It depends on what you’re delivering. If your retainer work is low‑time, like 30 minutes of website maintenance per month, you could have many clients. To scale beyond ten, focus on retainer deliverables that have little internal production cost—e.g., monthly reports, Loom video breakdowns, or limited Slack availability a few hours a day. This creates leverage and arbitrage between the time you put in and the perceived value, keeping you profitable.
I run the agency with zero employees. I prefer contractors over employees because with contractors I just give them the work and a deadline, without managing their hours or schedule. Employees require a set schedule, clock‑in/out, and more regulations. Contractors have more flexibility, fewer legal constraints, and I can hire fantastic people who have their own systems. I give them a deliverable request, like “I need this done in two days, I’ll pay X amount,” and they deliver. Currently I have a YouTube editor, a strategist, a community manager, an agency partner who gets a percentage of projects, and previously a VA. This lean contractor model lets me move faster and focus on high‑margin direct work rather than scaling the agency.
If your goal is to scale to seven‑ or eight‑figure monthly revenue, first consider what you're selling. Moving into enterprise with large, intimately scoped contracts often means custom software development and would require scaling the team far beyond nine people, bringing a whole different set of problems I don't enjoy. Instead, I recommend what every lean agency does at the million‑dollar‑a‑month mark: productize the hell out of your offer—think Fat Joe level productization where fulfillment cost is near zero and you charge based on outcomes like placements or deliverables. For example, an old client of mine productized SEO to the point where you just order a $7,755 campaign on their platform with zero fulfillment cost. For your specific model—$10K up front and $35K over six months (about $4‑$6K monthly plus upsells)—you could increase the monthly retainer to $5‑$8K and average $60‑$70K per client. Also, consider niching down: sell outcomes, not the systems, and use automation just to deliver those outcomes (e.g., a cold‑email agency enabled by automation). As an unofficial note, Lewin’s white‑label GHL approach is a massive revenue ad with little effort, but I prefer to focus on creating high‑quality content rather than pushing software on everyone.
To land one or two retainer design clients in two months with a 20% call‑to‑client conversion, you need 5‑10 calls. Over 60 days that’s roughly one call every 6‑12 days. Aim for one call every 12 days: with a 1% booking rate you’d contact about 100 people in 6 days, or ~15 people per day. That’s doable with the free manual outreach method—send cold emails or Loom videos on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, TikTok, etc. You don’t need money or elaborate planning; just commit to taking action.
Yes, it’s a good time to start reaching out as a freelancer to scale into an agency. Avoid posting identical content on multiple videos (YouTube removes duplicates). Use a guaranteed‑results model: promise a specific outcome, require the client to sign up for Instantly/email enrichment, buy domains and scrapers (their out‑of‑pocket ~$200), then charge your fee (~$2k) upon delivery. Generally run a managed service—handle everything end‑to‑end—to improve result probability.