okay so got a special video for you today I'm joined by a good friend Charlie Morgan who many of you may already know from the social media marketing space online it's got a YouTube channel I'll put a link in the description so you can check that out but Charlie is someone who has stumbled across I'd say it like just less than six months ago and and and in this mist of kind of all loads of new creators coming into YouTube and all this new extra value I was like okay let me see who who's actually kind of putting out the really good [ __ ] who's got the who's got who's got the really valuable stuff right now who's got the juice and and I stumbled across Charlie and I watched a couple of his videos like man this guy really knows what he's talking about and he's built an incredibly successful agency and I value everything that he's saying and I really want to connect with this guy and get him on here and we've had a lot of chats over the last couple of months I've been picking each other's brains a ton of stuff some little private Mastermind and I wanted to get Charlie on this challenge to share his story with you guys and I also want to pick his brain on some of the systems that he's implementing at the moment as well so Charlie first of all thanks for jumping on man always a pleasure to chat if you could give the guys a bit of an understanding of your backstory uh and how you got your agency or started in the first place will also how you then scaled it up to your first 10K month yeah of course man well thank you for having me mate first of all I really appreciate that so well my name is Charlie as you'll introduce me and I basically run a company called Imperium acquisition at the moment um where we help people like systemize client acquisition um we'll always talk about that we're here to talk about the first I don't know what you call it the Genesis of you know what what I've created so well it go it goes back because I'm 24 now so it goes all the way back to when I was about 17 or 18. where I was this sort of I was a pretty weird individual in the sense that you said this because we had a chat before but Jordan said this before where he thought like yeah I'm going to create the next Uber I'm going to create the next YouTube I'm going to be a billionaires actually and I have this sense of energy where I wanted to create something bigger than myself and I didn't want to go down the route of a nine to five my biggest Nightmare and no word of a lie except for maybe blood test but my biggest fear was the traditional you know um semi-detached in the suburb somewhere shepherd's pie for tea nine to five kids go to local school there's nothing wrong with that and I would never judge someone for living that life but I was so inherently terrified of that and repelled by that that I was sort of driven towards starting the agency so that's the sort of psychological um underpinning that led me to taking the actions so the long the long shot of it is is so I went to University and when I finished my a levels I was internal studying psychology at the last minute I changed to entrepreneurship and Enterprise much to my parents dismay although they did support me very well and I was I was about six months for three to six months I can't remember exactly into this University degree and I spoke to my tutor a guy called Raphael and I was reading a book this is the sort of pivotal moment I was reading a book um called and what you see is what you get by Alan sugar it's his autobiography and in there he was talking about how important sales is and stuff and I was like all right billionaire I've seen him on The Apprentice he probably knows a thing or two so I thought well I need to learn sales do I want to start a business because that was why I went to University in the first place so I went to my teacher I said hey Rafael when do we learn sales like when's the sales module like when do we have lectures on how to sell we said oh well we don't really do that here and I was like I was like oh well how come you said well to be honest like the lecturers because they haven't got their own businesses like they don't really know how to sell so we and you know so he just sort of started now that's when it sort of clicked in my brain and my stomach dropped and I was like oh great I've just wasted nine grand so the next day I literally sent over my application to drop out like I woke up the next morning I thought I'm gone um and then after that basically that was a a strange one because at University I'd kind of I'd sort of been doing a similar thing to what you'd be doing right where you'd be going to local businesses so I was at Plymouth uni and I would basically you know in my free time like when I wasn't um doing lectures and stuff I'd go out on foot to like local restaurants and stuff and try and sign up a social media marketing client because I you know sort of knew a couple of things about social media at the time and I signed like a couple of very very low ticket clients but I think I was doing like a grand or two a month at Uni when I dropped out I went to do an apprenticeship um and then through the apprenticeship it was basically a cold calling apprenticeship it was sales and marketing I learned a lot of stuff there but during the apprenticeship I also built agency clients on the side of the gym Niche but bear in mind this is what you said a while ago as well it was in the gymnast four or five years ago now so it was actually quite easy to get clients and I sort of went from zero to 10K a month in that six month period but that's that's the sort of the beginning of it and I can go into different details at different stages but it was basically like Drpout Apprentice although I had this weird sort of period in between both of those things where I was working in um Clark's customer care for Clark shoes and that scared me a little bit as well so that gave me more motivation that's how I got started uh the old Bill retail jobs I've had plenty of them yeah mate nothing nothing right it's not that bad but it could be worse it wasn't it's not but it's like am I gonna do this forever absolutely not if I was I was like you know I thought to myself I said if I ever have to say good morning class customer care Charlie Morgan speaking if I have to say that again I thought I was gonna go insane so I had to