Episode 21 – Rob O’Rourke Shows That Listening To Your Clients & Solving Problems Trumps Skills

Introduction   00:00:03 Marketing, explosive growth, and revolutionary secrets that can catapult your business to new heights. You’re now listening to The Underground Marketer Podcast with your host Tudor Dumitrescu, the one podcast devoted to showing new businesses how to market themselves for high growth. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:00:24    Welcome to the underground marketer. This is the place where we deliver the real truth about marketing and explore big ideas that can help new businesses thrive and grow into big ones. I’m your host Tudor and today it’s my pleasure to welcome Robert O’Rourke. He’s the founder of the Fox Web School, and he’s currently helping web designers and other entrepreneurs scale their businesses massively online. So welcome, Rob. It’s great to have you here. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So I think that it’s best if you start a little bit with your background and you tell us a bit about your story, basically how you got started, what you did before you got to starting the Fox school and how you got into the whole endeavor.

Rob O’Rourke 00:01:10    Yeah, for sure. And I can already hear, we were just talking about this before we started. I can hear a skipper back in a little bit. So if you guys hear any background noise in the background, I got a little chihuahua. He might go crazy. Uh, so yeah, my background story I’m from Ireland. I grew up, uh, in a pretty normal Irish family and my dad did construction. My mum did nursing and when it was time for university, I wanted to kind of get in on the construction game. So I studied construction engineering, but by the time I graduated, there was a massive recession in Ireland. So just no jobs, no opportunity in the construction industry, but just kind of across the board. Uh, the whole country was trashed. We just spent way too much money as a country, and then we didn’t have any means to pay it back and just kind of ran out of cash. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:01:51    So not many jobs, not much opportunity. I taught surfing and worked at like summer camps, um, for a year or two, just like water sports, which is fun, a lot of fun, but uh, eventually like, okay, I gotta make some real money, got to go somewhere. So in Ireland, there’s this culture of immigration, a lot of people head off. So I was looking at the usual spots, um, the US and Australia. And eventually, I found in Canada that at that time the oil industry was really booming. So I moved out to Canada with no contacts whatsoever. No history of working in oil, hardly even knew how it worked. Like, uh, I just knew it was in the ground. Like they got it out of the ground somehow. So I moved over there pretty long story, I guess. But eventually, I ended up working in oil. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:02:32    It took like seven or eight different jobs I got in on the oil industry. And because I had a degree and at that time they’re really desperate to hire people. So if you had a degree, no matter what it was in, they kind of like, oh, this guy is, you know, got some education. So they put you kind of up the ladder already. So eventually I got to the petroleum engineer position. Really good job was making quite a bit of money. Uh, but the downside was, I didn’t really have any freedom. So I was just out there in the middle of nowhere because in Canada, it’s an and Northern BC, it’s super, super remote. So you get paid well, but you got to work like a lot of days every year. You don’t have any sort of consistency in your life. Um, you could be doing something on your time off. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:03:11    They give you a call. You got to get straight into the truck. You got to go out for like one month, two months, sometimes like three, four months. Uh, so it’s pretty crazy. So I did it for a few years, was making good money, but I was just burning out. I was working nights, super tough job. And eventually the oil industry kind of crashed. So it was almost like a good thing. Looking back, I’d say, well, for me personally, it was probably, uh, the right thing to happen. And at that stage, I was just like, okay, I’ve done this for a few years. I’ve kind of finally had this high-paying job, but I wasn’t happy with a lot of things. So at this time I, you know, we were both on the Fastlane Forum. I didn’t know the Fastlane Forum. I didn’t have a different way to look at it. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:03:48    I just knew that in Ireland, I’d never made any good money. Now I’d made all this good money, but something was wrong. You know, like where what’s this money giving me basically, um, um, losing massive chunks of my whole year, doing nothing, basically like just out there on a computer in the middle of nowhere, a bunch of dudes in the forest. I mean a fun job adventurous, but, uh, just chunks of my life was, was going. So at the time I had a buddy, he traveled a lot and he was heading down to Columbia and he was like, come with me to Columbia. You know, we’ll, we’ll do a few weeks. So I went down there and it was just super fun, like the culture and, you know, great country to travel pretty, really good times. And I just didn’t want to go back. So I was like, okay, I gotta figure out a way to make money. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:04:30    And I was running into a lot of people in Canada, obviously in the oil industry, you’re working remote. You only meet people who are in the oil industry. Uh, and Columbia is meeting these online entrepreneurs and it kind of surprised me. I always thought like somebody at that point, somebody made their money online was like super smart. Like they, you know, a tiny percent of the population, like it was impossible for most people, you have to have like, you know, um, something from Harvard or whatever. So I was kind of surprised. I was meeting a lot of people who like hustled away in an online. Uh, they seem like ordinary dudes. I mean, they’re working hard, but they didn’t seem like these top, you know, 0.1% of intelligence people. So I was like, oh, this might be possible for me, got talking to a few different people. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:05:10    And this one guy in particular, this one day we went out or about to go for lunch and he’s like, oh, let me just check the computer. I got to check sales. And at that point in the day, he had already met like, well, over a thousand, $2,000 or something that day, I was like, man, this is like, like what’s going on here? This is crazy. Because like, he was telling me what he had done and how he’d done it on one of the things he mentioned was a fascinating millionaire. So he recommended that book. I got the book, joined the form and just figured out like, okay, here’s a lot of people making money online. They’re doing well. And you know, other things and, uh, more than just the money, it was like the way they’re viewing life. I definitely resonated with that. It wasn’t, you know, it was like how to make money about how to use that, to get more freedom control, how you set up your life. 

Rob O’Rourke    00:05:52    Look after yourself, look after the people close to you. So love the forums. I learned a lot. Um, I started trying different business ideas as well as like improving my business IQ. So the first few ideas were kind of crazy. Uh, you know, it didn’t go so well, but eventually got into web design. So web design was the one that like, you know, it was the first one that hit, started making real income with that. Eventually the first few months were pretty rough. I worked on some freelancing websites. Again, I didn’t really know what I was doing. We might get into this later. Like, as we talk more about sales, but I just didn’t really understand like what value was to a business. So I was like, okay, it’s probably about how many hours I work or how eager I am to work. And I was focusing on, uh, like the me part of the equation and not like what they’re actually getting as a result. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:06:38    Like true me, you know, was, I was thinking, okay, good service work, lots of hours do it for cheap. This is what a business wants. And then it started to click that, no, this is just gonna burn me out. And it does not actually equal, you know, anything in particular for them to work all day. It doesn’t mean a good result. So eventually it clicked. And I started working for just better clients who wanted a real result and were willing to pay pretty good money for it. So went from $2,000 projects to $5,000 to $10,000. And although I had made good money in oil, like I was on a thousand a day as a petroleum engineer, uh, making that like online money direct for myself just felt so much better. So I remember the first sale, my first big sale as a web designer was $2,000. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:07:20    And, you know, it took me probably I guess, like two weeks to do that project, but that was probably the most like satisfactory amount of money I’d ever earned in my life. At that point. It just felt so good. So yeah, I kept going with web design and then I was posted in different places and people started asking me, and then on the fast inform as well, like how did you do this? How did you get clients? So I started helping a few people that turned into more people and eventually, um, it was just too many people to do one-on-one. So I was like, okay, I’ll make some, uh, videos. And then, you know, you guys all watch the videos, we’ll have a call together. And that kind of went to the next level and then the next level, and now it’s like a full school. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:07:57    So I used to have smaller courses and products, which had a few thousand people, but I’ve really focused on like, you know, delivering the most value and not thinking about big numbers. So I have over 300 students, which I mean is still a good, decent number, but it’s like a full-on program. Like I stick with these people, some of them for, well over a year, like two, three years and just work with them and get them like the best results possible. So yeah. Pretty long story there hopefully covered everything, but it’s been super fun so far. And, uh, yeah, excited to see, I guess, where it goes next. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:08:29    That’s awesome, Rob. I mean, there’s quite some heavy progress in there. So I’m excited to hear about that. There are a few things that intrigued me. So you mentioned that you got a degree in construction, so I’m similar in that because I have a degree in civil engineering, although I’ve never practiced it, but I do. I had a question. So you said that you decided at the very beginning to move from Ireland to Canada. So how was that for you? I mean, were you scared to do it? How was your mindset when you actually took the plunge? Because I guess that was the first real plunge that you took before you actually went into the business. And I think that the reason I’m asking is because I think that one of the hardest things when it comes to entrepreneurship is sort of going on your own 

