Made millions. Now at 0 again.

Hey everyone, just want to preface that I've known about the forum for a long time, joined a while ago, and occasionally would bump into it here and there, just like today.

I have a question as to what I should do because I truly do not know what to do.

To make a long story short without going into too much details. I am 23 right now, from age 16-19 I've ran a small "agency" but more so a freelance type thing of email & sms marketing for eCommerce brands, generated a lot of money for those branda ( mid to high 7 figures ). And got paid a percentage (performance fee, because my offer was "I do the job, don't pay anything upfront, but you pay me a % of the revenue".

Worked perfectly and I had a couple stable clients that I worked troughout the whole time during those 3 years. Well the money I've made at the time (mid six figures for the 3 years), I ended up basically blowing almost all of it on dumb shit (drinks, partying, hookers, a $30k audi TT that I totalled while on my way to register and insure it so money down the drain ), the only good thing is I didn't have nor do I still have any debt + I paid off the loan for the apartment I still live in with parents).

I am saying all of this, because right about the time my savings account was very low, I also lost my clients in a span of a week due to reasons outside of my control ( 2 clients had exits, 1 retiring & 1 dropshipping store blowing up so they moved on)

I was like no big deal, i'll find new ones and i'll be back on my horse soon, well fast forward couple months, thousands of cold emails that were personalized manually sent one by one, I noticed a trend in the replies :

- Fuck your guru
- Tell your get rich mentor to blow in my ass
- Why are you the 100th person to be sending this email today pitching same stuff

And similar, and I figured out that the niche of eCommerce was flooded with "get rich quick" students of Iman, Tate's and alike idiots, so I stopped for a bit and had to take some time off due to health reasons aswell.

Then comes a point where I decide to enroll into Uni for at least some benefits so I did that, and tried getting clients on the side nothing worked.

Completely stopped focusing on that part of my life for the past 2 years, but still kept in mind that I will figure out a way to make money again which hasn't happened.

Honestly I've had a huge goal since the start (i keep my childhood journal still) , I was 13 when I started dreamimg of having a big ass company that owns many companies and crushes the industries. (And this was my idea with email marketing aswell [Freelance -> Agency -> Equity -> Roll up -> High 8, 9 Figure Exit, Invest and live off a portion of the interest & retire]

Well, I am nowhere near close to that goal, but I still keep it in the back of my brain, because I truly believe it can be done.

My question basically is does anyone see how I can get out of this situation?

My thinking is I am already very well versed in email marketing for eComm and have the results so I am thinking of finding a remote job for email marketing positions ( I live in a 3rd world country btw, so I have to figure out how to land a remote position, if you have advice let me know ) and then since the job would provide capital i'd be able to slowly transition into the path I've mentioned earlier.

Any toughts, advice, suggestions from experienced and seasoned guys or people who've gotten out of the same quicksand before?

TLDR;

I did email & sms marketing for eComm stores, made a bunch of money for them and for me, lost the clients, did outreach figured out it became saturated, never got back on my feet again since that happened years ago, trying to figure out what to do

there is no such thing as "too saturated" if you are good at it and can generate revenue for the brands then I don't see why you wouldn't be able to do the same?. Use them as case studies, build a brand around you and go get those high ticket clients

Atleast you paid off the mortgage -- many won't have done that and don't have any debt The experience isn't going anywhere, you'll always have it with you. I'd recommend you to get Jr.VIP and JV with good sellers from here, SEO is very big industry as well and with your experience, shouldn't be hard to get you back on your feet

hellservices said:

there is no such thing as "too saturated" if you are good at it and can generate revenue for the brands then I don't see why you wouldn't be able to do the same?. Use them as case studies, build a brand around you and go get those high ticket clients

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I think I understand where you're coming from and in theory I agree that if you're good at something and can get results, you should be able to get clients.

The challenge I ran into back then and what I am almost positive is the same or even worse now is the sheer amount of volume of people pitching the same stuff.

Most replies that I got are along the lines of the " you're the 100th person pitching this" or "why tf is there so many of you, no no i do not want it bla bla". Funny thing is I've known a lot of guys who back then used to run small operations agency ( think $20-30k/month with maybe 1-2 staff ), some had paid ads as a service wether google or fb, or web design and so on. Out of the 3 guys I knew and regularly chatted with, 2 of them now sell courses just like Tate's, Iman's of the internet "Buy my course, I'll teach you how to get rich with an smma/agency model" and funnily enough both of them failed a little after my "agency" failed. The third one went on to work for a company as a CMO after closing his agency, so at least he isn't a sleaze ball like the other two.

And I am unsure of as to how to even start approaching the situation so that eventually I succeed in my endeavors with freelancing into agency into equity agency and so on.

Let me know what you or anyone else thinks.

