web designer and IM'er now own a residential painting business

I didn't make big bucks in my web design and marketing days, I did pretty good.. sometimes. Was hard to keep consistent with all the competition.

I learned a lot over the years in IM and coding and running a business, how to outsource, all that good shit. Now I have took my knowledge from IM and am using it toward an offline niche (painting).

Yes, im switching careers. But will always do IM for a hobby, now that I have the extra cash flow I can invest in different online markets.

Here is what happen, things started to get slow for me online, I needed more money then I was making so I got a job doing residential painting for a guy. I have painted before so I was already one step ahead, started painting for him and really didn't find the time much to do any IM. The whole thing I was thinking about was, my boss, he does the exact same thing I did with my web design business. He gets the jobs, and hires us for peanuts to do the job and banks the rest. That's pretty much the essence of business.

Anyways to make a long story short I used my IM skills to start a painting business and market it successfully, I don't work for him anymore. I now have 2 guys working with me and making more money then I ever had in IM.. I have more jobs then I can take on right now..

Interesting story, I've had the same type of thought myself: "Man if I was a landscaper I would be making bank". In the local market I'm from landscapers are massively behind the times. It would literally be like shooting fish in a barrel to out compete them. Its cool that you actually did it and your making bank, sell those extra leads to your competition for a kickback. I will have to ponder this more...

The thing is, if you took your OWN business from nothing to now being overbooked... it means you know how to generate leads and enquiries.

In that case, you could have just sold lead generation to businesses the whole time, because you clearly know how to do it. You have proven that.

Good luck with your business in either case