87 - A Story of Side Hustling, Ups, Downs, and Everything In-Between with Lindsey Anderson

From the repetitive day-to-day job with a comfortable salary to turning her degree into a company of her own. The love that Lindsay shows about her passion of information systems and the World Wide Web to her company and her clients is like no other.  The steps are for the ease of the client and the rewards are for the benefits of the clients company. Although it is an income driven business she works very hard to provide as much information and resources for her clients so that they can get the most out of the services that Web Impakt offers.

Tell us how you side hustled to build your business and how you started Web Impact? She started working for the government in Idaho on very remote site out in the middle of nowhere with very limited access and not much around. It was a mind numbing, boring job that with any change followed with the need for numerous signatures to even get a part of the project done. From the very beginning she had the mindset of an entrepreneur, where she was seeing an idea in everything and not really wanting to work for someone but work for herself. However coming out of college with an information systems degree she was making good money in a contract position with the government but really was not fulfilling enough. While working she decided to pick up some website work on the side and picked up the local jewelry store website job. She was completely scared out of her mind with the how-to, such as the pricing and time that it would take. But she stuck it out and finished and then went about doing more websites for anyone at any price just to start gaining the exposure and to put more experience under her belt. At the time she did not have any kids so she was able to work when she had spare time and could get things up and going.   Then 2008 happened and things started to slow due considerably because of the economy. At that point her contracting gig ended and she was basically at the cross-road of dive into her own company full-time or stay and do another contract because the working on the weekends and spare time was not going to take care of the bills. She picked up a business partner that could handle the in-depth programing because although she could program he was much better. They dove in full-time and along the way made a lot of rookie mistakes. Lindsey was listening to one of the podcast, with Shannon Cherry, where she mentions not to spend what you don’t have to spend and they did the opposite of that because what they were use to in their government job, not thinking about the down the road impact. Along the way you realize that you are just working to meet the demands of the business and the expense that are going along with that.

What did you do to re-shift, refocus and get back on track? Essentially, the downward turn went on for a bit and then they decided to down grade everything, to basically how they should have started. In doing so, they laid off employees and picked up contractors, so they only worked the hours that they had available. Which reduced the benefits and taxes part of the expenses. They downsized the physical location because most of the business can happen remotely so there was not a need for a large office.   One of the most interesting facts that she really realized about two years ago was being transparent and telling businesses what they need to know will gain you more respect than the small or big price tag. Now they primarily do only word press sites, and will steer a client to a template based site over a custom site where she is collecting less but gaining respect because she is being transparent and offering advice. And in the end the customer is seeing her as a value and sharing that with others. Lindsey tells her clients to share industry secrets, your competitors will hate you for it but people will see value in what you have to offer and will come to you. If you have a budget on an item find what is best to get the results that you need to make your business grow so then you can add other features that you really want in the end.

With regards to marketing, what are one or two things that have been successful for you? On a local level of marketing they make sure that they are on top of their sites SEO so that they come up on the top of search results. For local business she strongly suggests running SEO campaign as many of your competitors are not running them. The tool that has been the most successful has been content marketing, not only for them as a company but for their clients as well. If you can write content, you can do some short videos and present yourself on social media people will come to you. Video’s are so powerful because people do business with people, not just companies so if you can put a face with a name and a personality behind it, then it turns out to be like running into an old friend at the grocery store. When Lindsey started Lindsey’s web she committed to herself that she was going to work it for a year, she did not care if no one was listening to her or not but she was willing to put in the time and the time has given her benefits beyond what she imagined.

So what is next for your business and what you want to leverage next. What most of her customers have a problem with is getting overwhelmed with what to do next or what holds more importance when it comes to marketing their business. So the next phase for Lindsey and her business is to take www.lindseysweb.com and develop webinars and do it your-self classes. But for the clients that do not have the time to do it yourself then they have packages to buy blocks of time to help you and take your business to the next level. This concept relates back to a previous guest that we have had here on the show.   Steven stated that if you take one positive step every day in your business then in one year you have taken 365 positive steps you are bound to be in a good direction with your business.

You can find Lindsey at www.lindseysweb.com or for her free offer visit website review.

More about Lindsey: Lindsey Anderson is a web strategy expert working with small business owners to help them grow their businesses. Lindsey is the founder and CEO of two companies; Web Impakt, a successful web development company, and Lindsey’s Web, an online resource for small business owners to learn about ranking on search engines, newsletters, analytics, social media, pay-per-click ads, websites, blogging, and the list goes on. She knows how to utilize web technologies to help small business owners achieve their dreams.