Back story...
Waaaay back in 2018 I was desperate to get back on my entrepreneurial path. I had successful online businesses and internet marketing enterprises before, but couldn't scale. It seemed like everything I tried was missing "something", and I could not make anything work, or got hit with some change in an industry that killed the cash flow. eBay and PayPal for one thing. What a shit show they both were. I posted on these very forums to give me some accountability, and studied MJ's books like my life depended on it. I hit a wrong turn with so many things, I lost count.
Over the past six years a lot has changed for me, both personally and professionally. I ended up going back into full time employment, working from home, writing copy and content mostly. My mother passed away, and I hit a mental wall which almost ruined me. My wife supported me entirely, and got me back on my feet, then taking one step at a time.
I knew I had to get back to my roots, because even though the stress of being an entrepreneur was massive, it was nothing compared to the death by a thousand cuts in full time employment. It f*cking killed me after working for myself for most of my adult life. I was very fortunate that whilst working in my last job, I met my (now) business partner - Dan. We were kindred spirits. 100% aligned on everything entrepreneurial. We discussed an old business he had worked on that was bearing fruit despite having no attention on it. The business is an awards company - Business Awards UK. We were both still working full time when he introduced me to the business and I introduced him to Fastlane; which is when he turned into a monster.
Dan was invigorated, and began plotting out a business plan to revamp and grow the business, and I (inspired by his energy and passion for leaving the rat race) began to chip in with some of my own ideas. We became legal 50/50 business partners, then made a plan to quit our jobs as soon as the business could pay us a salary. He quit first, taking a heavily reduced salary, and began working full time on the website and growth plans, whilst I worked in my spare time on marketing, SEO, copy and content. Then I quit my job, and joined the company, knowing we were absolutely heading in the right direction.
During this time, my father had been living with us due to ill health, then moved to a care home, and had passed away. My wife was having a tough time in her career. My business partner and I were both suffering financially, and we STILL forged ahead. We doubled down and worked our asses off. We were so clear on how successful the business would be - because we had done everything properly.
Over the course of six months, all of the changes we'd made, all of the SEO and content, all of the new marketing ideas - everything started paying off. We were in a position to hire people and spend our time 100% on marketing and growth. And that's exactly what we did. Not only that, we had been making plans for AFTER we'd got the company to where we wanted, with employees managing operations, so we could build a true Fastlane enterprise on the back of it.
It wasn't all good news..
We had a fantastic run with SEO, and with our own B2B outreach, but we were not getting enough leads through the door using our methods. It wasn't scalable. As luck would have it, we got a cold email on LinkedIn offering lead gen services on a "no win, no fee" basis. We took them up on the offer, and leads began to come in at a decent rate. Then we wanted to scale up. The guy was a one man band, and his proposal for scaling would cripple us financially. We would not be in profit for months. We'd had a good relationship with the guy, and were actually helping him grow his company - but he was reluctant to take any risks to get to the next level. It was time to go our separate ways.
After our final meeting, I basically said "We know what these lead gen guys are doing - we just need to know how it's done... and f*cking scale it". It was true, and Dan agreed. We'd had open conversations about the lead gen methods the guy was using, but we'd never actually tried it ourselves. It would cost us significantly less to just build and test it, so we just went for it. And... it worked.
Success
We built our own in-house lead prospecting software that dealt with refinement and targeting, whilst the heavy lifting for verifying and sending emails was outsourced to other tools. We were cold emailing thousands of companies every week, and were getting HUGE open, click and conversion rates. The combination of my copy and our value props worked amazingly well. Dan's background is CRO, which basically means whatever I write is wrong. Just kidding. Dan and I have a great shorthand, and we edit copy until it screams quality.
We exceeded all of our expectations, and after just one year in business, we were taking over £30k per month, and had employed five staff. Two were previously colleagues, who I trusted 100% to get us where we needed to be. I made them a great offer to come work with us, and (thankfully!) they jumped on it. One of the hires was my wife, who is now Managing Director and runs the daily operations of the company. She loves her career, and the business has thrived under her control.
