A Step by Step Guide to Starting Your Own Online Business

A real life example of Angie Boyd, May 2006

Victoria Ring---Bio-

Angie Boyd has been working for 50 State Notary and 713Training.Com for a month now. During that time I helped her to start two businesses:

http://www.yourohionotary.com
http://www.bankruptcyplus.com

I wanted to give Angie the opportunity to choose which direction she wanted to go in. Although Angie enjoys working with the mortgage companies and doing closings, she does not enjoy the fluctuation in monthly income.  After fully understanding the job duties of both the notary signing agent and virtual bankruptcy assistant field, Angie has chosen to make the bankruptcy field her main business. Then, she will use the notary signing agent business only to fill in when money is tight.

Millions of notary signing agents (NSAs) are doing the same thing. They are beginning to understand that working as a full-time notary signing agent can often be a dog-eat-dog world.  Other NSAs are finding it harder to make a profit due to the rising gas prices and signing companies are often unreasonable and unwilling to pay us enough money to stay in business, let alone enough profit left over to build and grow our companies.

Therefore, smart NSAs add additional products and services to their notary signing agent business to supplement and stabilize their company.  One way to do that is to work directly for debtor bankruptcy attorneys drafting bankruptcy petitions.  This is the field that Angie chose.

So ....  I started building her a company and I want to share the experience with you. I believe if you follow along with me as I build Angie a virtual bankruptcy assistant service, it will help to train you, so that you can do the same thing.

Lesson 1: Starting a Company

Before we decided on a company name or built a website, Angie started learning how to draft bankruptcy petitions.  She studied my two training videos and read the book: How to Start a Virtual Bankruptcy Assistant Service.  Next, she practiced with the workbook: The Virtual Bankruptcy Assistant Training Workbook.

Next, I sat down with Angie and gave her an actual bankruptcy petition to input. I sat beside her as she keyed in the information and trained her as she progressed through the Forms and Schedules.  As we worked through the petition, Angie prepared a list of questions to ask the client (which I explain how to do in the Workbook). Then she called the client, obtained the missing information and finalized the petition.

I must say – I was very impressed with her attention to detail. I checked everything over with a fine-tooth-comb, made a few changes and explained to Angie why these changes were made.  This helped her to understand the logic of the business and after only one training session, I felt she was ready to try drafting a petition on her own.

So, the next bankruptcy petition she drafted was at her own home office. When I asked her how it went, she said:

I ran into a few problems doing the petition on my own the first time, but instead of calling Victoria to get the answer I popped in her training video and watched it.   I was glad I did, because when I was watching the training video to get the answer to my question, I learned more stuff I didnt pick up when I watched it for the first time. This is probably the single most-important training method that worked for me. I made it a point to search for my answer before calling Victoria, and in the process I learned so much more.

After Angie drafted three bankruptcy petitions on her own, she had reached a point that she felt more comfortable with them. That is when we decided to open her business. (Notice that we learned the job before starting the company. This is a very important key element in building a business. You MUST know how to properly perform your service before you can sell the service.)

Lesson 2: Deciding on a Name and Building a Website

Before building a website, we had to find a domain name that would match the business name.  We went to http://www.dnwiz.com and typed in the key words: bankruptcy and service.  After paging through a long list of available domain names we found BankruptcyPlus.Com.

Next, we went to Bummer Hosting at http://www.bummerhosting.com and registered for the domain name (Cost $9.95) as well as basic hosting service (Cost $12.95).

Next, I went to http://www.basictemplates.com/ and checked out some web page design ideas. I took a variety of layout and design ideas from these samples and designed the front page of Angies website which you can view at http://www.bankruptcyplus.com/ The software I used to design the website was Netscape Composer, Version 4.79.

Next, I personalized Angie a set of Client Intake Forms (you can get a set at https://www.713training.com/intake_forms/ ) and linked them to her website. The personalized forms are very important for you to have because attorneys interested in your service will download and use them.  Because the personalized forms have your name and contact information at the bottom of every page, it will make it very convenient for the attorneys to fax or mail the forms to you for processing.

Then, on Friday, May 12, I had the opportunity to conduct a client intake interview for the bankruptcy attorney I currently work with.  I took Angie with me and she was trained in this area of the virtual bankruptcy assistant field.  We also will be attending a 341 Meeting with the attorney on June 8, which will give her even more exposure to the bankruptcy process from the Bankruptcy Courts point of view.

Next, Angie and I spent a great deal of time compiling a mailing list of bankruptcy attorneys and bankruptcy paralegals.  I began compiling the names by checking out prices for mailing lists that were already compiled. One of the best ones I found was offered by the National Paralegal Association at http://www.nationalparalegal.org/busform2.html but the cost was rather high: $350 per 1,000 names.

So I decided to compile my own mailing list.  I realize this takes more time, but I knew I could compile a better list than anyone because I knew my product better than anyone else.

To compile my own list I started by going to Google and typing in the search words: find a bankruptcy attorney.  I also located several bankruptcy organizations that were filled with bankruptcy attorney members and I visited those websites also.  When I found a list of attorneys with links back to their website, I visited their website.  I looked at the Practice Areas to make sure the attorneys were practicing DEBTOR bankruptcy law and not creditor law. Once I found an attorney practicing debtor law, I obtained their name, law firm name and mailing address.

