Six Figure SMMA As A Teenager (Agency Incubator Student Interview)

so ladies and gentlemen you are in for a treat today we are joined with Michael now Michael's been a part of the community for two years at this point and it's many you guys know I'm a 17 year old high school dropout Michael actually dropped out at the age of 16 so next we're probably gonna get there like twelve-year-old middle school to help out a millionaire but um yeah this is a very very interesting story Michael is making six figures a year from his agency and as I said that you know there's certain people in

the community where like I know their stories so intimately between obviously seeing their their posts in the group between the fact that they've been members for a couple years and the live Q&A calls like you know between if you think over like a one-year period and the fact that you know I do my live community calls every Sunday for one and a half to two hours although sometimes like last Sunday I let it go on for two and a half hours plus the fact that you know I'm all doom and I'm speaking one-on-one with someone

once they get unmuted you get to you know you you get to see some very familiar face in the community and really get to know their journey so I know Michaels journey very well both from a business sense from a from a discipline slash mindset sense from a well-being and friendship sense and I can tell you he's very very interesting in a very smart character at that so without any further ado let's welcome to the student interview so ladies and gentleman welcome to another student interview we're drawing here with Michael and I'm really really excited

to get into a student interview there's a lot I want to unpack there's a lot of very different a lot of very interesting points to your story so first of all thanks so much for taking time out of your day sure thanks to you man I appreciate it all right so first of all what crazy [ __ ] drops out of school at the age of 16 so I touch on that so first of all how old are you right now and yeah were you from yeah for sure so basically right now I'm 19 years

old from Montreal Canada and yeah you're right it's pretty like it is a big move to drop out of high school like 16 years old and you know I did it because you know at that time I didn't really know like where exactly like what business model I wanted to have but I knew for sure that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and have my own online business and yeah just I didn't really see the point in having like a degree because I knew for sure that when I found out about like entrepreneurship that I

was gonna work for myself and build my own business so I was like why do I need a degree when it's gonna be me hiring people and not the other way around so yeah that's basically my thought and also you know I dropped out I was good because I also knew that if I didn't drop out of high school I would be left with like eight degree and maybe I would I'd be like less motivated but like I when I dropped out of high school I was like okay like if I if I drop out

of high school leg I will not have really uh I don't have a choice to succeed basically and I'll find a way so I basically burned my bridges so that was you know one of the reason why I did it and then yeah that's pretty much it like like I was saying off camera before we we started recording basically I did it when I didn't even know about you or like the whole like marketing agency space or like the the whole like digital entrepreneur or like digital nomad or whatever cuz you know I think nowadays

is it's almost you know it's almost like a trend just drop out of school or whatever but like yeah the 12 year old middle school dropout millionaire yeah like that's what we're gonna get next like I wouldn't be surprised right so yeah back then I was like I wasn't influenced by all this stuff I was just like yeah this is what I want and you know it it makes sense for me and you know I'm just going to take the risk and yeah go for it mmm okay so first of all quick question what do

you what did you find the hardest part about dropping out of high school because I'll give you my answer after right damn that's a good question like I think it was probably the fact that I was alone and like I didn't really felt understood because like when I dropped out of high school I was basically like doing no money at all basically you know had like a few thousand dollars my bank account was pretty much broke and I had nothing going on in Middaugh was like working like really hard every single day so that was

hard and also the fact that um like all my friends and you know family members and everything we're like you know what the [ __ ] are you doing like what you know it's a bad move and stuff so and you know nowaday when I look back at it you know like you know comments like this from people I liked friends or family members it really doesn't affect me because you know like now I consider myself being like good with my with my business and with the amount of money I'm making right now but like

back then when I was broke I was working really hard nothing was going on like it was hard just like you know and I got him like you know I got depressed at one point I was like damn like that I really mess it up like should I go back to school and stuff but like yeah at the end of the day I think that that was the the hardest thing like not being understood or like being alone not being able to to relate because like all my friends were like you like you you're [

