hey guys it's kevin with jmw fabrication and the welding business owners podcast
today i want to talk to you about taking your side hustle to a full-time gig so check it out
taking your side hustle from a part-time gig to a full-time gig is no joke you might have
responsibilities you might have kids you might have a wife and they all depend on you for that
income so instead of making the leap to go on your own let's make that a step let's bring that boat
closer to the dock so that you're not jumping out into unknown waters and unknown territories
and you have a customer base built up you have work lined up and you could do this successfully
so how do you make going from part-time to full-time less of a leap and more of a
walk and more of a step well you have to be doing side work now you should ideally have
20 30 40 hours that you're hustling on the side before you even think about quitting your job
and that has to be consistent i mean weeks of 20 hours 30 hours 40 hours people that have projects
lined up for you then you might start thinking about going on your own now after you do that
fair warning what's going to happen is it's going to seem great you're going to go out there you're
going to be for the first couple weeks you're going to have all the work you can handle
but it's those people that you've been working for who promised that they had work
they do but what happens when you get caught them caught up on their work then what
you need other people you're going to work yourself out of a job you need other people
to rely back onto and be out there getting new customers so that you can keep yourself busy
next thing you need to do is advertise ideally you should already have a network that you're
utilizing to get people in and get customers in you should be putting things on social
media facebook there's a big welding community on instagram putting it out there so people know and
your friends know that you're doing this and your friends want to support you they're going to tell
other people that hey my buddy does this he fix his railings he does that he does bucket work
whatever your niche is you decide to do let people know what you're doing show them what you're doing
so that they can help you and ideally pictures show your work better than just telling people
so you can hand somebody a business card and that's one thing but if they see pictures of the
work that you've done and it's pretty impressive that's going to speak volumes next part of your
advertising strategy should be business cards obviously i'm not telling you anything new if
you're doing a side hustle you should already have business cards when i first started out i had
really thick business cards made they were almost like a cardboard they were kind of impressive when
you gave them out people tended not to throw them away and they usually always commented on them
after that i got to the approach of a of a brochure i'd rather show people what we do
rather than just tell them so we gave a brochure that gave all our features of what we did
along with some pictures to go along with it then i stepped it up a little bit i went out i got
some metal business cards these things are from mymentalbusinesscard.com they are awesome great
it they're not cheap but you know what for three bucks that is really cheap advertising because
you know what people aren't going to throw these away next thing you need is a website come on guys
it's 20 22. you need a website you need to keep it up to date it needs to be sleek it needs to
be clean it needs to be nice looking needs to be easy to access i prefer a minimalistic website
because we do such a variety of things we might have two or three pages but that's it i want
people to call us and contact us rather than just showcase what we can do social media alone is not
good enough just to showcase your work remember you're in the big leagues now you're not doing
this as a part-time gig for friends and family you're chasing after other companies and other
companies they're professional they want to work with other professionals professionals have a
website you're not going to be going to a place where they do millions of dollars of business a
year and tell them to go to your facebook page you need to tell them to go to your website
next up is google advertising approach this like anything else you need to do your research i've
had really good success with google ads but i spent days i probably spent two full days
watching youtube videos on how google ads works what they want to see and the whole
business structure remember google's a business they want to know that you are professional and
you are going to serve their customers well so you need to understand what words to put in
how the whole structure of the whole thing works now granted you don't have to have a master's
degree or take on like a whole another college course on this but familiarize yourself with it
so that you don't throw your money down the tubes and speaking of money don't think that
you're going to throw 20 bucks at google ads and all this work is going to come flowing into you
it's not going to work that way our strategy is we advertise for the big jobs for the five figure
jobs six figure jobs that come and they would have never known about us other than google ads we'll
spend thousands of dollars a year on google ads but we'll make hundreds of thousands of dollars
from that advertising so don't think you're going to spend 50 bucks and all this work is
going to roll in you might get something hey it might work out for you you might luck out but
you got to think of your google advertising as a long-term solution for your goals okay okay okay
i hear you guys say i don't have thousands of dollars to spend on google ads how else do i get
this well the old-fashioned way go knock it on doors i spent two full days in my entire career
knocking on doors i tell you i've had some of my best customers because of it when it comes
to knocking on doors there's a couple things you gotta plan for know where you're gonna go plan out
your route so that you're not driving around aimlessly do a little bit of research on the
companies that you're gonna go talk to that way you know what they do and you can sell yourself
and your services to them you know you don't want to go into a big industrial warehouse and say hey
i do artistic stuff you want to go in there and say hey i do maintenance on catwalks i do railings
that people tractor trailers back into i can do stairs that are rusted out so know your customer
before you go in there so that you can convey the services and the value that you bring to them
before you even get there another thing with knocking on doors is show up looking professional
you could bring your work truck but wear clean jeans wear a clean shirt show them that they can
trust you from anything from a four hundred dollar part to a four million dollar machine
next is build your team this is something i got wrong in the beginning i tried to do everything
myself i tried to wear all the hats and i burnt myself out because i wasn't good at any of them
