If you're stuck trying to figure out how to start an agency, this video is packed with tips on how to get your first 7 figures and how to scale a marketing agency. To start an ad agency takes a lot of work, and many people never get to the stage where they are returning consistent profits. In this video Eric Siu uncovers his top strategies on entrepreneurship in general and how to build a marketing company from the ground up.
If you're looking for advice on starting your business, keep watching and stay tuned on our playlist here for more digital marketing insights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHSSz9dJMEk&index=2&list=PLWSSOx1A_2vX121PVP2ZjrOni1IAHfm6A
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Full Transcript of The Video
Eric Siu: Okay, we're gonna talk about how you can scale a marketing agency to seven figures and beyond. I have an agency. It's called Single Grain. We work with great companies and I can basically give you the playbook here.
At a very high level. If you think about going from zero to $1 million, it's all about product market or service market fit. People are actually enjoying your service and people are getting good value from it. That's how you get from zero to $1 million.
If you wanna go from $1 million to $5 million, it is all about the process. All about the process over and over and over. Then you go from $5 million and beyond, then you're talking about the executive team that you put together.
These executive teams, in their own mind they are entrepreneurial and they can actually get things done. They can figure things out on their own. You as an individual, you can only do so much.
I think we all, especially me in the beginning, I always thought I could do so many things. I'm very versatile. I'm very dynamic. I was Superman.
But then you realize very quickly that you're brought back down to Earth and you're, in fact, not Superman. You're only one man. You're only one woman. You're only one person. One person can only do so much.
You think about sports that you watch. It's based on a team. It's not just one individual. Championships are based on teams. What I'm gonna say is this. You have to think about process, process, process.
When you're growing, we document a lot of the stuff that we have. It seems very boring, but what happens? Let's say you go to Chipotle, for example, or you like McDonald's. Whatever restaurant you like, you go there because you're getting the same experience every time.
It's the same good food. You expect it. You know what you're gonna get. You have to get that kind of experience with your agency, too. When you have people that are coming in, every single person is different.
But you can get them to perform in a very similar way if you have the right processes for them to follow. From onboarding to training, as well, to offboarding, all this kind of stuff, you have to have it all nailed down.
If you're doing the same thing more than three times, it's probably best for you to document it and then write it down. You can put it in a Google Drive, which you can do that for starters but then I recommend using some other tools to organize your processes down the road.
There are tools out there like Confluence, which is from Atlassian. Pipefy is another one. They actually have templates that you can follow. It's very similar to Trello. Pipefy is easy to do.
If you're starting out as an agency, it's very easy to say, "Oh, let's become full service. Let's do video. Let's do SEO. Let's do design." You're only one agency in the beginning. You can't try to be 10 agencies at the same time.
I recommend niching down on something first. For example, we started with SEO first. Then we started adding new services like paid advertising and other things on top.
If you think about Apple, for example, they started with the computer and then gradually started adding other products like the iPad, the iPhone, even the iTouch, all these other things. You gotta niche down and then you can scale from there.
I would also say this. Let's say you decide to start on paid advertising first or web design first. It's in your best interest to focus on a niche first. That might be on education, for example. That might be on software as a service.
That way, you're able to say, "Hey, we only help education companies with paid advertising." That becomes a lot easier to sell. It's a lot more tangible. That makes it easier for you.
That actually leads me to the next point. You've gotta increase your pricing. A lot of people in the agency world, I've seen big agencies, too, big agencies that I've worked at in the past. They don't really charge much and they actually make a lot of money.
Pricing is the biggest lever that you can pull to just grow your business really quickly. Don't be afraid to charge more. It's much easier for me to say this to you right now and it was much more difficult for me to implement, but we started charging more. Nobody blinked an eye.
Every year or so, think about how you can adjust your pricing. Tell your other clients that, "Hey, we're increasing our pricing. This is what it's gonna look like. If you don't wanna work with us anymore, we got some other agencies that you can talk to." Great, right?
You gotta also think about if you wanna grow to seven figures and beyond, maybe you gotta fire your most high-maintenance clients, as well.
The other thing I'll say, which I mentioned a little earlier, is hire amazing people. That's a lot easier said than done, but I've done a lot of videos on this channel about hiring great talent that you can watch and you can learn about it.
But when you hire great people, you can delegate things out. You can trust them. They're gonna come up with other ideas. They're gonna collaborate. Then you can focus on growing the business and you can focus on other opportunities. You can focus on being the visionary for the business.
Now, if you like doing the work, if you like continuing to be a freelancer, that's no problem at all. But if you wanna grow to seven figures and beyond, you're gonna have to learn to let some things go.
If you wanna grow, I mean, talking about acquiring other marketing agencies, that might be something that you wanna consider with your partners or maybe with your executive team, too.
I do know other agencies out there that go out there, focus on acquiring other agencies just to grow. That's one thing that you can do to grow. There's a lot of small agencies in other cities.
For us, let's say we wanna acquire an agency in Tennessee, for example, and they're doing maybe $100,000, $200,000 a year revenue. Maybe we offered them 2X, 3X on profit or so and maybe there's some kind of earn out, and all of a sudden we have an agency in Tennessee.
