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So You Want To Start a Web Agency? Read This First.

The dream of running your own business, the creation of an empire where you answer to nobody but yourself. You have employees, or outsourcers doing your dirty work. You’re financially free and have no worries. That’s the dream isn’t it? You’re motivated to take action and finally live the life you always wanted.

Then reality hits in. Things aren’t as easy as you thought it would be. Creating an empire isn’t on your mind anymore, staying afloat and surviving is now your top priority. You figured out you can’t outsource everything you wanted and bills are piling up. The live you wanted to live seems so distant that you don’t even know what life is anymore.

It’s a common theme among those starting out or even those that are more advanced but needing to hit a higher level.

The Reality Behind Starting Your Own Web Agency

It doesn’t matter what you’re offering, SEO, web design, digital marketing, lead generation, offline marketing or countless other services, you’re going to have some struggles.

I’ve been there and have done that. I’m very familiar with the struggle. Beginners or those new to the business or industry think that once you reach a certain level, your problems are over. However, that isn’t the case. Once you reach a new level or overcome certain roadblocks you just get to the next roadblock and have to overcome a new set of obstacles.

It never changes. You constantly have to adapt, personally and professionally.

There are a few things you need to consider before deciding to pursue this journey.

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Get Your Financial Ducks In a Row

If you purchased my Ultimate Blueprint To Start a Web Agency, and read the introduction, my story, you know I didn’t have my financial ducks in a row at all. In fact, I started my business out of desperation, I needed to make money fast and I knew a good deal about designing websites and eventually dived into SEO.

While it is certainly possible to grow a successful company from absolutely nothing, I can recognize that statistically it just isn’t likely.

One of the biggest causes of failure in starting your own business is having a lack of capital. Not enough money to fund your operations will force you to give up before you even had a reasonable shot at success.

If you’re barely scraping by as it is right now, and you’re thinking about quitting your job to pursue this full time, then I strongly recommend thinking twice about it.

In an ideal situation, you would have at least 6 months worth of bills saved up before getting into this, preferably 12 months. This allows you to handle some of the swings you will have when running your own business. Some months you’ll be making sales and other months you will have a down turn. It’s very difficult to predict what your income will be when you’re starting out in this industry.

Another thing you must consider financially, is cutting out the crap. If you eat out a lot, or spend a lot of money on food, a diet of grilled cheese and ramen noodles will likely be in your future. You don’t have a guaranteed paycheck when you have your own business, the only guaranteed paycheck is the one you write to the IRS, assuming you have any profit whatsoever.

The truth is, you have to be committed to this, and your finances need to reflect that or else you’re going to be pouring money down a bottomless pit and be in a very bad situation!

You Need To Invest TIME Into Your Business

It’s funny how when most people think of investing they rarely think about the time investment involved. The time investment is probably even more important than any kind of financial investment you’ll be making. I consider time in everything when it comes to business, for example, one blog post I wrote yesterday talked about the enormous time investment for inbound marketing.

We all wish we could outsource 100% of our business but I’m here to wake you up from that dream and tell you it’s time to face reality. You can’t outsource it all, you can’t outsource yourself. The greatest E-Myth and catch phrase of all time is “work on your business, not in it” and that is regurgitated in almost all business and marketing circles. However, it’s not relevant to you.

You can’t help but work IN your business when you’re starting out. Working “ON” your business and not in your business is a dream for when you reach the peak of a mountain in success.

So if you think this is a good business idea because you can simply outsource everything, and not invest much time into your company, you will almost certainly fail.

That doesn’t mean you can’t outsource, or find people to do something that you can’t efficiently handle…

What you outsource or delegate, depends on 2 things.

1.) Do you have more money than time?

or

2.) Do you have more time than money?

If you have more money than time then you can afford a few luxuries but if you’re serious about running a new business, especially offering services in a B2B environment, you will find that it still requires more than money, it requires time.

You Need To Have a Plan… and Execute That Plan

Another thing I see people doing, is jumping into this will all their heart but not having any sense of direction or a concrete plan.

If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.

When I say have a plan, I don’t mean…. my plan is to make money and sell stuff to businesses. It doesn’t work like that. You need to have a real, detailed plan about what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it.

You need to have a plan for fulfillment and how you will deliver on the work you have. When you sell to a company, how will you handle the work flow? What will you use to manage the project? Are you going to do it all yourself, or will you have a team of outsourcers to help?

You need to have a plan for marketing and how you’re going to generate leads for yourself. What methods will you use? Do you have a decent amount of money to invest into paid marketing or will you just be using free methods? Will you be utilizing email marketing or will you cold call businesses to sell your stuff?

What about lead nurturing? Do you have a blogging strategy that you can also use for lead nurturing purposes?

You need to have a concrete plan for your business, from how you’re going to get started and get your first client, all the way to fulfillment and customer satisfaction followups.

Having a plan though, is only one part of the battle… it is up to you to be able to execute that plan.

Summary

Starting your own freelancing operation or your own web design company or web agency is an attractive goal for many reasons. However, a lot of product creators and people “selling the dream” ignore the important things that you need to know in order to get started.

When I started out, I didn’t have this advice, I didn’t really have a plan I just kept on going on, trying to move forward without knowing what forward was. I didn’t have money saved up, if I did, I could have avoided a lot of problems.

If you’re interested in venturing out and getting started, great! Just try to follow these 3 little tips before you do.

I wrote the book on starting your own web agency… seriously, I did. It’s the “Ultimate Blueprint” that includes everything from creating a unique selling proposition, to understanding your buyer personas, accepting payment, marketing your business to acquire clients with full detailed guides including using LinkedIn, Email Marketing, Craigslist and much more. Don’t be left in the dark, get the Ultimate Blueprint To Start a Web Agency for the ultimate plan for success.

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