3 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started SMMA

so this year we'll actually my 4th anniversary of signing my first sm8 client and Wow this time fly I've made a lot a lot of mistakes and I'm here to make sure that you don't make the same ones because as brandon Mull says smart people learn from their mistakes but the really sharp ones learn from the mistakes of others now before we get started I actually want to do something quite interesting first things first go ahead and smash the like button second I want you to pause the video and comment down below what is one

thing you wish you knew when you first start SMA now where you can drop your comment and you can see the rest of the video and you'll be interested to see if we have any commonalities anything that we both wish we knew when we first start as mates so with no further ado here are three things I wish I knew when I first started SMA number one is jump and build on your way down what I mean by that is people spend so long focusing on the relevant when it's just that it is irrelevant you

know I find it so amusing when I see all these people spending so much time on on their logo and their web design and this and that and just what it is is this procrastination and it's stalling from the thing that's actually gonna get you results as an agency owner which is sending appointments getting clients and from there getting clients stellar incredible results and I guess the reason I find it so amusing is I go to $15,000 a month with my agency with no name no website no business cards literally I didn't even have an

agency name I'm actually I think it was at a 4 or 5 class within the space of 45 days scale up to $15,000 a month and I didn't even have a name or a website because I'm sure as you're familiar success likes speed okay so set up the basics and then get started now there is one sort of caveat and one sort of nuance to this and that is for the large portion of you guys watching this are actually enrolled in agency incubator I give you guys your website your scheduling page your onboarding funnel like

four or five six other funnels to actually run the agency all with a one click integration you just press one button it's import it into your click funnels I give you guys step-by-step instruction in excruciating detail on how to actually set up your payment processes had invoicing bill clients how to set up your domain how to set up your business email at a set of econ tracks and actually giving you fifteen plus different legal agreements and contracts so really every student who comes into agency in committee you have a fully functioning agency within five days

so my point is whether you're an agency incubator or not if you're an agency incubator almost you have the luxury of having all that stuff kind of plug and play so you can spend your first week just setting up your entire agency but if you don't have agency incubator not to worry spend your first week setting up as much of the basics of having an agency as possible for example I getting a business email getting a domain getting a very cheap logo done trying to get some sort of website done if you can but my

point is once it hits that seven day mark of okay I've started an agency I've made the conscious decision to start an agency seven days on from that point you should be reaching out to clients and that brings me on to point number two the second thing I wish I knew when I first started my agency was fill up your calendar at all costs here's the thing no matter what you do in life you are never going to be good at it when you first start and that includes sales so what you need more than

anything else is practice experience and reference points so that is why I want you to start filling up your calendar with meeting slash sales calls ASAP because look realistically when you first start an agency it's gonna take you a few weeks maybe even a few months to sign your first client yes there's outliers out there yes I've had students who've sign a clan veloute within 24 hours or a couple days or we've had a lot of instances of students scaling to 10k within their first 30 days but I'm gonna be honest with you those are

outliers so the common path once you start an agency is you get your first client within a few weeks or a few months kind of within that time frame so the reason I'm saying that is don't think you need to set up all of your website stuff you have to literally become an expert in Facebook Ads or SEO or social media of growth or content whatever service you're actually selling just start selling it with a baseline competence knowledge of how you would deliver those services or how you would get a contractor to deliver those services

for you because as I said realistically you're not gonna sign your first one two three meetings yes it happens within your first 1 2 3 meetings or sales calls you're a bit nervous you're a bit stifled because as I said sales is a skill just like anything else on earth and you get better and better with it over the time and that brings me on to my next point with this which is when you first start go for quantity over quality focus on filling up your calendar rather than having the highest quality leads when you

first start with your agency the highest or a wide thing you could do is setting appointments jumping on sales call / in-person meetings however you decide to do it because the only outcome from that is one of two things either you've made money in Santa client or you have experience you have reference points and if you're doing your sales calls / meetings on zoom' or Skype or online then hopefully you should have a recording - so you can actually see where you're going wrong in the meeting with your sales process and that's kind of what

I wish I had thought about or known when I first started I wish I had looked at me getting on the meeting with the client as having already one because quite frankly I earn something more valuable than money which is experience and at the beginning I'm telling you experience and getting a little bruised and bloodied and you know just being in the arena and not being in simulation mode anymore that is so so I really I could go on for hours about just how profound and how valuable that is now the third thing that I

wish I knew when I first started my social media marketing agency is focus on being a better entrepreneur and a better human full-stop you see you need to understand that having a successful business 30% comes out - the business tactics and strategy the other 70% comes down to the basics the fundamentals of building blocks as an entrepreneur as a human and it's exactly why my education how many agents adolfo yes technically we teach aspiring agency owners how to start a scale or people who are we have agencies take their agency to an entirely new level

in height yes technically it's business consulting but I teach every single one of my students biohacking fundamentals how to sleep better how to meditate how to optimize your focus how to streamline your entire life how to replace your identity how to improve your environment and your working conditions I do all of this so not only can they be a better agency owner they can be a better entrepreneur . and if you want proof of that I have three very successful businesses I have my advertising agency IG media I have my education company or agency comm

and I also have a physical brand a physical ecommerce brand now gadji which is my clothing line and all those companies are sitting at either multi six-figure or seven figures a year now why is that why have I been able to replicate that success across advertising agency education company and a clothing line it's because I focus on being a t-shaped entrepreneur now clothes you guys who don't know what t-shaped means they use it a lot in sort of corporate world tech IT world t-shaped basically means you know a decent amount about a lot of things

and you're an expert in one or two fields and that's really what I want for you as an entrepreneur I don't want you to just be a one-trick pony I want you to know a decent amount about a lot of things and be an expert in one or two fields so ladies and gentlemen those are the three things that I wish I knew when I first started my estimating number one jump and build on your way down number two fill up your calendar at all costs and number three focus on being a better entrepreneur slash

human and then that will reflect in your agency now if you have just started your agency or you're kinda in the first 18 months you are in for one incredible incredible ride I can tell you from me personally and said you know coming up to kind of my fourth anniversary or signing my first client but I'd say I started my agency properly properly eight months after I signed my first client so you know it's been three years now just over three years and I'd say the first 18 months was cool you know obviously within the

first 18 months I'm asking my agency up to twenty twenty-five thousand dollars per month profit at points but it just wasn't as a light and easy and enjoy and almost effortless as it is now and that's the thing in the first 18 months most agency owners quit and if you get past that point you will fall into the upper echelon of agency life and I'm telling you once you're in the upper echelon the life is good 20 19 was the first year my agency had a hundred K month profit and all in all our agency

went strength to strength our clown results got better than they ever had and retainers got higher than they've ever been so I really do implore you if you're watching this you just saw your agency or in that first 18 month period I'm telling you unlike many other business models out there and I see this all the time there's a bunch of business models out there where it kind of goes like this and then they face entropy and it goes like that and I've seen a lot a lot of businesses and a lot of different industries

crash and burn because they got that spike but things don't build a year or on year when you have an agency you're building roots you're building foundations and they strengthen every single year that's one thing that comes with having a service-based business so you're interfering absolutely treat I hope you guys enjoy this video as I said go ahead and smash that like button it really really helps out the algorithm I'm gonna be checking out the comments and seeing what you guys said you wish you knew when you first start you're s major knee so hope

you guys enjoyed I'll see you guys in the next video