Angus Mace (From Failing Dropshipper To $200K/YR Digital Marketer)

all right welcome back to the channel guys today I have a very special guest on this is somebody who is a little bit more advanced in their career if you can say that you know you can be advanced in digital marketing because it's such a a new career path but this is somebody who you know you could look to to see what's possible four five six years down the line in your digital marketing career so I'm super excited to invite onto the channel Angus thank you so much for coming on thanks for me have your day here awesome awesome so what I wanted to do is basically just take it back to the beginning and just talk about your origin story right so before you discovered digital marketing maybe you didn't even know what it was before you discovered uh the digital career blueprint Seth's course uh and Seth content online what were you doing you know what what kind of jobs were you doing what was your life like and you know how did you kind of discover that so I'll take it back to the beginning I started when I had left school um well I didn't do great in school so going to University wasn't actually an option for me um in Australia you have sort of requirements to be able to get into University which I didn't have so at that point I started out doing personal training so I was doing that for think about a year a year and a half so getting up early going in training clients at the gym I wasn't making very much money and I probably um if I reflect back I don't think I was overly happy with with the career that I was in I was at first but after about a year or so I sort of realized this isn't really for me um I enjoyed talking to clients I enjoyed trying to get more clients and that sort of aspect of it but obviously I was looking for something different um so my journey sort of started when I began looking online on other ways to make money outside of my career which for me led me to drop shipping and trying to um trying to basically make money on mind somehow um long story short that didn't work that didn't work out um but through learning Drop Shipping and and sort of playing around with um some things like that online I had discovered that there was an actually a career in running you know paid advertising for businesses um and I found that really interesting at the time so I stumbled across um someone's Channel and I started finding all interviews of students to a done Seth course and that's when I actually realized that there's a full career in digital marketing and um yeah probably spent two or three nights just consuming as many of those interviews as I could and then pulled the trigger and and bought the course wow that's awesome so a couple things that I wanted to maybe like talk about or ask you about there um I think a lot of people get into uh you know a lot of these make money online opportunities I know I did a bunch of them too and they used to be especially like five six years back you just see ads all the time little harder to to make it profitable with ads now but you would just see ads all the time almost every video you click on it'd be some Drop Shipping or Amazon FBA or some guy with his shirt off in a golf cart uh you know telling you to trade or something um but uh yeah so a lot of people got into that you know I did the same thing I bought a ton of different courses and uh you know some people would say it's a scam or whatever but I actually I I learned a lot from them and if I didn't do those things I probably wouldn't have been successful on YouTube because I learned so much from those things I learned what I liked I learned what I didn't like and I learned some really tangible skills even though I didn't have any success you know I wasn't like didn't make like a super profitable Amazon FBA store but I learn I learned a lot of you know about copywriting and just like you know marketing and and just some tangible skills so um yeah I think uh you know a lot of people get into digital marketing after kind of trying some of those make money online opportunities so uh that's kind of the first point I wanted to make and then another thing is um you how long have you been in uh doing digital marketing now so I think it's been about six years now okay okay so yeah six years and you kind of started off um well we'll get to that actually so uh let's talk about how you discovered digital marketing in and Seth so how did that happen yeah okay and I'll even touch on the point you were saying before about the Drop Shipping I thought was going to get rich I had done a couple courses store it was it was actually I was making sales I remember with one of the stores in particular and I thought I'm going to become a millionaire I'm just going to start heaps of Drop Shipping Stores um that didn't eventually and then obviously I was looking for something else and and found the the course um sorry what was the question again um yeah how did okay so you found Seth's course did you so you basically knew about what digital marketing was because of Drop Shipping so that's what your introduction to digital marketing and then how did you remember how you found the course uh it was stumbling across the interviews on YouTube so I think I was probably looking at I'd probably come to the realization I'm not going to come become a millionaire from dropshipping I need to look at something else um and I think I was looking up high paying careers or something along those lines that you don't need a University degree to get um and that's how I found the VI and the course yeah cool so you kind of you you probably did you were you somebody who went to college or or did you you skip okay got you got no yeah yeah I I know a lot about college in the US I don't know that much about college in Australia but in the US there's a lot of college degrees that are probably not worth it but I have no okay it's the same Australia got you got you okay um so you were thinking like I I don't want to go through college I don't want to rack up a bunch of debt don't want to pay that don't want to spend four or five years of my life uh getting a degree and so you're looking into digital marketing um how uh how was the course itself well one of the things that I liked before I did the course was it wasn't selling anything crazy so it wasn't saying you're going to get rich I think at the time and I believe it's still the same it was just saying you're going to get you know get a 60k career I think it was