An agency founder charged £1,000 for their first placement and regretted it: the client paid late, behaved poorly, and demanded constant negotiation. A later £4,700 placement was smooth and turned into a £25,000/year client. The lesson: underpricing attracts difficult customers and kills margins.
Questions this video answers
£1,000 (≈ $1,300).
Within three weeks of starting the agency.
Took over 30 days (did not pay within the first 14 days).
£4,700 (≈ $6,000).
About $25,000 per year, with 3–4 placements a year for the next 3–4 years.
Hello, everybody. And in today's video, I wanted to share one of the biggest mistakes I made as an agency owner when I first started. So one of the first mistakes that I made was our first client and placement. Our fee was actually only £1,000, so given, give or take, $1,300, and we really gave our services away really cheaply. And at that time, I did regret that because that client actually turned into being an absolute nightmare and they wanted a lot for the work and effort that we put in. And the lessons that I took away from that was really to really value myself and my agency, even when I'm first starting, that we provide a great. And we shouldn't really be at a low level in terms of what we expect in terms of rates. And the second thing was when you do actually give away your services for nearly not free, it does have some upsides as well. But the other downside was that that prospective client or previous client actually really didn't look at me on an eye level in terms of an equal. So they sort of mistreat us in a way as well and expected so much for so little cost. But the learning curves that I learned from that, so the benefits of actually making that placement were it got the ball rolling. So it actually started us in terms of building momentum to make our first placement. So that first placement happened within three weeks of starting the agency. So it was quite quick. We could have had something quicker, but it actually started the process of understanding selling terms of business, negotiating with the client. Obviously, I didn't really negotiate very well in that first client that we had and actually getting paid. So even getting paid that thousand pounds or $1,300 was actually a nightmare. Like, they didn't even pay within the first 14 days. It took over 30 odd days to get them the money. So the lessons learned was like, don't give away your services too cheaply. Yes. When you first get started, you do have to be flexible to get your foot in the door. So I think the second placement we made after that, which I was just looking 4,700 pounds, so around about $6,000. So it was four times more than what we took for the first placement. And it was like easily five times easier in terms of the joy of working with that client. And that client led on to be a $25,000 a year client where we made three to four placements a year for the next three to four years. So there's a lot of value in that. So when you are launching your agency or you start to grow. Like you really need to build value in yourself because what you do in your niche market is worth the money. Now also you want to add value so it's not just being transactional, sending CVs. Yes, you want to give client market data advice, try and do some extra services for them, but also just don't give away yourself too cheaply because if you spend all of that time working the role for real low margins, your time is going to be absorbed and you're going to miss the opportunities with the bigger and better clients as well. And also you'll most likely the cheapest isn't always the best and normally when you are cheap, the client doesn't value your advice as much as someone that's charging a premium service. So just go into that mindset when you are negotiating your fees. Learn from my mistakes. You don't want to be negotiating a thousand pounds fee, that's for sure, with the promise of further roles down the line because that ended up being a costly mistake. But there were again with every bit of adversity or every part was a learning curve, especially for us as a business. And that truly stood in the back of my mind. And now we're charging obviously premium rates, but we do give a premium service to our clients, but obviously our average fees increased a lot more since then. So I'm interested to hear if you have started your agency already, what was your actual first placement? Tell me the story around how long that took you to make your first placement and how much was it? So off the back of that initial placement it started the ball rolling. So then in our second month we did four placements and brought in I think just under £20,000, around about $25,000. And that was like a big turning point for us because we actually had money in the bank and I remember what a great feeling it was to actually like refresh our business bank account to see that money coming from the client. There was no better feeling. And so it is all about enjoying the journey, especially when you start up. So yeah, drop your comments below. What's the biggest mistake that you've made in your agency so far? Or what has been your first placement and how much it was because where we started off to where we are now making seven figures plus an hour agency. Now that one client was a big learning curve for us. So please like and subscribe if you haven't already to the channel. And like I said, I'm always checking our comments. So I'm more than happy to respond back to any questions you have. Hi, thanks for watching today's video. If you like what you've seen, please like and subscribe the button with Entrepreneur James so you keep up to date with all of the updated videos. If you've got any questions or comment, I'd love to hear from you. So please drop a comment in Entrepreneur James below and we'll look to answer those on a weekly Q and A video. Keep an eye out for any future videos that we'll be posting. I'll be popping the video in here probably every one to two days. Thank you.
