Robin Waite is the founder of Fearless Business, a Business Coaching programme for Coaches, Consultants and Freelancers.
From 18 years old until 22, Robin worked as a systems analyst for a medical device company.
Putting systems into play, Robin increased e efficiency and decreased cost, helping to make the company 50% more profitable.
For the next decade, Robin ran a successful marketing agency, serving over 250 clients.
He delivered workshops and masterclasses to over 1,000 business owners on subjects including marketing, product architecture, pricing, websites and more.
Now Robin helps other coaches, consultants and entrepreneurs, offering insights on Product Architecture, Pricing Your Products and Sales.
With fearless goal setting and accountability, Robin’s program is turning dreams into reality for clients around the world helping them to double their income and more.
How did you start out as a marketer?
In 2004 I was on holiday in Florida and got a phone call from an old work colleague.
At the time he was building websites and I was buying and selling computer hardware.
We felt there was a great opportunity to join forces so set up a Marketing Agency. Over the next ten years we built hundreds of clients websites and also got into Branding in a big way.
The agency grew from just us two to a team of six and in our biggest turnover year we achieved £250k turnover.
For a small local agency we were incredibly proud of this.
During the 12 years running the agency we specialised in building Google friendly, good looking websites which generated leads for our clients.
Looking back what is your hardest struggle when it came to delivering results?
At the time the biggest hinderance to our business was saying, “Yes!” to complicated, custom, bespoke website builds.
They always took longer than we’d anticipated and the clients of these sites were the hardest to please.
After reading “Built to Sell” written by John Warrilow, we streamlined our processes and created a series of 1 and 2 day workshops to deliver productised websites and brands. It transformed the agency.
How did you get your first client back then, and what kind of service did you do for them?
Most of our clients came from local networking meetings, referrals from existing clients and local searches on Google.
Our primary offerings were website design, hosting and branding. Anything from 5 pages websites right up to fully bespoke applications.
Although we dialed back the custom work to focus on out more profitable work which was the smaller more standard websites with a focus on the care plans which we then upsold.
What do you find most rewarding about what you do?
Nowadays, with the coaches, consultants and freelancers that I work with seeing them grow their businesses is my greatest reward.
We’ve had several “Fearless Babies” as well as clients who’ve been able to save for their wedding, first house or take a lease on their first office.
I find their rewards my biggest rewards!
We have a lot of readers who are bent on becoming freelancers, aside from freelancing how else can someone earn online, and what is your advise?
When setting prices, most freelancers look at their competition to see how much they are charging.
The mistake though is assuming that the competition have got it right. Many Freelancers are operating unprofitably.
Think about it, there could be 20 web designers locally to you, only one of them can be the most expensive and more often than not they’ve been in business for a number of years.
So if they can get clients at the top price, so can you!!
If you were given the chance to build your career all over again what would you do differently so that you will achieve your dreams faster?
I built several apps as a side hustle when we started building websites, I wish that I’d taken them more seriously now and doubled down as they had the potential to be great SaaS apps.
Equally they might have gone nowhere so I don’t regret it.
We just spent a lot of time building other people’s dreams rather than out own and certainly had no confidence around pricing and or knowledge on how to make money when we first set up the agency.
How is your typical work day structured?
Right now…it’s a bit crazy, I have two daughters aged 6 & 4, and they’re both in school but my day is broken up with school runs and coaching sessions.
I’ve found my most productive days are when I block out my diary in the following order:
- Life stuff 2. Coaching Calls 3. Sales Calls 4. Marketing/Content
Can you tell us about a time where you had to put in significant effort up front and then wait a long time for success?
I’ve written several books, but most notably Online Business Startup.
The book required 8-12 months of hard work in advance in terms of writing the drafts, copy editing, proofreading, typesetting and design even before they were launched.
And then 6-8 months of solid marketing AFTER launch to get them into the charts in Amazon.
It then took after FURTHER 12 MONTHS for the royalties to start coming in and to make an ROI.
It was totally worth it, as the books have helped me get speaking engagements, podcast interviews and numerous clients since.
You’ve been tasked with redesigning the company’s brand strategy from the ground up. Walk us through your process.
I hope this doesn’t come across as egotistical, but I’m incredibly proud of the Fearless Business brand, design and identity.
Plus what the company stands for in regards to culture, core values and mission. It’s exactly what I imagined the vision for the business would be.
Can you tell us about a past situation where you had to juggle multiple projects with competing deadlines?
I remember a summer in 2008/09 where we delivered a handful of large £10k+ projects and a about a dozen smaller £1k projects.
At the time we were charging £50/mth for support and hosting irrespective of the size of project.
I realised at this point that the 10+ smaller projects actually produced a 3x larger Customer Lifetime Value than the 3 bigger projects…because we had more people paying £50/mth on the smaller projects.
This was when we flipped our business model and focused on recurring revenue over project based work. It was an absolute game changer.
What recently-developed marketing strategy, technique or tool interests you the most right now?
I absolutely love YouTube and I’m doubling down on experimenting with my own Channel right now to gain more subscribers, views and especially watch time.
Trying to create business related content that keeps people engaged for a lengthy period of time is actually really hard!
I love the gamification of YouTube though, understanding the algorithm and ultimately understanding what people want to see and engage with.
What do you do to stay up to date with new marketing techniques?
I have mentors and coaches myself who know more than I do, I am subscribed to several masterminds and newsletters which regularly send out updates of the latest software and technology, and watch some of the more successful internet marketers to see what they’re getting up to.
Which one book/blog post would you recommend every Marketer should read?
Built to Sell by John Warrilow – By far and away the best book for any creator or marketer to read.
It talks about “product niching” which is a little known about subject; having a solid focus on 3-5 core products and doing them really well.
That’s how you add real value to your clients. I’d also recommend reading Breakthrough Advertising which is THE BEST copywriting book out there if you really want to understand your audience and what makes them tick.
If there’s a marketer out there who DOESN’T own a copy of Breakthrough Advertising I’d question their credibility.
If there’s one Marketing Guru you’d recommend who and why.
I’m currently following Chris Do (his YouTube channel is called “The Futur”) – his approach to productization, pricing and sales is very similar to my own and he executes is brilliantly.
As an graphic designer himself, his channel is beautiful and he delivers so much value on his channels and websites.