On building a $48k/month business with no money, skills or experience

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Victor ThomasFrom Tiburon, California

Owner at Thomas Digital

Business Model: Agency$48,000monthly revenue$20,000monthly profitAll info self-reported by intervieweePublished January 2, 2020Reviewed and edited by Rita Epps



Who are you and how do you make money online?

Hi there, my name is Victor Thomas and I own a website design business based out of San Francisco, California.

We specialize in designing and developing custom WordPress websites for small and medium-sized businesses, typically in the service industry. Our pricing ranges from $5k-$35k per website project, with the average website project being about $7.5k.

As of writing this in December 2019, I have 11 full-time employees. They all work virtually, with most of the team being in the Philippines.

So far this year we made just over $540,000 in revenue for the business.

It wasn’t always this way.

I started my business broke, desperate and clueless.

In my first year in business, I think I made something like $35,000 in total. This was about 9 years ago.

Since then the business has steadily grown each year.

Profit and loss so far this year (mid-December 2019)



What does a typical workday look like for you?

What I love most about my business is that I get to live life on my own terms. 

I have the flexibility to make my own schedule and work when and where I want.

My typical day starts at around 5:30am.

I usually spend the first couple of hours working at a coffee shop a couple of blocks from my home which I walk to.

I use this time to work on the important but not urgent tasks for my business, which for me is usually content writing or general strategy.

$100k/month in FREE Google traffic

Then I usually go for a run, come back home and check my email.

If it’s Monday I’ll do a team meeting with my team. We meet once a week via Google Hangouts. 

Most of my team is in the Philippines. Even though they work remotely they are my full-time employees. I’m lucky to have a very loyal and dedicated team, with my oldest team members dating back 7 years now.

I don’t really like doing meetings, so we only do one per week just to make sure we don’t forget what everyone looks like.

Working hard at my home office

I like to run my business out of Asana and block off my calendar each day for times to talk to new leads and existing clients.

I block off Tuesdays and Thursdays for no calls so I can focus and work on developing my business and catching up on project work for existing clients.

I have two small kids, so sometimes my day ends as early as 2pm when I have to pick them up. But mostly I’m working till around 5pm.

I don’t work weekends and spend quite a bit of time with my family, at least 3-4 hours a day, which is pretty good given my workload.