Dec169
New Contributor
I don't usually do this and operate on the mantra of "shut up a listen" more than speaking so this is a little weird for me, but I fee as though it would provide some value, especially to new entrepreneurs so I figured I might give it a shot.
My name is Declan, I'm a 19 year old college student at many people's dream school, an entrepreneur and professional problem solver. My goal, and life's purpose is to help push back the boundaries we as society build around what we can do and help people realize how limitless and unstoppable they truly are.
My entrepreneurial journey really started when I was little, a million years ago when a teacher asked me what I wanted to be. I was little and hadn't quite grasped the concept of doing things people "expected" me to do so I answered with "I want to be an inventor, I want to build a sun on the earth so that everyone can be warm in the wintertime." And I showed her a bunch of pictures and doodles I made showing exactly how this would be done. How we'd take the sun from the sky, put it in a bottle and make everyone warm.
She laughed. I was in the second grade, about 6 years old, when this happened and to this day I can see her face laughing as other kids joined in with her until she was finished and said in a deadpan voice "You can't do that."
That memory is burned into my head and I have replayed it over and over again throughout the years and have added it to the countless other memories where people have implied that I wasn't too "smart" to do something. I wasn't too "good" to be this or that person. And, years went by and I used those as fuel to help me grow.
So, I became a stellar student. It took a bit, but I graduated near the top of my class and attended Princeton, a silent F*ck you to everyone who had doubted me before as now I was "extraordinary" and so "talented" and "lucky." I still hadn't forgotten my dream of building a sun on Earth and leaving the solar system though and figured that the best way to do this now would be to become a scientist and work on projects with this goal. So I came in as a Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Major with a Physics, Finance, and Computational Mathematics minor. Everything was going according to plan until this one time in physics lab when I asked my TA how he got into Academia.
He turned to me, spoke a little bit about his back story and said, in many more words, that we was sick of crunching numbers all day and reviewing data so he decided to go for something where he could interact with other students and have a chance to see the change he was making.
That single conversation changed everything. Everything in me wanted to avoid to soul sucking aspect of being trapped in the same building crunching numbers for someone else, and here I was planning to do the same thing, but in a different field. It was an absolute "hell no" for me. I had always had the idea of doing something meaningful to me which would not only give me meaning and purpose, but also give me the freedom to do other things I wanted to do and physics did not seem like the way to go.
For a couple months I was really lost. My girlfriend had recently broke up with me and a friend I had been really close with had cut off ties with me. It was just a really rough time and I was pretty much spinning in place and had no idea what to do with myself. One day, a friend of mine introduced me to the books "The Law of Human Nature" by Robert Greene and the book "Space X, Tesla, and The Quest For a Fantastic Future" by Ashlee Vance. While I didn't know it at the time, these two books changed my life.
So, about a week later I finish the books, I'd been an avid reader since high school and had been using them as an escape, and needed new books, but didn't have the cash for it. I decide to sign up for a tutoring company where I could make a little bit of money and pay for more books. I do that for a few months until the end of the school year plowing through book after book after book and when the year ends I finally leave school and head home. I'd been working there for a couple months when I ask for a small raise, by 1% as stated in the contract. But, my boss looks at me, laughs and says no. I was just derailed and completely taken aback by it because I felt like I wasn't asking for the moon and still got turned down. A couple weeks later, after logging maybe 80 hours a week for 10+ weeks at this new job something in me goes "what the hell am I doing?" why am I working 80 hours a week for someone and keeping 30% of it, when I could do it myself and keep 100%. It seemed super simple at the time so I just stopped and jumped.
Now, here's where we start. (I'll provide a timeline so you guys can follow my progression through time)
July - August 2019
I started building my own tutoring site in early July. There were many times when I questioned if this was truly worth it an what the actual hell I was getting myself into. But, I stuck with it and on August first we launched.
Early August 2019
Looking back, this site was absolutely awful, but I hadn't had a concept of what was good and bad at this point so I didn't know that, but what I did know was that there was no traction. At that time it really clicked with me that this wasn't as easy as I thought it would be
Mid August 2019
A couple redesigns to the site was done and my brother and I put up 200 fliers a day, every day for two weeks in public spaces and educational books (like the SAT, ACT, etc.) to build awareness for the site. We waited a couple weeks and still nothing. By this point I want to throw in the towel and call it a day, but we decide to try one more time.