Tudor Dumitrescu    00:09:15 Yeah. Being in charge basically of your own finances and you, because you basically went to an entirely different country, you obviously did that. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:09:24    Yeah. So I, the thing that I’d learned early, um, my family, when we’re very young, we moved to New Zealand. Uh, this is way before, you know, travel was popular even before Lord of the rings came out, which is a popular, you know, New Zealand movie series made in New Zealand. So just one day my parents got the idea, let’s move the whole family to New Zealand. So we moved there for like two years. We came back and I guess it stuck with me like this thing that you can always do, you know, you can change things up in a big way. Like you don’t have to be stuck in the same situation. So after university, when there’s just no jobs, I was just getting so tired of like, uh, no opportunity. Like I was willing to work hard. I was willing to hustle, but I got out there and I just, I wasn’t seeing like an environment to, to put those skills into auction, like, uh, you know, I’ll show up, but there’s just nothing there to show up to. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:10:12    And I was working in a, in Ireland, we called them a petrol station, but like a gas station, like I was pumping gas. I had a degree, you know, I was just like, okay, like I got to do something here, I’ll switch it up. So I did my research, Canada looked good, but again, I knew nothing about the place out there. So I got on a plane. And actually before that, it took me over a year just to save the money for a plane ticket on like about $1,200 for when I got there. So I was coming in, but like no contacts, no Anna thin. And I remember the very first night I arrived in Calgary. So in Alberta, you got two main cities, there’s Calgary, more south and there’s, uh, Edmonton more north. And I was, I was moving to Edmonton, which is closer to like the oil field stuff, but I flew into Calgary and the plan was to get a hotel or just somewhere to stay. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:10:59    And then the next day got the, uh, the bus to Edmonton, but I got in and found out there’s this big cowboy convention going on and everything was sold out. So that very first night I to sleep on the ground in the airport. Wow. Wow. Yeah. So I remember sleeping and somebody came over like a vacuum cleaner. I think they’re trying to get me to like leave basically, but, uh, I just, you know, stay there, but I, I just remember that feeling. I was there first night by myself. Like not that much cash, no contacts sleeping on the floor. And I was like, man, this is like, I got a hustle here. Like this is going to take, you know, everything. So I actually kinda, sometimes I look back at those times and like, it was super fun to, you know, just go that crazy and like have to make every day work. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:11:40    And you know, that those early days sometimes actually have the best, like fun stories. I feel like later in business it gets more, you know, you’re looking at spreadsheets, you’re looking at like systems you’re working on these small things, but in the beginning, it’s just like straight hustle. Yeah. So I ended up getting a bunch of random jobs in the beginning. Alberta has kind of extreme temperatures. So in the summer it’s quite warm, but in the winter it gets down to like minus 30, minus 40. So my first job was these landscape, uh, company, but it was the end of the summer. So it was like cutting grass for like a week. And then it changed to like collecting leaves cause autumn hit. And then like a couple of weeks later, we were out with like shovels and pickaxes, like working in the snow super bad weather, but yeah, eventually, um, hustled my way into the oil industry. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:12:23    Have you got time for one more story? I’ll just quickly tell you that. Absolutely. Yeah. So with the oil stuff, I had like, no idea how it worked around the thing, but I had talked to a buddy and he kind of like told me what to say in the job interview to get hired because he had moved to the states and he had got hired there. So another Irish buddy. Yeah. So I was like, if I can just get an interview, I’ll maybe can make this work. But, uh, all I had was a bicycle. I didn’t have a car or anything. And a lot of these oil places, aren’t in the city, they’re out of town. So in the beginning I would show up on the bicycle and walk in and try it like at a job interview. And, uh, one of these, like I had no idea what I was doing. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:12:59    One of these job interviews, the guy, it was called bear drilling. I think his massive, big dude behind the BA a desk, uh, you know, just like you can tell he’s like a tough, you know, so he’s like is interviewing me. It’s like, okay, so where are you from? I’d like to have experience. I just try to like bullshit everything in there and make it sound as good as I can and was like, okay, so how are you going to get out to the oil rigs? I was like, oh, I have a bike. And he’s like, well, you know, there’s no motor bikes a lot out there. You’re going to have to have a pickup truck. I was like, no, no, not a bike. And I like point out the window of his like massive oil office with like a huge, you know, expensive desk. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:13:32    I’m like, no, I have a bike. And he sees, he sees like this bike, like a, you know, chained up to a post. And he’s like, you thought it was like joking for about, you know, two, three seconds. And then, uh, he like had, um, my resume. So he’s like hiding his face. Like he was just trying so hard not to laugh. He was like, what we’ll do is we’ll give you a call back and I could hear his voice that he’s just waiting to laugh. So like walk out of the office and the secretary like closes the door and I could just hear him like roaring laughing. So yeah, I definitely started off with just like, no idea what I was doing, but eventually I got in with a job interview. I said, the right stuff got hired and it was pretty fun. And that like, it’s kind of a crazy job. Almost feels sometimes like you’re heading out to space or something like you drive in a truck just hours out into the snow, like the most remote places. So yeah, just straight hustle. I think that’s what it takes those early days. Looking back, like so many lessons that are used now in business. I just learned from those first couple of years in Canada, that just like everyday hot to matter, always trying to like spot something that you can use to your advantage and yeah, just like focusing so hard on making it work. Exactly. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:14:38    I mean, that’s awesome. I mean, I gather that a lot of especially mindset lessons, you know, came from there and that’s really the foundation, uh, you know, because if you can do that, then you can, uh, sort of actually move on actually the more technical stuff and make it work. Because I see a lot of the problems that people have is that, for example, they don’t talk with enough customers or they’re afraid to talk with enough customers. They don’t call cold enough. And I feel that that hustle is really important. And you sort of got that at the very beginning. So you had a foundation on which to build everything else. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:15:11    Yeah. I think naturally a lot of us, like if we’re pushed, like we got to do it, then we’ll do it. But people get to a certain comfort level and then that drops off. And even to this day, I still like try and just think back to that hunger. Like if I, if I could see where I am now, back then, like I wouldn’t even believe it was possible. But then back then I had so much hunger and I try and keep, keep that as much as I can. And I’ll be honest. It is pretty hard because when you got nothing, it’s like, you gotta make it work. But, uh, I see that all the time. I mean, everywhere, like Adrienne life is pretty comfortable. Especially last couple of years, you can kind of get every, you know, like a base level, you got your Netflix, you got your phone, you got this. It’s not too hard to get comfortable for the average person, but yeah, you just gotta fight that. Like, if you want something, you got to get uncomfortable. If you’re only trying to do something big and stay comfortable, you know, your chances of succeeding or how long it’s going to take is just, uh, it’s not going to be good. Like you gotta push, push too uncomfortable. I agree. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:16:09    A hundred percent with that. I think that actually one of the biggest problems with the modern world is that we are surrounded by all this technology and knowledge, but we have a lot of us have lost access to what we used to have before in terms of this capacity to deal with the unknown in the uncomfortable. If you think about how people back a hundred years ago, for example, how to manage it was a lot rougher. So there are a lot more used to dealing with hard things from the get-go. And I feel that entrepreneurship by in itself is a lot harder than working a job. You know, you can be comfortable in being an entrepreneur. So I think that that is one of the biggest roadblocks that I personally see people, you know, when they they’re thinking about starting and they’re not being successful, they’re not finding any success a lot of the times is because they’re just unwilling to be uncomfortable. And I mean, your story sort of illustrates that there is no way to get around that other than just doing it. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:17:12    Yeah. A hundred percent. It’s like that thing, uh, you know, just burn your boats or I didn’t have a return ticket. I don’t think I was just there hot to work. And, uh, I’ve been thinking about that story actually a little bit just for myself recently. Like I want to get the business to the next level it’s been doing well, but, um, it’s just like, you gotta, you gotta think of it that way. Like your opportunities, your time, it’s all limited. It can feel good at like a DC. I almost find it’s harder for me anyway, like to go from nothing to a decent level. Like you gotta do it cause you have nothing. But when you get to a decent level, I find there’s a lot of different mental things you’ve got to deal with to get to a great level. And I definitely don’t feel like I’m, you know, anywhere close to hit my full potential yet. And I just, I got to yeah. Use that, use that hunger. Like remember, you know, if you had this opportunity that you have now, like a few years ago, if you could see where you are now, like show up with that sort of work ethic 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:18:07    A hundred percent. I mean, I struggled with some of the same things because I mean, when you’re first starting out, you’re sort of, you don’t know anything, but you’re not so interested to know you’re just doing, because you really have no time to sort of gather the knowledge. You just have to figure things out on your own. And I think that that state is really, really powerful and, you know, being able to basically recreate that state can be very powerful and it can really push your head quite a bit. So I struggled with a lot of the same things nowadays, you know, because once you, you start making your income, you leave a lifestyle that’s comfortable for you. You sort of have the problem of getting trapped into that. And, um, you don’t have that same motivation. Like you don’t feel like you need to work as hard as before. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:18:53    And that’s a problem, you know, when it comes to growth. Yeah. Massively I’m with you a hundred percent on that. So, I mean, you joined the Fastlane forum after you got introduced to the lifestyle and making money online and so on. What are your first impressions when you first read the millionaire fast lane? So, I mean, for me as well, that has been one of the life-changing books. I read it longer ago. So I think around 2011, 2012, I looked on the forum for a very long time after that. And then I finally joined. So what are your first impressions with that? 

Rob O’Rourke 00:19:30    Yeah, what I really like about the Fasten, uh, forum and then the book, like all of MDs books, like I knew it was all come from an engineering background, so I’m used to like, where’s the manual, like check the manual. Here’s how it works. Yeah. Okay. Let’s, let’s go for it. Like, so before that, when I read a lot of books, it just kind of seemed like up in the air, like, okay, I, you know, I kind of get what these guys are saying, but like, what do I, what do I connect that to? What do I tie it to? What I really like about the fast lane concept just overall is, you know, there’s rules. It’s not like rules maybe is the wrong word, but there’s very like, you know, this is how it works and this is why it works. And this is what you need to consider if you want it to work as good as, you know, you’re trying to make it work. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:20:12    And that’s what I love about the it’s. It’s just like an idea that once you see it that way, it’s very hard to unsee it because it just clicks so well. Like it just fits reality. You’re like, of course this business is doing so well. And this one isn’t, and this person’s struggling to get ahead in a job, but this person over here who can scale, you know, things independent of themselves, like, it just makes sense. So you can just look at something and understand right away. Okay. It’s working because of these principles or it’s not working because it’s not following these principles. That’s one of the very rare books that I’ve read that, that has that ability that it just like fits in and you can just it to everything you see. And you can just, you can just prove straight away that it’s, you know, it’s, it’s a real book. Like the guidelines in here is really how it is. Yeah, yeah. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:20:56    If I’ve got something very similar out of it. So, I mean, the biggest thing for me was that he really portrayed the mathematics behind it very well. You know? So you have a lot of other books that go into the motivation and the, this and that, but they don’t really show the model. You know, why can this business be so successful? And the sense framework that’s revealed in there is I think really powerful and the wealth equation as well. So you really get a sense that there is, there, there are some mechanics to this that you have to make work in order to achieve these results. It’s not just being motivated and going after it and so on. So that for me has definitely been, um, been life-changing. Yeah. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:21:40    Yeah. And I think the form, like whenever you produce content as a content producer, I think you attract people who resonate with your style of like the message, but then also your style of delivering that message. So I feel like the forum is full of people who are, you know, like to think about stuff like to break it down, analyze it, like, look at it from different perspectives. And you can see that with a lot of the posts that are very analytical and, you know, really take time to think it out. You know, if there’s another forum that said, like the follow your passion form, which isn’t the real form, but you know, it’s all about like up in the air stuff. I’m sure you get a lot of people who would connect with that. So I feel like the fast inform, true, like how detailed and, uh, solid that book is, you just got a ton of cool members who are definitely a high-level thinkers and just really, really, really, really good advice and thoughts on like their own success. Like they break it down in such fine detail, like how they did it, how it works, what’s working. What’s not, yeah. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:22:36    I think that’s one of the big things. At least for me, it was because you sort of see that people are actually making it on the go, you know, a life, not like five years ago or whatever, but you know, people are actually making it now. That’s very inspiring when you first started out and you got to the forum, you, you mentioned that you had a few ideas that didn’t really work out. So, I mean, can you sort of walk us through briefly a summary of what those were and why they didn’t work out? Because I think there can be a lot of lessons basically for people to learn there. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:23:08    Yeah. Yeah. So I have a bunch of them. I was going to make a YouTube video on this pretty soon and I’ll definitely have to create the full list, but off the top of my head. So one of the big ones, and this is kind of, so I went down to Columbia and then it came back to Canada and then I went back to Columbia, like there’s a bit of back and forth. So after the first trip where I met these guys working online, I was like, okay, I got to do something online. And I went back and at that time, Tinder was really big in Canada. Like everyone was using Tinder, uh, online dating. This makes me sound kind of old, but like online dating, uh, was starting to really hit in Canada. And when you went around and like a lot of people were just using Tinder all the time. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:23:42    So I was like, okay, they’re using this like Watson angle. What’s something I could do here. So I made this app that automated Tinder. So there was a few of them at the time that did like, you know, auto likes, like it would swipe everyone or, um, I forgot what the other features were, but I was like, oh, there’s no app that auto messages, all your matches. This is the most spontaneous thing ever. But basically what my app would do is auto. Like, you know, everyone in your area let’s say, or you could set the parameters and then once you had matches, you could put in a message like, Hey, how’s it going? Nice photos. You know, what are you doing this weekend? And you could send it out. And I don’t know how this was allowed to be on the app store because you could send like a thousand, 2000 messages at once. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:24:24    So I think what started happening is like, you know, nightclubs would get this thing and just like promote their narco or like all this sort of stuff. But yeah, I really thought it was going to do super well. And in my head, I was like, you know, there’s this many million using Tinder. If I can get 5% at this price, like I was figuring I was going to be a millionaire, you know, in a couple of weeks. So it took me a couple of months to launch it. I worked with a developer, put it out there. And, uh, I only got like, you know, a thousand, 2000 sales. Uh, I was pretty disappointed, but, uh, it just was what it was like, I tried something, I was happy that I tried it. I was like, okay, I’ll try the next thing. Um, so I had a bunch of other, like kind of crazy ideas. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:25:04    We, Conor McGregor was getting bigger at that time, the UFC fighter, we tried to make a Conor McGregor’s cereal box, which is just a crazy idea. So not licensed or anything. I was like, well, make cereal about Conor McGregor in this fight, because I I’d heard a story from the guys who started Airbnb, that they had started the cereal box, make money in the early days about the presidential election. So we kind of copied their idea. We tied it to Connor McGregor, uh, ended up getting some orders from the top guys in the UFC, but we very quickly got a cease and desist, uh, kind of email from Conor McGregor’s business, basically telling us, Hey, like, you know, can’t make cereal at my name button. Other thing that like was pretty solid at the time, but I didn’t go further with, it was when I went down to Columbia, I was studying Spanish and it was really hard to deal with the schools. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:25:51    So, you know, like when you’re in Columbia, you can get a visa to be a student, but to do that, you have to sign up for these schools. And ironically, a lot of the schools will only deal with you in Spanish. So I see, you know, you’re there to learn Spanish. You have no Spanish and all the instructions online. I had to join the course and how to pay. And you got to go to the bank yourself and, you know, with the bank person, get the account like is really hard stuff to do when you don’t speak any Spanish. So I made a website that would do all this in English and then take a percent. And I was getting 30% actually of the language courses. So I set this up, looking back, I don’t know how it works, but I did make it work a really basic website, how to page for each school. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:26:32    And you basically would send me, it looked like it was automated. Like you would send me what you wanted, but then on the backend, I just take all the wrong information, send you back a price. And if you’re good with it, you would pay me over PayPal. And then I would go like, do it all for you manually basically. So I was doing this and it actually went quite well. I was getting some pretty decent sales. And for the visa situation, then there, you might sign up for six months of, um, Spanish courses and a, has to be true university to get the visa. So it’d be like a couple of thousand dollars. So 30% was a pretty decent sale. So run that for a while, but, um, I just couldn’t get enough schools to sign up and I didn’t know how to get traffic and I didn’t really have enough sales to really take it to the next level. So I ended up selling that business, tried a few other things. And then shortly after that web design from making the website for the Spanish school, I was like, okay, maybe I can kind of do this for other people and just go straight to, you know, clients and make money freelancing. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:27:32    Awesome. Yeah. That’s very interesting. I mean, it really shows that you’re a super creative person. I mean, all those ideas, they’re very creative, so that’s great. Why do you think that the Tinder app failed? 

