How to Morph from a Creative into a Successful Agency Owner

I worked with an amazing creative executive some years ago who successfully managed to walk the line between his creative side and his business side. His LinkedIn headline at the time included a reference to being a Creative Director in the Streets and CEO in the Spreadsheets.

It’s a special person who possesses this ultimate right brain/left brain mashup. 

If you’re like most agency owners you’re really more of a right brained creative. Let’s talk about the tricks and tools you can use to manage the business-y part of growing your agency.

The Challenges of Creative Entrepreneurship

Remember when you started your agency? That feeling of daily drowning as you scaled yet another steep learning curve in those early days? 

Some of the things you had to learn how to do will have been within your comfort zone, but most were not. As you’ve continued to grow, you’ve hopefully hired expertise to help you with those things you have no business doing. For most creatives that includes the books, probably HR and payroll, and maybe some other operational and administrative things. 

It’s harder to hire out sales. And marketing, well, you should know how to do that, but so often we’re not so good at doing what we’re good at for ourselves, right? 

Which probably means you’re having to manage sales and revenue growth. And the associated processes and KPIs. Is your creative brain already glazing over? 

I get it. My kryptonite is technology - I avoid it like the plague.

But you can’t really avoid revenue generation as an agency owner, even if it’s your kryptonite. 

Revenue Generating Tricks for Creatives

Step 1: Start with What (and Who you Know)

You’ll already have done this because it’s where most agency’s first clients come from. Here’s how to 10X it:

• Who do your current clients know that you’d like to work with? Ask for introductions in your feedback reviews. 

Wait, what? You aren’t conducting feedback reviews at the end of projects or quarterly for retained clients? You can start now! Here’s how.

• Where are the people you want to work with hanging out? Make sure you’re there too. Maybe you won’t meet your perfect client prospects, but you’ll start to get to know the people who can introduce you to them.

Yep, this takes work, but if you do it consistently and strategically, it will bear results. 

Step 2: Make Client Growth and Retention your Top Priority

Top agency CEOs were quoted in an article published recently by “The Drum” that their ideal blend of retained, current clients to new business is 75/25. One wanted to work towards a 70/30 blend. 

Bet that surprised you! But it makes so much sense - your existing clients already know, hopefully like, and trust you. There WILL be opportunities to grow those accounts simply by being a good partner and looking for opportunities to help them grow more. 

Of course there will always be some attrition, and yes, you’ll lose some accounts for no good reason other than that the new CMO wants to work with his wife’s brother’s company, but even just a little shift in the way you view and manage current accounts will make a difference to your growth efforts. 

Step 3: Teach Your Account Teams How to Identify and Develop Current Accounts

No, your account managers and project managers aren’t salespeople (nor should they be), but they are closest to your clients and have the greatest ability to impact how those accounts are served and developed. 

• Teach them how to build relationships with clients that go beyond project updates. 

• Teach them how to evaluate the results you’re getting for clients in the context of what you know about your clients’ goals so they can see ways to better serve those clients. 

• Teach them to be human and to treat clients the way they’d want to be treated by a partner. 

Step 4: Grow Your Agency to a Size that Warrants a Professional Salesperson

If you’re not a rainmaker and you’re still chafing at this business-y sales stuff, follow Steps 1 through 3 above consistently and you’ll eventually get to a size where hiring a fractional or even a full time salesperson will make financial sense.

You’ll need to be north of $1M in revenue, and probably more like $3-5M, but if new business (remember it only needs to be 25% of your total annual account base) is still your kryptonite, this is how you’ll continue to grow while you continue to be the creative you want to be.