Is a digital marketing agency a Fastlane business?

[ajlall]

I'm in the process of starting a digital marketing agency, and I don't know whether it is a Fastlane business or not. I get clients on a monthly retainer, and every month I pay a freelancer to do the work for the clients, so I don't spend much time doing actual work(in theory). I started working on it before I came across the Millionare Fastlane, and I just want to know whether I should make this my main income stream or work on a better business model. Here's how it compares to the NECST commandments:

Need: Small businesses need to expand their marketing online to keep their businesses growing/afloat because of the pandemic and the increasing spread of the Internet.
Entry: There's plenty of competition in the digital marketing industry, and I even got the idea from an Iman Gadzhi video here:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNRGkMeITVU&t=1334s
. It is, however, a pretty long process to actually get the business up and running(for me at least).
Control: I'll own the business and make all the business decisions.
Scale: I can easily scale past my local area(which I'm targeting as of now) because my business offers online services. The profit I'll theoretically get from each client is roughly a couple hundred dollars, but I can change that as my services get better. I can take on a pretty large number of clients(theoretically) because I can just hire more freelancers or give one freelancer more clients.
Time: I've organized everything and have streamlined the outreach process, and once I start the business I'll try to automate as much as I can. Additionally, I'm opening the business with a friend, and I'm thinking that if this business isn't a Fastlane business, I can probably just shoulder all the work onto him, and use the extra time to start a Fastlane business(basically withdrawing from the company while taking a good chunk of the profits for some passive income).

This is my first time doing anything even remotely entrepreneurial, so please give me some different perspectives on this business model.

 

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[SEBASTlAN]

GOLD! - IDEA - MINDSET - Is This Idea/Business/Blah Blah Fastlane? (Uh, no, it isn't.)

Is this Fastlane? Folks, the worst thing you can do after joining the forum is asking the question, “Is this Fastlane?” If you have been linked to this post, there’s a reason why. From this point forward, I will officially ignore any post that contains any variation of “is this Fastlane?”...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

 

[BigRomeDawg]

As an agency, you're just reselling labour and the labour typically scales proportionally with the revenue. You're not going to get the same scale economics as some examples in TMF, like "if I sell 10,000 units per month, and I want to give myself a $20,000/month raise, I can just increase the price by $2/unit".

Unless you are getting a commission per unit sold, or some other way of detaching the money made from the time put into it.

That being said, agencies can have amazing margins, get quite large, and be very successful. If this is your first business, great model to "cut your teeth on" and learn skills that will transfer into a truly Fastlane business later.

 

[ajlall]

As an agency, you're just reselling labour and the labour typically scales proportionally with the revenue. You're not going to get the same scale economics as some examples in TMF, like "if I sell 10,000 units per month, and I want to give myself a $20,000/month raise, I can just increase the price by $2/unit".

Unless you are getting a commission per unit sold, or some other way of detaching the money made from the time put into it.

That being said, agencies can have amazing margins, get quite large, and be very successful. If this is your first business, great model to "cut your teeth on" and learn skills that will transfer into a truly Fastlane business later.

Thanks so much!

 

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[ajlall]

GOLD! - IDEA - MINDSET - Is This Idea/Business/Blah Blah Fastlane? (Uh, no, it isn't.)

Is this Fastlane? Folks, the worst thing you can do after joining the forum is asking the question, “Is this Fastlane?” If you have been linked to this post, there’s a reason why. From this point forward, I will officially ignore any post that contains any variation of “is this Fastlane?”...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

Thanks for the heads up!

 

[Black_Dragon43]

First, quit watching Iman Ghadzi, it’s a waste of time for starry-eyed desperate kids. I literarily don’t know of even a single respectable agency owner who even knows him, much less follows in his path.

You should look less for flashy, in-your-face stuff and more for things that actually work and get results. It’s sort of choosing the dirty, poorly clad mechanic with oil all over his face over the fancy and sleek mechanic dressed in a suit. One of them is trying very hard to create a good impression - BECAUSE HIS PRODUCT SUCKS - and the other is busy getting dirty and getting things done. Learn from doers, not salespeople.

Second, an agency can be fastlane provided you come from a systems-building approach, know how to build & manage larger teams, and build an agency that you can sell. Agencies still sell for 5-10x annual revenues… so if you scale an agency to $500K/yr you can sell for $2.5M-5M which is a nice lump sum.

Having said that, an agency isn’t fastlane BY NATURE. Meaning that you have to create the barrier to entry - through your network, through your contacts, through your intellectual property. And you have to create the SCALE and TIME - by knowing how to secure customers without investing your own time AND how to extract maximum value from your existing customers.

To make it fastlane you need to stop treating your agency like a “side hustle” and start treating it like a real business. A real business is something important, something that consumes your entire life. It’s like a child - you gotta believe in it even when no one does, even when things may look hopeless.

Here are a few threads that you should find helpful in your journey:
• MARKETING - Stats + How to Master LinkedIn For Outbound Appointment Setting in 2022/3
• SIDE HUSTLE - 3 Steps to Create an Irresistible Message to Market Your Agency

In addition feel free to check out my profile for the free training I did for agency owners about 1 year back or follow me on LinkedIn.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Any business concept pushed by some over-hyped guru is a business concept you want to avoid.

 

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[ZackerySprague]

I'm in the process of starting a digital marketing agency, and I don't know whether it is a Fastlane business or not. I get clients on a monthly retainer, and every month I pay a freelancer to do the work for the clients, so I don't spend much time doing actual work(in theory). I started working on it before I came across the Millionare Fastlane, and I just want to know whether I should make this my main income stream or work on a better business model. Here's how it compares to the NECST commandments:

Need: Small businesses need to expand their marketing online to keep their businesses growing/afloat because of the pandemic and the increasing spread of the Internet.
Entry: There's plenty of competition in the digital marketing industry, and I even got the idea from an Iman Gadzhi video here:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNRGkMeITVU&t=1334s
. It is, however, a pretty long process to actually get the business up and running(for me at least).
Control: I'll own the business and make all the business decisions.
Scale: I can easily scale past my local area(which I'm targeting as of now) because my business offers online services. The profit I'll theoretically get from each client is roughly a couple hundred dollars, but I can change that as my services get better. I can take on a pretty large number of clients(theoretically) because I can just hire more freelancers or give one freelancer more clients.
Time: I've organized everything and have streamlined the outreach process, and once I start the business I'll try to automate as much as I can. Additionally, I'm opening the business with a friend, and I'm thinking that if this business isn't a Fastlane business, I can probably just shoulder all the work onto him, and use the extra time to start a Fastlane business(basically withdrawing from the company while taking a good chunk of the profits for some passive income).

This is my first time doing anything even remotely entrepreneurial, so please give me some different perspectives on this business model.

Iman had made his money by selling a course over and over again. If you take MJs equation.

Wealth = Units Sold x Unit Profit
Wealth = Students (Units Sold) x $1,500 (Unit Profit, high margin by the way)

So with a YouTube Channel as a traffic source to amass millions of views. Your Law of Effection is massive and the road to wealth is possible, thus him selling a course amassing tons of money.

Jordan Platten does the same thing.

 

[ajlall]

Any business concept pushed by some over-hyped guru is a business concept you want to avoid.

Yeah, I realized later than I should have. If it was that easy to get rich, everybody'd be doing it.