Good news. Successisguaranteed.
Find the nearest growth advice and follow it. These tactics (even cold email) will work over time.
The bad news is it takes too long.
I should have warned you there was bad news. TBF, you should have anticipated I’d use the good news/bad news structure. My writing is pretty formulaic.
Yes, if you are starting from zero with everything, growth will take a long time.
Most agencies find a shortcut.
A piece of luck or circumstance. Often this is how the agency gets started, but it can also happen at any point.
The results are transformative.
You can find your own shortcut if you know where to look.
Why we love systems
One place people search for fast growth is through systems. The software and processes by which we run our agency can make us efficient and keep us focused.
We want to make best use of our time.
The number of coaches selling “proven” ways of working shows how much we desire control through repeatable systems.
However, we can max ourselves out on systems and not leave room for anything else.
And it’s in the “anything else” that those catalysts for growth come from.
The cause of fast growth
Agencies that grow quickly combine their systems with a bit of chaos.
Good luck, good fortune, a relationship, a chance meeting, serendipity — whatever you want to call it.
They have an extra ingredient.
Sometimes it’s relatively passive: somewhere they’ve worked or someone they know. A ready-made network and reputation.
Sometimes it’s something they got involved with or started, not directly related to the agency.
These ingredients equip you with an unfair advantage
A client who doesn’t care about the price and provides the profit you need to expand or a side project that blows up and becomes a lead magnet.
The advantage can simply be a default approach they’ve landed on.
If you’ve come from an environment that understands the value of your work, you might have the confidence to skip the common struggle with pricing. Instead of worrying about raising rates, you charge well from day one.
The result of any of these is that they can quickly change the level you are operating at.
And none of them came purely from inside a system.
How to get it
How can you provide an actionable process to get something that can’t be predicted?
Well, you can’t know exactly what will work, but you can increase your odds.
When you play a game you aren’t in control of whether you win, you are only in control of playing well.
These unfair advantages may feel like things that people justhave. But they didn’t always have them. They chanced upon them
Make room in your system for more chance.
Try this: Put an hour in your diary and plan something completely inefficient that involves other people.
Go for a juice or a coffee with someone you used to work with.
Attend an event run by someone who won’t ever be a client but who you find exciting.
Better yet, start something:
- Invite a bunch of interesting people to breakfast together
- Post something valuable on LinkedIn
- Offer to mentor someone
Allow yourself to be inefficient.
Allow yourself to procrastinate.
Don’t ask for a return, only make sure you enjoy it so it can become a habit.
The more you do it the higher the chances that you create change.
Spot the moments
The people selling systems have forgotten how they got there, but you can play detective.
Find any interview with a founder and learn to spot these moments of chaos. The interviewer will focus on the things in the founder’s control, but as part of the story, you’ll hear the unfair advantage they had.
How would you make those happen?
You can read about my agency-changing piece of luck here.
No one starts a business from zero
You need hard work, talent, and systems. Not everything that affects your agency comes from inside your agency.
You are part of an economy, and avoiding outside influence is impossible.
Every success story has an element of luck.
So you either need to wait for your luck.
Or get outside your systems and make your own.