02. Booked Out Social Media Series - Part 1: Becoming an In Demand Manager

Podcast
Written By Jessica Sheehy
 

Posting on Instagram stories that your accepting clients is not going to fill your client books and your pocket… we’re going to uncover crucial mindset shifts you need to make to step into your CEO role and how you can become an in-demand social media manager.

Welcome back to another episode of Hashtag Managed. Today I am sharing part one of our three-part series to help you land your first or another social media management client. So over this three-part series, we are going to cover all things from business owner mindset.

So I founded Social Savvy at the end of 2018. Now four years ago, and what started out as a side hustle that I was too scared to launch into a business has now evolved into a six-figure social media agency. More on that roller coaster of a journey and do I mean journey in another episode. But while it may seem like everything is perfectly set up and running smoothly now, there was a time where that was not true. It took me months to launch this business off the ground in years to perfect my craft, processes and systems.

And I don't say this to intimidate you at all that it's going to take so long, but to remind you that no business is an overnight success. It is a work in progress, one that is still a work in progress today as I'm recording this episode. But if you keep at it, it can be so worth it. I'm filled to the brim with gratitude over how much I've really grown this business over the past few years.

All of the clients that we've worked with, from great clients to lessons-learned clients in the doors that have opened because of taking the scary leap into entrepreneurship. As I mentioned, this journey has been a roller coaster. I started this business when my boss told me that he could no longer afford to pay me. He was flat-out broke. The company had no more money, and our communication and my job basically ended in that slack conversation. Yes.

It was not even face to face. It wasn't even over zoom. It was on a work from home day, and it was over slack. I was completely devastated because I was caught off guard. It took me months to land this quote-unquote, perfect job in my new city that happens to be the most expensive city in the United States. I'm talking about New York City. It was very competitive to find the job. I went through so many interviews before I landed this job, and I was so excited to work in this role and become a really step into a marketing manager. I had never been in a marketing management role, and I was so excited. I looked forward to working with the team, working on campaigns, and working with the brands that were under this media company's belt.

But unfortunately, it only lasted three months, and it was really shortlived and very abrupt with how it ended. But when that happened, there was no way that I was going to go back to a corporate role. I spoke with my partner. I told him that I did not want to go back into a corporate role. I felt like now was the time more than ever to take the leap into entrepreneurship.

So I figured that this was my sign. I don't know if it really was a sign, but that's how I read it, and that's what I did. I started Social Savvy that day with barely any money in my checking account, with bills piling up.

Thankfully, I did have a wonderful support system, which I do hope if you're listening to this, no matter what you're going through in your life as to why you're starting your social media management business, but I hope you have a support system in one way or another.

And if you're looking for some like minded people, I want to just go ahead and do a shameless plug to invite you into our free Facebook community, the Social Savvy Collective. Myself, our community managers, we would love to invite you in and support you in any way we can.

When I started Social Savvy, I barely had any idea of what it took to run a business. I thought all I needed to do was create a brand name and create a logo and have an Instagram account and be active on other social media platforms, which I had already done, because I had been doing this as a freelancer for quite a while before even landing this job that I had just lost.

So I had the foundation there in terms of all the things I thought I needed. I didn't have anything that I actually needed, which is our whole point of this three part series, which I'm so excited to share those because I wish somebody had shared that with me four years ago. So the day after that, I lost my job. I knew that I needed to hit the ground running. I needed to do anything and everything to start putting my name out there, start connecting with people I knew to grow my network and find a client, find my first client who will pay me. Now that I'm doing this on my own as a solo venture, I finally found my first client. And I just want to start off by saying she paid me $150. $150 for the first three months of our social media management contract.

Now, I am not going to go into the nitty gritty details of everything that I did for her, but I will say I managed three platforms, and I will say I went above and beyond because this was my only client, and there's a few reasons as to why I said yes to this client. So now, did $150 pay for really any of my expenses? No, it barely covered anything. But that was her budget. She was open. She was transparent about it. She knew that I was very new as well. I had worked in social media marketing for several years prior and I had the knowledge and the experience, but I didn't really know how to do it on my own. I knew how to do it in the comfort of my corporate job and my jobs prior, but I had assistance, I had processes, I had systems, I had teams, I had leaders that I leaned on to help me do that.

