Is taking your agency full-time your goal?
Lots of people in the Agency Coach community currently have a full-time jobs and moonlight as a digital agency. They’d love to be able to fire their boss and live life more on their own terms.
We’ve given the Agency Coach Full-Time Agency Award to lots of people.
Do you want to be next? Well, here’s how I’d do it. Here are 5 tips for taking your agency full-time…
#1 Build Your Lake of Leads
One of the most valuable assets a business can own is its client (or potential client) database. It's a contact list of all of the people you could possibly sell to. This is your lake of leads. It’s a book of business that you can tap into any time you want more clients.
In the absence of a database like this, you’ll always be at the mercy of word of mouth leads. Don’t get me wrong, I love word of mouth but it’s unpredictable, and going full-time requires that you have a predictable source of leads.
#2 Get Good At Warming Up Your Leads
When you can take a cold prospect and turn them into a hot buyer, you’ll have as many clients as you could ever want. If you want to go full-time in your agency, then you need to be good at taking people from your lake of leads and nurturing them into business opportunities. When you have a list of potential clients, you need to build a relationship with them. Email them, tell them stories, educate them and when you’re ready, make them offers to do business with you.
#3 Make Sure Clients Buy Your Full Range
A value ladder is the sequence of services that your clients buy and the order in which they buy. But, most agencies have half-built ladders. In other words, their clients don’t typically buy your full range of services. So you might have clients with more money to invest, but they aren’t enrolling in other services you could be doing for them.
When you sell your services, try to enroll them in all the services you think will help your client from the start. And, if they don’t buy all your stuff, go back to them again and again to get them there.
#4 Delegate and Outsource
As an agency owner with a full-time job, there’s one resource that you’re probably short on: time. If every project you sell requires more of your time, you’ll find it very difficult to create enough cash flow that makes you confident that it’s time to fire your boss. That’s why you need to find opportunities to get your time back. The number one way to do this is to find other people that you can contract to do the work for you. This also means you need to be charging enough to pay these people while also keeping a large sum for yourself.
#5 Make The Decision
This is perhaps the most important on the list! If you want to go full-time, you need to decide what your goal is. Ken Blanchard says, “There’s a difference between interest and commitment. When you’re interested in something, you do it only when it’s convenient. When you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.” I’ve never met a full-time agency owner that was simply interested in making it their career. I’ve only met those that were committed to it.
If you're curious about how to make the jump to full-time, be sure to apply for a call with our director of coaching. We'll help you develop a plan that's tailored to your unique situation.
