Facebook Digital Marketing: Side-Hustle to Dream Business with Work-at-Home Dad Brien Gearin

Have you ever wondered who creates the ads you see on Facebook? Believe it or not, Facebook digital marketing is a fast-growing field that can allow you to earn thousands of dollars with only a few hours of work per week, making it an excellent side-hustle for work-at-home moms and dads.

From huge businesses to the local pizza place, Facebook digital marketing is in high demand – and that demand is exploding.

Why?

Because Facebook marketing makes use of the platform’s algorithms, and that means that Facebook digital marketing can be more specific than any other platform when it comes to reaching a target audience. Since 74% of US social media users use Facebook daily (and 79% of Americans use social media), that makes for a huge pool of potential customers.

Facebook digital marketing can also be a very inexpensive option, making it a wise marketing strategy for small businesses without a huge ads budget. While large corporations may spend millions on ad campaigns, it’s possible for a small business to create new business and visibility for only a few dollars per day. That means even one new customer can create a very high return on their investment.

Facebook digital marketing is expanding so rapidly, there is a high demand for Facebook ads specialists who know the ins and outs of digital marketing ads and can make a small marketing budget give the best possible return on investment.

If you’re looking for a work-from-home side-hustle with a great profit margin and flexibility, a Facebook ads consultant business might be for you.

There are hundreds of digital marketing courses available to choose from, but the Facebook Side Hustle course specializes in Facebook marketing mastery, helping you build not only the skills you’ll need to successfully create winning Facebook ad campaigns, but everything you’ll need to launch your business and get clients willing to pay you $1000 a month to run their Facebook digital marketing campaigns.

How does it work? Does it work? Recently, I chatted with Brien Gearin, Facebook Side Hustle graduate and owner of Ricochet Digital Marketing, to find the answers to these questions and learn more about how Facebook Side Hustle continues to be a huge part of his career in Facebook digital marketing.

Brien is a work-at-home father of two (soon to be three!) and one of the earliest graduates, completing FB Side Hustle in January 2018. That gives him several years’ of perspective on how the course has helped him in his business.

Hi, Brien!

Tell us a bit about yourself! How did you get started working from home? What led you to Facebook digital marketing?

I started working from home in 2016 when my wife and I had moved to Indianapolis for her job and I was basically starting from scratch. At the time, my father-in-law needed help in marketing and sales in his small business and asked if I would work for him. His business was 2 hours away so I was able to work from home 4 days a week and come into the office one day. This also allowed me the time to complete the tasks necessary for my day job but also be able to take time to start learning more about the field I decided I really wanted to get into; digital marketing.

Why did you decide to enroll in the FB Side Hustle course?

I found FBSH by happenstance. I had been following a personal finance blogger who one day sent an email to his list promoting a new course that was created by one of his PF friend bloggers, Bobby Hoyt. At this time, I had just completed a digital marketing course from Udacity where I had learned about all the different avenues in digital marketing and decided that the possibility of running FB ads was a way to start the business I knew I had always wanted.

It was divine timing that having just finished that course, I was notified of the FBSH. It took me about 2 days of reading the sales page one million times that I decided I trust Bobby (and Mike Yanda, his business partner) enough from their messaging that I need to take this chance and dive in. At the time, my wife and I had just bought our first house and found out we were pregnant with our first child. So I ended up being one of their first students. I told myself this is how I’m going to live the life I’ve always wanted to and there is no plan B.

Nearly 5 years later I run a 6 figure agency with two teammates, have helped numerous businesses grow, am a coach in one of Mike and Bobby’s growth communities, still have them as my mentors, and am in the process of starting another business that will be based around FB marketing in the automotive space. I owe so much to Mike, Bobby, and their course.

You mentioned that you got started with Facebook digital marketing as a side hustle. What were your original goals? At what point did you decide to go full-time in your new business?

My original goal was for this to be a full-fledged 7-figure agency. Although by necessity I started this as a side hustle, I always knew I was going to make this my full-time gig, help a lot of businesses, earn a very comfortable wage, call the shots, live the life my wife and I always wanted, and have a damn good time doing it too. 

Can you explain what you do in a nutshell?

In a very broad nutshell, I help businesses make more money. The vehicle to that is what I call our Built to Scale system. We help small businesses implement this system that focuses on lead generation and closing sales. So many smaller businesses do not have a locked and loaded system that consistently brings them new leads AND gives them the tools to close new clients. We aim to change that and help small business owners turn their business into a money making machine. At the very base of this is helping them create killer offers and using our razor sharp Facebook/Google ad and email marketing (plus other important digital marketing tools) skills to generate new interest and business!

What is your favorite aspect of creating Facebook digital marketing for your clients?

