Dan Henry started working as a pizza delivery boy at age 16.
Fed up with “trudging through six feet of snow, up six flights of stairs to get a $2 tip,” he set his sights on something more, and spent two years learning everything he could about running an online business.
“I would read these stories, like ’18-year-old kid started an office chair site and makes $1 million,’ and I was just like, ‘I want to be one of those guys.’ I just decided,” he told Business Insider. “When I launched my first site, I was making $30,000 a month in profit 14 months later.”
When Google changed its algorithms and his earnings started to slow, he switched paths to brick-and-mortar businesses, reviving two local bars through Facebook ads and flipping them for a profit.
Today, having secured six-figure annual profits, the 30-year-old has turned his attention to helping others achieve their own entrepreneurial success through private coaching and courses.
When asked what he wishes he’d known when he was first starting out in 2009, he narrows it down to two points:
You can sell without a website
While he has a website for people who want to learn, the majority of his business comes through sales funnels. A sales funnel is a multi-step system to convert leads into customers, and doesn’t always (or even usually) begin with direct traffic to a website. “I wish I would have known that you don’t need a website to make sales,” Henry said. “I wish I would have used funnels more than a site, and I wish I would have used Facebook ads a lot earlier.”
It’s never too soon to start putting yourself out there
“I wish I’d gotten out there and put myself out there like I am now,” Henry said. He’s found, for him and for this students, getting a taste of success is critical to growing a business. “The biggest check I ever got was $98,000, and when you’re standing there, holding the check, feeling the little ridges of the check between your fingers, you’re like this is effing real. Now, all the things you didn’t do because you were were too lazy or didn’t think it would work, now you’re excited about them.”
That’s the reason he celebrates his students’ successes so publicly, like the 19-year-old who saved up $1,000 to take Henry’s course and landed a $1,300-a-month Facebook ads client, or the student who earned over $50,000 in a single week by launching a course of her own.
“I like to show off, whether it’s myself or my students,” he said. “I will show screenshots of my bank account because I want to be like, ‘Listen, this is real. This is something that happens to people, but you have to be motivated to make this happen.’ Because I didn’t taste it, I wasn’t motivated. You can do it right now — the difference is you’re just not motivated because you don’t know what it tastes like.”