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BdaZ's Road To Financial Freedom

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

BdaZ

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Sep 6, 2020
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Hi Everyone,

Figured I make a thread about my journey to financial Freedom. Not only that, but also geographical freedom and time freedom.

A little bit of backstory:

I am currently running a digital marketing agency (yeah I know, very original :p). I'm mostly working with Facebook ads and Med spa's, but i definitely want to offer more services for more audiences, because Facebook is highly unreliable.

I'm trying to systemize as much as I can so software or other people can take over work from me.

My plan with this journal is to keep myself accountable and if any of you guys want to keep me accountable, thats great as well of course.

Currently my income ranges from €1500 in bad months to €4000 in good months. I have already had this agency for about 3 years now, and I can't seem to get past the €5000+ mark. So my first goal is to get past €5000 consistently and then quickly build to €10k a month. I have some systems in place already, but I just have to execute harder, it's as simple as that. More follow up sales calls on people who expressed interest.

Excited to share this journey with you guys. Im planning to update at least once a week.
 
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Paul David

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Hi Everyone,

Figured I make a thread about my journey to financial Freedom. Not only that, but also geographical freedom and time freedom.

A little bit of backstory:

I am currently running a digital marketing agency (yeah I know, very original :p). I'm mostly working with Facebook ads and Med spa's, but i definitely want to offer more services for more audiences, because Facebook is highly unreliable.

I'm trying to systemize as much as I can so software or other people can take over work from me.

My plan with this journal is to keep myself accountable and if any of you guys want to keep me accountable, thats great as well of course.

Currently my income ranges from €1500 in bad months to €4000 in good months. I have already had this agency for about 3 years now, and I can't seem to get past the €5000+ mark. So my first goal is to get past €5000 consistently and then quickly build to €10k a month. I have some systems in place already, but I just have to execute harder, it's as simple as that. More follow up sales calls on people who expressed interest.

Excited to share this journey with you guys. Im planning to update at least once a week.

the best advice I see lots of successful marketing agency owners give someone in your position is to make sure you’re spending 80% of your time doing outreach to sign more clients.

focus on setting appointments with these people and closing them.
 

BdaZ

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Sep 6, 2020
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Vietnam
the best advice I see lots of successful marketing agency owners give someone in your position is to make sure you’re spending 80% of your time doing outreach to sign more clients.

focus on setting appointments with these people and closing them.
Yeah thats very true. I have a pretty decent system now where I get a lot of "yes's" in my cold outreach. If they say "yes" they go to a page with a video where I explain them how our service will get them at least 20+ appointment requests a month. They can book a call below that video, and I also email follow up with them to book the call. Unfortunately, most don't book the call themselves, so I have to do more of the follow ups myself by calling them.
 

BdaZ

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Sep 6, 2020
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Vietnam
Almost 1 month later now after my first post and decided it's time for an update. From now on I want to update this thread at least once a week on Sunday to write out weekly goals and reflect back on the week.

Reflecting back on the month
At the moment I have 5 Facebook ads clients who pay me on average €500 a month. Which is not enough. I'm looking a lot into finding ways to solve more problems and can thus charge more money

I have a lot of leads that I got with cold email, but they need to be called more consistently to make an appointment for a salescall. One of my weaknesses is being inconsistent and easily distracted. One day I do a lot and another day I hardly do anything. This needs to improve and I have to make these calls, even though its my least favorite thing of the business.

Last month I got 2 new clients though which is good, but my price point to get started is low for the first month. At the moment I have a Facebook ads offer for €300 for the first month. After the first month they will pay €500 a month for my lowest tier offer

I also started working on a cold email lead generation service for marketing agencies. I have a specific method that gets me a lot of leads, that I know can be very valuable to marketing agencies, especially if they have their sales teams ready to book calls and make appointments. I could also offer this as an extra service to call leads and make appointments.

And lastly, I'm building a FB ads lead generation course for small business owners in the Netherlands. I noticed there are quite a lot of business owners who just want to do it themselves. The course I am creating is for them. At the moment I have priced it at €500.

Points of improvement:

- I need to be more accountable to myself and do those tasks that I know need to happen (mostly call follow-ups)
- Work more and put more quality in the time . Must get at least 4 hours of FOCUSED work blocks in 6 days a week. In 4 hours of focused work you can do more than 12 hours of unfocused work, so I make sure these 4 hours are distraction free. I know 4 hours doesn't sound like a lot, but my focus is something I need to work on. If I can get 4 hours of focused work in every day, Im already improving a lot and can build from there.
- Work more focused and block time


Main goals for this week

- Finish my marketing system for my cold email service for agencies. I still need to write my own email sequence, I need to create a video lead magnet and I need to hire someone to get me 50 agency owners emails.
- Get my Facebook ads course sales page ready and finish course slides
- Call 30 leads to make appointments
- Reach out to former clients with an offer to get them back working with me again
- Send out a minimum of 10 proposals on upwork to acquire a few side jobs and gain more experience
 
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BlackMagician

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At the moment I have 5 Facebook ads clients who pay me on average €500 a month. Which is not enough. I'm looking a lot into finding ways to solve more problems and can thus charge more money
Instead of getting them on retainer, go with performance based model. You don't charge them anything if you don't perform. If you did, you earn a % of rev/profit or whatever deal. This way, if you perform you can earn a lot with few clients.
 