Late August 2019
I email a bunch of teachers in my area about this awesome tutoring site which would transform the lives of their student and receive nothing. It wasn't until the end of August, right around when I was leaving for my Sophomore year when I got the first call from a parent asking for tutoring and then my feedback finally fired for the first time.
September 2019
One parent turns to two which turns to three and four and so on and there are more and more requests and I start having less and less time to handle them. I bring on one friend then two, then three and learn about systemization and develop a process to streamline the business so that I can delegate out tasks and focus on the big picture. But, there's a really small problem, while I'm still delegating tasks and have streamlined as much as possible, this is still taking up a a lot of my time and when juggled with school and life was becoming increasingly difficult to do.
October 2019
I'm browsing through reddit trying to learn how to automate some of my business when a book catches my eye "The Millionaire Fastlane ." I bought it and ' it. Didn't think much about it because I thought it was a bullshit "get rich quick" type book I just blow $20 on so after buying it I promptly forgot about it.
Around this time I run into the problem where I realized that I couldn't scale. Business had been slowing down and I realized that I need to find a way to scale this independent of my time.
One Saturday I wasn't feeling too great so I decided to stay in and read. I picked up "The Millionaire Fastlane " looking for some entertainment to distract me from the tragedy which was midterms week and dove right into it. It was a phenomenal book, and I'm sure a million and three other people have talked about here on the site, but it was incredible.
Now I had a framework and ideal I was working towards. A sort of compass I would use to guide the life of my business
November 2019
Here I went more from interest to commitment. I started documenting my journey on instagram, the books I read, the inspiring things which would get me through touch times, and a bunch of other things to help me on this journey.
I also unofficially joined the fastlane forum right around now, looking around and seeing what other people are doing and seeing if I could learn a thing or two from their example.
December 2019
In early December I learned about Facebook Ads and made an insane amount of mistakes during the process of learning. In the first couple of weeks I plowed through maybe 1,000 with no sales and click through rate of 0.01%. It was absolutely abysmal. But, mistakes were made and learning ensued. I grew and got better and by the end of December I had a decent grasp on the concept of "failing elegantly" as it related to facebook and business as a whole and went into my schools winter break excited to learn a lot about what I could do with it.
January - Mid February 2020
My business was still growing through word of mouth and each parent would invite approximately 0.3 people to the site. So I knew that if this was going to grow I needed to reach a wider audience and bring that number up to at least a 1.
January and February was a lot of testing and learning. Seeing what worked and what didn't work on Facebook. Learning what "CPC" was, what "Click Through Rate" was and all the other things that came with that.
I also learned how to market much more effectively and knew what captured people's attention and what didn't and how to effectively drive traffic to my site. By the end of February I mastered getting click through rates of 5% - 7% routinely and had mastered the art of telling a compelling story which would drive traffic to the site from Facebook.
Late February 2020
After that, right around the end of February I stumbled onto Google Analytics to see how people were interacting with my site and l discovered what bounce rate were, what conversions were and how even through I drove traffic from facebook to my site really well, no one did anything on my site. The bounce rate 100% across the board.
March - April 2020
I learned about the importance of "Landing Pages" right around here and the site "Hotjar" and pretty much have focused exclusively on trying to optimize my the landing page for my site. While I'm not moving as fast as I would like, I never do, I'm making good progress and consistently decreased the bounce rate from 100% to 90% to now 85% on a consistent basis. My goal is to try to break 75% before I start moving on to building the funnel and closing customers.
Here's a timeline I have moving forward
April - May 2020
During April and May I'm focusing exclusively on learning how to optimize my landing page and reducing that bounce rate as much as possible
June - September 2020
I'm going to learn how to sell customers on joining the site and becoming a member. Effectively monetizing them.
September - December 2020
I'm going to learn how to automate the selling, streamline everything as much as possible and improve what can be improved upon
January 2021 - ???
Scale
If you've reached this point thank you for reading this wall of text I really appreciate it.
