E145 | Luke Van Der Veer: How He Quit His 9-to-5 and Built a Freedom Business with Website Rental Coaching

Luke Van Der Veer’s journey from a 9-to-5 job to building Website Rental Coaching is a masterclass in entrepreneurial reinvention. In this episode of The Proven Entrepreneur Show, host Don Williams talks with Luke about how frustration in his corporate HR role sparked a search for independence. After experimenting with side hustles, Luke discovered SEO and realized he could help local businesses rank higher—and profit. What started as an agency quickly evolved when Luke pivoted to renting his own high-ranking websites, creating a scalable passive-income model that gave him both financial freedom and time flexibility.

As Luke Van Der Veer explains, true entrepreneurship begins with a mindset shift—from following directions to taking ownership. He shares how he faced skepticism, failures, and long nights of trial-and-error while building his first lead-generation sites. Over time, he refined his approach, selecting niches with low competition and high ROI potential, turning his websites into valuable digital real estate. His experience now powers Website Rental Coaching, where he mentors others to duplicate his success using strategic SEO, resilience, and consistent effort. The conversation highlights practical insights on risk-taking, mindset discipline, and work-life balance for entrepreneurs.

Beyond money, Luke Van Der Veer measures success by impact and lifestyle—helping others quit their jobs, find peace, and regain control of their time. As he tells Don Williams, the freedom to create, travel, and spend time meaningfully matters more than any revenue milestone. This episode offers actionable inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs seeking to escape the 9-to-5 grind and build lasting income through creativity, digital strategy, and purpose-driven work. Watch the full interview below and learn how Luke Van Der Veer turned SEO skills into a freedom-based business model that anyone can replicate.

For information on how to work with Don visit us at https://donwilliamsglobal.com
You can also reach out to Don Williams at https://provenentrepreneurshow.com

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Hey, Don Williams here with today’s episode of The Proven Entrepreneur Show. I got a real treat for you today. I have Luke Van Der Veer with website, Rental Coaching. That’s kind of an interesting name and I’m going to let Luke explain what it is, but he provides this really unique, highly valuable service. So Luke, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me, Don, I appreciate it.

it is my distinct pleasure. so let’s jump right in. Tell us what website rental coaching is, does, who you do it for, why you do it. Okay. And how your customers benefit. That’s like five parts to one question. Just a couple, just a couple of minutes. It’s a short show. So give us the best you got.

How much time you got? ⁓ man.

Okay, okay.

Yeah. So let me back it up a little bit here. I’m currently helping people build lead generation websites that they can then rent to a business. So I’ll dive into this a little bit. But first, I started doing a normal job. I had a nine to five. I used to work in human resources doing benefits. I didn’t like that job. And I was trying to figure out what can I do to not do this anymore?

Please.

And I was trying all these different side hustles. was doing, tried job shipping. was selling on Amazon. I’m selling on eBay. I did a bunch of multi-level marketing. That was miserable. There was lots of things I was trying to try to figure out how do I quit the job? And I just kept trying and trying and trying. And I eventually came across SEO. I’m like, this is really cool. You can like manipulate websites, get them to the top of Google, help businesses make money. Awesome. Built an agency, did not like working with tons of clients.

They were just always telling me, send me this report, do this stuff on my website. I was like, this is terrible. One day I had a client that, it’s how I am. I had a client call me in the middle of the night on a weekend, just wake me up out of a dead sleep and just complaining about not getting enough results. Meanwhile, this guy, two weeks, like months ago, he was just buried.

Mm-hmm.

You’re picky, Luke. You’re picky.

or like super, super far back in the search results, like page nine, 10, like he’s not getting any traffic from Google. I had had him ranked number one for weeks and he was just tons and tons of calls, eight, nine, 10 calls a day, just killing it. And he was complaining to me and I just snapped. I was like, that’s it. I shut down the agency and I switched it to now instead of working for other people, I was like, you know what? I’ll just build websites and all of the same niches I had clients in and I’ll just rent it to them.

It’s like, I’ll just keep the site myself and they could just have the leads as long as they pay me. And it actually helped. It worked out really well because they didn’t, they couldn’t complain anymore. It’s like, they changed this thing on the site. I’m like, no, it’s my site. I’m like, you can have the leads. If you want the leads, you can pay me this. If you don’t, I’ll find another person who does what you do and they can rent it. So that’s what happened with me. And I used it to quit my job. And then I had some friends say, what are you doing?

and they convinced me to show them how to do it too. And then that just kind of spun out of control because it started with referrals and then people just kept coming to me. So was like, okay, I guess I’m a coach now. So now I do both.

Okay, I love everything about that story. I had a job, I didn’t like my job, and so I was looking for a way out of my job. I built a pretty successful company, but I didn’t like all that either, and so I pivoted, and now I like it. So I appreciate that. So let me ask you this, because basically you were trying to replace a job, and now…

Bye!