Rob O’Rourke 00:27:46    Yeah. Good question. I’m not too sure. Actually, probably because I had no real means to, um, to promote it. I just feel like, cause I really did think that one was going to hit at the time. I was like reading a book about apps and all this other stuff and I was like, this thing’s going to take off. And I felt like, uh, it provided a lot of value, but I feel like where it went wrong was nobody just knew about it. I didn’t really have a means to promote it and get the word out there. I tried to get some press, I got a Maxim magazine, just like cold emailing reporters and stuff, but, um, it never really took off and I just didn’t really get the downloads. So there was a couple of apps that did similar stuff. Uh, I wasn’t really towards the top of the list on the app store. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:28:26    And at that time I didn’t know enough about marketing or promotion to, to really get it to hit. But yeah, out of all the kind of crazy ideas I had at that time, I feel like it was actually one of the better ones, but yeah, just like an okay idea, but probably, you know, I don’t know, not the most high value thing in the first place I had no control. If you break it down to the sense thing, like, you know, apple could have changed the rules, Tinder could have changed their, how they internally do it, uh, which they did eventually. I think they cut out a lot of those apps and then I just didn’t know how to get it out there and, and get in front of the marketplace. So 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:28:59    If you were to redo the same thing with the skills that you have today in marketing and sales, do you reckon you could make it work? 

Rob O’Rourke 00:29:07    I think with the Spanish school, if I was to go back to one of those ideas from that time, I think the Spanish school was a great one. I would do Columbia. I would do all the other countries in south America and central America. And then if it went well branch off into other countries, but that was a pretty solid idea. I feel there’s a lot of people down there who, and then even before you go there, so you want to go to Columbia, obviously COVID, Satan’s a bit different, but let’s say you wanted to go there. And a couple of months you’re planning ahead. You want to book in your Spanish lessons. Uh there’s just, and there still doesn’t exist. There’s no one website that lists all the schools has. The calendar has like the breakdown had to get the visa, what you need to know how to move around. Um, so I felt like that was a massive opportunity. There there’s a lot of individual schools all competing with each other, but there’s nobody who’s made that one site that, you know, uh, puts all that information in one place and you can just compare and you can get the best deal and make it as easy as possible. Yeah. So sort 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:30:04    Of like one of those lead gen websites that you have, for example, for lawyers, you know, you’re looking for a lawyer, what’s your location and then it sort of helps you pick one. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:30:14    Yeah. Yeah. It’s like the classic, uh, you know, the joke, uh, the Airbnb of Uber, like whatever, but it’s the, uh, the Airbnb of booking Spanish courses in south America, I guess 

Tudor Dumitrescu    00:30:26 That’s a very good metaphor. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:30:28    Right. So, I mean, you, then you got started after all this, you got started in web design finally. So how did you go about getting your first client and was that project actually successful? Did you have to do a lot of learning in terms of coding? Did you already have the knowledge? What stage were you at? 

Rob O’Rourke 00:30:46    Yeah, yeah. So the very first place, so like web design kind of come out of, uh, or where I thought, okay, I can make this work is Gian Xander who doesn’t post as much anymore in the fast inform, but he’s a guy who’s done super well. He had a post for his e-commerce store. And he had said that he had learned HTML and CSS, uh, quite quickly using a system, a website called code academy. So I checked this out and I was like, okay, yeah, I can actually learn the basics of HTML CSS. So I went through that pretty fast. Uh, went to you to me. I took a little course that shows you how to make a full website out of that. So I had the ability to make a very basic website and I had just actually made a website through this course. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:31:23    So I was like, I could take this website. I just made, I could switch at the text and the images and I could put in someone else’s information and that will be a business website. So I was like, this shouldn’t be too hard. So I contacted my uncle, who I used to work with in Ireland when I was much younger in my early teens. And he runs a business or used to run a business for garden sheds. So I was like, Hey, you know, I do websites now I’ll do one for your business. You don’t have to pay me when I get you results. You can pay me. And he’s a pretty shocked like hustler kind of farmer’s sort of dude. So he’s like, yeah, sure. Like there’s, you know, there’s nothing he had to didn’t have to pay anything yet. So he was like, yeah, for sure. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:32:00    So I did this, we put it online and I never got a single sale. And when I checked back in, he’s like, Hey, no, one’s using this thing. And I was like, yeah, of course, like, how would they even know it exists? Like, I didn’t know anything about SEO or paid ads or anything at that time. So I was like, okay, I’ve gone in the wrong direction here. Some ideas. And I was like, okay, let’s, you know, do this a different way. So I went to freelancing websites, I went on to Upwork, I met a profile and basically I would just bid super cheap. Cause I was trying to get some experience, like just get some projects that worked. Uh, I got some okay clients, but a lot of crazy clients. I mean, when you’re doing a website for $50, a hundred dollars, you’re going to get just total new cases sometimes. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:32:40    But you know, the craziest idea one day, they’re thinking this thing the next day, they’re thinking that thing. So I worked a couple of months with all sorts of clients, crazy projects, hustling super hard. And then just sort of like context as well. Like I was used to making a thousand a day, but I was working my ass off all week for websites that were like $70 or $110 or something just, I wanted to make, make it work so bad. And I just wanted to stay in Columbia and not have to go back to oil industry basically. Yeah. Ceremony. There’s a bunch of seagulls flying around if there’s, if there’s background noise, you know, worry. So what eventually happened in Upwork was I was starting to see that it wasn’t going anywhere. I just had this feeling like this is never going to go up in price because there’s just so many people willing to work for cheap. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:33:25    And also the clients, it was like, something’s wrong here? Like these businesses aren’t real businesses. These ideas are stupid. I was looking at it from their side. I was like, it doesn’t even make sense for them to pay me much because this thing is never going to do anything for them. Like this is just so ridiculous that there’s no value in it for them. And there’s no purpose of me building it, uh, either. So what happened was my final project. Some 14 year old kid hired me for this app idea. And it was the most stupidest thing ever. No offense. This kid basically I met like actually really good luck in website. So I like showed up back to the like, I’m literally, you know, an adult like doing all this stuff for this kid for like, you know, $60. And this kid is like, Hey, I want like this change and like make this brown and make this purple. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:34:08    And he wanted all these crazy colors and he just was butchering this website that looked good. And it just started to look so ridiculous. It was all over the place. So eventually I was like, look, dude, like, I’m probably just going to wrap this project. Like you can have your money back. And he’s like, oh, if you don’t finish it, I’m going to leave you a one star review. And I just like console my whole profile. I was like, I’m outta here. So what I did was I just thought about it. I was like, look, where, where have I gone wrong here? Like, what is what’s missing and how do I switch this up? And the big thing was I wasn’t working with real businesses who had real problems. I was just working with joke businesses with crazy ideas. So there’s just no value there. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:34:46    Like they’re not helping anyone, their ideas don’t make sense. How can a website solve anything? How could it be worth more than just a few dollars? Because all it is for those guys is a bunch of images and texts that do nothing. So I went looking for a real business and at that time I was looking, uh, you know, my kind of the situation that I was doing, my, um, PR process, my permit, uh, residency. So I’ve been working with this lawyer, uh, Roxanne’s her name really cool lawyer. And she had a great business, but one thing I’d noticed, cause I found her through a Facebook group was when I was doing my research. I clicked on her website and it absolutely sucked. Like it was really old broken pages. It just looked like something somebody made like a long time ago, all crazy, kind of late nineties web. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:35:29    So yeah, like another it’s really old school. You’re like, you know, weird fonts and all sorts of stuff. And it’s like a really small size, like it’s made for a proper modern day browser. It’s like, you know, a phone size on a desktop. Like, so I said this to her, I was like, look, you know, cause we had had calls about my visa situation and I said, look, you know, I’m actually doing web design. I noticed your website. Uh, you know, it’s not maybe the best, I’d be happy to build you a new website if you’re up for that. And just straight away, I got kind of lucky there. She was like, yeah, like I need a website so badly, like, you know, watch your price. Like you can definitely do this for me. And I said 2000 Canadian and she’s like, yeah, no problem. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:36:06    So I was like, man, like not one sale, I’d met more than like months of working on a Upwork. So start to recommend a business and a lot of things with that project lined up super well. And basically she had a great business. Like she was really good at what she did. I was an in demand industry. So people wanted her services badly. At the time she had a great reputation. She had loads of good results from past Glines loads of qualifications, all these things about her that just weren’t there on the website, like her website, her current website at the time showed none of this stuff. Really bad information. Like none of the basics of like what you would use in a sale to get somebody to hire this person. So I just put in all the good stuff about our business and everything else, pretty basic sales system, but just on-point couple of pages covered the different services she offered. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:36:54    Why she’s the best good credentials, good results, a little bucking system where people could like, you know, book their first consultation, they could pay online, put that website online. And it just started getting a ton of results from day one because the market was there. She was known she had this big Facebook group. So this website just starting like killing it, like loads of sales are coming in. She had to hire extra staff. And in like a week or two, the website going live. Yeah. Like her revenue went way up. She was super happy, really nice woman to deal with in the first place. So just so positive. So after that project, I had a conversation with her, is there just kind of winding down the project. And I was like, Hey, you know, just out of curiosity, I know you paid me 2000, but seeing the value that, you know, it’s given your business, you know, so far, if we were to do it again, what’s like the highest price that you would have paid and still felt really good about the product. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:37:41    Yeah. So she was like, ah, it’s like probably five, $6,000. I’d still feel like I had to great deal. I was like, wow. Like I didn’t tell her. I was like, okay, thanks. But in my head I was like, okay. Th th this is like, this is the difference between, you know, Mickey mouse projects on Upwork and real clients with real needs. They have a real business. And like just their website is just like this one cog, this is broken and everything else is running. And if you can just like fix that website, you know, it’s going to take off. So I went out there and looking for other businesses with that same sort of setup, like they’re really good at what they did great results, like the best sort of product or service, but their website wasn’t reflecting it. And that was my tactic or, you know, who has a focusing on for this first year project. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:38:25    So it went from 2000 to like 5,000, 7,010, over 10. And then I started getting up towards closer to 20 and one project not. And I started to see actually you can kind of like overpriced as well, where you get to this higher numbers and now people really expect this whole different level of service. Um, so I had one or two projects at that price range that I felt like went well, but not as profitable for my amount of time. So I actually, uh, scaled back a little and kind of stuck around the seven to 12, 15,000 mark and did really well actually at that price point. So yeah, it’s just those, I think that’s the big thing that web design, like it’s, it’s not a page, it’s, it’s something to do something like, what does the business need? What’s going to be most valuable and then building a website that does that, like so many people only see it from the lens of, or the perspective of colors, fonts, you know, cool, fancy things that happen, uh, for a business. That’s the tool like they’re, they’re buying something that they wanted to fix. This other thing, like what is the other thing? 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:39:32    It has to be a system. You know, that’s what the website is in the end, it’s a sales system and it has to integrate in a reliable business model. So, I mean, it’s very interesting what you said about Upwork, because I say the same thing to a lot of people that I speak with they’re on Upwork. Most of the clients you’re going to get are very bad. There are some good clients there with real businesses, but there’s few of them and there’s a lot of competition over them. And obviously if they have so much choice, it’s much more difficult to actually go about convincing them. Then if you are one of the few people who reach out to a strategic client who has a problem that you can fix and it’s high value for them. So, I mean, I share the same feeling there and it’s the biggest thing, in my opinion, you know, working with the right clients and it’s not just in web design, the same thing is true. Incorporating the same true thing is true in sales funnels, which is what I do. So, um, it’s pretty much across the board and it’s really important to find these people. And actually when I talk with people, I always talk about strategic cold outreach, you know? So you want to identify the people who actually have that need. And so with regards to that, I was wondering if you can share how you went about in the beginning, identifying these proper businesses who could really benefit from having a web. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:40:54    Yeah. So my strategy with reaching out like web design at any stage is I put a lot of thought into what I’m doing before I take any action. And I guess I’m kind of naturally a lazy person. So when it comes to certain areas, prospecting is definitely one of them. I don’t want to be the person who rings like 500 phone numbers to get a website, because at that stage, even if you’ve got a deal, it’s never going to be profitable. So I’m trying to do like the least amount to definitely get the max return with prospecting. So how I work on an overall philosophy there is I definitely look at what I’ve done. So if you’re going to reach out to businesses in a cold way, you’re not the first person who’s come up with that. There’s a lot of people who do that. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:41:34    So, uh, you gotta be standing out, like there’s gotta be something about you and your approach on your past work to just give yourself the best chances. I mean, ideally if you have rate past work, like really clear results, tons of like, Hey, I did this, I fixed this problem. Um, that’s going to give you an advantage. So looking at any past results and understanding that past results. So, uh, you know, let’s say somebody built a website for a business. What did you do for that business? So you built a website, but what did it do for the business? What problems did it solve? What value did you create then taking that, like part of it, the project, and then bringing that to other businesses. So you would reach out to someone let’s say, cause this is what I actually did with the lawyer project. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:42:16    So finish the lawyer project. What did I do there? Okay. I clearly communicated very easily to the marketplace. How valuable she is. I made it easy for people to move forward. It’s easy for people to trust her, uh, easy for them to book in and make that initial transaction. Um, I showed all the social proof. I showed all the authority, all the past results. So then like looking at that, I was like, okay, that’s the most sellable thing of the project. It’s most sellable prior to the product. So now I just gotta find other businesses who have those same problems. And then very quickly show that, Hey, if you have these problems, I’ve solved these problems before for other businesses. And I could solve them very easily for you because you have the same things that this other business had. So it can be solved. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:42:59    Like it’s ready to be solved and it can be done. Like this is how I did it. So I would reach out to these other businesses and just very, very quickly one way or another try communicate that. So, Hey, like I build websites, but it’s not just about websites. Like if you’re stuck with this sort of stuff, which maybe I think you are like, you know, whether it’s true cold email or whether on the phone call or whatever, um, of course there’s no method, a hundred percent success rate, but I did pretty well with that method, targeted niches that I knew quite well. So because of the lawyer project, uh, it was good to target other lawyers. I could just use her name. They knew the project or say they knew like that business, or they kind of knew of her one way or another. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:43:38    But I also contacted a lot of oil businesses because I had experience in oils. So I just knew how they thought, how they communicated. Um, so that can be an advantage as well, kind of jumping all over the place there, but basically like coming at it from a business perspective, I think that’s the main area of web designers go wrong. They approach businesses and they try to push their worldview like, Hey, your design is off. Like you’re low. You know, your page load speed is terrible. Like your SEO is an optimized. Like this is a business owner and live in the world from their perspective. Like that’s, so those things might actually be super important to help them get a result, but the way people communicate it, they see it as like, that’s the least important thing out of everything right now. So yeah, you gotta, like every business owner is stuck with a few key things at any given moment. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:44:25    There’s always something big or a few things big that they would love to get, uh, out of the way this week, this month, like these are the big problems. So you got to find out what those are and then show, Hey, web design can actually help you with this. Like my design is not like, wait on the list of priorities and a super non-important thing. It’s actually a very real way for you to tackle these big issues that you have right now today. Here’s how you do it. Here’s how I did it in the past. Here’s how maybe I do it for you. Um, that sort of idea. Awesome. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:44:53    Yeah. That’s very solid advice. I mean, for anyone who is starting out with web design, so I mean, when you found out, when he went out, looking for those lawyer clients, how did you actually know before you contacted them? If they had the sort of problems that you could solve or you didn’t and you just tried to reach out anyway? 

