Journey From Freelancer To Agency Owner

[IronBorn]

In order to help keep myself accountable, I decided to create this progress thread.

I am a full time freelancer currently (copywriting and social media stuff). It is nearly a year since I started freelancing after graduating from University.

The money I have brought in this last year was decent by Slowlane standards, but I am ready to take it to a whole other level and 10x it this year.

Short Term Goals

· Create and build my personal website so I can easily showcase my portfolio and continue building my personal brand

· Send at least one email a day to someone, adding a lot of value to their operations

· Start posting on authority sites like Forbes, Entrepreneur etc.

· Get a more solid work schedule in place

· Expand my skillset when it comes to different marketing mediums

· Create and build a digital marketing agency. File legal documents, get website created, set prices, get a reliable team of contractors on board.

As a freelancer, there is no real way in which I can scale up by just working by myself. I want to move to a Fastlane life and get other people working for me while I reap a lot of the benefits. A lot of the time I have to turn down good projects from clients as I am simply too busy. The demand is there for me to set up an agency and take on a team of freelancers who will be able to do this work on my behalf.

While I am good at what I do in terms of copywriting and social media consultancy, my real skills lie in sales so I would prefer to focus my efforts there.

Starting off, I will offer mainly writing type services from the agency (SEO writing, blog articles, landing pages etc.) before expanding into advertising campaigns and other digital marketing avenues. The USP of the agency is going to be the stellar customer service that will be provided, as well as a number of unique perks that I am working on.

Medium to Long Term Goals

· Decrease the amount of time I spend doing freelance work myself

· Hit personal brand building goals

· Have a stable of high profile clients

· Have the agency running smoothly and successfully so I can outsource a lot of the operations of the agency, freeing up my time to pursue other projects

· Provide a lot of value for a lot of people


Thanks for checking the thread out. Any feedback, advice or comments are greatly appreciated.

 

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[Guest24480]

Hey IronBorn, I noticed you didn't get any replies so I thought I'd chime in here.

How is your progress coming along?

I think your plan is a good one. The opportunity to outsource is huge which is why I find the agency model so attractive in the first place. It's also beneficial because the start-up costs are low and you can learn the ropes as a freelancer as you've demonstrated. Getting a grasp on the basics is important before trying to outsource or expand. After all, if you're offering marketing services you better be able to market yourself sufficiently before you try to do it for a client. It takes some hustle to prove your value to those first clients but it's worth it in the end imo.

I myself am an Information Systems student at uni so I have a general understanding of the technical side but I'm looking to expand myself a bit and start doing some freelance work. Possibly find a product or service to sell with a proven demand and start a project of my own to begin developing a portfolio. Polish my skills if you may. Then I'll look to expand into doing the same for others.

 

[IronBorn]

I appreciate the reply holmzee.

Progress is going well, I must post an update when I get a chance this coming weekend.

The personal site has been set up and designed, so I just need to write the content for it and get my portfolio samples up there and I will be good to go. I have been sending out emails most days to people, building a lot of cool relationships with people from a diverse range of fields.

Once the site has been completely finished, I will start approaching authority sites to begin guest posting on and develop a regular schedule for getting content for my blog completed. I'll probably aim for 3 pieces of content on my blog per week starting off. With regards to the other goals, I have made some progress on them also, but I will go a bit more in depth when I make the update to this thread.

With regards to the agency, I will be looking to get started on the site as soon as the personal one gets completed. I aim to have the team together and everything up and running by the middle of August. Currently involved in an unrelated startup that has been taking up a bit of my time, so I will be looking forward to taking a bit of pressure off myself when it comes to producing content for clients.

I agree with you 100%, extremely low costs starting off. I feel like I have reached a place as a freelancer that I can consolidate what I have learned from my personal experiences and use it to help my team to produce the best work that they possibly can. They don't need to make some of the mistakes I made along the way.

The point you made about marketing yourself is so key. I always say to people "If you can't market yourself, why would someone else hire you to do their marketing?"

That sounds very cool, it would be great to put some of what you have been learning to the test to see how it applies in a real world scenario. In my experience, you learn a lot about what you are good at and what you are not good at when you start out freelancing. I was probably a bit surprised at what some of my actual strengths were compared to my notions of what my strengths were before starting off freelancing.

That sounds like a great plan, I'd love to hear more about it when you get started. Once you have that proven track record, you will be golden.

 

[IronBorn]

Update

So I thought I would do bit of an update for this post.

I am still doing a lot of freelance work, but have made some solid progress on my short term goals that were outline in the OP.

The personal site has been built and I just need to get started with regular content for the blog. I am thinking of following the process that Gary Vaynerchuk proposes for younger people in business, to document my journey rather than try to give advice that is touted as gospel. I will be documenting my journey through the process of starting a content marketing agency and into the future.

I haven’t really been sending off one email per day, so this is something I have started back doing as of the past couple days.

I still have not approached any authority sites to get featured, plan to flesh out the personal site with some blog posts first before doing so.

After going travelling for a month, I struggled to get back into a solid routine until a couple of days ago. I was not getting much work done in the middle of the day and ended up staying up late at night trying to get work finished. I’ve always worked better in the morning, so I have started getting up at 5:15am and the results have been amazing. I have been ploughing through work and have so much time left over to pursue my other goals.


I am at bit of a crossroads with the agency. While I have a pretty clear plan of how I will specialise, my pricing structure etc., the one problem I have is deciding whether or not to have a friend of mine come in as a partner on the agency.

