My First $2800 Client - Digital Agency Progress

[DrunkFish]

Coming to the end of the course I bought and it's been seriously helpful. It's an industry specific course (not some abstract guru stuff, which has it's own place but I'm far passed that) so it's directly worth it.

Once I completely finish it and organize my notes, which i have organized in a fashion for extremely quick reference and simplified systems, i will go gung-ho in this new strategy. Everything just about ready and fully fleshed out.

Also, one of my current clients is trying to refer another business to me. He said it might be more than they can afford but we'll see. Cool to see that theyre happy enough with me to recommend me (again)

 

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[DrunkFish]

Finished my notes. Having all my processes written out and organized really helps me in general. Revamping one of my clients social media to be more inline with my new strat and automatable and active.. Once I do this i will start new strat. Also began thinking about other strategies to implement in the future for more client acquisition on a different medium... wanna master this one first. though.

Set up automatic recurring invoices/payments with Waveapps (as recommended on a thread here on FastLane recently)

 

[DrunkFish]

Really automating my processes better. I've put in minimal effort in client acquisition so far though but ive gotten a few solid leads and landed one new client, for at least a month. She's a shopify store owner and just said she might not always have the budget but she wants to do at least one month. Fine with me

 

[DrunkFish]

Closed two clients from online acquisition. For this month, I'm over $2k NET profit.

 

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[DrunkFish]

Haha, so fun story. Basically i hired a "project manager" type of guy for one of my contracts. email newsletter, text, two posts a week, appt reminders, and a simple ad campaign for FB. Not my usual strategy, but i talked to him and he said he could handle it. We got everything set up and worked it all out, which took too long in the beginning tbh. So then im expecting easy from here on out since it's set up, right?

Nope.

Dude literally has delivered like 1/5 of the monthly deliverables and lies nonstop and i've been VERY pleasantly dealing with his excuses and stuff for a few months.

He will say things like "yeah ill do that on tuesday, we'll use the power editor and not just boost posts and it'll be far more effective" etc. Yeah well he won't do it, then I'll remind him a week later that he still hasn't got that started like we talked about and if theres anything i need to do for him, or whats up what do we need to work on to get things flowing smoother, etc.... he says its all good, says some excuse, and then will go and boost a text heavy post, which is horribly inefficient and a slap in the face if you know about FB ads.

I've decided to drop him. I'm now trying to bring all of this work, reorganize it all, and work it with my new assistant. Very fun. Should be a little cheaper with 10x the results though. Guess this is my first "roadbump."

 

[Smith11B]

Haha, so fun story. Basically i hired a "project manager" type of guy for one of my contracts. email newsletter, text, two posts a week, appt reminders, and a simple ad campaign for FB. Not my usual strategy, but i talked to him and he said he could handle it. We got everything set up and worked it all out, which took too long in the beginning tbh. So then im expecting easy from here on out since it's set up, right?

Nope.

Dude literally has delivered like 1/5 of the monthly deliverables and lies nonstop and i've been VERY pleasantly dealing with his excuses and stuff for a few months.

He will say things like "yeah ill do that on tuesday, we'll use the power editor and not just boost posts and it'll be far more effective" etc. Yeah well he won't do it, then I'll remind him a week later that he still hasn't got that started like we talked about and if theres anything i need to do for him, or whats up what do we need to work on to get things flowing smoother, etc.... he says its all good, says some excuse, and then will go and boost a text heavy post, which is horribly inefficient and a slap in the face if you know about FB ads.

I've decided to drop him. I'm now trying to bring all of this work, reorganize it all, and work it with my new assistant. Very fun. Should be a little cheaper with 10x the results though. Guess this is my first "roadbump."

Ha, Been there before. Should've reached out to me man would be glad to help. Let me know.

 

[DrunkFish]

Ha, Been there before. Should've reached out to me man would be glad to help. Let me know.

Pm'd you.. again lmao.

Yeah I kinda figured it was coming considering the guy was full of excuses and moved at the pace of a snail. But like i said I'm gonna be making a few more hundred a month this way and not be living with anxiety and providing a better service. Win-win. Just part of the gig.. testing out different people.

