How to Guides Archives - Digital Agency Insiders

As the Coronavirus quarantine starts to lift and the world starts to get back to normal, digital agencies need to reflect on what we’ve learned over the past few months.

One of the most common questions I’ve been getting over the past several months is about how to stay calm. As the sky is falling down around you, how do you minimize stress so you can think clearly, make smart decisions, and adapt?

You’ve heard it a million times: “Fake it until you make it.”
Every entrepreneurship guru and personal development expert loves repeating this.
And they’re completely wrong.
I agree with the idea of not waiting until everything is perfect to get started. And I agree with pushing yourself outside your comfort zone.
But here’s the problem with “faking it”: it leads to false bravado. And whenever there’s a gap in honesty, it opens the door for mistrust.

I spend a lot of time at client meetings, mastermind events and in Facebook groups talking to other agency owners about what they can do to reach new clients. To acquire new business. To generate new leads.

Now, of course, I recognize the importance of all of these conversations and what they mean to building the business that we’re all trying to build.

But, humor me for a minute.

Is there a chance that sometimes we’re focusing on the wrong aspect of building our agency? What if we had a shift in mindset? What if, just for today…or this week…or this month…we need to set our sights on our current clients?

And there are countless more unknowns. So even as things slowly start to recover, many digital agency owners and aspiring entrepreneurs remain fearful about the future. “Is now a good time to launch my business? Will I really be able to grow my business over the months ahead?”

The good news is that we can look back at depressions and recessions throughout history and learn lessons to apply to our current situation. Countless businesses have been launched and grown during economic downturns, and we can do the same.

Keep these principles in mind to survive and thrive…

There are a million entrepreneurship gurus, all pushing their strategy for making millions online. Ecommerce, dropshipping, membership sites, ebooks, consulting, SaaS products, apps… the list goes on and on.
These are all great business models. In fact, we use quite a few of these in our businesses today.
But most of them come down to one fatal flaw: they’re not the right fit for the average beginner.

Over the last several years, my team and I have made a name for ourselves by coming up with crazy ways of getting in front of clients. Donut Drops, cardboard tubes, niche podcasts… these are keywords that sound funny to outsiders, but they represent some of the biggest drivers of our business. Which is why since the quarantine started, countless people have been reaching out to us saying, “Is it too late to start my digital agency? I was just getting started before the Coronavirus hit, and now that we’re locked down I can’t go meet prospects in person!”

We get emails every day from business owners scrambling to survive the Coronavirus recession. Everyone is looking for strategies and ideas to weather the storm.

The vast majority of people completely forget about an incredible asset that is sitting right under their nose… their dead leads. Many of our clients track their outreach with a spreadsheet, or with a CRM like Pipedrive. If you do as well, this is a great resource to start generating new business.

Here’s how to heat up those dead leads and start making sales…

I see so many businesses right now that are saying, “The economy is doing terribly, so we’re going to stop spending money on advertising until things get back to normal.” This is like saying there’s not enough oxygen so you’re going to hold your breath…

The fact is, you need to advertise more during a recession. And in fact, all of the things business normally do become more important:

The reality is, chaos creates opportunities. Fortunes will be lost, but fortunes will be made as well. And if we play our cards right this can actually be an incredible period of growth for our businesses. And even more importantly, we have a huge opportunity to do good in our communities, to help our clients weather this storm, and to provide guidance and reassurance to people who are desperate for it.