Transcription
Okay, so I've been getting a lot of questions from people who don't fully know what I do, or they have an idea but they don't really know in full detail. And I don't really expect someone to, you know, watch all of my videos, so you can just watch this one. I'm going to go over what it is I do, how I make my money, and why I think anybody can do it too.
Okay, so to give you a short answer, I run an Upwork middleman agency. Uh, so let me explain what that means and try to make it as simple as possible. All right, so I have a great illustration here. So let's say there's someone here that wants a gallon of milk. All right, he wants a gallon of milk, but for whatever reason, he doesn't want to get it himself. He's too busy, he's tired, whatever. So he goes to you, right? And then he says, "Hey Thomas, can you give me, can you go get me a gallon of milk from the store? I'll give you $20. I'll give you $20 to go to the store and buy me a gallon of milk, right?" And then what you do is, instead of actually going to the store, right, and getting the gallon of milk, you turn to someone else and you say, "Hey, get this guy a gallon of milk, and I'll give you $10. I'll give you $10 to go to the store and buy this guy a gallon of milk, all right?"
So I tried to make this as simple as possible for people. This right here is the middleman strategy, right? And the great thing about this business model is not just the infinite potential to grow, 'cause essentially you're not even the one doing the milk delivery, right? As long as you have this, you know, someone who needs the milk and this someone who can deliver the milk, you can take on as much work as there is, right? But also, everyone's happy. All right, this guy is happy because he's getting paid $10 to go buy a $3 gallon of milk and deliver it to this guy. This guy is happy because he's getting the milk that he wanted, and you're happy 'cause you're profiting the difference, all right?
Now, you're be thinking, "Why would anyone pay $20 to go get them a gallon of milk?" Let me give you the short answer, all right? They are paying for convenience, all right? If they wanted to save money, they would have just went to the store and got it themselves, all right? They're paying for convenience. They can get it themselves, but they don't want to because, you know, they're too busy, they're too tired, they have other things to do, whatever it is, right? They would rather pay someone to do everything for them, right? And trust me, there are a lot more people like this in the world than you might think. I know it might not make sense to you because for you, you would just go to the store yourself and get the gallon of milk yourself and save the money. But there are people out there, "Hey, I need a gallon of milk. I'm too busy right now. Hey, you can you go get me a gallon of milk? Here's $20, right?" They're paying for convenience.
Now, you also may be wondering, "Okay, then why would this guy pay me $20 when he could go directly to this guy and pay him $10? Why won't this guy just reach directly out to this guy, you know, and take me out of the picture?" So let me give you the short answer: because without you, these two people don't even know that the other person exists, all right? This guy went to you, and you went to this guy. It involves you. So if you is taken out of the picture, this guy does not find this guy, and vice versa.
Now, let me give you another example. So imagine you go on your phone, right? You go on your phone and you open an app, an app that allows you to find drivers in your area to take you to wherever you want to go. So you open the app and you say, "Take me to the LA airport, LAX." Right? And the app goes, "Okay, I can send someone to take you to LAX. It'll cost $60." So you pay the app $60, and then the app goes to a driver and says, "Hey, take this guy to LAX. Here is $30." All right, this right here is the middleman strategy, all right? And this app is Uber. This is pretty much how Uber operates, all right?
Now, you may be wondering, "Why would someone pay $60 to take them to the airport?" Just drive there yourself. Convenience, all right? Maybe I don't have my car right now. Maybe I just don't want to drive to the airport at 7:00 a.m. in the morning, or for whatever the reason is, I would rather have someone else. I would rather pay someone else to drive me to the airport for my convenience, okay? And again, it may not make sense to you, but there are a ton of people that use Uber. To them, it makes sense to pay that $60 for that one-hour drive to the airport, all right? But why doesn't this guy just go directly to this guy and avoid the middleman? Same service, avoid the middleman, save the fees. It's because without Uber, this guy would not know that this guy even exists, and vice versa, right? And Uber was able to build a system where someone can just easily come in, type in their destination, right, request a ride, and in a couple minutes, a driver will come pick them up and take them to their destination, all right? So this guy is not just paying for the driver, right? He's paying for the convenience and the systems that Uber was able to create, all right?