add it down but nice nice uh so you went to UNI um it's just cool I didn't know that and um I mean I went to Union as well I I actually got ended up getting kicked out of all things um but but I I there's many people it's interesting because I've seen a quite a few people in the space have gone to UNI and many of those people didn't actually follow through and what they were doing did you take many lessons from University of course you realized early on that it wasn't going to be the thing that that was going to make you successful but did you take anything from University that gave you an unfair Advantage when you actually started the agency that's a really good question um there's a couple of things that I took from it the first and most important lesson was how not to teach business um I think that was like a that was a good one there's a quote from Abraham Lincoln that says you can learn and you can learn something from any man even if it's what not to do or something like that so I I thought I didn't have the foresight to realize that I would be teaching people business in in the long term but on in in in retrospect when I'm building products and stuff I do think well how was it taught at Uni and like you know I just thought that wasn't a very good idea I think the second thing that that I learned and realized is that it isn't particularly difficult to gain a competitive advantage over your peers and your you know your social competition for jobs and business and stuff if you've just got a little bit of a work ethic because and not to slay anyone but but first year of uni which is you know the first few months of Union was my only exposure to that sort of culture but I noticed that the people around me were quite lazy they'd you know they they'd skip lectures even though they only had one lecture a week or something and like a lot of them work really hard but I I soon realized that like once the essays were done they just wanted to go away and party whereas I go to there's a place in Plymouth called The Charles seal library or something like that and I go there with a bag of books and read in my spare time everyone thought I was weird so I learned those two things but I wouldn't say I learned anything tip massively applicable in business from those lectures um I mean maybe I did but and I apply it without realizing but I think I learned more from from books specifically when I was reading fine that's interesting do you did you feel uh somewhat of a even back then being in University being kind of alone or I say alone you're really alone uni uh being introverted and so on and taking yourself off and reading those books in yourself did you feel that you were destined to be successful in in some way or or yeah were you just desperately trying to better yourself to to I think that I've always had a and I've come to terms with this in the last year or two I've always had this sort of inherent sense of narcissism and grandiosity um and I think that there's a massive stigma behind thinking you're better than other people now I think that as in terms of value systems I don't think I'm better than other people in terms of you know being good or being bad or being moral or anything like that but I've always had the ability to take myself further and go above and beyond what most normal people are able to do so when I was at Uni and I was looking at people around me I didn't look down on them because I wasn't in a position to do that and I wouldn't even do that these days but I think in terms of like Paradigm and mindset or wavelengths whatever you want to call it I felt extremely isolated because you know one thing I did when I was at Uni as a guy came I think his name was Brett a guy came to do um a sort of lecture or guest speaking thing and he ran a local business like in the city and he'd been on the apprentice and I took a camera in and I said I was sat there in this lecture hall with a hundreds of people and I was sat there recording it and after the day after I transcribed it through a YouTube channel which I've now deleted and everyone thought like why is this guy recording and transcribing this stuff and I was like well because in case I want to go back and re-watch it and listen to it and like I thought by transcribing the information it would go into my brain more and I'd learn more from him which it did and that was the sort of behavior that I partook and I didn't I partied quite a lot during freshers week and then that put me off drinking and cider pretty much for a long time um but but generally speaking I was just strange mate I was just quite I'd isolate myself and read stuff so yeah I think that's strange at all I I asked questions I asked that for a very selfish reason because it's interesting because I had those feelings myself and what you just said about this sense of grandeur those I resonate with an incredible amount like an incredible amount because I felt that exact same thing uh and and still do to some extent but but again not to be mistaken by any kind of hard incentive importance over over ethics or anybody in any sense that I'm better than them but in the sense that you just know in your heart and in your frequency then you are an extremely powerful person and everything that you touch you you yeah I think that grandiosity is is potential in Disguise it's kind of just that that deep part of you is just like because I'm a firm believer that emotions or a lot of emotions are parts of us that are trying to communicate that we haven't got access to so I think that the grandiosity the narcissism the ego you know thinking like I'm gonna I'm Gonna Change the World I'm gonna have an impact I'm gonna do all this stuff which still exists this day like I think that that is like a deep part of me screaming like don't be average don't be average do more do more and I think that it's easy to mistake that and and you know if you're not careful it goes to your head then you start thinking you truly are better than people and that happened to me and that was like not a good place to be and once I you know level myself out and corrected myself I started to connect with it and say right why the hell do I do I what business do I have thinking I can be a billionaire because it's so it's so rare like why do I think I can do that and then I just came to terms like do you