We have since opened the USA Awards and Business Awards UK went from being the fastest growing to the largest awards platform in the UK. We were featured on Starter Story, which meant the absolute world to me, having watched Pat Walls drive his business to massive success over the years. We entered the Starter Story Slack group and lots of other things began to click into place, as we rubbed shoulders with start-up founders, successful business owners and entrepreneurs (just like we do on The Fastlane Forum!).
Things are not just good now, they are amazing. My business partner and I are now able to focus on our other projects, which are slowly bearing fruit. These other projects are direct descendants of learnings from our success. I'll explain this below.
What we learned
It goes without saying that without having the philosophies we'd learned from Millionaire Fastlane , we wouldn't have been able to qualify most of our strategies, nor would we have killed off certain aspects of our business that were not in line with CENTS. Having a rigid structure to our business plan was essential, and whenever pieces fell out of line, we found ways to make it adhere again.
We have learned a SIGNIFICANT amount from the businesses and leaders we've interacted with through our awards platforms. This actually paved the way for our latest venture (more on this below).
We also learned that if you are seeking a product or service for your company and it doesn't exist - you should just go ahead and build it yourself. We have now got a bunch of our own tools and software that we'd pay tens of thousands per month for... but because we built and own it, there's no cost other than staff to operate it.
The massive piece of the puzzle, however, was the business model itself. This "secret formula" as we call it is now something we can implement in our other projects. If it meets CENTS and our Secret Formula - we go for it.
I mean, it's not that secret. I've actually outlined it below
1. Fast Traction
2. Attraction Mechanism
3. Social Proof
Fast Traction
Anything that allows you to grow fast organically (SEO) or socially (people sharing on social media). Whatever you sell or offer, it needs to be something people will tell others about because they are proud of it, or want others to know they bought it. They will link from their website or social media, which means YOU get backlinks.
Attraction Mechanism
This is paramount. We learned that (in B2B) anything that taps into the vanity, ego, or pride of a businessperson adds an immeasurable amount of weight to your product/service. Does this work in retail? SURE! If you sell shoes, then people need to be so proud of these shoes they can't wait to post a pic of them wearing them and showing how stylish and sexy they are. If it's organic dog food, they cannot wait to post a pic of their lucky little Chihuahua tucking into their delicious, healthy meal. Make it your priority to tap into this. In our case, we are a B2B service, but people cannot wait to show that they are proud to be our customer! We have so much social proof and UGC (user generated content) that it's just a no-brainer for new clients to work with us. They must sit and think "Well, I don't want to miss out on being THAT happy".
Social Proof
With the two above mechanisms in place, you now have a recipe for lots of tasty social proof. And you better damn well show that off on your website and in your outreach! People love to see happy faces on your website - previous customers who were delighted by you. They love to hear who they are joining in outreach copy.
None of this is new. It's all stuff you have heard about before that works. But if you're not using it, it doesn't work at all.
We made all of it work for us, and it does all of the marketing heavy lifting. Our offering is heavily based on businesses being proud to work with us, which means people want to share on their website and on socials (and link to us). When they post on socials, we use that social proof on our website and in our copy, and in our outreach. This leverage is critical to our success.
What's next for us?
We recently launched New Vertical. It's a free, regular newsletter full of interviews with experts, and strategies for all aspects of business. We cover lead gen, SEO, copy, content, growth hacking, business development - you name it, we try to cover it. We're hoping to help entrepreneurs and SMEs with actionable stuff that just works. We've got plans for other newsletters in the future, but this one is our passion project because it is the newsletter we wish we were subscribed to back when we started!
