Geography To 6 Figure Social Media Agency

The episode features Shoaib Ahmed, who transformed from a geography student to a successful owner of a multi-six-figure social media agency in just 12 months.

Key Takeaways:

1. Career Path Shift:
   • Shoaib initially studied geography because of his interest, not for career prospects. His journey underscores the importance of following one’s passion and the realization that a university degree doesn’t necessarily dictate one’s career path.
2. Entrepreneurial Success:
   • Ahmed’s transition from a placement year in a media agency to owning a successful business illustrates the power of seizing opportunities and adapting to circumstances, like leveraging LinkedIn during the pandemic.
3. Personal Branding Insights:
   • He emphasizes the significance of personal branding, especially on LinkedIn. His insights into content creation, engaging an audience, and the power of storytelling provide valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs and content creators.

Notable Quotes:

1. “I did geography because I enjoyed the subject. I never knew what I wanted to do long-term in terms of my career.”
2. “LinkedIn is in a rather sweet spot in terms of growth...it's becoming more of a creator platform, rather than just a professional jobs platform.”
3. “If you put content out there, you've got to be willing to take a punch or two.”

Conclusion:
This episode is a blend of personal journey and professional advice, offering listeners inspiration and practical tips for leveraging social media and personal branding to achieve entrepreneurial success. Shoaib Ahmed's story is a testament to the power of aligning one's interests with career opportunities and the effective use of digital platforms in building a successful business.

CONTACT METHOD
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/b16ree
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ree.hurakan.5/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/b16ree
Clubhouse: @b16ree
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@b16ree

Transcript

Hey guys, and welcome to the entrepreneur heroes Show. Today we have got a very special guest of mine. And as you guys know, some of you know, I've been trying out a new platform over the last six months, but we actually got one of the actual kings of the platform. So we're going to talk to Mr. Shoaib Ahmed, from Geography student to multi six figure social media agency in just 12 months. Welcome to the show, bro. Hey, dude.

Hey, I'm good. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to this. Always a pleasure.

Always a pleasure. So I may have given someone a game away already. About You know, what you do? What you're doing now. But look, let's just call out the hippo in the room, right? Geography. Why did you do geography?

Honestly, I got asked this question a lot. I did geography because I enjoyed the subject. And that was pretty much it. I never knew I wanted to do long term and like, in terms of my career, and I feel like there's a lot of pressure on texting somebody to enroll to decide what they want to do for the rest of their life. Yeah. So I level I did maths, science and English and humanity. So I thought I'd keep my options open. Yeah. And then I did a placement year whilst I was, in my degree, so like a year in industry where you go out, so I went to a media agency in London and worked with them, loved it fell in love with like marketing media, unit building social media. And then from that, when I left uni, I pursued that, that kind of career. But yeah, geography, I just thought it was something I enjoyed. And I didn't go to university to necessarily, like, accelerate my career, and you think degree would be a tick box on job applications, what degree you got didn't really matter. As long as you've got the tick box, which is a bit stupid, in my opinion, I think the system isn't kind of set up really, for the modern working world. But there you go, as always,

so in a day, you've done something that is a tick box and look, your Asian background. There's always a pressure in that background to go to university, and you've gone to university, you've, you've ticked box, fulfill your family, your friends, the community, you've got it. And now you've done something completely different by having your business but you see now that you know why you didn't even need it. You could have just gone ahead, done it. But you know, everything you do is the right thing where we're exactly where we're supposed to be. So while on the geography. What part of Scotland is

really, really a testament. In my defense, in my defense, I actually studied social geography, it's a human geography, study, physical geography, Don't test me. Well, this

is a subject for me, because that's all I have. For us. It was someone just going to study Google Maps.

To give you an insight, what the things I study well, like I said, like Middle Eastern conflict, energy crisis, immigration, politics, a lot of stuff on race, and post colonialism, gender theory, loads of more kind of, I guess, the intersection of history, and sociology, and through like, the dimension of space, right, it's like, that's the element of geography that holds it all together, how space is constructed, how society is constructed. So it was very much like understanding the current world and why it's the way it is and how it's come into that.

Like, sounds interesting to loosen. If there's anyone out there listening, and you've not ever thought about geography, I think show it was actually kind of just sold something quite interesting.

Right? It's history, but better, because you know, the President, that's what I'd say. That's good. And

we will have we will have to do I went to the I ended up going to university, I did take a gap year, but I get there was actually to buy my car because I'm a petrol head and got my car. Then I went to uni and was just racing, street racing and all this silly stuff I shouldn't be doing but completely agree. Like, did you find that you had a pressure from the family and communities to go and go to university?

Yeah, now 100% I think also not just to go to university, but the wider community I think in specially South Asian backgrounds has certain subjects or career choices which are more desirable than others. So law, medicine, typically those kinds of industries, the traditional industries, marketing, social media, anything online, anything in the creative space isn't really considered a viable career path. Even to this day, the stuff that I do online, my parents don't fully Understand, I was explaining the concept of a podcast to my dad yesterday. And he just couldn't get his head around it like it was like, so it's like the TV button on wine. I was like, I just gave up

telling you to get a job.

My, funnily enough, a couple of months ago, I was a little bit of my mom told me to just bring your boss and tell him, You taking some days off, and I was like, Man, I am the boss. So I think you know, it is what it is. It's different generation. It's a different kind of education system. But yeah, I'm very happy with what I'm doing. And I feel like they they see the results. And

they're like, Yeah, I'm sort of proud of what you've achieved here. This is not easy. Like, you've got a bit of a double barrel, because the subject you don't isn't traditional Asian subject, right? If we're not an accountant, a doctor, lawyer, something like that. It's like, why we've been studying why you've been doing anything. So if you're going against the grain, not once, but twice.

Yeah, I remember when I said I was studying geography, like everybody would ask me, but what can you do with a geography degree? And I think it's the same kind of answer I give, for most degrees, you can do anything you want with a degree, a degree is just a tick box, on a CV, it's just a piece of paper, at the end of the day, what you do with that, it's up to you, like people, like you're doing a Mickey Mouse degree, like, it's not really a degree, it's not real subject here. But then when they see what I've achieved from that, they don't really have much to say.

