27-Year Old Black Female Entrepreneur Has Made Over $30 Million as a Freelancer

When she was just 24-years old, Ashleigh Warren quit her 9-to-5 marketing job with only two years of experience in the industry to start her freelance paid social media marketing service. She made $417,000 in personal earnings her first six months as a freelance social media marketer and went on to scale her business to even more.

Now, Ashleigh is 27-years old and manages marketing campaigns for the best of the best. She is responsible for over $30 million in revenue on Facebook and Instagram for brands. She’s 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 ROI (not counting Black Friday) and even managed ads for high profile influencers such as Jake Paul, David Dobrik and The Try Guys. She’s even worked with Mike Tyson’s personal brands.

Started from the bottom 

 Ashleigh wasn’t always “crushing it” though. Before she got into marketing, she was a full-time student, lived with her parents, and worked 30 hour weeks at Starbucks. They were still recovering from the market crash, so she worked to help her family and provide a little for herself. They lost everything in that crash…their house, cars, and even their dog. Her six-person family was on food stamps and at one point, and they also had to move in with her aunt and cousins in their two-bedroom home to have a roof over their heads. Crazy enough, Ashleigh never lost hope and received straight A’s that year. She was determined to work hard and have a better future.

 Ashleigh got a job at Starbucks and enjoyed an incredible year and a half there, as a part-time Shift Supervisor, but she knew she wanted more from life. Ashleigh didn’t even know what online marketing was at that point, but one day after class, she told herself, “Enough is enough. Go find better.”

Getting introduced to the industry

 So she began looking for office jobs on Craigslist. She found an admin assistant/creative writer role for a marketing company. She like what it paid ($15/hr), and she liked that she would be getting more business exposure, so Ashleigh applied and got the position. She changed her school schedule to complete her degree online so that she could work full-time.

 Ashleigh was an admin assistant/creative writer for about four months and was then offered a promotion to become a Media Buyer. Ashleigh had no idea what that really meant but was down. It paid $40k/month plus a small commission. She learned Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest advertising. Ashleigh quickly became one of the best buyers in the office, her numbers proved this, and she was still a full-time straight ‘A’ student. 

 Ashleigh appreciated the success but realized she was making this company all of this money, working crazy hours, only to see such a small amount of that profit. So she began looking for better opportunities in this field a few months in. Ashleigh found one, a media buying position that paid $60k + a higher commission, an excellent benefits program, unlimited PTO, a fantastic office space, great people, and pretty everything you could want working for someone else. She took it. 

Seeing her vision

 What no one knew at this point was that Ashleigh had started looking for her freelance clients on Craigslist at the same time. What’s even crazier is the only reason she thought to do it, was because her little sister was living with her at the time and she wanted to move back into a nicer part of downtown San Diego, but could not afford a two-bedroom on one salary. So Ashleigh responded to a remote Facebook marketer part-time position days before she had received the new media buying job offer. The Craigslist client reached out to her the SAME DAY she got a call from the media buying company.

 Ashleigh decided she was all in and committed to all of it: full-time online student, a full-time job, provide for her sister (a full-time traditional on-campus student at that point) who didn’t have a car and manage a freelance client. Somehow she was balancing it all well, taking her sister to school every morning before work and picking her up late at night, getting straight A’s of her own, succeeding at work – all her accounts were performing to par or above. So two weeks into Ashleigh’s new full-time job, she started looking for another client she could personally take on. She searched through Instagram beauty hashtags for clients as she had previously seen a lot of success with beauty clients at her old job. She found a small brand. She saw a lot of potential in and sent them an email pitch. They signed a commission-based contract with her, and within two months, she was making $30k+/month just as a freelancer Facebook marketer because their sales were so good.

 Crazy enough, Ashleigh’s success kept growing. Clients kept referring to her, and she officially didn’t have enough time to work full-time for someone else. She had proved to herself that she could work for herself and no longer needed the stability of another company. So she took a semi-comfy leap of faith and quit. She built her freelance business and finished school with straight A’s while doing it.

Enjoying life and business, and helping others

 Ashleigh currently resides in Santa Monica, CA, manages a handful of clients monthly, travels the world regularly (check out her IG: @_ashleighwarren to see her adventures) and makes sure to strive for three things above all else in her life: to love what really matters, to consistently outgrow herself and to always give back to people who need a little hope. 

 Ashleigh has only ever been available to high paying clients, and a few months ago, she decided to change that. For the first time, via her blog at www.extrabuthuman.com, she explains how she built her business, how she finds clients, how she learned what she knows, and how others, too, can effectively start their own company online. She also shares a lot of tips and tricks. 

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