Happy to answer any questions and offer any insight. Thanks so much to you all for your guidance through the difficult years and affirmation through the easy ones with such transparent advice and unrelenting positivity. Both Dan and I owe a lot to this forum and @MJ DeMarco , and until now, we've not really been in a position to give back. So I am
Edit: Spellingses
Waaaay back in 2018 I was desperate to get back on my entrepreneurial path. I had successful online businesses and internet marketing enterprises before, but couldn't scale. It seemed like everything I tried was missing "something", and I could not make anything work, or got hit with some change in an industry that killed the cash flow. eBay and PayPal for one thing. What a shit show they both were. I posted on these very forums to give me some accountability, and studied MJ's books like my life depended on it. I hit a wrong turn with so many things, I lost count.
Over the past six years a lot has changed for me, both personally and professionally. I ended up going back into full time employment, working from home, writing copy and content mostly. My mother passed away, and I hit a mental wall which almost ruined me. My wife supported me entirely, and got me back on my feet, then taking one step at a time.
I knew I had to get back to my roots, because even though the stress of being an entrepreneur was massive, it was nothing compared to the death by a thousand cuts in full time employment. It f*cking killed me after working for myself for most of my adult life. I was very fortunate that whilst working in my last job, I met my (now) business partner - Dan. We were kindred spirits. 100% aligned on everything entrepreneurial. We discussed an old business he had worked on that was bearing fruit despite having no attention on it. The business is an awards company - Business Awards UK. We were both still working full time when he introduced me to the business and I introduced him to Fastlane; which is when he turned into a monster.
Dan was invigorated, and began plotting out a business plan to revamp and grow the business, and I (inspired by his energy and passion for leaving the rat race) began to chip in with some of my own ideas. We became legal 50/50 business partners, then made a plan to quit our jobs as soon as the business could pay us a salary. He quit first, taking a heavily reduced salary, and began working full time on the website and growth plans, whilst I worked in my spare time on marketing, SEO, copy and content. Then I quit my job, and joined the company, knowing we were absolutely heading in the right direction.
During this time, my father had been living with us due to ill health, then moved to a care home, and had passed away. My wife was having a tough time in her career. My business partner and I were both suffering financially, and we STILL forged ahead. We doubled down and worked our asses off. We were so clear on how successful the business would be - because we had done everything properly.
Over the course of six months, all of the changes we'd made, all of the SEO and content, all of the new marketing ideas - everything started paying off. We were in a position to hire people and spend our time 100% on marketing and growth. And that's exactly what we did. Not only that, we had been making plans for AFTER we'd got the company to where we wanted, with employees managing operations, so we could build a true Fastlane enterprise on the back of it.
It wasn't all good news..
We had a fantastic run with SEO, and with our own B2B outreach, but we were not getting enough leads through the door using our methods. It wasn't scalable. As luck would have it, we got a cold email on LinkedIn offering lead gen services on a "no win, no fee" basis. We took them up on the offer, and leads began to come in at a decent rate. Then we wanted to scale up. The guy was a one man band, and his proposal for scaling would cripple us financially. We would not be in profit for months. We'd had a good relationship with the guy, and were actually helping him grow his company - but he was reluctant to take any risks to get to the next level. It was time to go our separate ways.
After our final meeting, I basically said "We know what these lead gen guys are doing - we just need to know how it's done... and f*cking scale it". It was true, and Dan agreed. We'd had open conversations about the lead gen methods the guy was using, but we'd never actually tried it ourselves. It would cost us significantly less to just build and test it, so we just went for it. And... it worked.
Success
We built our own in-house lead prospecting software that dealt with refinement and targeting, whilst the heavy lifting for verifying and sending emails was outsourced to other tools. We were cold emailing thousands of companies every week, and were getting HUGE open, click and conversion rates. The combination of my copy and our value props worked amazingly well. Dan's background is CRO, which basically means whatever I write is wrong. Just kidding. Dan and I have a great shorthand, and we edit copy until it screams quality.
We exceeded all of our expectations, and after just one year in business, we were taking over £30k per month, and had employed five staff. Two were previously colleagues, who I trusted 100% to get us where we needed to be. I made them a great offer to come work with us, and (thankfully!) they jumped on it. One of the hires was my wife, who is now Managing Director and runs the daily operations of the company. She loves her career, and the business has thrived under her control.