That's what it is. Society is always going to have an opinion on what you do, whether you're doing something good or bad, they're always in the top. It's actions and resulting, you've got a hell of a lot of results. And everyone in the intro, we talked about the king of LinkedIn. So how, why LinkedIn?

To be honest, I start posting on LinkedIn and furlough. So during the pandemic, I was working on that placement for a marketing media agency, I was put on furlough for a while and I just knew LinkedIn was like a good place for a student to make themselves more employable. So kind of purely out of circumstance, I started posting on LinkedIn a little bit more, that then kind of became more regular, as I had a lot of free time. And when I was on the platform, I realized there's so many other students in the same position. So I created like a little ebook was like a downloadable PDF, giving advice on how to kind of create a LinkedIn profile and how to create content and that kind of thing. I collaborated with a few people who are also posting on LinkedIn at my age, ask them to feature in that ebook. And then a year and a half later, one of those people reached out to me, he was setting up a personal branding agency himself, and asked me to work part time to support him in that process, that converted into a full time job at that agency, which I was there for seven, eight months, and actually rejected a grant, like quite a prolific grand scheme to work with this guy. Some is called in his startup, stayed there for a few to two thirds, three quarters of a year. And then realize, okay, I have a model that I think works really well when it comes to personal branding. So LinkedIn kind of came out circumstances a little bit, it's just that the stars aligned, but also as a platform, LinkedIn, organic reach, and the potential to grow on that platform faster passes, a lot of other channels where the reach is kind of dwindling, or you have to use monetization models to access the same audience, right. So right now LinkedIn is in a rather sweet spot in terms of growth, it's becoming more of a creator platform, rather than just a professional jobs platform. And so there's a lot of opportunities that come in that I just thought it'd be silly not to tap into this, especially with my marketing, social media background. I was kind of in a good position to make something out of this opportunity.

That's good. And is is great to see that locked down. And, you know, the consequences of that enabled you to be creative. And that's the thing sometimes we're on a path and stuff happens. And you need to respond, not react, a lot of people reacted, they went crazy. And although like I'm on furlough, I don't need to do nothing. I'm going to Netflix and chill. And then you got the other people think you know what, I've got an opportunity where I don't need to work on getting a bit of pay. I can actually go and do something, what do I want to do and it's great to see that you just took action. And you know you're you're fearless like to go on social media and be able to just write you have to be fearless because social media is full of trolls. It's full of bullies. I still get bullied and Well I wouldn't say bullied. I laugh them off, but there's some on people that they can't handle the abuse, what comes with social media? So going on to that, did you? Did you encounter that in your journey?

Yeah, no 100% multiple times. So when I first started posting, it was always kind of it was a bit abnormal for a 20 year old, he was still at uni to still actively posting so much on LinkedIn. Whereas most people on Instagram or Tiktok, Facebook and Snapchat, right, and I wasn't really active on those platforms. And I've never been super active on them. So LinkedIn was known as its kind of dull and dreary platform for typically, let's be honest, middle aged, white, senior men, that's what the platform is known for. So it probably wasn't a little bit different for me to be perceived so regularly, and definitely had a few comments like, why are you investing so much time on this, like, what you're getting out of it kind of thing. And then obviously, when I started launching kind of my business or going freelance, there's loads of stuff that you do at the beginning, which isn't great. Like, I looked back at a lot of my content, it wasn't that good. I look back at my copy, it wasn't great. I look at the design work I did. It wasn't great. But if I didn't do that, at the beginning, I wouldn't be in the position that I am now. And everyone's got to start somewhere. So I think at that point, you know, there's a lot of people who are saying, Oh, you need to do this, or you shouldn't be doing this, or you're doing this wrong. But I think everyone's got on that journey themselves. And if you don't post, you know, I've improved and I've got better. There's also times when I launched yellow hippo where the video I did for my website. So first proper, like, it felt very professional to me, at the time, I was like in my bedroom, like for six months, and then that now out in the streets of Manchester with professional videographer shooting, I could campaign video for my website. And one of the first comments I got when I uploaded that and shared it on LinkedIn was other videos a little bit cringy, isn't it? Today, but you know, you get comments like that. And it is it is what it is. But I've also had tons of people disagree with my content or disagree with what I've said in a post where I've given an opinion. And that's fine. Like, I think it's great. If you're sitting on a fence, you're not really you're not building fans, you're not causing controversy, and you're not. You just kind of fade into the background. So it's great that people disagree, but there's been times where people disagree. And that disagreement crosses a line to just abuse. So I've had like comments that obviously, delete, I had a couple of people reach out to me via my website, just to say like, I won't guy who was just explicitly racist contact form through the website anonymously, talking about our LinkedIn posts that I had written about diversity and inclusion, ironically. And kind of made a point that it's gone too far, that like that diversity has gone too far, almost very bizarre argument. But you know, it comes with the territory. And I think if you put content out there, you put opinions out there and put yourself out there. You've got to be willing to kind of take a punch or two.

No, of course. And I believe it's an act of bravery. Because there's points in history where people should have stood up. And they don't know, we can talk in the last three years where society probably should have stood up to things that were happening out there, but they didn't have complied and look where they are now. So I would rather stand up, get stoned for my opinions, like I believe in than just sit on the fence because we're like, why are we here? What would we stand for something right?

Yeah, I think close to this. I really like what you just said about the fearlessness and the bravery and posting online. Because I think there's a bit of stigma attached to the Creator economy, especially, typically from an older generation. It's like, How is this a job, how he's posting content, or sitting on TV all day, you know, taking photos, how's that a job, but I think that there's so much you have to have a level of self confidence to create content for it online. Knowing that you're going to take up space in someone's newsfeed in someone's day in someone's life. Having that self confidence that you know what, I'm worthy enough to take up that space, like my content needs to be heard, my voice needs to be heard. I think there's so much power in that. And the amount of work and skills that go into the creative economy is ridiculous. Like, it's not just you know, posting a photo online, it's editing, its video creation. It's copywriting. It's social media management. It's it's everything that's involved design work. There's so much involved in it.

