If you were following Shoestring101 in January, you know that I did another 30 Day, Thousand Dollar Challenge.

In case you’re tuning in late to this channel, I’ve been able to start a number of small businesses with no capital. Or less capital than you might take from the first hour of a garage sale (hence Shoestring101).

Some businesses I’ve started publicly and documented in real time on this blog. January’s Challenge was no exception.

The 30 Day, Thousand Dollar Challenge is meant to show how possible it is (with a little hustle) to start a small business on the side and make a decent income WITHOUT:

risking capital,

borrowing money,

or taking on partners that may or may not share your vision.

I’ve done a number of these Challenges to demonstrate the Shoestring101 principles  in “object lessons” for my upcoming information product…

Side Money Blueprint: Start Your Own Profitable Business From Scratch in 30 Days Without Risking a Dime (or Wasting Your Time).

Last month, rather than choosing the kind of business I was going to start in 30 days and make $1,000 with, I asked YOU (my good-lookin’ Readers, the Shoestring Steppers) to pick what kind of business to do and whom it should serve.

The results are in.

The Business You Chose for this Month’s Challenge

So, starting a business centered around writing ad copy (copywriting) and designing sales funnels for middle-class small business owners around the world has finally invaded the lower layers of my subconscious.

Last night my German Shepherd, Jovi (yes, kinda like Jon Bon Jovi) was put out to do his business at 10:30 pm, but he didn’t do his doody. Ahem, duty. SO he got me up at 2:30am instead for an emergency outing.

In my mind rather than thinking,

“Damn dog, okay wait a minnit I’ll get up and let you out”;

instead what bubbled up in my grogginess was,

“I’m sorry but you have come to a portion of the site that only members can access. In order to get this amazing benefit please register for our free gift and give us your email…”

Heh.

YUP, sales funnel strucures and copywriting are actually coming out of my ears… though during the 30 Day, Thousand Dollar Challenge I only actually earned a couple hundred dollars.

$216 to be exact.

That’s a durn sight SHORT of the thousand clams I claimed I would be able to make from scratch.

I guess that here I should point out that:

1. It didn’t end up COSTING me, like most failed attempts at business cost their owners.
2. I DID have some very beneficial side effects as a result of starting this biz!

Side Effects of This 30 Day Challenge

Before examining why I didn’t end up making one thousand spendable dollars in thirty days, let’s expound the benefits and lessons that DID come out of this month’s Challenge.

Learned the Process

Shoestring Step ONE is Get OFF Your ASS… which I did, at least for thirty minutes to two and a half hours a day.

Now, I realize that a “real workday” is much longer than that. But in the spirit of “Side Money Blueprint” I wanted to show it’s possible to make a side biz with side time. After all, most folks are not gonna QUIT their job to start a business… at least I seriously hope they don’t… they’re going to start a little something in their spare time. Well, with three other businesses of my OWN to run I didn’t “quit my job”… but what I did do was to try and eke out a little time every day to dedicate to working at this side gig.

Either I would be writing copy and constructing sales funnels or finding people for whom to write copy and construct sales funnels, for thirty days.

Shoestring Step TWO is Find Out The W’s.. Who Wants What, Why they Want it, Where and hoW they may be found. “Marketing” should really be called “finding”. My son asked me what is the difference between marketing and sales, since they seemed to him to be the same thing.

“Nope,” I told him. “They’re nowhere NEAR the same thing. Sales is what you do to convince someone they need something. Marketing is finding the people that are already convinced they need something, and letting them know you have it.”

Thanks Professor Kurt. 😎

So this is another thing I did daily… I looked for the W’s. I thought I would find them on Fiverr, but in truth it was harder and more time-consuming than I thought it would be. We’ll get to that later when we look at why I failed this time around. But first, some other side benefits:

Shoestring Step THREE is Learn To Create Value. This I did by playing with free trials of ClickFunnels and LeadPages (btw of the two I found LeadPages to have the best educational value, and ClickFunnels to be easier for this non-techie guy to use).