After compiling a list of 200 debtor bankruptcy attorneys, I decided to do a test mailing. I wrote a very professional 2-page sales letter and personalized each one for every attorney. I also included a business card in with the letter.  It took Angie and me about 5 hours to fold, stuff and put postage on 200 envelopes. We mailed them all on Tuesday of this past week.  As of today, we have not received any replies, but we must allow enough time for the letters to be delivered and the attorney enough time to review it. I am sure we will be receiving some type of response within the next week or so and I will alert you of the outcome.

Next, I designed a very professional 4-page newsletter that was printed on 11x17 paper. I had these printed at S. Beckman Printing (my contact is Dave Schultz at 614-864-2232 or click here to visit their website.

See a copy of the Virtual Bankruptcy Assistant Newsletter I designed in PDF Format; Click here.

We will be mailing these newsletters to the same attorneys and paralegals from our compiled mailing list within the next two weeks.  This will serve as our 2-week follow-up to the sales letters we mailed this past week.

Finally, I updated Angies website at http://www.bankruptcyplus.com to correspond with the sales letter that was mailed to attorneys.

NOTE: I realize that you do not sell the same products as 713Training.Com so you will be unable to copy my newsletter word-for-word for your own marketing.  But the purpose of this article s not intended to make your work effortless. The purpose is to give you ideas about marketing and growing your business – not do the work for you.  The mailing list software I use is My MailList. Click here.

Two Weeks Later . . .

Remember the 200 piece mailing Angie and I did two weeks ago? Guess what? This week we sold 8 bankruptcy books to the law firms we mailed to. Now, 8 orders may not sound like a lot, but in the world of marketing, this is an EXCELLENT indication of a good mailing list.

On the average, a mailer can expect to get a total of a 3% response from mailings they do from a mailing list they purchase. But, like I said last week, I decided NOT to purchase a mailing list of attorneys. My thought is this: The people who I would purchase a mailing list from would have no idea what products I was selling. They also would not know the types of attorneys I wanted to market to. They would not visit every attorney website like I did, determine the size of the law firm, find out whether they practiced solely in Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy, whether they had a large staff of paralegals or was a sole proprietor.

And even if such a list existed, it could cost as much as $1,200.00 per 1,000 names and I would probably be forced to buy a minimum of 5,000.   I don’t know about you, but I don’t happen to have $6,000 lying around gathering dust.  This is one reason I decided to compile my own mailing list but the main reason was that I believed I would have a more quality list doing the job myself.

Eight orders out of a 200 piece mailing translates into a 4% response rate.  This shows me the mailing list will probably do exceptionally well.  And on top of these great statistics, the initial orders arrived less than one week after the attorneys received our mailing piece.  For a return of 4% to come so quickly is another indication of great success.

But these figures are only the preliminary results.  Things could change for the bad or good.  We won’t know for awhile.  However, once I see that the mailing list is a winner, I may sell it to a few of our customers to help them market their virtual bankruptcy services. But before I do that, lets give the mailing a list a little more time to determine its pulling power.  Angie and I are getting ready to do a two week follow up mailing to the list.  The effects of the second mailing will tell us exactly how good the mailing list is working and I will continue to report the results to you.

Another 100 Piece Mailing

When I saw the 200 piece mailing produced a 4% response rate, I mailed the same personalized letter and my business card to 100 more attorneys on the list this week. Spacing the mailings one week apart will ensure that orders continue coming in for a longer period of time.  I plan to continue mailing to 100 attorneys per week until I have made it through the entire 1,000 names.

Notice that I did not stop once I did a 200 piece mailing. To be effective in marketing you must continue marketing on a heavy basis until you get results. Instead, some people will market to a few customers, then sit back and wait for results. When the results are slow or they do not make money immediately, they give up.  I hope you do not learn this lesson the hard way.  Instead, do something every day to market your business regardless if you have money or do not have money. And never stop or give up until you are ready to stop making money.

One week later . . .

Our mailing paid off this past week!  We sold 18 books to attorneys we mailed our personalized letter to and picked up a new bankruptcy attorney.  That’s right! After receiving our mailing and visiting our website, an attorney in Arizona (who owns three separate bankruptcy law firms) asked us to draft all of his bankruptcy petitions. This is our first major attorney client, which will result in $1,000s of dollars for Angie’s company, Bankruptcy Plus. So you can see, the cost, the time and the sweat equity put into this project really paid off.

Now that we are starting to pick up new bankruptcy attorneys (we have 4 now but are negotiating with 11 more), we are in a position to begin building our network of subcontracts.  In other words, I did not want to build a network of people first, then go out and find work to give them. If I did that, a lot of people would be waiting on me to market and build my attorney customer base.

Instead, I had to work from both angles and merge the two groups at the proper time so that the virtual bankruptcy assistants as well as the attorneys would benefit and everything would merge into a smooth operation.  (This is the part of business that I dearly love. In fact, I love this area of business so much I often forget to eat and sleep.)

Anyway – Angie’s business is growing at a steady rate. She has been working on bankruptcy petitions this past week and her skills are improving with each one she prepares. One day, I hope to be able to teach her everything I know so I do not have to continue checking the petitions in the great detail that I do now. But I have faith in Angie’s ability. She is the best employee I have ever found and without her help, I would not have the time to develop the products I am working on now.