Rob O’Rourke 00:45:14    Yeah, I didn’t, but kind of like the same way that Facebook ad or Facebook ads has like a look alike audience, I would like profile the clients I worked with and then be like, who’s is really similar to these guys in like, you know, a different kind of way. So I’m not like only contacting, you know, these exact sort of lawyers, but like who, somebody whose businesses operate in the same way deal, you know, same sort of, um, you know, type of clients or same sort of transaction or similar sales funnel or similar profile of client, this sort of stuff. So whenever I got one project, I would just add that in. Sorry. So warm your man. I just add that in to like my group of potential people that I could be reaching out to. So for example, I worked at one business and then this is kind of link back to the last answer as well. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:45:59    So I worked at this business, their electrical engineering business for the oil field, and they actually didn’t really care too much about the website at all in the beginning. They were like, Hey, you know, we never even used the website. Like we’re not going to be directing traffic. That’s not how we sell, nobody’s searching for this stuff. We do sales presentations. That’s how we get our deals. So I was like, okay, like what happens in the sales presentation? So they would talk about, you know, we get up, um, we have an opportunity to sell. He got like 20 minutes. So you go through everything, you do a slide show. And then I was asking, okay, what, you know, do you hand out anything in the sales presentation? They said, they handed out some paperwork with some quotes and different stuff. And then I kind of found out through this, like, you know, asking a lot of questions that they didn’t link to anything on this like paperwork that they’d hand out. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:46:44    Like, they’d give a little kind of a, you know, a couple of pages of info, but they were missing out on a lot of things that they could use to sell. So I basically sold them the website because there are people are gonna find it on Google or anything, but because they could link it at the bottom of their sales presentations, and then people could go on the website, see all the past projects, see all the big names they worked for all the qualifications, all the equipment, all this stuff. So those guys very shortly after the website went live, uh, they got a million dollar contract directly from this. Like they had, yeah, they’d missed out on the sales presentation that hadn’t gone well and they know it hadn’t gone well. And then a couple of days later, the guy rang. He was like, look, you know, uh, dah, dah, dah, like in the beginning I was kind of whatever. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:47:26    And then I checked the website and I seen how this project that’s exactly what we’re looking for. So the owner called me, he was like, yeah, Matt. And he’s like, this website literally has Madison million dollars. So just results like that. Or like that idea, like that story that I just told you, I would just take that to other people like, Hey, you know, this just happened. Like, these are the sort of results I got. Like, this is my focus. And, um, I just found that when, again, when you like come at it from a business owner perspective and they can see that you’re thinking about the world from their viewpoint and you’re really trying to solve those big problems that it does. It makes it a lot easier to solve it and say makes it easy to sell. There’s always some work, but it’s just a way better approach than how most web designers go about it. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:48:09    Yeah. The shotgun approach where you send the same thing to everybody. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that approach. So yeah. So in the beginning, were you searching for these clients pretty much by Google? Like you found lawyers in whatever, or what was your approach to figuring out who potential prospects were? 

Rob O’Rourke 00:48:27    Yeah, so I would start always like easiest fruit first, you know, low-hanging fruits. If I did a project, like, can I have some referrals? Like, uh, I see connected to you and you know, I would like try and just branch anywhere that it could offer the project. I just done stuff. I did a project for somebody. I look at, you know, the nearest things, connected to them, my contacts, whatever. And then if I couldn’t get a warm lead or I couldn’t get a referral, then I would kind of like take the project and try create my own warm leads, own referrals. So I would like, who is this person connected to? But they hadn’t introduced me. And then I had contacted us people like, Hey, I just finished recommend Roxanne. I think you might know her because you guys are connected. You know, I’d find some way to connect like LinkedIn and Facebook or stuff like that. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:49:09    LinkedIn Facebook, uh, you know, they work in the same university. There went to the same law university, whatever it is like. So I find out anything that I could to connect them. And I wouldn’t say that like Roxanna recommended me, but I’d make it sound like I was reaching out to these people like them pacifically specifically for a purpose. Like, not that I was coming out of a phone book, but like, Hey, you know, I just done this project. Um, while working on this project, um, doing some research and your name came up, like, I would say sentences like that. Uh, so I wanted to reach out to you just see if you’re stuck with anything, um, maybe have a quick call and that worked super well. So I did that for every project, uh, that would often turn up a lead and would help me not have to go to like the next levels. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:49:52    But if it didn’t, I would just work my way down. So okay. Not as warm, slightly cold, very cold. And yeah, keep going until it’s something warm again. And then just like that same process. But also, uh, I did like deals with people, stuff. Anyone could refer me to anyone if they didn’t need anything themselves, I paid them some cash. If they didn’t need something, maybe I do some free pages for them or a thick something with their own website. So I started building a pretty decent network of people to refer me and promote me as a sales machine. Yeah. Yeah. Always looked after those people super well again, I was like, I like to be effective with selling. I don’t want to be doing a bunch of work when it could be done a lot easier. One sale is worth, you know, one sale from cold calling is the same as one sale from an easy referral. Absolutely. Oftentimes the referral actually pays more. So I’m going to try and make it as easy as they can. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:50:42    Yeah, yeah, no, that’s, that’s a very good thing to have. And I mean, one of the least exploited assets that a lot of businesses have are email lists that they have past clients, maybe past prospects, whatever it is, those are often the best. If you, if you’re looking to make some quick cash for them, those are great. And I mean, people often ignore that, but in my own agency, for example, I can’t count the times that I’ve been able to reactivate a client just by reaching out to them. So definitely something not to be neglected. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:51:18    Yeah. And a big thing is, so let’s say me and you are selling basketballs or something like you got to sell a lot of basketballs to make profits. So you can’t like, Hey, referrals or warm leads. Like you have to have a, a different, whole different type of marketing machine. But if you have an agency and you only need like 10, 15 projects a year, you can have a really like strategic one, like, you know, sniper approach. So I was never trying to like make the big machine that sends out a million emails or 500 cold calls or anything. I was just thinking like, like a Wolf, like I just need one kill for this next week. I can chew on that thing all week or all month. And that was it. So I was just always gone for like the big profitable to you with the best company that at that level, whatever level is that like the best deal I could get. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:52:05    And I would just like stalk my prey. Like I was just looking for one, one easy kill when it got it as good for the month in Columbia, I had my money, you know, it was a lot of fun. And then when the funds started to go down, I get that next kill. That was it. So yeah, if I had to go the full agency route, I guess I would have, you know, I had the staff and the full-time, whatever, I guess I would have had to switch that up and gone into more consistent, like broad marketing approach. But it was just me. I was doing everything pretty much myself. And, uh, each of these projects, I mean, in Columbia, like you sell an AK project, you can last for months down there having the best time ever is so nice. Yeah. Yeah. It must be, I imagine are super cheap. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:52:45    Yeah. I mean, in the beginning, cause I had like kind of gone through the oil savings with my app project and other stuff. So I was down to pretty much nothing. And I was last thing, um, before I got profitable, I was the last thing, like months on just like a couple of hundred dollars a month. Wow. Um, wasn’t super enjoyable. Like that was more, you know, very humble. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Like I didn’t have hot word in the apartment. I was eating like rice and just chicken, this sort of stuff. But you could last on there for probably like three, $400 a month. Uh, if you have to. But obviously when the web sales come in the quality of life, 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:53:24    So did have spikes and then falls again. Yeah, yeah, for sure. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:53:28    There was some times where I definitely enjoyed life too much and I was like, I gotta get back and like constantly again, but it was good man to not just Columbia. Like I did Columbia for awhile and then I moved to, um, Malta. I was in Ukraine for a while. I did Georgia. I was a Mexico. Like I traveled around quite a bit. It was only the last, you know, three years. I’d say that of like, okay, let’s start now building like a proper business that, you know, can scale up and do these bigger figures. But I was enjoying that freelancing life, man. I mean, for me, my value is like what I enjoyed the most. Just if there’s a bit of money coming in and I have the day off, I can go surfing or do something fun. That’s all I kind of want. You know? So, uh, back in my twenties now that I’m a little bit older, I’m like, okay, you know, let’s, let’s step it up a bit with the responsibilities. But for years, man, that was just a super fun way to live one or two projects on the go enjoy that have a good experience. And then when the sales were kind of, or the funds are going down a little bit and just cut the next project, it was, it was good. That’s 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:54:28    Awesome. I mean, it sounds like a great lifestyle and I’m sure that many people want to live that lifestyle in their twenties. So 

Rob O’Rourke 00:54:34    Yeah, you can’t do it forever, but it’s definitely fun for fun for a while. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:54:39    Yeah. Yeah, exactly. In terms of how you actually went about the websites, did you build WordPress websites I suppose, or what did you start with? 