So I went into this knowing that this was going to be a great lesson, that I would learn something from it. I would learn that this was not the way to go about it, that I needed to try something else. But I would also go in with just knowing that I'm going to use this as a trial and error of my first paying client and this is how I'm going to create my business, this is how I'm going to support my family, this is how I'm going to make my dreams of entrepreneurship come true.

So I formed my processes working with her that I've iterated over the years and still use to this day. I found systems and tools that I absolutely love and still use in our agency side of things today. And it has been a really great experience working with this client because she opened so many doors for me. She referred me to so many amazing people. And with that opportunity, was it not glamorous at all? Was I being I was not being paid well. I was not even making a wasn't even making $500 a month working with her, but it really created a really solid foundation of everything I needed.

It taught me a lot about boundaries, a lot about time freedom, a lot about financial freedom, just all the things that we see others online and on social media have with their businesses. But there is so, so much more that goes into it. And that's part of my one of my goals for this podcast is I know entrepreneurship is so glamorous, and I know it's not so glamorous, and I really want to share the highlights and the lowlights of being an entrepreneur. Because the last four years I have learned so much about myself as a person, as my work ethic, about myself as a leader, and it has been so rewarding. So I'm so excited for diving in to everything that I've learned from this very low paying client. So this kind of brings me to a few myths that circulate our industry of social media managers. Myth number one, don't do free work. Don't not do free work. I had to include both of those in the first myth because so many people share that you should do free work or that you should never by any means do free work. And I just want to say do what feels best for you.

If you haven't listened to our first episode, I want to recommend you go back, you listen to it because I talk about how that's part of the crucial things to building your business. Not necessarily doing free work, but doing trial work, building your portfolio. That can be free work, that can be discounted work, or it could be full price.Pay me what I'm worth work. Okay.

Myth number two, you have to work twenty four, seven and weekends because you're a social media manager. Absolutely not. Did I do that from the start? Absolutely. I worked so much for this proof client. I was working late at night. I remember I was on the couch binging Netflix with my husband, and we were trying to watch a movie or trying to watch a series, and I'm over there creating content. I'm over there writing out ideas. I'm over there fine tuning the strategy or figuring out exactly how I can optimize her channels. And I'm like, you know what?

After some time, enough is enough. And I knew that if I wanted to create the best work and just the best experience for clients, that I don't need to work all of the time. I don't need to work weekends, we don't need to post on weekends. And if we do need to post, we can auto post.

Myth number three, if you don't have prior social media skills, you can't do this. That is beyond crazy to me, because here's the thing. You don't have to have prior social media skills. You don't have to previously work in a social media management or marketing role to become an in demand, booked out social media manager.

Do they help? Yes.

Are they required? Not if you're willing to educate yourself on social media.

If you have previous experience in customer service, you're going to be a few steps ahead of other social media managers who have never worked in a client facing role. If you've done any role where you need to manage projects, you're going to be able to manage your clients accounts with a clear, smooth process.

So ultimately, it starts with you. It starts in your mind. And do you want to know the number one thing that's holding you back from experiencing success in your social media management business? It's you. I know you're like, whoa, I cannot believe Jessica just told me that. I am standing in front of the success of my business. Now, I am saying this very lightheartedly. I am not saying that any of the outside factors that you have going on in your life do not affect it. Of course they do. Keep those in mind.

One of our core values at Social Savvy is all about staying true to ourselves and making decisions based on what we know we need to do for our livelihood, for our families. And I know that comes with a lot of caveats.

Just depending on the support system, we have the stage in life we're in outside factors that affect us, and there's so much that plays into that. But a lot of times it comes down to the mindset being an entrepreneur is so hard.

It is one of the toughest roles in the world because if it was super, super easy I think there's a famous quote, if entrepreneurship was so easy, there would be more entrepreneurs. But there's a reason why the entrepreneur pool is so small and the fact that you're listening to this podcast that you're an aspiring or new or seasoned social media manager, and you're looking to better your business.

