$20K Per Month Agency In Just 8 Months
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
My name is Munir, and I am an engineering graduate from the University of Ottawa. Upon graduating, I started a Web Design and SEO Company with my two closest friends in my hometown of Ottawa – Vixel Studio.
We help businesses with their digital marketing campaigns through Web Design, SEO and Branding services. We work with businesses in all industries throughout Ottawa and the surrounding areas.
We launched this company by placing simple lawn signs around the city that said, 'Need a website?'. Since then, we have generated over $20,000 per month within eight months of incorporating our company.
Today, we are managing over 50 clients and are en route to doubling that amount over the next four months.
The most important skill you can learn is speed. If you are young, ambitious, and have time, your greatest leverage is the speed at which you can produce things.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
My journey began at age 12 when I began tinkering with the family computer, learning Photoshop and editing photos from my camera. This curiosity led me to learn many critical skills that help me operate this business today.
It wasn't until University that all three of us co-founders met. We made a great team because we shared common values: working hard and being able to have fun along the way.
We used to always say it would be a dream if we all worked at the same company. But upon graduating, we each found ourselves at our corporate job.
During my time at University, I've tried:
- Running multiple dropshipping and miserably failing
- Convincing a local auto shop to have me build them a website to sell more cars for $300.00.
- Tutored students to get more side-cash
- Started a mobile tire-changing company that generated $1000.00 in 2 months with a simple Google My Business profile listing.
After sweating and changing tires for two months for $1000.00, I concluded that running a mobile tire-changing business would not be my destiny. I quickly began to jot down ideas of the next business idea that would truly has to be ‘it’
I knew I had many valuable skills. I needed a scalable business that could be done remotely, didn't involve physical labor, and required a low starting capital.
I kept thinking about that local auto shop that refused my website services. I knew that just because they didn't need my services did not mean nobody else did.
I've seen countless embarrassing websites around my city, and I knew I could make something much better at a cheaper price with my skills.
Launching that tire-changing business helped prove to myself that I am capable of starting any business. I knew that with hard work and dedication, nothing could stop me from starting a Web Design Agency work as well.
And that was the beginning.
I began to quickly think of a business name. All I needed was something easy to remember with an available domain.
I thought of the word “pixel”, replaced the “P” with a “V”, and added the word 'studio', and VixelStudio was formed.
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
The most important skill you can learn is speed. If you are young, ambitious, and have time, your greatest leverage is the speed at which you can produce things.
Within two weeks of buying the domain vixelstudio.com:
- Designed my logo and brand guidelines
- Performed market research and analyzed my competitors in Ottawa
- Watched endless videos of other founders of Web Design and SEO agencies
- Created the entire website including the copywriting
- Established my Google Business Profile and began to get reviews
- Purchased a course for $500.00 from Anerdsworld on how to start a successful Web Design & SEO agency
- Gathered a list of potential leads that I was going to target
- Began running Facebook Ads
Describe the process of launching the business.
After launching the website, it was time to strike.
I began pitching a free website to my dentist, friends, lawyers, family members, and all businesses within a 20km radius of my location.
In every restaurant I entered, I would look for the owner to introduce myself and then pitch them a discounted website for their business.
I was ready to offer a complete refund and take a loss if any customer was not pleased.
I finally convinced a few friends and began making the best websites as quickly as possible.
One of the first websites I created for a friend:
A free website I created for a Photographer I met locally at a sweet cafe:
A website we made for our friend with a wedding signage business:
I began to have a few free portfolio projects under my belt, but I needed another way to attract clients. I wasn't moving at the pace that I wanted, and I wanted paying clients.
I stumbled upon the Twitter account of another agency owner who posted an image of a lawn sign with the simple statement, 'Need A Website?'. I realized how genius of an idea it was.
- A lawn sign in your city with an Ottawa phone number indicates that we are local, a huge factor for many business owners.
- The simple phrase 'NEED A WEBSITE' will capture the attention of many people driving by.
- It was an inexpensive way to get plenty of eyes.
- It was a method that no other business owner in my city was using.
As soon as the snow melted, we placed an order using our own money and spent countless hours during late nights driving around town and planting the signs into the dirt.
The night after we placed our first batch, we got our first call. Within a few days of answering interested leads, we signed our first client for $500.00 for a website. We were now operating a Web Design Company.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Lawn signs were working and getting us clients, so we doubled down. We placed more than 1000 signs in our city at night over four months while working our full-time jobs.
It was a continuous cycle of placing signs, answering calls, signing clients, delivering results, and printing more signs. Each client became easier to sign as we obtained more client testimonials and examples.
Winter was soon approaching, and we needed other ways to get clients that didn't involve planting signs on grass. Our solution was to start cold-calling all nearby local businesses, promising beautiful websites willing to meet them in person. Within one month, we signed our first client from cold calling.
Within four months, we had the budget to start a bus campaign to capture more people's attention in Ottawa.
All the remaining funds were reinvested into Google Ads. We spent all of our revenue trying to get more attention from people who could benefit from our services.