Full disclosure: clicking on the ClickFunnels links ^ here takes you to a 60 second video about ClickFunnels. I found that ClickFunnels was easier for me to use and yes, this is an “affilliate” link. My opinion is not for sale… but if you wanna make your own sales funnel  and you’re not a techie I’ve already done some testing for ya.  ‘Nuff said. 

Now, I never did get to Shoestring Steps FOUR and FIVE… Measure Everything You Do and Now Write Everything Down.

Neglecting these two Steps was probably part of why this particular Challenge failed to bring in $1,000 of side money. More about that later. But doing at least the first three Steps had some real benefits, beyond just learning the process of the copywriting/sales funnel biz. Read on:

Revamped My OWN Sales Funnels – Made $972

THIS side effect was quite tasty.

Since it was tough going sometimes to find the people that needed my services most on Fiverr, I began to use the tools and tricks I was selling on Fiverr to improve my OWN local business gigs.

Physician, heal thyself.

In another post on this site where I speak about the importance of tweaking your own sales funnels, I mention that if you could choose between working for a HIGH hourly rate, say a hundred bucks an hour… or work on a process for your business that increases how much you automatically bring in by one dollar a day… you should choose the second.

Eventually (and sooner than you think) your automatic income will surpass your hourly, “worked for” income. But you won’t have to work to keep getting it.

So when work dried up from Fiverr, rather than do NO funnels and copy… I revamped some funnels and copy for myself…

…and increased my income from one of my businesses by $972 in January, plus residual income of $239 a month afterwards!

That’s not a shabby side benefit.

Shucks… I don’t mind at ALL failing to make a thousand bucks last month creating sales funnels for others, if concentrating on my own sales funnels brought in that much extra bank 😉

(BTW I’m publishing this post on the tenth of February, though I began writing it on the third. In that week I had another four sign-ups, one of whom paid for a YEAR of classes in advance. Of the four new Students, three came from the sales funnels I put in place in January. This is another $1970 received in February so far, ABOVE the $972 in January I mentioned at the beginning of this section. So again, not a shabby side effect)

Okay, couple more side bennies:

Made a Number of New Contacts, Strengthened Old Ones

By announcing to the world I was gonna make a thousand dollars from scratch writing ad copy and constructing sales funnels, I did attract a lot of attention and make some new friends. I also did some work VERY CHEEEEPLY for clients on Fiverr.

These fellas and fellerettes are sure to think of me again when they need some copy written… and I dare say they would be willing to pay a bit more for it. I treated each $5 job like it was a $50 job… and when those turn into $50 jobs I’ll treat ’em like $500 jobs.

One of those contacts wants me to write her launch funnel and record video for it… what til you see it, I’m going to promote her product BIG TIME because I totally believe in it. More about that later, watch this space.

Got Some Testimonials and Exposure

I’ve decided from this little snafu that I really WANNA do copywriting and sales funnel creation. After all, I’ve done it for myself for years… but doing it for others has really sharpened the saw. Made me better.

Well, when I finally do hang out my shingle to really do copywriting in earnest… as a “real” business and not just a 30 Day Challenge…

…I already have a boatload of testimonials to quote.

Now here in February I already have some repeat biz… folks that ordered from me during the Challenge have come back ’round and ordered more.

(Heh… if they had placed their orders a few days sooner it might’ve spared me some of the embarrassment of missing my thousand dollar goal…)

But that’s all right. The ball has indeed gotten rolling and is picking up momentum.

The Biggest Side Benefit of All

The most important thing I’ve gotten out of this 30 Day Challenge is that my core Subscribers are still loyal, even seeing their “fearless leader” FAIL miserably.

I can’t thank my Steppers enough for the letters of encouragement during this Challenge. I DID have a couple (well, more than a couple) unsubscribe, but that’s okay… I’m not writing Shoestring101 for folks that think there will never be failures along the way to success.

I’m writing Shoestring101 for real people with real aspirations to start their own businesses.

Or if you already have a business… to point the way for YOU to own IT instead of IT owning YOU.