at the time in digital marketing an entry-level job um and that's all wanted I just wanted to get a start and get working in an industry that had potential um for me to take it further if I wanted to um and yeah I found the course was it was good because it wasn't there was no um selling in it if that makes sense some I feel like some of the courses I've done in the past it's just you do a course and then it's just an upsell for a bigger course this was really practical um it was Seth who obviously you can tell he actually had worked in the industry and he was just giving you the basics that you need to know to get an entry-level job it was exactly what it set on the package if you will um and that's what I really liked about it and you can do it as quickly or as slow as you want um so I think some people in the course at the time had been sort of chipping away at it while they're working a full-time job whereas for me at the time I had um since I thought I was going to get rich from Drop Shipping I'd quit my personal training job so I had a lot of free time and um so I thought I'm going to get it all done in a month I'm going to get get all the horse components done and then I'm going to create my own experience and I'm just going to start applying um that's what I did and so you literally were able to get a job in a month is that what you're telling me it was just over a month I'd finished the course I think within about 20 days and then I'd already had a client or two on the side that I was just working for free um just running their Google ads it's probably like $500 a month or something that they were spending not much but enough for me to gain the you know the basics of how to run ads on the platform mhm and I'd obviously had a little bit of experience running U meta ads for the drop shipping stores so I had a bit of had the foundation and probably I was just naive so I thought I'm just going to start applying I can get a job and um yeah then one of the places pretty quickly after I started applying um one of the guys gave me a call and that was the job the first job that I got and that's the same agency that I'm at today wow so you you've been at the same agency for six years then yeah so it was um it was the my now business partner who started the agency he had just started it so he was working in a global role um doing marketing for a big technology company out of the US and he had come to Australia um and I think for whatever reason he wanted to start his own agency um so he only just open the doors and I think that's why he was open to hiring me because I I didn't have the skill set but I was young and I really wanted to learn and obviously for him you know you get someone cheaper if you get him with no experience um and they're moldable so he knew he could train me um I didn't have any bad habits coming into the role and and I obviously had demonstrated based on some of the stuff that they tell you to do in the course that I was eager to learn I had my Google certification um and it was very clear to him that I actually wanted the job which I think was definitely one of the reasons why he gave me a shot and that's one of the good things about the course a lot of it's helped you stand out as someone who's applying um to a hiring manager or an agency owner because you actually already get your Google certification you've already demonstrated that you've got some practical experience and I think a lot of people coming into it don't realize how big of an impact that has and how much that helped you stand out um now I'm on the other side of the hiring and I see a lot of very lazy apption and I haven't seen one person yet who has for a junior role who has done what set sets to do in the course so it's yeah there you go there you go right there by the way guys uh if you're super confused about what we're talking about you you're like what is digital marketing what are the different digital marketing careers you know how do I get into digital marketing is digital marketing a good choice for me Seth does have a free training which you can check out down in the description and the pin comment below so definitely click down there and check that out because that'll explain everything um so let's talk that's actually a really good point that you brought up about the hiring um now you're on the other side because you are well we're going to get there in a moment but you're in a pretty Advanced role at this point and so you're on the other side you're the one who's hiring for those Junior roles and um what Seth has people do not to give too much away but he basically has them prove that they know the skills because everybody says they have the skills everybody says that they do uh because that's what all the you know career coaches teach people to say it's like yeah just say that you have the skills even if you don't so everyone says they have the skills but how do you actually prove that you have the skills well you you have you know you want to do portfolio projects and that's exactly what Seth has people do um but he hasn't do it in a very specific way so um you've uh like hired I'm sure probably interviewed and hired a ton of people and I've done the same thing both in my corporate job back when I was working corporate and then now that I'm actually hiring people and I would agree like there's very few people that do you know portfolio projects in the way that you know Seth recommends to actually prove that they have the skills so could you maybe dive into that a little bit more because I thought that part was very interesting coming from the other perspective the other side of the table so many people are kind of on this side of the table they want to get a little more perspective on the other side yeah definitely well I think for for an employer if you're trying to to build a business you need people who care because you're not going to build a big business by yourself um you need to have people especially in an agency your biggest commodity is your your biggest asset is your your people um so you can't buy a good attitude you can't buy someone who's actually inspired for the job um but if you find it you have to hire those people and you have to treat them well um because they're the people where they progress very fast in their career and if they're inspired by what they're doing they're the people that make a long-term career out of it so what it demonstrates when you come to an interview with your portfolio with your