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Agency owners: When / how did you go off on your own?
Hello, I have been in the industry since 2017 through freelancing and internships but graduated college in 2019. I quickly excelled via jobs at small agencies where I got to touch everything—I learned it all: building websites, Google tag manager, analytics, social ads, search ads, etc.
I am now 28 and the Director of Paid Media at a large agency with nationally recognized clients.The goal is to create my own agency at some point. I have always wondered how others have gotten there – did you find a large client while freelancing that you could build off of? Did you find investors? How did you do it? When did you do it?
How was the money when you got started? Have a young family I have to consider as well.Any advice, information, thoughts are helpful!
Thank you
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1 Reply
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I worked in agencies from 2008 to 2015
Then picked up some consulting work from 2015 to 2020 while holding down my day job at various agencies
Went full time into my own agency since 2020
So, all in, I spent more than a decade in agencies before “[going] off on my own”
Many of my former colleagues refer clients to me and landing a large long-term client really helped with the transition.
The money is good, but there’s a lot of stress that comes along with that.
Seems to me that you have the experience.
A few questions you should ask yourself:
– Do you enjoy structure or not? The buck (starts and) stops with you when you own an agency. Being self motivated is a huge one rolled up in this question.
– Have you managed the variety of spend you’re probably going to see? For me, I’ve personally managed $500/month all the way up to $1MM/month. Campaigns, strategies, tactics, goals, all are very different along the spectrum
– How good are your sales skill?
– How is your business network?
– Do you plan to, or can you do this indefinitely? You become “unemployable” pretty quickly though.. that’s something to consider because finding full-time work is really hard
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I worked for other people’s agencies for about 10 years. Got fired for making too much money (negotiated 20% commission on fees from new client I generated, generated a client who was worth $2M/yr in fees, got fired because if they kept their part of the deal I was going to make 25% more than the partners do).
At that point, I knew I needed to open my own agency so I couldn’t get fired for making too much money again.
I just built a website, got business cards, joined a networking group, and started working for me. I did run up a couple grand in credit card bills during the first six months where I was earning less than my previous salary, but since then I’ve consistently earned about 50% more money than when I was working for others.
Good luck!
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