My website can be found here, landing page here
If you have any ideas, tips or suggestions I'm ears!
Thanks again, wish you the best!
Sincerely,
Dec
My name is Declan, I'm a 19 year old college student at many people's dream school, an entrepreneur and professional problem solver. My goal, and life's purpose is to help push back the boundaries we as society build around what we can do and help people realize how limitless and unstoppable they truly are.
My entrepreneurial journey really started when I was little, a million years ago when a teacher asked me what I wanted to be. I was little and hadn't quite grasped the concept of doing things people "expected" me to do so I answered with "I want to be an inventor, I want to build a sun on the earth so that everyone can be warm in the wintertime." And I showed her a bunch of pictures and doodles I made showing exactly how this would be done. How we'd take the sun from the sky, put it in a bottle and make everyone warm.
She laughed. I was in the second grade, about 6 years old, when this happened and to this day I can see her face laughing as other kids joined in with her until she was finished and said in a deadpan voice "You can't do that."
That memory is burned into my head and I have replayed it over and over again throughout the years and have added it to the countless other memories where people have implied that I wasn't too "smart" to do something. I wasn't too "good" to be this or that person. And, years went by and I used those as fuel to help me grow.
So, I became a stellar student. It took a bit, but I graduated near the top of my class and attended Princeton, a silent F*ck you to everyone who had doubted me before as now I was "extraordinary" and so "talented" and "lucky." I still hadn't forgotten my dream of building a sun on Earth and leaving the solar system though and figured that the best way to do this now would be to become a scientist and work on projects with this goal. So I came in as a Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Major with a Physics, Finance, and Computational Mathematics minor. Everything was going according to plan until this one time in physics lab when I asked my TA how he got into Academia.
He turned to me, spoke a little bit about his back story and said, in many more words, that we was sick of crunching numbers all day and reviewing data so he decided to go for something where he could interact with other students and have a chance to see the change he was making.
That single conversation changed everything. Everything in me wanted to avoid to soul sucking aspect of being trapped in the same building crunching numbers for someone else, and here I was planning to do the same thing, but in a different field. It was an absolute "hell no" for me. I had always had the idea of doing something meaningful to me which would not only give me meaning and purpose, but also give me the freedom to do other things I wanted to do and physics did not seem like the way to go.
For a couple months I was really lost. My girlfriend had recently broke up with me and a friend I had been really close with had cut off ties with me. It was just a really rough time and I was pretty much spinning in place and had no idea what to do with myself. One day, a friend of mine introduced me to the books "The Law of Human Nature" by Robert Greene and the book "Space X, Tesla, and The Quest For a Fantastic Future" by Ashlee Vance. While I didn't know it at the time, these two books changed my life.
So, about a week later I finish the books, I'd been an avid reader since high school and had been using them as an escape, and needed new books, but didn't have the cash for it. I decide to sign up for a tutoring company where I could make a little bit of money and pay for more books. I do that for a few months until the end of the school year plowing through book after book after book and when the year ends I finally leave school and head home. I'd been working there for a couple months when I ask for a small raise, by 1% as stated in the contract. But, my boss looks at me, laughs and says no. I was just derailed and completely taken aback by it because I felt like I wasn't asking for the moon and still got turned down. A couple weeks later, after logging maybe 80 hours a week for 10+ weeks at this new job something in me goes "what the hell am I doing?" why am I working 80 hours a week for someone and keeping 30% of it, when I could do it myself and keep 100%. It seemed super simple at the time so I just stopped and jumped.
Now, here's where we start. (I'll provide a timeline so you guys can follow my progression through time)
July - August 2019
I started building my own tutoring site in early July. There were many times when I questioned if this was truly worth it an what the actual hell I was getting myself into. But, I stuck with it and on August first we launched.
Early August 2019
Looking back, this site was absolutely awful, but I hadn't had a concept of what was good and bad at this point so I didn't know that, but what I did know was that there was no traction. At that time it really clicked with me that this wasn't as easy as I thought it would be
Mid August 2019
A couple redesigns to the site was done and my brother and I put up 200 fliers a day, every day for two weeks in public spaces and educational books (like the SAT, ACT, etc.) to build awareness for the site. We waited a couple weeks and still nothing. By this point I want to throw in the towel and call it a day, but we decide to try one more time.