Getting to help them think of their businesses potential in ways they haven’t done before. The satisfaction I get from testing multiple offers and landing on the ones that work and make a real difference in the client’s bottomline is very rewarding.

If you could change one thing about your work, what would it be?

The digital landscape changes so frequently. This is good and bad, but sometimes I wish trends and algorithm updates would just take a month or two off!

Can anyone start a successful Facebook digital marketing business, or are there specific qualities and skills you feel are needed to have a thriving career in this field?

Short answer: Yes absolutely anybody can do it. If I can do it, you can do it. But, you have to have the desire, the drive, and resolve to learn this (or any skill) well enough to go perform it on behalf of other people. This is all before you even get into what it takes to run a business, which is much of the same but on steroids. There are qualities and skills that if you are blessed with them from the get-go (ability to sell, adapt, manage money), you have an advantage but all of this can be learned and sharpened as you continue in your business. Mike and Bobby always told me the only way I could fail at this is if I quit. And that ain’t gonna happen!

How do you feel the FB Side Hustle course prepared you to succeed in your Facebook digital marketing business? Also, how long did it take you to recoup your investment in the course?

The course prepared me in all ways to succeed in my business. The continuing mentorship and coaching has and still does provide me the ability to continue to grow in my craft. Once I signed my first client, it took me a stroke of the pen to make my money back on the course. Only problem was it took me 11 months to find my first client! Sales was and still is the most challenging part of building my business. Learned everything I know about sales and scaling from the support in the course coaching group.

What was/is your favorite aspect of the FBSH training? What do you think could be improved? How long did you need to devote to the course material?

My favorite aspect of this course and the community around it is the incredible support I got from Mike, Bobby, the coaches in the group, and the other students. This coaching community is truly the best on the internet. There’s no trolling, no spamming, no negativity. If the world operated like this group it would be a vastly better place. I devoted 2 months to the course training initially, but then constantly went back to certain videos as I came across them in practice or needed to reference them. Watching something once doesn’t lead to retention for most of us. Over the first year I probably watched each course video 10-15 times. 

I’m very curious about how you learned to create the ads. Is there a formula for developing Facebook digital marketing content? Once ads are created, how much time is needed to maintain a client’s account?

Once you know the fundamentals of working inside Business Manager (Facebook's advertising back end), it comes down to your marketing know-how. Effective copywriting, creating good offers that people will respond to, using the images or videos, and understanding the data…this is what will determine the success of your campaigns. The more you do it, the more you learn and improve. Test and Find Out is something that was drilled into me since day 1 in the course. There is so much testing involved, but once you learn how to utilize the data, the sky’s the limit. It can vary, but once an account is dialed in and performing, I may only spend a combined hour per week in the account. Sometimes less, depending on if anything needs editing or changing.

FB Side Hustle’s sales page says students can earn $1000/$2000 in only 2-3 hours of Facebook digital marketing a week. Can you explain to our readers how this works?

If you have one client who pays you $1,000/mo. to run their Facebook ads, it may only take you 1-2 hours to create an ad and launch it. Then your job is to let it run but monitor its progress over the next 3-5 days. That’s maybe 10 minutes a day. If the ad is getting desired results, you don’t touch it. If the data says it needs some tweaks, you spend an hour changing the copy or switching out the image, or whatever step you deem necessary. So 2-3 hours per week is pretty darn accurate as an average.

Now, some of my higher spend accounts or clients who need me more involved at a strategy level (which is most these days), require more time at different intervals. There is a lot of ebb and flow to my weeks. Some are just crazy busy depending on client needs, and others are more chill and allow me more time to focus on working on the business instead of in it.

Is it ever a challenge to find clients/steady work? How much time do you spend finding Facebook digital marketing clients?

It’s always a challenge. It’s the number 1 challenge. 95% of what I do is client acquisition. It is 10 times easier to maintain a client and keep them happy than it is to find one. Selling your services never stops. So much so that I even recently hired a biz development expert to join my team and help me on the sales side of things. I spend at least 3 hours a day either selling, meeting with prospects, creating or updating sales documents, following up, or further improving the process. Sales never stops!

In our “getting to know you” chat, you mentioned choosing not to quit. Can you explain this in more detail?

Quitting is a choice. So is success. One is much easier to attain than the other. Only I can prevent myself from quitting. I have a lot that depends on my success and if I were to quit, I’d let a lot of people down and I couldn’t bear to do that. Being an entrepreneur is scary. It requires this unshakable belief in yourself that you will achieve your goals and be successful, whatever your view of success may be. Quitting isn’t an option because that’s the only way I fail and I’m not going to fail.

How many hours do you work in an average week? Do you keep that constant, or vary it by week?

