Great story Aaron. Thanks for sharing! 👏 We’re delighted to have been part of the journey and love keeping up with you and what’s next 😎🚀
For those who don't know me, I'm Aaron, a 24-year-old agency owner. My agency specializes in the distribution of personalised emails designed to create sales opportunities for clients at scale. My journey has been very odd, where I have tried and failed thousands of times and only now am I actually getting success and hitting the goals that I've always wanted to reach. It's been a hectic couple of years with some major highs and lows. My journey to where I am now has not been the most conventional. ⚽ 2018 - At the age of 18 I quit professional football where I played with a number of Scottish football clubs and got the chance to represent my national team at youth level. 🎒 2019 - Joined university and Bright Red Triangle @ Edinburgh Napier University where I first found "entrepreneurship", I also became a part-time video person, personal trainer and sold double glazing windows 🤣 🏥 2020 - With the great support from BRT, I founded a health tech start-up and we won 2 international awards, but we ended up putting the project on pause. 💊 2021 - I joined another health tech focussing on mental health, we almost closed our first Seed round but we never quite got it over the line. 👨⚕️ 2022 - I joined OnceHub which was my first ever sales role, I was delivering 5 demos per day due to their awesome PLG function and I learned how to sell! 📈 2022 - I moved up the sales value chain and joined Shine Interview where I got my first leadership experience in sales and discovered outbound! 🆕 2023 - I left Shine to make my own fractional marketing consultancy (I couldn't get past $5k MRR) then I found Clay where I morphed it into an agency 🚀 2024 - I formulated my Clay agency Traction, spent ages perfecting the product and we reached a point where 90% of clients got results, 80% of clients have been with us for 6 months + and we hit the $20k MRR milestone! I also entered the "LinkedIn influencer" (I wouldn't call myself that) world where I actually get paid to conduct posts, I still feel like a major imposter doing this. 🌎 2025 - This is going to be a BIG year, I will turn 25 (mid-20s...getting old) and we are targeting $100k MRR by the end of the year and we are doing a major niche down to digital marketing agencies (80% of our portfolio is in this space.) My journey has been an odd-ball stacked with failure but what I've learned is: 1️⃣ Don't get on the career ladder too early, give yourself some time to taste different departments, industries and professions. You don't want to end up with a career path you hate. 2️⃣ Use start-up or agency building to jump the ladder, if I just stuck to a graduate job then I wouldn't have hit my 2024 progression + income goals until I was 40. 3️⃣ Work isn't everything, people take work so seriously but I encourage people to have fun, build relationships and remember that nothing is more important than health, family and friends. What has everyone else learned about their journey?