0 to $500k ARR

First, the back story: I previously worked in marketing/growth/SEO for about 10 years. Almost 2 years ago, I left my job at a startup — burned out. Decided I was going freelance for a while as a writer and content marketing strategist.

It only took me a few months to fill my dance card. I got kind of bored without the hunt for growth and new business. So, I decided to take the next step and start a content marketing agency.

We officially launched in December of 2016.

Now, as of December 2017:

• 6 long-term (retainer) clients
• $480k annual run rate

Feels good. Obviously, still a lot of room for growth. But I feel great about the progress we've made so far. Feels like we are on this really good path.

I didn’t use any bullshit “growth hacks” or cold email. I'm not a sales guy.

So, I did what I know.

We grew the agency organically through content , SEO, and inbound leads. In total, we had ~35 inbound inquiries throughout the first year. These opportunities represented an estimated $2 million in annual revenue for us.

Of those, many were not a fit. I turned away about half of them after having initial conversations or after doing a pilot/trial project. About 8 more deals are/were stuck in our sales pipeline (can’t get internal buy-in, budget is tied up, etc).

The rest we've signed.

Some keys to our success:

#1 - Agile/flexible structure

I didn't have six figures in the bank to go out and hire a team right out of the gate. Instead, I decided to build a network of full-time professional freelancers to work on long-term client projects.

This is a mix between a traditional agency model and an outsourcing operation. All of our freelancers work together as a team (12 in total). Most work on multiple client accounts and stay on client accounts for the long term.

Obviously, this means much less risk/overhead for me/us. Also helps the freelancers by delivering consistent work load and guaranteed rate.

These aren't bottom-barrel freelancers. They're professionals being paid a competitive rate (up to $75/hour). Everyone is US/Canada based. One freelancer in South Africa.

I did this for both strategic/financial reasons and also because I liked being a freelancer more than having a full-time job. IMO, the future of this kind of creative/technical work is some kind of ad-hoc model like this. It has all of the upside of an agency, but much less risk and overhead. We're able to scale up and down to meet the needs of clients, reconfigure our teams as needed, and we can bring in new talent for specific clients as needed.

This is probably the most unique thing about our agency and it's worked really well so far.

#2 - Sell results, not just "content"

If we were just out here slinging bulk blog posts, we would have failed.

There are a lot of agencies much cheaper than us. Instead, we focus on generating results. Specifically, growing organic search traffic. (Average 7% WoW growth is our goal/benchmark).

From our client perspective, this is obviously a lot better than just seeing posts published every week and nothing else to show for it.

It's also better for us because we're able to control the entire content marketing program. This gives us ownership of strategy/planning, content creation, and outreach/promotion.

I think any kind of agency or service-based business should try to take ownership over more than just the deliverable and find ways to continue to create value.

#3 - Focus on recurring revenue

Many agencies struggle with cash flow issues.

We have experimented and done some project work and one-off content campaigns. In most cases, though, it’s more trouble than it’s worth. We actually end up losing money a lot of times because the initial startup phase with any new client is time consuming.

So, for anyone else starting a service business, I would definitely advise that you figure out how to sell something with recurring value rather than one-off projects if possible.

Retainers are king, in my opinion.

All of our clients pay a flat monthly fee for a pre-defined scope of work. We've scoped/priced different types of content and built it into a package based on their specific needs/goals/strategy.

We have some flexibility on deliverables (usually, 6-8 posts/mo, for example), depending on the type of content we're creating. But this also goes along with our pricing being value/results-based rather than just based on the number of words we crank out each month.

#4 - Get rid of shitty clients ASAP

The biggest risk for any service-based business (in my opinion) is having shit clients.

This could be clients that just don't pay, clients that put you through a gauntlet of reviews/revisions, or clients that just don't have the same strategic vision for what you're trying to accomplish together.

These relationships suck for everyone.

They kill morale, cause tons of stress, and usually waste enormous amounts of time/money.

So, it's super important to try to identify these red flags as soon as possible in any client engagement and then end the relationship as soon as it becomes apparent that things are not going well.

Pretty early on, we decided that any new client would go through a pilot/trial project. For us, this is pretty simple. It's usually 1 or 2 pieces of content that we create on a project basis.

This gives us the opportunity to work together on a short scale and make sure we were happy working together.

It also gives the clients a chance to evaluate our work with less upfront investment/risk (keep in mind most of these people are hiring ostensibly strangers from the internet for $5-10,000/mo).

We had a few pilot/trial projects that turned out to not be a fit—but that was mostly our decision to part ways with those clients.

I’m happy to say that we have had no churn from our long-term clients.

#5 - Great content

Obvious key is obvious.

If the client doesn’t like the work, it’s bad news right out of the gate.

Trial project and our portfolio help us to set expectations for new clients. But, we must be able to consistently deliver good work at the end of the day.

We have a pretty streamlined process that has worked really well for us and allowed us to do pretty seamless hand-offs. Each person ultimately owns their piece of the process and everyone has a stake in keeping the client happy.

Because this isn't just a normal outsourcing operation, our team has buy-in to the overall project.

Each person has a role, clear expectations, and clear deadlines. So far, this has proven to be just the right framework for us to keep things moving with minimal management/overhead.

We continue to tweak the operations process and find ways to improve it for everyone.

Obviously, this will never be a billion dollar company. But, we've grown quickly and shown great results for our clients. It will easily scale to over $1M annually and there are other opportunities beyond that.

It's been exciting and fun. Honestly, the best year of my life.