Yesterday I talked about us knowing what type of clients we wanted to work with and staying true to ourselves.
The next lesson we learned along the way were: Know what kind of agency you want to be.
Six months in we all thought that we were building an agency in the traditional sense where we’d grow our team, our office space would grow and our profits would grow. However, after dipping our toes in the water with work experience students we had an awakening!
It was great to have new people in the office but it made us realise that we are rarely office based and while we wanted to grow and for our profits to grow (who doesn’t!) a traditional agency model wouldn’t work for us.
Lots of head scratching later we realised that what would work for us was a virtual agency model, with a small office ‘hub’ for creative sessions and team work, and a bank of shit hot handpicked freelancers, who could deliver projects with us, enable us to offer a wider range of services and enhance our offering.
So we changed our plans and explored working with freelancers
We’re at the start of the journey and we’ve got a few freelancers on our books now and are talking to a few more. It’s hard this bit, because it is just like employing someone in that they have to have the skills and experience that you need and they have to work with the same values as you have, so it can be a case of testing people out (scary!).
There are so many other things to navigate when you are working with freelancers as they all operate slightly differently so
- Do you pay travel time
- Petrol
- Do they need to be insured – the list goes on
We have to make sure that we are talking to our freelancers to make sure that it is working for them too. For us this is a great way to grow our business, calling on fantastic additional resource as and when we need it, sticking to people who work with the same values as us and can provide support in key areas when required. Welcome to the world of the Virtual Agency.
Charlotte's Sidekick Blog 