Life Update

So, I’m writing this on 31st December, 1.26am.

Tomorrow I have a virtual team lunch, no jiu jitsu for the next 2 days, and a buck load of work to take care of. Some things I haven’t talked about anywhere else, but since you’re putting in the time to read this. Let me spill some tea.

1. Working on finalizing the agency website.

   1. VSL

   2. Structure

   3. Email sequence

2. Content plan for 2025:

   1. 1 filming session for Whysaksham (This will sort out content till feb mid, wtf)

   2. MMH IG content writing

   3. Filming 2-4 YouTube videos

3. Freebies for agency service

4. Client work sorted during my absence of 2.5 weeks

5. Work on creating a client acquisition IP

6. Training on Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat and leave on Sunday

7. Make sure that agency doesn’t face any issue during my absence.

So these are the things I am working on, and I have so less time left.

Not really giving much significance to the new year. I’ll celebrate it a bit, get some deep work done.

This gives me a reason to do a proper audit of everything that has happened this year, see where I could make progress and start working on it.

Plus, the poster frame I got, I’ll take this as a reason to get it printed, and on my setup.

I don’t have any specific party plans, I’ll just hangout with friends, have a chill time.

One thing I have been doing is letting the agency core team know, about the vision with the company, if you’re new here, I run a personal branding and sales agency called Metro Media House.

We work with online entrepreneurs and help build lead gen through their personal brand. We have a really unique angle to our service. Our IP.

The team is closing in on 25 people, some full time and others on contract.

The whole of December was easy going during most times, as I travelled, fell sick twice and got the agency on a good track that I can maintain until 22nd Jan, then start my sprint mode for 3 months straight.

That’s pretty much what’s going on recently.

Now let me give you the most transparent, and real look into my year. None of this is actionable, or thought to be educational, I want you guys to have a look in what went down, at a personal level.

This isn’t to flex, or ask for sympathy or any unnecessary emotion. I want you to read, and visualize the Journey.

Being on this path in the online world, I am closing in on 5 years by May 2025.

2024 has been, hands down, the best year in terms of experience, ups and downs, family and work. Let’s dive right in.

This will be a long read.

Big events, BTS and the unheard of stories.

So, this year started at a low.

The agency went back to around 2-3k MRR (Yes that low), I didn’t know if things were going to survive till mid year. Not knowing if I’d have the money to pay my editor Aman, or the team members.

I was still living a decent life, no sacrifices there. It’s just that things were not ticking in work.

The year before, clients left in the last 2 months, had about $4000 + $2000 of unpaid money, and I was paying the team off from my pocket completely.

I didn’t know how I’ll get things back on track. So I went back home during December 2023, and I had to do a brutal self audit.

I saw things where I was plain stupid, I was letting my brand rot by posting like 2-3 times a month. Thinking that I can’t carry on.

Letting the agency rot with team members still believing in me, my parents behind me always, and none of them ever knew what was wrong.

A lot of what I’m about to mention is company IP, so I can’t disclose the exact things, however I’ll be transparent.

During that time when I was at home, out of nowhere, memories from me being a DM closer came back, and I went back to the basics.

Took one advice from Alex Hormozi, too seriously (this is a spoiler btw):

This struck me. I was thinking, who tf am I to tell all these people about stuff I’m doing when I don’t even follow my own advice.

Then I went back to my best work friends: Notebook and pen.

I drilled down the basics. Nothing else mattered to me. Not even my brand at that point. I just wanted to get the agency revenue back up.

So I type out an outreach script, tell Tanjay to get on this and start the outreach relentlessly.

We didn’t see results from December mid 2023 till Jan mid 2024. However, things made sense some other way.

I got 2 inbound clients from my second account, “howsaksham” at that time.

Those 2 closes. gave me belief that I can do it. So we went even harder.

Now I wanted to sustain and maintain cashflow, so I had to pull out a card I was hesitant to play: A workshop.

The last one I did was in Oct 2023. The response was great, there were people asking me to do it, so I thought, what better time?

I did a workshop at the end of Jan 2024, and the response was amazing. I only sold a few times on my account, and ended up making enough cash to be able to sustain the agency for a month and some change longer.

Combine that with the agency clients that were new, things were looking good.

We did let go of another client in that time, I had a small financial cushion, so I didn’t worry.

In Feb, we onboarded a few more clients and the agency touched the first ever $10k month. I was over the moon.

I legit saw my parents being real proud of me. And I can never have enough of it.

So much so, that I got back to consistent content creation.

Let’s talk about the brand for a bit, I was not optimistic at that time, used to think that this is maybe my best.

