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Earlier this year I started a men’s dating coaching business. Bootstrapped it with very little money and used a combination of cold calling and influencers to reach my target market.
The influencer marketing tactics showed some promise at the very beginning but overall did not work well. What did work (surprisingly) well was the cold calling.
I had a way to scrape numbers of single men from dating sites. I cold called them and though the success rate of cold calling was abysmal, doing it 5+ hours day actually gets you quite a few clients.
Problem is, I hated doing the coaching. I did some dating coaching nearly a decade ago and loved it but this time around it QUICKLY got stale. I have a few clients left and then I’m entirely done with that business.
Enter my new business…
Met an older photographer who has a highly profitable studio but is ready to shut it down and ease into retirement. Dude is not only great with a camera but he has some serious business skill too!
We decided to team up and help other photographers scale their business.
(I had a small photography business a long time ago before I went onto other things)
He is going to handle the coaching and I’m going to do the sales. We set this business up to where he is technically a contractor for my new business. Neither one of us likes traditional business partnerships and this is an arrangement we agreed on.
He will do the coaching and I will get him the clients.
Together we made a product. It is an audio course + several documents, worksheets, checklist, etc + a weekly group coaching call.
For a person who wants to start or grow a photography business, this program is the fast track to doing It.
Our initial outreach will be what I know best… cold calls. I’m NOT an expert by any means but I wouldn’t consider myself horrible either.
He just lost a lot of money in a divorce and I spent much of mine on recent unforeseen medical bills so we are bootstrapping this business too!
The plan is to cold call business -> set up a discovery call -> see if our product can actually solve their problems/help them scale/is in alignment with their goals -> close and get them entered into the coaching program.
The client then gets handed off to my “business partner.”
Today was the first day doing cold calls. Unfortunately I had a massive problem with the software that I get my cold leads from (I believe this software mostly just scraped google maps and FB) and spent the day fixing that. Then right after that the company that we set up to handle invoices and payment processing informed me that the bank account was rejected and had to fix that.
All said and done I only spent around 40 minutes calling.
Dials made: 16
Connects: 4
Appointments set: 0
Something odd occurred to me. When I was selling to consumers, it seemed normal to me that very few of then picked up their phone. I rarely every pick up my personal cell when an unknown number calls. But a business? When you are calling a businesses phone number… shouldn’t they pick up? I mean, how do you expect to talk to customers if you dont pick up the phone? I honestly figured the connect rate would be like 90%. But no, 4 out of 16 picked up the phone. Very small sample size however so we will see tomorrow.
Anyways, one hung up on me within 10 seconds. Another said they were about to retire and wasn’t interested in taking on any more clients. Another said they were flat out not interested, and another said that she was up to her eyes with clients and they she wishes they had less work. I tried to then pivot with her but someone in the background started yelling for her so we agreed that I would call her back tomorrow.
Tomorrow should be interesting, we’ll see what happens.
The goal is to spend the next month or so split testing different sales scripts and offers to see what converts the best and then to start hiring appointment setters and then eventually hire and train some closers and get an entire sales team going. I’m not going to worry about getting up inbound stuff such as FB ads until we get at least a small sales team going.
Should mention, right now… we are only charging $2k for the program and weekly coaching. Plus its tax deductible which damn near makes it free when you think about it (Either pay the tax man or pay yourself). Insane value if you ask me.
Cant wait to see what tomorrow brings.
The influencer marketing tactics showed some promise at the very beginning but overall did not work well. What did work (surprisingly) well was the cold calling.
I had a way to scrape numbers of single men from dating sites. I cold called them and though the success rate of cold calling was abysmal, doing it 5+ hours day actually gets you quite a few clients.
Problem is, I hated doing the coaching. I did some dating coaching nearly a decade ago and loved it but this time around it QUICKLY got stale. I have a few clients left and then I’m entirely done with that business.
Enter my new business…
Met an older photographer who has a highly profitable studio but is ready to shut it down and ease into retirement. Dude is not only great with a camera but he has some serious business skill too!
We decided to team up and help other photographers scale their business.
(I had a small photography business a long time ago before I went onto other things)
He is going to handle the coaching and I’m going to do the sales. We set this business up to where he is technically a contractor for my new business. Neither one of us likes traditional business partnerships and this is an arrangement we agreed on.
He will do the coaching and I will get him the clients.
Together we made a product. It is an audio course + several documents, worksheets, checklist, etc + a weekly group coaching call.
For a person who wants to start or grow a photography business, this program is the fast track to doing It.
Our initial outreach will be what I know best… cold calls. I’m NOT an expert by any means but I wouldn’t consider myself horrible either.
He just lost a lot of money in a divorce and I spent much of mine on recent unforeseen medical bills so we are bootstrapping this business too!
The plan is to cold call business -> set up a discovery call -> see if our product can actually solve their problems/help them scale/is in alignment with their goals -> close and get them entered into the coaching program.
The client then gets handed off to my “business partner.”
Today was the first day doing cold calls. Unfortunately I had a massive problem with the software that I get my cold leads from (I believe this software mostly just scraped google maps and FB) and spent the day fixing that. Then right after that the company that we set up to handle invoices and payment processing informed me that the bank account was rejected and had to fix that.
All said and done I only spent around 40 minutes calling.
Dials made: 16
Connects: 4
Appointments set: 0
Something odd occurred to me. When I was selling to consumers, it seemed normal to me that very few of then picked up their phone. I rarely every pick up my personal cell when an unknown number calls. But a business? When you are calling a businesses phone number… shouldn’t they pick up? I mean, how do you expect to talk to customers if you dont pick up the phone? I honestly figured the connect rate would be like 90%. But no, 4 out of 16 picked up the phone. Very small sample size however so we will see tomorrow.
Anyways, one hung up on me within 10 seconds. Another said they were about to retire and wasn’t interested in taking on any more clients. Another said they were flat out not interested, and another said that she was up to her eyes with clients and they she wishes they had less work. I tried to then pivot with her but someone in the background started yelling for her so we agreed that I would call her back tomorrow.
Tomorrow should be interesting, we’ll see what happens.
The goal is to spend the next month or so split testing different sales scripts and offers to see what converts the best and then to start hiring appointment setters and then eventually hire and train some closers and get an entire sales team going. I’m not going to worry about getting up inbound stuff such as FB ads until we get at least a small sales team going.
Should mention, right now… we are only charging $2k for the program and weekly coaching. Plus its tax deductible which damn near makes it free when you think about it (Either pay the tax man or pay yourself). Insane value if you ask me.
Cant wait to see what tomorrow brings.
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