What is better? Agency name or Personal Name for client work?

a few weeks ago I announced that I was going to start a new web design business and I'm documenting the whole journey so the last few weeks I wanted to make some progress with this business and then I started working on The Branding the visual identity but then I ran into a dilemma which was should I start this new agency under my personal name or an agency name so come up with a new name and I needed this answer because I was working on The Branding and I need to know do I need to make a new look logo a new domain uh email everything so the first thing I did was ask my community for help the results were that the majority of people like 60% thought that doing client work under a separate business name was the best so I asked them for some arguments this person said that it's a lot better to make an agency name because then you can sell it in the future this person said be real and be yourself and this person said two things were clear to me in your first video you want to create a strong brand a company of one and who is that one you reeno so yeah I have two camps of opinions not a clear winner yet so I started looking online for some other YouTubers the first one that I found is from ran another fellow uh design YouTuber let's see what he has to say about it it really depends on number one your Ambitions if your ambition is to start a big agency and hire a lot of people and grow and scale and stuff like that an agency might be the right thing for you but if you're looking to build a single person business small business and work on your own then maybe an a freelancer name works right for you and I want to tell you that some people think that uh maybe clients do not treat Freelancers who use their name you know seriously and but I've always used my personal name and not an agency name and my experience has been that there's a lot of clients who actually do not want to work with agencies they want to work with Freelancers because they have the Assumption which is a lot of time correct that agencies are more expensive there's more people it's going to be slower it's going to be more bureaucratic you're not going to work with the Creator itself so there's people who actually want to work with freelancer on the other hand there's big clients or corporates who do feel more security working with an agency so it really depends on your ambition and what kind of clients you want to work with thank you ran this was very interesting he doesn't have a clear answer but I think he leans more towards the personal side because he says that many companies want to work with one person instead of this big agency I know that many people uh that are also struggling with this they say like yeah but with an agency you look bigger you look more professional but this is interesting he says from his experience not all the clients want that they want to work with one person so that they know that communication is faster they know where their money is going very interesting I also found this guy a professional photographer let's see what he has to say if you want to be a professional photographer you trade under your name and your name alone there is no yeah but I want something cool and creative no nobody wants your cool and creative name they want your name as the creative when you're getting booked as a commercial photographer you're getting booked because it's you okay I'm not a photographer but I do think he has a point here where he says when the client approaches you they want to work with you because they like your style maybe it's your design stff or your style of communication or even your personality I know that this is true because I also have a friend who does photography and videography and he says the same thing about clients that they really care about the person who's actually doing it instead of the product that they deliver so when I saw this I was leaning a lot towards the uh personal name side but then I did some more research because under my last video you guys were also recommending some books and especially two books that caught my attention a few of you actually recommended this book uh the emth why most small businesses don't work and what to do about it and this one the million-dollar web designer guide well if that's not for me then I don't know what is right so I started reading these books these books basically explain the problem that most creative businesses run into and that is that if you keep your business small just one person you then a lot of the pressure is on you so when the business starts to grow chaos occurs the emth book even says if your business depends on you you don't have a business you have a job which sounds very convincing if you don't think about it too deeply so the general idea of these books is that instead of you trying to do all the work yourself you build system so you document how you do it then you teach that to other people which then become your employees or your contractors and and then they can deliver the service for you without you being involved basically letting the agency run on its own this gives you the founder a lot more freedom to do something else and it can create a lot more money because you can skill with systems you can skill without systems it's impossible to skill this sounds very appealing right because you get more money and more freedom I mean who doesn't want that that's why many young dudes fall for this approach including me in the past because I thought it would give me freedom but is it really so simple and is this solution for everyone or is there more to it I personally think that there's a lot more to it because there's a big price you pay for that which these books don't talk about the first price you pay is a lot of responsibility because do you really think your agency can just run on its own have you ever had employees by yourself I mean some of you have some of you haven't but let me tell you you you first have to find a person that's not easy already then you have to teach them the material so you have to have good teaching material and that is assuming that you can actually teach because that's a skill but then do you really think that that will just go right all the time no you have to check up on them they will have questions you have to answer that you will have to manage them you will have to give them feedback if they're underperforming you have to pay them so you basically become a manager which is a lot of responsibility and then the second price you pay is that you lose the connection with the work you actually wanted to do from the beginning I mean if you're managing all the time because that costs time trust me it does cost time to manage people so if all of your time goes to that and maybe doing some sales then are you still doing the design