Freelance to Agency Blueprint

For those reading my post for the first time, I am Siddharth, an engineer by profession and a designer by passion. I started my agency business, Markals, a few months back. Markals focuses on and helps you with design and development solutions.

I have been working on Markals for the last few months and have faced many challenges, such as acquiring clients, setting the right prices, building a team, and other issues.

I have been following Pratham for a while and have enjoyed his content on both LinkedIn and Praper's Instagram. When I got this opportunity, I immediately booked my seat for the session.

Learning from the session.

The session was majorly divided into 8 modules.

Module 1: Timing is everything.

okay in this module, Pratham started with a reality check explaining majority of the people don’t have to setup agency. and one needs to setup agency if he or she meets all the conditions stated below:

1. Putting 8hr+ work on your freelancing
2. Have 3+ client case studies
3. Have 50k+ MRR(Monthly revenue rate)
4. 50% of your clients are satisfied.
5. Turned down few projects because of limited bandwidth

Module-2: Solution, not services

Okay in this section pratham jumped on to telling the importance of giving solution as services because if a service is not solving any problem then people will not opt for it. Now for this he suggested 3 stages

Stage 1: Find you niche

Started with picking up your niche. for this he simply suggested a small exercise. lets say if you are a video editor, don’t just say it like that. niche down like I am a finance video editor.

Now why the need of niche down, the simple answer is you can focus on that one thing. And you can identify problems around it, create processes around it.

“Its better to have bigger piece of pie from small cake to have a small piece from big pie.”

Now one will ask how to pick your niche? So there are 3 basic things you can do.

• What niche do you enjoy, understand & have knowledge about?
• What are the hot markets? Check with people, use google trends
• Which clients have the highest budgets, success rate and enjoyment?

After asking these three questions, you can have more clarity on what niche you want to pick

For example, if you love watching cricket, and its a hot market with very high budgets. So you can pick field like “I am a cricket copywriter”

Stage 2: Identify a problem statement

When you niche down and work with people specifically of that niche. You get to know about there challenges and huddles in that niche. Now you have to identify two key things:

• Clients goals
• What’s stopping them to achieve there goals

If you are able to identify these two things correctly then the next step is to create solution around it

Stage 3: Building a solution service.

The main objective of this stage is to make solution services that enable your clients to achieve there goals. And this is win-win for both the parties.

You can create package around your solution. And can also add services around your core service. for instance if your offer video editing, then can also offer services like, scripting, management, promotions, graphics etc. This will further help you expand your horizon.

But keep in mind that these touch points should not hamper you main core service.

Module 3: Lean Agency Setup

When baby is born, we give it a name. Likewise we also need to work on agency name, branding, and legal formalities. This may sound boring and irrelevant, but this is crucial step as this builds authenticity and trust.

Branding: ( You can contact Markals for this)

• Pick a name (Namelix)
• Logo (Looka)
• Website (definitely Markals)
• Fonts and Colors

Registration: (Registerkaro)

• Sole or LLP

Other Formalities:

• MSME Registration
• Import Export Code
• GST Registration
• CA Consultancy

Module 4: Foundational Team

This is the most important part of building an agency. You can't do all this on your own. So, hiring like-minded people that align with your vision is really important.

Reality check, team building is not easy. Even large companies struggle with this. Many companies treat team building as their last priority, but you should not if you want to build a successful agency.

Now, there is one important question one needs to answer before hiring.

SLAPS: give yourself one point for every thing you agree

• If you solely work more than 6hr/day
• Have your lead pipeline sorted.
• Used every AI tool out there to make your workflow smooth
• You have the paying capacity of at least 15k-20k for good talent
• You are sure you want to continue this business and scale it.

If your score is 5 (or 4) than this is the right time to hire.

Now hiring successful talent is also divided into few steps:

Step 0: Decide what format works for you?

• Interns vs Freelancers vs Fulltime
• Remote vs Office

Step 1: Create Job Description

• Describe Role
• Describe Responsibilities
• Pay(Atleast 20k for intern)
• Growth Prospect (Why they should choose your company)

Step 2: Circulate JD

• Circulate on Job sites like naukri
• Linkedin Jobs
• Personal Brand
• Personal Network

Step 3: Screening

• Initial Screening
• Pre Interview talk
• Technical interview
• Culture Fit interview (For judging there eagerness, perceptive, mindset, vision etc)
  • Common criteria→ Can I sit with this person in a 6 hours long flight without killing him

Step 4: Onboarding

• Fixed and Variable pay
• Scope of work
• working hours
• Monthly leaves and notice period.

Also brag about your company wherever you can, tell people why they should work with you, what are the upside etc.

Now the talent we want to attract makes us choose the platform the brand should be more active on. If its a corporate brand maybe LinkedIn is good place to be in, if its a media company then Instagram is the good place for brand to attract people.

Module 5: What makes an agency?

Now this is the module which all makes the difference. Now you will ask why SOP are so important. But they are really important. Pratham gave example of Divyank Goenka from Matar media, that he hired a wrong person which led him loose lakhs of rupees which led him to create SOP for his company. And this is what he says his most expensive mistake.

In this module Pratham talks about two things which makes agency a well structured agency.

1. Team Management

   This step revolves around building relationship with your team.

   • Get to know them
     • Talk about anything other than work
     • Invest in fun activities
   • Mutually Agree upon responsibilities
     • Time commitments
     • Deliverables
     • Clients

2. Operation (SOP’s)

   • Create Standard operating procedures (Covers everyday tasks and emergencies)

     • Identify recurring tasks
     • Create step by step to do list
     • Mention each step time line etc
     • Clarify final outcome

     Example of Employee onboarding SOP

     

   • Establish communication channels

     • Whatsapp
     • or Slack

   • Setup task tracking

     • Google sheets
     • Notion
     • Trello

Module 6: Making your dream client reality

The title is self explanatory, this module is about getting leads for your business.

Outbound Leads

• Use your network
  • Share your portfolio shamelessly
  • Keep your pricing low initially (increase it with each successful case study)
  • Get on a discovery call ASAP
• Cold Email
  • Create a list of people you want to outreach(scrape data)
  • Personalized emails
  • Track with Mailsuite
  • Custom work samples
• Cold DM
• Wildcard Outreach
  • Meeting
  • Offline Events
  • Online webinars
  • live streams
  • and possibly anywhere just be aware

Inbound Leads

• Referrals
  • Always overdeliver
  • Be your client’s friend
• Personal Branding
  • Pick platform
  • create content
  • Share case studies and results
  • Stay consistent.

Note: Get beta clients with low pricing and use them to build your portfolio

Module 7: Rewire your brain

As a entrepreneur there are lot of hardship that one has to go through. Now you have to rewire your brain in order to build a successful agency or any business for that instance. There are few things one could work on. Afterall Entrepreneurs “Think Different, or they do things differently”

1. Get used to rejections
2. Take control of your finance
3. Stop learning without executing
4. Rethink your social circles
5. Look for solution everywhere
6. Be thankful to the problems
7. Track metrices that matter
8. Always look for room for improvement

Module 8: Hope for the Best, Prepare for the worst

This is not a module but just a reminder, you have to work hard, put your efforts, prepare for the worst case and the result will come sooner or later.

Other Learning from the session:

• Ask (Law of attraction)
• Law of averages works
• Celebrate small wins
• Culture is easier to built in smaller companies then in bigger companies.

Common Agency FAQ’s