__ ] up like what [ __ ] you're doing right now you shouldn't do that and stuff yeah what about you I definitely feel laughs I think for me honestly now it's at this point in my life it's normal to almost forget what day of the week it is and it's normal to like like that the concept of a job and in just those stringent sort of boundaries on your life like it just seems like such an alien thing for me but I'd say for me the hardest thing about dropping out of school is the

fact that like you literally go from you have to be here at this time you leave at this time this is your set schedule this is when you can work this is when you can work on can and work on your personal stuff you have such a stringent sort of schedule - you wake up one more I remember the first day I dropped out of school like you wake up that next moment and you're like holy [ __ ] like I actually have like 16 hours to work on the business like it almost seemed like

what too much like the way we're gonna do with all this time and you're like you tell yourself that you know you're gonna be super disciplined and super on it but you know a lot of times too many options is the worst option and like you know too much time is you know some you know I find the law at the time that I'm just having to open up a day actually like messes you up because it's like you're always gonna leave things last-minute so I'd say that was kind of the toughest thing is like

you know as an entrepreneur you have to set your own schedule and that is way harder than people think it is and you have to be there's no one there who's gonna tell you to be at your desk at a certain time or this or that you know it's it's it's what you do in private you know and you can you know you can be at your desk all the time you told yourself you'd be there or you can be there two hours later because you slept in realistically no one's gonna know no one wrong

do you gonna know you're the only person who's gonna know so I'm yeah I'd say probably that was the toughest thing which is just like you think you're gonna be super productive once you drop out of school and this and that or you know potentially for something more relatable once you like leave your job and go full-time when your agency or this or that or or you might think that you know even with your job let's say you have the summer break coming up for winter break or Christmas or whatever you think that you're gonna

be super productive when that kind time comes around but then when that time comes around and you actually have the whole day it's like almost overwhelming so yeah I'd say that's that's what it was for me so like you drop out of school and then you know how long after that did you come into contact with the agency world um pretty much like three months later and you know and move your timeline from there to where you are now yeah so basically January 2018 that was like you know my first start of you know actually

like running the business I opened up like my business like few months prior to that but I didn't really work on it and stuff because I was going to school but I was like reading books and stuff while in school and you know doing like online courses and stuff like that really like into self-development and that's what like god got me started with the business thing and everything because before that I didn't even know about like I didn't even know that it was an option you know to become an entrepreneur and like you know build

your own business and stuff like that so January 2018 that was like my start and back then I was in the dental niche so I was reaching out to dentists and I was doing like LinkedIn outreach I remember and all day long that was yeah you know all I was doing you know LinkedIn outreach and for like a month or so like nothing really happened and then I was like back then I was reaching out to like anybody in my linkedin network and in my LinkedIn connections no matter if they were like adventists are related

to the mental word like it didn't really make sense but like what's funny is like I reached out to that guy who was like in the banking banking industry or whatever and you know I say above ah you know I I help like dental clinics get more patients doing online marketing and stuff like that and then the funny thing is like hey I'm not a dentist but like my cousin actually owns they don't a dental clinic not so far and I can refer you to him so I was like okay great and then I call

him up and then we set an appointment and that was like my first meeting and I basically closed the guy within like an hour so I was really really motivated you know first meeting and I actually closed it the guy so yeah that was it and then after that I was I'm a few closing for fifteen hundred dollars per month it was like for content creation even though I didn't even know nothing about but yeah that was yeah fifty hundred dollars per month then after that the second client came like a few months later really

took some time like maybe I think yeah May 2018 that was like my second client and I got him doing cold calling and it took me a lot of time and a lot of cold calls to get that client I think I did like a thousand cold call to get him because I was getting meetings but like it was so hard to close any dental niche for me because I was meeting like the managers you know cuz like it's so hard to meet my dentist because she's like always working with the patient so yeah I

had a hard time and also like I found that you know that tone each leg it's some more like formal / corporate nishan mentality there really resonate with me but yeah I and I closed this guy and like this client I'm still working with like today so it's been like almost like two years and it's one of my best client client retention huh yeah right and yeah after that I and funnily enough like because this guy was the manager that I closed you know when I when I'm talking about like my best client this guy

was like the manager and that was like my main point of contact with this business and this guy was actually a real estate broker and that's actually how I like thought of like transitioning into the real estate niche and because like he was like seeing the great return on investment we were bringing him with Facebook Ads and he was like can you also do that for you know my own rule will say business yeah sure so yeah then after that transition into the real estate niche percent and then from there like I'd say October 2019