Yeah.

You know, kind of accidentally, and I mean no disrespect, but you’ve actually built a company. I was replacing my job. Now I built a company, which is a different thing. It’s a different thing. Okay. Was there a moment when the light bulb went off and you said, Hey, this isn’t a job. This is a company.

Right.

Yeah, wasn’t the intent.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So when I first started doing the agency work, I thought this is going to be great. I like, have this cool skill set. I can make all this money. I’m not going to be stuck doing that whole nine to five grind, eight to six, whatever it happens to be for people. And I was working from home at least. So that was a little bit better. No commute.

Would you tell us about that?

I went really hard the first month to just pick up as many clients as possible. So much so that it got overwhelming and it very quickly turned into just me doing everything. I’m trying to hire people, stuff’s not getting done. And I just was sitting there one day like, this is miserable. I don’t want to do this at all. This is terrible. And I really, I don’t know that it was the smartest thing to do, but I didn’t have any dependents. I wasn’t married. didn’t have any.

anything I really worry about, I figure out how to make money. I could always go back and get another job if I needed to. So I just shut down the agency like overnight. I’m like, that’s it. And I just got rid of all the clients and like, you’re all done. And I kept a couple of them that were friends, but everybody else is like, that’s it here. You can work with these people. I found other people that they could like, I could refer them to for other agencies and things. And I was like, you can work with these people. I’m done. And that was it. I just shut it down.

And I started building the sites and I didn’t have any income for a little while because I turned all that off. so I was just banking on it, working. And I just got some sites to the top and some different niches, towing, towing for a couple, HVAC. what else? There was a limo, a pest control and a tree service or the six I did from the start. I got all of them to the top. And then I started calling companies and saying, Hey, you guys are ranked terribly.

You probably don’t get any business, but don’t worry. I can fix it. Just take mine. I’m number one. You can rent the top spot for me. I’ll just digitally rent you my website. And nobody knew what I was talking about. So I had to like figure out a better pitch for this. And eventually people started trying this and I would just send them a few customers because they didn’t trust me. And after they saw that I’m just like referring people to them, they’re like, okay, all right, whatever. Sure. I’ll pay for it.

And I started switching it from a pay per lead or a commission deal to a flat fee. And then I found that if I picked really easy niches that just didn’t have a lot of competition, like not a lot of other companies, a lot of kind of mom and pop shops, weaker areas and weaker niches, like maybe excavation instead of like lawyers, I didn’t have to do any work really after I got it to the top to keep it there.

So I didn’t have to do this continuous link building, continuous content, all this stuff. So it made it more passive. So between like the choosing the niches correctly and then doing like a flat fee and keeping it low enough where they’re getting a ton of ROI from me, I’m just like, okay, cool. I don’t have to do anything. So I just left it and then I just build the next one. And then I’d come back to it if there was an issue and they like called me and then I just kind of kept doing this.

So

there’s a lot of gold you’re sharing there. I mean, there’s a lot of nuggets. And the point I’m gonna add emphasis to is this. You were so over delivering on value, they were had very high ROI. And man, that’s a secret for delivering exceptional customer experience is just kill whatever your competition delivers.

just kill that. Okay. And, and you’ll never want, you know, for business. So great point. So, you know, you kind of got started doing this to escape your nine to five. um, and a lot of people think entrepreneurs, it’s all about the profit motive. They’re all going to be Steve jobs and build Apple. And, you know, after a couple hundred interviews, I can tell you, I think that’s really, really rare. Most of them are.

trying to quit their job or they don’t like this. I personally am an entrepreneur because I am, and I’ll be gentle when I say this, but I am resistant to authority. I don’t do well with people telling me what to do, which is your basic employer-employee relationship. so I always said I could have been a good follower if I had just met a good leader.

Me either.

but I never met one. So I just became my own initially, not very good leader, you know, and over a period of time you learn. So let’s, let me ask this, the people that you’re helping, cause you’ve got people now that are trying to quit their nine to five thing. Okay. They’re like, they’re like, Luke’s smarter than he looks. I want to do what Luke’s doing. You’re, you’re training them. I’m guessing, I know, I know there’s a big,

Yeah, yeah, it’s fun.

It’s fun.

mindset, gear shift they have to go through to go from employee to entrepreneur. How do you help them with that?

Yeah.

