#3 The right way to run your freelance ads business

Hello and welcome to the freelance ads club podcast with me your host Aggie Meroni. Whether you're a veteran freelance ads manager, or just thinking about dipping your toe into the world of self employment, this podcast is for you. Every week, I'll be speaking about my own experiences as a freelance as manager, sharing a freelancer spotlights where I'll have a chat with one of the amazing members of the Freelancers Club, where I'll be asking guests to share their knowledge and experience in ads across all platforms and business. Don't forget to follow and subscribe on your favourite podcast platform, so you never miss an episode. So today's episode is about just my view on how you should be running your freelance ads manager business. And my view is there is no right way to do this. The reason I'm prompted to record this is because recently, I was interviewed, I don't know if that's the right word. But I had a chat with someone who's quite high profile in the ads world. And he was talking about my membership, the freelance as club, and he said, Well, you know, how do you tell people to run their business? Or what do you recommend that they do? And it took me a little bit by surprise, because as far as I'm aware, or my intention is never to tell people what to do. I just share what I do in my own business and what my experiences have been. And the reason why I would never dream of telling anyone how to run their business is because it's such a personal thing. Everyone has a different personal situation, everyone has different reasons for setting up their business. Some people do for financial reasons, because they want to make more money than they could being employed. Some people really want the flexibility. And these things aren't mutually exclusive, by the way, but the primary objective is different. Some people I know they say, right, I literally just need this much money a month, to contribute to my household and to you know, have some money for some treats. But to me, this is my you know, I've got another priority at the moment. So as long as I can do, you know, just hit that revenue every month, then I'm happy. You know, some people live cross border, that's why they decide to go freelance and all that kind of thing. And I also think that's something that's massively undervalued and not talked about enough. I know some people like, do talk about this a lot. And it's like their specialty, but everyone has a different personality. So for some people, they absolutely love going to networking events, they love being on stage. For them. They're like super connectors. And that is like their lifeblood. For other people. That's their idea of hell, you know, they prefer to just do word of mouth referrals. And they like recoil at the thought of going to live events, like complete introverts. And that is okay to, you know, the whole point of setting up your own business is you can do whatever the hell you want. And I just think it's just so wrong for anyone to shoot anyone down for trying something different or doing things a different way. If anything, I really admire business owners that just stick to their guns and say, I refuse to do things this way. Because one person has said that they that's how it's done. I've been in memberships in the past where the membership owners or owner has been very black and white about how certain things should be done. And I've never agreed with that approach. One of my good friends is in a completely different nation runs her own business. And she's working with a coach at the moment. And some things a business coach and some of the things that she's been advised to do, I strongly disagree with. And I actually think it's very damaging to her business, the things that she has been advised to do and not to do. And I just thought it was so wrong, that this person was saying you can't do it that way, because I didn't do it. And I've you know, I made my first million by doing things this way. Totally disregarding my friend's personality, how her clients will want to interact with her. And it just makes me really sad. That that is still happening today. So I just was like, you know, thinking about it and I just wanted to be really clear that however you want to run your business is absolutely okay. And another thing that kind of came up recently was a discussion in the freelance ads Club, which is the paid membership I run for freelance ads managers, and what One of the members asked if we could have a chat about scaling. So I'm, I've thought about this a lot as well, myself. So you know, you've got great book of clients, it's all going really well, you're getting lots of leads and great opportunities coming up. Do you turn those opportunities away? Or is it time to grow business? Now I, I can share my thoughts on it. I've never been against setting up an agency. It's something that I have thought about. And it's something I continue to think about. However, the things that hold me back. And again, this is a very personal opinion, is I've never met a happy agency owner ever. They're always extremely stressed. They always have cashflow problems, they work with nightmare clients. Now, for me, I'm like, is that on them? So are they not doing the right marketing? Or are they just taking every client to grow as aggressively as possible? Without thinking about the damaging impacts of that? Or, you know, have they not set up their cash flow? Properly? They don't have a buffer. You know, there's all these things I'm like, is that exclusively an agency issue? Or is that a business issue? specific to that agency. So that's kind of put me off. I also love actually managing ads. So I love being in ad accounts, I love writing creative briefs, I like, you know, having that really personal connection with my clients. As soon as you kind of grow your business, you're removed from that day to day because you suddenly become a manager of people. Now, it's not to say that managing people is awful, but I don't think it's my zone of genius. And, yeah, I just, it kind of puts me off that side that I beat become more of a project manager, saying that though, the positive of that is a lot of agency owners, from