Everyone you have hired learned Facebook ads on someone else's budget. I learned it on mine.
The person running your Facebook ads right now probably took a course, got certified, and started practicing on live client accounts. Your account. Your money. That is how this industry works. The agency hires someone young and cheap, gives them a playbook, and bills you $8K a month while they figure it out. I did not do it that way.
I spent over a decade in corporate America building large-scale sales organizations before I ever ran a Facebook ad. Most notably for Ancestry.com, where I built their entire sales division from zero to 800 employees doing $150 million a year. Did it again for a coaching company, built them to 500 employees doing $75 million a year as their EVP of sales and operations. We did lead gen, sales and fulfillment for some of the biggest coaches in the world, including the biggest.
About 13 years ago, I started my own sales company, got some angel funding, and one of my first clients was running Facebook ads. He showed me what he was doing over a couple of Skype calls and that was it for me. I was all in. I sold my ownership back to the angels, locked myself in my home office for six months, lighting money on fire learning the Facebook ad platform.
I cracked the code running Facebook traffic to affiliate offers, which was a huge no-no on the platform back then. I had to get creative with zip submits, pre-landers, and jump pages. Scaled my personal ad spend to north of $10,000 a day and ran affiliates for about six years. We sold everything, moved overseas with our six kids, lived the digital nomad life before that was even a term. Then Facebook banned my business manager and all 800 accounts. Took eight months to get it back.
Most agency owners learned Facebook ads from a course. I learned it by spending millions of my own cash for six years straight until I figured out what actually works.
After affiliates slowed down, I scaled a drone store from zero to a quarter million dollars in 45 days and did just under two million in the first year. Then I got on with a full-stack agency because I wanted to know if I actually knew Facebook or if I was getting lucky. They had four media buyers who were the age of my oldest kids and had never spent any of their own money. Within four months they fired all four and turned all 15 accounts over to me. Worked with Kajabi, ClickFunnels, bravethinkinginstitute.com, apparel brands, supplement brands, coaching programs, low ticket, high ticket, everything. Scaled them all.
About seven years ago I stepped out to do my own thing because I liked some of what the agency model offered but did not like how clients became a number on a roster. I currently work with a handful of brands at a very personal level. My longest client has been with me almost seven years. Next is five years, then four.