The secret lies in one word — Gen Z.
Wise Old Friend: “Heard you wanted to start a new business. Exciting! What are you thinking of? Restaurant? Coffee shop? Ecommerce or Dropshipping, maybe?
Gen Z Entrepreneur: “Why would I do that?”
Wise Old Friend: “That’s how it works. You start a company and market for it on Facebook and Google. Then you get more customers and succeed in time.”
Gen Z Entrepreneur: “How long would that take?”
Wise Old Friend: “10–15 years?”
Gen Z Entrepreneur: “That’s too long. I plan to retire by 30. So I need to grow my business in 5 years.”
Wise Old Friend: “Impossible. You GenZ’ers do not know what you are talking about. Listen to me. I was born twenty years before you and have a good bank account.”
Gen Z Entrepreneur: “How long did it take you to reach 1 million customers?”
Wise Old Friend: “Oh, I remember that moment clearly. It has been four years and eight months since I started my business. Wonderful moment.”
Gen Z Entrepreneur: “Yesterday, I posted a TikTok video that reached 10 million people.”
Wise Old Friend: “…”
Gen Z Entrepreneur: “…”
Wise Old Friend: “But… Yes, but… You cant… You know what, I do not understand you.”
Gen Z Entrepreneur: “I agree. But you know what? I understand my market and my generation. So scooch away and let me do my thing.”
Gosh, I sound like I am ninety.
So here I am, working on expanding my business. Since my operations are mostly B2B, I thought of expanding into LinkedIn, logically.
So then, I start reading about techniques to grow your LinkedIn company page online. The instructions online were almost the same:
- Stay consistent in posting.
- Do not put external links.
- Engage with other people.
- Never stop posting.
Then I found a few people online with hundreds of thousands of followers doing the techniques above. For instance, Justin Welsh has built an entire business around it. He’s a master of understanding how to ace a social media algorithm like LinkedIn and Twitter.
So I thought, “It makes sense, he started writing a long time ago, and he is an experienced human being.”
But then I asked myself, “Is age a direct proportion to success these days?”
A week after that, while skimming through those successful people on LinkedIn, I found an intriguing person named Catalina Valentino.
I’ve seen at least 30 individuals before her, but she was quite interesting because of the following:
- She was 20 at that time.
- She had over 50k followers and grew swiftly.
At that point, that was interesting. But it was not very impressive. Then I realized:
3. She has her own personal branding agency.
But my critical mind said, “So what? Anyone could start a business, but that does not mean they’re succeeding in it. I, of all people, know that.”
Oh, in case you’re a first-time reader, I am Al, an entrepreneurship consultant in Zurich, Switzerland. I’ve worked in this startup fundraising and investment industry for over ten years. I’ve helped clients who raised more than $140m and those who had no product yet.
Then one last piece of the puzzle impressed me (and I’ve dealt with highly successful businesses.) — Her personal branding agency, Pivot, made a six-figure, and they’re pushing to a seven-figure.
This is where the skeptical mind stops operating. I concluded that — She is a Gen Z, 20 years old female entrepreneur with an agency making a six-figure.
My entrepreneurial mind started asking questions. Finally, adding the fact that she owns a tech startup, which is where my expertise lie, I went on and talked to her.
They had $11.5 billion in revenue in 2021, a whopping 43.7% annual increase. (Businessofapps.com reports.)
They currently have 822 million members, with over 57 million businesses and 120,000 schools.
It’s one of those businesses you start to feel will exist for the long run. That their existence is a given. I’ve mentioned before that I am a high believer that LinkedIn could dominate the freelancing market one day or another.
It started with a post that went trending. By trending, you’d think, “Oh, now it makes sense. A single post that reached 2,000,000 people could get you to build what she built.”
However, the truth is her first trending post, as she told me, reached around 200 likes. That’s not even trending in a lot of people’s dictionaries. So then the first thing Cat did, which you should learn from whether you’re a Baby Boomer, Millenial, Gen Z, or even Gen Alpha, was that she seized the traction.
Lesson 1 — Seize the moment.
Gary Vee said this a zillion times. If you get a post with any attention whatsoever, capitalize on that and do not let it fade. That’s what she did. She used that post and created another, then another, and another.
That’s the initial step on how to ace LinkedIn and other social media platforms. Alright, so if followed correctly, you can build a good audience. But you are light years away from creating a successful entrepreneurial venture.
This leads us to the second step that Cat did, which I personally noticed when talking to her — a client’s success is your success when it comes to an agency.
Lesson 2 — Prove your ROI
This is what the “old-wise-friend” at the beginning of the article would agree on. It’s the basics of building a business. It’s also the groundstone of establishing a successful agency.
I can hire ten agencies right now. Yet, I will end my contract with them in a few months if I do not see results. What most naive entrepreneurs go for is signing a lot of clients. What Cat knows is more important is to show clients that you made them more money than what they paid you.
Think of it that way — If I told you to give me $10 per month, and I’ll return it as $100 each month, you’ll most likely accept that. It’s easy math.
Similarly, if anyone owns an agency, especially in an intangible asset like “personal branding,” it’s not easy to showcase the ROI unless it is a direct amount. For example, “Her services led me to increase my revenue by 3X” is what you want to hear.
If you concluded from this article that there’s a Gen Z’er called Catalina Valentino, who had a few viral posts and created an agency, you need to think again.
It’s never that simple. She had a viral post, capitalized on it, built another twenty viral posts, channeled it into an entrepreneurial venture, focused on the customer, got attention from publications like Business Insider, won an award about being a young entrepreneur, and finally landed an investment interest in her agency.
That’s how a young person is undergoing their entrepreneurial journey, which is in no way like the old times. So, if you want a take-home message and advice from her before closing this, here it goes.
- Spread actual opinions rather than following templates of growing followers.
- Be consistent
- Make smart business decisions and think of your clients.
As usual, this is not a sponsored article whatsoever and never will be. There’s value in the story of Cat that you ought to grasp from the above article.
I’m Al Anany, a business consultant in Zurich, Switzerland. I believe in the power of delivering value to you, the reader. You’ll find me on most social platforms by simply googling my name. Follow me if you’re interested in the value of my content.