Will Ray. I help beginners start a web agency and land their first client. Kitchen table to $15,000 a month. Clean since 2017. Dad.
not prison anymore
Joined April 2022
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People ask how I build a business with two teenagers in the house.
Full custody of both. Anthony's 16. Billy's 14.
That's a big part of why I work for myself. I get to give them the hours instead of giving them to a boss.
They're why this has to work.
"Do I use a CRM? I would have to learn the CRM and how it works."
I run it all myself. AI builds the sites. Blog posts and reports run on a schedule. I do the outreach, the replies, and the closing.
First client? You need a spreadsheet of who you messaged. Not a CRM.
"when it comes to doing projects on my own I freeze up."
Stop picking projects. Let a business pick it. Find one plumber with a bad site and build his homepage.
Use AI for the parts you freeze on. Make it explain every line.
A practice project never made anybody's phone ring.
I've been in sales my whole life. Took me a while to pick something legal.
In-home sales I closed about one in five. Same skill, pointed at contractors now.
"I'm an older web developer that nobody wants to hire, over 50."
Being older hurts you in a job interview. It helps you here.
The guys you'll message are forty, fifty, sixty. They'd rather pay somebody who talks like them.
Free playbook:
heywillray.com/playbook?from…
Tech Dad Media LLC. Registered and everything.
Went as a felon with an LLC this Halloween. Same as every day.
"How do you get contact details of those contacts?? Through Apollo or Google Maps??"
Google Maps. It's free.
Search a trade and a town. Find five with no website or a dead one. His phone and Facebook are right on the listing.
That's your first list.
"Do your clients want a CMS (so they can directly edit text etc?)"
Mine don't get one. On purpose.
A contractor doesn't want to log in to anything. He texts me a photo of a new job and it's on his site.
A guy he can text is what he keeps paying for.
"Does the record stop people from hiring you?"
In and out of jail several times. Then 18 months in prison. I don't hide any of it.
A contractor wants his phone to ring. That's what he's hiring me for.
"Where to start? What knowledge I need?"
AI builds the site now. More code won't help.
What's missing is who to message, what to say, when to build the demo, and what goes in the monthly.
I wrote all of it in one book. Build First.
heywillray.com/build-first?f…
First stranger I ever sold a site to was a plumber off a cold call. I paced the house before I dialed.
Then I had to go build it.
An agency guy described churn under my video. Month one, fine. Month two, no leads. Month three, cancel.
Here's how you keep him. The monthly pays for search work, blog posts, and a report that shows what moved.
Guys don't cancel a thing they can watch working.
A developer asked why I don't build sites in React and Next.js.
For the code, no downside. AI writes it either way.
I check three things. Fast on his phone? Phone number changed in two minutes? Still works untouched for a year?
Pick the stack that's boring to keep running.
"you aren't exactly giving us any key insight."
Fair. This is the blank template I start from. Every homepage does five things:
Tappable phone number up top.
His customers' words.
His job photos.
His towns, by name.
One button.
Get those right before colors or fonts.
"Easy work to do, getting clients is the hardest part."
Top comment on my most watched video.
What I do is boring. Twenty messages a day. Each one points at something on his site that's costing him calls.
The messages are in the free playbook:
heywillray.com/playbook?from…
"can I do this remotely from a Balkan country?"
Yes. A laptop and a phone is the whole office.
Check your town in ten minutes. Open Google Maps, search plumbers or roofers, count the ones with no site or a bad one.
Where are you reading this from?
