How Do I Go From Freelancer To Agency?

Are you stuck in the freelancer grind, wondering if it’s even possible to build something bigger? Will sent in today’s question: how do you go from hustling for clients alone to leading an agency? If you’ve ever asked yourself the same thing, listen up! In this lesson, Omar digs into the shift from solo work to agency building. Instead of hustling harder, you’ll hear how to rethink your role, reshape your offer, and set up the foundations that let your business grow beyond just you. The answers aren’t about hype; they’re about clarity, leverage, and the first moves that make scaling possible. Press play at the top and join Omar as he shows you how to break free from freelancing and start building an agency that lasts. MBA2738 How Do I Go From Freelancer To Agency? Recommended episode to explore:MBA2733 3 Ways To Force Yourself To Take ActionTo submit your questions, visit 100mba.net/q. Watch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHiSUBSCRIBEYouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Small business owners, listen up. You started your business, but you can't do it alone. And that means you have to hire people to help. That's where Justworks comes in. Justworks is the payroll, benefits, and global hiring platform to unburden your brain from all the complicated small business stuff. They handle the things you can't afford to get wrong, so you don't have to worry. So you can focus on the parts of running a business that you enjoy, knowing everything else is running smoothly. You don't have to worry when it just works. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? For example, I really wanted to love the show Mad Men. I really tried to watch it and love it, but it just didn't do anything for me. As a marketer and business person, the show was a little bit of a disappointment.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, like impressions. But then we don't see revenue. LinkedIn has a word for that: bull spend. Instead, you can get the highest ROAS of major ad networks with LinkedIn ads. Cut the bull spend, advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/MBAShow. Terms apply. If you're a freelancer right now, I already know something about you. You're busy, you're probably making decent money, but you're also extremely exhausted. Because no matter how good you are, if you don't do the work, you don't get paid. And that's the ceiling you're dealing with.

• 1:27Speaker 00

  So today, we're going to answer a great question from a listener who asked today's Q&A Wednesday's question. How do I go from freelancer to building an agency without blowing up everything in my business? We're going to break it down step by step, so it's not intimidating, but at the same time, you're making progress in a short amount of time. Let's get into it.

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  Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.

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  I got a quick favor to ask. If this show has helped you in any way, leave me a quick review. You could do so wherever you listen to podcasts. This helps me and my team reach even more people who need the same no-fluff, practical business advice that you're getting from the show. It only takes a few seconds, but it makes a huge difference. Thanks for being a part of our journey to help others on their journey. The biggest mistake freelancers make when they're trying to become an agency, get out of freelance work, is they try to do more work, not different work. There's a difference here, and I'm going to explain. An agency is not you working harder. It's not you talking to more clients. It's not you answering more emails at night.

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  It's you building an asset. An agency is a delivery system, not a person. It's something that you create to do the work for you. Your job is going to change tremendously. You're going to go from how do I do the work well? To how do I make sure the work gets done well without me? This is a mental shift, and the best way I can teach you this is how I learned this. I learned this actually from Ayman Abdullah, who is a business coach. And one of the things you need to do is you need to start becoming allergic to work. Yes, allergic to work, which sounds very strange, because hard work got you to where you are today. But in order for you to scale and build a business,

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  you have to start saying, no, I can't do this because I'm allergic. I can't. And I need to get somebody else to do this. I need another system. I need a tool to do this for me. Whatever it might be, you need to start delegating and start expanding. Now, don't worry. You might think in your head all these questions like, oh, I can't afford it. How am I going to do this? Don't worry about that right now. Just understand the concept, and then we're going to talk about implementation in a moment. Step one is to productize what you do. Before you hire anyone, before you get fancy, you need some clarity. You need to ask yourself some important questions. What do you do over and over again in your business? What do your clients hire you for every single time? What's the value? What is the actual thing that you solve for them? What part of your work creates the most value for them?

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  Think about it for a moment, and feel free to pause and rewind and answer these questions in your notebook or on your phone. It's going to make a big difference and allow you to start implementing by just answering these questions, because the answers to these questions are your core offer. It's not "I do design work," or "I do strategic consulting." No. It's "I help X achieve Y using Z." What does that mean? Well, "I help busy moms achieve their health goals using a simple workout plan and meal prep." Whatever. The point here is, is that you are achieving an outcome for your customers. Your customers only care about the outcome. Just keep that in mind. If you can get them the outcome, they don't really care about how you do it.

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  Okay, as long as it's legal and ethical, they're happy. So, that is how you gotta start thinking about your business, because now you're gonna start thinking, "What are some ways I can get those outcomes without me getting involved?" Or at least you're involving yourself at the absolute minimum amount. Agencies, they grow by saying no to everything else outside of the outcomes. You have to get laser-focused about what you actually achieve for your customers. Step two is to stop selling time and start selling outcomes. Now that you have a clear outcome, you have to understand that freelancers, they sell hours. And agencies sell results, right? If you want me to run your Facebook ads every single month and get you results, this is how much you gotta pay.

