In today’s video, I’m talking about something that’s been highly requested. Essentially, I’m gonna show you how to run a web design agency while working a full time job. I’m speaking from experience: I did it myself, and now that I’m a full time entrepreneur and web agency owner, I can show you the way that I segwayed into doing that by following this process.
So let’s dive in, and let’s get it done.
A crazy thing, right? 55% of freelancers still have a full time job. And so, I want to show you how you can start to cultivate and develop your agency while working a full time position.
I never, ever, recommend someone quitting a job cold turkey. People have responsibilities, mortgages, rents, children, and other things that they need to maintain while they have a job. Not to mention health insurance!
Jobs can be super beneficial as you segway into entrepreneurship. So I’m gonna show you how to do that—and this is the exact process I followed to achieve financial freedom while working a full time job that allowed me to make passive income outside of my main job so that I could quit my job 7 years ago and run my agencies.
So, again, a few statistics: 1.1 billion freelancers right now in the world, and 55% of them still have other jobs. So, if I could do it, you can do it. And without further ado, let’s go ahead and dive right into the show.
So first things first is a book by Hal Elrod called The Miracle Morning. I recommend everybody to read it. Now, you don’t have to be the cliche entrepreneur that wakes up at 4AM, has a coffee, works out for 3 hours, and does all these regimens and things.
This is the way that I follow it, because I’m not a morning person, so I essentially have to force myself to get up early. But essentially, one rule is to try and wake up before 8AM. If you have to be at work at 9-9:30, try to wake up while you have enough time to do these specific tasks.
So one, try to wake up before 8AM.
Meditation is great for getting a frame of mind. There are a ton of free apps out there, like Calm, or Peloton, and this’ll really put you in the mindset of getting your day going with this process.
Also, try and get some exercise in—I try to get an hour in each day, but 30 minutes is the minimum. Try and get your blood pumping by doing some cardio, or maybe some strength training. There are a few really cool apps that you can find—there’s tons of free websites out there—so try and get your process going in the morning as soon as you can.
Then, of course, read. I like to read 10 pages per day. It’s not a huge benchmark, but again, try and get 10-15 minutes to get that done.
And so, once you kinda do those things preliminary in the morning, you can do maybe 40 minutes to an hour of deep work or work on your own business. So if you need to be at work at 9AM, for example, you might have to wake up a bit earlier than 8AM to get those other tasks done, where you want to set aside some time to work on your agency in three buckets.
That’s going to be crucial to you being able to get this job done and work on freelance projects while you have a full time job. So make sure that you’re developing systems—and again, I have a video on creating standard operating procedures, so check out the upper right hand corner to check out that training. I won’t go into detail on it here, but you can check out that video to get acclimated.
Next, you wanna start building out your team. You can use Slack and Asana to communicate with them throughout the day while you have your full time job.
You’re gonna have to develop your skills in detail so that you can charge a premium and start to push yourself out of that full time job. And again, if you wanna do both, you can. You can have a full time job and then run your own agencies—it’s just gonna be a lot, and the ultimate goal is going to be to segway into entrepreneurship on your terms.
So to go into developing systems, SOPs are essentially step-by-step instructions compiled by an organization to help workers carry out complex routine operations.
So in SOPs, they aim to achieve efficiency, right? If you have a step-by-step direction on how to do something, you can mitigate issues and problems you might have. This is also going to reduce miscommunication and failure to comply with initial regulations, or your IP/Intellectual Property—again, check out my videos on SOPs for more on that.
Here’s an example of a standard operating procedure that I had in a Google Doc. You have at the top, the last time it was updated, it also shows a team member the last time it was updated for reference. It has a link to video training, and our video training just goes through that process in real time with the directions on the right hand side—again, check out my other videos on that.
Next, mention any of the other documents or things that will be needed to execute this task. And then, the step-by-step breakdown.
Just a side note, a lot of you are like, “Well, I can’t afford to hire anyone just yet. Why am I gonna SOPs and start building my teams?”