If you’re reading this, you’re in the category of the champions that I do this silly blog for in the first place.

Thank you.

Okay… Lessons Learned

Now, every failure is an EVENT, not a PERSON. sounds a little hollow when you’re licking your own wounds, but it’s still true. Rather than looking at myself as a total loser for taking on this Challenge, then making only $216 of the $1,000 I boasted that I would make… it’s time for me (and you!) to view the game tape and see where the mistakes were made.

The lessons learned fall into three categories. In this Challenge, I:

1) started off on the wrong foot,

2) allowed too many distractions,

3) finished strong but reached cruising speed about three weeks in… too late to make a diffference.

Let’s talk about starting off on the wrong foot. Before I do any endeavor like this, normally I take a step back and get extremely clear on WHY it’s important for me to succeed. I didn’t do that. Instead, I talked and talked on my blog and in my emails, thinking that this would motivate me while I was a-runnin’.

But I would have gotten a faster start… meaning I would make mistakes quicker and fix them sooner… if I had only followed my own directions. See recent my post, How to Get What You Want, for the “pre”-Step you should always take before the Shoestring Steps.

Next critique: I allowed too many distractions. If I had thrown more weight into it, I can see (looking back) that this Challenge could and should have made me $1,000. But I allowed other things to take precedence. I’m not talking about being a hubby and parenting and running my other businesses… those were necessary to do…

…but I AM talking about concentrating on those things when it was time for them, and concentrating on the Challenge when it was time for that.

Instead, I was thinking about my challenge during personal time, and during Challenge time I was thinking about my businesses and family.

D’oh!

By having a more clear statement of what I intended to do each day, I would not have been flying by the seat of my pants most of the time. If I had this Challenge to do over again, I think it would be a success. But as it is, I got to fail, fail miserably, and fail PUBLICLY (never fun) and mainly due to being unorganized and therefore unproductive.

Note to self: don’t handicap self.

Finally, I got my poop in a group and finished strong but it was too little, too late.  Specific actions I could have taken sooner are these:

I should not have started a brand-new Fiverr account. Since I ended up using the old one anyway, that’s where I should have begun instead of wasting time setting up a new one.

I should not have  taken some wrong advice… if you read about the “Fiverr Boss” debacle 20 days into the Challenge, you know that I picked up a program that gave insanely BAD and WRONG practices.

I could have gotten my Fiverr account(s) suspended indefinitely. As it turns out it just resulted in wasted time, but still: when something sounds too good to be true… well, you know the rest.

I should have gotten videos up quicker. Studies show that Fiverr gigs with attached videos are 220% more likely to sell. Now, I held off recording videos for all five gigs (I did record videos for two) because I got sick… but that’s no excuse. Whatever my voice might have sounded like, it would have been better to put up a crappy sounding video than no video at all.

I should have done more research. My “Aha!” moment came too late.  When I figured out the kind of gig titles that were getting traction and changed my gig title and offerings to match, it was the difference between night and day. Trouble is, that happened much later than it should have,

I should have been more prolific in promoting… don’t shoot self in the foot

use more channels… fb, pinterest, youtube, twitter and use ’em more often and on autopilot

I should have asked for repeat biz sooner. Piles of repeat orders have come in already since Feb 1st.. not that they count for the 30 Day Challenge starting January 1st 🙁 Had I asked these customers for their repeat biz, they might have placed their orders before the Challenge was ended.

WHEW. That’s a lot of “shoulda”..! In fact, I should all over myself 😉

Point is, it makes sense to go over one’s mistakes. NOT to wallow, but with the right attitude of “Okay here’s what happened. What did we learn and what are we going to do about it in the future?”

Ladies and gents… my beloved Shoestring Steppers… I can’t promise you I’ll never fail. What I will promise you is fair and honest coverage about the Challenges and to let you learn from my defeats as well as from my victories and the victories of other entrepreneurs.

Thanks for being a Stepper.

Next time I hope to win.

Watch this space.

Keep Stepping,

Kurt