Anyone here own their own ad agency or design firm? How old were you when you started? Howd you get clients? Any advice would be appreciated

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Not an owner but started my career in a very small shop. The partners (in their 40’s) left their previous agency with a client to start their own. We did a lot of project based work and design work in the beginning before landing bigger AORs.

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Nice. Good to know. Anything you think they did different or unique to stand out?

🙋🏻‍♂️ 37. We didn’t have many existing contacts, so we got our early jobs through a mix of strong inbound discoverability and partnerships with complementary agencies (eg, video production, lead gen, etc).

At first, you need any job that will help keep the lights on. Don’t be too proud to take them.

Thanks for this!

Small shop owner but outside the US. Started about 10 years ago with little professional experience but a desire to do out-of-the-box work. The way we got things going was mostly through proactives, some of which caught the clients attention. Portfolio now includes Netflix, Sephora, Starbucks and more. We now have a few retainers and also get an invitation to pitch every 1-2 months.

That’s pretty cool. Thanks for the details

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