Sales is onboarding is infrastructure. Yeah, combined partnership

strategy. This Time goes into it that just gets overlooked. So I'm always advocate for like creators I tried personally to a one person was gonna go on Tik Tok and grow and build on that I realized, wait a minute, this is this requires time, effort, exactly what per resource and it's not something you just do overnight and go viral. Like, there's a lot of work that goes into it, which I think sadly gets overlooked.

I mean, they think it's easy, like you see someone that's successful now, but you don't know about their journey. You don't know how they have begun. And I think a lot of it's a mindset shift where people need to understand what you just said, but they don't, because it's it's lack of education, lack of awareness, and just a complete mindset. It's like, look at the beginning of the conversation, I said, geography us and Edinburgh. And you've educated me, it's that Hold on This is the type of geography is, and if people understood that, in the creative economy, it's not just somebody getting their phone out and pouting. And taking a selfie. Yes, a hell of a lot. And I think the world is going like that. And if you don't get on now, it doesn't matter what age you are, you have to get involved in you, you have to stand for something. Because I say one thing that probably ships a lot of people is that in life, there's a couple of things I look forward to, and one is my funeral. Because when I am going to do it, I'm not going to know I'm gone. However, I want it to be packed out. I want my kids to say you know what, it was actually the right guy to come the people he he touched. And that's the mark of of leaving something behind. It's not about that you can see the cars and all that stuff. What I've got, it's not what I stand for. What I stand for, is what I do and how I transform people. And I'm not afraid to say it.

Yeah, I say this with my clients. It's, I always say to them when you want like if somebody wants to work with us as an agency, that yellow hippo, I always say to them, What are your intentions? And usually at the beginning that most will say, you know, I want to build community, I want to generate new business, blah, blah, blah, when you get into it, some of them are just purely for vanity metrics, is that I want to I want to have this many followers, and I'm like, Okay, why do you need that many followers? Right? So there's got to be a purpose behind behind everything that you do I always say to clients, what legacy Do you want to leave? Right? What impact do you want to have on people, because without that, you can't really authentically build a brand online, or I'm not going to work with somebody who just is there for kind of the wrong reasons, there has to be intention in everything that you do. And like even the business over the last half months, I've had a whole like, mental reshift, around how I operate and how I approach business. And it's all come back to like purpose and intention. And what I want to achieve long term. So totally agree.

No. And that's why because there's it's mainly our experiences that shape us. And there's two things people want either either people pleasing, or they require validation. Yeah. Now, getting people pleasing. And validation is not a bad thing. But when you make it about, specifically for them for the wrong reasons, that is a bad thing. Like if I'm going to have an opinion, and change it every time based on who I speak to I'm a people pleaser. If I'm doing stuff for validation, to feel good. Like for example, my business is high ticket. And I help people get results. Now, yes, I want to help people, but I feel validated, and have a sense of purpose by doing that, because I know I can help people get a result. But there's validation where it's like, you always need that from an audience or from people who posts us specifically just for that, like my Instagram when I used to post just about my cars, videos collecting this collecting that I will get 1000s of likes 1000s of views. But when I've talked about enough pivots, you know, while I was building this community of dreamers, I want to help them. So what can we do? I changed my content from 1000s of likes, it went down to hundreds and then sub hundreds. But I never stopped. I'm like, You know what this is tells me about my audience. I'm learning about them. So it's fine. If I'm going to lose a few 1000 followers. It's okay. They will never don't know never there for me. They will never fans are never followers or just dreamers. So it's cool. It's like someone you just need to take it on the chin and learn from it and do better.

100% 100% agree.

You mentioned something about LinkedIn organic reach is one of the best platforms people investing in it and all that. So I'm going to just call it out. Why is my account after nearly 12 months working with two top agencies in a personal branding space? Not really grown as much as it should be?

Okay, number of things. Firstly, I haven't looked into your account, so I haven't fully diagnose it Yeah, but on LinkedIn, there's a number of things that I always say and lead with. And it's, I think it's something that makes our agency quite quite different. Now, every agency has like a specialist and right I identified yellow Hooper's, and that's building brands around people through storytelling. So it's creating and crafting stories, a story arc, a journey that is inspiring, educational value driven, right? Ideally, all three of those things, you've got to show elements of vulnerability, you've also got to show elements of transformation, right? So people like liking your Instagram, you're saying you had loads of people, 1000s of people liking it when you showed the the results, right that outcomes, people seeing that stuff. But people also love seeing the district struggle, right. And then people have seen the transformation when you put both of those together, here, and now I'm here. And this is how I did it. That's where the value comes in. That's why that education element comes in. So I think we follow two kind of approaches to content. And I think most platforms loosely have a similar model. So I would say you want your brand awareness content, which is stuff about you. It's personnel, it's specific, it's story led, it shows transformation. And it's inspiring, usually, or vulnerable. Right, that stuff that's mass relatable to a big audience. So if you want to talk about something really niche in your field, that immediately is going to alienate the majority of a LinkedIn audience, right, because it's not relatable, there's no touch point where they can comment, or they have a point of connectivity or interruption. So you want to stick to those universal themes, right. So things like leadership, culture, entrepreneurship, because the majority of people have had a touch point with those things. If it's leadership that either our leader, they want to be a better leader, they've had a bad leader, we've had a great leader, whether you're an intern, or CEO, or director, you've had a touch point with that topic. What happens when you inject your story into into that topic, is he still talking about universal theme that people can relate to, but you have an angle, you have a point of view, and that is so many posts on LinkedIn that don't have a point of view. It's just like an opinion thrown out there. But it's not strong enough, with a particular example, with a specific story that demonstrates and the kind of fully encapsulates the message. So that's what I say is the first piece brand awareness, universal theme, inject it with a specific personal story to validate the argument you're making the second bit, because if you just do that stuff, people will say, Well, what's, how's that helping my business? Right? How, like, how am I gonna get leads from that? The second bit is the nurturing and the conversion. So that's when you talk about the specific kind of service offering you have. And you've provided value. So the main thing here is educating people about your expertise, showing them social proof, testimonials, results, providing stats and numbers. Because it works really well where people can actually see again, a transformation might be not your transformation, but a client's transformation, since you've worked with them, they start to hear these without problems, agitate those problems, talk about them, and then provide the solution to that audience that in itself is the story was the story that is going to convince people of your authority base, right, you put those two things together, the brand awareness, which is going to get you reach eyes on your profile, visibility, more engagement, and then you combine that with the value driven stuff is it means you're going to get eyes on your content consistently. But also, you're going to have conversion pieces in there. Exactly what you do and who you are. There's more, you know, there's loads I'd rather condensed it just, of course, because we can be able to London page to sleep your LinkedIn profile as a London page, that every little component has to be optimized for the audience. So the post is brand awareness, you get people to see visit your profile when they land on your profile. If it's strong enough and ticks all the boxes, you then convert that traffic they become followers they become might become a DM they can visit your website, clients. That's roughly like a very quick overview of how yellow hippo and I approach personal branding.