Maybe they have a couple people there and we can start to grow that out. The idea there is when you wanna scale maybe to seven, eight figures, maybe even nine figures, you gotta think about acquisition as a mode of growth, as well.
If you enjoyed this video, we've got a ton more like this. All you gotta do, hit Subscribe and I'll see you in the next one.
At a very high level. If you think about going from zero to $1 million, it's all about product market or service market fit. People are actually enjoying your service and people are getting good value from it. That's how you get from zero to $1 million.
If you wanna go from $1 million to $5 million, it is all about the process. All about the process over and over and over. Then you go from $5 million and beyond, then you're talking about the executive team that you put together.
These executive teams, in their own mind they are entrepreneurial and they can actually get things done. They can figure things out on their own. You as an individual, you can only do so much.
I think we all, especially me in the beginning, I always thought I could do so many things. I'm very versatile. I'm very dynamic. I was Superman.
But then you realize very quickly that you're brought back down to Earth and you're, in fact, not Superman. You're only one man. You're only one woman. You're only one person. One person can only do so much.
You think about sports that you watch. It's based on a team. It's not just one individual. Championships are based on teams. What I'm gonna say is this. You have to think about process, process, process.
When you're growing, we document a lot of the stuff that we have. It seems very boring, but what happens? Let's say you go to Chipotle, for example, or you like McDonald's. Whatever restaurant you like, you go there because you're getting the same experience every time.
It's the same good food. You expect it. You know what you're gonna get. You have to get that kind of experience with your agency, too. When you have people that are coming in, every single person is different.
But you can get them to perform in a very similar way if you have the right processes for them to follow. From onboarding to training, as well, to offboarding, all this kind of stuff, you have to have it all nailed down.
If you're doing the same thing more than three times, it's probably best for you to document it and then write it down. You can put it in a Google Drive, which you can do that for starters but then I recommend using some other tools to organize your processes down the road.
There are tools out there like Confluence, which is from Atlassian. Pipefy is another one. They actually have templates that you can follow. It's very similar to Trello. Pipefy is easy to do.
If you're starting out as an agency, it's very easy to say, "Oh, let's become full service. Let's do video. Let's do SEO. Let's do design." You're only one agency in the beginning. You can't try to be 10 agencies at the same time.
I recommend niching down on something first. For example, we started with SEO first. Then we started adding new services like paid advertising and other things on top.
If you think about Apple, for example, they started with the computer and then gradually started adding other products like the iPad, the iPhone, even the iTouch, all these other things. You gotta niche down and then you can scale from there.
I would also say this. Let's say you decide to start on paid advertising first or web design first. It's in your best interest to focus on a niche first. That might be on education, for example. That might be on software as a service.
That way, you're able to say, "Hey, we only help education companies with paid advertising." That becomes a lot easier to sell. It's a lot more tangible. That makes it easier for you.
That actually leads me to the next point. You've gotta increase your pricing. A lot of people in the agency world, I've seen big agencies, too, big agencies that I've worked at in the past. They don't really charge much and they actually make a lot of money.
Pricing is the biggest lever that you can pull to just grow your business really quickly. Don't be afraid to charge more. It's much easier for me to say this to you right now and it was much more difficult for me to implement, but we started charging more. Nobody blinked an eye.
Every year or so, think about how you can adjust your pricing. Tell your other clients that, "Hey, we're increasing our pricing. This is what it's gonna look like. If you don't wanna work with us anymore, we got some other agencies that you can talk to." Great, right?
You gotta also think about if you wanna grow to seven figures and beyond, maybe you gotta fire your most high-maintenance clients, as well.
The other thing I'll say, which I mentioned a little earlier, is hire amazing people. That's a lot easier said than done, but I've done a lot of videos on this channel about hiring great talent that you can watch and you can learn about it.
But when you hire great people, you can delegate things out. You can trust them. They're gonna come up with other ideas. They're gonna collaborate. Then you can focus on growing the business and you can focus on other opportunities. You can focus on being the visionary for the business.
Now, if you like doing the work, if you like continuing to be a freelancer, that's no problem at all. But if you wanna grow to seven figures and beyond, you're gonna have to learn to let some things go.
If you wanna grow, I mean, talking about acquiring other marketing agencies, that might be something that you wanna consider with your partners or maybe with your executive team, too.
I do know other agencies out there that go out there, focus on acquiring other agencies just to grow. That's one thing that you can do to grow. There's a lot of small agencies in other cities.
For us, let's say we wanna acquire an agency in Tennessee, for example, and they're doing maybe $100,000, $200,000 a year revenue. Maybe we offered them 2X, 3X on profit or so and maybe there's some kind of earn out, and all of a sudden we have an agency in Tennessee.
Maybe they have a couple people there and we can start to grow that out. The idea there is when you wanna scale maybe to seven, eight figures, maybe even nine figures, you gotta think about acquisition as a mode of growth, as well.
If you enjoyed this video, we've got a ton more like this. All you gotta do, hit Subscribe and I'll see you in the next one.
