A design agency appears because a person exhibits four qualities:
- Creative talent, taste, eye, precision, and an ability to execute.
- Strategic thinking, the ability to connect a real problem with a solution.
- Commercial nous. The ability to sell, persuade, and negotiate price.
- Entrepreneurial drive and accountability.
With these four things, a business appears around a person.
And you become entangled.
The same thing that meant you could start an agency is the thing that gets you stuck.
And this is why it feels like your fault. Because it is.
It’s your fault it started and your fault it’s stuck.
While reading this article it’s important to remember that running a design agency didn’t make you like this, your skills and instinctive behaviours have self-selected you as a design agency founder.
So you get started (and we are proud of you for that, not many manage it), and you start the journey straight down the design agency founder entanglement spiral.
So cynical.
There is probably a brief period of time on the lip of the spiral where you aren’t stuck and you feel like you can grow this thing forever.
Remember it?
Great. Let’s move on.
Let’s understand the areas you get stuck that founders of other types of agency don’t.
Selling is more complex and you have to do more of it
When people want design it’s because they have a problem and don’t know the solution. The sales process is therefore more consultative and requires the most experienced person in the business. You.
On top of that you need to do more of it. There is a natural demand for project work in design. The largest value design can deliver is going from old to new. Consequently, retainer work is lower value, leading to more “churn” (or as we call it, the end of a project). This leads to more pressure on new business. More pressure on you.
Talent is hard to find and afford
You need people skilled in client management, commercial sense, design taste, and execution. It’s rare and expensive to find these qualities. It’s no surprise that the only person you can afford to do it is the one willing to work extra for less money. You.
Your ability to do great work will both grow you and increase the “clients buy the founder” factor. This entanglement was completely inevitable from the start! If anyone ever tells you “it’s your fault” then keep reading their articles because, as we’ve established, it is.
Untangling involves stepping back and you can’t
You need a plan to get out of this but you don’t have time to plan.
😐
How other (not design) agencies do this stuff
You’ve searched for the magic solution, but the advice out there is for other types of agency. They aren’t selling magic beans, this stuff works if you are selling something different to design.
Find one offer for one ICP in one niche. That kind of thing.
- If your offer is simple you can productise it and sell by numbers.
- If your processes and tactics are repeatable you can document them and scale.
- If you can prove value with KPIs then you can get and grow retainers providing a steady increase in profit that you can invest into your unentanglement plan.
It’s not that you shouldn’t be aware of these strategies, there are places they can help in a design agency. But they ride against some fundamental truths of design itself.
Design is most valuable when it’s a step into the unknown. We may know the outcome but we always want it to be different and better than before.
You can’t document, systemise or automate taste and decision making. If you could then we’d have all packed our bags and gone home by now.
Design is often project-based and operates in the middle of the funnel where it’s hard to prove value. If you think you are going to sit back with MRR on repeat then the laws of demand have news for you.
How you need to do this
The ways out aren’t easy but they are doable. You need a plan for the investment it will take.
That starts with visibility. A big problem of entanglement is that the performance of your agency is often hidden by you working a bit extra for free and taking home less than your market rate.
Finding your replacement will be hard enough without also needing them to work for peanuts.
You need to know the profit it will take. That will trigger some uncomfortable truths around clients you shouldn’t be working for, people you shouldn’t be employing, and conversations about rates you need to be having.
Then you need to start that investment into:
Employer brand and relationships
Even with the plan you are going to be at the bottom end of the market wages-wise, so how are you going to compensate for that with the things you do have to offer? Culture and opportunity are desirable.
Pipeline that compounds
What can you create that will introduce you to new people, engage them and keep that relationship warm over time? How do the people you admire do it? An event? Authentic presence on social media? A publication? What’s yours and how are you going to make it happen?
Sounds easy?
If it were easy then it wouldn’t be valuable. Building this business would be a waste of time.
Luckily it is valuable. Taking the parts of you (talent, drive, sense) that were good enough to start this thing and turning it into a team that can deliver on the big projects is worth it.
People pay to work with you because they can’t do all that themselves.
Getting entangled was a valuable thing to do.
But yesterday’s solution is today’s problem, and now it’s time for the next step.