How to Start An Agency: From Idea to $10k/Month in 4 Hours

Why I started an Agency?

Starting a business is always challenging, especially when it comes to starting an agency that sells digital services. But what if I told you that it's not as hard as it seems? In this article, I'm going to share my personal experience of how I started an agency and almost went from zero to 10K per month in just 4 hours.

Let me give you a little background. I run a CRM software, and most of our clients are agency owners. So, I was curious to know if it's really hard to start an agency or sell a digital service. In November 2022, I was pretty depressed because I wasn't sure if we would be able to rebuild our sales software. I decided to try doing an agency and see if it can be a plan B if my software doesn't work out.

In just 4 hours, I was able to make an offer, create a website, send cold email campaigns, and get calls. I recorded the whole process, and in this article, I'm going to show you the results and how easy it was to get the calls and close the deals.

Disclaimer, here are the unfair advantages I got:

• I already had a cold email domain warmed up

• I already had access to specific softwares

How much it would have cost to to do the same:

• Breakcold: $49/mo

• Typdream: $0/mo

• Apollo: $19/mo

• Google domain + Google Workspace + warm up: $24$

Step1: Creating an offer

The first thing I did was to create an offer. I wanted to target people who have money and can pay on a monthly recurring basis. I didn't want to waste my time on people who would unsubscribe from my monthly service. So, I targeted B2B startups who had raised at least a seed round or a series A. These companies have a funding range of 1 million to 10 million but are still not structured enough to have a team that runs the company for every single part. They outsource a lot of things, and that's where my agency comes in.

1°) Pick a niche

The second step was to choose the offer. The trend now is to go for TikTok agency services, TikTok ads, organic ads, repurposing content, etc. But I didn't want to be just like everyone else. I wanted to stand out from the crowd. So, I decided to offer a Twitter ghostwriting service. I would contact the co-founders of B2B startups. It was a unique offer, and I knew it would be irresistible to them.

2°) Create a website

I created the assets of the website using Figma

Next, I created a website using a website builder called Typedream. It took me just one hour to build the website. I didn't even bother to buy a domain name; it was just a basic website with my face on it. The website offered Twitter services for B2B startups, and the headline read, "Twitter is underrated by startups to grow faster."

This website is designed to provide inspiration for B2C startups, but we have a strong expertise in B2B SaaS. I was able to use this expertise to generate traffic and grow my Twitter following from 0 to 8,000 in just 5 months. As a result, I decided to create an agency that could offer this same expertise to others. I sold mainly the Unicorn plan, which involves writing Twitter threads and engaging on behalf of clients. Creating the website was quick and easy, taking only about 1-1.5 hours.

I was mainly selling the UNICORN plan

2°) Send cold emails

Once you have a competitive offer, it's important to reach out to prospects. This requires data, and if you're not doing cold calling, you'll need to use an email finder software to generate leads. You'll need to distinguish between cold and warm leads, and then close the sale. I found that using Apollo was really helpful in this process. With a VPN, it can be as cheap as $19 a month, but without a VPN, it costs $99 per month. However, for the value you get, it's definitely worth it. Apollo provides access to LinkedIn Sales Navigator and email addresses.

To find prospects, I used filters to search for co-founders of B2B startups in the computer software industry who were based in New York. Although I had more filters in place, I found 57 potential prospects using this method (in the video, in real I had like less than 150 prospects).

The actual email is a bit different if you look at the video

My email sequence was all about offering value and giving some numbers to back up my claims. People love to read numbers in their emails, so I made sure to include some impressive stats about how I could help them grow their Twitter following and generate website traffic. I even created a fake persona named Sophie Williams, the head of Twitch Unicorns, to make it seem like I had a team of experts behind me.

Alright, so let's dive right into the details of this cold email campaign. The preview of the email was simple, and the email itself was short and straight to the point. This allowed prospects to quickly understand the offer and respond in a timely manner. The response rate for the campaign was about 6%, which is pretty average, but all six responses were positive, which is a win in my book. The total value of these deals was over 10K per month. It was a huge success, and I was proud of what I had achieved.

3°) Make the calls

Once I got my responses, I basically set up some calls using a calendar link given by the fake head of growth I created.

The calls went really well. I was able to connect with the co-founders on a personal level, understand their pain points, and offer them a solution that they couldn't resist. I recorded the calls, and it was interesting to see how easy it was to get the calls and close the deals.

I created a super personalized deck for my first agency call ever

Overall, this simple offer worked pretty well for this cold email campaign, and maybe with my own personal touch, I can show you a couple of clips where I make the person's face unrecognizable, of course. It's all about keeping it simple and straight to the point, and that's what worked for me.

However, I had to ditch some calls and never follow up to close the deals. The reason being, we managed to rebuild our sales software, and it was doing well. However if you watch the video of this blogpost, you'll see that I did some of the calls and I recorded one.

4°) follow-up

Moving forward, if I wanted to close the deal, I would move the leads from my campaigns into the CRM portion of our software and follow up on the leads. It's a simple strategy, but it works.

To summarize, following up on leads is a crucial part of closing deals in the B2B world. And with the help of CRM software and social media aggregators like Breakcold, it's now easier to keep track of warm leads and engage with them in a highly personalized manner. By having access to a prospect's LinkedIn and Twitter profiles, you can get a better understanding of their interests and activities, and use that information to build stronger relationships with them.

This is how you can make the difference to close deals faster

But it's not just about sending out generic follow-up emails. It's about being creative and finding new ways to engage with your prospects. Maybe it's sending them a personalized DM on Twitter, or sharing an interesting article on LinkedIn. And with the help of assistants, you can even automate some of these tasks, making it easier to stay on top of your prospects and close more deals.

At the end of the day, the key to closing more B2B deals is to be persistent, but also highly personalized in your approach. By using the right tools and techniques, you can turn cold leads into warm ones, and eventually close more deals for your business.