Brainerd DWI Lawyer | Crow Wing County DUI Defense

I keep thinking about exactly what it is I'm trying to do. I guess we'll divide this up. What I'm trying to do with this particular blog post is to tell you about my new "Up North" DUI site. I had already built a DWI site for this client, and based on the job I did on the first site, he decided he wanted a second one. We targeted cities like Brainerd, Little Falls, St. Cloud for DWI hoping to get some business from people who are up on Gull Lake or at Breezy point and get in some trouble. That site is available at either of those previous, or the following link:

Brainerd, MN DWI / DUI Defense Lawyer

While I don't have a long and storied career in sales, I did have a stretch where I held a territory, well two actually, for a large marketing company. Because of my resume (lack of) I was really over my head. I pushed and shoved my way into the job, and then got it and then realized I wasn't very good at it.

I listened to sales tapes a lot. When you sell websites to law firms, listening to motivational speakers talk about sales can be difficult because most of them sold something to the general public. This isn't a "it's harder to sell to lawyers thing" but one of the things that sales managers and speakers like to talk about is the way that you educate your client about what it is that you sell. A guy I worked for loved to tell this horrible story about how he goes into a clients office with a struggling sales rep and develops a great rapport with the lawyer.

In the story, he asks about this photo on the wall. The guy has a boat, and really enjoys the times he spends on the boat. So the manager guy also has a boat, they start talking boats. The manager talks about how this great website actually allows you to get higher value cases by having more to select from. This leads to greater profits and efficiency, which leads to more time on said boat. Long story short, they make a big sale, leading to this conversation in the car:

Struggling Sales Rep: Wow, that was great.

Awesome Manager: Well, it's always nice to make a sale. Now what did we sell him?

Struggling Sales Rep: Oh it was a XZ2000....

Awesome Manager: No, what did we really sell him?

Struggling Sales Rep: Well, the chance to make some money online? Like, is that why we go and ask him about his average case value and then tell him how to run his business (that part was a little author inserted-mocking....I hated the way this guy sold. It was reckless and completely void of knowing anything about what we did....he didn't.)

Awesome Manager: No, we didn't sell him a website, we sold him more time on his boat.

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is how you sell a website to a lawyer. By promising him it will make him more money when you have no clue if, or how, it actually would. I remember listening to this story, not to exaggerate, so let's say seven-hundred times. The reason I'm going through all of this is because I would always ask myself "why can't we just sell them what they're buying? That was, in my opinion, a nice website that would help people learn more about their practice, and could increase the amount of new clients they receive. Well, the answer is that we had to sell them 'the dream' to ensure that they could swallow the gigantic price tag.

So this is really all getting too long. So let's call this the introduction to the story and we'll pick it up in the next post. The point is, It's interesting to be actively defining what it is you are selling.

Minneapolis DWI Lawyer

Well, I'm going to do what I can. I am working hard to get one of my DWI Defense websites up on the first page for "Minneapolis DWI Lawyer" on Google. Not super easy. Considering I used to work with people who were paying upwards of $10,000 a year for DWI websites that were NOT there, I am going to be pretty happy if I can get my guy there for $1,200.

I noticed in my time carrying a bag around talking to criminal defense lawyers that all of the attorneys who are viewed as "really good" are downtown Minneapolis. I don't know exactly who it is who says these folks are "really good"... I don't think anyone does. I think there is just this basic idea of what a lawyer is and what they do that seems to jive really, really well with very tall buildings. You will be hard pressed in Minnesota to find taller buildings than the ones they've got up there in Minneapolis. They are tall. Certainly. There are lawyers in them, certainly. They will take your DWI case...certainly.

So while this blog has done very little to educate, or even entertain the public, let this serve as at least one more page that is pointing to my favorite Minneapolis DWI Lawyer, and let's hope and pray that the site starts to show up on the first page.

Phoenix, Tucson Garage Door Repair

These sites have been out for a while, but I am still working with the owner of Garage Door Repair of Phoenix, and Garage Door Repair of Tucson.