Whether you're a solo venture, a solo premier, whether you're an agency owner, you have so much power and you are already light years ahead of so many other people because you have what it takes to become an entrepreneur, and not a lot of people do. And I just want to applaud you for that because I'm sure there are times where it feels so lonely to where there's not a whole lot of support systems in place. But sometimes we and what we focus on affect our success. So a lot of the times we focus on what we're afraid of and where our attention goes, energy flows.

So failure as an entrepreneur is a privilege, it's a lesson and it's inevitable we all fail. But what matters the most is what happens after that.

  • Do we get back up and try again?

  • Do we seek help or mentorship?

  • Do we learn from others or the mistakes that we've made to lead us to this lesson or this failure?

Whatever we do, that is what is going to play into the success of our business.

So I want you to really quickly, if you can, of course, close your eyes. Picture yourself in three months from now, six months, one year. Where do you see yourself? If you did partake and close your eyes, go ahead and open them and immediately start writing down in the notes app on your phone. Or if you have a notepad handy, write down what you saw for yourself in the time frame.

Now, how are we going to get there? I love to work backwards from a goal. I'm a very practical person, but I am also a visionary. I have big visions of where I see my life going, where I see my business going, where I see the company that myself and our amazing team have created going. And I know that there are some realistic steps that I need to take to get to that goal. It doesn't just happen overnight. It doesn't.

So say, for example, that you want to be a social media manager that is booked out making consistent $5,000 a month. So it's really a basic math equation. So let's say you want to make the $5,000 a month. You can take on five clients for $1,000 each, you can take on ten clients for $500 each, or you can take on five clients for $500 each and do ten consultations, maybe that's two a week for the month for $250 each.

So there's so many ways to get to that end goal, but when we start to break it down and we see it in terms of the steps that take it, that is how we are going to really think about OK, yeah, I think ten clients is my capacity, or no, I cannot do ten clients, even if they're small projects at five. Five is my lucky number. Whatever you land on and you have that end goal, that monthly recurring revenue that you want to make in your business, that is how you can start taking strategic steps to building out your social media management business and knowing how to get there. So let's kind of go a little bit further because I really want to create realistic goals for your success as a social media management business owner.

How are you going to get those leads into your pipeline?

Basically how they're going to know that you exist, know that you can help them, know that you'll do this work for them to then turn into clients for your business. Well, you need a brand, you need a website. It can be a super simple website. It doesn't have to be expensive. The brand doesn't have to be expensive. You don't need a full branding suite right now. You need an application or an inquiry form.

I love personally using Dubsado. That's what we use on our agency side of the business. You can also use a tool such as Calendly to book calls with clients, to do discovery calls, see what it's like, figure out if they are a good fit for you and they can see what your services are like.

I really recommend using Calendly, but of course, if you use a tool such as Dubsado or HoneyBook, they do have those built-in. And you need social media presence, you need some accounts to showcase what you can do. And then you need a content strategy on how you're going to attract those clients. So you're going to attract them by your content, by your outreach and through the network and experience that you have, because this is how you can leverage referrals in your business.

So there really is no super top secret formula to becoming an in demand, booked out social media manager that I can share with you in one simple podcast or over the course of some time. But there is a proven system that you can implement to become a social media manager who is seen as an authority, is trusted and referred to when it comes to work. And that is what we are going to cover over part two and part three of this series.

So this is all that I have for you in today's episode. I hope it was super helpful to you. If you need to go back and relisten, definitely do that. Go with your Notes app, go with the Notebook. And next week in part two, we're diving into tapping into your signature service. But one final thought I want to leave you with is that growth happens where decisions are made.

So what are you deciding for yourself, for your social media management business right now, in this moment? Until next week!

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Thanks for listening!

Jessica Sheehy
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03. Booked Out Social Media Series - Part 2: Tapping Into Your Signature Service
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01. Roadmap for a Sustainable Social Media Management Business