Your good work should get you more good work.

When I was 16, I ran a small lawn and pressure-washing business. I’d just formed my LLC, which at 16 feels about as official as it gets, and I found customers the only way I knew how. I went door to door.

That’s fine, by the way. Knocking doors works. It’s just slow, and it only works while you’re standing on somebody’s porch.

The neighbor and the truck

One day I was mowing a customer’s yard. Their neighbor came outside, looked over at my work truck, took a picture of it, and left.

A word about the truck: it was beat up. It was not a truck you’d put on a billboard. But somebody thought it was worth a photo. I noticed, went back to mowing, and didn’t think about it again.

Later, my customer brought it up. The neighbor had wanted to hire me for the summer.

But my customer didn’t have my number to give them, and the neighbor left town for about three months. That was roughly an $800-a-month customer, and I never got a shot at it. I didn’t even know the job existed until it was already gone.

The work already made the sale

Here’s the part that stuck with me.

I didn’t lose that customer because my work was bad. My work is the reason they wanted me. They watched me do the job, liked what they saw, and made up their mind. The work had already made the sale.

What was missing was everything after that. There was no path from “that guy does good work” to “I want to hire him.”

A photo of a beat-up truck isn’t a path. It’s a picture of a truck.

I think this happens to good businesses all the time. Somebody sees your work. They like it. They mean to call. Then they can’t find you, or they find a Facebook page with no phone number on it, or they call once while you’re on a ladder and get your voicemail. So they hire the next person. That person isn’t better than you. They’re just easier to reach.

Minecraft, of all things

I didn’t know anything about marketing. What I did have was some very basic coding from making Minecraft mods, which as far as I know is not a recognized credential in the web design industry.

But it was enough to try. So I built a basic system. Nothing fancy. It just followed the path a real person would take:

1. See the truck.
2. Find me.
3. Figure out who I am.
4. See examples of my work.
5. Check my pricing and whether I cover their area.
6. Request an estimate.

Looking back, that first version was pretty rough. It didn’t matter. It worked because it answered the questions people actually had, in the order they had them.

A QR code on a beat-up truck

Then I put my branding and a QR code on the truck. Same truck. But now, if someone took a picture of it, they were taking a picture of a way to hire me.

The first stranger

It took a while. But eventually, someone I had never met booked an estimate.

Their first message had pictures of the job and the measurements. I could nearly price the job before we ever talked. No phone tag, and no “so, what are we looking at here?” They’d found me, figured out who I was, seen my work, and handed me what I needed. All I had to do was show up and do the part I was already good at.

What I’m actually good at

That’s when it clicked.

Mowing wasn’t the thing I was best at. What I was good at was removing friction, meaning all the little stuff sitting between someone seeing good work and someone becoming a customer. Can they find you? Can they tell who you are? Can they see your work? Can they reach you when you’re busy? Can they send you what you need to give them a real answer?

That’s what I mean when I say “website.” It isn’t a page with your logo on it. It’s the whole path.

I’ve gotten a lot better since then

That was a while ago, and I’ve gotten a lot better at this since.

These days I build much bigger systems, projects in the $10,000 to $20,000+ range. I do AI consulting. I’ve spoken to rooms full of business owners about AI and technology. I’m not telling you that to sound important. I’m telling you because the kid with the QR code on his truck has had a lot of practice since then, and you get the benefit of all of it.

I still remember being that kid

Here’s the thing, though. I still care about the small version of this problem, maybe more than the big one.

I mean the person who just formed the LLC and bought the mower, or the pressure washer, or the tint film, and knows exactly how to do the work. They’re thinking, “I’m going to make this business work,” and they’re ready to put in the hours. They just aren’t really online yet and don’t know where to start.

I still remember being the kid trying to figure this out.

I wish somebody had built this for me when I was starting, so I built it for the next guy.