Rob da Costa tells agency owners how to stop trading hours for money. Pick a narrow niche, sell your processes instead of yourself, build systems so clients work with your team not just you, and hire account managers before creatives to scale without burning out.
They want to outsource to freelancers or offshore work. And so their business that turns we turned over one and a half million pounds. Theirs. Their business that turns over one and a half million could be them and a bunch of freelancers. Someone else's could be a small team of five or six. So I think it starts off by having some very honest, soul searching conversations around what do you want? What do you really want?
Walk us through a typical example in the book. Let's say I am. I've had an agency for three years, but it's really just me. Let's say I live in London and I've got half a dozen clients and I'm making, let's say a quarter of a million dollars a year, which is not a lot of money in a place like London. I mean you're not, you're not living in the fanciest penthouse with that. But I'm doing okay. I find that I am. I'm doing it all myself. Maybe I use a few freelancers, but every single client is expecting my call, you know, me returning their call. And without realizing it, I'm working late at night, mornings, weekends, holidays. How is your book going to help me transition to ideally making more money and working less or at least making the same amount of money and not being on call 24 7?
Yeah, I think the first thing is to decide what you want to be, whether you want to be, have that kind of freelancer mindset, which is what you've just described your business as, or where you want to have that entrepreneurial growth mindset.
And actually let's assume for this scenario I do want to be an entrepreneur, I do want to grow, but I want to have a life too.
Yeah, yeah. So we've got a bunch of things in place. First of all, we need to get super clear about who your niche or your niche is and who your ideal target customer is. And it can't be everybody. It can't be anyone that wants advertising or anyone that wants PR or, you know, so the more narrowed down the niche we can get, the more specialist you are. And the more specialist you are, the higher the fees you can charge. And then you can stop being a busy fool. It's funny, one of the very first blogs I ever wrote when I launched my business back in 2007 was entitled Being a Busy Fool. And it's still the what the most searched term that I find that drives traffic to my website. So we don't want to be a busy fool. And what I mean by that Is we don't want to be working all hours, you know, answering the phone because everyone wants you, and yet not earning very much money. Because let's face it, the business owner is always the last person in line to get paid, not the first person in line to get paid. So we need to put. We need to decide on your niche, we need to have a roadmap, and then we need to start putting the systems and processes in place so that you can delegate work and you can be confident that it's going to be delivered to a good level that represents your brand. And the clients will be happy to work with Jane and Fred and not just you.
Because for the purposes of our hypothetical, hypothetical, let's say it's luxury brands, things like purses and dresses. So big industry and yet wildly demanding clients who want to micromanage the look and feel of every print ad, of every TV ad, video ad. How do I. How do I really grow? Because I can't just tell the. The founder, you know, a very. I can't tell Stella McCarthy. Oh, you got to talk to my intern now, my freelancer in Indonesia. It's not going to work that way. Right.
I am really convinced that people buy processes. And if we can. I know that sounds very dry, but what I mean by that is if I can say to you, look, Stella, I can get you from here to here, and here's my proven way of doing it. And actually, I'm not the best person to take you through this. My creative director is the best person to work with you at the beginning. And then my account team are the best people to get the best price for your. For your ads. I'm there to kind of help set the strategy and oversee the quality. But I am not the best person. So I am really convinced that people by process. So when we are promoting what we do, we really want to promote that repeatable process, because that gives people comfort that we can actually deliver the result that they're looking for. But if all I'm doing is promoting Rob da Costa, and then of course, the client is always going to want Rob da Costa on the account, and the minute someone else is working on it, they're going to feel not very important anymore, and they're going to feel like, well, we're not good. We're not big enough for you anymore, and they're going to leave. So it's about getting that positioning right at the beginning. It's about selling your brand and not just you. And it's about identifying this process that you Take clients through so that they are comfortable that you can get the result that you are promising and that they're looking for.
The book is the self running agency. Back to our hypothetical. So let's say it's the individual making 250,000 a year wanting to get bigger. How do they, how do they hire a creative director? Especially if it's in a place like London or does it even need to be without taking their own salary down to almost zero?
Yeah, well, the truth of it is tj that the first people you hire, you're in that situation is not going to be a creative director. The first thing you need to do when you're looking at hiring staff is creating a bigger well of people that can do the work. If you sort of mean. So if you're, if your cup is this big, well then the first hire I need to do is get more people to make my cup bigger so that I can then focus on my superpower. And let's face it, the agency owner's superpower is always going to be winning new business and setting the strategy and being that figurehead. It isn't necessary. Yes, they might think they can deliver the work better than other people, but they're asking the wrong question there. They shouldn't be saying can can. If I hire someone, will they do it as well as me? They need to be saying if I hire someone, can they do it well enough to keep the client happy. The first person you're going to hire is not going to be a creative director. It's probably going to be an account exec, an account manager. And in places like London it's super tough. I mean, I have this conversation all the time either with people who are in a big city who struggle to hire or. Or people who are out of the big city and struggle to hire because everyone wants to work in the big city. But you know, today is so different to what it was back in the 90s when I ran my agency. Because today staffing an agency could be made up in multiple ways. Remote workers, offshore workers, freelancers, part time, full time.
You're Not Being Judged on Your Work Yet: What New Hires Are Really Evaluated On
