So ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this YouTube video. My name is Iman Gadzhi. I actually run an advertising agency called IAG media. We’ve worked with some very cool clients such as Evarae, IKNK, Motivate Design or Oura Ring and the list goes on and on. In fact, if you are an eCommerce business or an infoproduct business, there’s a link down below schedule in a 15 minute demo call with us and we’d love to help you out.
But anyways, enough with the sales pitch, I also run a company called GrowYourAgency.com, which is the largest education company on earth for agency owners. We help agency owners making literally 100K a month. And we also help people probably such as yourself, if you clicked on this video who have no experience, have no money and want to start an online business and there’s no better business out there that you can start than SMMA. Now SMMA basically just means social media marketing agency.
Now, I’ve had my agency for almost four years at this point. And the reason that I got into SMMA was because it was a business that was able to start with zero startup capital and no prior experience. And I want to get more nitty gritty. I want to get more tangible here and literally show you what I would do if I had literally zero or if I just had $10 that I could spare. So let’s go ahead and get straight into it. How to start estimate with $0 million. So in today’s teaching, the self limiting beliefs, every beginner has how to start on a shoestring budget, what to do if you literally have $0 million to spend, how you can use $10 to go a long way and how to start regardless of your experience level. So self limiting beliefs and how to overcome them. Now one thing I need you to understand is that perfection is paralysis.
There’s no perfect way to start an agency. I know so many agency owners and I put that in quotation marks, who spend months putting together perfect websites, Instagram, Facebook pages, and uh, you know, even copywriting these incredible case studies, but never actually reach out to clients. That’s why like I say, agency owners, but really big quotation marks there because there’s a difference between, there’s a big difference between having an agency and being an actual agency owner. So as I said, you might be going, look, I don’t know where to start to perfectly depict this. This is Steve jobs in front of his garage and this on the right hand side. Well that is the Apple headquarters. So, um, I think that should really prove the point that you can make something big. You can make something huge off of very small starts. So just look at my agency.
I’ve been able to get my agency to six figure months profit. That means a 100K profit in a single month from my agency. Now currently as it stands, that’s not consistent every single month. But we’re in that territory now. Even to this day, I still have 85 to 90% of margins with my agency. It’s just me, one full time employee and one, I guess you could say he’s still full time, but part time for the agency specifically. So it was basically me and one and a third team member and very minimal software costs. There’s not too many softwares that you need when you have an agency owner. So even to this day, it’s still a very lean and efficient business model. But back in the day, I had no money to start. I was in your exact position. So very small beginnings can lead to very prosperous futures.
So let’s get back into training. Next thing you might be saying is, well, I have no money. We’ll come onto this in a second, but there’s an image I want to share with you first. This is me when I was first starting my agency, and what this is, is a place called Brixton Bookmongers in London. Now. Brixton Bookmongers is definitely my favorite bookstore in London because I have so many memories there because I literally spent every single Sunday there. And the main reason is because at Brixton Bookmongers, you could get books at Waterstones that you could get for 15 pounds, you could get Brixton Bookmongers for two pounds, or one pound, or 50p. And the reason I say that is because I couldn’t afford books when I started my agency. I could not afford to pay for books. Instead what I had to do was I had to travel 45 minutes on the bus and I would go on the bus because you know, at that age in the UK at least you get a free bus transport.
So I’d do two changeovers and I would go on the bus every single Sunday without fail to Brixton Bookmongers. And sometimes I would sit down and I’d be in there for three hours and I basically read a book end to end, or at least for the most part, skim read it. And you know, every two weeks or so I might reward myself with, you know, two or three books totalling never more than 10 pounds. So the thing that I’m trying to get across here is I started this thing from zero and every decision I made in my life was based on a budget. So I understand where you might be coming from. Now, once again you might be saying, I have no experience. Well this is 16 year old me and I can, I can say I had no experience when I started my agency either.
