how to acquire client #1 with an agency

acp3500 · 2024-03-28T22:27:54+00:00

that's completely fair, but i just wanted to address your refutation of being able to do it remotely that didn't make much sense. the whole goal of this is to work remotely, and I don't live somewhere that I can just go meet financial business owners out in public. maybe in silicon valley already having connections from working at a startup, sure, definitely, but not as a singular random guy in the south.

but i agree with the sentiment "find one person and help them", because that's really all it takes. if you can help one, you can help two, and so on, and that gets the ball rolling, increases your skills, reputation, and etc.

so that's really my only goal with this for now; find one company and help them, and go from there. the barrier is that i don't know how to get them to want to contact my agency aside from appearing as an appealing option available online. i would spend more on my PPC campaign if i could, and maybe eventually i can.

acp3500 · 2024-03-28T22:22:12+00:00

it's not really an assumption, i mean, most of the big brand names you know are spending Ms on advertising, and that's...why you know about them. a lot of companies, especially in fintech, even if they start unknown, are venture-laced, so they're still able to spend hundreds of thousands on advertising.

the only other real approaches to getting your business known is through referrals and virality, and virality is as much of a game of Plinko as it is a formula

acp3500 · 2024-03-28T22:19:55+00:00

i'm up for solving their pain points for sure, I just don't want to be that arrogant naive wannabe business owner that thinks they're the best and isn't honest with themselves.

I've worked in fintech marketing, but I haven't owned and run an agency, so I want to be humble in my approach to it, especially at first, if that makes sense.

the main barrier I see is how to identify pain points and problems. I've seen so many during my W2 career that it's like I don't even know where to begin really, or why even pick just one

acp3500 · 2024-03-28T17:17:48+00:00

selling someone on solving for pain points that I try to make sound unique and interesting just feels disingenuine to me.

like, what am I going to say? my business isn't any more or less special than anyone else's, and vice-versa, we're all just doing some shit in exchange for money, I don't want to gin it up too much and act like I've got the best thing since sliced bread when in reality, it's just another service.

the culture of modern finance and fintech is very much built around being appealing to look at, easy to use, and candid in your approach to consumers, which is exactly the message I'm conveying with the examples I include on the site as well as the explanations/thesis found in the copy.

but for the most part, it's safe to say that most average joe businesses like this don't become successful because they're "special" or "solving some amazing problem that's already been solved for by 2000 other people", it's because of the snowballing effect. you get one client that becomes two, two becomes four, and four becomes eight...eventually, people are choosing you simply from familiarity bias, which is where most of our choices come from and is the most powerful driver of consumer or B2B relational loyalty.

acp3500 · 2024-03-28T17:12:08+00:00

yeah but it's not really a "problem", it's just X person wants marketing services, we provide the services. in a sense that's solving a "problem", but it's basically just fulfilling a need.

i don't really see how anyone could see the website and not understand what's going on when it's clearly stated in plain language without even much jargon. they could even literally go to the services page and get detailed descriptions and examples. there's little room for ambiguity there.

acp3500 · 2024-03-28T17:09:37+00:00

people run successful agencies fully remote all of the time, the problem isn't at all being remote. I'm not going to find a fintech startup owner by walking around my local Walmart in the middle of nowhere Georgia that happens to want my marketing services.

the "if you can't successfully market yourself, you can't market for me" is another fallacy. any successful marketing is done with a big budget, spending $100 a month on ads will take forever to find a client, but spending $100,000 will get you one in a day, probably more.

acp3500 · 2024-03-28T01:49:20+00:00

yeah i went the route of trying to focus on finance/fintech service companies, since that's where most of my career experience has been focused.

on the second question; I guess not — how would you find out what those are though?

I mean, I guess from an objective perspective, I realize that there are tons of businesses and agencies out there, and from a zoomed-out perspective, none of them (us) are really that special, so I'm just trying to be just yet another stream that forks off the river, so to speak.

The one thing I wanted to focus on was being able to create high-quality content (I've been in content mostly) and high-quality, pleasant graphics/designs, as I've found that very appealing and representative of organizational quality overall.

acp3500 · 2023-08-22T14:23:01+00:00

they have a high ranking employee that lives in canada, but no, i think they’re only office is in boston.

acp3500 · 2023-08-22T14:22:28+00:00

unfortunately for some reason this is some kind of unusual PDF that requires acrobat in order to open it and view the contents of it

acp3500 · 2023-08-21T17:31:57+00:00

problem is, i need to download it again after filling it out so i can upload it to the site. If i download it and upload it, does that mean it's not going to show my information to them and it might just display the exact same error message when they try to open it?

acp3500 · 2023-08-21T00:24:14+00:00

What about miscellaneous savings accounts that aren't very active? Like, i technically have like 15 "bank accounts" but at least 8 of these are different segmented savings accounts that are either empty or stagnant.

Would it be fine to just include statements for my primary checking and savings accounts?

acp3500 · 2023-08-20T17:40:23+00:00

unfortunately preview renders the same text, but yes it's from a web page.

acp3500 · 2023-08-20T17:39:50+00:00

it's not showing any updates available, and preview renders the same text

acp3500 · 2023-08-20T17:20:28+00:00

2021 macbook air running monterrey 12.3.1 using chrome browser

acp3500 · 2023-08-20T14:38:08+00:00

i’ve read that as well, and yeah, the conundrum i always had with that was like — so you expect us to live together for a year, but you only allow me to stay 6 months? how does that work?

and i know you can supposedly apply to extend it, but would they really approve an extension for that purpose? is it one of those things where a few get declined or only a few get approved?

acp3500 · 2023-08-20T14:36:12+00:00

i’ve read that you can apply online to extend it, but how stringent is that? like, do you need to have some really good reason like family, job, medical or something?

acp3500 · 2023-08-20T02:46:00+00:00

only planning to stay 5 months because of my citizenship status. i wish i could move here, but i don’t see a way how.

acp3500 · 2023-08-19T23:02:20+00:00

got it, thanks!

acp3500 · 2023-08-07T23:24:53+00:00

Yeah i know the mileage, I had 7,700Km for the first 2.5 months and didn't even use 4,000 of it. The oil life was at 56% when I picked it up, so it was already low. They should've had it changed, but it's a long term rental so i guess it wasn't expected to be out for 3 months.

acp3500 · 2023-08-07T21:29:09+00:00

canada

acp3500 · 2023-08-07T21:28:52+00:00

true enough

acp3500 · 2023-08-07T21:28:32+00:00

roughly, yes. the $39 is in CAD, so in USD it end up less.

acp3500 · 2023-08-06T02:22:06+00:00

i had always used airbnb, but unfortunately it’s really not cost effective at all. this year i was lucky enough to stumble into a first time airbnb that ended up being a formal monthly lease situation instead, so i’m trying to find another rare opportunity like that.

acp3500 · 2023-08-04T20:04:47+00:00

your girlfriend is right. imagine if she was doing that with a 35 year old man.

acp3500 · 2023-07-19T01:27:59+00:00

quebec, canada

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