My Story So Far - How I went From £100 a month to growing a team and VAT registered

A few weeks ago I had a memory pop up on my socials of one of the first posts I’d made when I started my business. At the time I was charging £100 per month for a comprehensive social media package and this caused a lot of reflection!

And boy are things different now, the business is VAT registered, I have a team behind me and how I operate looks completely different! 

So I wanted to share a little more about how I got started in marketing, what led to me setting up my own business and a few lessons I learnt along the way.

If you’re just starting out in your business, this blog is a must-read because I know first-hand how easy it can be to compare where you’re at to where other businesses are, how much they’ve achieved and what position they’re in.

Getting Started As A Social Media Manager

I remember very clearly having a conversation with my mum and dad when I was in my last year at university when I said that I wanted to help local businesses by running their social media accounts for them.

This might not seem like a big deal or a shocking revelation, but at the time I was studying geography at university and since this was over 10 years ago, social media wasn’t as prevalent as it is now.

The truth is hardly anyone was using it from a business perspective!

However, even though I was very much heading into the unknown, I knew it was something that I wanted to try and that social media had the potential to be really interesting and effective.

My first social media marketing client 

With my sights set on social media management for small businesses, I set off around Exeter knocking on the doors of local businesses and asking if I could support them with their social media (for stupidly low prices). 

After visiting many different businesses, one finally said yes and I was over the moon because the fact that they had even agreed meant there was potential that this was something people would be interested in or benefit from. 

The lady who said yes was a beautician who owned a small beauty business. 

We had a meeting and she decided she’d go for it and hand over her social media management to me!

From that point on I created her content, managed her engagement and had strategy sessions with her where we would talk through the offers she was planning to put out that month and I’d then publish them on her social media.

It worked and really benefited her business. This gave me the confidence that this concept of helping local businesses through social media management was going to work because she took a chance and it paid off. 

Growing My Social Media Manager Business

With this newfound motivation and excitement for marketing, I knew that if I wanted to be able to develop this further, I needed to first expand my skills and knowledge.

Because although my geography degree was great, it didn’t help much when it came to marketing strategies and methods!

So fresh out of uni I started applying for marketing positions until I landed a job at a digital marketing and web design agency. 

This was right around the time that digital marketing and social media were becoming more of a thing and it was more common that businesses were outsourcing their marketing. 

It’s through this job that I gained more experience in social media marketing, ads, SEO, websites, managing projects and putting together complex marketing strategies. 

Generating Results As A Social Media Manager

This experience gave me the motivation and confidence to go out on my own and start my business!

I started up by myself with a focus on only offering social media management at first (that’s when I was charging £100 for a package).

Slowly things started to evolve and I signed more clients, expanded my services suite, and grew a team and as they say, the rest is history!

I’m now a VAT-registered business who has a full team of incredible people behind me and I’m feeling really proud of what I've accomplished so far. 

Even though I was charging pennies before, I’m grateful for that and all of the experiences.

Because that enabled me to know this would work, build up my confidence and learn everything I needed to so I could get to this point! 

It's easy to look back and criticise your past self for charging so little or doing things in a different way that seem ridiculous now but you have to remember that you had to do that to get to where you are now!

So let that be your reminder for the day.

And if you’re in the early stages of business and are looking for guidance so you can accelerate your success without having to spend years figuring it all out yourself, I highly recommend checking out The Business Beach Club because I’ve created that alongside the amazing Kayleigh Mckenzie to help you evolve your marketing efforts, skills and business quicker!