Now you might be saying I can’t get clients in my country. None of my current clients are based in the UK. Okay. You need to reach out via DM, via email and speak via zoom guys, be country agnostic, use a.com use Stripe to get paid. And you really can’t sign clients from anywhere in the world. In fact, even when I’ve had clients in the UK before, I still refuse to meet them in person because if you know anything about me, the way that I wrote my agency and the way that the thousands of my students run their agency is we have a boutique and very niche agency. I have, I offer one service and I offer it to only one will, technically two kinds of clients, but they kind of fall into the same umbrella. My team is remote and I run a very streamlined operation.
So I have what I like to call a boutique agency and my students, you know, some of my students that are making even 10,000 a month, which I noticed some of you guys may seem like such a ridiculous amount of money, but at least in the grid and see community, that’s pretty standard to be honest. So even someone doing only 10,000 a month, they’re making more than most agency owners out there doing 50-60,000 a month because they’re doing 10,000 a month profit. So remember it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, you can sign clients. And should be signing clients all across the globe just as long as they speak your language. That’s what I do and that’s what thousands of my students do as well. So getting started with literally $0 dollars, this is exactly what I do. If I had to start with $0 dollars.
Okay? All you do is you create a Gmail email. Okay? So as an example, black lab media@gmail.com and you created an Instagram black lab media, and then you create a.wix.com website. So black lab, media.wix.com then to communicate, I would use zoom. Zoom has, uh, I think unlimited. If you’re talking one on one with a client, unlimited runtimes you can, you can talk for as long as you want. If there’s more than two people on the call, then it only runs for 45 minutes, then you have to have paid zoom. But realistically you’re going to be talking with a client one-on-one anyways, are you Stripe to get paid and it costs zero. And you can also send your invoices directly from Stripe. Stripe only takes a percentage of your payments. So for example, I think domestically it’s only 1.4% they take, I think International’s 2.9% but my point is, look, if you’re getting paid, if you’re signing your first client for a thousand dollars or $1,500 or $2,000 or hell $5,000 do you really care that you’re giving up 1.5 to 3% no, not really.
Then use Facebook business manager to actually advertise and deliver the results for clients. If you have an Facebook advertising agency. When I first started my agency, I actually was creating content for clients and then distributing it on their social platforms. If you guys want to learn more about how to run ads step-by-step for Facebook, I’m going to go ahead and leave a link in the description to my step-by-step Facebook ads training that’s here on YouTube. You don’t need to opt in or anything like that and yeah, you just create a very simple Instagram, just a very simple Facebook profile and guys, this isn’t going to help you sign clients having a good Instagram or good Facebook. What this will do is just really you’re just covering bases and making sure you look professional. You can see black lab media, we help pet supply companies, get customers through social media, ladies and gentlemen.
That’s literally how you start with zero. You use the tools that you have out there, the costs, no money. Look, is it ideal that you have a dog, wix.com website? No, but when I first started, I had zero website. In fact, I didn’t even have an agency name. I got to $10,000 a month with no website, no agency name. I was just selling myself as like a service provider without even a name, no limited company or LLC, whatever, depending on where you are in the world. I was just a sole trader. I was just self-employed. I can speak from experience because I started with a shoestring budget. I started with nothing. What I recommend is, look, if that’s what you have to do, then do it, but if you even have just $10 a month that you can spend, that goes so far, so look, don’t spend that money on Chipotle.
Spend that $10 wisely so you can make an extra 10-50, just even an extra $1,500 a month. You know, let’s not even talk about the 10 15 20,000 Mark. That, as I said, is very common in the grade in the C community, like just an extra $1,500 a month that does so much for people. So invest that $10 a month running costs in something that will actually bring you a return. So I know this video says how to start with zero. I’ve shown you how to start with you. Now. I’m just going to show you very quickly what I would do if you even just have $10 a month to spend, I would upgrade to a G suite. Okay? You can use a GoDaddy or uh, I prefer Google domain just because it’s easier than to set up with your G suite.