You know, the mindset thing I think is one of the toughest things. And for the longest time, when I initially started it, just, I didn’t really know what to do because I wasn’t a coach. I’m like, I’m just gonna record my exact thing, exactly what I do and just give it to you and you just try to follow the same thing. And that actually worked pretty well. But then I found that a lot of people, the business owners that I work with,

because we’re leveraging the SEO skill set, it really can help two people, right? If you can, if you want to do it like website rental, like I did, you could build sites and rent them out for some income and then quit the job, whatever. So that helps the nine to five years. The business owners were taking the SEO piece of it and growing their own companies. And then the passive income was just like an extra side thing. So like, I didn’t realize that I had the two audiences, but that’s kind of what was happening. And the business owners that were coming in were getting results much faster and in greater.

quantity than the nine to five group. And I was like, what is the difference with these people? But in talking to them and just kind of seeing what was happening, just being in this for a while, they’re just coming in with a different mindset. They know that they have to spend, they have to spend money and that there’s risk involved and they’re going to have to spend a lot of time. And it’s not a, it’s not like a choice whether you want to work. It’s like, if I’m going to do this, I need to show the discipline and show up every day, regardless of whether I feel it.

Like if I only do it when I feel like it, it’s never going to get done. Right. I can make all kinds of excuses, but no, it’s this day from this time to this time, I’m going to do this and there’s no other option. And you just have to treat it like a job to build it into something that can surpass it. And I think I, once I figured that out, I was like, okay, so I just got to talk to people about that kind of mindset shift. And I built a whole mindset piece into there. I didn’t know if people would initially need it, want it, whatever, but everybody liked it.

So I was like, okay, I guess that’s what it is. So for me, I try to find people that already have it because I think it’s easier if you just have that mindset instead of me trying to convince you of anything. But if they just need a little nudge, I basically recorded all that so they can hear like, here’s how to do this differently or how to think about it differently.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Love that. So I don’t know if it was Napoleon Hill or I’m not sure who it was, but you know, the, the single differentiator between people that are successful and people that are not successful is that people that are successful will take action, take risks, do things that people that are unsuccessful will not do. And that sounds really simple. Okay. And it is simple, but it’s also very true, you know, is

Yeah.

There’s a lot of 20 year overnight success stories from, you know, women and men who built a company and struggled and struggled, struggled, struggled, struggled, struggled, Okay. And, and then hit a 500 foot home run. And, and in fact, many entrepreneurs that, that are founders and some people inherit, you know, I mean, there is that side, but many that are founders.

If you look at their career, if you just count the days and say, well, how many days were they successful? Their unsuccessful days far outweigh their successful days. But the successful days, the dollars far outweigh even the number of unsuccessful days. so, anybody can run a business where it’s going great.

But can you run a business when it’s a little more challenging? That’s where the rubber meets the road. So hey, know you took some, it sounds like, hey, I want to quit my job. I found this thing. I started it out. Life has been good. Life has been great. Life’s even grand. It’s getting better every day. But I know somewhere, somehow, you took a couple punches along the way. Other than just the midnight call where the

Ugh.

client was unhappy because instead of getting 22 leads, he only got 18 and so he was unhappy. Do you have a time when you got knocked down and what did that experience teach you about resilience and leadership?

Yeah.

You know, I try to just look at everything as a learning opportunity. So I don’t know that I have big ones that really stick out, but I wouldn’t say consistently. It was challenging to a way to consistently get a website to the top.

That was hard because I was trying to outsource pieces of it so I didn’t have to do everything myself. And I would hire people from all over the place. was trying people from the Philippines and trying people from India and Bangladesh and all these things. And PayPal doesn’t work in some of these countries. So you can’t take the money back if they don’t deliver. So I’m paying money out, people are stealing from me and they’re copying things from other websites. And it’s a…

Don Williams (13:50)
Hmm.

Ha

for lack of a better word, a shit show, trying to figure out how to get things to work consistently. But once I kind of got that down, then it was more just trying to be persistent and keep going, even though Google keeps smacking you backwards. Because if anybody has taken a website from invisible to the top, it’s not a linear path. It’s like you one day you’re like 20, then you’re back to 80, then you’re 70. You’re just it’s this whole thing, but generally trending in the right direction. So that was weird to try to.

like get used to agency work and then through. And then I think once I kind of got the work part handled, getting beat up by family and friends and everybody else who’s supposed to support you and telling you you’re crazy, go back to your job, it’s safer, why are you doing this? This doesn’t make any sense. This is stupid. Just constant barrage of that. And the people at work laughing at you, like, why are you working at lunch? All of these things. That was, I think, the hardest part.

just listening to all that crap and just trying to tune that out and stay focused and not take any of their opinions, which I wanna pretend I don’t care, but my family’s opinion means something to me. So I’m trying to like, okay, you know, I love you guys, but you’re wrong and just keep going. That was the hardest thing I think.

Yeah, and that can be brutally hard and a lot of entrepreneurs probably quit because of things they hear from people who literally love them and think they’re helping them and that they mean well, but they’re just not wired to be an entrepreneur. And I can remember, I don’t know, 15 years ago, somebody said something, well, I just can’t stand, how do you handle the risk?

