I built a small software agency. What should I do next?
Hi, I've been subscribed to the newsletter for ages but only recently started to look at the community behind it. When I finally did I was thrilled to find so many people going through similar journeys! Really looking forward to joining the discussion.
Over the past several years of my life I've built a software development agency with $XX,XXX monthly revenue in a very "boring" industry -- it mainly boils down to building WordPress themes and plugins. (I don't find this boring, but it's not some hot sexy speculative thing that the media is gushing over and VCs are throwing money at.)
We have a couple people on payroll and three long-term anchor clients who pay the bills.
It all began with a few years of grit, pain and poverty grinding out projects on Elance -- an experience I'm reluctant to repeat (and which might be even harder these days).
But when I started looking at ways we could grow I realized I didn't know the first thing about marketing, sales and outreach. I thought a productized, done-for-you small business website might be easier to sell than our current service (easy to paint a value proposition, thousands of small business starting up all the time) , and we got started on that, but I realized pretty quickly I don't know how to sell that, either.
What should I do next? Figure out how to market this product? Find a sales guy/cofounder who can help? Start from scratch because it's a bad idea? Turn my attention back to our corporate retainer business and figure out how to get more of those?
I need some fresh perspectives!
Hi Aaron,
Firstly, congrats on getting this far. Building a business and managing people is hard.
It's impossible to say what you should do next. We don't have anywhere near enough background information about you, your business or your employees to even begin to give advice.
If it were me, I'd begin by doing two things:
Both of these steps will take time, but that's ok.
Then you should have the time, motivation and financial security try out new projects you're interested in.
I don't believe you can't sell a product. Selling services is a tiny bit easier in some cases, but the basic skills are the same. You'll pick it up quickly.
Good luck!
Thanks Louis! That's some good advice.
Hmm if I could work on anything and money/security wasn't a concern I'd probably make my role more technical and I'd work on an alternative to one of the abusive and manipulative services offered by the tech giants. In practice I've never developed a service like this because it's always felt a little too speculative--I've gravitated toward more secure businesses but maybe that's a weakness.
I would want to remain an entrepreneur/founder/owner/investor as it suits my personality well.
Regarding streamlining things we're actually pretty streamlined already. I've worked hard to keep turnover low, I've trained my staff well, and I've put good process in place -- as a result I can run 80% of the business with one day a week.
It doesn't grow like that though. That's what the other 4 days are for. :)
Hey Aaron congratulations on building a successful software agency! I think you've already done the hardest part of your journey and now have the time and thought to decide your next step for growing your business. As for marketing and sales you might want to hire someone to cold call local small businesses and offer them commission. That way you get your productized offering out in front of as many people as possible while keeping the cost low. Then you can take the feedback you get from that process and maybe adjust your offering or your targets market(small businesses can be very stingy).
As for outreach you can find lots of PHP and Wordpress projects that would fit perfectly into your wheelhouse online. Job sites, social media, forums, chat groups, etc post every day looking for your skills. If you don't want to spend the time yourself sifting through all these leads or hiring someone new you can check out the service I run at www.feastflow.com. We deliver 5-10 project leads every week that match your skills that are all $5k+ budget, open to remote, and contain a personal email address so you can reach out directly. It reduces the time it takes for you to do outbound marketing and grow your business from hours per day to just minutes.
Thanks Sean! I've signed up for the free version and I'm looking forward to the first list. This is something we would pay money for in a heartbeat if it hit the right notes, may follow up with you directly once we see the first leads. (A little surprised you're giving something that valuable away for free.)
Thanks for the feedback Aaron! We find a lot of people are skeptical about the quality of leads we can provide every week so offering a free list seemed like a good way to prove our value before users upgrade to Premium.
Feel free to reach out to me anytime at hello@feastflow.com. Talk soon!