Rob O’Rourke 00:54:47    So, and this is really funny. I got a lot of, um, black, let’s say from other professional web designers, but I use HTML themes, which is like the most basic way I think, to make websites. So a lot of our clients that I worked for, they didn’t actually need any like backend features. It was just more like here’s the info online and as much more about the sales side of things. So like that is in the right order that it was an effective, um, you know, system, as in like you’re going through the information that leads up to a sale, maybe one or two sort of features in there. So I used a lot of HTML themes, one or two projects, especially those bigger ones. They want more stuff to not, I’d bring an extra people and just manage them to do these different features. But I actually went a really long way on a very simple way to make websites. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:55:31    That’s very interesting. So, I mean, how did you go about doing the payments, for example, for the first lawyer that you worked with? 

Rob O’Rourke 00:55:38    Yeah. Yeah. So you use the I-frame and then there’s another system Accurity scheduling, I think is the name you drop in the eye frame and then people like you can’t tell on the site, but that little square is actually another website that runs kind of the way you could integrate like a Typeform or something. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Those sorts of things I’d make it super easy if there’s something conflated 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:55:59    By acuity then. Yeah, 

Rob O’Rourke 00:56:01    Exactly. Yeah. So people don’t know it, but they’re like running that side of a true, like another website, 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:56:06    So wow. That’s, that’s awesome. Very creative. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:56:10    Yeah. And the HTML seems it’s so basic. Like it’s pretty much all there. All you got to do is switch around some sections out it together, change the content, change the images and you got like 95% of the project on. So 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:56:22    These actually take you a long time to complete in terms of the time that it took you or put you get very fast with them 

Rob O’Rourke 00:56:30    In the beginning when I was learning. Yeah. Because I just had no idea, but after a while, like half a day I’d have pretty much, most of the website don’t as far as the code goes. And then it was just the case of getting the content, uh, putting it in there, working on the copywriting. A lot of my work actually, cause the code got real simple after a while a lot of the work would just be dealing with the clients and then a lot more actually copywriting and just sales. So for me, web design, it’s like 5% code. And then it’s all these other things like the marketing, understanding the customer, the sales, the system. And when I say system, I don’t mean the technical, like, you know, click here and this happened system. I just more mean like the, the order of like what information you’re presenting to people like yeah. What information to include to make the sale. Yeah. Yeah. So code wise super easy just to give an idea. So that’s seven K projects I mentioned earlier, the electrical engineering guys. Yep. So that was seven days and I wouldn’t even say full days and that was a seven K project. So again, 

Speaker 5    00:57:28 It’s changed more. They made them millions. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:57:33    Like that’s the thing, it’s all like people, um, you know, you’d see a line. Like I posted on YouTube, quite a few videos and then people are like seven K like, no one’s ever going to pay that for a website. But when you see these businesses, like how much some of them do and how much your website helps. And it honestly feels like you’re charging so little, um, for the results that you’re getting. So yeah. Seven K for them is just an opposite steal of it’s like a no brainer. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. People, I could see why, but so many people, especially web designers just have a, they have this really bad way of looking at web design where they view it as being super cheap. But then they’re trying to get around that and think that the clients will like that. They’ll kind of trick. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:58:14    The clients of the thinking is valuable. Like they’re already in their own minds, they’re already sold on it being cheap. And then they’re like, I don’t get it. Like I can’t increase my prices, but they only see it in like the most low value cheap way. But when you see it as what it could be, and it doesn’t have to be technically advanced or anything it’s possible, but just something very, very simple to add tons of value, this the same ain’t copywriting, the way you could have one page of copy that makes somebody millions of dollars and you could have someone else writes a million pages and it does nothing. It’s just pure nonsense. So absolutely. Definitely not. Yeah. It’s not about volume. It’s not about being fancy, not about how many hours or how technical or whatever. It’s just that idea. That’s what I love about sales. Like you got the right idea. It doesn’t have to be whatever. It’s just, the idea is the idea for works, get the results you’re just charging for those results. So 

Tudor Dumitrescu 00:59:04    Exactly. I mean, I have a few web design guys in my discord group and the problem I see for a lot of them, especially when they first come in is that they’re just going after the wrong clients and these clients, then they’re surprised that, you know, the clients doesn’t understand the proposition or it doesn’t understand what he could get out of the website, but they’re just the wrong client in the second problem that I see very often is that people, they want to start charging a lot from the get-go, you know, like they’ve never built a website at all, but they want to charge a thousand, 2000, $3,000 from the get-go. And I mean, even if you go after a good client, if you don’t have any experience that sort of difficult to pull off, at least in my experience from just seeing people. 

Rob O’Rourke 00:59:51    Yeah. That’s a huge thing as well. People come in and they expect like, Hey, I’m here. I’m putting in work. Like I should be getting paid a lot. But again, it’s, it’s just results. Like if you can get results, you’re going to be worth a lot. If you can’t, it doesn’t matter how hard you work or how many hours or how many pages, it’s just not worth anything. It just isn’t like, so yeah, definitely part of that is picking the right clients in the first place. And then, and this is why like the fast informed, I feel like it’s such a good resource for this it’s understanding business. Like you’re building something for a business and then what do they want? Like they, businesses will spend money on lots of it when they can see that they’re going to get something and it helps their business move forward. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:00:33    But no business is going to waste money on anything that you don’t need. So it’s a very like black or white. They’re like, you’re either hitting the mark or you’re way off the mark. There’s no kind of like, Hey, this website’s half useful. So we’ll pay half of $10,000. It’s either like $50 or, you know, it’s, it’s the full 10 K budget and they probably won’t even spend $50. Because again, it’s like the time it’s the effort, it’s the focus business owners just don’t want to get involved with something that’s not going to help their business. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:01:02    Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I mean, you said something very interesting there, and it goes back to this concept that, uh, which is a mistake that a lot of people I see make, which is that they go from the approach of thinking, okay, it’s not about the technical stuff. So it’s about sales. So they go to the next mindset, which is basically how can, what can I say to this guy to convince him to pay me 10 K or whatever it is. Um, and the same thing with copywriters. So I work with a lot of copywriters. So I see this very frequently with them. They think, what can I say to these guys who come on the sales page so that they will buy. But to me, that’s sort of the wrong approach because I feel you’re working at a very low level and the high level is like the big ideas. What ideas are you going to include in that copy that are going to convince the client, not how you’re going to phrase those ideas because that the effect of that is going to be much less. So I don’t know. What’s your experience with this? 

Rob O’Rourke 01:02:01    Yeah. That’s very true, man. So like that lowest level of thinking is like, it’s not possible. People are saying you make money with this scam, like copy done. Uh, and they just like block out any possibility that you can do it. But then that next level then is like, what’s the trick? Like, oh, you got people to pay for this website. Like, how’d do it. You know, like, what’s what to say, like what you’re saying there, where there’s some, like, you know, you got to say that and they give you 10 K and then like you run with the money, like yeah. So that, that’s their train of thought. But yeah, when you, when you see at the high level, I mean, this is why I feel when you get it, you can just switch to anything. And I feel like, you know, right now I’m hiring from a business for another role. Like, uh, let me explain this better. I’m hiring for something. And I’m actually not even looking at the people who do that. I’m looking at people who understand sales and copywriting because I’m like, if I can get one of those people and just train them up on this, they’re going to be way better than the person who’s technically good at this right now. And doesn’t get sales and marketing, 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:02:58    Feel free to share here, if you want to, what you’re hiring for, because we might have listeners who are going to have, okay, 

Rob O’Rourke 01:03:04    So I’m looking for a VA and it’s like a lot of the technical things. So like how to set up zoom calls, automated, uh, got on gas. People have the system there. So it’s easy for them to book in a, when a new student student joins the emails that go out the first couple of weeks, um, the Facebook group, we’re moving that over to a new platform. So kind of like technical things. So I could get a normal VA who understands the technical things, but it’s like, and I’ve had this in the past. Like you want people on your team who are thinking just that sales perspective like me, you know, it sounds like we’re saying the same thing here. When it comes to sales, like some people view it as manipulation and you stay this stuff and then like, you can trick people into this. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:03:43    I just really view sales as like you’re effectively giving value to the customer. Like you on the front end, like sales is you’re communicating effectively what this is, who it’s for, how it can help and the results to expect. And then once the deal is done or it’s being done, you’re just like transferring it over in a high value way. So they got the results, but you made it easy. You made it effective. The amount of fun. It was enjoyable to me that sells. So when I say sales, like, I want somebody gets that. So they don’t just like, Hey, I set this up and then you check it. And you’re like, oh, that’s such a bad experience. Although it is technically set up correctly, you know, obviously this like thing, could it be knotted in here to make it a hundred times better? So, um, yeah, a bit of a tangent here, but I’m looking for like that talent when it comes to hire, because anybody went in a day like right now, today I was learning trife cards this morning. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:04:32    I don’t know if you ever use that system, but then life. Yeah. So within an hour, I know like so much about it because there’s not that much to it really, these like systems you can learn very, very fast, but the mindset behind it is always what makes somebody 10, a hundred, a thousand times more valuable. Of course, especially, you know, everything’s just getting easier all the time with technology I feel, but what people are missing is the understanding. Like these are people out there, they have real money that they worked hard for. They have a real business, they’ll spend that money. They’re not going to keep it. They have to put it into something, but they’re looking for value. Like they’re looking for something that moves the needle forwards that like get some real results. So true by design or true whatever, if you can figure out what they need and then show clearly how you can solve it, get them to what they want. Yeah. Th that’s just like the crux of selling. Like that’s, what’s going to make it easy to sell. That’s 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:05:24    Fantastic. And I mean, you shared something there that really resonated with me. And I never heard before, which is this idea of the front end of sales and the backend of sales, which I think is very interesting because we don’t often think about it in that way. But I think that it’s really valuable because as you said, the front end is communication. I think that the backend is the ideas. What are you going to communicate? And being able to choose that. And I think that’s an unexplored, a bit of sales. I mean, I haven’t seen a lot of books about that or a lot of courses about that when it comes to sales. And I think that figuring out the ideas that are actually going to be valuable and make a difference for a business. I think that that’s where it’s at for a lot of people, you know, if they could do that, I feel that a lot of people even have the communication skills, but if they can do this backend bit as well, they can be way, way ahead of where they are now. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:06:20    Yeah. To me, sales is just an everything like, you know, I think maybe not a lot of people to some people it’s like, you have the worst house ever sales. They get the nice book at a fresh paint. The paint, the front of the house looks okay, you know, perfect. We’re ready to sell, like, yeah, to me, it’s like the, you know, your customers are going to talk, they’re going to go out there. They’re going to tell other people they’re going to leave reviews. Uh, they’re going to go on forums. They’re going to go on YouTube. They’re going to whatever, like you got to have it the whole way. True. Like the whole experience has to be solid. And then when it is solid, okay. There is some sales techniques, of course, like you got to have good tech, Nique and good, um, strategies to communicating why you’re better than the competition, focusing on your strong areas, all this stuff, but just not alone. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:07:04    Uh, it doesn’t get you far. And I, I see this on my design, actually a lot where people maybe watch the YouTube videos and they learn like some stuff that I teach him how to get a big deal. And then they get the big deal. And they’re like, you know, how do I solve this problem? Like, it’s good. They learned one half, but you got to back it up and stuff is all like selling. Isn’t just getting a high price. It’s, it’s bringing yourself up to where that is the price that it should be back to. You know what we covered a little bit earlier, but like that 7k project. And I know it’s not a massive project around the thing, but in my mind, that was always like such a good deal. Like any website that I’ve ever sold. I always feel like this is a great deal when I got it done. I just look at the project. I’m like, they’re getting so much more out of this than what I’ve charged. And I always felt that way now one or two maybe went wrong and you know, like the project itself had issues. I’m like, okay, maybe that wasn’t the best, but by and large, I look at something I’m like, they’re paying this much and they’re getting so much more and I truly feel that. And then it becomes very easy to sell that that’s on the future. Yeah. It’s also, did 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:08:06    You ever have any project which didn’t work out and what, how did you approach it? In those cases? 