Also wanted to add, I'm so happy i started doing this honestly.

If you have the organizational and management skills, it's really not too bad to grow this to $5k+ a month which is awesome because it's remote, basically the reason I started it!

I mentioned previously this month is my first $2K+ Net profit month and it just feels dope as hell.

 

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[DrunkFish]

My LLC is made. EIN acquired. Bank account created. Waiting for debit card. Accountant hired for my taxes (yeah im pretty late on that)

Working on adding value to my contracts so i can go for bigger fish. Got a few stable clients going right now, if one or two happened to cancel tomorrow id hop right back into lower effort/bread and butter client acquisition but for now i want to focus on developing my bigger product and acquiring those sort of clients.

Man when i look in my bank account and see what i have from just the last few months of this, it's crazy. Im closer and closer to investing in real estate. It really adds up quick if you're not a crazy spender, which i never was. Growing up poor F*cks with your mind haha.

Ive been really working on Organization and Process.
Learning the ins and outs of my accounting and invoicing software, getting a separate business bank account, having everything going in and out of one place for money and emails, working out dates and todo lists with my team, etc. This kind of thing can take off SO much stress. Dont underestimate organizing as early on as possible.

 

[DrunkFish]

Things have been going pretty well.

Currently: Got my bank account setup, accountant doing taxes, accounting software in tune with everything, excel spreadsheet for anything that isn't coming in/out of the bank account (which is semi rare).
Have a potential upsell or two in the pipeline. Integrated some new software, hoping my VA can learn it well (it's more complicated than our old software, but cheaper and 100x more useful.)

But honestly, I have one big thing that makes my progress way slower than it should be. And it's depression.

I struggle very hard with it I've come to realize. I will be great, on task, sociable, happy one day, and literally the next day, without any change, I'll be the complete opposite. Can't focus, totally disconnected, no appetite, etc. It really takes a toll. Ive been trying to work around it.

No health insurance, so I just have to deal with it.

It's on and off on a daily basis. It's quite maddening how i can go from happy go lucky, productive, being my self to completely anti social and disconnected, like my brain is absolutely pushing me down from any positive or productive thought. For no damn reason.

On a lighter note, I did speak at a local SSM intitute for the limb loss awareness event. I made a presentation and everything. It was my 3rd time speaking. First was at a prosthetic company's HQ in Iceland to like 80+ employees, then at an entrepreneurship class at a nearby smallish town to 15 students, and then this even to probably 50 people, from local prosthetic clinics, to SSM staff, to local amputees.

I wish to continue on the speaking journey I got going, that's for sure. It's always very well received and fulfilling to me. Ironically, I haven't spoken about my little gig/company yet in any of those opportunities.

Oh, and i also went to a real estate meetup and met some cool people. Should be going to that monthly.

Goal for the future: Pitch the upsells and get an answer on those, fully integrate and get comfortable with the new software setup and get my current clients all lined up in it efficiently, and try to pitch contracts triple the price of what I offer now. Currently, with a few clients in my pocket, I'm making just about what I'd say is the absolute minimum needed to get by in my city with a paid off car, super cheap rent, and no health insurance.

 

[DrunkFish]

ANOTHA UPDATEEEEE.

I'm hiring another team member, so now it's a team of 3 including me. Moving forward I'm going to keep focused on the social media and paid ads. No longer interested in doing ongoing emails or sms or other random things that I did before. It's just kind of ANOTHER thing to keep track of. Not really worth it in the grand scheme of things.

With the new position I'm hiring, they will implement kickass copy and strategy and work in conjunction with our other team member. So that will take a load off of me and allow me to focus to get more clients. So this will basically move my job fully into sales and accounting only, instead of that + copy and strategy.

 

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[DrunkFish]

Lol guys, do not accept bad clients. Posting for a Medspa... posted about microneedling. A picture with someone getting the treatment as well as a description, using sentences straight off their paragraph for microneedling on their own website. They complained and told me to take it down because of the wording and that it's 'not the right tool'. When i told her that is indeed a microneedling tool, she said 'honestly im just saying what im told, if you can get a hold of xyz you can ask her.' Unbelievable. I can't imagine doing anything more basic and accurate than that. I now have to get 'doc or I' approval before doing anything. I said id start sending them the batches of posts up front. Didn't think i would need to when im literally taking from their website.

