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- May 21, 2023
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I was recently laid off from my freelancing role about 3 months ago, and since then I have been trying to build my agency, particularly around the AEC space. (Architectural, Engineering and Construction).
A bit about myself, I graduated from Civil Engineering in Australia and was a Project Manager / Consultant for about 6-7 years, with experience in many industries such as Water Infrastructure, Defence, Schools, Enviromental Remediation. As well as managing projects, I did a lot of procurement side of things, which was writing bids and proposals on behalf of my company and also reviewing subsequent bids from contractors as an Owners rep.
Within that time, I also did dropshipping, learnt about facebook ads, google ads and learned massively about copywriting, and made some decent side money (not a lot, just nice amount). And it was actually selling shoes, and they were super nice shoes. At the same time, I was also learning cold emailing too and did several campaigns for a founder, who wanted to bring me onboard, because he saw that I made a small demo tool of upcoming council projects, by basically extracting all the minutes and using my procurement knowledge to identify the projects to be released to the market soon.
Now I ran a few email campaigns for him, and one of them kind of took off and got him about 20 odd leads within 3-4 weeks, and booked about 10-15 calls. I can't remember but it was super cool because they were struggling to book meetings and I kind of just played around with it. Anyways, I left because nothing really came out of those calls and I left because I felt there was a bit of a value misalignment with the founder.
This then led me to a freelance role for a GC in the US, as a freelance marketer or GTM or RevOps etc. I don't know whats the correct name but I think you get my gist. Anyways, this was an incredibly valuable role for me because the construction sales cycle in the US is completely different to the Australian landscape and it was just insane (in a good way). Or maybe, its just the CEO. Over here, I did upskill in copywriting and email infrastructure and data analysis (around deliverability), routing all email leads to their SDRs, designing MQL and SQL sequences. I also had to manage the VAs too. Eventually, the client churned because he couldn't find anymore role for me. ie. when you run a campaign and you intend to keep the same campaign running for 6 months with the same leads, it kinda limits what you're creatively able to do and you become a man manager.
Within this time, I was also growing my subreddit around the AEC community. Because all of the clients I was getting was actually from reddit, which was super valuable especially while I was building my email skills. And I can see this being potentially used to grow a community around my niche, and it currently has approx 3000 subscribers, which I trippled in 6 weeks, through data driven content. I basically some of the best engaging posts on other platforms, looked at the analytics and tried to understand what gets insane amounts of engagement, and then re-created that on my subreddit. This was much better than grinding. Will it convert to a paying audience. No, not in the way you think, but it does open up really interesting conversations and referrals that led me to my next client and a project im working on with 2 AEC "influencers". I put this in quotation because I think they are influencers in the sense that they are very much in the media and do have an audience.
Subsequently, I got a con-tech client since then and I will be running lead gen for them and doing content as a fractional marketer and I am super excited for them because they have a product market fit and have been picking up enterprise contracts lately, so I really want to help them scale that rocket.
A bit about myself, I graduated from Civil Engineering in Australia and was a Project Manager / Consultant for about 6-7 years, with experience in many industries such as Water Infrastructure, Defence, Schools, Enviromental Remediation. As well as managing projects, I did a lot of procurement side of things, which was writing bids and proposals on behalf of my company and also reviewing subsequent bids from contractors as an Owners rep.
Within that time, I also did dropshipping, learnt about facebook ads, google ads and learned massively about copywriting, and made some decent side money (not a lot, just nice amount). And it was actually selling shoes, and they were super nice shoes. At the same time, I was also learning cold emailing too and did several campaigns for a founder, who wanted to bring me onboard, because he saw that I made a small demo tool of upcoming council projects, by basically extracting all the minutes and using my procurement knowledge to identify the projects to be released to the market soon.
Now I ran a few email campaigns for him, and one of them kind of took off and got him about 20 odd leads within 3-4 weeks, and booked about 10-15 calls. I can't remember but it was super cool because they were struggling to book meetings and I kind of just played around with it. Anyways, I left because nothing really came out of those calls and I left because I felt there was a bit of a value misalignment with the founder.
This then led me to a freelance role for a GC in the US, as a freelance marketer or GTM or RevOps etc. I don't know whats the correct name but I think you get my gist. Anyways, this was an incredibly valuable role for me because the construction sales cycle in the US is completely different to the Australian landscape and it was just insane (in a good way). Or maybe, its just the CEO. Over here, I did upskill in copywriting and email infrastructure and data analysis (around deliverability), routing all email leads to their SDRs, designing MQL and SQL sequences. I also had to manage the VAs too. Eventually, the client churned because he couldn't find anymore role for me. ie. when you run a campaign and you intend to keep the same campaign running for 6 months with the same leads, it kinda limits what you're creatively able to do and you become a man manager.
Within this time, I was also growing my subreddit around the AEC community. Because all of the clients I was getting was actually from reddit, which was super valuable especially while I was building my email skills. And I can see this being potentially used to grow a community around my niche, and it currently has approx 3000 subscribers, which I trippled in 6 weeks, through data driven content. I basically some of the best engaging posts on other platforms, looked at the analytics and tried to understand what gets insane amounts of engagement, and then re-created that on my subreddit. This was much better than grinding. Will it convert to a paying audience. No, not in the way you think, but it does open up really interesting conversations and referrals that led me to my next client and a project im working on with 2 AEC "influencers". I put this in quotation because I think they are influencers in the sense that they are very much in the media and do have an audience.
Subsequently, I got a con-tech client since then and I will be running lead gen for them and doing content as a fractional marketer and I am super excited for them because they have a product market fit and have been picking up enterprise contracts lately, so I really want to help them scale that rocket.
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