I think a domain on GoDaddy is a $1 in your first year on G suite. It’s $12 in your first year. So look, you’re spending like a dollar a month on your domain, right? That’s $1 and once you have your domain, like let’s say for example, let’s say you have a black lab media.com then your G suite would say your name, like let’s say your name is a Sophia, Sophia, add black lab, media.com it comes across so, so much more professional and a strongly do recommend it and with G suite, now you’ve got your email. Obviously you have the entire suite of tools. You have all your Google sheets, you already have Google slides, you’ve got basically everything you could ever need. Another tool that I want to add in here is Loom. I’ve been using loom for probably two and a half years now.
I’ve probably sent them a 10,000 plus customers. They have a paid version, which is $10 a month, which you don’t need loom pro you, you don’t need it. I didn’t even know they had a pro version for a long time. For literally the first 18 months I was just using their free version with loom. The awesome thing you can do, it’s a Chrome extension. You literally just hit loom record and you can record your screen and that way you can send out audits and you can send out proposals and video audits and video messages to prospective clients where you can share your screen, show them what you do differently, show them their current advertising efforts, how you could build on it, or maybe their social media, how you could build on it, show them some of their competitors, et cetera, et cetera. So that’s just another honorary mention
I want to add there. The next thing is ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels is really like I run half of my agency on that thing. I use ClickFunnels to build out all of my funnels, my onboarding funnel. In fact, I’ve even had my website on ClickFunnels before. Now, once again, because you have bought a GoDaddy domain or a GCP domain, you can help hook that up to your ClickFunnels solo. You use the dragon drop a ClickFunnels, a builder, you know to build a website and build your onboarding funnel, stuff like that. It can still have your professional agency name on there. Now I’ve gone ahead and provide you guys with a link. It’s great. And c.com/clickfunnels free trial, the link is in the description. Would that link specifically you guys actually get a 14 day free trial. So once again, I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend that tool. Check it out for 14 days and Hey, within the next two weeks, if you watch this training and you watch other videos on my YouTube channel, you very well could have a client by that time.
So the next thing I want to talk about is getting started with no experience. Guys, I want you to meet Jake now jig studies at university. He doesn’t have time to find clients and Jake is great at Facebook advertising. He just, Jake doesn’t really like selling clients or finding clients or just, you know, being a business like he doesn’t want to be a business owner. He’d rather be like a freelancer or a contractor and there’s so many people like that. Now I want you to meet your client custom color.com custom color.com pays you $2,000 a month and then you pay Jake $500 a month as a contractor. Ladies and gentlemen, this is where I want to talk about the Expedia business model. This is something I’ve been talking about for years and years and years. I need you to understand that Expedia or booking.com or whatever, they own zero planes, they own zero hotels, yet they make billions and billions and billions a year.
Just by connecting the customer, the client to the product or service. I want you to use Airbnb and Uber as the example. Once again, when you get in an Uber, Uber doesn’t own that car or doesn’t employ that Uber driver yet. They take a substantial cut of that and that’s really what an agency is, is you’re paying an agency and then they have someone who actually deliver the services, whether we’re talking like a 500 person, full-scale agency or a boutique agency like this. So when I actually got started, Danny who now has been working full time with me for two years, or actually he’s been working full time with me for 16 months. Prior to that he was my contractor for eight months, but I used to sign clients for 2,500 a month for 4,000 a month. Hell, I even had a couple clients even at that time that I was signing for eight, nine $10,000 a month and I used to pay Danny, I used to pay daddy 700 a month per month per client.
So to bring that back, let’s say more to reality, you can sign a client out there for 1500 a month and you pay your contractor 500 a month and you pocket the difference. You can do that or you can just decide to run ads yourself. Or for example, with me, I’m really good at photo video and that’s how I first got started with my agency four years ago is I would do photo video for clients and then post on social media and grow it. So all depends on your style and your level of expertise, but my point is whether you have zero money, zero experience, it doesn’t matter. And the best part about in this example, Jake, you signed that client for $1,500 a month or let’s say even a thousand dollars a month that client pays you and Jake only gets paid at the end of the month, but you should be charging the client at the beginning of the month.