MaxGuard said:

Atleast you paid off the mortgage -- many won't have done that and don't have any debt The experience isn't going anywhere, you'll always have it with you. I'd recommend you to get Jr.VIP and JV with good sellers from here, SEO is very big industry as well and with your experience, shouldn't be hard to get you back on your feet

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Yup that's the one good thing that I did with the money, but hey lessons learned

Yeah that's what I am counting on, even tough I haven't really done it for a while, not much has changed from what I see, maybe a few things that I could easily brush up on but the principles are still the same.

I'll check out what those are, I am guessing some type of membership or? [I'll have to save up some money first to do that, but not in a rush]

I stumbled upon email marketing because of SEO actually, I tried learning SEO back then when I started and someone had a "hiring seo experts for ecom marketing agency" or something like that, and I saw a bunch of people had started doing it, and I also didn't like it as much as the email marketing so I got the idea to do emails as a service instead of SEO and it skyrocketed from there.

Yeah, I also think in the next 3-5 years I'll be at an even better level then I was before, but we'll see, I plan on doing outreach for remote jobs first to ensure I at least have some money coming in, but we'll see.

edithwadee said:

Yup that's the one good thing that I did with the money, but hey lessons learned

Yeah that's what I am counting on, even tough I haven't really done it for a while, not much has changed from what I see, maybe a few things that I could easily brush up on but the principles are still the same.

I'll check out what those are, I am guessing some type of membership or? [I'll have to save up some money first to do that, but not in a rush]

I stumbled upon email marketing because of SEO actually, I tried learning SEO back then when I started and someone had a "hiring seo experts for ecom marketing agency" or something like that, and I saw a bunch of people had started doing it, and I also didn't like it as much as the email marketing so I got the idea to do emails as a service instead of SEO and it skyrocketed from there.

Yeah, I also think in the next 3-5 years I'll be at an even better level then I was before, but we'll see, I plan on doing outreach for remote jobs first to ensure I at least have some money coming in, but we'll see.

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Jr.VIP is our BHW membership - it'll cost you around $150, you'll probably be able to make that back from signature space alone lol and JV is joint venture - here, you'll have to vet the partners but many people are looking for serious experienced joint ventures there.

MaxGuard said:

Jr.VIP is our BHW membership - it'll cost you around $150, you'll probably be able to make that back from signature space alone lol and JV is joint venture - https://www.blackhatworld.com/forums/joint-ventures.65/, you'll have to vet the partners but many people are looking for serious experienced joint ventures there.

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Oh thank you, I guess I assumed correctly. Once I have the money, i'll definetly buy it, won't hurt if it gives access to more experienced people.

Thanks once again.

I'd suggest starting a YouTube channel around email/SMS marketing and use it to promote your services.

Crazy story bro, respect for sharing. Curious, what was the biggest lesson you took from that journey?

Rufai said:

I'd suggest starting a YouTube channel around email/SMS marketing and use it to promote your services.

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Thanks, that actually sounds like a good idea.

Wrote it down to research it a bit and how to do it, I'll most definetly do this will alongside also outreaching or a remote job.

edithwadee said:

$30k audi TT

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It deserves maan

I think this is the toughest period we will ever face. Welcome to the grind mode.

I'd suggest just grinding for as long as it takes you to find success, for us it took us 3 years. While doing this we had our full time jobs as well.

If you already have time on your side and enough money to sustain your live expenses, you're in a much better position and realistically you could probably develop something within the next 12 months. It's going to take effort and time for most of us.

Best thing you could do is find a remote job and reduce your burn rate and grind like a mad dog until you get up and out of this.

Dodi AGC said:

Crazy story bro, respect for sharing. Curious, what was the biggest lesson you took from that journey?

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Well, money wise :

- Live normally unless you have a guaranteed stable income that will continue to come forever so you can afford an expensive car, travel, luxuries etc. That was one of the biggest things I didn't think of, as I stated my mindset was when i saw the savings draining "oh no big deal, will find a client easily" and yeah here's where I ended up
- Do not flex that you have money ( I got into so many problems because of this one in particular, from false friends, crime accusations that eventually led to a short lived investigation because they had reasonable suspicion that i was a drug dealer using PayPal to launder money , people I let in my home stealing expensive stuff from me (a rolex, a 3k euro PC i just bought few days earlier at the time, but in all honesty not even mad at anything, I lived like a mad man, hung out with mad & bad people, shouldn't have expected anything else)
- Honor your principles no matter how hard it gets ( I had offers to run onlyfans managment and was offered a $30k/month salary + % of model's earning if we cross the target sales by a person I know really well and I declined it without even flinching because it goes against who I am and how I was raised (honesty, morals, integrity and legal basically)

That's about it that I can think of right now, because these constantly come to me when my mind is wandering so that's why I recalled this right away

edithwadee said:

I think I understand where you're coming from and in theory I agree that if you're good at something and can get results, you should be able to get clients.