Both companies have emergency repair services available 24/7. They specialize in broken garage door springs and garage door roller repair.

They serve most of Arizona, covering both the Tucson and Phoenix metros, and everything in between. If you are in either the Tucson or Phoenix metros and have a problem with your garage door, don't hesitate to contact either company!

Twin Cities Chiropractor | Woodbury, St. Paul

So I am just a matter of days away from publishing my first chiropractic website. It's for a chiropractor in Woodbury, MN named Dr. Adam Schotzko.

It's always fun to build a site for a new industry. It's a great learning experience, and sort of reminds you a little bit about who you are. I don't say this to brag, but I've always found it flattering when I'm in a meeting with an attorney and they say "so are you a lawyer". I am always honest, replying "no, but I do play one around the house". I guess the very fact that someone would think it's at least viable to ask the question makes me think it was worth tying this tie.

So by contrast, I'm in my second meeting with Dr. Schotzko discussing the content for the site and he looks up and me and says something to the effect of "So...you don't know ANYTHING about chiropractic, huh?" like it was stated as a question to be polite, but he already knew what the answer was.

I hope that someday I will be in a meeting with a new chiropractor and I will know enough about the industry for them to ask "are you a chiropractor"? I won't hold my breath.

Milwaukee Family Law Website

Here is a new website that I built for Thomas Napierala in Bayside, Wisconsin.

Milwaukee Family Law Attorney | Bayside Divorce Lawyer

Mr. Napierala used to have one of those very large and expensive websites with a large legal marketing company. When the nearly $1,000 a month price tag had long-since stopped justifying itself financially, he cancelled the site. In a rush to get something in it's place, he put up a very basic, one page site. When I saw it, I couldn't help but remember how great his logo and color scheme were, so I got in touch with him.

We put together a few pages of content based on some things that he had around the office:

He had some workable divorce information, as well as a lot of information on custody & visitation.

I put together a design based on his pre-existing marketing materials and was able to give him a great price. Now when people go to his website, they see a great reflection of an effective law firm instead of a simple white page with their address and phone number.

Minnesota chiropractic websites

I guess we can file this under "general web marketing advice" which means you'd be wasting paper and ink to even bother printing this. I will further qualify this advice by saying, like all marketing advice, this will end with MY product being the solution, so get ready for that, too. You've been warned, here goes...

So I am looking through some chiropractor websites as I'm thinking it could be a great target for me. I'm noticing that, like large legal sites but even more so, they are overloaded with information that all leads the reader to the same place: still being hurt. Oh, yeah...and you still don't have a client. General SEO rules will tell us that relevant content is a minimum requirement to show up on the search engines in any meaningful or stable way. But does that mean that your website should be a full blown 2,000 page encyclopedia? I'd say no.

There are rules to how google ranks a site. Long story short, it's unlikely that you will ever have a single site that shows up consistantly at the top of google for a wide range of searches. For example, you can build a site to show up for a search like "apple valley chiropractic clinic" but that same page will probably not rank for that same search subbing 45 different cities. If you substitute "chiro" for "chiropractic" you may end up with a completely different set of results. The point is, you need to have a reasonable target, and build a tempered, gradual approach towards it. You need to decide what the most important phrases are that you want to rank for and make them clear with your SEO. This should ideally be a combination of the three target cities, the county they are in, and the two or three phrases, abbreviations, keywords, acronyms, whatever that you are after. Obviosly, these phrases will include words that if re-arranged, create similar phrases.

New DWI site

We've got another DWI site coming out this week at http://mnduiguy.com/. The law office of Harvey Skees in Minneapolis.

We are targeting suburban google placement with this one, Bloomington, Minnetonka, St. Louis park and Eden Prairie.

Harvey Skees offers a free consultation, either over the phone or at his office to answer your questions about your DWI arrest.

Minnesota / Wisconsin Motorcycle Accident Lawyer | Personal Injury Attorney

Sorry for piling these all on top of one another. I'm getting caught up with the sites I have already done and then these will be fewer and further between.

