# I Cold Called 5,000 Businesses to Sell Websites. Here's What I Learned.

Channel: Sam Robinson
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBkvcMJwYbc
Duration: 16 min
Language: English
Words: 3839
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/rBkvcMJwYbc

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[0:00] This is the story of how I went from cold calling small businesses from inside of my car on my lunch break to running [music] a successful web design agency that allowed me to leave my 9-5 in 1 year with no experience. [music] In short, 6 months ago, I was working as a full-time planner in a 9-5 office job for a variety of communities in Central Vermont, and since then, I've shifted full-time to designing small business websites and offering other digital marketing services to the small businesses. Today, I'm going to tell you exactly how I was able to do that and whether or not 6 months later, I feel

[0:29] like I've made [music] the right decision. So, a little bit about me, I'm from Central Vermont, that's where I was born and raised, and I moved back here when I was about 26 with my then girlfriend, but now wife. If you're familiar with New England or Central Vermont, you'll know it's a relatively rural area. We do have some big cities, but particularly where I live, it's super rural, which is great because we have a really small, tight-knit community, but it makes it really hard when it comes to things like getting a job. Um, I have a college degree, I have [music] prior work experience, but when

[0:55] I moved back here, I knew it was going to be difficult to find a job, but I don't think I truly appreciated how difficult it would be. And it was really discouraging because I had experience, I had a degree. Often times, the jobs that I was finding required me to commute an hour one way, which meant 2 hours of my day would have been spent commuting, [music] which I just wasn't willing to do. As a result of that, I ended up working at a small, local planning office. I basically was like a town employee for three different [music] towns in my area, which was super fulfilling cuz I got to work on projects

[1:21] that genuinely in my belief benefited the community that I lived in, which was super valuable, but it just wasn't where my passion was, and I felt like I could continue [music] to do that in other ways through like volunteer work, for instance. I wanted to find something that I truly was passionate about and felt a desire every day to get up and do. [music] For me, I knew I always wanted to run my own business, I just

[1:40] didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. And I tried a lot [music] of different things. I tried freelance brand photography, I did a lot of freelance wedding photography. I just never had something that really clicked and kind of lit that fire in my in my soul to continue learning and growing and trying to grow that business until I found development. I always thought things like coding were super interesting, but I would tell myself like, "Oh, my brain just doesn't work that way. Coding's too difficult for me." And I always had such an admiration for people when they said, "I'm a programmer." Thought it was the

[2:07] coolest thing in the world, but just something that I could never [music] learn to do myself. Then finally, I decided to do a little bit of digging around on YouTube. I started a free YouTube Python programming video. It was like one of those 7-hour videos where they walk you through some of the basics of programming. Thought it was super interesting and it actually did kind of click in my brain. But then, when coding really clicked in my brain was when I understood the difference between back-end development and front-end development. Because I had a somewhat creative past doing brand photography and wedding photography, I really gravitated towards front-end development

[2:37] because I really loved the technical aspect of writing code, but in a way that was immediately gratifying in a visual sense. So, designing a really beautiful website was something that just clicked in my brain. And that was the first time I had the feeling of this is something that not only could I turn into a business, but potentially scale it could replace my income, [music] replace my salary, and allow me to

[2:58] really dive into entrepreneurship fully. So, what I did is I started The Odin Project, which if any of you [music] have done some online learning as far as programming is concerned, you've probably heard of The Odin Project. It's completely free resource. I highly recommend it. Super cool community. But that's what really got me into becoming a programmer. I learned HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. And while I did learn those skills, I really struggled with JavaScript and I would constantly go on to Reddit and I would basically try and answer the question, "Are there any like real programmers that make money mainly with HTML and CSS?" And a

[3:29] lot of what I found was, "No, you need to know JavaScript. You're not a real programmer if you don't know JavaScript. HTML is just a markup language." But I did see one comment from a person. [music] He claimed to be making $6,000 a month doing exactly this for other small businesses, just creating really custom, professional-looking websites for them and helping [music] them get leads. And that is when something clicked in my brain and said, "I want to do that." I had made the decision and I figured out what I wanted to do. Now came the actual hard part, which is doing it and finding people that were willing to pay me to do