The challenge I ran into back then and what I am almost positive is the same or even worse now is the sheer amount of volume of people pitching the same stuff.

Most replies that I got are along the lines of the " you're the 100th person pitching this" or "why tf is there so many of you, no no i do not want it bla bla". Funny thing is I've known a lot of guys who back then used to run small operations agency ( think $20-30k/month with maybe 1-2 staff ), some had paid ads as a service wether google or fb, or web design and so on. Out of the 3 guys I knew and regularly chatted with, 2 of them now sell courses just like Tate's, Iman's of the internet "Buy my course, I'll teach you how to get rich with an smma/agency model" and funnily enough both of them failed a little after my "agency" failed. The third one went on to work for a company as a CMO after closing his agency, so at least he isn't a sleaze ball like the other two.

And I am unsure of as to how to even start approaching the situation so that eventually I succeed in my endeavors with freelancing into agency into equity agency and so on.

Let me know what you or anyone else thinks.

Click to expand...

How are you pitching it? do you have a professional website, properly written case studies etc. I suggest you start spreading some of your knowledge through tiktok, instagram etc. Build a personal brand around you!. Don't be afraid to teach some haha it wont make you get less customers at all. The ones earning the big bucks are too busy running their biz to even try those stuff themseleves so they will for sure hire someone to do it and you teaching some of it will create trust showing that you do know you stuff unlike the hundreds of people that call them every day.

Yupwork said:

It deserves maan

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hallooo3 said:

I think this is the toughest period we will ever face. Welcome to the grind mode.

I'd suggest just grinding for as long as it takes you to find success, for us it took us 3 years. While doing this we had our full time jobs as well.

If you already have time on your side and enough money to sustain your live expenses, you're in a much better position and realistically you could probably develop something within the next 12 months. It's going to take effort and time for most of us.

Best thing you could do is find a remote job and reduce your burn rate and grind like a mad dog until you get up and out of this

Click to expand...

Yes I agree that I am in a much better starting position ( most of my expenses are covered because I am an above average student and I got into a scholarship of sorts for young future engineers and they basically pay for most of my stuff so not that worried on that part ).

I can't legally have a job due to law, but even if it was allowed engineering is super hard so would take away from my studies, but a remote one would be much more manageable so that's what I am going for.

And as another user said to start a YT channel to promote myself, so i'll basically do as much as I can to stir up the pot and see what sticks alongside finding a remote job that would pay heftily (because i'd be able to save 85-95% of it)

edithwadee said:

Yes I agree that I am in a much better starting position ( most of my expenses are covered because I am an above average student and I got into a scholarship of sorts for young future engineers and they basically pay for most of my stuff so not that worried on that part ).

I can't legally have a job due to law, but even if it was allowed engineering is super hard so would take away from my studies, but a remote one would be much more manageable so that's what I am going for.

And as another user said to start a YT channel to promote myself, so i'll basically do as much as I can to stir up the pot and see what sticks alongside finding a remote job that would pay heftily (because i'd be able to save 85-95% of it)

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Understandable, perhaps you could pick up some sales job that allows for remote conditions. Where are you located?

hallooo3 said:

Understandable, perhaps you could pick up some sales job that allows for remote conditions. Where are you located?

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I'll be looking into email marketing remote jobs or perhaps remote sales jobs because I have extensive experience in email marketing because I provided that servicr and I am somewhat I guess good at sales because I had to sell my clients aswell we'll see tough.

I am in Eastern Europe, not sure if I want to disclose the exact country

hellservices said:

How are you pitching it? do you have a professional website, properly written case studies etc. I suggest you start spreading some of your knowledge through tiktok, instagram etc. Build a personal brand around you!. Don't be afraid to teach some haha it wont make you get less customers at all. The ones earning the big bucks are too busy running their biz to even try those stuff themseleves so they will for sure hire someone to do it and you teaching some of it will create trust showing that you do know you stuff unlike the hundreds of people that call them every day.

Click to expand...

I used to pitch it, haven't pitched in a long time as I said.

I have case studies basically me explaining from A to Z what I did, what we expected, what we tested, what happened, how we overcame problems if there were any etc etc

But yeah as another user said I'll mostly likely start a YT channel explaining all of this to funnel potential customers to my calendar.

Why not pivot into SaaS or info-products using your email knowledge instead of just freelancing?

shijin said:

Why not pivot into SaaS or info-products using your email knowledge instead of just freelancing?

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Hey thanls for the reply. Would you be willing to elaborate a little further since I am not sure if I understand what you intended to say, I'd appreciate it.

do you still work with onlyfans?

H

teentitansgo said:

do you still work with onlyfans?

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He literally said he declined the offer...