Yeah.

I’m like, what risk? And at a certain point, you’re just numb. You’re just like, I don’t see the risk. Now, if it’s like we’re going to fall off the cliff and everything’s going to crash and burn, I see that. But the minimal risk, I don’t even see, because the entrepreneur, you’re basically all in every day anyway. And so you just get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And the non-entrepreneur.

Right.

Yeah.

They’re comfortable with being comfortable. That’s the difference. Yeah. Can I be comfortable being uncomfortable? And then, you know, one of the things I share with my clients is this. Your zone of magnificence, your zone of excellence, where you can be better than anybody in the world is outside of your comfort zone. When you’re doing something where you’re wondering, is this going to work? That’s where you can be your best. Will you be your absolute best every time?

No, sometimes it won’t work, but that is the area. That’s the neighborhood. That’s the zip code where you can be literally magnificent. And so I always encourage people get out of your comfort zone and try something, do something. Life is an experiment. And so go experiment. Okay. At this stage of your journey, what drives you more? Freedom, impact, mastery.

impact because I, the originally I thought it was a dollar figure. I thought that’s what would make the difference. When I was at the nine to five job, I had this number in my head. That’s, that’s drastically higher now with how things are, but it was a hundred thousand dollars was the number in my head and my salary at my first job was 45 grand. I was like, if I could just have a hundred thousand dollars and I could have that coming in, that’s just going to solve all my problems.

But I didn’t think about, you know, what am I going to do for work or like, how far is that going to go? Can I save anything? None of this stuff. So I was just doing everything I could to make the money, but I didn’t think about what the lifestyle would be like. And the lifestyle I found was much more important. The lifestyle and the time. Time was the biggest. So once I got that with website rental and just running out sites, I was like, I don’t really know what to do with my time because I would be, I was free to go do whatever.

And like I’m at the gym in the middle of the day, I’m just golfing in the middle of the week. you know, the only people out there, all the guys that are like retired, but like none of my friends have that, they’re all at work. I’m like, what am I supposed to do for all of this time? I’m not really, like I can’t just like retire at 28. So I was like, okay, I guess I’ll just build more. So I just kept doing more work because it was becoming fun.

And then when I found you could actually help other people do this and people were getting results following the same thing, that was really cool because I was watching people quit their jobs and it didn’t quite feel the same, but it was close. And I was like, okay, I like this a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah, I love that part. I mean, it took me a long time to clarify my mission, but my mission is to help others who help others. I love helping people, but I really love people who help other people because of the impact that that has. And sometimes you don’t see all of that, but, you know, there is certainly more to it than just the dollars, the P &L and the balance sheet.

that won’t do it for you. I talked with a guest the other day and I was asking him his definition of success. I loved his answer. There was two partners and one of them was like, you know, want to do what I want to do, when I want to do it with who I want to do it with. And he said, and I’m fortunate I’ve been able to do that for some time. And his partner said, you know, I would tell you my definition of success. It’s not…

Yeah.

It’s not decimals, it’s not dollar signs. That’s a tool and I get to go places and do things I want to do. But he said, it’s just peace. If I’m at peace, if I’m content. And I was like, that is such a great way of looking at success because I think the non-entrepreneur thinks, hey, everybody in business is all about the money and we’ve got to make money, otherwise we’re on the food line.

That’s a good way to it.

But for most successful entrepreneurs, at some point, their focus shifts from money being the primary. So at one point you were like, got to have a hundred thousand dollars. then, and then all my problems are going to be solved. Life is going to be, life is going to be roses and unicorns and rainbows from that point on. But you know, what, what

of nothing.

That’s right.

entrepreneurs learn is there’s a new devil at every level. so every place you, every time you grow, there are new challenges and next steps to take. And Mark Cuban has next steps. I don’t know what they are, but, but he’s got some to take and I do and you do. So, okay, Luke, love your story. I think I’m going to reserve the right to recall the witness at a later time on a future episode.

There’s more stuff I want to talk to you about, but if one of our audience wanted to reach out to your company or to you, what’s the best way to do

Website rental coaching.com talks about what I do. It’s basically a video kind of showing some of the steps to my process. And you could also connect with me on social. If you can spell my name, I’m on Instagram. It’s just Luke van der Veer.

Yeah, and band of your three words, yes.

Well, I have it all done Instagram. It’s all just one big thing, but it is technically words capitalized. Everybody butchers it.

⁓ there you go. Yeah.

Well, yeah, they would. Okay. Luke, a real pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you so

Thank you, Don.

That’s today’s episode of The Proven Entrepreneur Show. We’ll see you next time. Thanks. Bye.