Google certifications already is you don't have to say that you have a great attitude it demonstrates it based on your actions um and when you're hiring people that's something that I don't know if everyone looks for it but I know myself and Mark we definitely look for it is has if the person says they want to be a manager let's say if it's for a management role or have they demonstrated that they've already done that in a previous role or they're actively trying to learn and put things in place to step into that role but if you say I want to step into this role but I haven't done anything that demonstrates that I've put any time into it before the interview that's usually a bit of a red flag um so the course you know by by demonstrating your experience getting your certification it definitely helps you stand out especially for a junior role because most people for a junior role either they might have a marketing degree or some sort of a degree um but they come into the interview thinking they're ready for the job but the reality is University degrees don't teach you the the practical skills that you actually need to work in an agency um so one of your one of the things that's going to help you stand out is that you've got a demonstrated you know track record of learning on your own um it's really really important do you guys care at all about a University degree when you're hiring for those roles I wouldn't say we don't we place no value on it I think what a University degree shows is that you can be committed to something and you can stick something out and finish it to the end that's that's where we look at it as a positive but then we've also seen people with University degrees where they just can't handle the the pressure or they just they're not they're not up for it and and it doesn't have Curry as much weight in this industry in particular just because it changes so often um and the universities aren't really teaching you the practical skills um that you need in the role so it's not something that we overly care about if someone came with a University degree but they didn't do any of the stuff that Seth talks about in the course versus someone with no University degree that had taken those steps and gotten their Google certification and things like that we'd hire that person unless they were came across very bad in the interview but nine times out of 10 we'd be we'd be really interested in that person got it got it okay yeah and I totally agree on the University thing like I I'm not familiar with Australian universities but the same thing in the US it's almost impossible just because of how universities are built to for them to keep up with what's actually working right now they're usually teaching stuff that worked 5 10 15 years ago but they're not teaching the stuff that's working right now um and the only way you can learn that is just by getting your hands dirty and being in the trenches basically you know so simple as thought yeah so awesome so you got a job in about a month uh and I everyone is probably gonna want to know you know let's talk about the money right let's talk about the money that's that's what everybody wants to know so that first job uh that you got how much was that and I'm talking in Australian dollars here just for anyone who's listening from the US but the first job was I think it was 5 55,000 around about Australian dollars um and we obviously have super annuation here so that was inclusive of super um so not a overly High salary at all but it was it was fair based on the fact that I had to be train pretty much from scratch um to actually to actually step into the role um so that's where I started um and then pretty well every year from that point I progressed I think the first sort of two years I I was just learning I probably wasn't really into it as much as I am now so I was just sort of slowly progressing and learning and then around year two I think I was earning about 70,000 to 75,000 Australian dollars um so that's once I'd sort of Built My fundamental level knowledge um and then somewhere around that point I started taking it really seriously really enjoying working with clients i' built some great relationships with some of our larger clients um and I think my inspiration for the career actually grew over time and once that sort of kicked in then it accelerated relatively quickly um and I think around year would have been year three I was thinking I can go and do this on my own I can go and start my own agen I'm going to I sort of having those those thoughts um and then I had sort of come to the conclusion I'm going to treat this agency like it's mine for a year save as much money as I can and at the end of that year I'm going to be ready to go and start my own agency um or I was hoping that an opportunity would open up in this company for me to buy in and become a partner or start those conversations um but either way I was going to treat it like my own business and for me that meant going way above and beyond my job description in terms of taking care of clients um in terms of building out at the time a new service offering for the agency that we didn't offer and and actually sort of packaging that up and getting some of our clients doing that um which also helped grow revenue for the agency a little bit anyway at the end of that year the conversation with my now business partner but my boss at the time um was raised around if I was interested in potentially partnering in the business and and buying in um and yeah then here we are today did you I'm I'm actually curious and if you don't want to share this you don't have to but who brought that conversation up was it your your your boss and now business partner or was it was my boss yeah my boss and our business partner he he he'd raised it I think he we we would have conversations sort of after work most nights just talking about clients and the business and stuff like that CU I was very interested in it so just context at that point I was just because I wanted to IID requested that I could you know basically look at all the books and the revenue figures because I wanted to really understand all of that um understand gross margin utilization rate of employees all that sort of stuff and so we would have conversations around the business um and in one of those sort of days then yeah it got brought up okay one of those conversations sorry I should say so maybe you were kind of hinting at at something just a little bit just like not saying