A contractor’s story that has to be told!
I can only ask that you give me a few moments to tell you a story that is very true. This story may have some highs and a lot of lows but just like when you started your contracting company you will be able to relate to my story.
This story is being told threw the eyes of Glen Kohlenberg and his 8 month quest along with his partner Josh MacMichael to build a new member contractor website.
I first must confess something that given a choice to either start a new contracting company or a new website I would pick without a doubt to be a contractor.
Now for the rest of the story!
Eight long months ago I met Josh on a forum for contractors. Most of you no me by Carport King on a lot of the forums.
Josh needed some help to get some business and make the phone ring. So on the forums I like to stay on the marketing side of things because after 25 years in the contracting world I have been able to build or help build a few million dollar companies.
I would say I have marketing for contractors down to a skill that works and makes sales. After all that is the bottom line. Right?
So Josh called my secret weapon, Susan for all the graphics and design of 3 postcards. He followed my simple rules to a tee and the next time I heard from Josh he said he had to shut off his phone because he could not run all the leads. Yeah success!
Now that I think of it, Josh is the one that had the brain fart that ask hey Glen why don’t you do this for a living?Your so good at this plus it did not cost me a fortune like in the past.
Well I gave Josh my Ideas that I had been tossing around every since I bought the domain for contractorblab from Go Daddy. All I can remember from that point was he wanted in.
So at that point started a young buck contractor and drooling moron marketing guy twice Joshes age and our partnership was on. So G&J Social Media dba as contractorblab.com was formed.Keep reading because it gets really good….
Now starts the good stuff! Glen and Josh can now admit that neither one of them new crap about starting a website let alone a membership website.
There you go Josh I said it first! I’ll forgive that lighting strike lord!
So what do you do first? You ask your friends? Right?
Lesson 1 do not ever ask your friends anything about a website! Or anything else for that matter.
But Josh brought 2 things to the table. First was money,thank you lord! and second was Peter from TC Websites up by where Josh lives and works. He even built NLSeamless.com website for Josh.
Now Peter which by the way is a Geek big time! But hey that’s cool we can deal with that because he has been doing this for 14 years. Plus come to find out he has this tribe of geeks and geeketts that do most of the work for Peter.
He has mastered the 4 hour work week come to find out, hey it took us 8 months but who said we are fast learners. Please remember that as long as you have a laptop and Internet connection, the world is your office!
As I continue to tell you my story just keep remembering how you started out in the contracting world. You had to find employees or subcontractors! So were both not far off here are we?
Josh sent off a large check to buy our software for our new member site. Now I won’t go into that experience because it would take to long. But I will say lets compare it to buying your first Bobcat with all the bells and whistles and lets say you have never run one before. You sit down in the seat with the levers and foot pedals and all the buttons fire that sucker up and around and around you go.
Holy shit don’t push that button Glen!
Well, now your in my world with this new software.
So, thank the lord again that Josh picked up on using the new software and here we are today and I must say the little shit got it mastered!
But let me fast forward 4 months and we thought we had this thing all ready to go for a launch and some genius said in our weekly conference call hey by the way want are you guys doing to get traffic?
Can I lay in the street and play dead?
So smack us silly the geek and geeketts told us we should write 100 articles 500 words long each and submit them to articles sites to help build us traffic.
Now, why in the hell they did not tell us that 4 months earlier I have never found out. So, do you know how hard it is to write 100 articles 500 words long about contracting stuff. Plus how long it took us?
Fast forward 4 more long, long months.
But, here we are jumping up and down 8 months later with www.contractorblab.com live now and everything working and Josh and I laughing our asses off today of all the things we have learned and experienced along the way.
Did Josh just say what I thought he said?
I would have not had it any other way. Well shit I have to agree. Because along the way we have built our own tribe of geeks and geeketts.
So, again I keep going back to when you started your contracting company and all the things you had to go threw. Is your story much different then mine?
We all reached our goals threw hard work a lot of praying and a few cuss words but the bottom line is Josh and I have grown a lot closer and we look forward to building more and more websites together. We have put together a fantastic group of contractors that we plan to network for years to come.
But the bottom line is that we built this site for all contractors by contractors and Josh and Glen would like you to join us and lets make the phone ring and make some sales. Yeah!
Thank you for reading my story and our journey. Now come visit us!
Happy selling
Glen Kohlenberg
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