Start an Agency From Scratch (And Get Your First Client Fast)

Have you ever wondered why so many people start marketing agencies only to watch them crash and burn within a few months? It's rarely about talent or hustle. It's because they skipped three critical steps and without them, it doesn't matter how good your offer is or how many cold emails you send. In this video, I'm going to show you how to build an agency runway that gives you breathing room instead of panic. I'll show you the secret weapon I call a profit portfolio, even if you've got zero experience. And I'll show you a strategy called the MVA, minimum viable agency, that lets you launch fast and get clients without wasting weeks designing a logo. But there's one piece most people miss entirely and it's the difference between agencies that survive their first year and the ones that quietly disappear by month three. I've built and scaled multiple profitable agencies over the last decade and made just about every mistake in the book, so you don't have to. So, if you want to avoid all the painful detours I took and build something that actually lasts, let's dive in. And the first biggest reason that most marketing agencies fail is pretty much the same reason that almost all businesses out there fail and that is that they're offering a service that nobody wants, at least not [music] anymore. If your marketing agency is planning on helping someone optimize their MySpace or Friendster profiles, you're going to be in a world of hurt. The next reason that they fail is that they can't get enough clients or customers, which usually just means that they're not doing enough marketing and not getting in front of enough of the right kind of people. This is good news for you though, the person who's thinking of starting a marketing agency, as it means that most businesses, most people out there are in desperate need of your help. But it also means that you're going to need to spend your own time and money and energy dedicated to building up your own marketing and generating your own client list as well. Lastly, they fail because of cash flow issues or more accurately, a lack of cash coming into the business or into the agency, which can usually just be solved by generating more clients and more customers and more sales, but is sometimes also caused by spending too much money on things that just don't matter and don't actually result in more growth for your business. For example, fancy clothes, fancy car, fancy website or other things like that. The fact is, the only thing clients care about is results and what you can do for them. But more on that later, too. The good news is that all of these problems and potential reasons that your agency could fail can be solved just by building an agency runway. You could spend the next few years writing your own agency playbook from scratch or you could just use mine. I've been using HighLevel to run the back end of three different seven-figure agencies, but here's the truth. Software alone doesn't get results, systems do. That's why when you start your free trial through my link, I'm giving you everything I've built, completely free. $10,000 plus worth of assets, the scripts, the templates, the frameworks behind every and follow-up that's actually worked. This isn't some old recycled PDF bundle. This is the exact operational playbook from three of my million-dollar agencies, ready to deploy. 30 days free, no risk, cancel anytime, keep the bonuses either way. Links below, everything you need to get started is inside. So, with that taken care of, here's what an agency runway looks like. If you've ever watched an airplane take off before, you've probably seen that they spend a decent amount of time on the ground building up speed before they take off and actually fly. And the bigger the plane, the longer they need to spend on the ground in order to build up that speed so they actually take off. And the same is true for your agency. Sure, you could totally just dive in right now, today and call yourself an agency. That's actually kind of just what I did, but wasn't the smartest plan. Instead, here are the few things that you want [music] to do right now. First, focus on building a network. There's an old business expression that says it's not what you know, it's who you know. And it's kind of true, though a better version would be it's what you know and who you know, cuz you obviously have to know what you're doing, too. The point is that relationships go a long way. So, reach out to friends and family and other groups you're part of, even if just to plant the seed and let them know what you're thinking of doing. Next, use your network to start having conversations and building a warm leads list. A warm leads list is going to be a list of people that you know that could possibly be interested in your agency's services. For a marketing agency, this is going to be the people that you know that own businesses, work for businesses or are even thinking about starting a business. Having a list of people that you can reach out to and get started with is a huge boost when you first launch. Next, it's time for a little financial advice, which is to start saving right now. The more money you save, the longer your runway is going to be, which will allow you to build up even more speed and fly even higher, maybe even twice as high. Depending on who you ask, the amount of money that you're going to want to have saved up could be anywhere from three months to six months, all the way up to a year, sometimes even more. So, your specific number is going to be really whatever you feel most comfortable with, [music] but something that I