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Agency owners, how did you grow out of the “freelance” stage?
Hello,
I worked as a freelancer for a few years, went full-time last year and started my agency this year mainly due to tax reasons, as I grew too large and couldn’t keep the self-employed status.
Now I have an agency and all the responsibilities that come with it (= paying more taxes), I’m kind of stuck in the “freelance” stage – I’m honestly happy to be where I am, but I feel like I could take on some more work.
I’m not great with networking, and 100% of my work is remote-based – I don’t get any kind of physical meeting as I live in too remote of a place (countryside Japan). Honestly I found my clients… or more like, they found me on reddit, and another one of them is a previous employer, so I’ve been rather lucky so far.
Does anyone have some kind of guidance as to how to step up from here? I am over my first $100k ARR, which is why I couldn’t remain self-employed, but what else could I look into to grow farther? My attitude towards work? Client acquisition? What are some tips you could share?
Aside from charging my clients more, which all things considered should be possible, but not the way I want to grow.
Thanks for your time & guidance, hopefully!
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1 Reply
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Well, onboard more clients than you can handle – you’ll have to hire somebody and yeah, your agency is getting shapes. Then employ some business development manager and scale the thing, As your clients base is growing, hire more specialists, create team leaders positions, specialize and voila – you’re full-scale agency. DM me for more tips
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Do you have a presence on Linkedin or any professional online networks? Start building that could be a good one. Also since you live in the countryside and wouldn’t be able to go to events to network, maybe hosting/co-hosting webinars, online events, etc could be a good way to find potential clients?
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Doing it now, aah!
Basically I went from too many to just 3 steady clients + some low maintenance/irregular clients. These 3 pay well and allow me to hire a junior for the handiwork.
And from here I hope to evolve more into a strategic role for myself and give executive work to juniors who want to learn.
Then expand slowly, get 1-2 solid clients again once the junior is accustomed, which should be profitable even if I hire another employee. And from there probably get some low maintenance clients again for the executives to learn and get better. Rinse and repeat until on the edge of capabilities. And then keep that ship steady over at least 5-10 years hopefully.
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Found another freelancer with a book of business. Combined into an agency.
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How did clients finding you happen?
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probably consider outsourcing operations offshore and focus on business acquisition. If you have any such requirement, you can dm me.
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Like any company, you need to figure out how to market yourself if you want to grow. It’s fine if you don’t want to do in-person networking and are not able to go to many places because you are remote. Then you need come up with a marketing plan and then execute it. Similar to the clients you work on, if they don’t market themselves then people won’t know they can buy from them.
This question gets asked a lot across Reddit. The issue is most people don’t put in the work to market themselves. Especially with how easy it was to get clients during the pandemic. You can do a lot of things:
1. join Slack groups
2. Network with other agency owners
3. Get leads from traditional agencies who need help with digital marketing. so they outsource to you
4. Post more on LinkedIn
5. …ect.You just need to pick what works well for you and market yourself and educate people on what you do. You should set aside at least 1 hour a week to marketing. It is an ongoing operation, even when business is good. A client can leave anytime.
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1) double down on a niche
2) copy and paste the product/service
3) ?????
4) profit -
There are two paths any business owner can take.
1. Realize that you’ll grow to a large enough size that you can’t be involved in everything. Around 10 employees it becomes virtually impossible and you have to have good systems, structures, tiers of responsibilities. Plan for that now and start to figure out how your company operates as it hits that size and what might need to change and when (eg will it require a sales person to get you over $500k/yr in revenue?).
2. Same as one but decide you don’t want that. Figure out how to structure your business to sustain a better version of your current lifestyle for as long as possible. But put a hard cap on growth (eg get comfortable saying “we’re full, sorry.”)
Make that decision now and that should guide what you do next. Maybe you’ll realize you don’t even want more clients.
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You may hire freelancers on Upwork to do some work for you and spend more time on looking for new clients.
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Hi I can help in managing your work.
I can talk to clients either through phone calls or virtually. I have knowledge in digital marketing, like running FB ads, research, etc. If you need someone to manage your work then we can have a chat. -
Paying more taxes isn’t a bad thing. Just means you’re making more money. You don’t need to increase your expenses to lower your tax burden just so that you’re paying less tax. You don’t spend a dollar to save a dime as they say.
As soon as you start hiring FTE, your responsibilities change drastically.
I would check out these two articles from DYF:
[https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/do-you-need-a-team/](https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/do-you-need-a-team/)
[https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/earn-six-figures-solo/](https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/earn-six-figures-solo/)
I would ask myself the “why?” question several times over to decide what you want.
Do you really want to manage a team? do you like doing business development and sales over fulfillment?
if the answers are yes, then sure go ahead and start hiring. But start with contractors first.
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I was at this stage 1.5 years ago and managed to collaborate with an agency(guy was freelancer before agency). He was focusing on client acquisitions. I was given the charge to hire a team to manage design, content, publishing, ads and back office management. Now i have 35+ people working for me in this department working with couple of agencies managing everything for them.
You can try a similar route imo!
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Automate as much as you can in your business to make yourself as efficient as possible. Eventually, though you need to start hiring people. Generally, your first hire at an agency would be a PPC manager to take on more accounts.
However, I think $100K/year might be a bit premature to hire, I would expect you to be more around $250K before you really need help. See sentence #1. You might also consider hiring a virtual assistance to unload some of the busy work you do once you’ve automated as much as you can.
And yes, you should be raising your prices periodically as long as you’re steadily growing and especially if you’re already super busy. As your agency grows your clients should be generating more revenue each.
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Interesting post. I’m kind of at the same crossroads. Been freelancing for around a year now, but mostly worked at agencies in advertising. Around €10k a month now with mostly search and social ads.
I think my strategy will be to hire a freelancer from a region with lower average wages to start experimenting with. I have to be super efficient with my time as dad life kind of forced me to only have 4 work days effectively, so I only focus on billable hours and thankfully up till this point I’ve never had to do sales. All clients I get from referrals, mostly from old agency contacts (both colleagues and clients).
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