An Agency Growth Story - The No BS Way
Running a 1-2 person branding agency can be a tough gig, and taking it on isn’t for the faint of heart. But on the flip side, being on payroll and clocking in and out is way more terrifying!
So as you go on this rollercoaster, I’m going to tell you how I navigated it in my own branding agency growth, what I do today that keeps it thriving, and what you can take on for your own journey.
Hourly rates, to packaged services - your ticket to predictable growth
Once upon a time, when my husband Steve and I had set up our branding agency, over 10 years ago, we did what everyone else does - estimated how many hours we’d need to spend on a project, work out an hourly rate that wasn’t too high, wasn’t too low, and then present that to the client.
It didn’t always go well. Some clients were OK with our fees. Some ran for the hills.
The ones that were OK with our fees, though, always had SOME consideration in the background…
“...could you maybe just do this thing too?”
“...if I don’t like it, could I get a refund?”
“...how about I pay you half now, and the rest when the job is done?”
Such bullshit.
When I look back on it, it makes my skin crawl. How could I have said yes to those conditions? Was I that desperate?
Well, yeah. We both were. Steve and I were busy trying to make a name for ourselves, get as many clients as possible, and we’d pretty much take anything that came along.
Sound familiar yet?
We all go through that phase in our branding agencies, but the important thing to get is that it IS just a phase.
It’s not meant to be the way you continue to run your agency - if you are, then there’s a good chance you’re not making as much money as you want to.
So we were having one of those moments one day where we were totally burnt out, again. We’d got to a point where we’d been selling high-ticket branding projects (tens of thousands of dollars) so it looked like we were finally living the dream.
Except it was costing us almost as much to deliver those projects, and then some.
And it was all because of the ‘extra’ stuff that we ended up doing for our clients. The long project timelines that started off as a couple of weeks, but dragged on for months.
Each week the client extended the scope, meant we were losing hundreds of dollars in new revenue. And we wanted to be ‘good people’, so we didn’t charge any extra for all those additional hours of revisions, meetings etc. (I could kick myself!)
Something had to give. Steve and I were walking around like zombies, barely functioning as we were beyond tired the whole time. We weren’t getting to spend time with our families, and we couldn’t even remember the last time we went on vacation.
Steve then said ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could just take all those parts of the project we love to do, leave out all those meetings, revisions and crap, and just sell that as a stand-alone branding service?’
That got me thinking. It would be SO great to do that, but would anyone really buy that?
I could see the dollar signs lighting up in my eyes as I could see how we could get out of this financial hole we’d dug ourselves into, but I didn’t know if people would really go for it. After all, any prospect or client we’d done business with always insisted on more revisions and extras that weren’t in the contract. Hell, the whole industry is built on this kind of bullshit!
But there was something inside me that just had to try it - we had literally nothing to lose. If it didn’t work, we could always go back to the old way.
And that’s how our Brandshrink™ and Brandup™ were born - and to this day, they are the ONLY ways you can hire me and Steve to do your branding.
And I teach it to all my students now, so they never have to deal with what I did.
I’ll lay it out for you, and I want you to try it out in your agency, especially if your situation is anything like ours was.
The Brandshrink™ is our strategy piece - where we deep dive into the brand, figure out ALL the things the client needs, before we even touch Adobe.
In fact, this is how I describe it on my agency website - worstofalldesign.com:
YOU'RE BADASS: WORSTOFALL DESIGN WILL FIND OUT WHY
The interview is a mind clearing, eye opening experience, addressing key questions like, is your message digestible? Does it stand out as being different? Is it disrupting people's thinking, & inspiring a curiosity that has them begging for more?
WE GET IN YOUR HEAD
The time you spend in this session will have you thinking about your brand and business in new ways, while the Worstofall team takes it all in and pushes it through our irreverent lens to identify how to pitch your badass value proposition - the special sauciness that compels people to engage and buy.
And it literally is that. We spend 90 min-2.5h with a client getting everything on the table - where they are now, what they want, what’s in the way of them getting there, and a bunch of other stuff.
Once that part is over, we compile all that into a client brief - we say back to them everything they said so they know they’ve been heard, and that we’re on the same page, and then we scope out how to make that happen.
That ‘scoping’ is basically telling them all the brand elements they need, and what we will deliver. When we started doing these, we made sure that we left out things like ‘multiple revisions’ and ‘meetings any time’ - we had to put an end to all that crap.
We then have a follow up call with the client after they’ve had a chance to go over that brief, and they can ask any questions about the brief, and about the next stage of the project.
More often than not, the clients are so ecstatic about the whole process, that they hire us on the spot to complete the entire branding project - aka the Brandup™.
When we started those, we only offered one option, but over time, we found that didn’t cover all the types of clients we saw.
So if you go to our website today, you might see a few options, but the principle is the same. Here’s our blurb about the Brandup™:
STEP 2. - MAKE IT HAPPEN WITH A BRANDUP™
After our Brandshrink interview reveals what makes you different, we show you off with Badass Branding that gets you noticed, remembered, loved and shared. Our Brandup executes your entire brand, from developing the strategy & message through designing and building the website, and gets you out there selling immediately. (no joke)
Needless to say, our revenue and profits turned around pretty quickly after we kept doing this - we were clearly on to a winner! Our agency was bringing in $30-$50k/mo consistently, all because we went all in. And now I love teaching my students to do the same thing.
