It was such an amazing year! I learned so much and worked through some growing pains.
Matt Henderson:
Hey everyone, Matt from Business Mind Podcast. And we are back for the second section of my end of year review. And this will be the second episode of that. And I’ll pick up where I left off yesterday. All right, welcome back everyone. Thank you so much for coming and listening today. Again, I know yesterday we were starting over from the beginning and we left off where I was last February. So, almost one year ago today. So, it was actually 11 months ago that I started this… Not even actually, it was… Oh man, it was January last year. I was wrong with February. It was January of last year I had made this decision that I was going to go on the path of starting out my new businesses. And what I was going to do was I was going to start building websites for people and I would do all of their SEO, and UI, and UX. So SEO, search engine optimization, then I’d help them with their website design, and then customer interface and interaction with it and everything else.
…And my thought was, what I want to do is I’d like to help small business owners, which I’ve always been, and I struggled with this myself, which is why I decided to take on websites. I wanted to help them find a presence online. And it’s because I found it so difficult to… Not difficult, but I didn’t have all of the website knowledge that I needed when I had my taxi company. And I had even gone into school to become a webmaster. And in that process, it taught me absolutely nothing about what I actually practically needed to know to do website build out and design. So, I decided that now years later I’m in a business, obviously I’m an online business, but my business partner has always been the website side of things. And I didn’t realize he didn’t have a ton of… He’d a decent amount of knowledge, but all just self learned knowledge and just trial and error kind of stuff.
So, I realized I needed to be a lot more knowledgeable about my business, so therefore it would be a great idea for me to learn website design, and SEO, and how to rank my sites on Google and everything like that. So, I decided that I needed to be very knowledgeable on that so that I could be very knowledgeable for my business. And likewise, I wanted to help out, like I said, small business owners, and other entrepreneurs, who are trying to get themselves found online as well. Because, I look at websites and it’s atrocious, they’re tough. And the website design stuff started when my neighbor where our office is, our neighbor next door, he actually was running a… It’s an engine repair shop essentially. So, he swaps out and would repair older cars and do engine replacements and stuff like that.
And he came to me one day and he just asked me who handles our website stuff and how we do it all because he was canceling his, I think, he said, honestly, a membership or whatever. But, he was canceling his contract with the person who had been assisting him. And, honestly, I’d never even looked at his website. So I, I didn’t think much about it at the time, but when he was saying it, I’m thinking like, “Geez, I guess he just knows we do a decent business online. So, if he could do that kind of thing, if he could get that kind of traffic over to his own website, then he could start to generate more business and he could do a lot better.” So, his name was John. I said, “Hey, John, I’d be willing to take a look at it for you.”
But, at that time I wasn’t doing any of the website building or SEO work. So, he left and I pulled up his website and I felt terrible, because I had asked him how much he was paying the person. And it wasn’t a small amount of money. It wasn’t huge web design and upkeep kind of money, but it was way more than it should have been for what he had. So, just to give you a quick picture of what it was. He had a website that actually… It was brutal. It was probably designed in 2004 or five, somewhere around that time frame. And it had never ever been updated by his “web person”. And nothing had been changed. And the photos on there were this guy 15 years ago, fixing a car, and 15 years ago what his shop looked like.
He’s no longer even in that shop, and it’s the same photos, it’s the same pictures, the same write up. And it maybe was two pages or three pages. It was a front landing page. He had an “About Us” page. And then a “Thank You” page saying, “Give us a call.” And the guy was charging him, I’ll ballpark it, I think something like 250 a month to upkeep that. And it charged him north of a thousand dollars to build it. And when I just went online and I typed in “engine repair,” or “engine replacement,” whatever I typed in to see what his search engine optimization looked like and where he sat in Google, his website was lost. I never found it. I went through, I feel like 50 pages of Google at least. And when I looked up his rankings, it was horrendous.
There was not a chance in the world anybody was ever going to find him. And this unconscionable human being that had set this up for him was still collecting from him on a monthly basis. I asked him why he had stayed with this person so long and my neighbor’s comment was, “Oh, he’ll take us out to dinner once a quarter and talk to us about what the next year is going to look like. And you know, I really feel comfortable with him.” I thought, “Oh my gosh, this guy is really pulling the wool over their eyes. He’s using their own money to take them out to dinner. He’s doing zero work on this website. Literally he’s not even updating it a little bit and the guy’s lost on the web and he has no business coming in.”