Once again, if you want to find out more information about this, I recommend down the description. I’m going to leave my YouTube step-by-step training on how to build a social media marketing as well as my YouTube Facebook ads, step-by-step training and between this video and those two resources, you should have everything you need to know without ever even giving me your email or opting into anything. So ladies and gentlemen, just do what I did. Now these days, Danny gets paid very well. I mean a little too well. You know, these days he’s making Apple engineer type income. But that’s because I’ve grown my agency to the point where as I said, we’re hitting a hundred came months profit at times. So ladies and gentlemen, hopefully this has just rid you of any excuses you have. Now today’s action step is number one. I want you to book in a call with my student integration managers, Max and Caden.
There’s going to be a link down in the description. You’re going to be matched to either max or Kayden. Once again, they’re both very, very busy helping students in the community as well as talking to people who might be a good fit for Agency Incubator. So it’ll be one or the other. So as I said, go ahead and book in a call with them to see whether you’re a good fit to join thousands of other students in great agency. Next thing is I want you to go subscribe to the second channel on the second channel. I’ve actually got four uploads a week. They’re more long form content and I actually do weekly giveaways on there. With this channel I have to be a little bit more mindful of like SEO and stuff. I got on the second channel. I just talk and I talk and I talk and I give tons of value on there and we get a lot more specific.
In fact, I even do student interviews on there, 30 minutes to 45 minutes student interviews every single week where I share people’s journey and how they matched, assign their clients. The last thing is I want you to leave a comment with what you thought of the video. I’m giving away a coaching call for every hundred unique comments and I’ll keep the winners update in the comments. Guys, I’m super busy, my businesses, so I can’t give you a one hour coaching call, but let’s just call it a 20 minute coaching call. I’ll keep the common section of day with the winners. As I said, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you guys have enjoyed those videos. Really important. Go follow those action steps. Go check out the other videos I mentioned. Everything will be in the description and I’ll see you guys in the next one.
The lack of an up-front cost makes SMMA an attractive business model.
Whilst other business models require heavy initial investment and expertise, SMMA allows you to start with no investment and zero experience.
Here, we’ll detail how to start SMMA with $0, and the exact tools you can use for free.
Whilst we always recommend students start with at least a personalized domain name and email address, it’s still possible to perform client outreach with nothing more than a Gmail, or other free email services.
In this example, we’ll refer to an imaginary SMMA that specializes in helping Pet Supply Stores.
Let’s call them BlackLab Media.
Welcome to BlackLab Media
It’s perfectly acceptable to use ‘blacklabmedia@gmail.com’.
If you want to upgrade, trying purchasing a domain for as little as $1 from GoDaddy.com. You can also use a G-Suite which is available for around $6-a-month.
Many website builders such as Wix.com offer a free service where you can build a professional-looking website for free, provided you use the ‘.wix’ suffix.
So you could use ‘blacklabmedia.wix.com’ – and have a professional web presence, for free.
We also recommend ClickFunnels for students, you get a 14-Day Free Trial and can use it to create high-converting funnels for your clients and agency.
The great thing about Instagram is that you can create a professional-looking business account with just as much useability as long-standing agencies.
Take a look at BlackLab Media’s fictitious Instagram account:
BlackLab Media’s Instagram Account
These graphics were created with Canva.com and create a clean and professional appearance for the account: this can be used to DM prospective clients.
We also recommend Loom to send personalized audits to clients.
Stripe.com is a payment processor with a built-in invoicing tool.
Stripe charges a commission on each payment but is free to sign up to.
It’s easy to provide services such as social media management or paid traffic services through Facebook’s own software. Facebook allows you to schedule Facebook and Instagram posts directly onto the platform, and advertise through Facebook Business Manager free of cost.
If you’re looking for high-quality stock images, try Unsplash.com
Learn how to advertise on Facebook with our free training here.
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