How to Set Up a Freelance Agency

It's an awesome problem to have: your freelance business is now generating enough word-of-mouth to keep you working for a long time. In fact, it's given you more clients than you can possibly handle within a 40-hour workweek. Sure, you always have the option of turning down clients, but what if this does nothing to stem the tide of incoming work? The obvious solution is to delegate work to a cadre of freelancers like yourself, and turning what was once a humble solopreneur business into a freelance agency, managed by you.

But before you start thinking this should be easy as cake, determine if you have what it takes:

Finances: Do you have the finances to pay your freelancers while still paying your rent and giving yourself a salary? Is there enough runway to keep your agency afloat in case clients don't come through or are late with a payment? If you will collaborate with professional services, do professional service corporations have limited liability when it comes to finances?
Confidence: Are you confident enough, not just in your craft but also your managerial skills, to transition into the role of team leader? How about your business project management fundamentals?
Mindset: Are you ready to fail? Are you prepared for more complex work processes once you bring in more people? Are you ready to do a little less hands-on work yourself, and invest more time in marketing, finding, and retaining customers?

If the answer to all three questions is a resounding yes, then it's time to start.

From Solopreneur to Freelance Agency: The Main Steps

Get the Legal Stuff Done

The first order of business is a legal one: consider the pros and cons of becoming a limited liability company or an LLC. It's a business structure that will give your freelance agency limited liability. This means if your LLC is sued, then the claimants are suing the agency, not you as its owner or any investors. The LLC structure is easier to establish and simpler to maintain than a corporation. And it gives your agency pass-through treatment of income for tax purposes. Added bonus: it gives your agency the credibility of being a legal entity.

Read this for concrete steps on setting up an LLC. And here's a list of legal resources for your agency.

Gather the Talent Together

If you don't already have a network of freelancers at your disposal, then your next step will be finding the type of talent that you can build a business on. And that's a struggle that every founder and business owner has. But outside of doing the legwork yourself to hire people in your area, you could opt to hire fellow freelancers. And there is a huge number of websites where you can find them, including popular choices such as Upwork, Guru, and Fiverr. The trick is finding people who won't flake out on you and who produce quality work. Which only means, you've got to try different freelancers till you find the ones who meet your qualifications. Stick to those with high ratings and customer reviews.

Land the Big Clients

Finally, before you reveal your superstar lineup and start creating award-winning work, you will need clients. And not just the small, one-off projects that you used to take as a solopreneur. You will need to find larger clients with budgets who can afford to pay your team. Start by wooing your existing client base, to see if they have larger projects in their pipeline. Ask them to spread the word to their networks. Double up on your marketing efforts in order to keep new customers rolling in.

Choose the Right Tools

The final point here is to use the right tools for your agency. Sure, there are a ton of free tools you can use. But always look for, and test, those that make collaboration seamless. You're looking for tools that cut down on admin tasks, so that you have more time to run the freelance agency, or market to prospects. Tools that make communication easy. Tools that allow work to progress no matter where your freelancers are. As such we suggest you start with these three categories of tools:

Work management tool: Wrike for planning and managing all projects
Communication tool: favorites include Slack, Skype, Google Hangouts
File storage: favorites include Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive

Ready to Build Your Freelance Agency?

For more inspiration, watch this video interview where Matt Britton shares how he turned a one-man operation run out of his bedroom into a full-fledged, multi-million dollar agency.

If you're interested in building a freelance team that's firing on all cylinders, then download our free guide: the 7 Habits of High Performance Teams.
IMAGE CREDITS: Photo by Alejandro Escamilla on Unsplash.