what I've seen, so this could like you could have a different experience or knowledge of this. But they if they go from freelance to agency, at the beginning, they'll be doing the doing so they'll be doing everything in the business, there'll be running the ads, they'll be doing their own marketing, and that kind of thing. As they soon start scaling, they'll bring on other either full time staff or freelancers do contracts for white label for them, and they'll start handing over the doing some will most that I've seen, will focus purely on their business development, then. So start, you know, to just sell the services to new people, or to new brands, new businesses, and I actually love that part. It might be my past sales background, which isn't really like the aggressive or more free sales that you probably have in mind. But I love connecting with people, I love talking about what I do. I'm very comfortable in social media or that kind of thing. So to me, it's not necessarily a negative, but your role definitely changes when you start scaling the business. At some point, you probably even outsource your sales, so that you'll have a whole team that are just doing business development for you, you probably won't speak directly to your clients anymore, because you'll have client managers in place. So, you know, it's for me, running my own business, I really have to enjoy it, I don't, I don't want it to be a chore. On the other side, I am financially driven as well, I have my own goals for what I want to achieve. And I know that if I set up an agency, I'm building an asset that I can sell. So, you know, do I take lots of money, you know, out of my own pocket in the short term to grow business, which I can then sell hopefully one day in the distant future, or do I just, you know, enjoy the way things are at the moment as a freelancer. So this is a conversation that we discussed in one of our connection calls in the freelance ads club. And it's really interesting to hear everyone's different take on it and different opinions, their life experience. You know, a lot of the people on the call had the same concerns me, you know, they're kind of at the stage where they could start scaling, but do they really want to others we're 100% freelancers for life and we're happy to be company one if you've ever read that book, you know, happy with managing a smaller book of clients on their own outsourcing everything that wasn't ads management so they can purely focus on what they do. That's pretty much how I run my business. Anything that isn't ads management, or you know promo So social media, like the content of my social media, everything else I've outsourced. So again, this is such a personal thing. So whatever suits your lifestyle, how you want to earn your money, what your longer financial goals are. I think something That is changing. And I don't know if it's from COVID. Because I've I started as you know, if you've listened to episode, whatever it is one or two, what the intro episode is what my story is. My business started in 2020, may 2020. So I've only really been in business since COVID started. But I have seen a shift that a lot of people are prioritising the work life balance, if that ever existed, but you know, being able to be fluid between work and personal life and juggling your own interests, and it isn't necessarily about working every hour under the sun. So earn as much money as possible. So I think it's just so nuanced about how to run a business, sometimes you will work weekends, maybe your bank or the bank holiday, but other times, you'll be able to take the month off and think, Oh, this is amazing that I would never be able to do this if I was employed. But also, you know, the facts. And this is something that I've touched on in other episodes, life happens some sometimes, and you just need to be able to take some time out of your business. And is that something you can do if you have employees, or as easily as a freelance, obviously, it's really stressful, because you've got no one to pick up the slack for you. And it's all on you. But as an agency only have the responsibility of paying people salaries as well. So if you need to take a break, it could be a little bit trickier to do that as well. So this episode has literally just been a brain dump for me to talk through various things that have kind of come up in the last few months about running a business the right and wrong way, which obviously there is no wrong way to run a business really. It's just about finding what works for you. And I really think that's down to testing not always be open to try new things. You know, if something doesn't work, just brush it off. It's not it's not a failure. But that's a whole episode, a different podcast episode about that whole mindset thing. But I hope this has reassured anyone who feels that they're not doing something that someone else is doing. If they're, you know, at capacity, and they're feeling what I should be scaling to the next level, you'd actually don't need to like it's complete, like what do you want to do? Like, what are your personal goals? What makes you happy? That's what you should always be thinking about when you're doing or any, like big decisions in your business. So yeah, that's that's my worst words of wisdom or not, for this episode. If if it is important to you to have, you know, a bit more stability in your income streams. Or maybe you want to have a bit of a reassessment, I guess of what you're offering in your services, then feel free to download the offer matrix. It's a free Trello board with some ideas. There's 18 different ideas on there, and a free pre qualifying questionnaire for any client or any leads that come in. I'll add the link in the show notes. So hope you found this reassuring insightful, I don't know. But you can catch up with me in the next episode. Thank you for listening to this episode of the freelance as club podcast. If you're a freelance ads manager, don't forget to download the free Client Onboarding Trello you can find in the show notes. If you're a brand or agency looking for support from one of our community, visit our website at the freelance ads club.com to access our member directory. Tune in next time