Existing customers that were pleased with our services were convinced to become our SEO clients with monthly retainers.
To increase retention and customer satisfaction, we refined our process by:
- Creating an onboarding process for all new clients
- Updating our existing clients every week to ensure that they are up to date on their project
- Began hiring contractors to be able to cater to the increased demand
I began pitching a free website to my dentist, friends, lawyers, family members, and all businesses within a 20km radius of my location. In every restaurant I entered, I would look for the owner to introduce myself and then pitch them a discounted website for their business.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
Today, we are operating from our office in our hometown of Ottawa. We are profitable and generating $20,000/month, with significant monthly growth. The average cost of obtaining a customer through Google ads has steadily decreased to $200.00 - $300.00.
Our local agency office in Ottawa:
As we improve our website copy and film more testimonials, our conversion rate has also increased with our Google Ads.
Our most significant expenses are software subscriptions, Google Ads marketing, and contractor wages. Our team also significantly grew to ten contractors abroad who help us fulfill our Web Design, Branding, and SEO services.
Our short-term goal is to generate over $300,000 in revenue by the end of 2024. We aim to build organic channels through SEO and social media to rely less on Google Ads.
Our long-term goal is to create Ottawa's most trusted marketing brands. We know that by developing relationships with other business owners in Ottawa and delivering quality results, we will always have clients lined up to work with us.
Within a few years, we aim to scale VixelStudio to generate 1-4 million per year by slowly expanding to neighboring areas.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
One of our biggest challenges was to find talent. Platforms like Upwork and Fiverr have thousands of workers, but finding upcoming talent takes time and effort. We should have begun the hiring process much sooner to account for the incoming projects.
Another thing we learned was the importance of niching down. Your team’s skills will cater to some clients better than others, and your agency should be positioned accordingly. If you provide the best results to a specific demographic, it's in your best interest to begin saying 'no' to other clients.
The biggest question that customers will have is whether you can deliver the services to the quality they desire. Clients who've seen you fulfill for other similar businesses will pay the premium to work with you.
One of our best decisions was to start this company as a group. It's true when they say, 'If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together', and this experience proved precisely that.
Putting yourself in a room of like-minded individuals puts everyone on an upward spiral. Tasks feel more manageable when everyone around you is focused. Ideas spring up easier when everyone's talking to each other. Concentrating on what you're good at is achievable when others take essential tasks off your plate.
People will say to not work with friends, but if your friends are ambitious, hard-working and loyal, there is no reason not to work with them. There’s no limit as long as everyone can take feedback and share the same values.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
Our favorite tools for our business are SemRush and Pastel.
Semrush allows us to create a strategy of how we can outcompete competitors through SEO. Pastel enables our team to comment on websites we're developing, making collaboration and revisions much faster.
Some other tools we use day to day are:
- Slack for team communication
- WordPress & Elementor
- SurferSEO for on-page SEO
- Screaming Frog for technical SEO
- Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere)
- Upwork to find contractors and talent
- Google Drive and Suite to organize documents and projects
- Loganix to find backlink opportunities for clients
- Google Analytics and Google Search console to track SEO Campaigns
- Hostinger to host all client’s websites
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
The first resource that launched this business was a course from Chris Hughes, co-founder of Anerdsworld. Anerdsworld is one of Toronto's most successful web design and SEO agencies.
Chris currently has a course for $500.00, and he teaches all of his lessons from running a 7-figure company for over ten years.
Chris has been through the good, the bad, and the ugly, and he shares all of his lessons in his course. He goes over how to structure your website, how to find and sign clients, and how to deal with them once you’ve signed them.
Brian Tracey has also been influential on my journey. His main message is simple. Write down your goals for the year in a notebook, and keep doing it daily. After the first few days, it may not seem like it's doing anything. But you will find that after repetition, your goals will come to life. You would be surprised what you are capable of. It all starts in the mindset. If you tell yourself you are capable of something that is truly your goal, you can achieve it with enough sacrifice.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
My best advice for entrepreneurs is to work as fast as possible. As a small company, your greatest advantage is the speed at which you pivot and complete tasks.
If it took six weeks to launch a company because you decided to focus on your logo and website, those six weeks are gone. Someone else could have launched your business quicker and got their first client faster. Quickly figure out how you'll get money and try it. Once it succeeds and money comes your way, everything else will fall into place.
There's no point in dreaming of an office and buying equipment when nobody has validated your business. I see aspiring entrepreneurs make the mistake of spending all of their money on products, logos, and websites when they don't know if the business idea will work.
I created the rough draft of my business in two weeks and then spent all my time chasing potential clients.
Even if you have yet to learn what that 'one' business is, fast action is the only way to figure it out. If you are quick, you can test five ideas in the time it takes people to test one. Eventually, you will find that 'one' business that works.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We're always looking for Web Design and SEO talent. If that's you, send us your portfolio to [email protected].
Where can we go to learn more?
To learn more about us, check us out at our website.
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