Rob O’Rourke 01:08:12    I have an outbreak. I had quite a few, this will get off in a Tanya, but there is like just some crazy people on there. I remember I did one website for a business in Canada and their logo was, um, you know, if you make like cookies, they have like the little shape of like a person you just like stomped the cookie. So their logo was like four of those in a row. And it was like a blue, red, white, and green or something. And I forgot the colors. And, um, I put a like on the website or something, and then they came back and they’re like, this, this logos, like racist or something. And there wasn’t a, like, you know, they’re saying it was sexist, it was racist, all this stuff. So just sometimes you get these crazy people. I was looking at it. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:08:52    And to me, it’s just not the, it’s just some graphics that didn’t represent anything really. So I had a few like crazy clients. I thought just CRA you know, they weren’t as a business, I guess they had other ideas than making money. Like they were coming into these projects, but they had some kind of passion project or they some kind of like mission that wasn’t really business related. It was super vague. And they’re trying to maybe make more of a political point and actually do anything with this website. And, um, again, I, you know, if you go in and you’re charging low prices, you’re going to attract people who think in terms of just like minimum costs. And a lot of times that is sort of the worst sort of customer. I mean, if you have a real problem, you’re going to pay well for a real problem to get fixed. If you’re looking to do things very cheap either, I guess you just don’t value it. Well, I think 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:09:45    The question is why are you looking to pay really cheap because you can’t afford it and why can’t you afford it? Because you don’t have a real business. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:09:52    Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Can’t afford it. Don’t value. It don’t understand. It don’t even need it. So you’re attracting a lot of, uh, bad customers. And, uh, that was the problem. The big problem on Upwork with low prices when I started charging more, I just, you know, a lot of those people dropped off. I still have one or two projects with some issues up on the higher range. I ran into other sorts of like, you know, working with big businesses. Like there’s a lot of different people who were involved with the decisions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like this guy over here has a cousin who says like, maybe it should be this way. And then next week, this person over there thinks like, yeah, you’re like, hold on it, like, what’s the goal here? Like we have all this different stuff, which is a classic, um, freelancing problem here. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:10:36    A lot of people say that stuff. So I kind of did well. And then I went to big and I was like, okay, I’m having problems when it’s super cheap, which I’d long got rid of, but now I’m also having problems when the businesses are too big and there’s just too many, it’s turning into like more of a corporate, you know, setting, which is going to be real messy. So I just moved back down to solid businesses, run by a small team, super focused on fixing a couple of key problems. And here’s a website that does that. And I was just like the sort of client that I love to work with and then that sort of client hardly ever have any issues. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:11:10    And if you ever face, like for the higher clients, when you start you’re facing issues, did you do anything in terms of reducing the fees or anything like that? Or did you just do your best to help solve and iron out those issues? 

Rob O’Rourke 01:11:25    Yeah. So what my biggest client I’ll tell you a funny story. So I was down either in Mexico or Columbia at that time, I just remember it was somewhere south of, uh, America. So I was like, I’ll fly up and meet these guys. So I flew up and they had a massive warehouse, like hundreds of staff. So I go in and I’ve just been dealing with one person at that stage. So I was like, I’m just going to meet this, uh, this person and have a conversation, ask them some questions. And I just kinda wanted to go there for the experience to see like one of my clients in person. Cause a lot of my clients never meet. So I got to meet them and at the place, you know, the factory or whatever. And they’re like, oh, you know, it’s great that you’re here. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:11:59    Like we’re ready to go with the meeting. So let’s just move down to the, you know, this room and most start the meeting. So I was like, okay, this sounds a little bit more serious than I thought, but you know, be fine. So I go down there, I’m wearing like, you know, skate shoes and a t-shirt. And I’m just used to chill in that in Columbia and, uh, go into the boardroom. And it’s like one of these, you know, Bruce Wayne boardrooms with like 30 seats, you know, massive one piece table. And I sit down at the very end and you know, all the heads of the business walk in and they’re all like suit and ties, super engineering type folk, you know, they got the clipboards, they’re ready to take notes and they’re like, yeah, whenever you’re ready, you can start your presentation. And I, when I sell, I never, um, or when I’m getting paid for project and I started a project, I don’t like combine ideas first. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:12:46    I got like, I want their information before I come back with like, this is what we’re going to do, because just makes logical sense. How am I going to solve your problems? I don’t even know what the problems are. So what I actually wanted to do with that meeting was asked them a bunch of questions and they’re all looking towards me, like massive a presentation. So I had to like switch it around and get them talking. So that was my first experience with like massive corporate business. Uh, but with that project, that was just, you know, what I was describing earlier, too many people got involved, too many ideas. And what I did to wrap that up and I’ve used this technique in a few projects is I’ll just kind of buy my way back out of the project. So I’ll like give them back. So I always take half upfront and half when I finish. And if it’s getting really stuck and just, we’re not making progress, I’ve tried a few different techniques. And I really feel like it’s just not going to be possible to finish this in a, in a good way. I’ll just start like reducing what’s left and sometimes just go down to halfway. So like, Hey, you guys can keep half work with someone else. They can get you the results that you want and you can just use whatever 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:13:49    They, you just keep the, the amount that they paid upfront, but you don’t charge them anything. Or you keep 75%, uh, in total. Like, it 

Rob O’Rourke 01:13:57    Depends on how bad the situation is and how much work I’ve done, but I’ll just start adjusting Dan. And if it’s, if it’s really, really bad, but that project that wasn’t like, I gave them half back. I think I reduced just a small bit. And they had somebody do like the last little part. Uh, but that’s kind of the way I got out of a project because there’s always another great client out there. And I don’t want to try finish a project that I just feel has gotten like too far apart. And it’s just, you know, either forcing it to be finished. Yeah. I want them to get the best result possible, take back some of the money, go hire someone else who is more suitable to your style of doing things and I’ll just go find another client. So 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:14:34    Yeah, I’ve also found this problem with clients, especially when they have a team and a lot more decision-makers get involved. And there’s not like a clear head who is going to call the shots. Uh, what tends to happen in those settings is that projects drag on and they can drag on for quite a bit. Also, if you get a client who doesn’t really listen, the project can drag on for quite a bit and they don’t tend to end up successfully. I mean, you should go through the process and you take the project to the end. It doesn’t end up being successful because there’s too much input and there’s not enough structure to it because it’s just not accepted by one decision-maker or another. And so on. It doesn’t even end up being a good experience for either either party. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:15:22    Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. I got nothing to add to that. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:15:24    That’s perfect. Yeah. I think that, I think that that’s very smart that you have that strategy. All right. So we talked a bit about the freelance stuff. Let’s head to the, to the Fox school. So tell us a bit more in a bit more detail, how you actually started. I think that the first time I personally saw you, it was on a Reddit post a long ago. So that’s how I knew you. So tell us a bit how you started Fox web school, how you got the first year students. And then of course also tell us why somebody should consider joining like what situation they should be in that they should consider joining. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:16:01    Yeah. So we got way back at the beginning. I think the very first students I got was like five students posted up a lot in the foster inform. I think that was the first thing I did. Uh, or before that actually let’s say before I even like met a formal thing, just people are reaching out. So I was doing as much as I could for free in the beginning, I started just like responding to people on the forums on Facebook. I was jumping on calls at a few people and then it just got to a stage where it was just too much. I was like, I literally can’t focus on my own work. I’m not charging for this. So if I’m doing this I’m charging or I’m just not doing this when people are asking a lot. So I was like, okay, I’ll, I’ll charge something. So I met a post in the fast lane form. I think I’m about five people signed up and I was working one-on-one. So I saw him, he charged him. Yeah. I think it was five, 500 and it was five weeks and an hour a week. And 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:16:52    I was a great deal for them. It was 

Rob O’Rourke 01:16:54    Really good. I was just like, I’m going to charge something and whoever is most serious can take me up on this. Yeah. So I did it. And then I went to do it again after five weeks and sinister lacks at that time. So you know him from the fast, he was like, he’s like, don’t charge 500, like that’s stupidly low. Like that’s not the price of coaching. Like you’re selling chunks of your time, like charge more. So he was like charge. I think it was either 2000 or two and a half. He was like charged that much. So at the beginning I was like, that’s too much. Like, although I was like super used to high prices at web design, I was like, I don’t know. Like, I feel these prices, whatever. And he’s like, you know, if you charge good prices, you can do better work. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:17:33    You’re going to get this people better results. So eventually I was like, okay, I’ll do it at a higher price. I was really like, I don’t know about this. So I did it. And um, yeah, like, I’ll be honest. I actually feel like both groups got like the same value. Like, you know, there wasn’t like I was holding anything back for the smaller group kind of things. So both groups got great value. One thing I did though, was with the people who paid more, I actually give them more weeks. I was like a little bit guilty. You’re charging more. So it was like, okay, at the end of five weeks, like you guys hit me up. If you need anything, a lot of them did. So I was like still continuously helping them. So after awhile I was like, okay, you know, this is going past the five weeks. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:18:10    And I think it maybe did it one more time. So I was like, it’s probably better make a Facebook group or something, get everyone in together. And then I’ll start doing, uh, you know, like the classic course things. So I started making videos, videos went super well. People are getting really good results. And then eventually I was like, okay, I’ll make a full course medic course. But I made a mistake. Actually. I met two mistakes. So one, I priced the course blow because I’m at the stage at a free group. That’s starting to grow and I’d started on YouTube and stuff. So I priced the course low, which is good. I got a lot of people in there, but then I realized when you charge low prices and anything, it’s, it’s good upfront for everyone. Everyone loves the low price at the beginning. Yeah. You know, everyone rushes in, but then you don’t have the resources to offer a good service. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:18:56    Long-term like you as a business, you just quickly go true low price funds. Cause there’s not much in the first place. So you can do a few weeks or a few months of good service. But then you’re like, Hey, the, you know, guys, the party’s up like, uh, there’s nothing more here for me to keep serving you and you know, providing good service. So the low price for us, I just had to kind of, you know, they had the content, but I had to discontinue the one-on-one or like the, the live calls and stuff, because I just didn’t have the budget to keep doing it. Like it just made more sense to go back and do other things. This 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:19:26    Is a video course that they had access to. Yeah, yeah. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:19:29    Yeah. Like, um, I think it was videos every week we do one live call every so often. I mean, it’s, it was really, really good. I just was charging too low for what it was. So people upfront would get a great deal. But then I just, again, I couldn’t provide the service for too long at those sort of prices. So I switched it to a monthly thing, which is, this is where I studied. I had out of everything. I was trying to like different models. So the monthly thing was like 30 a month, but you could join the first month for $1. I’m sure you see where this is going to go. And I was like, if I got to, you know, a thousand people in there, like 30,000 that can do a great job and like I’ll have the best community ever. Uh, but what happened was a load of people were joining for $1. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:20:09    I had no intention of sticking around tons of questions, tons of spam. And like, there was great people in there, but then also a lot of people who were like expecting you to do everything for $1, and then when he didn’t, they’d like spazz out and what happens with low price, like super demanding, like, so again, not a good way, shut that down. And then I was just looking back as like, who got the best results, who were the best sort of clients, people who are super committed and who stick with it, what’s the best way to screen for them charge a good price and I’m going to have a good price. I can run a solid business. I can run it as a full-time school. And then what also was happening was I was trying to in the beginning, juggle, running a school with Johnny juggling real projects. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:20:50    And the problem is mentally, they’re two very different tasks. Just, it’s hard to combine the two. So when I work with like a client in the morning, and then I go to the school, my mind was just like, you know, in two different places. And I didn’t like it. It was either I’m going to fully work with clients or I’m going to fully run the school. And I try to do both. Yeah. For a long time. I couldn’t. And I was like, I’ll go with the school. I just enjoy it. More talking to people. Uh, I feel like business stuff, the websites I do like it and it’s good money, but the school, I get more personal value out of it or just to me it’s more enjoyable. So, and then as a business, I’ll be honest, it’s more scalable as well. It’s just, it’s a business that can go bigger than a web design business. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:21:29    So yeah, built a full school. The base model of what I have now started to form proper community, um, higher prices, like the full package. We work with people as much as we possibly can, uh, best sort of content, weekly live calls, extra resources. I’ve got some staff get a team together. So started that model. I don’t have the exact times here, but I’ve kind of refined that. And now the school is at the next level where I feel like I’ve kind of put all the content in there that I’ve systemized all the value that I have to teach people. Although I still did the live calls and uncommon all the time. But as far as content goes, I’ve added it in there. And now I want to go get other experts, uh, which I’ve already started doing and have them add additional skills. Kind of my, yeah, my vision there is thinking back to when I started. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:22:16    So, you know, I’m going to teach you the web design stuff. I’m going to get you profitable. But my goal is that they don’t be web design is forever. Like I want them to go further and do bigger stuff. Like if they’re a web designer 10 years from now, like I’ve failed as, as a teacher, like, this is a way to start, but if you can do this, you can do bigger things. So get going with this, learn it, make the money, figure it all out, all the base level stuff, and then use that to go, uh, to go bigger. So along with that, like, I don’t want to just teach them web design. I want, when they go to that next level, their eyes best prepared as possible. I’ve got a bunch of different skills. So copywriting, SEO, ads, email marketing, all backend systems, all the sort of stuff. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:22:57    Yeah. So that’s, that’s the next level right now is just getting in these other experts and just adding in those extra courses. I already have an SEO one. I already have a copywriting one from two great instructors. And then I want to bring in more gas coals and just the community experience as well. I’m always trying to get that to a higher level. It’s a really tight group in there already, but we run a Facebook and I feel like if we get it off Facebook, we can do an even better job. Just organize that information to move better. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:23:23    That’s awesome. I love how you grew this thing organically because a lot of people, you know, they, um, they sort of want to go to the big level. All of a sudden impatience, I think is one of the biggest things that are holding the entrepreneur types back, at least because people want results really fast. And when you want really results really fast, you don’t really optimize your process. And just as you saw through your own experience, you went through a lot of iterations to get where you are at today. And I think that that was critical to actually making it work and providing the maximum valuable value possible here. So that’s awesome. I mean, can you give a brief summary of what the, the school delivers now and what people can expect if they join today and also what kind of person should consider joining? Yeah, 