While they have some experience working in digital marketing, there is not a whole pile that they can offer apart from having another person on board to complete client work. I know people are wary about going into business with friends, so I am very indecisive as to what the best course of action is.

They seem to be set on getting involved. I might even propose that they come on board as a contractor, rather than being a partner in the actual business. That means they can just get paid for the work they do, while not getting a slice of the overall profits.

Any advice or thoughts on this issue would be extremely helpful!

 

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[Andy Black]

Update

So I thought I would do bit of an update for this post.

I am still doing a lot of freelance work, but have made some solid progress on my short term goals that were outline in the OP.

The personal site has been built and I just need to get started with regular content for the blog. I am thinking of following the process that Gary Vaynerchuk proposes for younger people in business, to document my journey rather than try to give advice that is touted as gospel. I will be documenting my journey through the process of starting a content marketing agency and into the future.

I haven’t really been sending off one email per day, so this is something I have started back doing as of the past couple days.

I still have not approached any authority sites to get featured, plan to flesh out the personal site with some blog posts first before doing so.

After going travelling for a month, I struggled to get back into a solid routine until a couple of days ago. I was not getting much work done in the middle of the day and ended up staying up late at night trying to get work finished. I’ve always worked better in the morning, so I have started getting up at 5:15am and the results have been amazing. I have been ploughing through work and have so much time left over to pursue my other goals.


I am at bit of a crossroads with the agency. While I have a pretty clear plan of how I will specialise, my pricing structure etc., the one problem I have is deciding whether or not to have a friend of mine come in as a partner on the agency.

While they have some experience working in digital marketing, there is not a whole pile that they can offer apart from having another person on board to complete client work. I know people are wary about going into business with friends, so I am very indecisive as to what the best course of action is.

They seem to be set on getting involved. I might even propose that they come on board as a contractor, rather than being a partner in the actual business. That means they can just get paid for the work they do, while not getting a slice of the overall profits.

Any advice or thoughts on this issue would be extremely helpful!

Take them on as contractors. Don't take on partners just because they want you to. I think this is definitely a case of "hell yeah, or no".

I'm also building a marketing agency, as a stepping stone to building something else.

I'm not fussed about blogs or websites. I spend the vast majority of my time in a forum (this one). Helping people in this forum produces content I can repurpose for outside of this forum (a work in progress that I've not fully committed to tbh).

Get into a daily habit of producing content? Even if no-one sees it? Just to get into a rhythm?



Definitely read the book "Built to Sell".

And I found these very interesting:

• www.tropicalmba.com/consulting
• www.tropicalmba.com/services
• www.tropicalmba.com/scale

Maybe check out some of the Chats/Interviews in the thread "Andy's Other Posts" too.

 

[IronBorn]

Take them on as contractors. Don't take on partners just because they want you to. I think this is definitely a case of "hell yeah, or no".

I'm also building a marketing agency, as a stepping stone to building something else.

I'm not fussed about blogs or websites. I spend the vast majority of my time in a forum (this one). Helping people in this forum produces content I can repurpose for outside of this forum (a work in progress that I've not fully committed to tbh).

Get into a daily habit of producing content? Even if no-one sees it? Just to get into a rhythm?



Definitely read the book "Built to Sell".

And I found these very interesting:

• www.tropicalmba.com/consulting
• www.tropicalmba.com/services
• www.tropicalmba.com/scale

Maybe check out some of the Chats/Interviews in the thread "Andy's Other Posts" too.

Thanks very much for the reply Andy; I’ve gained a lot of value from your posts on the forum, especially this one.

You are completely right, it was not a “hell yeah” so I had a chat with him and we agreed to not partner up for this agency. I left the door open for him working as a contractor in the future if he is interested.

Sounds interesting, I’ve always been of the belief that being competent at marketing is absolutely vital for any business. If you have the most amazing product or service but people don’t know about it, you are really doing yourself a disservice. Nice to hear that you are in the process of doing this.

Very interesting, I have been subscribed to your YouTube channel for a while, I like how you use your same piece of content across a variety of channels, such as Snapchat, YouTube, TFL forum etc.

You’re right, while I produce content daily as a freelancer for clients; I need to start producing content for myself and getting into a good routine.

I’ll order that book now and check out those links.

Thanks again!

 

[Andy Black]

Thanks very much for the reply Andy; I’ve gained a lot of value from your posts on the forum, especially this one.

You are completely right, it was not a “hell yeah” so I had a chat with him and we agreed to not partner up for this agency. I left the door open for him working as a contractor in the future if he is interested.

Sounds interesting, I’ve always been of the belief that being competent at marketing is absolutely vital for any business. If you have the most amazing product or service but people don’t know about it, you are really doing yourself a disservice. Nice to hear that you are in the process of doing this.

Very interesting, I have been subscribed to your YouTube channel for a while, I like how you use your same piece of content across a variety of channels, such as Snapchat, YouTube, TFL forum etc.

You’re right, while I produce content daily as a freelancer for clients; I need to start producing content for myself and getting into a good routine.

I’ll order that book now and check out those links.

Thanks again!

You're welcome. Thanks for following on YouTube, Snapchat, etc.


I forgot I'd actually done a sort of review of "Built to Sell":

• You're selling the wrong product

 

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[Jon L]

Agree with Andy...take them on as a contractor. If they sell for you, give them a percent (10-20%?) of what they sell.

 

[IronBorn]

Agree with Andy...take them on as a contractor. If they sell for you, give them a percent (10-20%?) of what they sell.

Good advice, I will definitely be doing this, thanks. A nice incentive for anyone.