First of all - Iman uploads good content(sometimes) and there are some gold nuggets in some of his videos but don't forget the main point of these kinds of channels - to make (more) money.
Second - Don't mix Social media marketing with Social media marketing agencies.
-Social media marketing is optimizing social media profiles, posting content, answering comments, and engaging with the audience.
-SMMA's only job is to bring more clients to businesses(their clients) through various channels that might or might not be online at all (cold calling for example). Their only target is to bring more revenue to their clients. More business for their clients - more money in their pocket, as mostly they charge a percentage of ad spent or percentage of revenue brought.
Third - never ever try to start an agency or a company without knowledge and experience in the field. Yes, you can form an LLC just to pay your taxes, etc. but you have to start as an individual/freelancer/solopreneur to gain experience and knowledge. If you want to run an agency you will need good VAs and/or employees, how are you going to pick them if you have no clue what you are doing? Also as your agency is in its early stages you will have to work in it as well.
And Fourth(most important) - believe it or not, for every Iman Gadzhis out there, there are like 100k people that try and fail and maybe suffer financial losses, but you don't see that, you don't feel it and you and I and everyone else is thinking that it's a piece of cake to launch an agency overnight. It's not.
As someone once said there are 10 years of hard work behind every overnight success.
I'm not writing all of this to bash you or to discourage you(this applies to everyone that reads this). Just trying to be real here.
So what I suggest is you is to invest your time in building your skillset. This is the best investment you can make in your life because even in times of despair, low income, and world crisis, when big companies are firing hundreds of people to cut corners and when major world countries are at war - people with skills are still needed and it will always be like that.
Also, social media marketing is a giant niche(if this is what you are interested in), don't try to cover the whole niche, instead what you should do is drill down a bit. For example, you can manage Facebook pages for rehab centers. Or you can manage the Instagram pages of fitness coaches. Or you can be a Twitter ghostwriter(yes it exists and yes people pay a lot for this).
This is a very good strategy and I am going to explain why. Say you need someone to paint your daughter's bedroom, and you look for painters. Would you rather hire someone that has painted cars but also has painted interiors and wood and a lot of other stuff? Probably not - you are searching specifically for an interior painter, someone that can pick a nice color so the bedroom stays light, can cut the walls properly, and is not messy. The same applies to social media marketing or any niche for that matter. Chances are you will never have to broaden your niche if you are doing good in a small niche.
Here are a few tips:
-Start by finding your passion, you will invest months or years in this, so you have to receive some dopamine when doing it. Otherwise, you will quit and binge "rich" youtubers again.
-Don't ever look back for a second. Don't ever doubt yourself for picking this way of living - or it will slowly eat your confidence.
-Don't measure your success on daily basis. Be it income or problems you have tackled. Instead, do it weekly or bi-weekly.
-Don't try to be the guy/gal that does it all in one go or quit. Irrelevant but a very good example that opened my eyes: say you want to quit smoking, in the 1st week you smoke 20 cigs per day = 140/week. 2nd week you smoke 3 per day/21 per week, did you quit smoking? well no but 21 is damn better than 140 per week. Next week you smoke 1 per day. Next month you smoke 1 per week. Did you quit smoking, again NO, does it affect your health - given the environment that we live in I'd say 9 times out of 10, not anymore. Also, it's way easier to quit when you smoke 1 per week than when you were smoking 140 per week, am I right?
-Starting anything you have no knowledge or experience in is overwhelming(and this might make you delay or quit it altogether). Break it down into chunks that are easy to digest. Example: when I wanted to start creating software, I didn't know where to start. But after time I realized that if I break big tasks into smaller chunks it's waaay easier. I had to learn how to reverse-engineer, how to program, and how to sell my services. How to program - first research and pick a programming language, prepare an environment (IDE, GitHub, backups, VPS for testing, libraries), then learn the actual language and the libraries needed, then how to compile, then how to optimize, how to make decent GUIs, how to scale, port to different OSes etc.
-90% of the time, the time it takes you to doubt if something is going to benefit you is the same amount of time needed to do it.
-As blackhatters like to say "don't put your eggs in one basket". But as we Bulgarians say "if you are trying to sit on two chairs at the same time, you will end up on the floor". When you start offering your services/products concentrate on one marketing channel(for example Upwork), build your profile, raise your JSS, gain positive reviews, etc. After you start getting regular work from there you can invest some time to expand to other marketing channels(direct sales, cold calling, cold emailing, networking, social media, etc.). This has three benefits - 1. You know you have constant cash flow 2. You don't have to worry if the second marketing channel works or not
and 3. In some cases, you can leverage your Upwork established profile to feed authority to your next marketing channel(s) clever heh?
-Life is like a flywheel. It's hard to make it spin, but when it starts spinning it's hard to stop it. Also applies to business, relationships, and other areas of life. You start cold emailing for clients, day1 - no response, day2 no response, day3 only a few opens, week2 you continue the outreach week3 someone from day2 schedules an appointment. Don't lose hope - it will work. I have experienced this a loooot of times.
-"There is no such thing as luck" - actually there are two types of luck, the first one is what everyone would call "luck" - for example, whether or not you were born in a rich family or in a poor one. That's pure luck. But the second is not luck - it's probability and you have some control over it. "You are so lucky that you scored Adidas as a logo design client" - no I am not, I've grinded hard for years, I chose to improve myself and not to go out drinking with friends, I constantly send outreach to find new clients, Im building my portfolio, Im building my brand, I put myself out there, I have started an agency - this is not luck - this is probability and as you can see, you actually have some control of it.
-You have to find the minimum amount of levers to pull in order to succeed. Say you are a copywriter. Do you need an office, a company car, a powerful computer or a stupid AI writing algorithm to do your job? No, you need only inspiration, a laptop from 2010, and an internet connection.
Now you should Paypal me $999 for this because it probably is 90% of the content of these "masterminds" and "self-improvement" products.
Take care,
Todor.