Rob O’Rourke 01:24:16    So usually I don’t actually, I’ve never the latest version of the school that we have. I’ve never sold a personally. I’ve always gotten top students to just have conversations with people if it leads to a sale perfectly. So yeah, why I’m saying that is, I’m not like got the big sales pitch ready to go with the school around a thing for me, I would say if you’re starting off, because I built a school, kind of what myself and mine, let’s say, like, I look back and I’m like, I’m lucky to have made it, but I just got true, like so close that I didn’t fail. So I think of that sort of person with those sorts of like things that they needed to fix. So for me, the school it’s like somebody starting off, they’re looking to go big, but they don’t know like what’s the first real business to kind of get into and make something work. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:25:00    So they don’t have to have tech skills. Cause I’ve built it like for just the person who’s starting from zero. They don’t have to have tech skills, but they want to do something like a real business. They want to learn some real skills and they want to go bigger with these real skills. So the school is built without a mind, like somebody who wants to go fast lane, let’s say, um, they want to do something big. But right now they’re just like, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help anyone. I don’t have any real skills that I feel like I can monetize. I don’t even know how to get clients. I’ve never met, you know, much online or anything online. So that’s the starting point of what we assume and who we kind of aim for to join the school. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:25:35    The school then is of course how to get profitable web design, but really in all these lessons and kind of the way everything is built. Just trying to get people to think in these ways that I know is going to help them in business. So thinking about, you know, sales, what is sales, how it works, value creation, solving problems, and then running an effective business learning just how to think in that way, that’s going to help you in business. Like, you know, look at the marketplace, what they need, understanding their needs. How can you communicate things in a way to get people, to take action systems, all those sort of things so that the school true web design is teaching you all of that. Then with these additional courses, hopefully even more communities really solid, just support everyone. Really cool vibe. We never have any issues in there. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:26:18    I’ve never had to ban anyone. It’s like really, really cool people. Yeah. Super tight. So, I mean, who is it for? I guess just somebody who wants to get going wants something real to get into cool thing about web design. You don’t need technical skills to get started. You know, we’ll show you how to do that in the program. But a lot of other things you need very little, you just need a laptop, internet connection sat there. No, that’s the classic. Like all you need is a, a laptop, but it is true. Like it’s, it’s cheap. There’s no inventory. You don’t have to go like doing all, you know, a million paperwork or whatever. It’s, it’s a very simple business to start. You go out there, you find a real client, you download a theme, you edit the theme, you get it on the hosting and that’s it like? 

Rob O’Rourke 01:26:58    So, uh, it’s, it’s something that anyone I feel can do. Um, there’s always a market out there. Like there’s always businesses when you’re selling the right way. There’s always a market. There’s always businesses have problems. They’re waiting for the right sort of people to help. And yeah, like for me, a good web designer is someone who’s no longer doing web design. Like they learnt this skill that now allows them to do loads of other stuff. And MJ story is a good example of that, where he started web design, use the money, built the most.com you know, sold, uh, twice and then went on to do all this other amazing stuff. So that, to me, that’s a good web designer. Like somebody, I know offensive, you know, somebody doing web design 20 years, but from my perspective, like my goals, web design was always a way to get going. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:27:41    And I just looked back and I remember the days when I was trying this thing to that thing and nothing was working and I just felt like I was a failure. I felt like I was incapable of, you know, doing anything meaningful and web design nice is the biggest thing in the world. But it was a real thing. I helped businesses in real ways. It got them real results. And that was, that was the traction, like on my path. That was where it really, uh, started to take off. So the school is trying to model that, uh, my own kind of turning point, let’s say and give people that same experience, like within a couple of months, within a year, they’re just at a whole different level, but like, okay, I understand the game of business. And now, you know, if I want to stick with this or not, I’ll always have this way to create income for myself to serve the marketplace, provide value and do meaningful work. So 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:28:29    That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So you mentioned quite a bit in there about mindset, about sales and all those skills that are valuable for entrepreneurship, which is what you’re grooming people into through the Fox web school. I was wondering if you have, let’s say top five resources that you would share with people. I always ask, always ask this question from guests, because everybody is interested in this basically top five, let’s say mindset, business resources. What would you say? 

Rob O’Rourke 01:28:58    Just across the board? Like anything? 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:29:00    Yeah. Anything that you’d feel would be the most valuable? 

Rob O’Rourke 01:29:04    Yeah, really good question. Usually I rattle off a bunch of books, but I think the big one Fastlane Forum. So we’re both on the forums. If you’re on that forum long enough, when you post there, you’re going to see a lot of people who are successful, but also they’re going to break down why they’re successful. So you can model that behavior. You can, excuse me, you can see different ways to think, which is super like there’s loads of different ways to do this. Like there’s this way. There’s that way someone else has another way. So on the forum, it’s a nice selection of lots of different things. Like if you go to a web design forum…

Tudor Dumitrescu   01:29:39 It’s a science lab. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:29:40    Exactly you got to a nice breeding ground and success there. You can see everything. So I think the form is massive. As far as books, there’s so many that I would recommend. I’m not sure where to start on that. Um, of course all the MJ’s books, um, I dunno, I won’t recommend books cause there’s just too many. I feel like there’s too many different stuff for me. I feel like travel. I know this is kind of strange resources. Travel has helped me so much. You get around there just a lot of different stuff. You run into a lot of cool people when you travel, especially certain locations, um, like certain cities or certain areas that attract certain sorts of people. For me looking back probably was so key because I was just never exposed to people who did that sort of thing. I lived in Ireland. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:30:22    People are very like in the system, um, nothing against them, but you just don’t really meet like these entrepreneurs in Ireland back then anyway, didn’t and in the oil industry, I wasn’t meeting them so traveling, I just got exposed to like, here’s a real person who’s doing this, you know, they’re right there. Let’s have a conversation. Let’s see what they have to say about this stuff. Uh, so yeah, the forums traveling is going to be a crazy list probably compared to other guests. But I think fitness is so important. I think in business, uh, the mind body connection is massive. And if you’re not looking after your health, you know, what’s the point kind of, you know, if you’re going to work super hard to, to achieve something, but then you can’t enjoy it physically or mentally. Uh, there’s no point. So you also 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:31:02    Have more energy if your fitness 

Rob O’Rourke 01:31:05    And the last year just shows that as well. I mean, with this lockdowns and all this nonsense, it’s just so key. Like, you know, it’s great to get wealthy for sure, but, you know, keep your health along the way. So I’m looking back those like years or months where, like, I just didn’t look after that stuff. I always regretted and I can see the results just drop off the business, drops off, everything does. So, uh, yeah. Get a gym pass, whatever it is. Look after yourself. I don’t know, amount. I don’t think I can make it to five and kind of jumping, jumping around. No, it makes 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:31:33    Sense. And I mean, thank you for sharing that and it’s good that it’s different. You know, that’s not a bad thing because I think that there’s a lot of value that people can get from that different approach. I mean, the more approaches that there are, the more people have to choose from and try and different things are going to work for different people. So that’s, that’s great. I’m very thankful for that. Yeah. Cool. Cheers. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, the next thing that I wanted to ask you about a lot of the people that I see, they struggle, the biggest thing that I would say that they struggle with in businesses. Self-confidence do you have any recommendation that you would give for them? What can they do to develop more self-confidence and to actually do the things that they know they should do? It’s very funny, but what I notice in a lot of people, for example, they know that they should be cold calling for example, or they should, they should be finding businesses that they help, but they do everything apart from that, you know, they go and build a website, then they go and add this and that to the website. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:32:34    Then they go and they find whatever activity to do other than the one that they should be doing. And the reason why they do that is because they’re not confident about it. They’re procrastinating about it because they’re afraid to cold call someone and so on. So what advice do you have in those situations? 

Rob O’Rourke 01:32:53    Yeah, a big thing that’s helped me. I’m actually naturally introverted, uh, probably does come across in interview. I don’t know, but like naturally I don’t want to push myself too much to talk to anyone and especially calls. So that’s helped me a lot over the years is really understanding that it’s valuable for them. So a lot of people feel this way. You don’t want to bother somebody with something that’s nonsense that you feel is nonsense. Like, oh, this is, this is low value. This is trash. This doesn’t work. And now I got to go buy it and like contact a million people about this, unless you’re, you know, a psycho or whatever, you don’t want to do that. Like, nobody really wants to do that. So the more you understand the value of what you’re doing and how it can be so useful to people, that’s going to allow you like to feel good about what you’re doing. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:33:37    Then the other part of that is that you’re really making an effort to contact the right people. So I feel like this is where people go wrong. They don’t believe in what you’re doing. And then they blanket approach. Like I’m going to contact everyone whose name starts with the letter B and now they’re like, I feel bad about this. Yeah, of course. Like you’re, you’re bothering all these random people when something that you don’t even believe in yourself, you know, your brain knows that something’s up here. Like in the tribal days, your head would be cut off by now. Like, so like, you gotta believe in what you’re doing and then you gotta be selective. What, like, okay, I’m really good at fixing this problem for a business. And I’m going to reach out to these businesses who I really strongly believe are the right businesses for me to help with this. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:34:18    And who would just, if it’s a good fit would get the best return from this. Now there’s still, also like with that, you got to push yourself, take action. Uh, got to get yourself in state. You got to just make it work. There’s always a bit of resistance naturally to doing that sort of stuff. But if you line up those other things, I feel like it helps so much. Like a lot of people go wrong with that. Like, especially beginners, they don’t quite get it yet. They learn to maybe in the wrong way, I hasn’t fully clicked. And then they’re just not using a good method. They’re like, I’m going to contact every other attrition in town and they don’t feel good about it in the first place. And now it’s just this mission because, you know, we’re all pretty intelligent. Like you can feel when something’s off and when you’re pushing yourself to still do it anyway, there’s a lot of mental triggers that are like, Hey, like, let’s stop this buddy. And if you got to fight yourself like that all the time, it’s just going to be a mission. So yeah. Yeah, yeah. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:35:10    Yeah. And I mean, one of the, the issues with this is, in my opinion, is that a lot of these people, they feel unsure about the value that they’re offering. Right? So they feel unsure if it’s actually going to help the business. Right. So for example, with websites, they’re unsure if they actually make this website, if it’s actually going to get results. And I guess that until they see that it’s sort of difficult to really create that confidence in their own minds, you know, like they can see other people doing it, but until they do it themselves, they have a hard time to see themselves actually pulling off those results. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:35:48    Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great point. Like reference experiences. I mean like anything, like over time, you do it enough times, you see that it’s high value you see that helps people, then it’s not hard to do it anymore because you just know, you know, like if I see somebody dropped their wallet in the street, I know that if I like, Hey, you dropped your wallet. And I had to back to them, they’re going to be happy about that. So I would never feel like, how do I get the confidence to tell them they drop their wallet? Like, there’s nothing, there’s no resistance in that action because I just know it’s a good action. They’re going to, like, it feels good for me to hand it back to them. Perfect. Like, but when it’s something like, you know, I haven’t done it before. I don’t know if it helps them. I don’t know if it’s like even a good thing to do in the first place. Now, all the internal stuff is way off. You can push yourself past that, of course. But it’s way easier. And just better if you line it up right first, and then you’re just, you’re going to, so how can they do 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:36:40    That? You, because you said it’s, it’s better not to push yourself. So how can they line it up right. When they don’t have the, any reference experience to go back to. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:36:49    Yeah. So how I teach this in portfolio stage, like the pretty meta approaches, like one or two good reference experiences, like just get out there and straight away, um, you know, kind of, let’s say back to free lawns in context here, get out there and just help one or two people. Like, even if it’s small, even if, um, you know, whatever, go out there, real business, fix, find a real problem, fix a real problem. Even if it’s a small problem, get that online and get some results. And then you can see, hold on. Okay. I contacted the business, help the business, not the better off, uh, I’ve done my project. Perfect. And that’s like the first stage. They’re like, 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:37:25    You sort of ask them to push through it in the beginning to get that one or two references. And then once they have that, they no longer need to do that. Yeah. Yeah. But 

