For young entrepreneurs out there, no thought is scarier than that of trying to scale your business up and continue to grow it without moving too fast and finding yourself in the red. Jon Zacharias, co-founder of GR0 and long-time digital marketing expert, is opting to share some of his personal tips for how to successfully scale your agency, and how to do it with COVID-19 in mind.
While the economy is hindered by the widespread effects of COVID, there are actually some ways that the current working environment and culture can help you. At GR0 marketing agency, Zacharias has been able to move his team to working fully remotely, and as such is able to save money by not requiring expensive office space in LA. He can also utilize talent from across the entire country, which means he can hire people outside of California who can produce the same work for 60 percent of the cost.
This is certainly not an excuse to be cheaping out on everything, and it is important to put some of those savings back towards your employees to help bolster the culture of your workplace and connect your employees to your company.
Scaling your agency is more than just being smart with your money. As you work to acquire new employees, it’s imperative that you hire for experience and with the culture of your workplace in mind. Ask prospective hires about who they are as people. This can be simple questions like asking what their hobbies are or if they have practices they can’t work without. If the members of your agency can’t properly gel with one another it can create rifts among them and impede your scaling, making the team apprehensive to increase in size, scale, and scope. But with careful, respectful hiring, you can craft a prosperous team that works in harmony with itself.
Another essential subject to keep in mind with scaling is the clients you take on and the size of projects they’re going to want from you. While the idea of taking on a large-scale client in your early stages can certainly be enticing, it’s important to understand whether or not you currently feel equipped for that task. For instance, if a large brand approached your agency looking to collaborate, but would require you to take on many new hires to meet their demand, what would happen if they decided to end the partnership? With a surplus of workers and now a deficit of work to be done, you would likely have to scale back and make cuts, which would severely hurt your team’s morale. For these reasons, any agency looking to scale needs to respect the projects they take on and ensure that they aren’t getting in over their heads for a single client.
Edited by Maryssa Gordon, Senior Editor, Price of Business Digital Network
