Just starting out - share your success stories

Hi guys. I would like to get some motivation and insights into realistic results. I just started diving deeper into SEO for my marketing agency (google ads, meta ads, webdesign, copywriting and some other minor stuff but never SEO). Would you share your experiences? Where did you start, how fast did you grow, what were some key-insights? Currently I try to follow quality over quantity. I try to research the topics of my blog posts before I write them (chat GPT but I proofread and fact check and also add some of my own twist to it). I am focused mainly on serving more generic questions like "how can I grow my ecom brand (we focus on ecom/shopify)" or "is google ads worth it for ecom" and stuff like that. Google ads, META ads, website and product page structuring, copywriting tips etc. I also try and add locally relevant subpages to increase my local ranking (pretty rural but still a few tens of thousands of people and barely any competition). What did your first steps look like, how fast did you grow and what did you learn? :)