Man with 'no money left' shares 5-year journey to making over £100m on Facebook - 'I sold my house to fund my startup so I couldn't fail'

Now the founder of Big Business Events, Stott has established himself as a prominent expert in business marketing, sales, and branding, specialising in monetising social media.

In a bold move back in 2008, Stott sold his house to secure £50,000 in startup capital for his business venture at age 25.

He told GB News: "I thought it would be okay but it was much harder than I anticipated. Nine months later I had little sales and I was left with nothing, I had no money left. I was stuck and it looked like I was going to go out of business very soon."

Facing mounting pressure, Stott turned to Facebook to see if he could gain new clients. He invested in social media courses and media training and found mentors in the field to gain as much knowledge as possible.

Using what he had learned, the entrepreneur used Facebook to get leads. He was able to turn strangers into prospects and prospects into customers, which he had struggled to do before this.

He said: "Facebook helped me grow much quicker than I ever thought. In a year I had done £1m in sales after learning all those techniques and strategies. I spent time studying and understanding the social media strategy.

"From there I was able to grow it very well. In my second year, I made £2.9m, then I did £4.3m and it continued. It got to the point where the business was making £40m a year, and that was just from Facebook - later on I used Instagram and other formats.

"In my first business, I did over £100m in sales and I was selling finance, looking for inquiries about that. Then that moved into me doing cars and I just scaled it.

"Learning the social media aspect helped me change my life and get success. It was great and I did well. Before I was 30, I had a huge success story."

Eventually, Stott closed down his car business and focused solely on training people on how to use social media. He was able to use the same strategy he used for his car business and built a training business to also generate millions each year.

He uses this same strategy to help other people turn their idea's into six-figure businesses and eight-figure businesses through social media.

He said: "I put my time and attention to this instead of my car business and built it to eight figures. I learned my lessons from the first time around and I've now trained many thousands of businesses in every area and industry - from dog walking to recruitment companies.

"We teach people how to generate thousands of pounds every month and how to build a business on social media. This is what I'm best at. My specialism is focusing on how to get people to dive into the pool of social media and dive back out with clients and income".

Stott's strategy for building a six-figure business through social media centres on a focused approach. He emphasises that success doesn't require a massive following, just a sensible base which can be achieved with advertising.

He said: "The easiest way to make six figures is to have a product or service to sell and then look at the numbers. For example, if your product is £1,000 and you set out to make £100,000 a year, you need to sell 100 of those products in the year to be a six figure business. Break it down again it means we need 8.33 people a month to sell to, which is 2 new clients a week.

"This is where people go wrong, they think they need to amass followers of hundreds and thousands to make their business successful but no. You need a few people a week, and the way to do that is to find the ideal person.

"You need to ask 'what is their major challenge or problem' and sell them a solution to that problem. Then you turn that into a message that's going to resonate with them."

When it comes to marketing a product, the key is to focus on one social media platform where the target audience is most active.

He said: "A top tip is you only need one social media platform to do this. My first £40m a year was on Facebook. In the beginning, you need one.

"Focus on the channel where your ideal channel works out. For example for a B2B offer, I'd focus on LinkedIn, for a fashion brand, I'd focus on Instagram, for something e-commerce I would focus on TikTok/TikTok shop."

The next step is how can someone create a message to influence the target audience and get them to say yes with no resistance. Entrepreneurs need to build a good message and be creative which is super important.

Stott continued: "The next step is critical and often forgotten - what sales process will you use? Now that we have a message, how will we get the person to take a step towards us and make a sale."

Stott advocates starting small with social media advertising. Once a business knows who their target audience is, they can advertise for as little as £1 per day initially.

He said "You can buy eyeballs - Social media will sell you the opportunity to buy media, they will put your advert in front of a certain amount of many people."

For example people can pay around £20 to get their advert view by 1,000 people, making it an accessible starting point for new businesses.

Stott added: "This is the fastest way to grow your business bar none because you can put £1 in and get £5 back and keep doing that. But its so important to get the advert right, which is what my business helps people do."

According to Stott, businesses can begin seeing results from social media marketing almost immediately.

Around 95 per cent of businesses can use social media to grow and create great results. The strategy is what matters - the most important thing, he explained.

Stott concluded: "This is the beautiful thing, we can go and create a business today and get a message out to market and get leads today.

"It can happen fast - you can get a business going in a day if you know what you're doing and generate sales."