know what that's just I just seem to have it in me I just think I'm gonna do it and it's it's extremely narcissistic to think that but if you if you don't let it control you I think it's just it's just potential in Disguise I I think also I think but the reality of it is it probably comes from a deep rooted place of insecurity as well and and I know that within myself as well and and but also that that same concept there'll be people to listen to this right now thinking I resonate with everything they're saying right now and I'm glad they're saying this but it also can manifest a lot of negativity and it means that some people don't even [ __ ] get started I mean so some people don't even get the work done because they believe that they're entitled to the end result before they've even had to work for it they were in a lot of danger for all so so you want wanted to work for it and you did work for it can you give us an idea of kind of what those initial stages looked like of actually making that decision I'm going to reach out to companies like what did you do did you cold call them having had that Apprentice like what was the process yeah yeah so I think that just to touch on your point quickly I think that grandiosity if it's not leveled out with humility does become pretty ugly because if you don't have the humility to realize like okay I can be this but I'm not I'm only that if I if I work so I think yeah that's all you have to realize um so yeah so I I put myself um so I between my my Social Circle and my team and stuff I I have this this place that I call the darkness and that's basically you call it monk mode you can call it nightmare mode or whatever but I call it the darkness which is where you go to a really dark place in terms of like you try to inflict as much pain on yourself through work as possible and through and through that infliction you become more and then as a result of that you get what you want so I I took myself to the darkness right which is basically where you just spend six to twelve maybe even 18 months doing what is most painful every single day knowing that if you do that and you come out the other side and you have the balls then the market will reward you so really the work started properly what the uni phase was sort of me I had no idea what I was doing I would go to like restaurants with like a piece of paper and be like hey do you want to work with me like here's what I offer and I'd literally have like you know the social media logo so that was that was a strange place but but the the apprentices where a boy became a man essentially um so first of all I had this nine to five um a local marketing agency um and my boss Alan I am so grateful for him um I completely changed my life in terms of mentoring me but so my my job was to basically call like 200 businesses 300 businesses a day I'd start at 9 30 and I'd finish at 5 30. and that was for the for the business but what I would do is I was a bit sneaking so I would get up at about 5 30 and this was my routine basically for a whole year with a few mishaps because I wasn't perfectly you know diligent it's impossible to be perfectly you know disciplined all the time but I wake up at 5 30 and I'd get a gym session in and I'd be back at home by seven um I would leave to get to the car park of my office um and I'll try and get there about 8 30 or 7 7 38 you know 21 had a rest at the gym and for the first hour between you know eight and eight nine thirty whatever I would make cold calls and at this point I would be cold calling gyms in the UK because I knew that a lot of them you know were still doing like sessions in the morning and I also tried dabbling in Australian calls as well because I knew that they'd be sort of like you know it worked then I would do so I do my cold calls in the morning probably try and get like 30 of those done because I was just like frequency darling because I wasn't very good at it this is the thing got really good at it but at the beginning I wasn't so I could Dial A lot of people because the problem with cold calling is that you have a conversation it can take 15 minutes right and that's not efficient so I then went from 9 30 to about 1pm where I would cold call for this business right and that was pretty unpleasant but the good thing about that is it didn't feel anywhere near as painful because if I got rejected there they were rejecting the business not me so my cold calls I found way harder because if someone said no it was no to me whereas if someone said no to the the other thing so I created this thing called an alias which is it called strategy for cold calling what I would call these businesses the gyms and stuff and I'll pretend to be a guy called Joseph um and I just say hey as Joseph and then if they rejected me I was like oh they rejected Joseph not me I stopped doing that after about three months when I got through the pain anyway so then I would have my lunch break from one to two um from one to two I would basically get in my car eat my lunch or a meal deal really quickly I used to eat um the Southern Fried Chicken Pasta man it was lovely and I would drive for lay by and I'd make more cold calls now typically I'd always have a sales call booked at this point from 1 15 to 2 p.
m so I'd usually take the sales call but if I didn't I'd do more color codes then I would come back into the office um about 2 p. m and from 2PM to 4 30 p. m um I would do more calls for this business or take sales calls to business and then here's the cool thing I did so apprentices apprenticeships in the UK you might be familiar with them they have a single on the job training which is basically where an hour a day you have to spend like doing or training basically training yourself as an apprentice not just working for the business most apprentices will spend that on the job training hour doing the coursework um I wanted to spend it doing consulting accelerated by Sam Evans so I basically did all of my coursework in the first like three to four months of the apprenticeship so every at the end of the day after about three or four months I could do Consulting accelerator and just watch that and sort of you know learn the Facebook ads more do the mindset module then I'd come home 6 p.
m and then I'd usually do you kind of guessed it more cold calls and I I finished at like 8 p.