or a No October 2018 that was like when I first got my first real estate client besides this one and then just things took off from that point like I think October 2019 I was making like $2,000 and then after that January I was making like three thousand and then February 2099 I first made like seven thousand five hundred dollars profit that was like a breakthrough moment for me yeah then after that it was like basically where I'm at today awesome so your agency is doing around I mean it's around that six-figure year mark and

how many clients are you working with at the moment at the moment we have five clients five clients and I know that your agency as you said you know you broke past around seventy-five seventy-five eight thousand seventy five hundred slash eight thousand dollars a month but you you were delivering all the other services yourself right yep so you decided at this what you know Oh over the past five six months and obviously we spoke off-camera and I know your story quite intimately over the past five six months you've been starting to build out your team

and rather than hoarding all those profits you've been deciding to kind of reinvest that bring a team member on what made you decide to do that because other than a your your your cutting into a chunk of your pie right well you know I was doing everything myself so it was like really exhausting and honestly it was like so I was like so stressed out all the time was working like too much and like it came to a point where like you know my sister would would come and would ask me like hey what are

you working on today or this week and over like whoa what did you what did you do today and I was like I don't know like I was so like stressed out and like I wasn't there like I couldn't think anymore because I was doing like everything so that's when I was like okay like yes it's great to be making like a good amount of money monthly but like at the end of the day this is now you know scalable and I don't want to be doing that and living like that all my life sounds

like let me bring like a Facebook ad specialist that will help me handle the clients and I was like you know I was ready to sacrifice profits to scale the business and then long time have like a real team mm-hmm this is something that you know this is something that people are very very curious on it's the path that I took you know first off having a contractor on a per month per client basis so you're paying them per per client account that they're managing per month but it's not like a white label or a

contractor it's like it's having a team member and you're trying to nurture that person and it's like yeah they may only be managing one or two or three client accounts for right now but the goal is as your agency grows you know you lurcher them and you bring them all full-time so it's something that you know I've done very successfully obviously them successfully I know it's something people are very very curious about so that's all where did you where do you find your team member right so funnily enough like I did a lot of interviews

you know from people I found on up work and Facebook groups and stuff like that but you know my facebook ad specialist right now I found him I already know about him so like personally uh he lives like really close to me and basically he was an ex-employee that's where my dad's work where where my dad is working basically he so he was like a a colleague of my dad and how old is he I don't know for sure but I think he's like 24 like 25 years old okay I was thinking like 40 or

45 Mikey's 40 year old for a 19 year old living we live in a cool world when we live in a cool world yeah yeah so that's how I found out about invasive I already knew him I we trusted him and yeah he was a pretty nice guy you know we're basically friends basically yeah so did he have any background in paid traffic or did he have that sort of because here's the thing especially with like I found it what sales people I found it with people doing paid traffic like I find out not so

much with copywriters with copper eyes I find it needs to be something that's innate within them but to an extent then again like I even think about Danny like Danny when he first started working for us he his copy was horrendous so for the first year he would manage all the campaigns I would write all the client ad copy and then he was like he's a really determined little [ __ ] and so he was just like you know we get really competitive as a team so he would get really good at copywriting and just

study all the books and then we got to a point where we would split test our different ad copy against each other and see who would make more money for our clients and then eventually got to a point where we brought here and then carrying Danny fought and then Kieran manages everything now man is about point is like you know there are a lot of rules where someone cannot have the background experience but they have that sort of the raw just kind of those innate traits within them and they kind of have the archetype the

perfect archetype to be good at paid traffic or sales or this or that so did he have any background experience yeah he actually like two years ago or I think it's more than that like three or four years ago I think he left the company where he was working with my dad to go work with a marketing agency doing like paid traffic and social media management and stuff like that and then you know that's you know so he had a background in paid traffic right now he's also working in like full time in another marketing

agency you know besides mine and he does his paid traffic so yeah he's really good and he's also like really good at also like managing clients and like you know being friendly with the clients and stuff really good with that as well so I think that's something I definitely want to touch on because I think one of the the biggest fears for people when they bring on a contractor which I'd refer to them as that they're a member of team until you get to a point where financially and for both parties and makes sense for

