Go from a 9-5 to running your agency full time

I understand a lot of people that have subscribed to this newsletter are still working 9-5 but have an interest in wanting to run their agency full time.

Maybe you have a couple of clients already but you’re unsure how to take it to the next level of having 5-10 consistently, earning double or triple your current wage to minimise the risk of quitting that ‘safe’ 9to5.

When I quit my job in April I didn't have any guidance, I burnt the boats and went all in.

I probably wouldn’t recommend that approach to 99% of people, but at the same time that’s exactly what was needed and pushed me forward to get to where im at today.

If you want to be an entrepreneur you need to think like the 1% not the 99%, so take it as you want to.

Regardless, here’s a few pieces of advice to anyone thats in that transition period or looking to go from full time work to full time agency.

1. Planning

One of the things I noticed straight away is the freedom. Whilst yes it’s a blessing to not have to answer to anyone ever again, there’s no routine, no structure for your days set by your manager or list of things to do, so its down to you to keep that in place and constantly refine it for highest productivity. Let’s not bullshit and say you need to do 12 hours of work everyday, nobody is productive on the 12th hour. If your productivity peaks after 3 hours straight then do 3 hours split that with an hour or two break and work 6 hrs per day.

What you need to do is stick to your plan, plan your agency moves in quarters, i use the war map which I’ve covered before to plan ahead the next 3 months and implement everything as i set out. It keeps me accountable, keeps the business growing and im focusing on 3 months at a time rather than the day ahead. I have a plan for 3 months, broken down to months, weeks and days. Whilst yes that’s down to change if i sign a client and have to onboard them as an example the overview never does, what i set out before the quarter gets done no matter what.

2. Product development

Make sure your product that you’re offering as a service is 11/10. You don’t want satisfied customers. They’re only one wrong move away from leaving. An extremely happy customer stays no matter what mistake you might make. It leaves more room for mistakes and yes you will make them, everyone does. Develop your product on a daily/weekly basis. Constantly seek to improve whether thats through research on YouTube, speaking to your customers or speaking to other agency owners (which is why i really want to start a community - let me know if you’d be interested in one - here’s a waitlist if you are: https://forms.gle/9QpRQYJnPU69Q5VF7

Look to develop your product and make your customers worth more, can you upsell any additional services, chat bots, media management, content creation, a wide range of different services that can be sold to a business you’re already working with, that trusts you, knows and likes you.

3. Increase Outreach Volume

Pump the volume of outreach even more now you have more time. Don’t do what I did and spread yourself thin and do, calls, DMs, emails, content, paid ads… recipe for burning yourself out. Which I almost did. Focus on one method that’s working, and increase volume, if you fatigue your audience, look to reach out to the next best thing and not a completely different industry or niche. Constantly look to increase your numbers of outreach as the input of outreach not only counts twice, once for the experience and two for the outcome but also it massively lags behind. You reach out to a prospect, have 5-8 follow ups you dont know when the business will come. It’s never as instant as most think.

4. Investing into acquisition of new customers

When you’re already making money from clients, ie have a couple clients on retainers and dont yet run the agency full time, don’t be afraid to pay to acquire more. As long as you have a steady income, id put the entire cash collected after running costs into advertising to bring in more clients. Look to collect reviews, testimonials and build case studies of clients work and run those as paid ads. £10-£20 is a decent enough budget to start 3-5 conversations per week with business owners - i’m not saying you’ll be signing 3-5 clients. But you will be starting conversations which is super important.

If you’re looking to elevate your service delivery of lead generation using facebook ads i’m going to shamefully plug my blueprint which has helped 10s of people at this rate and i’ve had great feedback on it: https://stan.store/k23online/p/get-my-facebook-lead-generation-blueprint-now

i’ve plenty of vids on my youtube channel dropping over the next 6 weeks, a fuck ton of value all about agencies, growing scaling, offers, customer acquisition, show up rates and the lot so go and sub - https://www.youtube.com/@konradkujawa

Have a great week!