Rob O’Rourke 01:37:34    I, I definitely keep in mind to try and make it as easy as possible for them. So in the beginning I recommend family, friends, connections, local area businesses. You already know trust you. Yeah. Like just get one or two from that group. And then when you have that mentally, internally, you feel a lot better. But then also externally, the marketplace is also like, okay, this, this person can actually do this, done it before. Here’s a real result. So it helps them both ways. Now when you prospect, you’re going to feel better at doing it. You’re going to do it in a better way. And then you’re going to have something real that backs up all these claims that you’re making. And you know, people can build trust then like, that’s another thing as well. So, you know, let’s say we now know each other, like we know each other already. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:38:13    So you would personally trust me. So in the beginning, when you contact people who already are likely to personally trust you, you can sell as a person. But when you go cold prospecting, you’re not selling as a person. Nobody cares that it’s failing as a business. So a personal sale, like right now. Okay. I know the person I trust the person we’ve done this stuff before. They’ve got a good reputation. They’re friends, but my cousin, whatever it is, business sale, it’s all like results. Like what, what have you done? Like, you’re telling me this stuff. Where’s the reviews. Whereas the case studies, whereas the past projects. Yeah. So to make that gap, it’s ways to, to start in the personal side, get a result or two, and then switch to the business way of prospecting. I feel like a lot of sales leaves that out and people will be this. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:38:57    Like they read a method or they see a method that works for someone who’s now years into it. And they’re like, yeah, Hey, I just like go door to door and I get the sales, but yeah, you know, you got all this like track record or I just give a conference and you know, I got all these sales or I just make a cold call and I sell these big projects straight away. And it does work for them. They’re not lying. And they are sharing how it works a lot of the time, but they have all this stuff behind them that makes that method work when you’re starting. And you don’t have that, like things to back you up, you got to build up the blocks that make those bigger sales methods where it makes 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:39:31    Sense. A lot of sense. And I think that is very helpful to people. It actually makes me think about something that I read funnily enough, from David Goggins when he says that when he’s at his 40%, right. And he thinks that he can’t go on, you know, he doesn’t go straight to wanting to go to the a hundred percent because that would be impossible. He goes to 45%, then 50% and so on. And so if you push yourself bit by bit and you sort of make it into a journey, a process that builds on top of itself, then it’s a lot easier. And I feel that that’s what you’ve done with everything in your life. So far based on what you’ve been saying, you’ve been building block by block, you know, something bigger and bigger and bigger and growing as a person in the process, which is amazing. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:40:16    Yeah. Cheers, dude. What you said earlier, patients as well, where, you know, what’s the saying, I’m going to butcher it, but, uh, it’s like slow is smooth and smooth is fast or something. I dunno.

Tudor Dumitrescu   01:40:28 Slow and steady wins the race. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:40:32    If you have a smart, slow approach, it’s often the fastest approach because the people that go fast and try to jump a lot of steps, um, especially with selling, like trying to get straight up to selling at a high level, but freelancing where, you know, it’s not just the sell, you got to backup. What you just sold is all like, you gotta, you know, it’s not like you can sell and run. Like you sold something now you got to it as well. So you’ve got to build that up. If you go too fast, um, you’re just, it’s going to go in a bad direction. I, I often compare it to like a boxer. You know, they, they work a boxer up from the easy fights to the slightly harder fights to, you know, it’s that sort of thing. You go straight for the champion ship, like, you know, Belcher, whatever is straight. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:41:14    And then yeah, you’re going to hospital like you’re done, but that same fighter could have worked their way up and built the confidence. Same salmon freelancing. You do want to move up and progress, but you got to be your own like fight manager, like pick the next fight that you can win. That’s getting you up the ranks, but don’t go too far ahead of yourself because you definitely can bite off more than you can chew. Or you can get to a place where you’re like, how come I can’t sell anything, but you jumped way ahead. And people, you know, businesses, they know the deal. Like they know when somebody is an underdog is willing to deliver value or somebody is way out of their depth. And they’re like, uh, I can’t work with this person even though I would like to, because they’re just going to, they’re not qualified to do this. Yeah, 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:41:55    No, that makes, that makes absolute sense. And I mean, it’s part of the reason why I feel a lot of people remain stuck, you know, because they don’t take it step-by-step they want to go straight from square one to square 10 in one leap. And that’s very difficult to do. I mean, you have to, the only way to do it is to literally push yourself through all those feelings until you actually do it. And you have a reference behind you and a lot of stuff can go wrong in the process. It’s much easier if you actually take it step by step and you build the courage to get to that level. Yeah, a hundred percent. So, I mean, if you had to, I have a few final questions. So to number one, if you had to start again from scratch as a web designer, how would you actually go about doing that? 

Rob O’Rourke 01:42:46    So if I was starting again, I probably wouldn’t do web design because I feel like I’ve gotten everything out of it. So I would now just go on to some others, uh, sort of business. But if I had to do, what did you try to do here, man? Just kind of, of thin. I don’t know. I love, I love this school. I love web design, but if I started to get, I mean, it depends which way, like the scenario of this question, but I would just love like doing something completely different and just seeing if I could use all these skills to do whatever, again, nothing against like, what I’ve done is just like, if I had the opportunity, like, okay, completely new experience, let’s see if we can do it. That’s awesome. But if I had to start web design again, and I did this for you to challenge, so I’ll just share what I did there, because it’s exactly what I would do. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:43:27    I would look what businesses do I know right now. And I would think of everything like what businesses am I using right now? And what businesses have I recently used, who do I know in my own network, look through those businesses, write them down, whatever who’s like the best person. Who’s got a real problem that a website is going to easily add a ton of value. So I did this through YouTube channel. One guy was, there’s a boxing coach here that I use in Poland, a boxing twice a week. And his, it just changed. You had an old business. That was pretty good. He had changed location. He had a split with his business partner. So it’s a new gym and he had no website. So here’s a guy, great gym, great trainer, great history of all these different things, pro fighter, all the stuff, no website. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:44:06    So I met a website for him, easy website to make tactically just put in the information, took some good photos. Um, it is ring three city.pl is the, you, you know the name, if someone wants to look it up, but just that one project now that it’s done, I just know like we could sell skills. You can just leverage that so much to get other products. So that would always be my first step at web design. Just go out there, one good project that shows what you can do to help a business. And then it just becomes so much easier to get those bigger deals. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:44:36    I see. And did you also get leads for him or, I mean, did you do any SEO or any of that stuff or how did that sort of work out for him? Did he use it as a brochure to send people? Or how did that work? Yeah, 

Rob O’Rourke 01:44:48    So my, the city here is a massive, so there’s only a few blocks in gyms in the first place. So SEO was relatively easy, like just normal kind of Google my business. I am. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, so for him, this is like, you know, when you get into the website as well, you see like there’s slight differences that make a big difference. So for him, he actually was pretty tired of working with, he had a lot of people come into the gym, like Poland’s not a huge high-wage country. So a lot of people come in, Hey, I want to learn how to box. I got, you know, $2, uh, what can you do? And he’d used to do group classes that just completely warm out. It was like 60 people in the gym, all falling over each other for him. He’s like this isn’t real boxing. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:45:26    And you know, I don’t want to take money this way. So what he really wanted was, uh, boxing people like one-on-one clients who would pay top dollar for like expert advice. And he worked with them super dedicated. So the website for him, wasn’t so much about like a lot of leads. It was about just a few right. People to fill up his weekly schedule with high paying clients. So that approach with the website, it worked perfectly and now he’s just totally full. He actually doesn’t need any more clients. So, you know, it’s like, how would I describe? 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:45:56    And all of them sort of find him organically. Yeah. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:46:00    Yeah. Like he only had a few spots to fill and now they’re totally full. So, and again, I approach him with such a good deal. I mean, it’s a free website. He didn’t have one, he didn’t have the biggest need, but as a portfolio piece or as a starting piece, it was like a strategy piece. I take that now to someone else, Hey, I just worked with this guy is a pro boxer, like check this thing out, here’s this problem. He really needed these particular sort of clients. We fixed that he’s totally full of things as businesses, you know, at the level that he was trying to hit for a long time. Like, what’s your problems. Okay. I think I can solve them as well. So as, again, as a, you know, first starting off piece, it’s just showing what a website can do. And I feel like having that story of how he wanted these particular clients. Now he has these sort of clients. Uh that’s what’s going to be sellable if I use that to get bigger projects. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:46:48    Okay. That’s awesome. I mean, one thing that I forgot to ask you about is that we’re going to have links in the show notes below. So, I mean, is there anything that you want people to do to contact you or to join Fox web school? Is there any process that they should go through there? We can have those links there and I mean, feel free to talk about that for the listeners who are going to be interested. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:47:11    Yeah. Yeah. So this is funny, you know, Rebecca chalky from the forum probably back at, she has this thing. Um, the cobbler’s children don’t have any shoes, but I’m still working on the website for my, for my own program. There is a basic version there, but I just never got around to making it like that final version that I want. So probably the best place to go is my link on the fast name tread for now, maybe later the Fox web school.com website. So I’ll give you a link for that. Cause that’s a pretty long URL. I’m not going to have to call it that. Uh, if you want to follow my stuff, fucks up school on a YouTube. My Instagram is Rob ARR. That’s kind of it. I, I don’t really, um, do a whole lot on, you know, like all these different social media is no tick-tock or Twitter on thing. Uh, pretty low profile actually. So yeah, fast to inform Tommy’s Fox, uh, or follow me on YouTube and you’ll kind of see the links in those two places. Yeah. 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:48:03    That that’s, that’s awesome. So thank you for sharing those details. And final question I wanted to ask you, where do you see Fox web school? Five years from today? So you talked briefly about the fact that you want to expand into more than just web design. So where do you see five years from today? 

Rob O’Rourke 01:48:23   Yeah, so I’ve seen over the last few years that it’s always changed so much that to, to project that I just, I’m not so sure I could do it accurately and head towards it, but I just enjoy it, man. It’s a good community of people. I mean, at the end of the day, I definitely want a business that does well, of course. But um, for me like the people side of things, I just like that. So if I have a bunch of people that have helped to do super well five years from now, and that’d be great on the personal side, I think about this a bit. Like if, if money was no problem, what would I like to do? And honestly, there’s so many like the signs, so geeky, but there’s so many good books and things that I’d like to learn, like skills, physical skills, and then like mental skills as well. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:49:05    That, um, if I have a business that allows me to like learn a lot of stuff and then give that back to people and then also just bring in other people who are experts and then true my business, they can like, you know, uh, give out that information. And then I get to also kind of see that knowledge as well or learn like as my students learn for me, that would just be amazing. Uh, that’s kind of where I’m taking the business is I just love learning. And if I can learn like as, or if I can use my business to learn myself and then also give that back to people, I just think that’s like the best thing I can kind of go for. I know that sounds, I dunno, whatever way, but for me that’s like, 

Tudor Dumitrescu 01:49:44    Well, I think that’s fantastic because I get a, that you are a teacher at heart, you love teaching people and guiding people and I’m sort of similar to you. So I definitely get that. I mean, for me too, that’s what I’m passionate about. That’s what I enjoy doing the most. You know, I enjoy doing this podcast, producing content. It’s on much more than I enjoy running my agency. So, um, it’s, uh, it’s definitely true. And um, I mean, it’s great that you you’re able to do that and you’re able to grow that. So that’s fantastic. And I mean, thank you for being here today, Robin taking the time, it’s been awesome having you here and for our listeners stay tuned for the next episode. And until next time, all of you remember to keep growing your businesses and providing massive value because that’s, what’s making the world richer and all of us better off. Thank you very much. 

Rob O’Rourke 01:50:35    Yeah. Thank you, man. Great hosting.