Leadership 5 min read

5 Rules for the Solopreneur's Success

Ever considered a possibility of self-employment? While the idea of autonomously balancing your career and personal life appeals to everyone, there's hard work behind it. So if you wish to be your own boss, here are the 5 rules I would suggest taking into account: 1. Acquire good time-management habits When working solo, you have to wear all the hats – administrator, marketer, the actual service provider, just to name a few. To avoid being lured into spending 12 hours a day at a computer, get the most of your time. Make yourself a list of the 3-5 things you must accomplish today. Once you've prioritized, block out your time and work on these things distraction-free. Know that you cannot interrupt yourself until the most important of those things is done. 2. If you want a job done perfectly, hire a professional! The typical solopreneur is easily tempted to become workaholic, never feeling that their work is done. But it's rather misleading to think that you don't need (or want) anyone. Even if you believe that you can simply do everything better by yourself, it's always good to have others who can challenge your ideas a bit. Once you start to establish the processes to make yourself successful, hiring freelancers helps you get things done that you wouldn't normally be able to do on your own – without the overhead of full-time employees. Here are a couple websites I usually use: elance.com, odesk.com ... 3. Effective communication is king Communication is paramount for any business. When dealing with remote clients and freelancers, it's crucial to have a powerful system in place to turn your online discussions into something very close to the face-to-face meetings. I use Wrike project management software for this purpose. So, for example, when I have a task assigned to a client, they know the project doesn't go forward until their portion is done – and they clearly see that within Wrike. I also can sift through tons of e-mails in a snap. I turn e-mails into tasks and receive notifications when tasks are completed, having seamless collaboration automatized. 4. Celebrate your achievements Outside of the office cubes and corporate ladders, it's easy to lose sight of how much you've moved forward in your work. That's why it's very important to regularly track the progress of your accomplishments. I like to see what I need to accomplish in a day, week or month. I have a lot of different projects to juggle, and it's crucial that I do not drop the ball on any of them. I like to use Wrike's "Table View" to view my task lists across all projects. If I'm feeling bogged down, I filter by "Overdue" or "Due Today" to allow me to focus on what needs to get done first. I make sure that I write comments in every task and log my time so that I know I'm not spending too much time on one thing. 5. Access work when needed - anytime, anywhere Solopreneurship takes devotion and diligence, and these things do not at all involve being tied up to a certain workplace or work hours. As a person who is constantly multitasking, I like being able to add or view something crucial from my phone. It's also really nice to easily access documents on the go. And it's all available in Wrike project management software, whether I'm working from my home office, Starbucks or the beach. Are you doing any of the above as a solopreneur or in the hustle of full-time work? You are very welcome to share your experience here with us!

Leadership 7 min read

For Brand-Defining Marketing, an Olympian Emerges at Speedo

Denise Teti, Director of Marketing + Sales Promotion for Speedo USA, is our Manager-X Award winner for Predictability in Planning. We spoke with Denise about how she manages to cut through the chaos and lead her team to excellence.