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  Doesn't matter how many hours it takes me to do this. I'm selling you a result. I'm selling you an outcome. This means fixed pricing, it means clear deliverables, and it means defined timelines. Customers really love when these three are in place, because they can predict what's going to happen, right? They understand how much they're gonna have to pay, they understand what they're gonna get, they understand how long it's gonna take. Your offer should answer only one thing clearly, and that is, "What does the client look like after working with us?" What's the after-picture? You know, fitness is often used as an example when people teach business, because it's one of the easiest ones to kinda see clearly. Like, when you see those before-and-after photos of people that are getting fit, it's very compelling, because you understand, you have a clear picture.

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  This is what they're buying. They're buying this new body. What is that new body for you and your customers? When you sell outcomes, you can delegate all the execution to help them get to that outcome. But when you sell time, you actually undercut yourself. You actually devalue what you actually do. You're no longer selling an outcome, which what people actually value. You're selling time and time is really relative. A lot of people feel like $5 an hour is expensive. You know, if you don't, I have some uncles and aunts who you should meet. But the point here is, is that selling time is counterproductive for you and your customers because your customers are not really valuing how long it takes. They actually would prefer it to take less time and would actually pay more if you can

• 7:12Speaker 00

  get them the outcome faster. Today's episode is supported by Rosetta Stone. I absolutely love Rosetta Stone because it's helping me learn Italian faster than I can ever imagine. Why do I want to learn Italian? Well, who doesn't love Italy? But of course Nicole's family is Italian and I love to have some quick Italian conversations with her mom. And Rosetta Stone just came out with Rosetta Stone Sapphire, their biggest launch in over a decade. One of the coolest features is chat missions, which turns conversation practice into a game. With chat missions, you're put in interactive scenarios and given three objectives. A mission to accomplish, like asking how much something costs, ordering a cold brew coffee, or getting a wifi password.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  Along the way, you get real time corrections and feedback to help you sound more natural and confident. It's a supportive way to build confidence before putting your language skills to use in real life. I've been using Rosetta Stone for over two years and I actually can have some small Italian conversations with Nicole's mom now. Just the other day, she asked me, when are you traveling? And I said dopa domani mattina, which means after tomorrow morning. She was incredibly impressed that I was able to answer in Italian. How could you put a price tag on a happy mother-in-law? If you want to take your language skills to the next level, don't wait to try Rosetta Stone Sapphire. The $100 ratio listeners can get 20% off the Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when they sign up today. This gets you access to Rosetta Stone Sapphire in 25 languages.

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  Today's episode is sponsored by Upwork. I don't need a script to tell you how much Upwork has helped my business. I've been using Upwork for over a decade and it's the easiest way to find top talent to grow your business. From software development to AI implementation to marketing, design, and business operations. You can browse profiles, review past work, and get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork. With over 170,000 freelancers holding 5-star ratings, you can hire with the confidence that comes from hiring someone with a verified track record. I've hired engineers, customer service agents, marketers, copywriters,

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  all on Upwork that helped grow my business from the moment they got hired. The best thing is, it's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U P W R K dot com, upwork.com.

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  Step three, your first hire is all about creating leverage in your business. This is where most people mess up. Your first hire should replace you, not support you. You've got to look at all the tasks that you do that consume most of your time, and you need to take those tasks and give them to somebody else so that you can start doing high-level tasks, tasks that actually bring in the big bucks. We're talking about somebody who can take 60 to 70% of your work off your plate. This was the first hire I made in my business. It's one of the most important hires because they're going to free you up from all the admin work that you absolutely hate and also sucks all your time, whether it's email, or scheduling, or admin work, or scheduling blog posts,

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  or publishing podcast episodes, or filling in, you know, forms or descriptions, or publishing your YouTube videos, whatever those things are in your business. They're very time-consuming and you shouldn't be doing, you shouldn't be leveraging your time by getting somebody else to do this stuff. Yes, it costs money. Yes, margins feel tighter at first when you're making this hire because less money is going to be in profit because you're spending more now. But this is how you buy back your time, and time is the only thing that lets you grow. And by the way, time is Limited to all of us. We only have 24 hours a day. You, me, Warren Buffett, Sarah Blakely, Barbara Corcoran, doesn't matter how successful these people are, they only have 24 hours in the day.

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  That's the equalizer. So how do you make sure you use your time that allow you to scale your business properly? Where your time is only used on high leverage tasks, tasks that should bring in the money that helped you grow your business so that you can make more hires, so you can expand. You get the point. Step four, one of the hardest parts of this system, and that is when you need to start removing yourself. At this stage, your role starts to shift again, right? You start focusing on sales, you start focusing on client relationships, you start focusing on systems and HR and quality control and recruitment. You start to document everything, you start building SOPs, you get your assistant to help you with that as well. You get a better understanding of who are the clients you're serving, so you can have better messaging in your sales materials, all that kind of stuff.

