Hey, I’m Ashleigh! I’m 27. I quit my job at 24. I made $417k my 1st 6 months as a freelance social media marketer and went on to scale my business to even more. I went from living paycheck to paycheck, to making $60k/year working for someone else, to making so much money working for myself that I had to start a business (S Corp) so that I wouldn’t get completely slaughtered by taxes.
I’ve made $30+ million on Facebook and Instagram for brands by managing their campaigns, producing their copy and creative, designing their landing pages, finding new markets and develop their marketing strategies. I’ve built multimillion dollar beauty, apparel and lifestyle brands through paid FB/IG ads, further grew preexisting multimillion-dollar ad accounts, created campaigns at a significant scale that returned a 5.05 ROAS (not counting Black Friday) and even managed ads for high profile influencers such as Jake Paul, David Dobrik and The Try Guys.
Before I got into marketing, I was a full-time student, lived with my parents, and worked 30 hour weeks at Starbucks. We were still recovering from the market crash, so I worked to help my family and provide a little for myself. We lost everything in that crash…our house, cars and even our dog. We were on food stamps, and it felt like things were just getting worse. My parents had to sell everything just so we could survive and I’m grateful very to them for getting us through that. At one point, my six-person family had to move in with my aunt in her two-bedroom, 1 bathroom house with my two cousins (8 PEOPLE LIVING IN THAT SMALL HOUSE). She was incredibly gracious enough to let us stay for so long. Some of my best memories are from our time living there. Crazy enough, I got straight A’s that year and was determined to have a better future.
Eventually, things did get better, my parents got greats jobs, and we moved in our own condo. Things were looking slightly up, but I was going through the motions: school, Starbucks, sleep, repeat. Starbucks was great to me. I had an incredible manager that invested so much support and kindness into my life when I needed it the most, but I knew I wanted more from life. I had no idea what that was, or how to get there. I didn’t even know what online marketing was at that point, but one day after class, I told myself, “Enough is enough. Go find better.” So I began looking for office jobs on Craigslist. I found an admin assistant/creative writer role for a marketing company. I like what it paid ($15/hr), and I liked that I would be getting more business exposure than as a barista, so I applied. I got the position and quit Starbucks a week later. I changed my school schedule to complete my degree online so that I could work full-time.
I was an admin assistant/creative writer for about 4 months, and then they offered me a promotion: Media Buyer. I had no idea what the hell that was, but I was down. It paid $40k/month + commission. I learned Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest advertising. I learned how to operate the platforms, build my own creative, write my own copy, and a lot of best practices. I quickly became one of the best buyers in the office. My numbers proved this and I was still a full-time straight A student.
Still I knew I could do more and started feeling complacent so I began looking for better opportunities in this field a few months in. I reached out to one of our tech clients who was looking for an in house Facebook marketer. We went back and forth for a while, but nothing happened. Then literally a year later they reached out and offered me $60k + commission, an excellent benefits program, unlimited PTO, a fantastic office space, great people and pretty everything you could want working for someone else. I took it.
But what no one knew at this point was I had started looking for my own freelance clients on Craigslist at the same time. Literally, the only reason I thought to do it, was because my little sister was living with me at the time and I wanted to move back into a nicer part of downtown San Diego, but could not afford a two-bedroom on one salary. I responded to a remote Facebook marketer part-time position days before I had received that new tech job offer. The Craigslist client reached out to me the SAME DAY I got a call from that company.
I decided F it, do it all: full-time online student, a full-time job, provide for my sister (a full-time traditional on-campus student at that point) who didn’t have a car and manage a freelance client. Somehow I was balancing it all well, taking my sister to school every morning before work and picking her up late at night, getting straight A’s of my own, succeeding at work — all my accounts were performing to par or above. So two weeks into my new full-time job I started looking for another client I could personally take on. I searched through Instagram beauty hashtags for clients as I had previously seen a lot of success with beauty clients at my old job. I found a small brand I saw a lot of potential in and sent them an email pitch. They signed with me, and in two months I was making $30k+/month just as a freelancer.
I thought WOAH, but this might just be a fluke, so I didn’t quit my job for another three months and made sure I had a year’s salary saved just in case freelancing didn’t pan out. I knew I would be okay and my sister would be okay for a year.
Crazy enough it kept working. Those two clients began to refer me to other clients, and I officially didn’t have enough bandwidth. I didn’t have the time to work full-time for someone else. I no longer was worth the money. So I took a semi-comfy leap of faith and quit. I built my freelance business and finished school.
At one point I even built my own agency in downtown San Diego. Invested $50k into this beautiful space and it looked nothing short of DOPE. I loved it, but I hated actually running an agency. I couldn’t just focus on what I loved: the marketing, the training, and the clients. It was now a full-blown company, and I was back in the agency life that I hated. I had way more things to worry about, I had to be in the office all the time since I was the boss and we were a small team. I was stressed, had too much on my plate, way more expenses than I wanted/really needed. So I had a real heart to heart with myself: Is this seriously what you want to do right now at 25? And it wasn’t.
So I savagely fired everyone one day at the same time, broke my lease and fled. I was embarrassed that I let people down, but I had to do what I had to do so I could breathe again.
I kept the biggest and/or best clients, which was what I should have only taken from the beginning. Life went on, clients came and went. I was grateful to be still making an incredible living maintaining lifelong clients and get new ones but not gonna lie; I was pretty depressed for a few months after letting go of my agency. I felt like I failed because in many ways I did, but I WAS NOT a failure and that took me some time to understand and accept.
Fast-forward to now. I currently manage a handful of clients monthly, travel the world regularly and make sure I strive for three things above all else in my life: to love what really matters, to consistently outgrow myself and to always give back to people who need a little hope right now.
That’s pretty much me in a nutshell. I’m so grateful to God for the life I GET to live and people He’s woven into my journey. And I’m grateful for you and the fact that you’re taking time out of your life to read this. That was my beginning. This is my mid-story, and I can’t wait to keep jogging into my beautifully extra ending, which hopefully does not come until I’m at least 79 haha..as I consistently pray: “Lord leave me here until I can no longer wipe my own ass. After that take me to heaven where I’ll have a six pack and be best friends with Whitney. Amen.”
So now that you know me, I can officially welcome you to my blog which is really just a more in-depth look into my extra, but very human life. I hope my valleys inspire you just as much my mountain tops do. They are both so important. You’ll never consistently win if you don’t consistently learn from your failures. It’s a requirement of the process, just like the hard work is. Success just does not happen.
You have to go forward with wisdom, not just passion. You have to put in the hours that no one wants to put in today so that you can live the life no one really gets to live tomorrow. You have to learn the hard lessons that no one wants to learn so that you can make smarter wiser decisions in your next significant life endeavor. You have to learn never to belittle your small beginnings because that is where your magic is birthed. So protect your dreams AND your wins. Don’t let anyone sh*t on them because they’re dealing with their own humanity. We all get insecure at times because of own personal let downs that happen in life, but don’t let anyone’s insecurities ever make you feel the need to dim your light and shelter your God-given success. Nope.
So be grateful and take it all: the hate, the respect, and the love all with class, but not too much attention. Stay focused on your greater dream. Stay focused on your reason. Stay close to your tribe. Take your moment to celebrate when you can, but don’t do so for too long. Keep pressing forward because now isn’t the real win. Tomorrow is.
Thanks for reading. Thanks for subscribing. Thanks for supporting.
Ash
Personal IG: @_ashleighwarren
I quit my job at 24 (24 1/2 to be exact). I made $417k my 1st 6 months as a freelance social media marketer and went on to scale my business to even more.