Attorney Richard Schroeder was my very first client. He first reached out to me asking about a motorcycle accident and injury site for Minnesota and Wisconsin. After putting that site together, we replaced their general injury site.

If you need help with a business dispute or an injury of any kind, do not hesitate to contact the personal injury attorneys of Schroeder & Mandel.

Krug & Zupke, St. Paul Personal Injury Lawyers

I just finished up four sites for Krug & Zupke, a personal injury law firm in St. Paul.

Krug & Zupke's practice covers all areas of injury as well as family law.

If you were injured at work, they are a great resource to understand the workers' compensation process, how to find a QRC (Qualified Rehabilitation Consultant), how to get funding for retraining, and more. Michel Krug is also working with dislocated workers, which has unfortunately become a relatively common situation with the economic down turn.

A dislocated worker is basically someone who was injured at work, and then lost their job. Often, when someone is injured, they return to work with some type of restriction. For example, they can continue to work at the shipping plant, but cannot lift more than 50 pounds. When someone with work restrictions loses their job, replacing their previous salary can be very difficult. This is where workers' compensation comes into play, as there are cases where you can receive benefits based on the gap left between your previous salary and your new diminished earning capacity.

For more information on Dislocated workers, QRCs, or workers' compensation in general, consult either Krug & Zupke's Twin Cities workers' compensation site, or their main website covering general injury law.

They also offer Family Law services (divorce, child custody matters, asset division, spousal maintenance). To read more, see their St. Paul Family Law site.

Oakdale, Minnesota Family Law Offices

Three new sites from Oakdale covering family law and bankruptcy.

Gregory Dittrich is a family law attorney who also has mediation services available through the Family Mediation Center, where he partners with Gregory Seamon.

Gregory Seamon offers family law and bankruptcy services to the Twin Cities area.

If you are looking for a divorce attorney, or would like more information on exploring mediation, an alternative to divorce, call or email one of the three offices above.

Twin Cities Medical Error | Medical Malpractice Lawyer

Todd Young is a Twin Cities Medical Malpractice Lawyer.

He focuses his practice on recovering for people who have been injured at the hands of a medical professional, but also provides full services for any and all types of injuries.

He offers a free consultation to give you an understanding of your situation and offer you options to move forward. His website is available at ToddYoungLawOffice.com

So we're all set up for success then...

Again, I am going to try my hardest to steal nothing from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers in this post, but I probably will. That is a great book, and you should check it out. He explains why the Beetles were successful, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs....why asians are good at math, and why there are so many jewish lawyers. Now those last two might sound like sort of prejudiced stereotypes, but let's agree it's not bad to be a lawyer, it's not bad to be good at math, those two groups seem to adhere to those two things, and he examines why. It's spell-bounding. So don't hold that terrible book review against the book... Go check it out.

The point from the book is that a lot of times things come together for certain people or groups of people, and these opportunities (combined with hard work, and the ability to recognize the pursue these opportunities) create success.

Here is the basic environment I'm entering as a small business selling sites

-I build websites, marketing tools at a low price.

-I do the same things to my sites that the large, expensive shops do (metatagging, keyword rich content, inbound linking, XML sitemap submission) to get them to show up on the search engines.

-I started doing this at a time that several small businesses should presumably be looking at managing costs, specifically overhead. In other words, finally examining if this expensive site that some good looking rep came and sold me three years ago (that you've been dutifully paying for monthly ever since) is actually doing anything for you.

-My former company / competitor continues to raise rates. They are also getting pinched by the economy, so smaller groups of people are asked to do more work. Service (the one thing you are supposed to be getting with that fat monthly invoice) suffers.

-My former company raises quotas, making sales reps MORE aggressive, and forced to come in with higher total packages to reach their goals.

So that's the environment I enter: one where a large company with substantial market share issues high invoices and provides sub-par service. Layer on top of that the fact that I provide personal service and effective websites at a low rate at the very time that law offices (by virtue of the struggling economy) should be examining these costs. For most of my clients, I can show them very simply how in the first year they will save $2,500+. In the second year, they will save $3,600+ (these rates assume about a $300 a month invoice, which is pretty much the lowest that large companies will build a site for)

OK, more to come later (not that anyone reads this) but I just want to try to post at least once a day....