Marketing 7 min read

5 Rules for Scaling Your Marketing Operations Successfully

Marketing organizations are under tremendous pressure to perform. Budgets aren’t growing, but expectations are. How do you do more with less, without compromising on quality? For marketing leaders at growing companies who are ready to expand their programs, scaling marketing operations is a top priority. But doing so comes with major challenges: coordinating different teams while managing priorities, resources, and metrics in a way that doesn’t slow you down is no easy task. But bigger doesn’t have to mean slower or less effective. By scaling your marketing operations, your growing marketing organization can stay lean and agile while continuing to deliver campaigns that impress customers and fuel business growth. Wondering what is professional services marketing and how to excel at it? Follow these five rules to scale your marketing operations successfully. Rule 1: Ensure Your Strategy & Processes are Scalable Bigger doesn’t always mean better. Scaling your marketing efforts can create needless complexity, hinder collaboration, and slow your team down. Smart planning is needed to avoid these growing pains and keep your marketing organization running smoothly. So scale back before you scale up. Examine your current processes to see where you can streamline, determine which marketing efforts are generating a positive ROI, and cut back on what’s not working as well. To help determine whether you're in a good position to scale, ask yourself these questions: Do you know what distinguishes your brand from competitors in key vertical markets, or areas you've targeted for market expansion? Can you clearly articulate that difference? Being able to scale successfully means knowing what attracts and retains the customers you've already acquired, and leveraging that knowledge for growth that's sustainable. Rule 2: Make Sure Your Team is Ready Think about your team and its current workload and responsibilities. Are they equipped to handle a ramp up in projects without neglecting current customers, products, and services? If your marketing coordinators are also supporting other departments, such as PR and customer service, analyzing performance data, and implementing new marketing tools, they’re doing too much. Go back to step one to streamline efforts and processes so your team has the bandwidth to scale. Or consider adding staff to balance your team's workload and responsibilities. Next, ask yourself: does your team have the expertise needed to launch successful campaigns in the new regions or industries you're targeting? If not, should you hire new staff now, or contract out until you have a better idea of the kind of expertise your team needs? Evaluate your current team to identify each member's strengths and expertise, find out where your talent gaps lie, and hire for those roles. Rule 3: Fail to Delegate, Fail to Scale According to a report done by CMO Council and Deloitte, 45% of CMOs say they spend most of their time reviewing and approving marketing plans, budgets and campaigns. 42% say most of their day is spent in meetings. 66% wish they could spend more time on business strategy with fellow company leaders, and 55% want more time to implement innovative new marketing approaches. Making good decisions takes time — something few marketing leaders have enough of. So save your attention for the most important cases, and delegate whenever you can. Set your team up to be able to make good decisions on your current marketing initiatives, so you can focus on executing new strategies. Because many marketing tasks are recurring, like setting up campaigns, planning and publishing content, or promoting events, so are many of the decisions your team has to make around these initiatives. For instance, which segments or channels should a new campaign target? Which metrics will you use to track success? Create templates for recurring tasks and projects, so processes are standardized and easy to follow. Set up reporting dashboards that make it easy to measure and share results. This visibility lets you quickly check in on campaigns without spending all your time in meetings, and it allows your team to stay aligned on priorities and know exactly what their colleagues are responsible for, and what goals they're driving towards. Email and spreadsheets are about the least scalable solution there is, so find a work management tool that can grow with your team. This guide will help you evaluate your options and find the right fit for your needs. Rule 4: Embrace Automation It’s the central puzzle of marketing: sending the right message to the right person at just the right time. But as you ramp up your marketing machine, launching simultaneous, complex campaigns, it becomes more and more difficult to do so. In order to keep up with the complexity and volume of customer and campaign data, you need the right technologies to track, analyze, and optimize your marketing efforts. So how do you scale without losing the personalization that's resonated with your customers and fueled your current successes? Leveraging marketing automation tools allows you to send highly targeted messages to leads and shorten the marketing cycle. Automated lead nurturing helps you build relationships with customers through helpful emails, follow-ups, social media engagement, etc., to determine when they’re truly sales-ready. And by automating your creative workflows, you streamline repetitive tasks, cut down on errors, and execute faster. Rule 5: What Can’t Be Measured Can’t Be Improved A recent study by HubSpot found that only 23% of companies are exceeding their revenue goals — and of those not exceeding their goals, 74% don’t know the number of monthly visits, leads, MQLs, or sales opportunities they need. How can you grow your customer base and revenue streams when you don’t now how leads are coming into or moving through your marketing funnel? When you’re tracking the right things, growth becomes a much simpler task. Focus on metrics that make you a customer-centric organization, so you get actionable data and timely user feedback that pushes your company forward. Find out which marketing initiatives are creating value in order to improve results, boost ROI, and deliver mature leads to your sales team. Being able to properly attribute revenue across each of your marketing activities is key to knowing where to place your resources to fuel growth. Basic metrics like lead volume and website traffic are important, but failing to dive deeper means you’re missing out on key insights into your marketing performance, and valuable opportunities for improvement. MQL to SQL ratio, unengaged subscribers, and other advanced marketing metrics will give you deeper insight into what's driving your success and where you should focus your attention. And don’t just measure campaign results; measure the effort that goes into them as well. Evaluate campaign performance based on two factors: did your efforts produce the desired outcomes? And did the outcome justify the resources required? Maximize Growth and Stay Lean With the right foundation of marketing operations, you can grow your marketing organization into a responsive team that’s able to capitalize on customer needs and market trends. Teams that embrace the Agile marketing framework stay lean while improving productivity and efficiency. In fact, 87% of CMOs have found their teams to be more productive after transitioning to Agile marketing. Get in-depth strategies for making your growing marketing team more Agile in this free guide, 7 Steps to Developing an Agile Marketing Team. Sources: Oktopost.com, Blog.marketo.com, Inc.com, Blog.Hubspot.com

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How to Set Up a Freelance Agency