Scaling from a Freelancer to an Agency Owner (Umair Mansha​​​​​​​)
 

00;00;04;02 - 00;00;11;03 Jesse Gilmore Everybody is adjusting to your agency and transformation coach and founder of Mission Control, Greater of Leverage for Growth. 00;00;11;08 - 00;00;18;20 Lucas And I'm Lucas James, founder of Twist, which scaled from 0 to $200000 a month with my own agency. 00;00;19;25 - 00;00;45;24 Jesse Gilmore We are the host of Leverage for Growth podcast Agency, Leverage and Episodes. We know that in order to scale your agency successfully, there are multiple shifts that need to happen within the founders mindsets, skill sets and leadership styles. We are on a mission to interview marketing and PR agency owners on their journey to six, seven and eight figures and leverage the lessons from their journey to save you time, energy and money in order for you to get your agency to the next level. 00;00;46;09 - 00;01;09;10 Jesse Gilmore If you find value in these episodes, watch the case, Study video to learn more about leverage for growth and how we successfully scale agencies quickly at Niche in control Icon slash Key Study at Niche in Control Icon slash Kingdom. You are now listening to Leverage for Growth. Hey everybody. This is Jesse Gilmore, founder of Niche in Control and creator of Leverage for Growth. 00;01;09;19 - 00;01;32;22 Jesse Gilmore Welcome to the Agency Leverage edition. Today I am here with Umair Moja, the founder of Lazy Metrics, a creative marketing agency on a mission to help B2B companies and agencies as a white label partner to dominate their niche and outrank their competitors in search engine via SEO and content marketing. Thanks for coming to our show today. 00;01;34;10 - 00;01;35;25 Umair Mansha Thank you for having me. 00;01;36;19 - 00;01;40;25 Jesse Gilmore Absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit about the history and background of lazy metrics? 00;01;42;22 - 00;02;10;07 Umair Mansha Yeah, So I, I always have been very clear about my direction in life like I wanted since I was in college when someone would ask me what you want to do after you graduate. I always said that I want to do my own thing. And I was very much, I love web browsing, I love being on the Internet, finding opportunities to make some buck online. 00;02;10;07 - 00;02;43;04 Umair Mansha I was a college kid. I wanted to make some money too, to be able to afford my set of tools to live and obviously support my family as well. And my journey started from watching videos back in 2012, 2013 when I was looking to make some quick buck online black hat, white haired. No matter the hat, you just wanted to make some money and so I came across some more niche affiliate websites for them. 00;02;43;04 - 00;03;15;09 Umair Mansha But there were people that were writing. They're making their affiliate websites and ranking them on Google and eventually flipping them for profit. I started that, but also I someone told me that you could make money much quicker or you can offer your services on Fiverr. And one of my friends, he bought a Honda Accord, Honda Civic at the time when he was he was one year senior than me and I was, I was like, I need to do something like that. 00;03;15;09 - 00;03;43;03 Umair Mansha Like he is able to afford a car at such a young age and he's only one year older than me. The only one needs he knew I need to buy. And so he was. He told me that he's selling his services on Fiverr and it has been helping you make some money online. And yeah, I started making I made magic as a business plan, right, that I always was reading business books and everything that I could come my way into entrepreneurship. 00;03;43;03 - 00;04;18;23 Umair Mansha And yeah, I made maybe gigafiber it may actually see ranked on first page and on first order in business brand category in 2013 and I started receiving a lot of orders and that was my initial way of making. That was my, my, that's all my journey started. That's how I talk. Like this is real. I can make some money online and my first order was for only $10 and but it was to write some business plan for for a small startup. 00;04;18;23 - 00;04;49;25 Umair Mansha And it kind of brought board and to I became incorporated on Fiverr. Then I started doing services and I work as a business plan writer. Then I was also doing affiliate marketing on the site and some of my websites were doing not so good, but very few of them, like two websites, were started to work out and they started asking for really competitive keywords and I was able to flip my one on my website for six figures of a million bucks, to be honest with you, in 2018. 