So where are we NOW? How do I market as a lawyer

OK, so the previous five posts quickly (probably didn't feel like that to anyone who read them all) were about my little story....here's a quick re-cap:

-Guy learns a lot about web at big company

-Guy gets sales job with big company

-Big company treats clients poorly

-Big company fires Guy

-Guy starts small business selling websites to lawyers

So there we have it. This is when this starts to matter.

Let's say this blog somehow reaches my intended audience, and you are reading this as an attorney who is either looking for a website, or already has one that they pay far too much for. If you are not one of these people, don't despair, I can only hope that my wit and insight is so compelling that even if you don't care about the things I'm saying, you'll still read them.

Let's rewind for a second to Ben Afflac in Boiler Room when he says that (in regards to sales) "there's a sale made everytime...either you sell them on (whatever) or they sell you on why they won't buy it". I always thought about that... and whether this was the cause or the effect, I ended up sort of carrying around "reasons that they WON'T buy from me". I thought about how to overcome these objections:

"Why do I have to pay for this every month...what are you really doing after the site has been built?"

"Why should I buy from a company who has already sold to, and promised 'top' ranking to, my competitors?"

"Most of my clients come from referrals, all I need is a simple site where people can find me, read a little about me, and contact me... I can do that for less than $3,000 - $20,000 a year, right?"

Hmph. I think these lawyers might be right. Let's break these down.

"Why do I pay every month?"

Why would you pay every month? A website is typically built once, and updated from time to time. If you are paying for a website that you haven't updated for the last couple of months, you are over-paying. Hosting plans are available for $60 a year. I actually sell hosting for $50 a month, because I've got some scale there with multiple sites. The good news is that if the term of your contract is over with your current web provider, you own the content (with some exceptions, most notably, their "stock" content). The content (and the coding that supports it, AKA, metadata) is what makes your site rank on Google and other search engines. If you are getting value out of your site beyond people searching for you by name, that is where it's coming from. I have already successfully transferred over coding and content from higher priced companies and maintained or improved ranking and overall traffic.

"You sold to my competitors"

I don't offer exclusive anything at this point. If you buy a website from me, and then your competitor wants one, I WILL sell one to him or her. No reason for me to beat around the bush, I am not here to volunteer. That said, by the time I have relevant rankings for even 2 or 3 clients in this market, I'm moving to another market. I don't need to saturate a market. I can't wait to get out of town and sell in Duluth, and then Phoenix, and then Seattle. Once I have a handful of good rankings to display in other markets, I'm out of here. One other thing on this point, is the company I used to work for expects reps, on average, to sell $40,000 per month per territory. That means they are either going to fail and get fired, or have to sell so much advertising so often, that the "rising tide" is keeping you and all of your competitors at the exact same spot.

"Clients come from referrals"

I heard this so many times. Now that I have built some sites, and keep an eye on the traffic that comes to them, I realize this is at least 50% true. A good portion of the traffic that comes to sites is based on people searching by the name of your business, or your name (especially in the case of lawyers / attorneys). So what do you do on the web to leverage referrals? Well, if you want to read some of my ideas about online social networking for attorneys, click that link and go to lawyers-on-facebook.com to read about it. But yes, the fact is, showing up for "St. Paul Divorce Lawyer" or "Duluth Bankruptcy Attorney" will likely not get you a flood of new traffic or more importantly, clients.

That St. Paul Divorce Lawyer site linked above has been on the first page of Google for the search "St. Paul Divorce Lawyer" for a solid two months and seen relatively humble traffic. So while you can chase all sorts of rankings both organic and paid, lawyers who do a good job for their clients get more clients. That is what generates these name searches, and that is what will make you money. Again, if you want to make sure that all of your potential clients have access to all of your past clients, you should think about getting on Facebook.

