Building a successful online business

Welcome to building better developers, the developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We're continuing our interview with Chris Miles and we're going to his with blogger revolution.com. We are continuing talking about how he got started in this episode. We're going to dig a little bit further into that, how he went from all of those things we talked about last time, all of those little side hustles, you know, attempts at an app at a, an application, at a job, at a, at a product, you know, not, I guess not so much a job, as much as a product or service or a way to get to actual passive income or at least, you know, even early on just extra income and just earn a couple bucks and maybe help pay some things down. And how we went from that to through actually a very systematic, systematic kind of process getting to the point where he was able to completely quit his job and work for himself. But I don't want to spoil this too much. I want to let us get right back into talking with Chris Miles of blogger evolution. How do you, and this is what I don't, I haven't heard too many people talk about it. So it's sort of interesting to see how it's worked with you is have, how is your, uh, we'll say like your excitement and your interest grown and, and waned over this because you do have like, uh, I mean, I know that it's, it's passive, but it's not always completely passive. There's sort of like, you want to keep touching it and sort of keep it alive and make sure that it's up to me that evergreen kind of stuff. And so do you find yourself, have you like sort of found a path that now you're like, I'm just, I get up excited every day and I'm always adding this stuff. Or is it one of these where you're like, yeah, you hit it for a while and you're like, okay, I'm going to coast now. Ooh, I've got this other thing and now I'm going to go launch another business. Yeah, that's a great question. Cause I mean, Rob, when it comes to building a website, it's really a business and it has almost every aspect of it exists within that business. And when you're first starting off and you're just doing it and you're, you're everything, you got to come up with the content, you got to promote that content, you got to post it and do all of that fun stuff. So because there's so many different aspects to it, I just learned to systematize a lot of it and to hire virtual assistants who can help me out with doing this part, doing that part. So for example, there is an investment quality to websites. You can invest money into content, as in people to write the content for you. And then once you get a post onto the site, because of the way that you are monetizing you can get, you'll get that money back or you get the ROI, I guess you could say on that content that you created. So I have systems in place that people will write the content, people will post the content and then I just kind of go in and spot check it afterwards. I do have to do the research to make sure that the right content is created so that I'm not wasting money on creating content. But usually that might take a couple hours a month, you know, to come up with that kind of stuff. Other than that, I'm just kind of tweaking and looking at the site here. OK, what can I do to bump up the conversion rate by two percent or something like that? And that can really make a huge difference in the bottom line at the end of the month. So I guess the whole thing is just even though it is something that you do have to constantly tinker with, like with any business, if you do put the right systems in place, you can sit back and then just kind of watch it, you know, and just let it let it kind of continue to grow and see something break. You know, it's like building a house and then just doing routine maintenance on it, building that house is tough. But then living in it, you just got to replace some side in here, fix a broken window there, that kind of thing. And it does continue to be increasingly passive. So when you when you're going through this, how do you. When you're creating something new, you're sort of starting off from that scratch, what sort of you have like sort of a general approach to figuring out how to how to go from that like, hey, I want a website kind of point to, OK, here's how we're going to get you to something that's going to fit your your need. Yeah. So a big part of what we're going to be doing is creating content that that people are going to be reading or watching or whatever, if you decide to go blogging or YouTube or podcasting. So with that in mind, you will be creating a lot of that content yourself, especially early on, if you don't have a big budget in order to put into additional content for other people to do it for you. So because you're going to be creating so much content on a particular topic, it's better that you make it a topic that you like and enjoy. That way you can you won't it won't feel like work. You know, you're still going to be doing it. But, you know, some people say when you take the entrepreneur route, you know, you're trading in a 40 hour a week job for an 80 hour a week job sometimes. And that's that's really true unless you put the right systems in place. So because of that, you need to make sure that you like the content that's being created that way. When you're creating it, it doesn't always seem like work. Plus, you probably would be doing it anyway if it was a hobby of yours. So, for example, I have a I have a golf site and I like playing golf. So when I go golfing, I just snap a few pictures while I'm there. Maybe if I have an idea for an article on a driver or a sand bottle or something like that, then I just take a picture of me using it. And then now that's content