The 5 Secrets to How My Partner and I Grew Our Agency From 0 to 7 Figures

In my opinion, an agency is one of the best business models. I want to quickly give you some of the real pros and cons that I’ve seen from my experience of owning an agency and watching my friends/colleagues own agencies.

Pros of owning an agency: - Minimal $ needed upfront  - Easy to scale to your first $20k/month - Operations are simple and predictable

Cons of owning an agency: - Your time is your COGS  - It's harder to scale from 6 to 7 figures (compared to a brand or software) - It's difficult to remove yourself as the bottleneck.

So, how did we do it?

Secret #1: Find your product/market fit as soon as you can.

Early in the days of running an agency, you’re just trying to find what people want. You’re throwing stuff at the wall.  It can be largely unproductive if you’re not acting with speed and intensity at this stage.

You need to take cues from successful companies & founders. They do this better than anyone else.  You don’t wait around for product-market fit. You pitch hard. You deliver, even harder. And then you edit, change, and improve your service for the next client.

In our first year, we changed our pricing & scope multiple times.  Our first 10-20 clients were just the testing ground so we could figure out how to provide the best service.  It took us over a year to find the “product formula” but it helped us quickly scale after that.

Our seeding service scaled our agency because brand owners wanted an influencer community, consistent UGC, and organic + paid distribution.  And we gave it to them all-in-one at a price where they’d be profitable if we did a good job.

Secret #2: It’s only a ‘crisis’ if YOU make it a crisis.

Entrepreneurs are notorious for always trying to bend reality to their will.  Sometimes it makes us look foolish and obnoxious, but sometimes it works out. Which just adds to our incredible egos.  Here’s a good example of that:

One of the biggest crises that the world has faced in our lifetime was a little flu that went around in 2020.  That impacted a lot of businesses but strengthened ours, as a lot of companies had to move 100% of their product online. 

Here’s another example:

iOS 14.  It impacted all of those businesses that moved online and a lot of agencies who were already killing it.  We acquired more clients by helping them diversify their marketing outside of FB ads alone.

Did we get lucky?  Maybe.  It seems like these circumstances did nothing but help us, but there IS a world where we don’t adapt properly and go under.  It’s all about how you perceive ‘crisis’ and take advantage of it.

Secret #3: Give value with no expectation of receiving value in return.

The world needs more generosity, not less.  Here’s what most do: If I give you X, you give me Y.  Don’t settle for this. Give, without asking. The rewards are not as predictable, but they are greater.

“But if I give it away, I’ll never get it back.” What’s that phrase? “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Listen to this… When my partner and I started doing this one thing in August 2020, everything changed for us.

Twitter threads. Is there a possibility that brands will take our strategy and run it without us? Sure.  But it’s much more likely that they’ll understand that we’ve done this 1000x and they’ll hire us to execute it perfectly.  Give unconditionally.

Secret #4: Don’t be lazy when choosing your co-founder(s).

I’ve seen more businesses fail from bad partnerships than anything else.  We could have been one of those when Taylor and I had a third co-founder in our first year of business.

We parted ways in 2019 and it was a scary time. However… From that point on, we were crystal clear on where we wanted the business to go, and how we wanted to get there.  Use this checklist for choosing a co-founder if you decide to start something with another person…

Your co-founder needs to:

• Share your vision
• Be self-motivated and high-energy
• Have a track record of work ethic
• Be passionate about what you’re working on
• Have a complementary skill set to yours

It’s like being married.  Ending a partnership with a spouse or a business partner is expensive.  Choose wisely.

Secret #5: Learn the skill of hiring (yes, it’s a skill).

The one thing I waited too long to learn, and then I needed to check my ego at the door.  When you start an agency, you feel like the man (or the woman).  You want to be in control of absolutely everything and you think you’re the only person who can do it as well as you.

Not only is that not true, but it’s actually harmful to have that belief. I learned this over and over again. You will never scale an agency to where you want to be if you think this way. If you’re hesitant about hiring, do it the easy way (like we did).

Dip your toe into hiring by starting with overseas workers for smaller tasks.  It gives you the challenge of training someone for your company without putting thousands of dollars on the line if it doesn’t work out.  It removes the risk for you.

After that, bring on a freelancer or someone part-time to lift even more of that load off of your shoulders.  At this point, you should be comfortable bringing on a full-timer.  We hired our first FT employee in Jan ‘21. We’ve since hired 12 more. Baby steps.

I’ve lived through many different stages of growing an agency.  They all come with their own challenges, but they’re all exciting.

Still have questions? Feel free to message me or drop a comment below and I’ll try to answer as many as I can.  Thanks for reading!