and the development that you enjoyed I mean if you don't enjoy it then it's a good option but I personally enjoy the design and the development so it's kind of iron IC because this book promises that you will become a million dooll web designer but if you follow all of the steps of this book then you're not a web designer anymore you're a manager so that's what I mean with the price you pay so these two books basically assumes that the founder doesn't want to do the actual creative work himself anymore but I know how it works because I have some friends with agencies some of them they love it that they can manage people and they don't have to do the actual design work anymore but some of them secretly want to do some design themselves and then sometimes they just do it on in their free time which then kind of defeats the purpose because you went into this career to do design and then you do it on the side doesn't make any sense and also that profit thing you think it's so easy to make a lot of profit with that approach I've heard stories where small agencies are having a 100K of Revenue and then only 10k of profit because they have all these costs because they need to pay all of these people it creates a lot of overhead it's not just the salaries it's also the systems you have you have to buy bigger packages for project management for invoicing everything and so your profit margins go down when you do that approach so I'm just going to say it I think the writer of the emth was wrong because being a company of one doesn't mean that you are doomed to be a freelancer and have to just do whatever your client wants that is having a job if you have to follow orders if you're on your own you can still act like a business if you systemize what you offer it's all about positioning yourself creating those systems and then filtering clients that do not fit your agenda so that's why his quote in my opinion is way too dramatic and way too black and white the definition of a business that I found on Google was an organization that provides goods and services to the community in exchange for money with the goal of becoming profitable yeah you can do that on your own so even though I find it interesting to critique these books I do have to say that this approach is a valid approach you can build a team build systems and then try to skill that way okay so now back to the point we need to get to a conclusion okay so what I'm trying to do here is I'm trying to find an approach that works for me I'm not trying to find the best approach that works for everyone right one answer for everyone that doesn't work that gets clicks on YouTube and Tik Tok and wherever but it's not reality and I think I spent way too many years trying to find the perfect solution but you never find it at some point you just have to say to yourself okay what do I really wants so let me share that with you because maybe you can resonate I already said a little bit of it but I like to do the Creative work myself I love it I also don't like the process of hiring firing even worse and doing performance uh conversations those are not fun even though you have to do it as a boss I only want to work one day a week on this business which I think doesn't really fit the agency model because with the agency model it kind of looks bigger and it looks like it's always available so I shouldn't look too big and too available and I think when you do it in a personal way I think clients can be more understandable especially with me because they see I have a YouTube channel I have other things going on so I think that works better for me I don't want to do a lot of preparation work before I can get started with this agency and creating a separate name separate logo domain everything is just more work and then what about selling the agency in the future because that is a really good argument right but in my position it's kind of hard because even if I would create a separate agency name then it would still be quite depend dep on me my personal brand because my personal brand brings in quite a bit of clients and so even if it's a separate name and I am going to stop with the agency then it will also damage the lead INF flow so that makes it less interesting to actually buy my business in the future so as you can see I basically came to the conclusion for me that creating an agency name is not the best option for me and I'm just going to do it under my personal name I do want to keep it a little bit separate so I think I'm going to use a subdomain uh something like agency do uh my website.com where I can put my services and list it out a little bit more specifically because my personal website should also link to my educational stuff and everything I do I want it to be a little bit more than that so I think I'm going to use a subdomain so my Approach is basically a Onan agency it's not a freelancer approach where I'm just available for every project no I have my focus I know what I want to do and I do it in a specific way but it's a oneman show and let's say that I don't like this approach I can always change it in the future and I can always start an agency a separate name if I want to and I can still hire people with this approach as well it doesn't stop me from hiring an extra designer or developer to help me with a project but if I can do it myself I would do it because I enjoy it so what is your approach did you choose something that you're happy with or are you still question questioning what you want to do I want to give you a few questions if you're still questioning what your approach should be then I have some questions for you the first one is do you want to Outsource the creative work or do you like to do it yourself do you think you would like to manage people are you dreaming of making it big one day by selling your company do you already have a job and want to do projects on the site then it might be better to not make the impression that it looks too big by starting an agency and I know that agencies are very sensitive to employees starting another agency which makes sense of course so yeah that's it I also wanted to give you something that you can think about I am slowly building my agency step by step and I'm documenting everything I want to keep things simple I hope you like it so far and hopefully I will see you in another video

Channel: Rino de Boer

Views: 6,025

Keywords: agency name, personal brand, business name ideas, business name, agency name ideas, 10 best business names, agency name personal name, how to come up with a business name, naming your business, how to choose a great business name, how to come up with a brand name, web design business name, how to start a web design business, digital marketing, rino de boer agency

Id: Kj0RL9Xo3Q8

Length: 13min 19sec (799 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 15 2024