Brilliant, there you go, guys, you've had a bit of a masterclass. So, I'm gonna dig deep. You know, I want to give every listener some more help. Right. So I've got let's talk about the standard original LinkedIn avatar, which is the male, career driven, middle aged person they decide Add that you know what, I want to stop having my LinkedIn profile looking like a CV, and I want to maybe do a couple of posts. Now, you talked about brand awareness, what would be the three components that would help them structure that that type of brand awareness posts?

Yeah. So first thing is loan bond is the hub. So the first two lines of a LinkedIn post them the most important because if they're not good enough, people aren't going to click the read more button. The posts on a news feed today, it's so busy that more and more creditors flocking to the platform, which is why long term and over time to reach, it will decline inevitably like the platform during the first two lines to be strong. Based on the stats that we have. I on my team, I've written over 4000 LinkedIn posts in the last 12 months, that data clearly shows the highest, the highest performing pieces of content usually have an eye in the in the first two lines. I also have a number, typically I think about 80% of our top 500 LinkedIn posts we've ever written, have a number in them. So it could be like six years ago or in 2001. And then I number and then it sets up a story, right? It sets up something in science, curiosity that helps people keep reading. If you have like in 2017 or six years ago, that in itself is setting up a story right? In your personal experience into a universal topic. So off the top of my head, it could be something like six years ago, I got fired. Six years ago, I encountered like the best boss in the world. Six years ago, I quit my job, all these things take up a story. But because you're talking about quitting a job, bad leadership, those types of universal themes, it's still relatable to most people, inside curiosity for them to keep on reading. We've also had more like extreme examples of that. So I've had kids go really vulnerable in depth personal, where they've said, you know, three months ago, I suffered a miscarriage, right? A year ago, I was homeless? No, because again, real raw stories are what people relate to relate to, which is a big thing at the moment. It's like why we're seeing the trend of like D influencing. I don't know that but people want relatable role models like influencers rather than aspirational ones. So that's, that's the first first thing a hot, strong cup, that typically does those things. The main body of a person has been rather concise. So you have to it that doesn't mean a few sentences, it means every word you use. It has a purpose, right? You haven't said things for the sake of it, I usually write a LinkedIn post and then edit it down by at least 50%. Because usually, you're just throwing in a lot of repetition, you're saying things, because it sounds good, too, right. But when you read it out loud, it doesn't flow naturally. It's not conversational. So right how you speak, that is so important, I say to everybody, stop using that all the formal jargon to get rid of them write how you speak, because that brings personality to your post, and it brings some kind of a tone of voice. And it adds a point of view, right? Because there's so much you can do with how you write that conveys personality, for example, you swear in your LinkedIn content, you're probably a bit edgy, a bit kind of more dangerous in your opinions. If you use certain like, shortened versions of words. Like for example, sometimes especially in business, I use this or like, WTF like those kinds of shows kind of who you are, how you speak. You can somewhat sarcasm humor wit I really to LinkedIn posts just through the way you write. So then that main body has to be written kind of really well, structurally and stylistically. But it still has to continue the story probably started, you have to continue and provide values, there's got to be a message in there somewhere. Then the final bit, hook main body, the end bit, has to give something back to the audience. So typically, I flip it around, and instead of saying I at the top in the hook, remember I said use the word I and explicitly use the word you. But then you're talking you're talking about yourself, you're drawing them in with an interesting story. And then you're giving them something at the end to take away. It could be like a lesson what you learned from that experience. It could be like that transformation that turns into an inspirational message for somebody that could even be a call to action. Like you know, I did this using this isn't my website. It doesn't. You can't I'm on LinkedIn.

Always there you Yeah.

So there are three things I'd say treat your LinkedIn posts as a hook and main body, and then the end, which is the value that you're giving back to your audience.

That is, that is some gold, like, rewind that, pause it, and keep pausing it and you know, write down and do this stuff and write a speech. I think that's my big takeaway, because when I first started getting into this industry well, but before way before when I was doing e commerce, it was always about the product, your sales copy on your landing page, in your ad creative in your product descriptions, don't just sell it sell the feeling of that product, because this ecommerce you can't touch it yet. But what you're saying, I think resonate with a lot of people and possibly maybe this is why LinkedIn, LinkedIn has become it has grown so much, because not everyone is a copywriter. Not everyone knows how to write, but if they can convey a story, so speaking to people,

