We recently connected with Alyssa Ege and have shared our conversation below.

Alyssa, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

When I was just starting out, I was still working a full-time job to make ends meet. I had extensive experience in performance marketing and website development, but little to none in sales or running a business. I focused on delivering the few clients that I had outstanding results, and in turn, referrals came in organically. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to scale or even to reach the $10K/month mark.

In 2017, I was laid off from my corporate career in a company restructure. Filled with fear, I was determined to grow Sail Away Media to a place that could at least cover my expenses of living. This was around the time that I launched my first marketing campaign for my own (one-man) agency in an effort to scale my roster of clients. I used the exact strategies I was using to help my clients generate new leads for my agency – and it worked! I budgeted $20/day on Facebook ads and booked calls started pouring in.

I couldn’t believe people across the country were booking calls on my calendar to speak to me about my services. They saw the ads I was running for my own business and wanted me to set up something similar for them. However, at this point, I had NO experience with sales. And it did not come natural to me. I took over 100 calls with these prospects before I closed a single deal.

Months of tweaking my funnel, adjusting my sales script, and PRACTICE led to a lead generation machine that helped me grow the business to the next level. I was able to start paying myself a decent salary and bring on a team of experts to support the growth. Five years later, we’re still using the same tactics to bring in new clients and hit our goals. The platforms have changed quite a bit, but the strategy remains the same: cut through the noise on social media to acquire new clients and deliver phenomenal results to keep them around for years.

Alyssa, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a Paid Ads Specialist and the Founder & CEO of Sail Away Media. My area of expertise is helping businesses create a steady flow of new customers through social media (Facebook ads, Instagram ads, TikTok ads, and organic social strategies).

We’re a small team and we’re heavily involved with our clients and the results they’re getting. No matter how much we grow, I always want to be hands-on. Every single one of my clients has my cell phone and the ability to shoot me a text if they have a question or concern. This doesn’t happen with a lot of marketing agencies.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

In the world of entrepreneurship, the “hustle” lifestyle is overly glamorized. When I first started my business, I thought the more hours I worked, the more money I would make. Turns out, this leads to burnout, low-quality work, and resentment. Right after I gave birth to my son, I had a difficult time taking any type of maternity leave. Although I had a team in place to keep the business running smoothly, I was terrified the business would fall apart without me.

After months of sleep deprivation, working while I was in labor, and Zoom calls while bouncing my newborn… I had enough. I decided to take a maternity leave 2.0, and give myself a month or two to reset. I truly did step away, and when I came back, I felt so refreshed and excited about my work again.

Here’s what I’ve learned from the experience:

If you don’t listen to your body and you neglect your physical and mental health, it will negatively affect your business. Even if it means you aren’t in “HUSTLE” mode all the time.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I’ll never forget the initial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As businesses around the country were forced to shut down and people everywhere were terrified of losing their livelihoods, I had almost every client call and ask me to pause their marketing services. And for good reason: why should they spend money on marketing if they were forced to close shop?

At this point, I knew we needed to pivot. We got together as a team and strategized how we could make the most of this downtime. While brick and mortar businesses were closed down – everyone was stuck at home and sitting on social media all day. On top of that, CPMs were ridiculously cheap because no one was advertising. What a perfect time to go all in!

We spent this period helping nonprofits run campaigns on social to drive awareness and helped our dental clients implement virtual online consultations so they could continue driving in leads ready to purchase when they were open.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sailawaymedia.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/sailaway.media
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sailawaymediallc
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyssaege/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@sailawaymedia

Image Credits
Photo Credit: Andrew Nycz