What It's About
Ministry leader builds a six-figure business helping members of his church create an online presence.
Business Model
Skills Required
Complexity
Profit Potential
Words of Wisdom
One struggle was deciding how to value the work. He says that he doesn’t believe in set pricing packages. Instead, he spends time customizing packages with clients and then he and the team figure out how much time it will take to complete that work and pay the team fairly to decide the final price.
He also says that working with creatives and artists, who are often driven by emotions than analytical thinking, can be challenging. But Izu says that even when tempers flare around him, he tries to keep calm. In his words, “Turn on emotions when it comes to fighting for your team, turn off your emotions about everything else.”
Fun Fact
The @world_record_egg account began a campaign to crack the world record for the most-liked post on Instagram with this picture of an egg, and with over 53 million likes at the time of this episode going live, it was clearly an invitation people just couldn’t turn down.
There was a lot of speculation about who was behind the egg, and as time went on the egg began to crack. Literally, it posted pictures of itself cracking. The big reveal came during the Super Bowl when it was revealed Hulu had partnered with the egg to raise awareness around mental health. Pretty eggcelent, if you ask us.
Notes from Chris
Episode 924
24-year-old Izu Aginwa says that hustling and entrepreneurship have been in his blood almost since birth. Infusing him with a strong work ethic and culture was so important to his parents that they moved from the United States back to their native Nigeria when he was a child. Returning to the U.S. for college, Izu saw hustling opportunities everywhere. But Izu says that, like most Nigerian children, he was expected to focus entirely on school in order to get what he calls “astronomically high grades.” So that’s what he did. Still, during summer breaks, he was in hustle mode. One time in college, Izu traveled to Chicago for an unpaid internship at the largest public broadcasting station in America. He learned the ins and outs of social media and was also able to apply what he was learning in school. But the internship was unpaid, so Izu hustled and paid his bills each month by building websites. Fast forward to 2017, Izu was a new college graduate and moved to Southern California for his first big post-college job as a leader in the college ministry for a large, dynamic church. The job was a perfect fit—at least for a while. He dedicated himself to the work and his ministry area grew quickly. One of the ways he did this was using the branding and social media skills that he had learned earlier. It was the perfect way to engage the college students in his target market. Soon, the content he produced for the ministry was getting attention from entrepreneurs and artists within the church who began coming to him to ask for help with their social media. After several months of referring them to others so that he could focus on the ministry, Izu finally made time for a new side hustle. He called it Frsh (pronounced: fresh) Culture. In the few spare hours he had each week, Izu began helping clients with their social media and branding needs. He did everything from writing Instagram posts to designing strategy and shooting video content. Soon he was earning an extra thousand dollars per month. He says this thousand odd dollars each month showed him the potential of his project and it also turned his entrepreneurial drive into high gear. He quickly began thinking about what he really wanted to build. About four months later, he partnered with another creative and rebranded the agency, now called Riches & Saint. In the first four months, the new agency was generating $4,000 per month as a side hustle. When the time came to transition from his ministry job, Izu jumped at the chance and now his one-time side hustle is his primary work. Business continues to grow quickly and in less than a year, revenues are more than $15,000 per month. Izu is excited about the future and hopes to expand to serve more celebrity clients, as well as begin a new ecommerce venture. He loves what he’s doing and credits it with giving him a safety net.MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Riches & Saint: Learn more about what Izu's doing over on his website, and while you're at it, check out his Instagram page as well!
- College Grads Start Multi-Million Dollar Agency in Social Media Wild West: Today’s featured hustlers were in the first wave of college students to use Facebook. It didn’t take long to see how big it would become—and how much money they could make with it
- Baker Starts Agency to Raise Dough for Dream Home: She spent years dreaming of building her own property in California. To turn the dream into a reality, she started a side hustle by applying the skills she’d gained in operating a bakery
- Orthodontist Spends $500 in Facebook Ads; Produces $65,000 in New Revenue: When a marketing pro discovers a lack of efficient online marketing in the medical industry, he helps a new client bring in 13 new patients and $65,000 in new revenue with the help of Facebook Ads
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