My hours can vary week to week with some being very long and some being much shorter. It depends on the needs of my business and the needs of my family in a given week. My typical week is usually working from 9:30-4 with family time after I pick up my daughters at 4:30 until their bedtime at 8:30, followed by usually getting another hour or 2 from 10-midnight.

Do you set income goals for yourself? If so, how well are you doing at achieving them?

I do. It’s an ever-changing game of “how much do I pay myself this month”. I have my set goal but depending on the business needs and family needs in that month, some months I need to pay myself more and sometimes less.

Does the FB Side Hustle course provide a way for you to keep up to date with changes in Facebook digital marketing trends, policies, and algorithms that can affect the ads you create? If so, can you share a little about that? If not, how do you find this information?

Absolutely. It’s all in the coaching group. There is so much knowledge between the coaches in the group and the de facto coaches (that's us group lifers who are now experts in the craft as well) that there’s not a change that can get past any of us without one of us knowing about it.

How has starting a home business changed your life? How about your family life?

It has completely changed my personal and professional life in a profound way and it continues to do so daily. Before I found this path, this course, group, and mentors, I was totally lost professionally. I had bounced between jobs in sales, lawn care, and as a fairly aimless “jack of all trades; master of none” in a small business. My self-esteem was in the dumps and I was terrified of what might become of me and my family if I couldn’t be happy in a traditional job and couldn’t find my way as an entrepreneur. 

I knew three things: I hated working for someone else, I had no technical skills, and I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur with max control over my career and my life.

Finding this group filled all the voids. It taught me an in-demand technical skill, taught me how to monetize it, and gave me the keys to starting my own business. It has given me so much freedom in my life that I could once only dream of having. It allows me time with my wife and kids that many people will never have the luxury of having. I’d say I’m spoiled but I work damn hard to make this life a reality. Nothing is given to you as a business owner!

You’re a dad with two kids and another on the way (congratulations!). Do you feel Facebook digital marketing  is a good work-from-home career option for stay-at-home parents? Why or why not?

Thank you! My house is about to be 3 times as crazy. And hell yea it is! Whether you want this to be a true side-gig or a full-fledged agency, it can be done. Especially if you’re a stay-at-home parent, you could have one or two clients paying you $1k/mo. And spend 2-3 hours/ week in their account. Whether the work gets accomplished at nap time, playtime, or idle time, you can pretty easily make the commitment to a client or two to get them good results and be able to be at home with your kids.

Any advice for someone who’s thinking about starting a Facebook digital marketing business and/or taking the FB Side Hustle course?

(I’m reading this question two ways- Advice for those in the course and advice for those thinking of taking the course or thinking of trying to learn FB ads management so I’ll give you two lists and let you decide how to use them).

Advice for someone considering the FBSH course:

1. DO IT!
2. There’s hundreds of courses in this space but you are not going to find the type of attention and community you’ll get in the FBSH course and coaching community.
3. Don’t be afraid to invest in YOU. Taking this course is a huge investment in yourself.
   

Advice for those who are maybe just starting in FBSH:

4. Go through the course once and take notes.
5. Go back through the course again and follow along in your notes and write down questions.
6. Opt into the coaching community group and PARTICIPATE every day. The key to my success was participating and asking questions, almost daily at the beginning.
7. Open up to the group about your fears and things you feel may be holding you back. Even if you don’t, chances are the coaches will pull it out of you and help you grow.
8. Do one thing every single day that gets you closer to your goal. Even if that one thing is only 5 minutes worth of a task, posting a question to the group, or watching a few minutes of a course video, take one step forward every single day. The compounding steps will equal a long distance over time!
9. Be patient. Learning something new takes a long time. I’ve been at this for almost 5 years now and I’m still learning so much constantly.
10. DON’T QUIT. If you truly have the desire and the drive to make this fruitful, you will find a way to succeed. The only way you can fail is by deciding to quit on yourself.
    

Thank you, Brien!

Did you find Brien’s story compelling? Do you want to explore Facebook digital marketing?

If so, read on!

Facebook Side Hustle, the course that launched a life-changing career for Brien Gearin, opens its virtual doors a few times a year. When you enroll, you’ll get access to everything you need to learn how to turn Facebook digital marketing into a successful business of your own, plus a team of expert coaches at your disposal (and you might even meet Brien in the FB group!). Whether you’d like one or two clients as a side hustle to fit around the rest of your busy life, or your dream is to create a full-fledged agency as Brien has, FBSH can help you get there.

So, if you’re considering making this investment in your future – for yourself and your family ….

Do you have comments or questions about FB Side Hustle? Does Facebook digital marketing sound like the right work-at-home business for you? Join the conversation below!