SOPs are gonna help you internally as you scale, and it’ll help you create a step-by-step checklist for how you do your tasks. Now, as you build your team, you can do this on a project basis. So by fulfilling roles that take up most of your time, these individuals can work on projects while you’re at work, sending updates to you through Asana or Slack—I have another video on this and you can check that on the upper right corner as well.
Now when you’re thinking about building out your team, you wanna think about the key essential job roles.
So if you need someone helping you from day to day, project delegation, and email correspondence. You can probably hire a project manager or virtual assistant in websites like Upwork—they have amazing VAs that are available in both the U.S. and abroad based on your budget.
Also, if you need content, graphics, design, you probably want to hire a graphic designer—again, these can be on a project basis. So as you get this work, you can hire based on the work and the fulfillment that’s needed.
So if you bring on someone to do UI, UX, or wireframes, you can pay them specifically for that project out of the total. In that way, they’re getting paid on a project basis. Now as you grow and scale your agency, you can probably bring them on payroll, make them part time or full time, all that good stuff.
Also, if you need website design, custom integrations, you’re probably gonna want to hire a website developer.
Now the last piece of this is skill development.
Now that you’ve started to build out your systems, you’ve hired your team, you want to continue to improve your process so that you can charge more, so that you can make a premium product that your client loves, you need to develop your skills. Your only way to charge premium prices is by learning and applying knowledge from the best in the business.
So I have three resources that I have learned for myself.
This site is amazing. It’s run by Chris Doe, and it has business and education for design. So you have branding, business, creative skills, and courses on more. And these are from award-winning designers and branding folks that have done just a phenomenal job.
We’ve taken a lot of their courses, these courses are available to a lot of my team members that we paid for with the agency. And you have to be able to learn and apply these things to build and scale your agency.
Another course is the Ultimate Freelance Course by Mike Janda—and again, these are courses that I’ve taken, there’s no solicitation here, this is literally what I used to help scale my business to 7 figures. And so, this is a 6-suite course bundle covering everything from finding clients to managing your creative business.
Then we have the Web Design Studio Accelerator, which is my course. This is the course I leveraged to help agency owners develop their skills and create systems at their agency.
So let’s kinda go through this timeline ‘cause I wanna break it all down. So, to recap everything, those are specific things that you need to really scale your efforts while you’re working a full time job. So here’s kinda the daily timeline that I followed to segway into full time entrepreneurship.
One, you know, get up at 6AM. Once I’m up, I’ll meditate, exercise and read for about 6-6:45, give or take, you know, about 15 minutes.
Then I’ll work on my business. So that’s when I work on my business between that time from 7-8:15. Once I do that, I shower, get ready, and go to work.
Now, I’m working from 9-5. Now, in some cases, I’ve worked at the agencies where I work from 9:00-6:00, 9-7, 9-8. They’re really fluctuating.
Now, there are times when I’ll be up until 2-3 o’clock in the morning working. I don’t advise that ‘cause it can cause issues and you can have problems in both your work and your freelance business. So make sure you’re getting enough sleep while you’re kind of going through this process.
Then, 5:30-9:00, or -8:00, I’ll have personal time where I’ll have time with my family, chillax, maybe read a book. And then, from 9-11 you can work on the business again. By 11, I’m getting in some sleep.
So if you follow this process—which essentially doesn’t have a ton of work—beginning about 7-7 ½ hours of sleep, you’re looking at 60 hours per month that you can allocate towards your business.
Now you can change this up, right? If you don’t have a ton of responsibilities, and you have a little bit more downtime, you can increase that daily workload to 70-80 hours per month, in addition to your 9-5.
For me, now that I’m married and I have a kid, I need to make sure to be regimented with my process. But again, depending on your schedule and depending on the time that you have, you can allocate it to more time to what needs to get done for your agency.
Thank you, again, for checking out the video content. Make sure you like, subscribe, and comment below. Tell me how you’re launching your web agency, and I will see y’all again next week.