My little story, Part 5 | "non since Harmon Glass"

Well, you either have ZERO ability to detect foreshadowing, or you knew this was coming: I got fired from my job. The official last day of employment was December 5th, 2008 which was also my daughter's first birthday. It was one day before my dad & my combined birthday party (he's Dec 5th, I'm the 11th) It was at a time when unemployment was sky-rocketing and the only changes in employment happening in the market were people getting fired, not hired. It was a bad situation.

I am not an optimist. I am not a pessimist. I, like Johnny Sack so memorably (for me, anyway) said to Tony Soprano, "am a pragmatist".

I don't care when shitty things happen to me, because I can work my way out of them. While I love when great things happen to me, I try to be careful not to let it make me lazy. I really do believe (sorry for the cheese here) that every single person's life is the total sum of a combination of some pretty simple factors:

1. How you react to the "hand you were dealt"

2. The "hand you were dealt" (and no, it's not an accident that this comes second)

I'm not going to expand on that, because if I did, it would just be some regurgitated borderline plagerism of "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. If you haven't read this book, you should....if you don't read, get the audio book and listen to it. It's very important, and if you have a decent memory, is so packed full of interesting party / general conversation anecdotes that you could fool anyone into thinking that you are an interesting person regardless of how untrue that may be.

So I got fired....at age 30, three weeks before Christmas, from the only company I had worked for post-college. The place before this employer on my resume was TGI Friday's. Shit. So I could either make potential employers think that I am one of those silver spooners who never worked a day until I graduated from college, or I could let them go ahead and assume I'm an obnoxious douche-bag (only partially true) and IF I got an interview, it might just be for them to ask me about flair. God damn it. Well, that probably is totally irrelevant to my employment situation. You just can't find a job in this market...it's tough, but I think we all know this so time to move on...

So no job, no real hope of getting a good one. So then you get the chance to ask yourself a really meaningful question, and there are no wrong answers or other obligations standing in your way:

"What do you want to do?"

Well, I didn't quit, I got fired. So I want to sell websites to lawyers...I did like that. There were things I did NOT like about that...so what do we do? (Again, if you didn't see this coming, you need to work on your foreshadowing detecting abilities) Well, we're going to start a small website business and apply all of the things that we learned in the last 5 years working for this big company.

The things that they did wrong, I can do right. The solutions to problems that weren't scalable at the big, profit-driven company were suddenly workable in my tiny little doesn't-even-exist-yet company. I used to sell websites for $5k and make $1k. So what if I just sold websites for $1k and made $1k....that would work, right? There is very little overhead in website production.

Hey, wait...this might work. And this time, my optimism isn't sarcastic. (If you didn't pick up that it was previously....c'mon...pay attention)

Oh, P.S. The reason this is called "Non Since Harmon Glass" is because that was the last time I was fired. I was 16, and I am clumsy as all get out. I worked at Harmon Glass. I dropped and broke so much glass there inside of 4 weeks that I got fired. Have you ever seen what a 6 foot fluorescent tube does when dropped from a 15 foot ceiling on a concrete floor? Have you ever seen what happens to a 4 x 8 piece of glass when you lose your grip and it hits the aforementioned concrete floor? So that point is, I was so clearly ill suited for that job that when I got fired, it was more of a relief than a disappointment. That was the last time I got fired. I sort of felt like an idiot 16 year old, but this time I had a baby, a three year old, a 13 year old, and a wife that were all counting on me.

My little story, Part 4 | "The Magic Dust we sprinkle on sites"

So here comes out awesome new product. Search Engine Marketing Advantage.

I don't want to get all nuts and bolts on this, but it was basically described as "the magic dust we sprinkle on sites". It was a series of links pointed to a site that was supposed to help with Google. Part of the algorithm that turns out search results for Google is how many links point to your site. Each time a link is pointed at a site, it's like a vote of confidence from that other site, so Google assumes that it is relevant, and the site that the link is pointed to is given a little bump in the search results.