them to come on full-time I think that's one of the biggest fears or concerns is they people almost think they're like doing something wrong or they're doing some white label type [ __ ] when know like even Danny when he was working with me on a per month per client basis but some retainers ranging up to 10k a month like literally he to give you an example that like everyone will know ordering or client one of our old clients like he was still a contractor in the first two weeks that Orem was a client so

that's a you know five figure plus monthly retainer and the student is still a contractor you know while we were kind of finalizing the last details of him coming on full-time so you know it's not like Danny was like someone I hid like he was someone I acted like it's you kind of need to do the opposite which is just like really show them and say they're a member of your team and this and that otherwise it's it's almost a little even weirder yeah so yeah just in general like what have you done to instill

your agency culture because you know whether you're a team of one two or three like every agency does have things that are important to them as an agency culture has an agency DNA to it so what have you done to kind of its skill that in your small little team and how have you managed to get him to mold and gel well with the clients yeah for sure so basically first thing I did was like just introduce him to like my philosophy or not unlike how I see things with business and how I like to

like manage clients and deliver their service and stuff so basically I introduced him to like my my strategy and also like the like a thing like a communication policy that I created like you know this is how we we communicate for DePaul and slack and basically just telling like how to basically like treating processes through like Google Docs for example for every single thing so for example I have a thing called like communication policy within Regan media and then it is like one or two pages that explains how to communicate with clients and like with

team members well basically with myself cuz we're only 2 right now but yeah so that that's pretty much it and then from that in terms of like managing the clients basically it was already pretty good at it cuz he's a really he's really good like socially with with people and stuff but just again just a few just gave him like a few uh guideline on how to you know manage the client update them what makes them feel good like for example we started updating client every single Monday and Thursday just to give them a little

update on like what we've done so far because like you know we're always working on their account but like if they never hear from us like I've noticed that the they come back to us and they're like what are you guys working on is like what's going on so yeah things like that and also like in the beginning especially like when we are launching the ads I'm putting a system in place to update the client like every day or so just to give them a little update just one or two-sentence on slack dumb them like

hey you know we're writing the copies right now it's gonna be ready like tomorrow for example because I you know like I just want to have the best communication with my clients and what the team is possible yeah understood so like you're at a point right now where your agency's you know hovering right around that six-figure year mark working with five clients at the moment and but now you've managed to kind of offload the the SERS delivery aspect of it so my question to you is like what does a normal day and a life of

Michael look like what are your priorities like if you if you're planning the night before you know and just laying out your next day like what is the non-negotiables with the things that have to be done right first thing is outreach so every single day doesn't matter what the day is Saturday Sunday I do like a process I go through so LinkedIn outreach Facebook outreach yeah that's the first thing and then also after that I also do I started doing like cold messaging follow-up so basically you know within the agency incubator I have like I

created like an follow up sequence basically that I follow so I send like a few messages follow up following up with people on Facebook and LinkedIn and then the rest of the morning will be something like building systems or improving processes so right now for example working log unlike building like a standard operating procedure for delivering the service so that way there's like less communication involved with my facebook ad specialists and the clients and stuff like that and it's more like efficient and we can actually deliver the service faster so yeah so normal day would

be like in the morning I do my outreach and then after that I will like build a system or improve a system and then in the afternoon you know I'll take on calls and then I'll basically work with clients you know respond to slack messages and yeah night I do like role plays cells role play with people and I practice myself basically mmm amazing so out of curiosity what is what is a number of meetings a month where if you dip below that amount like you're concerned you know so whether that be you know if

you know that you're having less than two sales meetings a month or four or eight or ten or twenty like what's your barometer for like [ __ ] I'm not having enough meetings or I'm not saying enough meetings in order to be happy or I know I don't have a you know sustainable lead flow to keep up and grow or maintain the amount of clients from having right I'd say it's about 12 per month so roughly three per week and when I say three it's like three that are qualified because before I was just like