he knew I wanted more he knew I wanted to push it because I was working very hard so just for context some nights I'd be I'd be doing like 12 hour days um working on the weekends not something a normal employee would do so he definitely knew that I wanted more um or potentially he suspected that maybe I was thinking about starting my own agency yeah so just I guess like a little Golden Nugget here just for anyone out there watch who's in a similar situation or maybe in the future is in a similar situation yeah I think the great advice there was just treat it like your own business and just just go above and beyond and if you know if you want to partner with somebody that's a pretty pretty smart thing to do right treat it like your own business show that that you could be a good partner and you can basically run the business on your own and uh I think that would be like a very very good way to uh get someone to to offer you that position so for for the partnership position or even just to stand out in your role maybe you don't want to buy into a business but you just want to go up to a high level in the business if you have to have some level of commercial acument so you have to understand what are the clients worth that I'm managing um how much am I billing out at per hour if you understand those things it changes the way you look at the business and your boss or your manager will definitely take note if you have that sort of a mindset when you're coming into your job day to-day it shows you really care and care about the business yeah and I mean if you're bringing a ton of value to the table I mean if let's just say if you're bringing in a million dollars worth of Revenue or or a million dollars worth of profit per year and you you know you're getting paid like 50,000 your boss is going to see like okay well we we need to give this guy a raise right because obviously you know they're probably not going to stay with us long if they're bringing in that kind of value to the table so and for for me the first time I got access to those figures the realization was I'm actually not worth that much that was that was the Hest truth it was I'm actually not managing very big clients at the moment um and that sort of kicked my ass into gear to step up take on more clients um prove that I could manage some of the bigger clients yeah that's awesome that's awesome okay so you had an amazing career progression and now you're actually a partner at the business and you're you're just crushing it so um that's uh I I don't know did did you I I forgot did you give the the kind of the figures approximately I don't know if what whatever you're comfortable with sharing as a partner yeah so so obviously when you when you buy into the business for an agency it's um it's going to be a little bit different so you you would have your salary um but then obviously you you've got an equity stake in the business so if the business is paying dividends which if it's making money it probably is um you would have your salary and then obviously um you would be paid out the dividends which is just the profit that the agency makes each year um so since that became since I bought into the business that's obviously part of my compensation now as well um so it's it's it's above 200,000 that's awesome and obviously it's the the we're really lucky we have some amazing clients that keep growing we've got a great team we're not the biggest agency but we keep growing year on year so obviously that figure keeps going up which is nice um and it's quite quite rewarding that's awesome do you want to give a shout out to the agency there might be some business owners watching this who knows yeah sure it's be found digital is the name awesome okay be found digital check it out especially if you're Australian or in or in that area um that's awesome okay so uh okay so basically what would you say to somebody who is kind of in the same situation you were in they're kind of you know on the fence maybe they're trying a bunch of make money online opportunities out and they're not having any success and you know it it might just simply be because it's it's a skill issue in many cases right you just don't you simply don't have the skills yet uh to to have success in in business but you can attain those skills and the crazy thing is you can literally get paid to learn these skills because most people all across the world they pay money to learn in demand skills that's that's how colleges work that's how boot camps work is you pay a tremendous amount of money to learn in demand skills but what you know Seth and PE you know Seth and I we like to flip that Paradigm on its head and we like to basically say that you're going to get paid to learn these in demand skills right because there's certain careers out there where it's it's in demand and there's only one way to learn the skills which is just getting your hands dirty being in the trenches and colleges just simply can't keep compete or keep up with that and so what would you say to somebody like that yeah I would say if well probably two things one if it sounds too good to be true it probably is so I know a lot of the get make money online things are you might gain I gained really valuable experience from getting sort of caught up in that um but where I really started to make progress with when I focus on one thing I just F I'm going to get a job and then when I get the job for the first two years like I said I was enjoying it but I probably wasn't taking it that seriously um but once I started going I'm going to put all of my energy and focus into my career and I'm going to try and make it as successful as I can I'm going to work hard I just want to be the best that I can um that was when I really started to to make actual progress um so focus on one thing and for me that meant cutting out the distractions so I stopped trying to dabble in Amazon FBA and Drop Shipping and trying to pick up up clients on the side of my job to supplement my salary I thought I'm going to make the sacrifice to put everything to the side and I'm just going to give this one thing a really good crack and I'm going to give it a year I'm going to see what happens and if I don't see the results that I want based on the amount of time and effort and love that I'm putting into it I'm going to change direction um but I think staying focused on one thing is is really really important that that would probably be my advice that no one really told me that at the time but