yeah, absolutely. And I think there's a lot of people who are just paralyzed by this fear of posting on LinkedIn, because it has that stigma of being a very professional platform. In reality, most people unless you work in a very corporate senior executive environment, you don't speak to your colleagues with what like, Word Perfect Spelling Grammar. You have like you have a laugh with your colleagues, you speak to them about work stuff and home stuff, you go for a drink with them after work, you go for dinner with them during the day. I think we need to get back to that those kinds of conversations. Ultimately, if you feel comfortable saying something to a colleague, you should feel comfortable enough saying it on LinkedIn, and kind of vice versa. So obviously, don't post anything that you wouldn't say in your work environment. But I think, yeah, this is a lot of fear around posting. And I think when you have people have done really well on the platform and build a brand that it almost adds to that fear. Even sometimes I'm like, Shit, I don't want to post because I can't do that person, that person who spoke on this topic and just said it weren't perfect and the blowing up right now. You have to kind of put the blinkers on and focus on what you're doing. What's your intention? Why are you posting what's the end goal? And just every day is that 1% improvement? Okay, so last week that this person didn't perform well, why didn't perform well, maybe it was a bit too self indulgent. Maybe I didn't give enough value to my audience. Maybe I just posted at the wrong time, you know, always kind of analyzed it. I think LinkedIn and other social media platform should be data driven. Yeah. Because marketing people always thought of marketing as a bit of like the creative like wishy washy, think marketing should be data driven. You should always be measuring any kind of object, any campaign that you do, otherwise, what's the point, right, everything has to serve commercial value. So look at data's find out what's working, what isn't working, and make those incremental tweaks over time. And I guarantee give it six months and watch your engagement skyrocket, watch your following skyrocket.

Some grip a lot of golden nuggets you've dropped, the key thing for me was the fear. And look, you just said it yourself. You might see someone that's doing better than you. And even someone as successful as you now would get that fear. But you're like, hold on, like I'm going to carry on. And I think this is a mindset we all need, like, no matter how successful or good, we're doing, guess what, there's a lot of other people doing better than us. But if we're not seeing it, it's not gonna affect us. And there's a lot of people doing worse than us. And again, if we're not seeing it, it's not gonna affect us. Like, I will see people in my niche. Maybe they're having six figure days, and I'll be like, wow, like, What the hell are like, I'm so close my business down. You don't do that. Because we were here for a purpose and we own journey. And I'm not gonna say look, you know, sit there hope and manifest is gonna happen because it won't. It takes work. It takes continuous improvement, and it's going to take a hell of a lot of crappy posts. I'd love for those of you listening that have got a husband or wife. How many partners did it take the food, you found the one that you wanted to get a ring on? It's a same thing in life, but that mentality into what you do, because you need to test you need to be out there. And you need to see what actually works and look worst case, someone's going to trolley. You know what, congratulations because now getting trolled online is actually good. Just take it because if you're getting trolled online, it means you're doing something well.

I think also you make a good point there. And I'd also add that if you're seeing stuff online and it's having a negative impact to your business or what you do. There's a beautiful technique, it's called on follow and there's a button that you just click on follow. And it's as simple as that you don't see that content anymore. i There's so many amazing creators LinkedIn that I don't follow. And if I met them in a room, I would go to them and hug them. And we are friends. I'm not afraid to admit that because sometimes you see content that doesn't inspire or push you, but has that negative impact. And that's not a fault of that. It's probably an insecurity thing for me, too. Oh, yeah. But equally, this quote is actually really kind of inspire me and push me to go further. I create my newsfeed for that reason, if you're complaining that, you know, I see this on LinkedIn or LinkedIn is full of these people, or there's no value on LinkedIn or whatever done is not LinkedIn fault, it's your fault, because he rated your feet. This people on LinkedIn ask you all the time, typically older people as well, who are always having to go out, like Jen said, or that people are younger creators, like, they don't know how to do this, or they or their personal stuff is online. You know, those same people are all they're posting about on LinkedIn is how to hate LinkedIn, right? In the algorithm, right? The more you comment on that content, engage with that content, the more you're going to see it. All right, your feed for what you want to achieve, if you want to surround yourself with high net worth individuals, because they're your target audience, roughly on newsfeed for those people. You want to build community around, like young people, students, branchlets, whatever. You can craft your community around that it takes maybe two, three days to completely transform your community is based on who you follow who you connect with. It's as simple as that. I just, I just think, do the work before. Think about everything that's wrong, like work on yourself, work on what you're doing. I think it's too easy to just say, this is a problem or this is a problem. This is a problem without actually doing anything to fix it.

Not 100% And that older generation would know who Victor Meldrew is right. We don't want to be Victor Meldrew is of everything and complain. And there's one thing you said, that stands out for me, and it's a conversation I had with my wife and my team in the last three weeks. And it was things have gone wrong in my business the last few weeks. But that's my fault, because I've scaled very aggressively. But what have I learned from that is I've learned stuff that will probably take most people six months to learn. I've learned it in six weeks. However, there's the real problem is me. And I've taken responsibility for sometimes doing deals that I shouldn't have done, taking on people that I shouldn't have done, and possibly not giving the right training to people that are underperforming. Now, most people would blame the person say, You know what this person is crap. They're not doing the right job. This deal was good. But the other people it's not, it's taking responsibility. And before we jumped on a podcast as well, we discussed my own LinkedIn very briefly. And I said, You know what, I don't think LinkedIn is my friend. I said, I've worked with two top agencies doing it, what's going on? Now? Is it my responsibility? Because I have not invested time in it myself. Or as a busy business owner? Do I take responsibility and say, You know what, I've invested a lot of time with different copywriters, different people to write my story. So where would the because I'm sure there's a lot of other people in my position, or that are too busy that they will invest in people like you to do it. So where do you find that kind of happy medium? And responsibility lies in on that?

Yeah, I think. So it's a tricky question. And it's, it takes time, I think, to kind of become self aware, like when I started my business, I found it easy to blame other things that were going wrong. But I always asked myself, What could I have done better in this situation, if there are multiple things that I can say that I could have done better? For example, if I could have provided more support to one of my employees, if I could have invested more time in learning their software, so then I went into it with better education, all these little things, ask yourself before you ask anyone else, or pointing fingers, if you've done as much as you can, within your in terms of time, resources, and there's nothing more you can do without sacrificing the elements of your business, then it's totally justifiable to say, Okay, we tried this, it hasn't worked. I can't give it any more time. So I'm going to kind of cut back here. There's multiple times I've done that with, with people with projects with clients we've taken on board and you've just got to accept that sometimes it's easier and it's not easier but it's better to quit whilst you're ahead. As long as you like, quit fast. Get yourself back up learn from it don't make that same mistake again. It's more than slogging something out that you know, did dance not working because you're you don't you're eager to take a hit. You don't have that humiliation or lose a bit of money. People can Going only to lamda bigger punch to themselves at the end.