i'm a big proponent of let people do what they're good at i am not good at taxes i'm not good at
bookkeeping nor do i really want to be so you know what i do i pay other people to do that i
could fumble through it i'll probably do it wrong but the money that i spend on somebody else doing
it knowing that it's done right they'll do it in a quarter of the time that i would take to do it
and i'm over here making more money to pay them and be honest with you you're probably going to
make more money doing that than paying them and when it comes to taxes that person who you hire
should make you more money than they spend with tax savings learning how to write things off and
tax preparation they're well worth the money and i really suggest you do it when you first start
out when you're first starting out and doing it yourself you need things to be easy one cool way
to do this is the north one app the north one it takes all your invoicing it takes your quickbooks
it takes all your payment solutions and puts it into one app it's an online banking solution
that is really awesome and really easy to use you don't want things to be cumbersome you don't want
to be going over here for this and then over here for this and then have to make a spreadsheet and
plug all these numbers in to figure out no your time is better spent doing other things
if you are going to do this on your own the north one app brings all that in-house under one roof
online banking this is awesome you don't ever have to step foot into a bank again i know i hate
going to banks my time is too valuable for me to stand in line at a bank and deposit a check try to
do some sort of banking like that with north one it's all online and it's really important that you
separate your personal from your business a lot of people work out of their own personal checking
and they take money when they need and then they get into trouble when they don't pay their taxes
or they get deposits and there's no more money left first thing you need to do is separate it
from the beginning and with this northwind app it really helps you start out on the right foot which
is really how you want to grow you don't want to have to be chasing problems down the road that you
should have set up solutions for in the beginning next part of building your team is knowing where
to go when the jobs are too big for you sometimes you'll get a call for something bigger than what
you can handle and instead of turning it down well if you have a network of other welding companies
in the area other fabrication people who you can farm this part of the work out to maybe you have
them bend it and you install it or this p these people roll it and then you go and you install it
well you know what that might be an option for you to do if you have a good relationship with them
you i would make friends with every other welder in town you know in this welding game there's more
than enough work to go around we should all work together we shouldn't be enemies so you know what
build your network of other people in the area so that you can call on them and even they call
on you when they have jobs that are too big for them and don't be afraid to run equipment
if you don't have the right welder for the job and you don't have the money to go out and buy it
go rent it that's why it's there and on the topic of taking on jobs when you first start out i would
take on all the jobs that you could that you have the capability and you have the knowledge to do
don't go do some spacex stuff if you don't know how to do spacex stuff one of the things you
don't want to do is pigeonhole yourself to only doing one thing if you're really good at pipe
and you're chasing pipe work cool if you're kind of slow and you don't have any pipework don't be
afraid to take on a railing or some stairs or a dump body or somebody's little project over here
the more versatile you are and the more diverse of a network that you have of things you can do
the better another big thing is good toying can't emphasize this enough good toy there's
always the debate of what should i buy when i first start out what machine should i buy
what blah blah blah blah blah no you know what buy what you can afford and if you can't afford the
really good stuff we'll buy what suits you use it for a little bit sell it and upgrade to the next
one i'm a big fan of buying really good equipment because there's nothing more embarrassing than
getting on a job site and having your stuff not work another thing is consumables i like to buy
things that have easy to access consumables a lot of our retail machines we get from lowe's and home
depot because it can be a saturday or a sunday and the welding supply store is closed and you know
what you're going to be down to your last tip and you're going to burn that tip up it's going to be
a sunday afternoon when you're trying to get the job done for monday and nobody's going to be open
and you're going to be screwed one of the things i really value is being able to go to lowe's or
home depot on a on a sunday or a saturday and pick up more wire pick up tips specifically for
the machine i need pick up any consumables that i need and get the job done for the customer
now for the biggest takeaway of them all i promise if you haven't heard anything else in this video
listen to this you need to develop grit grit is defined as the perseverance to overcome an
obstacle or situation your customer came to you because they have a problem and they trust you
to solve the problem and you need to figure out how to do it if you don't already know how to
do it youtube is one of those things google's one of those things that you can utilize it is
everything is out there trust me anything you're doing has been done before you just need to figure
out how to do it this is where your network comes into play it's important that you have people who
you can call and say hey maybe take a picture of it send it to them how would you repair this what
do you think about this what's the proper way to go about this so developing grit is the number one
tool because you know what things are gonna get hard things are gonna get tough you're gonna be
stepped on you're gonna have bad days you're gonna feel defeated and you know what you need
to get over that i'm telling you bad days are coming you are going to have bad days
as a business owner you need to understand that it's worth it and you need to have the mental
toughness to keep on going and not quit if you can develop the grit to get it done and have that
figured out and get a done mindset you will be successful not only in business but anything
else you do in life because you know what you can have grit without a business but you can't have a
business without grief so that's all i've got for today guys i really appreciate you guys tuning in
if you have any more questions check us out on the welding business owners podcast
uh find us on instagram at welding business owners podcast you can check out the stuff
that we do at jmw fabrication on instagram and facebook jmwfabrication.com see there's
that website so thank you guys for tuning in i appreciate and we'll see you next time
you