The growth really stopped for a good 5-6 months. I was at 100k followers on my birthday, and during feb I was at like 102k.

Used to think that does it really matter?

But looking back on the journey, gave me energy out of nowhere, and I thought,

“I have tried everything so much, make things work from nothing, and this small issue stops me from growing again?”. No way.

I got back to creation and we started seeing some growth on the account. I needed that.

Now I had those 2 projects I always cared for, on good pace again.

Then at the end of feb, Akshat Tongia, a great friend of mine, reaches out with an idea.

“Bro, should we do a retreat with some of our followers?”

And I was like, “Absolutely, I don’t travel often anyway, this would be great as no-one is doing it.”

So we did, we executed the journey club during mid march, and it was the best place I visited this year aside from my home of course.

We did such a great job selecting people for it, getting Sankho on board for filming, and producing a high quality documentary.

It still feels a bit mad if you think about it, 2 guys started creating videos in their room, and now people pay to go on a trip with them. Mad.

I even think about this, when I am working on the agency or meeting anyone of you randomly.

I always have this thought:

“Is this really me? I was just a below average nobody in college.”

Parents didn’t have much belief initially. I didn’t know if this online thing would work or not. I just used to tell my dad this, “papa ek din videos bana k paise kamaunga, dekhna.”

And he used to nod and give me some validation, that go ahead son, do it.

Now, this is my lifestyle. I do it for a living. I am not the biggest or the best creator yet, however I have created my own space. I am proud of it.

So we came back from the Journey club, and the grind started again.

My focus went on the agency, fully. Again neglecting my brand.

I closed another client, on a 3 month deal (that turned out to be a disaster, more to follow).

I was over the moon, several high paying clients, I am making bank.

April and May were pretty much the same.

Wake up → Work → Eat → Train in evening → freshen up → Work → Eat → Sleep

I had my eyes on the next thing.

A jiu jitsu tournament in Delhi, called AJP.

I received my second and third stripe by June 2024, and used to think that I was prepared, but boy was I in for a reality check.

I went for the tournament with friends, and came back as the only one who didn’t win anything. I lost the first match on points, and the second one by submission, that I never expected to even defend. My elbow was more important than a medal, so I tapped.

I somehow lived the next 2 days and tried to enjoy, trying to fake a smile covering the disappointment I had in myself.

Went back home, with such low energy, my mom told me “Tu vapis chala ja Pune, agr aisa mood rakhega toh. Khel k aya na, wahi jeet h”.

I have a very healthy relationship with my parents, probably the closest I have ever been to them. This was my mom’s way of getting me to man up.

Those words definitely comforted me. I got the optimism back. However, now it awakened a fire inside.

I must get better at this sport, and ready for competitions.

Accepting one fact that jiu jitsu will always be super important for me as a person, I can’t put it above my work.

I am a thought worker, and a healthy body is needed. I would rather take it slow and grow slowly, than to do it faster, and injure myself.

So I started focusing on getting better. That’s when I invested in a fitness coach (Who’s a really good friend of mine, and trains at the gym with me).

To guide me on this journey, and I didn’t know I needed it.

I am the healthiest, heaviest, in the best shape of my life (not crazy shape, but performance wise).

I saw insane growth in performance during jiu jitsu. I was named one of the captains for the in house tournament in Ptown west MMA.

My team got second. I won 3, and drew 2 fights.

I was super proud of myself. And this was in middle of July. 9 days from my birthday.

Last birthday I had a fractured arm, no money, and grit to make it work. This year, I took losses, turned around my agency and more confident in myself than ever.

The birthday held another surprise for me, I was promoted to blue belt by our professor Jonathan Roberts. I was now among the only 4 blue belts in Ptown west.

That instilled mad imposter syndrome in me. There were people better than me who didn’t get it, but if professor said so I’ll accept it. I have utmost respect for him.

I dealt with it, grew better, and made myself a better jiu jitsu athlete. Decent enough I’d say.

Now keeping jiu jitsu aside for a while, during this time, the agency stopped growing. We were at the same pace and run rate. However the team grew.

I was still a sucker for more margins, that’s when Subah (Another good friend, in the agency game), gave me a reality check in terms of difference of how teams operate.

I took inspiration from him, and started spending more on the team.

I hired some people from my workshop in January (one of it’s selling points), and made difficult decisions in terms of trusting some team members.

Now one positive and one negative happened in this time.

Positive → One of my clients told me this:

“Saksham, you’re just giving excuses. You can create content, and run your agency and do many more things. Not working on content is only an excuse”.