BdaZ

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Sep 6, 2020
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Vietnam
Instead of getting them on retainer, go with performance based model. You don't charge them anything if you don't perform. If you did, you earn a % of rev/profit or whatever deal. This way, if you perform you can earn a lot with few clients.
Good point. I'm actually working on recreating my offer indeed and work more towards a performance-based model. I'm gonna test out a new method with a new client where their client pays online and upfront. I will do this by generating leads like I did before, but then on the thank you page add a bonus offer that if they pay and schedule now they get X bonus. This will be a performance based offer. It will be interesting to see how this will play out and it will have huge upside potential if it works out well.
 

BlackMagician

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Good point. I'm actually working on recreating my offer indeed and work more towards a performance-based model. I'm gonna test out a new method with a new client where their client pays online and upfront. I will do this by generating leads like I did before, but then on the thank you page add a bonus offer that if they pay and schedule now they get X bonus. This will be a performance based offer. It will be interesting to see how this will play out and it will have huge upside potential if it works out well.
So it feels you have the money mindset right now. Change that.
It's not about money. Give value to your clients.

They will pay you good on performance model if you give them value way higher than what they pay.
 
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BdaZ

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Sep 6, 2020
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Week reflection

This was a week of "busy" work, but not too much productive work. Did a lot of work for clients, which is usually a bad sign as it means that my campaigns aren't doing as well as they should.

Have not reached my goals. Even close. I didn't even do 1 follow up call... I didn't finish my cold email service yet... I didn't

So what did I do? I did finish my course sales page, but for the rest a lot of procrastinating. I am procrastinating mostly on the tasks that need to happen the most. The tasks that are bringing in the cash in the register. Which is actually picking up the phone to leads and book a real sales appointment.

I seem to have a fear of "bothering" people, even though I know what I have to offer is good. So 100% need to work on overcoming that and letting go of that fear. The best way to do that of course i just to take the action and expand the comfort zone.

Also BlackMagicians post also made me think about doing a more results based offer. I just came up with a new offer that may be more attractive to customers, but is also more valuable for me. My plan is to ask a small set up fee upfront and charge €20 - €25 per lead.

Points of improvement
- More productive work. Doing those follow up calls. However, I want to just do this temporary. Because my main focus should be to work on the business. Working out the marketing strategies, the funnels, the systems, the checklists, so other people can take over from me. But before I get to that point, I should do it myself successfully as well. Besides, I think it will be good for my personal growth to do these calls myself.

- Always be selling. Market and sell everyday and you will make more money. Whether it's with a call, by email... This machine can not stop and it has been stopped lately. This can never happen again.

-Test out my new offer with the market. See how they respond to it and if they like it. Will send the offer to about 10 potential customers by email and 5 former clients by email and lets see how many replies we can get.
 

BdaZ

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Sep 6, 2020
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Work = Play

Just a little insight I had this morning. I realized I had been viewing work too much as "work that has to be done" and not necessarily something I want to do or something that's fun.

If you view work this way, you have to utilize a lot of willpower and "hustle" to get through the day. Apart from that you probably also have to escape your work a lot for breaks, food, checking the Facebook newsfeed, etc to just take a break from the "stressful" work for a while.

Luckily as human beings, we have the power to change our attitude towards all things (learned this in the book "Man's search for meaning"). And I realized it's very important to start viewing work as fun, as play. If you manage to do that successfully, you've already won in the business game and the results to show in the bank account will just be a matter of time.

When you are playing a video game, you don't hustle, you don't grind, you just play the game because it's fun and time will pass very quickly. We can view business the same way. With this attitude, you can work all day, and time will pass you by. And you can do it day in, day out. Now, of course, just realizing this is not enough. I need to put it into practice. But there are just so many fun things to do in business, you just need to realize that.

Sales is fun. Marketing is fun. Being "rejected" by a prospect is fun and something to learn from and not something to be afraid of Creating new offers and testing them out in the marketplace is fun. Talking with prospects is fun. Creating new sales pages and sending traffic to them is fun. Mapping out a new marketing strategy is fun. Improving my sales, marketing and business skills is fun. It's all a fun game. Realize this and you can wake up excited to work on your business every day.

I use the word "you" and "your" in this text, but it's actually directed towards myself.

Now let's play and have some fun today!
 

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