We Started This Before Our Car Insurance Dropped

We started Str8shift young. Michael is in his early twenties and has more going on than is probably advisable. Isaac runs a real estate business on the side. Neither of us had managed clients before, and we made the standard first-year mistakes plus a couple that surprised us.

We said yes to the wrong clients

The clients who argue about price before you've discussed scope are the same ones who argue about everything else. We figured that out after taking a few of those projects. A difficult client at a low rate costs more in time and frustration than the invoice covers.

We tried to look bigger than we were

Our early copy said things like 'our team' and 'our process' as if twelve people were involved. There are two. Once we stopped writing around that, conversations with clients got more direct. People hiring a two-person shop want to know who those two people are, not read a mission statement.

We treated being busy as a metric

Both of us have full lives outside the agency. Early on, we wore that as a badge. It isn't one. Saying no to projects that weren't a fit opened up time to do the right ones well.

The short version for anyone starting out

Price the work correctly from the start. Be specific about who you are and who you're for. Take fewer clients and do better work for them. These aren't complicated ideas. They're harder to follow than they sound when you're trying to get a business off the ground, which is the only reason they're worth writing down.