I knew that inbound linking was important. I knew a lot of stuff about search engine optimization, but really only what my company taught me. So I wasn't out there reading magazines, or even Google's own webmaster guidelines. I was out there selling these packages for $600+ per month to get people's sites ranked. Thank god I only sold two of them.

After a sub-par June and July I was back in "make your number or we'll fire you" territory. By this time I had worked my way out of that scenario three times, and wasn't sweating it. I actually made my month in the first week of August, and got on a plane to go to our meeting in Vegas. Things were great.

They were talking about a blog posting when I got there. Apparently some little Canadian blog (oilman.ca) had said some nasty stuff about our product. I wrote him off as another guy who hated our company because we were awesome and got drunk for three days in Vegas. I was at my number on the 7th of the month...why worry.

I got home and read the blog. Erg. This isn't good.

I read Google's guidelines on selling links. Forgive the acronym, but my jaw hit the floor as I the words represented by OMFG ran through my head at a dizzying pace.

The most crippling thing about all of this to me was that I felt like I had been lied to. Let me sum up the above two links:

The blog basically said "FindLaw is filthy because they sell links". The Google guidelines banned the EXACT practice that we were doing...selling links with the intent of transferring page rank.

So the lie I was basically told was that we were on the up and up, and this was all a misunderstanding. That's what they said at the meeting, and content with being at my number, and drunk as I was in Vegas, I accepted it. I was in the room with the SEO manager when this product got dreamed up. Unlike 80% of the people selling it, I completely understood it, I simply had NO IDEA that it was against Google's guidelines.

The company's position was pretty straightforward. We aren't going to address this because we did nothing wrong. If you say anything about this to your clients, you will be fired. Wait...what? we'll be fired? For what? I was disappointed, confused, angry... Three days later the VP of sales called me. This little napoleon complex f-stick and I never got along. I was busy trying to do things right, he was busy trying to convince people he was much bigger than his 5'2" frame. Whatever. So he called me because someone named James commented on the blog. It wasn't me, so I denied it. He said "that would be an unfortunate way to lose your job", a poorly veiled threat, in my opinion.

So I'm going to try to get to the end of this story as it's boring me, which means you probably aren't reading it anymore. This whole process robbed me of everything (related to the company) that I believed in. It was a complete and total scam. We got our hands caught in the cookie jar, and at a time that we didn't know what effect this was going to have on our site, or more importantly, our client's sites, we decided to do nothing. We had people who were paying upwards of $5,000 per month to our company, and for all we knew their sites were about to fall off (Matt Cutts knew about this whole deal) the face of the earth....our decision was not only to completely ignore this issue, but one step further, you would be FIRED if they knew you so much as discussed this with your clients.

That's okay. I was just going to ignore it, and keep on selling normal sites without the bad SEO add-on (which they CONTINUED to sell, they still do today) and I was going to make my number, and a lot of money.

Things were going to work out....

My little story, Part 3 | "I am now officially successful"

So St. Paul, here I come. January 2008.

I was so excited. I got out there and met as many of my new clients as possible. I was closing deals in my first month in St. Paul. It took me 2 full months in Wisconsin, and I sold over $20,000 in my first month in St. Paul. I was so excited. It WAS the territory...it wasn't me. I was going to be a huge success.

February I was out meeting as many people as I could. Selling expensive sites requires a process; it's not easy and it's not fast. You have to meet with people a handful of times. In sales, a "one call close" is what they call it when you get a signed contract on the first meeting. It's efficient, it's quick, and it's how successful reps make their number. However, to do that, you have to go from "Hi, nice to meet you" to "sign this right now" in 30 minutes. Major a-hole risk in doing that. I was trying to build a network to generate referrals.

