online business it's a minefield right and there's a lot of lies going around in the space especially
surrounding social media marketing or smma right now so today i'm gonna debunk the lies and
just tell you guys how it is and maybe knock off some of the preconceived judgments you have about
social media marketing that you've been told from your favorite guru so let's get into it
okay so for those of you that don't know me my name is jordan platten i own affluent.com we're
a multi-platform digital marketing agency based here in the uk i launched this business four short
years ago now i came from a corporate sales based role i wanted to get out of the 905 so i looked
into online businesses that i could start and i stumbled across something called social media
marketing that's where i launched my agency i reached out to local brick and mortar companies
i signed them up on a simple facebook ad service now today we have scaled to six figures monthly
profits we've got an incredible team of people to help us fulfill our services so i know a thing
or two i've been around this isn't my first rodeo when it comes to social media marketing
and to be honest i'm kind of sick of the bs and there's a lot of lies that float around
the social media marketing space in order to pull people in to attract them to the business model so
gurus out there can sell courses and programs and so on and so forth so today i want to debunk those
lies and highlight the five biggest that i hear come up time and time again now the first one is
that social media marketing or smma is a passive income stream okay if you're looking to start an
online business and you want a passive business social media marketing simply isn't for you
believe me right you have to work hard and harder than you would in a nine to five i'm just gonna
be straight with you in fact this whole video i'm just i'm gonna tell you what you don't wanna hear
in this video okay for free other people will tell you what you want to hear for cash um it is not a
passive income stream when you're first starting out you are going to be doing a lot of outreach
okay you're going to be reaching out to local companies you're going to be cold calling going
to be emailing i'm going to be dm you're going to be building together a list you're going to
be putting together your website your logo your name okay all of these things that you don't
take into consideration when you listen to someone who's making hundreds of thousands or even tens of
thousands or even five thousand a month okay with a digital marketing agency there's a lot of work
which is going on in the background okay i like to think about it like a swan you're seeing the swans
swimming gracefully across the river right but underneath the feet they're going absolutely wild
and it's just like that in the digital marketing agency now that being said there is a disclaimer
here when you build your agency to a reasonable level when you have a few clients when you are
making a reasonable amount of money then you can start building a team and you can hire somebody
to fulfill the services for you can hire somebody to do sales you can partner with somebody else if
you want to okay but when you have a team you can start outlaying the work the time consuming stuff
okay which is taking up all of your time and when you do that then your business becomes a lot more
passive if i wanted to in my business i literally maybe would work half an hour a day in the agency
the issue is i'm obsessed with growth i'm obsessed with business development and so i can't
help myself but continually work hard within the company but if i wanted to i could retract myself
and just allow the team to fulfill absolutely everything and the business will still continue
to grow so you can turn it into a passive income stream but it isn't one initially okay you have to
work very hard to get to that point a lot harder than you would work in a nine-to-five let me just
make that absolutely clear the second thing i want to lead on to which follows on from passive
income is that smma is easy and anybody can do it now i do not believe that any business is easy
okay business is not easy it is not the easy path to take in life the easy path is to stay in a job
and work your way up through the ranks okay get a promotion every year or so
get a two grand pay rise every year and that's great for some people okay we all have our place
we all have different ambitions and desires within our lives okay we can never judge anybody for
their decisions that they make and if you are trying to start a business because you think
it's the easy path because you think it's the straightest line to making a million or whatever
your financial target is um then you're probably in the wrong place okay business is difficult
it's a much harder path than building your way through a career and you need to sacrifice a
lot because when we start a company we're not just working nine till five okay we're working
way beyond that uh we when we go to sleep or when we sit at night or when we wake up in the morning
the business is in our mind we can't escape from it we're not just taking ourselves to an office
where somebody else pays us to do a very specific job and when we come home our personal life is
separate there is a merge between our personal and our business lives and that is something that is
quite difficult to come accustomed to when we are first starting out it was certainly a big learning
curve for me when i first started the business i did not consider how much how intrusive really the
business would be on my personal life i had to sacrifice going out some weekends because i had
to do outreach because i had to have a meeting i had to sacrifice my evenings because i was working
in a full-time job and i needed to continue to reach out to businesses and to sign up new clients
to sacrifice my mornings i started waking up at 5am every morning educating myself building a lead
list reaching out to some company sending emails sending dms and so on and so forth and so you have
to make a lot of sacrifices and be prepared to make a lot of sacrifices when you are starting a
business so please do not come into this thinking it is going to be easy okay now as well as this i
think it's a lie that anybody can start a digital marketing agency on paper yes sure anybody from
any all walks of life from all corners of the world could start a digital marketing agency but
i think it takes a very specific kind of person to actually be successful as an agency owner and take
somebody incredibly resilient okay because when we are first starting our business we're gonna
get a ton of rejections you're going to hear no way more times than you hear yes okay and that