Yeah. Now 100%, it's, it's great to hear that because ego is something that I talked about with a lot of people and they do that in the gym. You guys know, if you're going to the gym, the first thing you want to do is rack up to 20s on the squat rack or the bench, and you can't do it. But what is ego, there's nothing wrong with getting in the gym, bench pressing was cooking the bar without any weak, because we need to start from somewhere that big bodybuilder that you're seeing started that you however enhanced they might be, they still have to train they still have to eat, they still need to have a regimented process and diet. So I think that's a really good, good thing to add for the ego part of it and media works on I would look at myself in Turkey. Before when we want to point your finger at people remember how many things are pointing back at us. And that's something probably is I won't say the secret to my success. But it's been a reason why I've been constantly able to improve, to look at myself, or be retrospective and be self aware. And this trade has not only helped me, in my business has helped with my relationships with my family with my friends and my wife. I'll tell you about when you got pregnant wife, there's any pregnant women out there you you may know that sometimes you just can't talk contracting can't say nothing to you. But it's us being self aware and understanding. And it's not about winning or losing it's about getting to the end goal together.

Yeah, and I think there's a, you've got always got to remember that nobody is like a villain in their own story. So nobody believes that they're the ones at fault. Not everyone believes they right. So you've got to sometimes compromise. I think that's really important. Sometimes, like I work with a lot of contractors or freelancers to support with kind of wider projects that are going on in the business, I've always got to remember if something's not the quality you want it to be, no one's purposefully, it's very, very unlikely that they've purposely done a bad job is because they think what they've done is what you asked for. So if that healthy communication member that knows that villain in that story, so don't point fingers, try to I think that also comes with experience, to be honest. And I think if you've really like worked your way up from nothing, you can understand that better. Yeah. Because you understand kind of the hustle and the mindset. And it's hard sometimes if you're like a perfectionist, right? I definitely I'm a perfectionist, I say to people at the start of working with unlock my qualities, my standards are really high. Because I think, Billy, I believe that the minute you'd lower your standard, you set a new one yet. And I don't think that's a good approach to take in any element of business. I always caveat everyone I work with a lot, my standards are really high, this is what I want. But then it's on me to make it super clear. B to communicate exactly what I want better. And it's on me to make the right decisions of who to work with. Most of the time, if something doesn't work out, it comes back to me, like we said, Don't point fingers, think how many are pointing back at you.

Yeah, and that comes with a certain level of awareness and maturity. And you know, I've I know people that are a lot older than me, and they're still blaming everyone else for where they are and and it's not healthy, it's not healthy for you, because you're gonna get a negative mindset, and you're gonna wake up a bit, and you're going to be lucky, you're going to go to bed like that, you're going to bring that energy home, you're going to be negative with your kids and your family and no one's going to like it as simple as that. You don't want to be a lonely old man or woman, but you carry on, it's going to happen. And it's been great here, because because you're you're young, you're a young person. But in the experience you've got in the 12 months, you've had, you're speaking with someone that has got five, five years experience minimum, right. So this, you've learned a lot more in the last year than you have in probably the last 10 years of your life. Right? And you have to mentor people you need to grow. And this is what I think people need to respect people, especially from the Gen Z and Gen Z or Gen Z wherever. It's where they're at, because that's something I had because when I worked with a couple of young people early 20s Before that us up, what do they know? They've not even gone to uni like what do they know? But then I remembered I said, okay, my journey was I was hustling when I was like eight nine to try and make money so what did I know people trusted me and handed over five quid when I was washing their car. Actually no five quid was a lot it was two pound back then. So you got to think so when I looked at myself and my journey of you know what It doesn't matter that age, if people got a result, they're proven, they're more than qualified to help you. And with that mindset, a lot of the team I'm building are actually young, the early 20s, no one's older than me plenty now. And I think there's a, there's a certain level of hunger that I've seen in this generation, that I don't see people in my generation. Definitely not older, and definitely not younger. So I think anyone listening though, if, if you're looking to work with creators, personal branding, look at what they're doing. And look at the results, not the age, because that's not a metric that define success.

I completely agree. Completely agree. I think also, the, the kind of whole world of work has changed a lot. Since COVID, and the lockdown and all of that stuff, I think priorities have changed. A lot of young people today, realize that the typical career trajectory of staying in a job for, you know, 15 years climbing this ladder waiting for your promotion, you don't need to do that you can jump 3456 rungs of that ladder, within a year. That's exactly what I did. So quadrupling my salary in the space of kind of eight months, working with that building this amazing network of individuals, I never dream of having, you've got to take the risk and do things a little bit differently. Because there's not there's not just one route to be successful, I think, all in the higher education system tells us you need to have a first class degree from a Russell Group university, you need to work in one of the big four in a corporate job, you need to iron out the ladder to you know, exactly positions director, blah, blah, blah. And usually, that process takes about 20 years. 20 years, like in three years? Well, for me, it was 12 months before I became a family director, I sell calls with clients who have eight agents and companies that are you know, making 50 million pounds a year, never would have thought that I'd be doing that as a 2324 year old. But it can happen if you have a service a skill, you can you can do? Well, you can do something with it, I encourage you, I encourage you to do something with that skill. Don't sit there waiting in line for your turn for somebody else will come and take it from you make it happen yourself.

No, no, of course. Because imagine, right? Would you have that kind of authority in a company in the top four, of course, you'll be on a grad scheme, farmed off and never heard from your program director. You'd be stuck. So I think it's, it's an act of bravery.

