A few years ago, I spent nearly every waking hour in a cubicle.
I have a terrible memory, so there aren’t too many dates that I have memorized but September 13th, 2013 is one of them. That was the day I quit my corperate cubicle gig. Over the next 12 months I bootstrapped my business to six figures in revenue.
In the process, I found a proven formula that allowed me to grow extremely fast.
Here it is…
Quick question: If you were going to build a house, what would be your first step?
– Hire a builder?
– Pick out flooring?
– Buy the front door?
No, no and no.
The first step would be to pick out a floor plan.
You wouldn’t draw a set of blueprints from scratch: that would be extremely expensive and time consuming. Average rates on a custom set of prints would be in the $5,000 – $10,000 range.
The better option would be to spend eight hours on Pinterest, three hours driving around looking at houses and few more hours buying house magazines from Lowes and Home Depot. Then after a few days of deliberation, make a decision.
That method is faster, cheaper and way more efficient than starting from scratch.
Let’s recap the available options:
Option 1: Custom blueprint (Cost: $10,000+ & 60-90 days)
Option 2: Pre-drawn blueprint that you modify (Cost: $800 & 14 days)
Which one makes the most sense? #2 is a no-brainer option.
Why is it that we do business the exact opposite way?
We get all excited after reading the Four Hour Work Week and decide we are going to outsource our entire business. Then when it comes down to hiring people we realize it’s not quite that easy.
You know what I’m talking about.
The first iOS app I built was a nightmare.
All these people were iPhone millionaires and I was ready to be one too!
I posted my description on oDesk and was flooded with a ton of people saying they could complete the project.
Have you ever worked with someone you thought would be awesome and then they sucked? They stopped responding to emails or the work they returned was NOT what you expected?
Yeah, me too. I did it for 6 months, but not anymore. Now I have a system.
But it wasn’t like that to start. In the beginning it was PAINFUL.
I went with some dude named Sayed on my first project because he was the cheapest and the first person to answer my email.
Real solid reasoning right? <sigh>
Then I waited three months and paid $1,200 for him to turn my scribbles and spec document into a real live app. You can probably guess what happened. He delivered a piece of garbage non-functional app.
But now after spending 100s of hours finding the right contractors, I’m able to make big updates to the Videofruit blog, produce explainer videos, and even develop full-blown apps, just by emailing the right contractor on my list.
