5 reasons you should start your own agency

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For most freelancers who have been at it for a while, there is a sense of comfort in being small. It's easy to control your own projects, and work with the same types of clients you're used to. But wearing all the hats can weigh you down, and limit your potential for growth. It doesn't have to be this way.

You've probably had daydreams about starting your own creative agency. If you have a large workload, and you've seen even one season of Mad Men, the prospect is alluring. In many ways, it's the obvious next step in the evolution of a freelancer. If your current project scope is limited to what you, yourself can dream up and execute, it might be time to think a little bigger than just yourself. In this article we'll look at some reasons why it might be time to start your own agency, then we'll move on to how to get started (hop straight to page 2 for this).

While not for the faint of heart, starting a creative business can be wildly fulfilling. An agency model offers many advantages over life as a freelance creative. Here are just a few of them.

01. You can focus on your strengths

The life of a creative freelancer is built upon the concept of 'DIY'. As a one-person operation working from home, you have no choice but to do it all yourself, sometimes to the detriment of your business. You are responsible for design, development, client wrangling, and all the admin that goes with in. 

As part of a bigger team, you can concentrate on what you love to do – and what you do well. Love to design homepages, but hate the tedium of designing every internal page? Hire (or contract) another designer to do it. Are you terrible at selling? Enlist a dedicated salesperson. No matter where your strength lies, you can focus on that, and fill in the gaps around you.

02. You can think longer-term

As a studio, the potential for growth is much stronger. Operating on design island, you are likely too bogged down with the day-to-day requirement of your current workload to even think about branching out – or plan too far in advance. But hiring other people will free up some hands and minds to come up with a growth strategy.

03. Billable hours will increase

As a freelancer, you are limited to how many hours you can personally bill per week. When you start hiring other designers, developers, and administrative assistants, you can bill for all the hours they work as well. The resulting increase in productivity allows room for more projects, which leads to even more billable time.

04. You can learn new skills

Even if you choose to focus purely on what you are already good at, being in close proximity to other professionals contributing with their skillsets will open your eyes to all elements of a project. Over time, you will probably start to pick up some of these skills yourself.

05. You can take on broader projects

By recruiting specialists in different fields, production on a larger scale becomes possible. Got a coder, a graphic designer and an animation specialist? You can hit many more points of a project than you'd be able to tackle on your own. And that means you can work with bigger brands, because your offering will be broader.

Next page: How to get started launching your own agency

So you've decided it's time to build your own team. How do you get started? There are number of questions to answer and elements to organise before you can launch your first agency. Let's take a look at a few of them.

Find your niche

In the overcrowded current creative world, it is generally advised for you to find your niche rather than generalising. Maybe you already have one as a freelancer, maybe not. If so, it usually makes the most sense to continue it into your agency. After all, you already have the work samples to prove your expertise.

A niche can be industry-specific (i.e. specialising in food service businesses) or discipline-based (i.e. specialising in only web design, or even more specifically, landing page design).

If you don't have a niche already, that's OK. You don't even have to narrow your focus yet. But, ideally, you will want to work your way toward a niche over time. This can either be an active process (you can do some research and decide what you want to focus on) or it can happen naturally, as you see what kinds of work you naturally gravitate towards.

You need to decide how niche you want your work to be

No matter what your niche is or how you arrive at it, you'll want to start to market to that niche sooner rather than later.

Even if you don't have a plethora of work samples to show, you can still pursue it with detailed case studies of the few examples you do have, and a solid marketing plan. The more great work you do in a certain area, the more of that kind of work you will attract.

Establish your brand

When starting your own agency, the first thing you want to consider is the branding. One of the first things to do is to brainstorm a name. You can certainly go with your own name if you like, many firms do – or you can think of something more creative that fits the voice of your agency. 

But beyond that there is plenty to think about. What is the overall personality and voice of the new business? Since it's coming from you, these elements should be congruent with who you are and your key values. Here are a few things to consider to help you find your brand voice:

• Think of three adjectives to represent your brand: Ideally, these should accurately represent you as well, since you are the face of your agency. Any incongruences might read as inauthentic to your clients.
• Keep it timeless: The last thing you want is to have to rebrand a few years into your agency because you went with something too trendy or unambitious.
• Nod to your niche, but don't overdo it: Let's say you plan on going after the pet industry as a niche. You might call your agency Red Dog Creative. This works, because it plays to the niche, but it would also work if you ever decided to pivot to a new niche for any reason. Just be careful your name or branding isn't locking you into anything that may not work out.

Then you need to start work on your own logo design, website and company collateral. For any designer this is the fun part, but it can also be draining. Designing for ourselves can spiral out of control based on the sheer number of options. I recommend putting a deadline on each phase, and treating it like a project for any client. Remember, 'perfect' is often the enemy of 'great'.

Assemble a creative team

Recruiting new studio members is the part that most creatives stress over, but if you're going to grow, you need a killer team on your side. Choose your collaborators carefully, as they can propel your agency to the top, or sink it like a stone.

The success of your venture rests on picking the right people

You have a choice here. You can either hire employees outright, or start by simply hiring contractors as needed, per project. For those just starting out, with no real capital, I recommend going the contractor route to start with. This allows you to grow slowly, and try different people out until you have assembled your dream team.

There are many types of contractors you may want to bring on, from other designers to web specialists, project managers, marketing people, accountants and copywriters. You may choose to work with people in your local area, but these days it's really not a requirement, because, you know, the internet.

Figure out a workflow

Once you start putting your team together, you need to get a process in place for managing everybody and their workflow. You may not have a brick and mortar workplace where everybody can collaborate under one roof (or even one time zone), but you can simulate the experience using the right software.

There are many online apps that will allow you to delegate work to your team, make lists, share files and keep track of what remains to be done. Most are not free, but when you consider they are freeing you from the overheads associated with a permanent workplace, the cost is negligible, and well worth it. Take a look at our list of the best tools to help you work remotely.

Adjust your pricing

Once you have made up your mind to ditch the freelancer title in favour of 'owner', you'll want to alert your current clients of the switch, as well as any pricing changes that have taken effect. Most agencies do charge more per hour than freelancers, so you are well within your rights to do so.

You will probably need the extra money to pay your contractors (or employees), since multiple team members will now be working on a single project. You may lose some of your current business due to the price hike, but now you can start going after bigger clients with bigger projects, and the budgets to match.

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