And that's the thing, you've

you've broken these beliefs, and you've done it and look, if what I tell people and I'm sure you will tell people the same as like, if we can do it. Why can't you? Yeah, it's it's excuses that I see is excuses to protect yourself.

Yeah, I think if you want to start your own business, if you want. I mean, again, it comes back to that purpose, though not intention for me it was I want financial independence. I want time freedom. And I want to build I want to decide my own lifestyle. I don't want my job to define how I live my life. So those three things, I thought, what is the best way for me to do that? I can't do that in a corporate grad scheme. It's impossible, right? So I thought, Okay, let me do eight years like crash course in business. And I didn't have time security last year, it's probably time freedom. I've worked more hours and I've ever worked in my life. But now a year on because I did that then like did the tough bit. Now I have more time to do other stuff like other projects, like I'm working with a lot of other kinds of creators at the moment working on some projects. I started my podcast, like all this extra stuff, I would never have the time, money, or know how and skills to do it like two years ago. It's not easy. It's not easy as everyone makes it look online when it comes to like entrepreneurship or building a business and a lot of time and graft. But if you have clear goal and you're like driven towards a particular outcome, and you work strategically to want that and putting the hard work upfront, you will get rewarded for long term. That's that's what I say.

It's so true. When people aren't willing to do that initial front stamp of work, and just go all in whether you're working a nine to five, like do more hours. That's what I did when I was working 1213 hours a day. I still came home and work because I knew compounded it would help and thankfully, it did. Most of the time. You're going to feel like a failure. You're not getting anywhere. but it's all about compounding and you've had to work more hours than anyone you know. And I'm sure there's a lot of sacrifices that you had to make. And some people, sadly, they don't want to do the time sacrifice and stuff and they don't want to sacrifice their social life. And, okay, you're raised as well, I'll commend you, because that's your, when I was your age, like, I don't even think about that. I'm like, okay, cool, what club we're hitting next. Again. And look, you have to enjoy your life. But if you now you've got no really responsibility, you got no family, you've got no kids, you've got none of that. This is the time to do it. Because I can tell you now, like, I've been married since 2019, I've got a kid, I've got another one on the way. And I'm still working hard, except this time, I know where my time needs to be. And I can tell you the amount of work that I do now, most people I know, my position won't do it. And when I when I like is when I got into the supercar, so called met a lot of people. And I was one of the youngest people there. And they are basically me 10 years later with their kids like 1011 Tall. So now they've got that time to work in the business. Now, those people that special thing about them as they were still hungry, they still have the desire to do stuff. The question is, do you will you, sadly, some people won't, because if you can't get in your early years, then there's a chance that you won't do it later. And you've got all this other stuff on your plate.

Yeah, I always would say, if you do want to have your own business work on this project, whatever that project is, you know, it could be like even working in a particular company, even if it's a nine to five, there's nothing wrong with that at all. But whatever objective or goal you have, start working towards it now. Because if you're a young person, you have less responsibilities, you'll take on less kind of financial risk as well, because you might have a family or mortgage with a commitment. And you're in that kind of phase of your life where you can experiment with things. And there's no real consequences if you make decisions. So for me, I had to call it somebody and I mentioned that, you know, I've got this grand scheme with a pharmaceutical company, why should I just start my own business? And his advice was start a business. And he was about 30 to phase three. And it was like, because if you were to start a business, 10 years later, you wouldn't do it. Because you'd have you'd make excuses, right? You'd say, I've got this, I've got more family, blah, blah, blah, do it. If it doesn't work out. What's the worst that can happen? You can always get a job. Exactly. Even even with me, like I say, I'm quite honest about this, which a lot of other business owners, I don't think would say, but if my business doesn't work out, if I fall out of love with what I do, I think, I think that job and that's fine. And I'm okay with that. It's like would feel humiliated or embarrassed. Because I'm so proud of what I've achieved in a year. I didn't expect to achieve it. But if I didn't, if it didn't, like, light me up in the same way, then I was happily go get a job. But now if I was to go apply for a job, I could you know, my values so much more. Yeah, I can get a job out four or five times the salary that I would have had a year and a half ago. When

when, yeah, you get a hell of a lot of lessons and you qualify yourself more than being in say, the media agency that you're working in. So that's, that's some goal, like any of the youngsters out there. Listen to what you just said. And any of the old guys. Take some advice what I said, because it doesn't matter what age you are Colonel Sanders 63. Right. He did have a Grant Cardone aside being successful in his 50s. Okay, now, there's a lot of examples out there, but it comes down to you, your desire your purpose in your way, really. And everything requires risk. And you just to go circle back with that you mentioned mentioned a podcast, right? So talk to me about the podcast and what is it? Why did you launch it? What is it called?

Yeah, it's called rebels by SREB. Ahmed. I actually had the idea about seven, eight months ago, but I didn't have the classic thing where I would just start with one of my friends and I just said, this sounds stupid. It's a silly idea. But I think I want to do a podcast. I look. I look back at that today. And I think I don't know why I said it's a silly idea. Or it sounds stupid, right? We all do that. We all think any ambitious idea. Oh, it's silly. We can't do it. Anyway, I started working on it a few months ago. launched it. Yes. Recently. Yesterday. I don't know when this podcast is going up. But it was a very recent episode by the time this podcast goes live will be live. And yeah, it's just again, it's something that I've always wanted. to do, I love the community building element I love storytelling that's at the heart of this podcast. It's not a typical business type of podcast is not going to be loads of this is how to achieve this, or yeah, this is how to do this is actually led by the guests. So it's a studio podcast where I have eight guests and season one from a range of industries. So we have people who are EX models, we have people who are coaches, we have kind of social media influencers, we have fitness, pro athletes, there's a range of guests that we've got on, and it's all about against the ground stories to success to help people achieve success, but maybe done it in a different way, which is why it's called rebels. It's showcasing kind of raw, very honest, sometimes unconventional ways of achieving success. And we just talked about a lot of different things. It's it was hard to kind of categorize it in a box. And you can talk about things like some serious topics, like sexism in business, we've talked about scaling the business bankruptcy, then equally, we've talked about the mafia. We've talked about modeling, we we've talked, offline and adventure. So it's a mixture of kind of rally, honest, raw, vulnerable moments, and then also has some light hearted, quite fun, entertaining stories. So yeah,

that's awesome. Sounds good. And I'll be adding that to Spotify. I'll be

Yep, Spotify, Apple podcasts, YouTube. Yeah.