takes a very specific kind of person to be able to stay motivated during that period to say you
know what i'm trusting the process this is what i want this is what i believe in this is my why
and i'm going to continue out through all of the rejections and that takes a very very specific
kind of person i see 95 of agencies who start give up they might sign a client or two they
might maybe not even get to that point because of the rejection and they move on to another business
model that they think is going to be easier because they've been sold the dream by another
guru and they fall flat on their face again because it's the exact same principle all business
takes a degree of failure before you get to success okay you could start an e-commerce store
you could start on shopify right and you might try five different products before you before you find
one product which is actually making new money which is actually profitable and scalable okay
you always see the success from people online you always see the success stories and the happiness
and the positive moments but what we don't see is the amount of times people fail but again it
takes a very specific kind of person you have to be resilient and you have to have a lot of
self-motivation and one of the things i think that really helps during that period and really helps
dictate whether or not you can be a successful business owner or successful agency owner is
your why and it's the reason why you're trying to start a business in the first place so take a lot
of time to think about that to assess why you were trying to start your company in the first place is
it just a short-term win a quick financial gain or is it something more meaningful do you want
to retire your parents do you want to build a life for your family do you want generational wealth so
your family name can live on forever nobody ever has to worry about money again do you want to
change the world do you want to impact the environment is there a reason which is greater
than yourself that will propel you through their tough times through launching a company
if not right now then work on that okay i think i've got a video on youtube go check it out so
that is number two number three is you can work from wherever you want now this one comes with
a disclaimer because to a certain extent this is true but i think a lot of people bend the truth
when it comes to the laptop the laptop lifestyle and owning a digital marketing agency now as
an agency owner it is very important that wherever we are we have a very stable internet connection
because we need to jump on a video called one of our clients and it's bugging out it's not going
to be a good reflection of us if we don't have internet at all we're not going to be able to
do outreach i'm not going to be able to continue selling and growing the business we're not even
going to be able to maintain ads for our clients and that's a very very big problem so we can only
work somewhere with a stable internet connection somewhere that isn't going to have power outages
all the time but in theory yes you can work from a laptop and run your business but the caveat
to that is when we are traveling the majority of people i'm probably talking more so about myself
but i imagine there's a lot of people like this as well when we're traveling we often get distracted
very very easy the last thing we want to do when we're in a foreign country and we're in the sun
and we're exploring and we're on an adventure is work right and so it's very hard to stay motivated
whilst we're actually abroad i've seen many people start an agency and move abroad and then all of
a sudden like they're moving on to something else okay they're not even running their agency anymore
because they lost motivation they lost a couple of clients they stopped getting results and they
didn't keep their sales pipeline full and all of a sudden they're stuck without another business
scrambling for something else to do might even get a job locally right and that's i don't blame
people for that but i think we have to be prepared for that before we decide okay i'm starting this
business because i want to move abroad and because i want to work in another country
i think to do that you need to build your agency to a respectable level first of all and on top
of that you really should have a team member to help you out when you're feeling or when you're
lacking motivation and you want to go off and go on a jolly and go on some excursions right so
it's important in my opinion you have a base level team before you then go ahead and travel
and take up that nomad lifestyle unless you are incredibly self-motivated unless you have traveled
tons of times in the past and you've you're used to working from your laptop and you've
already adapted to that lifestyle if you've done that i'm sure you can do so but i think
it's it's misinforming to just make a blank statement to say hey look start an agency
because you can work from anywhere in the world you can but there are caveats to that number four
isn't really a lie that is told but it's also a blanket statement and observation of the industry
and it's that not everybody that shares content about social media marketing or smma is actually
knowledgeable and is actually somebody that you could should consider listening to there are so
many people out there that start and this is for all online business right that start an online
business that dabble in it and get a little bit of success or maybe don't even and at some point
they get their heads turned to coaching to consulting to own a course and instead they
start putting out content and online to start teaching people about that business model instead
they start an agency they get one client and they think ah this is hard let me start coaching
because i've seen in the click funnels group that people make a lot of money from coaching
start putting out content on youtube how to get clients how to do this how to do that they're not
practicing any of it right and it is sickening how many people in the online space are in that
position right i'm not going to rare people out but there are countless people including on
youtube especially on youtube and on facebook and on instagram that pretend to be agency owners that
pretend to have success they pretend to have xyz sharing fake results and they are posting content
online to make money from a coaching program or a course right those people are not knowledgeable
those people are not people that you should listen to and you should be very dubious and skeptical
you should have a very skeptical mindset when it comes to the content you absorb within the
