How to go from Freelance Creative to Agency Owner

Plus, lessons from my experience of setting up an agency. 

Last week, I was invited to speak at SHIFT—a fantastic digital conference event for students that aims to help them with the collaborative, practical and professional skills to shift into a career in the Creative Industries.

I was asked to share some knowledge about the challenge of going from a freelance creative to an agency owner or business leader. Now, I know that with all the challenges that are out there at the moment due to Covid that there will be a few of you out there who may have been forced into freelancing or you may have been doing so for a while and are looking to make that next step in the growth of your business. I’m a big believer in sharing knowledge and so I wanted to share some things you can do to help make that transition. 

Before we get into it, I guess it’s worthwhile to talk about why people decide to make this switch. For me personally, my son, Finlay was just born when I left my previous job and I had the need to make some extra money to provide for my family, which was one part of it. The other was that I had this vision of the type of agency I wanted to work in and figured no-one was going to build it for me. So, MadeBrave was born. 

Here are some ways you can get your agency up and running. 

Present yourself as an agency (even when it’s just you for now)

What’s in a name? Well, the difference between being perceived as an agency or a freelancer.

When I first left my role, I came out into the world as ‘Andrew Dobbie—Design & Photography’ but I very quickly realised that this limited the perception of the business I aimed to build. Some brands still manage to keep their founders’ name of course (Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren etc) but for me, I wanted to lay the foundations of something that was bigger than me, even when it was just me at that time. Changing the name to ‘MadeBrave’ was a conscious investment in the future; I knew that the team would grow and I wanted to be ready for when that started to happen.

Side note: If you’re stuck on a name, I can’t recommend this book enough: “Hello my name is Awesome” by Alexandra Watkins. 

However, positioning myself as an agency in the early days took a lot more than a name and writing ‘we’ even though it was just ‘me’.

Very early on, my friend Grant gave me a desk in his office (thanks Grant ??), which gave me a business address, instead of my home address. I also did all my client meetings in Starbucks because my ‘office’ was essentially a messy corner with a desk inside the office of another company.

So, why does this all matter? As we all know, it takes time to build brand awareness and positioning. When you’re moving towards becoming an agency owner, the key is to make that brand position as easy to understand as humanly possible. So, launch your agency with lots of noise, update all your profiles and let your contacts know. Also, by using 'MadeBrave' as my name with no descriptor in it, it allowed me to flex and change as the agency services changed and matured.

Find a freelance team

Most of us starting out weren’t/aren’t in the position to hire right away. To build a team in the interim, I created a network of trusted freelancers who I enjoyed working with and who could do the parts of projects that I couldn’t.

This meant that 1. I could say ‘yes’ to jobs that needed a team (eg: a designer and copywriter) and 2. I was able to provide that agency service, without the initial pressure of annual salaries. Project after project, I worked with the same pool of people, which felt as close as possible to hiring a team of my own. 

Choose your dream role (and build your team around it)

You are your agency's first hire, and although I wouldn’t recommend interviewing yourself (that could get weird) I would recommend writing a job description.

When you start out on your own it can be quite overwhelming (feeling overwhelmed? check out NABS for mental health and well-being support in the Creative Industries) and you're required to wear many hats. As well as all the creative and strategic work, you're also doing HR, Accounts, Operations, Finance, IT, Marketing, Client Services and more!

For me, quite early on I chose to stop designing and instead, focus on leading the business and building the MadeBrave brand—but that didn’t happen overnight. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy designing, quite the opposite in-fact, but as our team started to grow there was just so much else that was required to run and grow a successful business. I also realised that as the leader of the business it was my role to look after the personal and professional growth and also the physical & mental safety of each and every new team member that joined the company. Like uncle Ben from Spiderman says 'With great power, comes great responsibility'.

It has taken a long time to build the team we have now (there's over 40 of us now! Hey guys!), but in the beginning, knowing what I wanted to do day-in-day-out really helped me to find the right people for my team. If you would prefer to keep doing the creative work, your first hire should probably be someone who enjoys the business management/operational side of things. It’s completely up to you though and everyone's vision is different. I think when you are leading the business you need to try and aim for an empty desk (stick with me) - when a task lands on your desk, eventually you should have someone much better suited and more qualified around you for each and every task– eventually leaving you to have the clarity and headspace to see where you need to guide the business to next.

Side note: I'm asked a lot how you make your first hire. When I was hiring my first team member, they said “I have a family to support, so I’ll need around ￡25k or thereabouts.” I gulped and thought “oh no, I don’t have ￡25k right now.” For making your first hire, my advice would be, don’t think about that ￡25,000 as a whole, think about securing the ￡2,000 you need to pay their wages this month...and then do that again and again. 

Become completely focussed

When I launched MadeBrave, I was also a wedding and baby photographer. Altogether, I had three income streams which meant I could happily pay my bills and manage my workload as a freelancer. 

However, after I made the decision to start MadeBrave, I had to shift my attention into growing that business. This meant cutting two income streams and giving my all to one. It was a risk, but there comes a point when you have to prioritise the future over the present. From that day, all of my focus was on creating the best strategic branding agency ever—reading, learning, finding the next client, developing our brand and building the team. When you learn to focus on one thing it becomes much easier (and less stressful) to grow.

Spend time on your own brand

As some of you will know, we invest a lot of time and effort in building the MadeBrave brand and if you’ve been here since the early days (hiya ??) you’ll remember when we first started creating content and sharing it online. If I could give you one piece of advice on starting an agency, it would be to treat your business like a client and build your own brand.

In a nutshell, here’s why:

• Creatively, it shows what you can do.
• Brand awareness. 
• You build an audience who are either business owners, or people who recommend you to their business owner friends, cousins, mums, dads etc.
• People remember stories, not sales pitches. 
• You attract the type of work you put out there. 
• It’s a way to communicate your company culture. 
• You can use it as a testing ground to understand what works and what doesn’t.
• You attract the right people to join your team and clients who 'get' you.
• You differentiate yourself from the thousands of other agencies out there.

Side note: I’ve written an entire post on branding a brand agency, which goes into more detail if you want to read more. 

Pitch like an agency and solve business problems

Hands up if you’ve ever thought “no way, [enter brand here] is too big, they’d never work with me” ???♂? 

Well, says who? Every agency that has ever existed has been exactly where you are right now. When you decide to become an agency, you need to see yourself as an agency and pitch for projects that you would’ve previously considered ‘too big’ for a freelancer. Don’t be afraid to reach out and talk to or make contacts with people who can help you land a project with that brand you’d give your left arm to work with. The people in these businesses are just people like you or I. And, if you can prove you'll help solve their business challenges using your creativity then they'll pick you time and time again. Once you have one or two successful projects, shout about them to attract more. With each and every project, you level up. 

When you hear from agency owners (myself included) everyone talks about the day they left their job, to the day they hired their first team member—but what about all that time in between? Even though the transition period isn’t a milestone, our experiences in that time are what can really help the next generation of agency start-ups. I hope this post has helped!

Agency owners (and brand owners too) what did you learn when growing from a one-person team? I’d love to hear your advice and stories in the comments below. 

PS: For more learnings on money, pitching and personal branding, go to my post on 17 Lessons I’ve Learned Through Growing a Creative Business.