Awesome. We're looking at anyone that's looking forward, because I'm sure there's gonna be a hell of a lot to learn because you are the rebel himself. You can see how I went from social geography to a six figure social media and in 12 months, so if that's not a rebel, I don't know what it is. So all the links, your podcasts, your agency, your LinkedIn, everything will be in there. So you guys can click and collect, connect with him yourself. And just want to talk about next now. Now, this is what you've done in Tolvanen. It's probably beyond your dreams. You've done your podcast. What's what's next?

Honestly, that question, I don't know. And I like not knowing. Because I, at first, when I started my business, I wanted to make it like this massive personal branding agency when I started the yellow hippo. But actually, now I'm quite happy with where we're at. And I've actually purposefully kind of de scale to the business a little bit. I like having a small team, I don't want to grow a massive team. Personally, it's not. I don't enjoy kind of the people management side of things. I love working with my current team, but I don't want them to be bigger. So yellow hippo is continuing, we are doing really well we have a waiting list of clients. So we fully booked, which is a great position to be in because we didn't want to expand, you know, there's always that option. Excited to launch the podcast already and talk for the few guests for season two, potentially, even though we haven't fully launched season one. So I want to explore that. So you can do. I'd love one day to maybe take the podcast on the road and do some live live events with an audience. But I'm pretty open minded at the moment, I'm exploring different things. If you asked me a year and a half ago, what I'd be doing today, I wouldn't have said what I'm doing now, of course, too much. I want to talk a little bit this this year, I'm taking my laptop in Barcelona. And there's been so again, getting that balance during the business, but also living my life as a 24 year old, which I think a lot of like young entrepreneurs forget to do sometimes. Yeah, work hard, but also enjoy your play hard while you're doing it. Exactly. So. Yeah.

So we talked about business goals. Do you have any other personal goals, relationship goals,

I at the moment, I'm very, very, like focused on the business understand the time. I think most founders will go through that right where they're like, when you're in that growth stage of a business, it's like, I'm very self aware that I don't, I couldn't invest time fairly for anyone else right now. And my time has to go to the business it'd be selfish of me to try and do that. In terms of my current goals over the next kind of two, three years. Get into property so five, an apartment with my best friend. So kind of getting that ball rolling. I want to travel a little bit more as well before I do anything else. And fitness and health for me is most important. So rarely want to get consistently in the gym, which I've started doing. Get a peanut baby and just again, honestly it's just working on myself. Sounds good. bit selfish, but so be it.

You're the best investment or like, always talked about that. Everyone's looking to jump on the next thing reverse Kryptos property stocks NFT whatever, look, you are the best investment because you control it. No one else is you're not worried about the government, Bank of England printing, printing more money devaluing the dollar or some wall or something happening somewhere. It's ruining your asset. You invest in yourself. And it's for me, it's one of my things that I continually do like this. This year. I've invested quite a lot. I'm happy in the in the direction. And for me, it's continuously improving.

Yeah, that will use what you just said at the end. Like if you're happy in your day to day, but I think you've already won.

Yeah. So that's a great quote. Because a lot. Well, actually, I want to add even more to that is you waking up today is a privilege because somebody went to bed last night, and never woke up. And I say that a bit closer to home, because that's happened in my family. In the last couple of weeks. Somebody went to bed and never woke up. So whatever you're going through anyone's going out there. You have to appreciate and be have gratitude. If I may have I'll share something that I do. I personally do is gratitude. Before I go to bed, I think of three things I'm thankful for. And I write down three wins. So every night I go to bed a winner.

I love that I did funny funny you mentioned that last night, I sent a really long message to one of my friends. Just telling them how great they are. And I think it's good to vocalize that as well not just think about what you're grateful for, but actually put it out into the world and put that like good energy out. It gets returned.

Yeah. 100% It's like the universe gives. So you keep giving. Obviously, you have to be selfish at some point. But also being selfless is free. It doesn't cost anything you like, like you said a minute Voice Note to somebody a one liner, it can change somebody's trajectory. 100% So what you know this podcast isn't scripted rival. We don't talk about any questions, but I'm gonna because one question which is scripted and which arcs everyone? is what is your number one secret

success? Secret to Success? Wolf, good question. I would say saying no. saying no. I think this simple as that setting those boundaries. If every time you say no to something you say yes to something else. I think a lot of people that I've worked with in the past Yes, people they'll take on projects that don't want to do I'll take on projects that shouldn't be doing and take on projects not qualified for. So no, for me it gives me so much peace of mind because I know this isn't for me and that's okay. But this this is funny I'm creating space for something that I really want to do and that really empowers me and serves my purpose. So I think saying no, is a superpower

certainly is and I think sometimes don't say no because they need validation there's nothing wrong with being okay be okay with where you are. We do not have that balance of life. So I want to thank you for taking the time to to be on the show today sharing you know some of your personal stories, your your business goals, and obviously given a live masterclass to go out there that's obviously going to want to listen to this and maybe get some tips. So, again, everyone listening, all of these details are going to be below this podcast, email, DM, look, you get a lot of DMS if you DM him and you don't get a message straight away. He's going to get back to you he's got a lot of people after him. So be patient and go back to this recording and follow what he said two parts to it to to kind of Boston to the branding, the value and then the three parts to a post fighting with I use a number see I listen. I paid attention. So if I've been you, Mike on you

know about thanks so much for having

me on. Cool. Well, thanks again for your time and we will maybe in a year's time. We need to get you back into where where life is taking you 100% I'd love to also Well, yeah, thanks for thanks for being here.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai