[johnorourke]

Agency owner, ~10 years exp:

1. Talk to people. At the very start of an agency business, you get clients by talking to people - at networking events, conferences, via LinkedIn, etc. You don't get those first clients by sharing stuff on socials or doing paid ads.

2. You'll never make money if you start with that negative assumption - "companies that are strapped for cash already". Companies have cash, otherwise they wouldn't be alive. You just need to be a valuable place for them to invest that cash.

3. When you first start out as an agency, you'll do a lot of underpriced jobs, say yes to lots of things and learn a lot, but not make much money. Later you'll learn how to say no more and make more money. Read Blair Enns' book "Win without Pitching".

[gremlinsinc]

As a freelancer, I want to leverage others (I'm a Laravel dev), and step more into management/pm and agency lead, how do you get to the point of hiring others and using their talent in replacement of your own? I'd like to do full digital agency, and is it better to niche down? Like maybe just target real estate or lawyers or something?

TLDR: Burned out dev, freelancer thinking of moving into either digital agency, or maybe an ai consulting agency (I think this will be big, and i love all the ai stuff going on and am fascinated by it), trying to make the jump from 'just me' to me + subordinates.

[mrprogrammerguy]

Hook up gigs and then just get them to do the work, or what do you mean?

[mrprogrammerguy]

Thanks. Shes done a few underpaid gigs and volunteering gigs. Also done some bartering gigs. How do you progress from there?