Can anyone succeed as a Digital Agency owner?

Most people dream of being their own boss and starting a business. The pandemic has given many people an opportunity to reassess and really think about what they would like to do for the next 5-10 years with their professional careers.

While the life of a business owner is not for everyone as it does involve dedication, hard work and sacrifices, more and more people are interested in becoming their own boss. Having the freedom to structure your own work/life balance and exceed your income goals are all important motivations for becoming your own boss.

However, it’s important to put into context the reality of becoming an entrepreneur. As a business owner, you often need to think about lots of things before you are even operational. For example, what do you propose to sell? How much will you charge? Where do you market your products or services? How much can you afford to invest? This is all without considering other external factors such as the competition, legislation, company set up etc.

This paralysis by analysis often leads to people becoming overwhelmed and doubting their capabilities to succeed as a business owner. Self doubt and a muddled mindset are never good traits to possess when you are launching any new business.

The human brain is really powerful and should be fueled with positive thoughts, especially if you are embarking upon the journey of setting up your own business. As a business owner, you need to channel all your energy into positive actions that will actually help you achieve your business goals.

Sure, you can research, analyse and debate every decision, but ultimately, the biggest difference between someone that succeeds in business and someone that doesn’t, is work ethic. There comes a time when you need to make a decision and then take massive action to succeed. This is why it’s important to channel your energy on actually completing tasks and progressing forward, step by step. After all, a business is a marathon and not a sprint.

Before you start a business, in our opinion, it is important to be honest with yourself and really analyse what the key motivators are that are driving your interest in entrepreneurship. For instance, some people want to start their own business to earn more money while for others it’s about greater control. Every motivation and reason is personal to the individual business owner but it’s important that you’re honest with yourself about why you want to start a business.

When we started iOB Business, our motivators were both intrinsic and extrinsic. On the inner side, we were looking to break away from the corporate world and use our knowledge, skills and experience to build our own business. On the extrinsic level, we were looking to empower people just like you to build their businesses and help their local communities leverage digital solutions.

We understand that motivations change over time and just like any good business, they develop and evolve into new things. By having a cause that you are truly passionate about, you can overcome setbacks along the way and focus on the end goal.

Whatever your motivation for starting a business, you need to make sure the desire burns strongly because the life of an entrepreneur is filled with challenges, successes and a unique path of discovery. The liberation of making your own decisions is great, but you also need the self discipline to stay organised and complete tasks. Ultimately, you are responsible for the success or failure of your business, so you need to put the work in from day one.

Do you have what it takes to become a Digital Agency owner?
In our opinion, anyone can succeed as a Digital Agency owner, regardless of your previous experience or skill level. Business is all about learning and developing over time, something we have seen over and over again with our partners. Having some experience will reduce the learning curve slightly, but in all honesty, the skills you need to succeed can all be learnt with dedication.

While every business sells or provides a product or service to an end user/company, there is one thing that all businesses have in common, they are run by people. The actual ‘people skills’ are what helps you develop a long term relationship with your stakeholders and build a business with longevity.

Talking, listening, reading body language, asking questions, advising, helping, are all vital skills as a business owner. Now all of us, whether we have run businesses in the past or worked for a company, have experience in these areas.

These soft skills are intangible but vital when you are running your own Digital Agency. This is because you are communicating with small business owners who may not necessarily have the technical skills to understand digital marketing. Your interpersonal skills will help you relate your service offerings to business owners in a way that they will understand.

As a Digital Agency franchisor, we have removed the need for any of our partners to learn technical skills such as how to create a website or run a pay per click advertising campaign on behalf of their clients. Our Fulfilment Team handles all technical projects for our partners which frees up their time to focus on revenue generating activities such as networking with their local business community.

Do you need a lot of time to run a business?
The creation and adoption of productivity tools has made it easier than ever for people to set up and run successful businesses without investing huge amounts of time and resources. There is agreement that the more time to dedicate to a business, the better the potential results.

However, for certain tasks, technology has made it possible to automate workflows and tasks without manual intervention. For example, processing data, sending regular automated emails etc, can all be configured initially as a one time task.

Most people are not able to start a new business full time and quit their existing day job/current business. Here at iOB Business, we are appreciative that every partner has life expenses such as a mortgage, car, family etc that requires a benchmark level of income each month. This is why we give our partners the flexibility to develop their businesses either on a part or full time basis.

Indeed, many of our franchisees start out part time and then look to transition to full time as they build up residual income by signing up clients in the long run. There is no right or wrong way to grow a Digital Agency, it very much depends on you and how much time you can dedicate each month.

What can you do if you encounter setbacks?
The life of a business owner is never all plain sailing, it is inevitable that you will encounter challenges along the way. If you review success stories from many well known business owners/leaders, you will understand that every single one of them had to overcome hurdles in their pursuit of happiness.

While challenges do occur in business, it’s important to push through and find a solution. This is why all of our partners get access to our live training programme, twice a month Business Growth Sessions, lifetime support, Partner Accelerator Programme, Learn Centre and Digital Office to help[ with their journey. Our team is focused on providing detailed support in a variety of ways to make sure our partners have a solution for every scenario.

Summary
As we have seen throughout this week's blog, anyone can succeed as a Digital Agency owner because the skills, competencies and traits you need to become successful can all be developed over time.

It is crucial that you understand your motivation for wanting to start a business and you are aware that any successful business is a marathon and not a sprint. Our value-driven package gives all of our partners a blueprint for Digital Agency success.

To find out more about succeeding as a Digital Agency owner, please contact a member of our team.

Until next time, take care.