that's going to go up onto the site. And I enjoy it. And I was doing it anyway. And instead of it just doing it anyway, just for the fun of it, I'm doing it now and being able to earn revenue from it. So I would definitely say the first thing that you should do is choose something that you enjoy. And then the second thing was making sure that you can make money with it. Well, and I think that if you if you enjoy it enough, the money will follow at some point. I think some of those, because you can you're excited about it. People like it when people are excited. And so there's there are podcasts and blogs and stuff that I've dealt with over the years. It's a topic I have no interest in, but that person, the way they present it, the way they write about it, it's like I'm going to I don't understand what they're talking about, but I love how they do it. So I'm going to go check it out anyways. Yeah, I know. I heard about a podcast that they all they talk about is how to raise goats. That's their entire podcast. And apparently it's widely wildly successful. It's just that's one of those things I would have never even guessed it. But someone saw a need and they filled it. And that's really what a lot of business is. Right. Like Uber gets you from one place to another. And that's very simple. They solve a problem. Airbnb, you find somewhere to stay. You know, as long as you can find a hole somewhere and then you can fill it with content that you enjoy and love doing, then, you know, then you all of a sudden you find a way to make some money with it. So now with that, with that kind of mindset, how often, how do you, how often do you like go through your general day and routine or week and have something pop in your head that's sort of like, oh, hey, I should put a website out for this. Or I should start a content stream on this. Yeah, that's actually tough because a lot of people, you know, when they're first getting started, they almost can't think of anything to create content on. And I'm like, man, I would, I can't think, I don't know anything that I'm good at. I don't know anything that I'd like to do or want to do. And that's just because you just haven't made that shift from being a content. Uh, what do you call it? Like watching content versus creating that content, being a consumer versus a creator. Once you finally kind of make that shift and to realize that I need to start creating content and then people watch or view or read that, then your mind just kind of opens up at that point. Now, all of a sudden, every time I turn around, I'm thinking, oh man, I can start a niche site on that. Or I can start a niche site on this, or I can do this or I can do that. And, uh, actually I have this one thing that I send out to people every now and then, and it's basically a long list of niche ideas. And when I say niche, I mean like a topic, right? So a niche ideas for, or topic ideas for a blog. And it'll be like a hundred of them. And then sometimes people will tell me, well, Hey Chris, how come, you know, you don't just start a site knees and that's a great question. I just don't have time to do it all. Right. There's so many great options and opportunities that are out there, but I'm not always a hundred percent invested in them or really care about it to, to want to be able to create that content. And nor do I have the time, you know? So, um, at any moment I might have four or five sites in my niche site portfolio. And that's, that's about all I need to handle. You know, they got some people out there who got 20 and 30 sites, but for the most part, they always tell me that only a handful of them are really bringing in the bulk of the income for that entire portfolio, you know? And I can definitely see that. So yeah, every time I turn around, I'm like, man, I can start one on candles. I can start one on mugs. I can start one on, you know, whatever. It just depends on whatever you, even if you go to the store, you know, go to like a Dick sporting goods or something like that, any section of the store that's there can be an edge site, you know? So it really makes a, it makes a huge difference when you start creating and then your mind's going to be always open to what's out there and what's available. Yeah. That's a, that's a really good point. I think it is, it is a mindset from, you know, producer, consumer to producer, kind of a mindset change there. How do you, how do you, as you're going through the, as a content producer, how have you maybe gotten to, or, and maybe some of the thoughts around your, uh, basically your schedule, like when, how often do you produce stuff? How often do you post stuff out? How do you sort of like approach that in a way that's, that's one that's, that's serving the need of whatever the site is that you're working or the sites you're working on, but also this gets a little bit into the balance of, so you don't get so drawn in that you forget that, oh yeah, I've got like, I've got all these other things that I want to do. I've got a family and things that I want to, you know, it's not, it's a little bit work balance, but it's also, like I said, it's you're trading a 40 hour a week job for an 80 hour a week job and how to sort of put those boundaries in place that you say, okay, I'm done. Like I'm yeah, I can, I can walk down the hall and work, but I'm not going to do it right now. Yeah, man, Rob, I'm a grinder. You know, I'm the kind of guy I can just sit down and just work. That's just the way that I am. And that's helpful, especially in like the IT field, right? It's, it's really helpful to be able to just sit down and I need to figure out this problem, right? And whatever that problem is and then go, go from there. That's what we do. We're problem solvers. So because