00;04;49;25 - 00;05;24;27 Umair Mansha And I got lucky I was making for very competitive what is like almost impossible dream for those people at that time. And that's the way it started to. It started to the word of mouth to like this guy. And eventually people started reaching out to me for help with the ACA and wonder marketing. And I quickly realized that I cannot scale my business plan writing because as long as I'm writing business plan, that means I am the one man person. 00;05;25;02 - 00;05;49;08 Umair Mansha There is no scalability. I cannot build a team that can write business plan for me at that time. And that was my thinking. And then I pivoted myself and around 2018 and I started my agency in 2018 as well, because the demand was so big that I would manage everything, every product that came my way. So I started to build my team around SEO first. 00;05;49;19 - 00;06;04;23 Umair Mansha And yeah, we have been growing so far. It's been almost like five years since I started my agency and now my main bread and butter has switched from ranking of create websites to into running an agency. 00;06;06;13 - 00;06;06;20 Lucas That. 00;06;07;12 - 00;06;09;00 Umair Mansha Does that. By the time you go to my rental. 00;06;10;23 - 00;06;29;13 Jesse Gilmore Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's awesome. So, like your first gig was for ten bucks on Fiverr, that got to a point where you started getting a lot of orders and then you had the affiliate on the side and then that became something that you could actually sell. And I kind of all led towards lazy metrics, which is really cool. 00;06;30;01 - 00;07;13;18 Umair Mansha Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I've been fascinated with SEO and digital marketing in general and I see a lot of room for scalability and growth. And I my goal is to be at the point where I am not intentionally working myself in the business or my business is working for me. So my team right now, we have a big thing, we have a solid as be and documentation and processes where I'm not personally involved with Operation Dynamo or anything and working towards that that goal right now to be able to run a business that happens and that is not really. 00;07;14;15 - 00;07;15;06 Lucas Mm hmm. 00;07;16;03 - 00;07;24;05 Jesse Gilmore Very different from the freelancer kind of, you know, gig, gig role or now business owner or focused on the people and the systems. 00;07;24;23 - 00;07;25;12 Umair Mansha Absolutely. 00;07;25;25 - 00;07;46;17 Jesse Gilmore Can you talk a little bit about that kind of that transition for you, growing from kind of like the independent contractor freelancer into kind of like this business owner, What are some of the things that maybe you learned along your journey that maybe you'd pass on to somebody that might be still in that that process of making that switch? 00;07;48;10 - 00;08;14;03 Umair Mansha As a freelancer I read, I realized like I was working with Way harder and obviously Die is up to your our number of hours per day had you and the energy that I have. I'm a young guy. When I started into Germany, I was like 18 or 19 years old at that point. Now when I'm 37, I'm turning 27 this this July. 00;08;14;05 - 00;08;43;13 Umair Mansha So yeah I'm I'm it's so I, I've been very much focused on this too to be able to not work myself to do that maybe I'm more towards that I feel like I, I yeah I love working but it's not, it's not my end goal to be working just for the sake of money. And like in selling my time is not ideal for me. 00;08;43;23 - 00;09;09;11 Umair Mansha I wanted to make something that that has the potential to outlive me and keep me running as a business where I'm going or the way that I don't see. As a freelancer, you can retire. You always have to sell your hours and you're still online and you're always finding more clients. And yeah, it's not very exciting for me personally. 00;09;10;16 - 00;09;36;07 Umair Mansha For some people it is. They want to control everything and they want to work themselves. They did nothing wrong with that, but my priorities were I want to build a business that that does, that has the potential to become big, that has the potential to be done by big teams and even if I'm not directly working on my business, it could potentially keep on bringing in more money and potentially great item. 00;09;36;07 - 00;10;13;02 Umair Mansha And so and focusing on family and the other stuff. So the pivot was very clear. I was fully in Freelancer for like three or four years and while I made quite good money while being a freelancer, I had to pivot to to become a bit or I don't think that internal internship. Yeah, there is a concept called solopreneur ratio, which is, which is really cool, where you are selling digital products and stuff that that could be, that could be built, that could be done without you. 00;10;13;02 - 00;10;23;12 Umair Mansha That's another concept. But for me, I always wanted to build an agency or a business that that gets attention to themselves. 