[3:57] it. The first thing that I will tell anyone that's looking to do this is leverage your local community [music] or the connections that you already have. In my case, my wife ran a business, she was a therapist. So I said, "Hey, I know how to build websites. You run a business. Can I build you a website for free?" Obviously, she said yes because she's my wife. But I built her that first website [music] as if I was being paid $5,000 from a client because I wanted to one determine my workflows. So when I'm onboarding someone, what does that process look like? Even though this is a free client, which is my wife, it

[4:26] helped me identify when I'm working with someone, what are the steps and the benchmarks that I need to get going. So I need their logo, I need their brand kit, their colors. I need examples of websites that they like. I need to conduct an interview to understand their services, what they do, what they don't do. I won't bore you with all the details, but understanding [music] the client and getting on the same page in

[4:43] the beginning, it helped me define that. And more importantly, by putting energy into the project as if it wasn't like, "Oh, I'm just building my wife a simple website and, you know, this is free, it's not a real client." It turned out really well and this website led me to my second, my third, my fourth website because some of the connections she had in her business were other therapists or where she posted the website [music] to her Instagram and another business owner said, "Hey, who did your website?" And she said, "Oh, my husband did. He designs websites. Would you like me to connect you with him?" All of these

[5:11] things led me to making my first six, seven, $800 online. And I genuinely believe if you can get that first or second client, as long as you don't quit, you will get to three, four, five, six thousand dollar months if you really want it. So once you've kind of proved that proof of concept to yourself that, "Yes, this is something people will pay for and yes, I know how to do it." This is where the real grind and work begins in my opinion. For about the next year, this was my daily schedule. Wake up at 3:30 to 4:00 in the morning. I would go onto Google Maps and I would look for a

[5:45] a and a particular niche. So let's say contractors Lexington, Kentucky. I would look at all of their websites. I would [music] test them on Google PageSpeed Insights. I would audit them to find any design or technical issues. I'd look at how many Google reviews they have. Were they good reviews? And from there, I would whittle away. So, if they had a really nice professional website, I wouldn't even bother cold calling them because they've already put money and time into developing that. They're not going to abandon it. If they had a terrible website that looked like it was built in the 1980s, for me, I wouldn't call them either because it seems like

[6:15] they don't value design. You'll get a sense of who you should and shouldn't call. And who knows, maybe you should call everyone. But for me, I developed kind of this sixth sense where I was able to look at a website or a Google Business Profile and understand the likelihood of that person being interested in [music] my services. Basically, I would do this every day. I would get a list of around 50 different businesses, and then I would do that quick audit of their site. I'd [music] have some talking points, and any free moment that I had, in my car, on my lunch break, walking on a path on my

[6:41] lunch break, if I got out of work a little bit earlier. Uh sometimes, I would call businesses in different time zones after 5:00 p.m. in my zone, but still in business hours in their zone, [music] so I could get in a couple cold calls from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. Any moment I had, I was calling, talking to business owners, understanding their pain points, and trying to sell them on how I could fix them. And then, from about 7:00 to 8:00 p.m., I had 1 hour of development time to do service delivery for the clients that I had sold in [music] that week. And the reason I only

[7:08] had 1 hour is because, I have, like I said, a loving wife, and I didn't want to spend all of my time working. So, I found ways to work outside of normal hours, either by waking up super early or fitting it in just anytime [music] that I could, so that my life wasn't work, and I still was able to spend time with family and friends, which is super important. All that to say, over the course of about a year, I probably did 3,000 cold calls. And since then, in the past year of running my business, I would say I've called well over 5,000