Man, by far the worst client ive ever worked with and as soon as i get one more client im ending their contract.

 

[ApparentHorizon]

Waiting for debit card

Get a CC for your biz and treat it as your Debit. IE don't spend the money just because you have whatever limit they give you.

If it gets compromised, you have a much higher chance of getting your money back, as opposed to debit.

And may CCs have reward points or even cash back.

 

[DrunkFish]

Get a CC for your biz and treat it as your Debit. IE don't spend the money just because you have whatever limit they give you.

If it gets compromised, you have a much higher chance of getting your money back, as opposed to debit.

And may CCs have reward points or even cash back.

Yeah i do that with my personal now! I will be signing up for a biz credit card pretty soon. For now im using a debit card and it ties in nicely because my accounting software tracks it. Would it track it too if i used a credit card or would i have to separately link that up? Might be a dumb question but off the top of my head im not sure.

 

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[DrunkFish]

-Long read ahead, but i would really love input via PM or on here-

So, I'm down to one client as well as another client that i reduced to a $200/mo service. So it's okay side hustle money I guess. But i want a real business.

I felt like social media itself wasn't valuable and I didn't like the subjectivity of it, and that was my main offering. So i stopped trying to get clients because of that and wanted to move forward to something of more direct value.

Maybe if i hired a sales team or something to close social media leads and pay them a % monthly for each lead closed i wouldn't have felt like it wasn't worth it/overhwlmed and could've scaled though? Is that a thing?

I ran a decently successful lead gen ad campaign on Facebook for one of the clients that I'm not with anymore, and decided that was way more valuable of a service and felt good about it because i did decently and i can graphic design ads and copywrite them very well. $150 bucks and got 8 local leads for $40 deal that could lead to hundreds/thousands of upsells. That was only the first attempt so it could've gone better if i spent another month with it and adjusted.

So i started looking into how to price, pitch, structure FB ads 'agency' / lead gen service and have been getting super overwhelmed. It seems like i don't truly know all of the little math involved, or i 'shouldn't' get started by doing xyz like i had originally thought, or getting clients might not be quick enough for the rate at how long they'd stay, etc.

Now, i have a headache with information overload, feel like i can't figure out how to make it work, and I'm right back on square one with zero clue on what to do or how to do it and literally everything online is people selling courses giving generic info, so it feels pretty hopeless and I'm income broke again. It's funny though, because if i add up all the money i made doing what i did, i could make a course on how i made "$30k" or whatever with an online side hustle, haha.

I also got the bill for my recent pair of legs that i got through insurance (when i even had insurance for that short amount of time last year) which i had thought the company covered completely. So yeah, also learned i'm thousands in debt on top of my thousands in student loans.

I even just got a job at a furniture store for selling furni, I start next week. Manager absolutely loves me, and seems like a great place to work, totally killed the intervew despite a loooong gap in my 9-5 resume.

But considering my double amputation, i can't stand for long at all, and really have no idea if i can even do this job. So I only got it for part time and I'm not even sure if i'll be able to make it through a shift, but i'm feeling incredibly desperate because my household can't afford bills, neither can i, so i'm trying literally whatever I can.

I feel like im incredibly willing to do ANYTHING (like working for absolutely nothing under a mentor, i've been researching, taking notes, trying to make sense of things, etc) to figure out how to truly structure something valuable and get something going. But it just seems like i can't make sense of it and get overwhelmed.

That month or three where i was making decent money and had a few clients and was going decently felt amazing. Absolutely the best months of my life business wise. I felt happy, got up early, had a routine, looked forward to the future, was trying to get things structured right. etc. Now i feel lost, like i'm not actually valuable at all, and generally a mess.

Maybe its just a lack of entreneurial friends? I really don't know anyone else other than my personal trainer friend that i talk to on a daily or even weekly basis about running any business.

Any words of advice are highly, highly appreciated.

On the plus side, i did start posting a bit to youtube again after 10 month hiatus because i didn't feel like i had time to be creative because I don't have income.