There’s a few things you need to know about this approach, if you’re going to use it in your branding agency:
You get paid upfront for each stage. Our Brandshrink™ took everything we would do anyway (usually for free) and turned it into a stand-alone, off-the-shelf product that was easy to buy.
Start at a price point that you know you can easily sell. You’ll see that we charge just shy of $10,000 for our Brandshrink™ and $35,000+ for the Brandup™. Probably an eye-watering amount, right? Which is why we didn’t start there! Each time we took on a new client, we upped our rates, till we got to a point that was great for us AND the client. You’ll get there too - our students frequently tell us how much more they’re charging, and getting, by following this process.
Once we had this dialed in, everything just got a whole lot easier. We could actually plan ahead as we were banking profits that we could put into savings for ourselves and our young son, reinvest into the business and just have fun by taking a 2 month tour of Europe one summer!
Adapting to curveballs
We all know what happened in 2020 - do we even need to go there?
Well, only to illustrate that businesses deal with curveballs all the time - it’s just that, in 2020, the whole world was dealing with the same bigass curveball on a plate.
Whether it’s something like a global pandemic, a local shift in the market where people just aren’t investing in branding, or the Fed playing around with the interest rates again, you need to have your agency set up so that it can weather those times and be around for the long haul.
One way we did this in Worstofall Design was setting up our revenue cycles so that we weren’t living month-to-month, but instead planning what we needed in a year.
We sat down and did the math. We put ALL our expenses down in a spreadsheet - business and personal. We took everything that was a monthly outgoing, and worked out how much it was annually, and totaled it up.
Then, we worked out how many Brandshrinks™ and Brandups™ we needed to sell in a year to meet those annual figures.
What that revealed was actually really refreshing.
We worked out that if we sold a bunch of Brandshrinks™ and Brandups™ in the first quarter of the year, all our finances were taken care of for the rest of that year - and in some cases, into the next quarter of the following year.
And so we got to work!
What that did was give us 9 months of ‘buffer’ time to build up any extra sales that would take care of unexpected expenses (beyond what we’d already budgeted for).
Can you imagine the peace of mind that gave us?
So this is my advice to you.
Oftentimes, curveballs are not really that unexpected (and no, I’m not including COVID).
But if you really think about it, you can prepare your agency to withstand any lull in sales, if you’ve sat down and done the math already.
Brainstorm some worst-case scenarios. If you had ZERO sales for 6 months - would you be OK?
If not, what can you do now to be OK?
Get it down on paper, get your business partner’s input, or even a family member who you trust, and let that guide your business growth and all your marketing decisions going forward.
Do the inner work to produce results
The other piece that is as critical as all the spreadsheets and calculations when it comes to business growth, is your own personal growth.
It’s not something to take lightly, and it’s definitely not something you do one time in a resort in Sedona.
If you’re committed to the rollercoaster that is owning a branding agency, and you’re really there for the long haul, you need to deal with what comes up when you lose a sale, make a sale, hire someone, fire someone and all the spaces in between.
Unless you do, you’re destined to keep making those same mistakes over and over again, and probably lose out on revenue in the process.
I’ll share a few things that you could try - I’ve done a bunch of things over the years, and I’m always looking for ways to deepen this process:
Attend seminars or courses where you deal with inner blocks, self-sabotage, impostor syndrome
Read books about people who’ve overcome adversity and turn that around - and see what you can learn from them
Listen to podcasts or audios by people who are discussing personal growth and overcoming mindset blocks
Hang out with people who are where you want to be financially - join a mastermind group if you can, or just find other places where you can spend time with them, socially or for business. There’s something pretty special when you are around people who don’t talk about living month-to-month or how expensive everything is. You actually get some freedom and clarity to set big goals for yourself, and even see a way of achieving them
Journal. It could be anything from writing out what you’re grateful for, what you accomplished or what inspires you about the world and the people around you.
The key is to make time for personal growth a serious commitment and get it on your calendar. I had to learn this the hard way in the early days of my agency, and now I make sure it’s there.
Anyone who tells you that you can be successful without doing any of this is doing one of two things:
They’re doing this work already without really thinking about it, or,
They’re straight-up lying
Either way, who cares? You do you - whatever method works for you, that is sustainable and fun.
Here’s what you need to get…
Moving from launching to growing can be one of the toughest transitions, as you’re still building momentum. With a few smart strategies, you can keep that momentum going, and profits rising.
Predicting curveballs isn’t always possible, but you can plan ‘as if’ by making smart choices in your revenue planning, so you can weather any storm.
And don’t leave out the inner work that you need to do, so you can keep yourself in a place of winning and succeeding, no matter what life throws at you.
P.S. You can always jump on a call with my team if you want to fast-track your way to business growth and all my other tools and strategies to scale up your agency - just go here to get started!