Late August 2019
I email a bunch of teachers in my area about this awesome tutoring site which would transform the lives of their student and receive nothing. It wasn't until the end of August, right around when I was leaving for my Sophomore year when I got the first call from a parent asking for tutoring and then my feedback finally fired for the first time.
September 2019
One parent turns to two which turns to three and four and so on and there are more and more requests and I start having less and less time to handle them. I bring on one friend then two, then three and learn about systemization and develop a process to streamline the business so that I can delegate out tasks and focus on the big picture. But, there's a really small problem, while I'm still delegating tasks and have streamlined as much as possible, this is still taking up a a lot of my time and when juggled with school and life was becoming increasingly difficult to do.
October 2019
I'm browsing through reddit trying to learn how to automate some of my business when a book catches my eye "The Millionaire Fastlane ." I bought it and ' it. Didn't think much about it because I thought it was a bullshit "get rich quick" type book I just blow $20 on so after buying it I promptly forgot about it.
Around this time I run into the problem where I realized that I couldn't scale. Business had been slowing down and I realized that I need to find a way to scale this independent of my time.
One Saturday I wasn't feeling too great so I decided to stay in and read. I picked up "The Millionaire Fastlane " looking for some entertainment to distract me from the tragedy which was midterms week and dove right into it. It was a phenomenal book, and I'm sure a million and three other people have talked about here on the site, but it was incredible.
Now I had a framework and ideal I was working towards. A sort of compass I would use to guide the life of my business
November 2019
Here I went more from interest to commitment. I started documenting my journey on instagram, the books I read, the inspiring things which would get me through touch times, and a bunch of other things to help me on this journey.
I also unofficially joined the fastlane forum right around now, looking around and seeing what other people are doing and seeing if I could learn a thing or two from their example.
December 2019
In early December I learned about Facebook Ads and made an insane amount of mistakes during the process of learning. In the first couple of weeks I plowed through maybe 1,000 with no sales and click through rate of 0.01%. It was absolutely abysmal. But, mistakes were made and learning ensued. I grew and got better and by the end of December I had a decent grasp on the concept of "failing elegantly" as it related to facebook and business as a whole and went into my schools winter break excited to learn a lot about what I could do with it.
January - Mid February 2020
My business was still growing through word of mouth and each parent would invite approximately 0.3 people to the site. So I knew that if this was going to grow I needed to reach a wider audience and bring that number up to at least a 1.
January and February was a lot of testing and learning. Seeing what worked and what didn't work on Facebook. Learning what "CPC" was, what "Click Through Rate" was and all the other things that came with that.
I also learned how to market much more effectively and knew what captured people's attention and what didn't and how to effectively drive traffic to my site. By the end of February I mastered getting click through rates of 5% - 7% routinely and had mastered the art of telling a compelling story which would drive traffic to the site from Facebook.
Late February 2020
After that, right around the end of February I stumbled onto Google Analytics to see how people were interacting with my site and l discovered what bounce rate were, what conversions were and how even through I drove traffic from facebook to my site really well, no one did anything on my site. The bounce rate 100% across the board.
March - April 2020
I learned about the importance of "Landing Pages" right around here and the site "Hotjar" and pretty much have focused exclusively on trying to optimize my the landing page for my site. While I'm not moving as fast as I would like, I never do, I'm making good progress and consistently decreased the bounce rate from 100% to 90% to now 85% on a consistent basis. My goal is to try to break 75% before I start moving on to building the funnel and closing customers.
Here's a timeline I have moving forward
April - May 2020
During April and May I'm focusing exclusively on learning how to optimize my landing page and reducing that bounce rate as much as possible
June - September 2020
I'm going to learn how to sell customers on joining the site and becoming a member. Effectively monetizing them.
September - December 2020
I'm going to learn how to automate the selling, streamline everything as much as possible and improve what can be improved upon
January 2021 - ???
Scale
If you've reached this point thank you for reading this wall of text I really appreciate it.
My website can be found here, landing page here
If you have any ideas, tips or suggestions I'm ears!
Thanks again, wish you the best!
Sincerely,
Dec
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