wish I would have done when I was first starting my agency was first getting started with my agency as a side hustle. Unless you're literally at your breaking point with your current career, there's no reason that you can't start to build your marketing agency on the side while still keeping your main job. This will help take some of the stress out of starting an agency for the first time and will give you more time to build up the skills and the network and the experience that you may want and may need. That said, it does take some of the pressure out of having you out there and make things work right now, which may or may not be a good thing depending on what kind of person you are. After all, if you can just put it off till tomorrow, well, maybe you will and procrastinate and never end up getting around to starting the agency that you always dreamed of. That's not good. Whatever the case, there is something else that you definitely want to have before starting your agency or start building as you start your agency that looking back over the past 10 years after having started and scaled multiple different profitable agencies, this one thing is probably made the biggest positive impact of all. And that is building a profit portfolio. I want [snorts] you to think of a profit portfolio as kind of like a resume or CV, but for entrepreneur agency owners. It's essentially a place or collection of places where you showcase your knowledge, skills, experience, expertise and results. [music] And don't worry if you're just getting started and don't have any of these yet. I'll show you how to get them in just a second. [music] But first, it's important to go back in time just a little bit to what I was talking about the only thing that your clients care about. So, let's do that now. The only thing clients care about is Ah, those were good times, weren't they? The point is that if the only thing your potential clients care about is results, then the main and possibly even only goal of building a profit portfolio is to show them that you can indeed get them results. Now, if you're fortunate enough to have been doing marketing previously for any length of time for any business at all, well, the odds are good that you probably have something [music] that you've done that's resulted in some kind of positive outcome. For example, maybe you've added things to a website or optimized the social media profile or increased a website's ranking or created some kind of content, anything really. But even if not, there are still a lot of things that you can do right now to start putting the pieces together and building an effective and client-generating profit portfolio. First, you need to start creating content. This could be social media posts, videos, podcasts, articles, anything and everything that you can think of. If you really want to shortcut your agency growth curve, then you need to put yourself out there and start creating content and talking about the marketing topics and subjects that your potential clients care about. If you're just getting started, that's cool. We all start somewhere. You can still share ideas and stories and quotes and things that you've learned from books and videos and leaders in the marketing space. The big thing here is to make sure that you cite the person that you're quoting and make sure to give them credit because not only is this important for legal issues, but it also help you to leverage the authority that they've built. You can also start to take a look around you right now, wherever you are, for different marketing opportunities. For example, if you're currently working a standard 9-to-5 job, are there any marketing opportunities in the current business or work environment that you're in? Could you take on some additional work in order to get experience and maybe create a case study from showing the results that you were able to get? Can you maybe take over the social media accounts and look at posting or managing or doing something else to grow them? Also, Gary V is famous for coming up with this next strategy. Oh, hey Gary. But his approach to creating content is pretty powerful and it's all about document, don't create. [music] Now, I like to keep a pen and paper around with me no matter where I go cuz I'm kind of old school like that, but using your phone will work just fine. Okay, boomer. Essentially, what you want to do is capture different ideas or thoughts or moments or strategies or anything that comes across, anything that you're doing that could be used and leveraged to create some kind of marketing from. Another place to go to beef up your profit portfolio is the three F's, friends, family and free. Friends, by asking if any of your friends have businesses or know people that have businesses that would benefit from some marketing. Same with your family. And then, and here's the kicker, offering to do it for free. Yes, free. This is because profit and revenue aren't actually the main objective at this stage. Rather, what you're after is case studies and testimonials and [music] results and proof that you actually know what you're doing that you can leverage later to get better and higher-paying clients. So, once you have that in place, it's time to move on to the next part, which is the MVA. Stands for minimum viable agency. So, let's talk about that now. When I first started my very first marketing agency back over 10 years ago, I had literally nothing other than a desire to learn everything I could about marketing and make this new business work so I didn't have to go back to my old job. Unfortunately, many of the books and courses around back then offered outdated suggestions