of that, you do tend to want to always work on it. You know, you do tend to always want to. Okay. I got 10 minutes. Let me go do this or let me go sit down at my desk and figure this part out. There's always a moving part. There's always something that can be worked on, but you do need to start setting at least some type of boundaries, especially after you are starting to be a little more successful with it and realize that I don't always have to go 100%. I can do 80% and then really get, you know, enough of it done to where I can work on the next part of it the other day, the next day or whatever. So, um, cause that was actually one thing that I remember my wife mentioned to me. And she was like, oh, I mean, she almost, at one point she was like, man, I almost wish you sometimes we're still working a regular job because at five o'clock you're done, you know, you don't have to worry about it anymore, but, um, you do kind of take it home with you because you're always working on it and when it's your, your baby, it's your project, you know, you do have to learn how to set some type of boundaries. So what I try to do is anytime someone asks me, uh, to do something or my wife wants to do something or my son wants to play or something like that, you know, I might say, okay, look, give me five minutes to finish what I'm doing. It's like, at least get it to an ending point. And then I'm there, you know, and I get the majority of my work done when, you know, my son's at school, you know, because I have a few hours there to where I can actually just concentrate and get it done. And then hopefully when he gets home, then, you know, I've done enough that day to where I don't have to feel guilty that I didn't get something done. So I do have to be a little bit strategic and I'll set, um, goals and stuff for the week, uh, goals and stuff for the month and in a quarter to see, okay, projects that I want to have done by a certain time. Um, and by doing that kind of thing, then I'm a little more intentional on what I'm working with every single day versus working on tweaking that and tweaking this, but those tweaks and stuff don't really affect the bottom line. It doesn't increase traffic to the site. It doesn't increase monetization to the site. Uh, I make sure that I focus on things that actually move the needle, which is hard to do because sometimes those things aren't super glamorous. You know, and people are like, Oh, I made my site look great today. I did this and did that. I shifted the logo, but at the end of the day, no one cares about that. You know, how good was the content and did it make you more money? Right. And that's really what the whole idea is. So being a little bit more intentional in what I do and when I do it, uh, it's been helpful with being there more for the family. Awesome. That, that leads right into another question that I'd had for you. Cause it sounds like you are, and I think this sort of an IT kind of thing is our IT people tend to be logical and to-do lists and planning and stuff like that. So now how you grew from the, uh, Hey, I've got to figure some out, some stuff out, and I've got to get a little extra money to the point where you're like, okay, you can quit. I'm going to quit. Was there a, was there like a roadmap or something that you sort of put together? Like, okay, I want to, I want to move the needle to this point, or I wanted to get to that point, or it was one of the things that it just sort of evolved so quickly and in a way that it was maybe that you underestimated how far you would go or how quickly you would go. Yeah. I'm going to be honest when I first started this whole blogging thing to begin with, my whole goal was to make an extra a hundred bucks a month. That was it. I was like, man, if I make an extra a hundred bucks, how much of my life changed? You know, and I remember thinking that and, um, you know, sometimes that was such a while ago now and he just like, man, if I had just stopped there, you know, when I had really been where I wanted to be at the point, but you know, it went vastly past that. So it didn't come by accident. I did have to plan. If I wasn't married and had kids and had a son, then it would be completely different. You know, if I was a single guy that maybe I can go live in my parents' basement for a little while, while I'm trying to put together the business so I can save as much money as possible. But I mean, I have doctor's visits, I have accidents that happen. I have a house where something can break and all of a sudden I need to come out of a thousand dollars to fix it kind of a thing, right? I mean, there's an old stat out there that says that like 70 or 89% of Americans can't go in, cannot not go into debt if they had an a thousand dollar emergency or something. And that's tough, you know, and I remember being in that exact same spot, not that long ago, but I didn't just turned around and had to come up with like a little bit of a process, kind of like you were mentioning. So one thing I needed to do was get out of all of my high interest debt. You know, that was one thing, just get out as much of that as possible. I had over $30,000 worth of bad credit card debt that I just, just kept paying the interest on, you know, over and over and over again, and mainly it was just because it didn't have enough money to put any more on it, right? And that was tough. You're kind of just, just barely kind of making it at that point. So, um, I did everything that I could to pay that off as quickly as possible and pretty much did it within a few months because the business was doing pretty well. Um, so once I had that paid off, then I decided to, uh, build up a nest egg. Um, so I was like, let's just build up a, a little reservoir of cash to