- All right, so today we're going to talk about
how to start a digital marketing agency.
So, you've decided it's time to go off on your own,
or you could be working full-time somewhere
and you want to get going on doing, well,
a digital marketing agency
because the cash flows are great
and you could do a lot with those cash flows.
You can choose to reinvest it in other areas,
such as your business,
or maybe find other opportunities as well.
I have an agency called Single Grain.
And through that agency,
actually we were able
to parlay the cashflows from that business
into other projects within the business
or finding other opportunities,
other more exponential or more durable sources of revenue.
I think it's a great model because you look at it,
it's basically your funding mechanism every single year
if you come across interesting opportunities.
And so I think the goal here, if you're starting out,
is you wanna aim for your first 100K.
Or if you're working somewhere,
you wanna aim to replace the current salary
that you're at right now.
If you're able to do that, then great, you can finally quit.
The best thing you can do is you start the agency
when you're working full-time somewhere.
Ideally your place lets you work on a side hustle
while you're working full-time.
And we certainly, at Single Grain,
we actually encourage that.
We encourage people to have side hustles
because whatever learnings they get from their side hustles,
they will translate it over
to one of the companies that we have
that they're working for.
And for a lot of people are like,
"Oh, you know, it's not good to let people
have side hustles.
It's a distraction."
People are going to be people,
and you might as well maximize what they're doing
and encourage people to do that.
And if their side hustle turns out great,
they were gonna quit anyway, so let 'em go do it,
let them go do something amazing.
By the way, I did this before.
I was working at a company
and they found out
that I was trying to start this digital agency,
which was not competitive to the company.
I was working on a media company.
And one of the leads reached out to the front desk
and then I got fired.
And then from there, I just went all in on the agency.
While I was working the full-time job,
I was reaching out to my "Dream 100."
So there's this book called "The Ultimate Sales Machine"
by the late Chet Holmes,
and it talks about this Dream 100.
These are the top 100 people that you wanna work with.
So, everyday, I was trying to get a little closer,
just reaching out to people.
I would use, back then it was called the Data.com.
And then now you can use a website like hunter.io
to find emails.
You can use LinkedIn to find titles.
You can also reach out to people on LinkedIn as well.
But my main thing was I was reaching out to people
while I had the safety net of my full-time job.
I was answering questions on Cora.
Things have changed.
There are different online communities.
Now, there are Facebook groups, you can make YouTube videos,
LinkedIn organic reach is great.
These are the things that I would be using now
to try to prospect.
So I'd be creating content while I'm spearing people.
So aiming for people on my dream 100 list.
Maybe it's VPs of marketing
or maybe it's CEO's that I wanna be working with.
You gotta figure out, first, what is your niche?
Who are the types of clientele
that you do really well with?
You're creating some content on LinkedIn,
where organic reach is very strong.
Maybe you might be doing some YouTube as well.
What I would say is,
if you're gonna start creating content,
pick one channel first.
Don't try to view too many,
'cause it's gonna take you
probably two to three years to compound.
LinkedIn, you might be able to strike lightning in a bottle
because organic reach is great.
You stick with one content channel first
and understand that it's going to take time
to build that up.
And then the other thing I would do is,
maybe every single day,
you're reaching out to five, 10, 15 people or so,
and maybe you're making a video on Loom.
So it's L-O-O-M.
And you can use Loom to make a quick two to three minute,
five minute screen casts
saying, "Hey these are the three things
I found wrong with your site.
Let me know if you'd like to chat about it."
And then maybe what you're sending
in the email subject line is, three issues with your site.
'Cause people are always like,
if I'm a CEO is like, "Oh, there's issues on my site?"
Boom, they would forward it to someone else,
the relevant person on their team
because they wanna be fixing the issues on the site.
So you have a good headline.
You have three minutes,
five minutes showing that you've done the work
and you're doing this as much as you can
to build up your clientele.
In the early days, you charge whatever you can.
We're talking about getting to your first 100K, right?
So, maybe you're charging, could be a $1,000 a month,
$2,000 a month, $3,000 a month.
And then as you get bigger and bigger,
you can start to charge more and more.
You can just start to charge 10,000 a month, 15,000,
20,000 a month, 50,000 a month.
We've talked about creating content,
we've talked about reaching out to people,
but also, get listed on these other websites,
these digital marketing websites.
Get listed on Upwork, get listed on freelancer.com,
get listed on marketerhire.com.
These are all job marketplaces
where they'll pair you with people looking for,
people that are looking for marketing help,
they'll be looking for you.
And start building your reviews up.
You can use clutch.co.
That's where you can list your agency as well.
That's an agency directory.
There's a whole host of things you can be doing,
but I think being proactive,
controlling the things that you can control.
Put out one piece of content.
Try to go for every single day.
Try to reach out to a couple *people
set number every single day.
That's output that you can control,
and eventually the numbers will fall in your favor.
And just understand that,
hey, to take a lot more pressure off of you,
ideally, if you have a full-time job,
you're doing this after your full-time job,
to build the agency up.
And your goal is to get to that 100K.
Just understand too when you're doing deals,
when you're trying to close deals,
that every no brings you closer to a yes.
Don't feel down.
Use it as fuel, use it as energy
to get stronger and stronger.
I think also understanding that your network
is your net worth.
Being part of virtual networks
or being part of in-person networks.
I'm in a lot of different communities.
I go to the Ted Conference every single year,
and that's great.
Very high level of people that attend.
I'm in entrepreneur groups
like Entrepreneurs' Organization, YPO, MasterMind Talks.
I also throw my own groups as well.
We have a group called The Growth Accelerator,
which is a peer group
where it's seven to nine figure entrepreneurs.
So my point of telling you this
is that that's always been important to me,
hanging out with like-minded people,
throwing dinners, things like that.
Even when I had no network at all
and I didn't really have a lot of experience,
I would throw dinners at my house.
I'd pay for dinner.
Sometimes I couldn't even afford to pay for dinner.
Get a group of people together.
We all learn.
We'd put each other on the hot seat and we'd learn.
And now you have the advent of Twitter spaces, of Clubhouse,
a lot of different drop-in audio options.
It's a great way to do speed networking.
To me, it's speed relationship building.
So understand that everything you're gonna be doing
in the agency world
is really built off of relationships.
A lot of agencies I know that don't really do good work,
their founders have really good relationships.
So that's what you wanna get good at doing.
Even though I'm an introvert,
what I do is, if I go to a conference,
I'll get a group of speakers together
and then I'll throw the dinner.
So every time I go somewhere for a conference,
I'll try to get a group of people together
and I'll just cover the bill.
It just makes it a lot easier.
And so that is stuff that compounds over time
and you just become the connector.
Relationships last a lifetime.
What I would also say is,
as you work towards the 100K, maybe you're hiring some help.
Maybe you're hiring some freelancers.
You can go to Upwork, you can go to freelancer.com,
the sites I mentioned earlier,
you could actually go there too to hire help.
A lot of people are looking to also get work.
Eventually what you wanna do is go from freelancer
and then level up all the way to full-timers
'cause those full-timers are going to be bought in.
I'm really just talking about the first 100K here,
so I'll, I'll make another video talking about
how you can start an agency
but then take it to seven figures or so.
But I'm talking about the first six figures right now.
There's a lot of work to get to seven figures,
then eight figures, and then so on.
Just keep playing the game.
So, anyway, if you enjoyed this video,
don't forget to check out the next video over here.
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All right, see you later.
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