Now, there are probably a million different businesses that you can generate with this business model, like including dropshipping, okay? If you run a dropshipping store, you are a middleman, right? Because you're not the one creating the product, you're not even the one delivering the product. You're the guy in the middle connecting the buyer with the seller, right? Then why does someone not just reach out to the manufacturer directly? Because you built the systems, you created the website, you created the store, you did all the marketing. Without you, the customer would have never found the supplier, and the supplier would have never found the customer.
So I found out about this business model, the middleman strategy, and I was like, "Okay, this makes sense. I'm interested." So that's when I found out about SMMA, which stands for Social Media Marketing Agency. Apparently, there are tons of businesses out there that have absolutely no idea how to run their social media pages or how to run ads for their social media pages, like tons. All right, so same business model, but instead of a gallon of milk, this guy is looking for social media marketing. And instead of $20, say hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars a month, right? So you see where I'm going with this, like how powerful this can be, all right?
So a couple issues: Where do I find people or businesses that need social media marketing? And where do I find people who can deliver the social media marketing? Upwork. So Upwork is a tool that I use to find clients and also find freelancers to work for those clients, right? I'm the middleman. And also, I get so many people from that video where I shared my profile saying that I have all this experience and that I've have all these hours worked. And someone was like, "You say you don't want to work a 9 to five, but you work for $15 an hour and you worked for all these hours for all these companies doing all this graphic design, you have all this social media marketing experience." All right, one, I just want to make this clear: my hourly rate does not matter because I do not work on an hourly rate, all right? It's not, "Hey, can you get me a gallon of milk?" and then you track your hours of how long it took you to get that gallon of milk, and then you come back and tell me how long it took for you to get that milk, and then I'll pay you based off of your rate of $15 an hour. No, it's, "I will get you a gallon of milk, give me $20." Right? It has nothing to do with my $15 an hour. My hourly rate, I don't work based off of my time or how long it took me to deliver the service. So many people were just stuck on my hourly rate. I don't work on an hourly rate, okay? It's, it's not even me delivering the service, all right? I have no social media marketing experience, all right? In fact, three months ago, I didn't even have any social media accounts, none. All right? And I've been doing this for a year, all right? A year ago, I started my own social media management agency when I never even managed my own social media accounts 'cause I didn't have any. There are people out there who know a lot more about social media than me. Like even now, like I'm still new to social media. Like I started my own Instagram and this YouTube channel like three months ago, that's it. That's the only social media experience I have, right? And the reason why I'm saying this is because I'm trying to tell people that you don't need experience to start this. And if you do have any experience in anything, you're already in the top, like, 30%. And again, there's a million different things that you can sell as a middleman. It doesn't have to be this or social media marketing, uh, or social media management services. It can be anything, right? Logo design, website design, uh, copywriting, lawn mowing services, I don't know. All you need to do is find someone who needs your service and convince them to pay you for it, right? And then turn around and pay someone else to deliver the service for them, all right? That is the middleman strategy.
Now, trust me when I say this, it's a lot easier said than done. A lot easier said than done. I just tried to make this as simple as possible for people to understand, right? You have to have value as a middleman, like you have to have good systems, right? The reason why Uber works is not just because they're a middleman, it's because they provide value and they have good systems that make things convenient for not just the customer, but also the driver, right? The driver and the customer need Uber, right? So if you're not willing to put in the work, like if you think that you can just be a middleman and not provide any sort of value to either side whatsoever, this isn't going to work.
Now, there probably will be people who already know about this business model, and that's great. But for me, like a year ago, I didn't know this. Like when I first found out about this, it blew my mind. Like, you're telling me if I can just convince someone to pay me for a service, I can take that money and pay someone else to deliver it for them and just profit the difference? Like, it blew my mind. I was a business major, and I was never taught this. Like, they don't teach you this in schools. But yeah, I can honestly talk about this forever, but I don't want this video to be too long. I have my own course on this, and that course is like 10 hours long. I'm not going to make a 10-hour YouTube video. But yeah, hope I was able to spark something in someone because for me, this was all it took. All it took was someone to introduce this to me, show me that it exists, and show me that it works, and that was enough. After that, I just went down a rabbit hole of research, and now I'm here. So yeah, hope you enjoyed.