Who is Iman Gadzhi?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last 12 months, there’s a very high chance you’ve heard of, or seen on social media, entrepreneur Iman Gadzhi. With over 3.8M subscribers you’d be pretty hard pressed to not have stumbled onto one of his videos. Not only are his videos hugely informative and well produced, but he is an incredible marketer using his channel as a funnel into his other ventures.
In this article we’ll be diving into:
- Iman Gadzhi Background & Early Life
- How Iman Gadzhi made his money, with a full timeline
- Iman Gadzhis current revenue streams across his different business ventures
- Philanthropy
Where Is Iman Gadzhi From & His Ethnicity?
Iman, full name being Iman Gadzhimagomedov, born on the 3rd January 2000 in a little town in South Russia called Dagestanskiye Ogni to a single mother. He grew up in post-Soviet Union poverty, where his mother worked three jobs to take care of him, so he spent most of his time with his grandma. This is a huge difference to the jet setter life Iman now lives.
How Did Iman Gadzhi Make His Money?
When people look at Iman’s socials and see the jets, holidays, houses and cars, this is the question on everyone’s mind. Let’s look at a timeline over the last 5-7 years of how Iman Gadzhi actually made his money.
Age 15: Buying & Selling Instagram Accounts
Despite Imans childhood dream compelling him to make it as a professional footballer, he realised, aged 15, he simply wasn’t good enough. It was time to find another way to make money. This led into his first venture; buying and selling instagram accounts. He made a decent amount of money for a 15-year-old too, but with one bad decision, he managed to lose it all by investing in one account that failed dramatically.
Age 15 – 16: Social Media Management
Undeterred, Iman embarked on a quest to discover new income streams. With a passion for fitness, he delved into personal training, spending days and nights absorbing knowledge and building training plans. His entrepreneurial spirit led him to persuade friends’ parents to let him train them, earning a modest monthly income.
Iman then bought himself a £400 Canon camera so that he could set up shoots wherever possible to hone his craft. He was still engaged in semi-pro football, and Iman recognized an opportunity in social media. He had been advising the club owner on improving their channels. Eventually, the owner offered Iman the role of managing content and social media.
With limited knowledge, he settled on charging £75 per week, securing his first agency client at £300 per month. But this £300 was recurring, every single month.
Age 16 – 17: Signing His First ‘Big’ Client
For seven months, Iman persevered until he secured his next client—an achievement that might have deterred many, but he remained determined. Securing a meeting with a large company called Aflete ( a software platform for fitness influencers now acquired by Genflow), He visited their offices and by the meeting’s conclusion, the founder, Shan, requested a proposal.
With a better grasp of industry rates, Iman quoted £1,900 per month, expecting negotiation down to about £1,000. He sent the quote during a school class, and during his lunch break, he nervously refreshed his email. Shan’s two-word response read, ‘Call me.’ Sitting on a curb outside school, Iman called Shan and signed Aflete.
This was the turning point in Iman’s agency career. The next two weeks were to be even crazier. He went on to sign his second client for £1,500p/m and then another for £750p/m. Within 14 days he went from £300/pm with a horribly underpriced client (that he ended up dropping) to £4,150 per month with three clients while he was still in High School.
Iman then ended up dropping out of high school aged just 17 (after pleading with his local council…)
Age 18-19: Scaling The Agency
After dropping out, Iman secured more clients like ZebraFuel & FuroSystems, surpassing the six-figure mark and feeling on top of the world. However, his success took a hit when clients started dropping off due to the inability to prove ROI in social media management where it was currently focused on ‘likes’ and ‘followers.’
Recognizing the demand for demonstrable business growth through paid traffic, Iman spent the next six months unsuccessfully selling Facebook ads services, despite trying various courses and coaching.
The turning point came when he stumbled upon Expedia’s business model during a holiday booking. Expedia made $10 billion that year without owning planes or hotels…
This realisation struck Iman, prompting the idea that he didn’t have to personally deliver Facebook ad services. Instead, he could delegate these to someone who could actually run them and deliver, while he focused on sales and operations, retaining the majority of the profits.
Age 19 – 20: The Start of Grow Your Agency
As Iman’s agency flourished, his public display of newfound wealth on Instagram and YouTube attracted attention. A YouTube subscriber approached him, expressing interest in learning how he built his agency. When asked about his hourly rate, Iman, unfamiliar with coaching inquiries, responded with ‘£100.’
After just two hours of Iman’s coaching, the subscriber secured a $1,500/pm client. This revelation led to two realizations: Iman was undercharging, and he could teach others to grow their agencies. Motivated by this, he developed a program—a straightforward formula for building an agency.
On February 1st, 2018, after testing with fifty students, Iman launched Six Figure SMMA, which later went on to become Grow Your Agency, with their hero product being agency navigator for $1,497. According to their website over 6,000 students have enrolled into the course making Iman ~$8.98M. Not bad.
Grow Your Agency also really marked the start of Iman’s e-learning empire.
Iman Gadzhi Current Businesses
Aside from Grow Your Agency, Gadzhi is the founder and owner of several businesses across software, e-learning, members club, and content. Here’s the list of all of Iman Gadzhi known businesses:
- AgenciFlow (now rebranded as Flozy) is Iman Gadzhi software company for agency owners, coaches, and other small-medium size businesses. Iman is likely building this business alongside his co-founder Pierre-Antonie de Preux, to sell for a serious sum, likely in the $M’s, in the coming years. The company is estimated to have over 1,000 paying businesses, at a minimum of $29 p/m.
- Educate.io, a e-learning platform teaching people high income skills like sales, copywriting and social media marketing (SMMA). Access to the platform costs, you guessed it, $1,497.
- Gents Croquet Club, GCC, a private members club with exclusive events and community of like minded entrepreneurs in which you need to buy an NFT to be a part of. The price of the NFT seems to fluctuate.
- YouTube, with over 3.8M subscribers this channel is most definitely part of his business empire likely making tens of thousands of $’s every month from ad’s, as well as acting as a funnel into his other business ventures
How much money does Iman Gadzhi Make?
Across all of Iman Gadzhis businesses, Flozy, Grow Your Agency, Educate.io, GCC and YouTube, it’s estimated Iman is making anywhere from $1-3M a month. This would come from around $30,000p/m from Flozy (although this likely to be much more), $2M (~1,500 students) per month from Grow Your Agency and Educate.io, and ~$100,000-200,000 p/m from YouTube.
Iman Gadzhi Philanthropy
The multi-millionaire is a passionate supporter of education for all and is a dedicated philanthropist. Gadzhi is globally renowned for self-funding five schools in Nepal, a project that has positively impacted over 2,500 children.
Iman has clearly been incredibly successful across both his agency and also his e-learning companies. The majority of Imans wealth is likely to have come from his courses from both Educate.io and Grow Your Agency. His funnel from YouTube down into his courses, and then onto his software offering is making him a fortune.
The software play will be incredibly interesting to watch play out, where they are up against some serious players like Monday.com & Asana, but if this comes off and Flozy gets acquired, this will be the one serious payday for Iman, Pierre and the team.
Interested in how other entrepreneurs got started and made their $M’s? Read our other business articles here.