[7:36] businesses, and it is a numbers game. This will work for you if you don't quit. You'll develop a more conversational tone. People won't automatically be [music] on guard when they pick up, and you'll understand ways in which to pitch yourself that relates to these business owners that you're calling. [music] If you can get your first five clients cold calling, which most people don't because it's very easy to watch one of these [music] videos, it's a lot harder to actually take some of these tips and implement them. But, if you can get your first five or even your first like if you just get one customer from cold calling, that will

[8:05] give you the fire of kind of like basically inventing money out of thin air for yourself, and it will motivate you to find other ways to do that. So, you just need to keep going, and most importantly, [music] do not give up. So, by the time I had my first like 30 clients, I felt that I was ready to potentially leave my job and kind of take that next step where I could have more time to invest in the business to keep growing at. 30 clients for me meant about $4,000 monthly recurring revenue because I charge on a subscription basis, so it's effectively $0 down, and

[8:33] then between 150 and $300 a month depending on the package [music] that the person's on. So, now to get into the section that you all are probably most interested in, how did I actually do this, and how do I work now in my own agency? At this point, I have enough clients that I don't always need to do cold calling. And another thing that I would highlight [music] just as a side note is don't be afraid to in-person network because that was a huge shift in my own business that led me to a lot of referrals. But, once you get around 20 to 30 clients, you'll either have enough

[9:01] referrals coming in from those clients. If you leverage social media, then that's amazing, too. You'll also have some revenue to put into things like paid advertising, whether you're doing Google Meta advertising, that will help. Don't blow all your money, but spending a little bit to continue developing a process or a sales pipeline is totally worth it so you don't have to cold call all the time [music] because that is absolutely brutal, I can tell you from experience. So, let's start with once I've sold someone. My intake process, we always do either a design questionnaire if they're willing to fill it out on their own, which is

[9:28] basically answering a couple questions about their services, their brand, [music] why they got into business, and some of their design preferences. Or, I do an introductory call, something like this, where we basically talk for 30 to 40 minutes. And this is a very key thing. Make sure you do this. If you do a call, record the call or use some sort of AI note taker to transcribe the entire meeting, cuz this is going to become extremely valuable when it comes to [music] writing copy for the website, doing things, if you're selling additional services like Google Business Profile posts, any kind of social media management, to understand exactly how

[9:59] they talk and the information that is pertinent to their business. You can plug that into ChatGPT, Bard, whatever your preferred model is, and it will give a project silo that understands that [music] business super well, which informs basically all the other steps of the process. Once we have the either intake call done or the design questionnaire filled out, I dive into designing, which this is another point in the business where you can choose to dive into it fully or once you have that client base built up where you're having some consistent revenue, this is one piece of the business that personally I've outsourced. That is the design

[10:31] process. I always design at least a homepage in Figma before developing any of the site or writing any code. And the reason I like to do this is it's kind of like a custom process [music] that makes the client feel super special, but also saves you time in the long run because if you're using Figma, which is this design tool for websites, you can create an ultra-realistic layout or design of their [music] site. You send it to them quickly. They immediately know what they're getting, and then it reduces your necessary edits when [music] it comes to actually coding and saves you time in the long run. It also makes the

[11:01] client feel super special and like, "Wow, this person [music] really cares about me. They're not just reselling the same website to everyone that they work with." For me, I found designers that I really like working with. I pay them for 10 [music] to 15 hours of design to come up with a homepage. Cost me like $300, and it saves me a lot of time. And then I implement that design system on all the other pages while I'm writing the code. All right. So, there's essentially infinite ways you can build a website in today's day and age, but one of the selling points of my websites and one of

[11:27] the things that I really pride myself on is I I super custom websites in a very technically simple way that allows them to perform very well. And the way I do this is using no page builder, so I don't use WordPress, I don't use Wix, I don't use Squarespace. And I know what a lot of people are going to say is, how can you sell a website for $170 a month

[11:44] if you're custom coding everything? Well, the person that I mentioned earlier in the video that I found on Reddit that said, "Hey, I do exactly this type of small business web design. I make $6,000 a month doing it." It turns out that he developed this product called Code Stitch, which is essentially a component library of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that is super customizable, and you can easily build static sites doing this. So, what that means is you can take these snippets, put them into your project, customize them according to your Figma file, and then ship that website. It scores perfectly on Google PageSpeed Insights. It's customizable to