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  And a lot of people view this as a little bit boring, a little bit unsexy, and they feel like, "Oh, I used to love rolling up my sleeves and actually doing the work." Yes, but you have to remember, if you want to build a scalable business, you're going to have to do things that are a little bit uncomfortable, out of your wheelhouse, because at the end of the day, you have to make a choice. Do you want to be a worker bee, or do you want to be the architect? The worker bee is going to do the work and pull out all the stops and do the R, and that's fine, okay? You can do that. But if you want to scale your business and go beyond just yourself and make exponential amount of revenue, then you're going to need to sacrifice and start doing some of the work. Until you build a business to the point where you can just jump in,

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  and there's so many experts, and there's so many people that can do the work for you, and then you could just do the design work, or whatever it is, for fun. Or you can be part of the meetings that brainstorm ideas and have creative ambition and work, whatever it might be. The point here is that you have to understand that there is a period of time where you're going to do less of the stuff that got you started, because what got you here won't get you there, won't get you to the point where you want to go. Now you might be thinking Omar, okay, I build this agency. How do I stand out? How do I differentiate myself from other agencies? Well, I know that this is something a lot of us are thinking about, especially in today's day and age. And this is why I created an episode just on this topic called,

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  "Why Does It Feel Harder Than Ever to Grow and Stand Out?" And by the way, you're not imagining this. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast because this is coming out very soon. I crafted this episode to make sure that you understand like, why is this happening? Why does it feel really crowded in whatever space you're in? And how do you actually become unique and really get the attention of the right people that you're trying to attract? So make sure you subscribe. That episode's coming out soon. Step five is confronting the hard truth that if you're an agency that only works because you are involved in everything, you don't have an agency. You have a fragile system. Listen, life is unpredictable. I'm telling you right now, there's going to be a time where you're not going to be able to be there full time.

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  You're not going to be able to give it your full attention. It could be a family crisis, you know, God forbid. It could be a health scare. It could be, you know, something as small as an accident that you need to take care of. And, you know, all this stuff is, is kind of piling on your plate because you have other things to attend to. Clients want predictable results. They might have some sympathy for you, but at the end of the day, they have a job that needs to get done. And they're going to find somebody that's going to get it done for them if it's not you. They don't care who presses the buttons, right? As long as it gets done, that's when you're becoming an agency, when you're building a business, when you're building an asset. Now, the reason why I really stress this word asset is because when you build an agency that doesn't rely on you,

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  this is an asset that you can sell one day. You can sell your business easily because the buyer understands that this business runs, regardless if you're at the helm or not, they can get somebody else to come and be, you know, the leader, the manager. And, you know, the customers get what they paid for, they get the results, your reputation doesn't take a hit, all that kind of stuff. So the value of your business sustains and you're able to exit your business and make some life-changing money. When you transition from freelancer to agency to building an actual business, your income starts to stabilize, your time comes back, you stop starting from zero every single month, you have consistency, you build something that's actually sellable one day.

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  This is where real businesses are born. This is kind of when you graduate into real entrepreneurship. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you're a freelancer right now and you're listening to this and you're feeling the tension, that pull, that's not burnout, that's not you being weak or anything like that. That's growth. That's growth knocking on your door. The move to be building a business, to building an agency, it's not about ego, it's about you having the ability to do what you're doing sustainably. You can't be a freelancer and grow unless you start charging astronomical amounts. It's very, very hard for you to be a freelancer and be sustainable for a very long time. And when you build a business around

• 16:16Speaker 00

  what you do, this builds freedom for your life. It's about building something that doesn't collapse if you take a week off or a month off for that matter. If this episode lit a fire under you, your next episode should be this one. Three Ways to Force Yourself to Take Action. Because knowing the path isn't enough. Execution is absolutely everything. That's one of our previous episodes. You can find it here on the podcast. And of course, subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And thanks, Will, for asking the great question. If you've got a question you want to ask here on Q&A Wednesday, go ahead and ask it over at 100mba.net/queue.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow, and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  My six-year-old little sister is taken from her bed and violently murdered, and we don't have any answers? It's been 30 years. It's not okay. We will find this person. It's not a question of if, but when.

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  Who killed JonBenet Ramsey? You think you know this mystery? But do you know about the DNA at the crime scene? Can science finally solve this case? And who is Unknown Male 1?

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  An intruder, a third-party male.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  So Unknown Male 1 is out there somewhere?

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  Yes.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  The stunning, all-new Diane Sawyer investigation, tonight on ABC.