So while I write this, I'm watching Boiler Room in the background. Love this movie. Anyhow, Ben Afflac's character says:

"There is no such thing as a "no-sale call". A sale is made on every call you make; either you sell the client some stock, or he sells you on a reason he can't...either way a sale is made. The only question is, who's gonna close, you or him. Now be relentless (over-dramatically waving his hand) that's it, I'm done"

Whether or not you believe those words, they rang in my head every single day. But what I quickly realized was that I was beyond proficient in collecting reasons why people would NOT buy my product, but I was still a pretty poor sales rep. So after January had gone better than I would have expected for my first month in a new territory, and now it was about February 15th. I was going to Arizona in a week for our national meeting. I got a call from my boss.

me: "Hey buddy, what's up?"

my boss: "Just working on getting a couple of things finished up"

me: "Sounds good"

my boss: "Is now a good time? Do you have time to talk"

(insert garbage about company policy and how there's no "gray area" and that we need to stick to procedure)...fast forward...

me: So I can either make my number this month, or get fired...that's pretty much what we're looking at? And I have basically 3 days after Arizona to get it done?

my boss: yes, that is what we're looking at

me: Well, I'll get there. I'll do it.

my boss: I hope so.

Believe it or not, I did. I sold $20,000 in three days to save my job in February. Then I sold enough in March to make up for January and made my first quarterly bonus ever. It was awesome.

Things were going to work out....

My little story, Part 2 | "Steep learning ramp"

So I take this Wisconsin territory. There were plenty of things working against me, an unexperienced, unknown sales rep beginning his career and looking to sell his house in late 2006.

I wanted it. Really bad. I made the calls, I tied my tie, I showed up to my meetings early. My face was shaved, my breath was fresh. The first couple of weeks my suits sucked...but they got better. I was probably the most well-liked, unsuccessful sales rep the world of over-priced websites has ever seen. I had no idea how to close. It's a pretty awkward process when you get someone to buy into a site, and then they have to ask "so, do I like, sign a contract or something now?"....ouch.

That said, in my first couple of months I started to get the hang of it and even hit my number a couple of times. We were up against some tough math at home. Our realtor was telling us that our house was over priced listed at the same number we owed. So basically we had to pay all of the transaction costs, our realtor's commission, and whatever the spread was between the offer and our listing price. It was about $20,000 at our asking price.... When people made 'offers' anywhere between $20k and $50k below our asking price, that number swelled as high as $70,000. Do you have $70,000 in cash? I do not.

Fact is, to get someone to believe in your product, they need to believe in you. For someone else to believe in you, first YOU need to believe in you. So I took all of that doubt, and math, and other non-sense and got focused on what I needed to do....go and sell these websites. Some months I made, most I didn't. Eventually, my boss took some mercy on me... A territory was opening in St. Paul, and they offered it to me.

I didn't have to sell my house anymore. I didn't have to live out of hotels anymore. My wife didn't have to be a single parent (with this dude who showed up on the weekends, distracted, defeated, depressed). I was going to LIVE in the community where I was selling.

Things were going to get better...

My little story, Part 1 | "I got a job in sales!"

Well, so here go....Blogging.

Look, I don't mean to make it sound like the concept is unique or new as it's certainly neither, but I want to see what it can do for me. I own a small business that designs, builds, and gets small websites placed on Google.

So short background on me: I worked for the largest online legal marketing company in the world for five years. I loved it. From the very first time I posted a picture on one of my clients websites I was hooked. So I worked my way up through the company, from making pre-sales calls, to account management, to senior account management. I learned a lot about web marketing, what lawyers want from a website, and how to put it all together.

As I learned more and more, I got frustrated that the sales reps made all of the money and we (the people back in the home office) seemed to be doing all of the real work. I didn't have any real sales experience, but through perseverance and persuasion I convinced them to give me a territory selling websites in Wisconsin. I lived in the Twin Cities....this was a jump.

Risky as it was, I put my house on the market, told my loving wife (who was making these decisions with me) that I was going to have to be out of town for a while, and left her at home with our son who was almost two. My territory covered Eau Claire, Madison, North Milwaukee and up into the Fox River Valley (Oshkosh, Appleton, Green Bay). This was late 2006. The housing market was about to drop through the floor, the economy was about to free fall into a complete nightmare, and gas was about to go to $4.00 a gallon.

Never the less, I was confident things were going to work out....