The Start…

Most valuable lesson of 2020 is to document your experiences. Show your journey and your process of growth. The “boring” of today can be interesting for the future.

How it Started

I started my entire journey at 16. That’s when I felt a major disconnect with the concept of going to school. Although both of my brothers had dropped out, my sister was still in college (pursuing something in medical) and it wasn’t as normalized for me.

The idea of it was kind of scary. When you think of going to school it’s like you kind of have your future mapped out for you. Pick a career. Study it. Take a bunch of tests for a few years. Graduate. Find a job.

I know it’s definitely not that easy, but it’s still a specific roadmap of steps that you need to take in order to keep moving forward. But when you go on a separate journey and create your own roadmap that’s constantly changing is where it becomes more difficult. You never really know what step you need to take to move forward. But I wanted to do it anyway. To my advantage, I still had two years to figure things out with room for constant trial and error.

I began looking into the idea of consulting and potentially starting a consulting agency. I thought it was incredibly interesting and exciting especially after seeing the results that so many people had from it.

I watched a course on it from a very successful person in the industry and studied every single idea and topic that was mentioned in it.

But even at that age, I didn’t have enough confidence to start it. I felt like I didn’t know enough and needed more time to learn other things. I spent 2–3 months just reading more books, watching videos, writing it all down but I had no clue or confidence on how to apply any of it.

When I saw stories of other people doing it — making so much in such little time, it motivated me but I think it also gave a false reality since it didn’t showcase how difficult it actually is.

I think it also has a lot to do with your mental state. If you don’t feel confident enough to do anything, it’ll always weigh you down.

But at the same time, I was fortunate enough to have a different opportunity in front of me that I was able to learn a lot from and gain major experience.

Stock Market Lab

Around the same time that I was trying to take my own path, I started working with Stock Market Lab (founded by my brother about 3–4 years ago).

At that time Stock Market Lab wasn’t nearly as big as it is today. We didn’t have an online training, a community of over 2,000+ traders, or a following on social media/youtube as large as it is now.

It was in a major startup phase of doing in-person classes with absolutely no proper foundation, at all.

To put it into perspective, here are some conflicts/things we were doing wrong(in the very beginning phase):

• No CRM to store leads, customers, and their contact info
• No marketing automation platform to build a reputable email list and nurture leads
• No clear and concise structure/foundation in our overall operations
• No experience in any marketing, operations, sales, building a team, etc.

Here are the Positives:

• In a non-biased opinion, it was a great training. Every member loved it and had nothing but good things to say.
• A strong and tight-knit community was being built who all wanted to see growth in themselves.
• We didn’t ( and still don’t) enforce the product onto others. If we don’t think it’s for you, then we don’t recommend it.
• We had room for improvement and we were willing to learn on the way.

But if you change your perspective and approach something as challenging as this to be fun your mind won’t face as much resistance.

I ended up sticking with Stock Market Lab full time and deciding that I should build up my experience here and then go off to do my own things once I graduated high school.

So let’s talk about how we started to combat all of the negatives and use the positives to our advantage. (Keep in mind this is all of the events over a course of two years, not an overnight thing).

• We started by using InfusionSoft (now known as Keap) to use as a CRM and marketing automation tool. The decision was between Infusionsoft or ActiveCampaign and looking back my biggest regret was when I confidently chose Infusionsoft. Infusionsoft is incredibly powerful, don’t get me wrong — but the problem is that I was a complete beginner to the world of marketing and infusionsoft was too overwhelming. If you’re in a similar industry, I would recommend you either go with ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit.
• We used infusionsoft for about one year and then ended up switching to a different platform, but we’re now on ActiveCampaign long term as a permanent solution.

Building out infusionsoft automation. On the top-left screen is how their automation platform works and just one of the many processes we would put our leads through. The left side is basecamp which is what we used to organize everything and now manage our growing team. (This image is about 2 years old)

• Creating a structure for scaling: My sister and I (we worked together on everything) became super hands-on with the customer service, marketing, sales, etc. Before hiring new people you need to play the field, build the structure, and then test out every system yourself and make sure it runs smoothly.
• Customer Service Foundation: So she handled customer service and came up with structures on how to manage a new customer service rep (multiple reps over time) how they would respond in a strategic way without being too pushy (like most are), and always benefiting the customer on the other end. She switched between different platforms and tried them out to see which would work best — zendesk to Hubspot, to now actively using Freshdesk to manage email tickets.

(Side Note: Customer Service is one of the most important concepts of scaling your business because it’s the initial conversations with your customers that matter the most and you don’t want your first impression to be a bad impression.)

Managing your team in Basecamp is super effective. Also ensuring that they have all of the resources to have no hiccups in the road. The platform in this image is Basecamp and Jun is our customer service rep who presents us with an end of the day report, every day after signing off.

• Hiring : We hired several people over the course of two years and implemented them into the systems we put in place and consistently iterated the process. Hiring the right people in your startup phase is super essential. We added Jun, in February of this year and he’s definitely a long term asset to our team. We have the daily end of the day reports where he fills out every business day in basecamp to keep us up to date on what’s happening in that department. We also hired new people for content and email marketing. (No one we hired has had experience in this, I find it easier to find open-minded people who have a willingness to learn when it comes to hiring).
• Marketing: This is a super-advanced subject. There are so many different types of marketing — some that work better for others may not work for you which is why it’s important to adjust based on your industry. For SML it was always primarily content marketing (focusing on inbound methodologies). Youtube, Instagram, email marketing — and constantly monetizing off of that.

Learning about sales pipelines, buyers’ journey, etc.

• Setting up an Email Structure: We now use ActiveCampaign to build our email list and set up our automated processes. I’m not going to go too much into what we did for Stock Market Lab did specifically for other reasons, but I will say that if you’re in the educational industry — or looking to get into it — it’s super important to teach yourself email marketing, inbound methodologies along with content marketing. It was the main source of growth for Stock Market Lab and I’m sure applying it in any E-Learning business is going to show to be super effective.

My digital journal I used to keep track of progress and milestones

There’s definitely a lot more that went into the growth of Stock Market Lab but I want to avoid making this first article too long.

With that being said, I realize that opportunities like this don’t come around for an average 16–18-year-old. Everyone’s journey is different and this is just how mine went, and I am and always will be grateful to be in this situation.

My future consists of a lot of things, from trying to reform the education system by helping people in their 20’s find jobs in marketing without needing a college degree. This is just one major stepping stone I had to take in order to do that.

I’m still on my journey and figuring it out as I move forward.

We all have to start somewhere. And this is my first step.

Thank you for reading!

-Saira