It felt like he spoke what I was trying to hide from myself, and that flipped a switch.

Since August, I have not had a break in content.

I grew my brand by like 30-35k followers since then. Not the maddest mark, but it’s good enough for me to feel proud.

Negative → The clients I closed early in the year, started having problems.

None of them got results.

1 client got nothing, even after me trying everything possible to get her results. I genuinely feel bad about not being able to help her.

1 client got nothing, he was at a really high position in a multi 9 figure company. Wanted to get results, but didn’t follow anything we said. Always changed operations, and fucked it all up on the back end honestly.

1 client got nothing. Out of our 3 months, he didn’t have a sorted offer for the complete 3 months. He did create content, but always changed expectations in terms of results. Some times it was clients, other times it was brand. I gave him 1.5 months of free service from my pocket, and he still wasn’t satisfied.

And he ended up asking for a $5000 refund, which I paid off.

1 more client, just nothing worked for him, as we saw that he wasn’t a fit so we stopped working together. He wanted to come back for his free month of service (that I promised even after giving a discount on his retainer)

All in all, that’s you looking at more than $10k of revenue lost per month. Back again at 4-5k max.

In this time I let go of the longest partnership I ever had in the online world. The guy I used to edit for in my early days, we worked on some of the biggest names in the real estate industry in the US, and I decided this is time.

I need to make a hard shift in my service.

Longer term clients. Better clients in terms of fit and their offer. In line with what we want to achieve as a service business.

I went back to my work best friends.

We went bullish on client acquisition again. I changed the second account to be my company page. We changed our offer. And I became more strict.

Being an introvert, who was always looked down upon, I developed this belief deep down that I want to just take control over everything now.

I am not going to be playing this game for easy money.

So we went with the purist approach.

I changed my self image to this → I can create great content, run my agency well, together.

And put my head down, and worked the hardest I could.

Too many Inbound opportunities I said no to.

Brand grew.

ECB was born.

Second account grew.

And clients started coming in.

All those people I was nurturing started converting in October - November.

I kept training jiu jitsu, and felt the most confident I have ever been.

Showed up with that energy. And the results followed.

Agency back to a really healthy pace.

I travelled several times in the last quarter, mainly back home, watched my first 2 concerts, attended a wedding, and the work never lost pace.

All that work made sense, this is the last 4 years compounding.

Getting a macbook, investing in courses, buying phones for my entire family, spending a lot of money on them, none of it even felt like a dent in anything.

The whole year has been full of ups and downs.

End Note (My goals):

There’s so much more I could mention, that I can’t. Stuff private in my life, and work.

What I’ll be building this year, none of the agency services come close.

In 2024, too many agencies copied our process.

I don’t really care when people copy what I do. Big fan of what Zach Pogrob says “You should be worried if you’re not getting copied.”

This year we separate ourselves from everyone, completely. I have love for this game, in my way.

People even started copying what we have innovated with our funnels, IP, etc.

None of them have any clue.

I am not going to mention the exact goals (want to keep them private). However, there’s some I want to achieve this year:

• Travel to 3-4 countries.

• Scale my brands.

• Go bullish on YouTube.

• Scale the agency. Uniquely.

• Scale ECB.

• Build the Journey club with Akshat.

• Train jiu jitsu.

• Give back way more to my loved ones. If I win, they get to celebrate. My job is to make it happen.

• Work more on conversations. I am very selective with who I talk to, Moksh inspired me to talk to more people, and I will bro.

• Plus personal stuff.

It’s not like I treat new years differently, as far as I can remember. 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024. Every single one of these new years eve, I have been at my desk working.

Won’t be that different tomorrow. I might go out and have fun, but we’ll see.

I get to work for 5 more days, then I’ll be on a 2.5 week break.

Then back to the most intense period of work sprint and self improvement of my life.

This is my way of documenting, even more, so I always have something to look back on, and relive the moments.

If I could say one thing to you all, if you came this far:

Document your journey more. Your life will change.

And one request.

(Do share any bit of this newsletter on your IG stories and tag me, I’d love to hear back from you all)

2024.Done and dusted.

~Saksham Gaur.

Here’s how I can help:

1. Expert Creator Blueprint: (Use code “2025” during checkout for a 20% discount).
   
   ECB 1.0 is underway. ECB 2.0 will release around March-April next year. The founding batch access has closed. However new modules and live sessions will continue for the next 3-4 months for 1.0.

   1. ECB 2.0 will be around 6x more expensive than 1.0. If you join right now, you’ll get the next cohort at a discounted rate.

   2. When it releases there will be no discount, of any case, aside from the case of existing students.