about what was required to start a business and so I wasted a lot of time and money and energy on things that just really don't matter, like getting a fax machine. As you may remember from earlier, So, this is where your efforts need to go. So, first, let's talk about skills. Now, this should hopefully not come as a surprise, but if you want to start a marketing agency, you need to know how to do marketing. I know, crazy idea, hey? Now, you don't need to be an expert in all things across marketing when you first get started, but you do need to make sure that you're investing time and money and energy in mastering [music] the basics, the fundamentals, the principles and the things that are going to help you and your agency thrive. Now, there are a ton of amazing and free resources [music] available, just like all of the videos I have right here on this channel. There are also paid options available like the Digital Marketing [music] Academy, so I'll link that up in the descriptions below if it's something you want to check out. The mistake a lot of people make though when they're first [music] starting agencies is thinking that they can just outsource everything by hiring a freelancer on Fiverr or Upwork and just getting them to do everything. But when you're first getting started and you don't really know what you're doing, it's hard to tell the difference between a good freelancer and a bad freelancer and that's not a risk that you want to take. This is why the focus here really needs to be on getting better as a marketer and focusing on what I call your agency sweet spot. This is where your skills, your interests, and market demand all overlap. Your interests could be anything in marketing [music] from social media to content creation to analytics to web development and understanding what you personally find most interesting in marketing will lead to developing skills in those areas. Then all you really need to do is match up the skills that you have with areas that the market, your customers, your potential clients are willing to pay for. And right now there are a lot of areas in marketing that brands and businesses need help with and are willing to pay top dollar for. So here's some advice on that and some places that you may want to consider looking into. You see what services your agency is going to offer is one of the most important strategic decisions that you're going to make as an agency owner. Which I appreciate when I say it like that, it makes it sound terrifying, big, scary. So here's the good news. What you start off offering is likely going to be very different than what you end up offering later on down the road as you get more skills and experience and end up working with more and different kinds of clients. But here's a really good place to get started. There will always be a set of businesses out there who require new leads calling and clicking and coming in the door. Local service-based businesses like HVAC, plumbing, roofing, and solar are good examples where running something like a Facebook ads lead generating campaign can work really well. If you're more into content creation then video continues to become more and more important. So skills like scripting and recording and editing and posting and optimizing videos is incredibly valuable too. And if video just isn't your thing but writing is then email marketing, specifically for e-commerce businesses right now, is a huge and very profitable niche. Another area that isn't going away anytime soon is SEO or search engine optimization where you help a business improve their website or content so it appears higher on the search engines when someone is searching for that term. [music] According to LinkedIn, marketers with skills in digital strategy, link building, search advertising, and off-page SEO are in the highest demand right now. Okay, next let's talk about your own marketing and what you need to get started. Here's the deal. When you're first getting started, you don't need a fancy website, fancy logo, fancy anything. That said, you do need to be present and professional. Which means having a clean and simple and easy to navigate website as well as a couple different social media platforms that you're going to be active and present on. As far as naming your new marketing agency, there is nothing wrong at all with giving it your very own name. In fact, using your own personal name rather than trying to come up with some new and creative marketing agency name can actually be a significant competitive advantage. This is because most people out there like doing business with people, not faceless mega-corporations. Mostly because we view people as more trustworthy than just those giant companies. So putting your name and your face on your business and showing that you're a real genuine person who stands behind your work is going to go a really long way. But whatever name you decide to go with, make sure that you get a custom domain name and URL and matching email address to go along with it. This is incredibly important so that you're not sending potential clients emails from [email protected]. So now that we've got that covered, the next thing you're going to need is an agency growth plan. And that's why I've put together a video right here that's going to give you a step-by-step guide on starting a digital [music] marketing agency. So make sure to check it out now and I'll see you in the next video. That said, here are three services that you can offer right now that are in incredibly high demand and that you can charge top dollar for. And when done right, these services will allow you to get amazing results for your clients.