Tim made me do it.
I’m taking the goal of building my agency seriously. I purchased a one year subscription to CopyBlogger Academy, and that’s home much time I’m giving myself—one year. I’m giving myself one year to get a roster of clients. I’m not looking to quit my job. I’m not looking to make $100,000. I’m looking to build valuable experience and get my agency off the ground.
I’ve had Pythagoras.agency (Don’t look at it! I stole a ton of copy from Tim. I’m going to change that. I just need something to start with!) now for a few months and haven’t done much with it other than reskin it a few times. There was even a super cool Art Deco design. It was dreadfully slow but looked sick. And to be fair, this is actually my second agency because my first one is still up and called brandywineadvertising.com.
I’ve been spinning my wheels for a while.
I need some structure
That’s why I signed up for CopyBlogger Academy. I’m looking for a step-by-step guide, a system if you will, on what to do next.
My Skills
I’m currently going through two courses: Content Marketing Mastery & Agency Clarity. I’m almost done with Content Marketing Mastery and about a quarter of the way through Agency Clarity. They’ve both been helpful in different ways
In Agency Clarity, Tim talks about freelancing to start. And he says freelancing is how you “get really good at something.” (Probably not an exact quote, but close enough). Because you can build an agency off of that skill.
This is a problem for me. I’m a jack of all trades.
When I think I my skillset, I think about being someone who gets stuff done. In my world of nonprofit marketing, there’s a lot of talking but not a ton of doing. So I pride myself on being a doer. And it’s paid off.
I’m the director of marketing at a not-insignificant nonprofit. Here are the skills I use every week:
Facebook Advertising, Canva, Google Analytics, Sprout Social, WordPress, Google Ad Grants, Email Copywriting, Email Marketing, Pardot, Google Tag Manager, Salesforce, MailChimp, Google Search Console, YouTube Advertising, Organic Posting on all the platforms, Twitter Ads, Ahrefs, and probably a few other things I’m forgetting.
I am comfortable using all of these tools. Am I really a top 5% expert on any of them? Not really. So while I admit I’ve been spinning my wheels, a clear path never really opened up.
So what would Tim say after reading this? If I had to guess, I think he’d ask, “What are you best at, and what do you want to do?”
What Am I Best At?
Not the easiest thing to answer.
I got started in marketing as a data analyst. I was in Google Analytics daily and made dashboards in Tableau (I forgot to mention Tableau!). My blog even has a bunch of old Tableau tutorials. Heck! My best performing post is a Tableau tutorial on how to make a period-over-period date comparison in Tableau.
Well, It’s fallen to #5. Not bad for an out-of-date tutorial from 2018. (I’m not sure why I went on the SEO optimized Rosary posts kick a few years ago.)
This is not to say I’m going to make a Tableau agency. Tableau is expensive. And I genuinely think it’s a bad product. My agency moved away from Tableau. And while the decision made sense, I’m still mad about it. I felt I had developed a real skill!
The lesson there: I like working with data.
Going back to what Tim said about freelancing. That’s where you “get really good” (Again, no idea if he actually says this. But I think he did.) Well, I’ve done some freelancing. And all those freelance jobs were for one thing: Google Analytics.
I like Google Analytics. And… This summer, we’re switching to Google Analytics 4. (And by we, I mean the world) While I’ve wasted the last year NOT getting really good at GA4, I bet I could get good really fast. There was a time when I was a Universal Analytics genius.
The lesson there: Google Analytics is good. And I like it.
But what am I really good at now? Simple. Facebook ads. My bread and butter are lead gen ads for newsletters. When I got hired by my organization last year, I had to fire the previous agency for getting us email subscribers at $70 per subscriber. A) It’s amazing to me that no one at my org realized how bad that was. and B) It was more amazing the agency running the ads decided not to tell me about the crazy high CPA until after they had spent our entire budget.
You bet your ass I fired him. Bullshit like that is never something I would do to a client.
I now get us email subscribers for a decent $1.50. But I’ve been able to get subscribers for as low as $0.40 apiece. That campaign was my masterpiece, and I was stupid enough not to take screenshots. Trust me, it happened!
Leeson here: I’m good at Facebook ads.
Now What?
So I like data. I like and was good at Google Analytics. And I am good at Facebook Ads. Where does this leave me?
I think it leaves me doing Paid Media and Analytics.
Honestly, nothing would make me happier than just running a company’s Google products. Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Ads, and Google Business Profile. And then you throw in some Facebook just to sweeten the deal.
Is this viable? What does pricing look like? How do I get clients?
Not sure. But I’m giving myself a year to figure it out.