00;10;25;16 - 00;10;30;06 Jesse Gilmore MM And you talked about the growth of your team. How big is your team these days? 00;10;31;09 - 00;10;34;23 Umair Mansha We are about 40 plus people right now. 00;10;35;12 - 00;10;36;20 Lucas Cool. Awesome. 00;10;37;18 - 00;10;44;26 Jesse Gilmore So what is, what are you working on these days and what's kind of like success for you in the next maybe 1 to 3 years? 00;10;46;17 - 00;11;13;21 Umair Mansha I'm I would love to. So my we are we are doing about 600 K every year and that was last year with my goal is to grow seven figure this year and I'm very confident that we'll be able to achieve in the next 4 to 5 months max and my 2 to 3 year goal would be to become a need for the agency and I'm not sure if I'm going to exit that or sell that. 00;11;13;22 - 00;11;55;18 Umair Mansha That's I haven't thought about that. But my goal is to become a ten in an agency that is at least doing 10 million per year in revenue. And while I'm I'm also working on some of the cool stuff, building my SAS or building my software, comping along with other stuff. But yeah, that that would be one of my goals too, to run multiple products that that that Yeah that that could be said so hypothetically then agency agencies it just is cool agencies are really great at cashflow they're really good at generating cash flow very quick and the scalability factor is also there. 00;11;55;18 - 00;12;21;18 Umair Mansha But you do become massively wealthy, like massively wealthy like nine figure into another agency would not be the ideal way. But on the other hand, SAS companies easily any size company that is doing 1 million a year is is worth around ten that amount and it's it's 10 million per year. That's really 40 to 50 million to a company, right. 00;12;21;18 - 00;12;43;15 Umair Mansha So my goal is to for once I'm at the point where I could see this agency could run itself on and we are working towards that. We are we are creating systems and processes that are very solid each and everything is very much prioritized and especially the operations part, we are almost there. We're not working on the operations. 00;12;43;24 - 00;13;11;15 Umair Mansha Everything that all the clients that we are serving and all the all the white label agencies that we work with has been really on pretty much not 100% automation, but the operational side of things have been growing like a well-oiled machine. And the way that we did that with the help of proper documentation and operating systems in place that enabled us through that. 00;13;12;01 - 00;13;13;11 Lucas MM Cool. 00;13;14;01 - 00;13;28;23 Jesse Gilmore Sounds like a fun adventure. You're on multiple businesses, the entrepreneurial spirit. The spirit is deep within you. So what is the what is the best way for people to get in touch with you, or do you have any offers for them that they could take advantage of? 00;13;29;17 - 00;13;56;23 Umair Mansha Yeah, I'm pretty much free, much available via email or some. Someone could just check out our website form or schedule a call on our Kelly or Reach out on social media under my name or under re accompany me. I tried to interact with a lot of people and get to learn and get the service as well. It's all about collaboration and partnership. 00;13;56;23 - 00;14;06;05 Umair Mansha So if anyone is looking to work with us or they have a great idea to work on common ground or collaboration or partnership, I'm all ears. 00;14;07;12 - 00;14;16;28 Jesse Gilmore Go. Excellent. And for anybody that's listening, I'll put the links to Lazy Metrics and Omega in the show notes. And I want to thank you very much for being on the show today. 00;14;17;26 - 00;14;20;03 Umair Mansha Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. 00;14;21;17 - 00;14;40;16 Jesse Gilmore Agency owners. If you want to transform your agency to sustain and grow without your direct involvement, where you can stop working in the business and switch to working on the business where you can regain control of your time, delegate effectively, get paid what you're worth, and have your team run the day to day. Go to niche in control. 00;14;40;16 - 00;14;56;16 Jesse Gilmore That com slash case study right now. To learn more about leverage for growth, you can book a free strategy session with us to look at your systems, understand what needs to be done in order for you to scale and get a free strategic plan for the next year to live the life of entrepreneurship that you've always dreamed about. 00;14;57;02 - 00;15;03;29 Jesse Gilmore Go to niche in control dot com slash key city that is niche in control dot com slash case that we now. Transcripts are auto-generated and may contain errors.