I always dreamed of running my own company but I never thought about what the first year would actually look like. Sure, I could’ve guessed that it would be a little tough, confusing, and that I’d have to wing some of it. But it’s been all of that multiplied by 10! Here’s looking back on what it was like to start. Hint: I knew far less than you may think.

About that not having skills thing… Starting from nothing is pretty much just like you’d imagine. A lot of people ask how I know how to do everything that I do. My answer: “Thank God I’m a fast learner and have the dedication to spend countless hours teaching myself.” I spent a ton of time sitting around trying to answer all the questions any normal person would have when trying to start. Things like:

“Do I charge hourly? How much? How do consultants even get paid?”

“How do you go about getting clients? Which clients are the best ones?

“I don’t even know where to start building a website. Who’s going to build this for me? How much do I charge? $1,000? $3,000? I don’t even have a ballpark idea.”

“Do I offer monthly packages for different services? What do those look like? How do I even run Google Ads?”

Now, I’m not going to entirely sell myself short here. I have an MBA, have taken plenty of marketing courses, have worked a few jobs in marketing before, and always had a pretty instinctual sense of how a brand appealed to its customers, which is what it all comes down to. I constantly analyze advertisements and marketing strategies in my head whenever I see them as I’m watching TV or around town, and I try to figure out why that works for that company or why it may not. So that was my background. But when it’s all of a sudden time to convince people to pay you for things you had never done before, that became a totally different game because…

• I had never built a website
• Never run an ad campaign
• Never managed social media for a business
• Never run an SEO audit
• Never designed a logo
• And had never given someone professional advice with implications of this size

And yet those are the six core things my company provides. “HOW??”

Well, for starters, it was terrifying. But like they say, your mindset is everything and if there’s one thing I took from my last employer that will be instilled in me forever, it was our motto: DWIFT. Short for “Do Whatever it Fucking Takes”. And that’s exactly what I did. Here’s how:

I had never built a website

I chose two friends to build websites for me, spent time learning how to make small edits to those sites, purchased the same software they used to build them, then used that to learn how to build the second rendition of LansrMarketing.com so that I had a sandbox to play in. Thank you to those friends.

Never run an ad campaign

Google offers a ton of free certifications that are amazing. Then I researched different software companies that helped manage campaigns, purchased another subscription, and paid to have an expert consult me every other week with a live account I was working with. Learn as you go. Thank you, Zach from Wordstream.

Never managed social media for a business

Fortunately, there are a lot of companies out there that constantly pump out educational content for this. I read A LOT of blogs, watched webinars, and built a rough framework for what I would provide with the help of some intuition. I had a friend advise me on what to charge, downloaded a couple more software programs again, and just went with it until I found a rhythm that worked for me.

Never run an SEO audit

This one was particularly tough. The art and science of Search Engine Optimization is an incredibly complex one. I had a very basic knowledge of it from picking the brains of our SEO experts at my last company and invited one of them to grab drinks. He helped give me some direction, told me what was most important or not, and I texted him occasionally as I landed a new client that I would be doing this for. I then signed up for – you guessed it – another software and had a representative walk me through the entire onboarding process and leaned on her to learn exactly what in the world I would even do with all those tools, and what applications each would be useful for. I learned a lot doing this and also came to the realization that I hate a large chunk of SEO and need to find someone else to contract that out to. Thank you, Marcus.

Never designed a logo

I tried, gave up, and found more friends who are graphic designers and contracted the work to them. Done. Thank you, Blake and Kira.

Lastly, I had never consulted someone with the stakes as high as they were now

There’s no software or Account Rep for this one, nor did did I have any friends that could advise me (yet). However, I had seen the financial benefit of what some of my recommendations had on my past clients at the old company (it was my job to improve the performance of their website and convert more customers), and I knew that I could provide real value. I just had to trust myself. And that’s really what that part came down to.

In the most cliche of expressions, it feels pretty surreal to officially enter year 2. Partly because I’ve only been in the true entrepreneurial world now for that long. Part of me always knew that running my own show was what I would eventually be doing, but I certainly didn’t expect it to come as soon as it did. At a time when my old job was starting to pivot away from me, a friend presented me with an idea to be business partners. But I shortly thereafter realized I wanted to be a solo artist and Lansr was born. 

I’m still learning every day and I’m pretty sure any business owner no matter their age or experience will tell you that never stops. I keep striving to provide more and more value for every client that I work with, and how to better operate my own company. We’ve still got a hell of a long way to go, but if I’m lucky enough, we’ll be celebrating many more birthdays for Lansr before it’s all said and done. 🎂