where if something were to happen and money from the business stopped today, we could still survive for a six to 12 months. Um, while I try to figure something else out or worst case go get another job. Right. So we built up the nest egg and thankfully around the time I had the little run in with my boss and everything, uh, I had enough to think, you know, let's, let's go ahead and give this a try. So, um, it was, it wasn't without setting things in place and then calculating, okay, what's the bare minimum amount of money we need to survive. And once we had that little like survival number, and then we had the nest egg, you know, I was like, okay, well, let's give it a try. Worst case scenario was like, like I said, we, we tried for a year and see what happens. That was really what the goal was at that point. Let's just try it for a year. But then two years came, three years came, and now we're here about, about four years later and, and we're still here, you know? And it's all because of being able to put the processes in place, being able to create a plan and focus on it, just like, you know, those engineering minded, uh, IT guys can be, and, uh, went, went straight with it. It worked out. Uh, it didn't come without being a little, you know, it's risky, you know, don't get me wrong, this is risky thing to do, but, um, I've never been a risk averse type of person, you know, I try to take calculated risk, of course, but, uh, you know, I've never been that kind of person where I wanted to be short. I always say this to myself, um, fear re I like to fear regret more than I fear failure and by doing that, I want to be able to go to the other side and look back and think, you know, at least I gave it a try, even if it was unsuccessful, I at least gave it a try. And by having that kind of mentality, it was very helpful because, you know, no risk, no reward, you know, and it's in this kind of game and that's kind of the way that it ended up working out. So I did put a process in place. And that seems like a good place to wrap this one up. We'll pause. We're going to come back for part three of our Chris miles interview. I hope you're taking notes. Once again, there's a lot of, there's a lot of reality that Chris brings to the discussion. And again, normally you get a lot of the, uh, sort of the end result, you know, the people that have gone through it all and say, Hey, I've got seven figures and I can sleep all day. I get up and do five minutes of work and I'm all done. I think what you hopefully will have picked up is that Chris is, I think as he said, he's sort of like, uh, you know, he's a grinder. He is going to keep working. He does not allow the success that he's had to just sort of like hang out there. He keeps pushing. And if you find, if you really dig into the people that are really successful at this kind of stuff, they don't just sit back. This isn't something that you do so that you can just, you know, go earn a bunch of money and then just retire at the age of, you know, 18 or something like that. It is a, it is much more a serial side hustler or entrepreneur kind of approach. And that's what I really like what we get from Chris's discussion is how he, you know, it's, it was an entire lifestyle. All of the things that he did fed into this career. And he talks about debt and eliminating that and planning and, you know, but finding some ways to be able to, basically to handle risk. You don't have to be take big risks. What you want to do is be able to find a way to essentially mitigate those. You know, you can lose work for three months if you've got six months worth of padding and it's things like that, that they don't happen overnight. They don't happen just accidentally. It's not like you just trip and fall. And it's like, Oh, boom, there's six months worth of income. You have to think through it. You have to plan, you have to adjust. And those kinds of things I think often are overlooked, but I really appreciate how Chris tells us that full story gives us the whole picture behind it. And I think helps us understand what our expectations should be so that when we go into it, it's a little easier for us to go in and put in that work and not expect an instant return. That being said, whatever your work is today, I hope you do get an instant return. I hope you're getting paid well. You're having a good job. You have a great day ahead of you and we will be back next time to continue our conversation with Chris, but until then go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to building better developers to develop a new podcast. You can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts, we are there. And remember just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. There are two things I want to mention to help you get a little further along in your embracing of the content of developer. One is the book, the source code of happiness. You can find links to it on our page out on the developer site. You can also find it on Amazon search for Rob Broadhead or source code of happiness that you can get it on Kindle. If you're an Amazon prime member, you can read it free. A lot of good information there. That'll be a lot easier than trying to dig through all of our past blog posts. The other thing is our mastermind slash mentor group. We meet roughly every other week, and this is an opportunity to meet with some other people from a lot of different areas of IT. We have a presentation every time we talk about some cool tools and features and things that we've come across, things that we've learned, things that you can use to advance your career today. Just shoot us an email at info at develop a newer.com. If you would like more information, now go out there and have yourself a great one.