upon reflection that helped me quite a lot got it and one thing I actually forgot to ask you about um I was supposed to ask before this but tell me about kind of job satisfaction what what is your job satisfaction like doing digital marketing versus before when you were doing other jobs it's um I think it's quite as a career it's it's quite fastpaced if you will I know it's a bit of a cringey word but it is quite you'll always be learning something new um and you obviously get a work the benefit of working agencies you get to work with different types of businesses um and so that's quite fun it's quite varied work um and if you're in the right type of agency where you get to work with the right type of clients it can be really really rewarding because you going to actually have a material impact on that client's business um you know some of the clients where we started working with them and they're quite small companies and now they're National businesses um and we still have have you know relationships with the owners and we've been on to see their business grow and obviously they appreciate what we do and they trust us um and we obviously love working with them and that's it's just great I like the idea of an agency because it just makes so much sense because if they tried to hire somebody in house there'd be certain trends that happen and what what's working now isn't necessarily going to work like a year or two from now but when you're working with a bunch of different businesses when some kind of trend changes you're quickly going to figure out what works right so that that's kind of one of the big value propositions of of working with an agency so that makes a lot of sense and so you're really on top of Trends and how they change when you work for an agency and you got to you got to deliver when you're in an agency um so it definitely develops a different type of mindset which whether you want to stay in in an agency or take it elsewhere it's very valuable um at least my observation has been people who have had agency experience since in an agency you're being paid to deliver a result most of the time so you you get stuff done quickly you can think on the Fly you know how to solve problems um and I think you're just overall a lot faster if there's something that needs to be done you get your hands dirty and you'll do it um whereas if at least my observation sometimes people on the brand side um they don't have that but the benefit of being in brand is you get a talk you get to interface with clients you get to have more of an understanding of the product that you're selling that your client paying points and that can really help too but having some level of a stint working in an agency will benefit you 100% no matter where you want to take your career yeah I I agree and one thing I look for in hiring is people who've either worked for agencies or are actual agency owners sometimes I'll actually hire agency owners U on my team so yeah that's I agree with that um awesome man so is there anything um that I should have asked you but I didn't about digital marketing uh maybe something around the tops of R so I know when I first started there was or Seth would talk in the course about the different types of roles you can get into so maybe that might be helpful to people who are listen okay okay yeah what are some of the the roles that are easier to get into at an entry level in digital marketing yeah at the moment and this might change over time but at the moment def if you're going into a paid role or in a paid digital agency um definitely paid search is still probably the foundational skill set which is going to help you get into most jobs um so learning how to do Google ads and Microsoft ads and you know that is definitely your grounding um that's going to be the easiest sort of skill set to have on your H that is going to be likely to get you a job I've actually heard people say that even though they ended up getting an SEO job or or a Content job the thing that got them the job was the paid search experience so even if they're hiring for a role that's not even there there's just like having people with paid search experience maybe as a on the back burner or something like they're thinking of like you know promoting them in the future or something like that so the reality is and it depends on if it's a bet Tob or a direct consumer brand but most companies spend the majority of their marketing Budget on Google search whether that's the best use of their spend or not I've got some opinions about that but a lot that's just the reality a lot of companies spend a lot of money on Google Search and they don't even question it and I'm talking some clients you know it's hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars a month that they'll spend on search um so it's definitely a skill set that it's in demand just by nature of the way that the media span goes out with most most companies makes a lot of sense so before we end it and by the way guys free training free digital marketing training you can learn a lot more about this down in the description and the pin comment below so before we end it um is there any just like last moment like is there one piece of advice uh that you could give to someone trying to to get in what's like the most important uh advice for someone trying to get in just do the course do the course and then well don't just do the course do the course and then do the Practical experience component um and get creative with it I think a lot of people got stuck on that for memory maybe it's because I'm not the brightest tool in the shed I just didn't even think about it and I just did it um and in hset that really help me so you might find you've got a family member who has a business you could run the ads for them for free just having that on your resume you can make it look like you've freelanced for that business the agency is never going to ask you about that um so just get started and don't overthink it if you're genuinely interested um you know if you're on the fence but you go this looks really interesting just do it and give it a crap that's awesome all right Angus thank you so much for coming on I really appreciate your time I know you're busy working on a Saturday morning uh for for your business and for your uh partnership so thank you so much for coming on and uh yeah maybe we'll have you on again here in a few years so we can catch up and see see where you're at no worry sounds good thanks sh