[12:18] whatever your client wants, and it makes the process [music] super quick where I can build an extremely custom website, much more custom than like a GoHighLevel template or Squarespace template, and it only takes me, once I have the design, and once you get really good at this, [music] you can knock out a website in, you know, 8 to 15 hours depending on [music] how many pages there are. And in some cases, if it's a really simple site, even faster than [music] that. Using Code Stitch is super easy. If you've gone through the Odin Project, or [music] even if you've never coded at all in your life, if you set up a Code

[12:49] Stitch repository and just mess around with making your own agency or business website. Let's say you do want to start this. Make yourself a website, spend, you know, [music] 8 hours this Sunday, sit down with Code Stitch, and see if you can build yourself a nice-looking [music] website, and then start marketing yourself, cold calling, and sending people that site, and say, [music] "Hey, I built this." The thing that I've learned about doing custom web development is it makes your client feel like they're getting a really high-quality service for a very low cost. And a lot of people say, "Well, I'm just a contractor. My customers don't care how my website looks." I

[13:20] would argue that they really do. A lot of people think that having a nice-looking website won't actually dramatically help their business, but I have seen from experience that having an optimized Google Business Profile and a professional website is a lead generating machine, and it's not [music] something that you should underestimate. And you can sell this benefit to your clients, and they will pay you every month for years for this service. The biggest thing that I can say outside of selling, outside of designing, outside of developing is that don't over plan, just get started. Pick up the phone, make that first call, throw together a quick agency website. You can redesign

[13:54] it later once you know what you're doing more. Just don't over plan every aspect of your business before you've even validated its proof of concept. What you need to do is spend [music] 7 days mastering a skill. It could be review automation. It could [music] be web development. It doesn't really matter what it is. Spend 7 days getting really good at something. Build yourself a very simple website just to have something to put out there for people, and then start [music] calling people, messaging people in Facebook groups, and selling your services because you can figure out all the rest once you get your first few clients. You just need [music] to get

[14:27] them, start working with people, and then iterate on your processes from there. So, 2 years into my business and 6 months after going into it full-time, where am I at? On average, I see anywhere between 5 and 10,000 dollars a month in revenue to my business. I would say 5,000 of that is monthly recurring revenue at this point, so subscriptions

[14:47] essentially that I get paid every month. And then I also have lump sum projects, add-ons, other kind of like more social media marketing that I do in the background as add-on services. That gets me up to that $10,000 a month range. Right now, this month, I think I'll put it up uh somewhere around here, but I think I'm within the last 30 days, I've billed around $8,900. So, as you can see, I'm very happy with my decision. I didn't quit, and I was able to push through and really start kind [music] of that momentum rolling. But, it's not without challenges, and I'm still learning every day as well. If running

[15:17] your own business, especially like an online digital marketing style one, is something that you've always wanted to do, I'm just here to tell you that you can do it. You just need to spend a little bit of time learning, develop a skill, start selling, and then don't quit. It's not going to be easy, but if you keep going and you keep working on it every day, you'll get that first client, and then you'll get that second, [music] third, fourth, and then those will turn into referrals, and then you'll have money for advertising. And you just need to keep going [music] every day and find some small way you can improve on your

[15:47] business, and you will get there. If you need a little bit help getting going or getting your first few clients or finding them online, [music] use the link in the description below. It'll take you to a cool web scraping tool that I built. It's completely free to use. It'll help you find opportunities to outreach to to get those first few

[16:03] clients and really grow your business. [music] I'm hoping to start making more content like this over the next couple months. So, if you're interested, please like and subscribe this video. And if you have any topics that you want that me to touch base about [music] more specific to running my own digital marketing agency in 2026, feel free to drop a comment below, and I will be happy to either respond to you individually or create a video about your question moving forward. Thank you

[16:24] so much. Hope you're having a great day.

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