Entrepreneur’s Schedule: How I Manage My Day

Entrepreneur’s Schedule: How I Manage My Day

I’ve written some about productivity as an entrepreneur on this blog before, but in recent months as my schedule has become busier I’ve had to become quite good at managing not only my time but also my energy. I run two companies actively and try to have a life outside of work, as I have a wife and dog who love spending time with me and going on adventures.

And let’s be honest – I love going on adventures too.

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Hi, I’m John and I’m a workaholic

Hi, I’m John and I’m a workaholic

“Hi John” you say.

I’m an entrepreneur. I’ve been making money in some shape or form since I was 11 years old getting paid $1 per horse stall I cleaned. I became so efficient at it that I was making $6/hr.

Not bad for an 11 year old.

22 years later (I turned 33 on Monday), I’ve been running my own company for almost 2 years. That’s crazy.

But I work a lot.

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How To Build A Successful Consulting or Agency Business

How To Build A Successful Consulting or Agency Business

Thinking about going on your own to build a consulting or agency business? Then read this first.

I will never forget September 29th, 2015. This was the day after I got laid off from my last fulltime job (19 months, where does the time go?) and I was laying in bed. I’m an ENTJ with a Type A personality (aka, I can never sit still) so even though I was unemployed and didn’t have to worry about money until the end of the year because of the severance I received, my mind was already spinning with what I was going to do next.

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I wrote 9000 new lines of code to learn this

I wrote 9000 new lines of code to learn this

Last week I pushed live the next incarnation of Credo. This update has taken a year of observing industry trends and needs, countless hours of conversation with agency owners, hiring a business strategy coach, speaking with multiple software mentors, working with my wife on designs, and 1000 lines of CSS plus another 500 or so lines […]

Don’t Let A Junior Technician Do Sales

Don’t Let A Junior Technician Do Sales

One of the biggest mistakes I see agencies make is hiring the wrong person to do sales, thinking they can do it themselves alongside all of their other duties, or letting a junior person who expresses interest in sales take the reins and do it.

I created a video for all of you (I’m trying to do more video this year) explaining my thinking around why this is a bad idea, and how to go about vetting someone internally to see if they can do the job or if they’re going to need more training.

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How To Let WordPress User Update Account Info on FrontEnd

How To Let WordPress User Update Account Info on FrontEnd

This post is slightly outside of my usual content about SEO or selling marketing work. But it’s a need out in the Internet world so I figured I’d take a crack at it. Let me know if you want more of this tactical type stuff.

I’m running a full app/soon to be marketplace over on GetCredo.com. The backend app involves a lot of things being tied together, and because it is a multi-sided platform I have many different levels of users (they’re called “Roles” by WordPress).

I’ve been building out the next iteration of the platform, and with that comes the functionality for projects creators to see all of the replies from Credo pros within the app, signed in.

WordPress is an incredibly extendable platform, especially with all of the plugins that exist today. I’ve written about it before, that it is indeed possible to build companies that make good money (yes, even processing payments while you sleep) because of the tools available to entrepreneurs today. I have a lot of respect for the people who have come before me who have built a lot of the tools that I now use every single day – WordPress core, Gravity Forms, Stripe, membership plugins.

But there are still some shortcomings and thus we have to find workarounds.

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How Long Does SEO Take To Start Working?

How Long Does SEO Take To Start Working?

In my line of work, it’s common to get the “how soon can I expect results?” question from new or prospective clients. Many SEOs say that it takes a few months to many months to really start seeing results. And whatever you are seeing after 2 to 3 months pales in comparison to what you will see at 12 months if you are doing SEO right.

I’ve always struggled to pitch the longterm value of SEO and that it takes time for many reasons:

  • You need to allow time to do the audit
  • You need to allow time to get the work implemented
  • You need to allow time for Google to recrawl everything
  • Building links takes a lot of time if you’re doing it scalably as you build the rest of your business

One of the reasons why I love having my own site(s) is that I can show specific case studies.

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Quit Making Emotional Decisions About Business Growth

Quit Making Emotional Decisions About Business Growth

Let’s Talk About Making Marketing Investments

I’m frustrated.

Why?

Because I’ve been building a business in the marketing consulting industry for the last 18 months and I think that most businesses think about growth and investing in growth in completely the wrong way. And that is hurting these businesses.

This post is primarily addressed to marketing agencies and consultants. I’ve worked with over 100 in the last 18 months and helped many get new clients and make more money for their agencies or individual consultancy.

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Company Growth and Profit Lessons for Startups

Company Growth and Profit Lessons for Startups

I’ve recently been doing a lot of reading, thinking, and having discussions with smart entrepreneurs about how companies grow and what it takes to build a successful company. As I’ve built Credo from nothing in October 2015 to approximately $350k ARR as I write this (numbers here) and growing, I’ve been through many levels of my own psychology and the psychology of others as I’ve fought to make this thing a reality and now to keep growing it.

Some posts have really caught my eye over the last number of months.

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