Benefits of Getting an Agency or Corporate Job Before You Freelance
On Twitter, someone asked whether it was helpful to get an agency or corporate job before going freelance or starting their own company.
For me, the answer is yes. Why? Simply, you’ll get valuable experiences you wouldn’t get on your own.
Let’s review a few…
You’ll Learn the Business of Business
Being at an agency or corporate in-house department gives you the perfect opportunity to watch and learn how they run their business.
Take a step back from your day-to-day work to note how they interact with clients, what they include on their estimates, and what processes they follow as they see projects through to completion.
This is the type of information you have to pick up by observation. The agency or company likely got to their processes through trial and error, so you may as well learn from their experiences.
If you work at more than one agency or corporation, you’ll see how they differ in their approaches and processes. Keep your eyes and ears open.
If you observe carefully, when it comes to your own business, you’ll have a head start by not having to invent every little thing for yourself.
You can start your business with suitable structures and processes while avoiding unnecessary trial and error.
At Agencies You’ll Work For Bigger Clients
At an established agency, you’ll be on teams working for clients with annual budgets in the hundreds of thousands or millions. You’ll learn how the clients and the agency make decisions on campaigns and how they prioritize their budgets. You may not agree with everything they do, but you’ll learn from their thinking processes.
Pay attention to this. It will come in handy later when you’re working with your own clients.
Over time, you’ll see how different clients work. Some will have big budgets for customer research, while others virtually ignore it.
Some are very well organized, while others seem to fly by the seat of their pants. Some clients want to get involved with every tiny decision, while others let the agency do what they think is best.
All of these observations and experiences will help you in your own business. You won’t find yourself so surprised at client decisions—you’ve seen it all before.
Much Easier to Scale Down Than Up
Working with large clients, you’re experiencing what it’s like to have significant budgets and expert teams.
You’re working on campaigns with maximum input at all levels. Some clients are incredibly wasteful, mind-boggling, actually. Try not to emulate that.
From this, you can learn how to scale down for your clients who likely don’t have the same time, budgets, or expertise.
Now that you’ve seen how the big guys do it, you can design your processes to fit your clients’ requirements. You’re winnowing down, picking and choosing options as you go.
That’s much easier than scaling up, trying to invent new processes out of thin air.
You’ll Learn From People Who are Better, More Experienced
Working in a creative department, you’ll ultimately report to the Creative Director. You may have an intermediate step where your direct boss is an Associate Creative Director, but for anything major, the CD will weigh in.
If you’re lucky, you’ll have a CD who can teach and guide you based on their experience. They’ll push and prod you to stretch, to come up with more innovative solutions while still answering the client brief.
Because of their years in the business, they simply have a larger bank of expertise to draw upon. That can be a huge benefit to you. You’ll grow faster, and learn new ways of solving problems.
In the best-case scenario, you’ll find a mentor, someone who gives you one-on-one feedback and guidance. You’re getting paid as you learn. What could be better?
You’ll Build a Lifetime Network
Typically, agencies create teams of people. If you’re a copywriter, you’re working with one or more art directors or designers, and vice versa. You might have on-staff researchers, analysts, and programmers. There will be account people.
If you stay at an agency for more than a year, you’ll see people come and go. Some agencies have high turnovers, others are a bit more stable.
The point is, you’ll meet and work with a lot of interesting people, with different experiences and backgrounds. Some of whom you may want to work with again when you start your business. Or, they may call on you when they start their business.
Try to stay in touch with people you meet. Use social media to build and nurture these relationships. These days, when you can live anywhere in the world and still work together, the size and scale of your network is more important than ever.
Working in an agency is the perfect place to grow and expand your circles of contacts.
Include Clients in Your Network
Those of us who work on the freelance or agency side sometimes see the world as “us and them”. In other words, the creators versus the clients.
Try not to do that. It’s short-sighted. People often switch roles, and that can be helpful to you.
In many cases, clients change jobs to work agency side, or even better for you, they leave their employers to start their own companies. That’s an opportunity for you if you’re part of their network.
My outlook with clients was generally to see us as two sides of the same coin. We’re both trying to solve a problem, and we each have our responsibilities.
I looked at clients as “business friends”. I wrote about how to make business friends to grow your company here.
You’ll Charge More—Now You Know How It’s Done
If you get the opportunity, take a look at some of the estimates that go to clients. See how the agency defines projects, what they include, and how they charge.
You’ll probably see that they break down jobs into more deliverables than you might have thought. There’s often greater detail than you may have considered. All of it is there to justify the charges.
Having comprehensive estimates is one of the secrets to increased billing—you can only charge for what you include on the estimate.
I wrote about how to increase your billing with detailed estimates here.
Learn about the benefits of having one or more agency jobs before going out on your own in my book, How to Start a Successful Creative Agency. It’s the essential business guide for graphic designers, copywriters, filmmakers, photographers, and programmers.
Buy Your Book Here
Over 300 pages and 23 chapters, available at Amazon (Paper & Kindle), Kobo (ebook), Apple Books (ebook), and Gumroad (PDF).
The book is packed with useful information to help creatives start and grow their business.
More Advice Than Can Probably be Absorbed
From Ben Hagon RGD, Co-founder, President, www.forgoodintent.com, who was an employee at my second agency before going out to start his own very successful agency:
“Contained within the book is more advice than can probably be absorbed, all learned and distilled over Andy’s long career in creative communications. It is a comprehensive guide to starting and running a creative agency. I truly wish I had a copy when I started mine.”
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This chapter covers essential areas such as Clients vs. Projects, Corporate Clients vs. Small Business Clients, How to Create an Opportunity Document, Benefits of Finding a Niche… and much more.
Questions? On Twitter, I’m @StroteBook. D.M.s are always open. Ask away.