So, that was my next catalyst to get into it was I saw that small business owners I felt were being taken advantage of, and I honestly believe they’re still being taken advantage of. And I wanted to put it into it, because everybody deserves to have a website. Everyone deserves to be found online and not have to deal with shysters that are going to rob them of their hard earned money for a small business and not give them what’s promised. So, I decided that I needed to be that guy, I needed to help. And if I could help by being able to build out even just basic websites for people like this guy, but that actually functioned and worked, and did what they were supposed to do, then it would be amazing. He would have a website that was a thousand times better than anything he had ever had. Now, unfortunately, the footen-end to that story.
Unfortunately, John didn’t make it to the end of the year. His business actually closed. And I was unable to even offer him my services before… By the time I was educated enough to give him the help that he needed, he was already out of business. And we’ve stayed in touch and he’s still a friend who stops by, we talk to each other, we hang out. But it’s sad. I didn’t like seeing his demise, and what was going on, and what took down his business, being that somebody really just took advantage of him. So, I wanted to bring my love for business, my love for websites, and online work. I wanted to bring all of that to these small business owners and that’s what I decided to do. And that’s why I went for it. So, I really just went into a deep dive of website design, building websites, SEO, keyword search, you name it.
If it has to do with it. Google my business. Anything you want. I did a deep dive into that for the better part of the year. And I have become extremely knowledgeable and can do amazing things now with websites, which is awesome. And I’m able to provide help to myself. And now I’ve signed up my first client this year that I’m helping them with their website. So, that’s how I started the 2019 year out was that I invested in myself heavily this year and it started with building websites. And all for the idea of just being able to help the small business owner, because I’m tired of people taking advantage of all of us. And it’s not right. Shouldn’t be that way. And if I can help out with one business and help them get ahead, then you know what, I’m going to feel 100 times better, and I’m going to be able to help the next guy, and the next guy, the next guy.
And that’s really all I’m looking to do, is I want to help people. So, I did start doing the website stuff, and I’ve got a couple sites up now and they’re starting to finally rank and they’re doing well. And hopefully this year it’ll hit the top three in Google, that’s my hope. And that’s what I’m going for. So, I won’t stop till I get it there. And I’ll have it there in under 12 months, which is fine. It’s not the greatest, but I’ll be there in under 12 months. I’m trying to rank in really hard categories, because I don’t do anything the easy way. And that’s how my 2019 started, it was all because I saw people who needed help and I knew that I could be the guy to help them out.
And I wanted to be the one that gave them a hand. So, that’s what I did. And that’s what’s been going on. And the year kept going really well from there, because I actually had stumbled onto another path that I wanted to start. And I was going back and forth between whether I start with website design or this other really amazing thing. And I started with web design first anyway, because I just thought, “Oh man, it just seems like this is probably the path I’m supposed to be on right now.” So, I took it and tomorrow I am going to tell you exactly where I went, as things started to rank on Google. And as my website design stuff started to fall into place. I want to let you guys know exactly where I took the next step, but I’m not going to do it today.
Because, I don’t want to run these episodes too long anymore. My wife told me some of them are too long. So, if you think they’re too long, feel free to shoot me an email. Mason, [email protected] And you can always let me know. Or if you need any assistance with
your website, or your business, or anything, definitely let me know. If you love the podcast, if you like this episode, take a screenshot of it, post it anywhere, let all your family and friends know, let them know that this crazy guy does a great podcast somewhere. If you hate it, let me know that too. I’m perfectly okay with that. I’d love to see some reviews, just let me know what you guys think of it. And for today I’m going to run, because I just pulled up to my house. I’m finally home from work today.
And it’s Saturday, I’m ready to call it. So, hey listen, put your thoughts together over the weekend and get ready to start your new year. Everybody makes these new year’s resolutions and they don’t have to be as strict as, “If it doesn’t start on January 1st, it doesn’t start. And if you don’t make it to the end of January with your resolution, then it’s over and you have to give up for the year.”
Don’t be so strict on yourself. I didn’t start until the end of January last year with what became my resolution for the year. And I had more success than I’ve ever had in my life. So, don’t let dates drive your decisions. Don’t think that you’re too late in life, or you’ve missed your opportunity for this year because the new year already started so what are you going to do? Just take the first step today. But, start by maybe just making a list of all the things that you always thought you wanted to do, or maybe a list of your 50 books that you think you want to start reading. Maybe just start with one. Make a list. Start putting books together, start figuring out exactly how you’re going to educate yourself and where you’re going to take this year. All right. I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I really love that you guys are hanging in there for these episodes and if you want to hear anything, definitely don’t hesitate to reach out to me and let me know. I will certainly do my best to do an episode for you. And for tonight, I’m going to get going. Thanks guys. This is Matt from The Business Mind Podcast, have an awesome night.