We have since opened the USA Awards and Business Awards UK went from being the fastest growing to the largest awards platform in the UK. We were featured on Starter Story, which meant the absolute world to me, having watched Pat Walls drive his business to massive success over the years. We entered the Starter Story Slack group and lots of other things began to click into place, as we rubbed shoulders with start-up founders, successful business owners and entrepreneurs (just like we do on The Fastlane Forum!).
Things are not just good now, they are amazing. My business partner and I are now able to focus on our other projects, which are slowly bearing fruit. These other projects are direct descendants of learnings from our success. I'll explain this below.
What we learned
It goes without saying that without having the philosophies we'd learned from Millionaire Fastlane , we wouldn't have been able to qualify most of our strategies, nor would we have killed off certain aspects of our business that were not in line with CENTS. Having a rigid structure to our business plan was essential, and whenever pieces fell out of line, we found ways to make it adhere again.
We have learned a SIGNIFICANT amount from the businesses and leaders we've interacted with through our awards platforms. This actually paved the way for our latest venture (more on this below).
We also learned that if you are seeking a product or service for your company and it doesn't exist - you should just go ahead and build it yourself. We have now got a bunch of our own tools and software that we'd pay tens of thousands per month for... but because we built and own it, there's no cost other than staff to operate it.
The massive piece of the puzzle, however, was the business model itself. This "secret formula" as we call it is now something we can implement in our other projects. If it meets CENTS and our Secret Formula - we go for it.
I mean, it's not that secret. I've actually outlined it below
1. Fast Traction
2. Attraction Mechanism
3. Social Proof
Fast Traction
Anything that allows you to grow fast organically (SEO) or socially (people sharing on social media). Whatever you sell or offer, it needs to be something people will tell others about because they are proud of it, or want others to know they bought it. They will link from their website or social media, which means YOU get backlinks.
Attraction Mechanism
This is paramount. We learned that (in B2B) anything that taps into the vanity, ego, or pride of a businessperson adds an immeasurable amount of weight to your product/service. Does this work in retail? SURE! If you sell shoes, then people need to be so proud of these shoes they can't wait to post a pic of them wearing them and showing how stylish and sexy they are. If it's organic dog food, they cannot wait to post a pic of their lucky little Chihuahua tucking into their delicious, healthy meal. Make it your priority to tap into this. In our case, we are a B2B service, but people cannot wait to show that they are proud to be our customer! We have so much social proof and UGC (user generated content) that it's just a no-brainer for new clients to work with us. They must sit and think "Well, I don't want to miss out on being THAT happy".
Social Proof
With the two above mechanisms in place, you now have a recipe for lots of tasty social proof. And you better damn well show that off on your website and in your outreach! People love to see happy faces on your website - previous customers who were delighted by you. They love to hear who they are joining in outreach copy.
None of this is new. It's all stuff you have heard about before that works. But if you're not using it, it doesn't work at all.
We made all of it work for us, and it does all of the marketing heavy lifting. Our offering is heavily based on businesses being proud to work with us, which means people want to share on their website and on socials (and link to us). When they post on socials, we use that social proof on our website and in our copy, and in our outreach. This leverage is critical to our success.
What's next for us?
We recently launched New Vertical. It's a free, regular newsletter full of interviews with experts, and strategies for all aspects of business. We cover lead gen, SEO, copy, content, growth hacking, business development - you name it, we try to cover it. We're hoping to help entrepreneurs and SMEs with actionable stuff that just works. We've got plans for other newsletters in the future, but this one is our passion project because it is the newsletter we wish we were subscribed to back when we started!
Happy to answer any questions and offer any insight. Thanks so much to you all for your guidance through the difficult years and affirmation through the easy ones with such transparent advice and unrelenting positivity. Both Dan and I owe a lot to this forum and @MJ DeMarco , and until now, we've not really been in a position to give back. So I am
Edit: Spellingses
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