digital marketing space don't follow somebody's sales strategies unless you know for sure that
they are actually implementing those strategies themselves and they are showing you that they are
doing so that's why we're in the affluent academy with our team members right or our community we
literally have live sales calls with real clients and i'm showing you the strategies that i taught
you in action and i'm signing up clients and growing agency that's why we're so public about
our agency because we actually have one our agency makes way more than our coaching program and it
always will it's the north star and it's where i focus the majority of my time but there are
so many people out there that put out content on digital marketing on how to sign clients on smmo
and they're simply not qualified to talk about it because they have ulterior motives so i want each
and every one of you to be skeptical when it comes to the content you absorb online okay be critical
do your own due diligence and do your own research okay look up this person's agency make sure they
are who they say they are before you go ahead and adopt any strategies or any lessons that they may
teach you number five follows on from four and it's that you need a course to start an agency
a lot of people say oh you have to have a course if you want to start an agency and that isn't true
okay and i can say that as somebody that owns an online education business getting a course
and buying your way into knowledge is like getting the elevator okay you are skipping the stairs okay
you're not muddling through and finding things out yourself but if you don't have the budget if you
don't have money it doesn't have to stop you from being successful and launching a business that's
why i put so much effort into the content we put out on youtube because i know what it's like to be
somebody when i was 16 17 18 years old and i was feeling helpless and defenseless that i wanted to
be successful i was desperate to be a somebody i used to speak to all my friends about who i wanted
to be and what i wanted to achieve but i did not have a vehicle or somebody to help me to get there
and that's why i love putting out free content online and my mission has always been to give
away more for free than other people will have you pay for i teach people how to find clients
i teach people how to sign them up i teach people how to get results for free okay now people would
want to take the elevator and self-subscribe okay and get one-to-one coaching and get the
exact scripts and get the copy and paste ads those people enroll into the affluent academy but if
you're watching this right now and you're not in the financial position to invest in yourself
then take the stairs okay because i've like i've laid out the path for you okay there's no excuse
not to start you have everything you need to sign at least your first client to make enough money
to then join a program like the affluent academy and be part of our community and have access to
our network of agency owners people at the start of their journey people who are already making
hundreds of thousands per month right but it is a lie that you need a course to actually get started
okay people say that because they just want you to buy their course and i can say that as somebody
that owns one an education business and an agency okay i've got your best interest at heart guys and
i'll always say it how it is and these are just some of the lies that come up in the industry of
course there are other things these are the main things for you to look out for and i don't want
this to be a negative video today because this business model and this industry changed my life
i remember working in sales job after sales job even when i started earning reasonable money i
was so unfilled in my life because i was earning and i had no time to actually enjoy the money i
was earning okay i couldn't spend time with friends friends spend time with family i was
working unsociable hours i was saving all year for one holiday before it even started and i
needed to change within my life and social media marketing was without being cringed this beacon of
hope okay it changed absolutely everything for me when i started my agency everything falled
into place and i wouldn't be where i am today if it wasn't for digital marketing now i just want
to highlight a bit of a bonus lie actually which come to my mind as i was just talking just then
and it's that digital marketing and social media marketing is a saturated industry
that couldn't be more incorrect the same people that say social media marketing is saturated are
the same people that think they've missed the boat when it comes to cryptocurrency right we are at
the tip of the iceberg this industry is so new and so fresh and so current and we have new platforms
coming up almost every single year okay tiktok snapchat clubhouse okay we've got voice chat
we've got vr we've got augmented reality we've got so many things to be excited about as agency
owners and these are all areas that we can branch out and we can capitalize on in the future and
there are so many different sub-niches of starting an agency web design advertising email marketing
content creation social media management there are so many different avenues you can go through
okay and it's such an accessible business model it is not saturated in any way shape or form we are
in the age of entrepreneurship the pandemic made people realize they don't want to work
in their normal jobs they want to start online businesses they want to start e-commerce stores
and those businesses need people like you and i to run their ads so we can help them grow
and expand and scale and there is always going to be that demand whether it's on
facebook whether it's on instagram whether it's shopify stores whether it's woocommerce regardless
there are always going to be people out there that need people like you and i to step in
and help them grow their businesses it's a huge opportunity and we're at the tip of the iceberg
geez this year we're going to scale the agency to a million a month it's happening okay we're
on that road map and we've mapped it out and guys i want you there along with me okay don't miss out
on this opportunity don't be put off by the lies i've gone through today i will always be straight
with you even if it's not exactly what you want to hear but if you are prepared to put in the
work if you are resilient if you are committed and you're driven then this is an industry that will
absolutely transform your life cool that's it from me have you enjoyed the video make sure you're
subscribed with the notification bell turned on and i'll see you in the next one cheers guys