hey do you want to get on my knee like quick I'm gonna call you know and pretty much without qualifying them and stuff like that and I was getting a lot of like tire kickers and it wasn't really qualified like yes I was getting a lot of calls but nowadays I really make sure that I take on calls that are serious that I already know about me already know about the results that we got so that way you know I'm not wasting my time so yeah three qualified calls for a week is like my minimum

mm-hmm okay amazing now what advice would you give to anyone who's just beginning on their agency journey and I want something a little more maybe a little more practical or actionable rather than just like you know believe in yourself or like don't quit or like this so that you know like you just see like seriously things that like if you had implemented would have collected learning curve even if it's something even if it's something as simple to be honest as sticking to one knee sure or maybe sticking to one outreach method or whatever yeah so

when you first start working do you outreach I'd be my biggest tip as soon as you start work don't do anything don't check social media don't check email don't work on anything else just to like some outreach and then after that you can focus on whatever and you know stick to your outreach and do it like at the same time every single day so and then after that once you're done doing it like give yourself a reward like even nowadays I still give myself like a coffee after doing my outreach so that's why you know

cuz I see a lot of people like when they first start off they there may be scared to do outreach or like yeah they it's not like a habit but when you give yourself a reward I think it helps a lot to build that habit mmm amazing yeah well I mean I couldn't have said any better at the end of the day like people run rings around the topic of like having a website and having a this and oh what happens in this obscure weird situation is like there's a 0.01 percent chance of happening we're

like Oh what if this what what what if coronavirus starts to affect my agency in this and just people were just like freaking sauce on and it's like it's like well none of this like all of that is contingent on you setting a meeting and like so why don't you worry about that once you set the meeting and especially you know especially the the next thing you know the other thing that I would say is like I think there's a totally valid case for having a hundred percent of your ducks in a row if you

know that your conversion rate if you know the you know the amount of meetings okay and obviously I'm you're probably not the best person to say this - because you're legit or make closed your first meeting so you know you're a liar but like you know that's the simple truth is that most people don't close their first meeting yeah most people it takes them five or six or ten or maybe even 15 meetings to close you know so other than a day like they're probably not gonna become a client anyways your first or second or

third meetings so like you might as well get those reference experience and in that practicing so um yeah I think that's pretty much it I don't want to take up too much of your time off camera except to kind of talk about some other more high-level agency stuff or actually a leave with one more high-level question look you're at a on 8k months with your agency what's the next goal post well by what time and what are you what are your action steps and what are you intending to do to get there right so right

now I don't have like a trick deadline on hitting that goal but to me the goal that I set myself and you know where I see myself in the future is really like at forty thousand dollars per month profit and the reason I am aiming like so high from where I'm at right now is just because like 15 or 20,000 or 30,000 dollars per month profit doesn't really excite me that much but like forty thousand dollars like like once I hit like 8k per month I really saw seeing things like on a much bigger level

and starting seeing bigger so yeah the next thing to get there I think is really to first of all like change up my identity and things and you know think change some of my limiting beliefs that I still have and then get higher ticket clients that that's for sure I'm starting to get three four or five thousand dollars per month retainers and yeah build systems to have a better service and keep clients on a long-term basis mm-hmm yeah and I mean just on your last point I mean you've got a client that's coming on 22

or 21 months they've been working with you I think you said I was told 2018 they signed may May 2018 yes a Martian house for 22 months I mean that's the thing you know 22 months that pays dividends like that that definitely pays dividends and you know other than a day it's way easier to keep a climb than it is to sign a new one yep so being able to do that all costs and you know I don't think it seems like that client is gonna leave you anytime soon so that's the cool thing like

you literally have when you when you have such a high ticket service and you pack and you match that with having a really high retention rate you look at you know the the lifetime value of a client of yours it could be you know depending on what you're charging and we're from and you know you keep them on for a year three years four years five years you're pocketing 30 50 a hundred two hundred three hundred K depends you know how high-tech you're charging and yeah I think that's something that a lobby agency owners need

to get a little bit more focused on and obsessed about is just sparking as much client delight as possible building really really deep solid rapport with clients to the point where like if they fired you would feel like they were like firing their best friends that's one thing I do in my agency is like we were really good friends with all of our clients you know so yeah all in all I think it's a really really solid interview and one thing I just want to thank you for your time sure well thanks to you men

really appreciate it I just