Two related points. Your Scrooge McDuck point is well taken — I find that there needs to be a fine balance between keeping a roof over your head and the adoption of the “Resort” mentality where hard work is unheard of. There are a number of virtual agencies out there (I've even employed a few of them on various projects but won't name names.) One of the issues with this model is that everyone seems to want to do the “fun stuff” and (here's the relationship to the first part of the quote) it is hard to get anyone to take on the drudge work. How do plan to you address this?

Two related points. Your Scrooge McDuck point is well taken — I find that there needs to be a fine balance between keeping a roof over your head and the adoption of the “Resort” mentality where hard work is unheard of. There are a number of virtual agencies out there (I've even employed a few of them on various projects but won't name names.) One of the issues with this model is that everyone seems to want to do the “fun stuff” and (here's the relationship to the first part of the quote) it is hard to get anyone to take on the drudge work. How do plan to you address this?

Two related points. Your Scrooge McDuck point is well taken — I find that there needs to be a fine balance between keeping a roof over your head and the adoption of the “Resort” mentality where hard work is unheard of. There are a number of virtual agencies out there (I've even employed a few of them on various projects but won't name names.) One of the issues with this model is that everyone seems to want to do the “fun stuff” and (here's the relationship to the first part of the quote) it is hard to get anyone to take on the drudge work. How do plan to you address this?

Two related points. Your Scrooge McDuck point is well taken — I find that there needs to be a fine balance between keeping a roof over your head and the adoption of the “Resort” mentality where hard work is unheard of. There are a number of virtual agencies out there (I've even employed a few of them on various projects but won't name names.) One of the issues with this model is that everyone seems to want to do the “fun stuff” and (here's the relationship to the first part of the quote) it is hard to get anyone to take on the drudge work. How do plan to you address this?

How do you see the two as different, and why would entrepreneurs be preferable to the freelancers Adam has in his model?

How would you balance the push and pull of the personal brands of the entrepreneurs versus that of the agency? In other words, why wouldn't I just hire the entrepreneur? (Or a freelancer)? And what would determine which work “belongs” to the entrepreneur and which to the agency? How do you avoid conflict of interest?

The trick would be, I think, to find a compelling story for the premium that hiring the agency would bring–and to find a premium that is less than typical agencies.

In that case, it seems the profit model would be based on volume, not margin…which brings the conundrum back to how to make it crystal clear to the client how both the experience and the product would be different from that of hiring either a solo entrepreneur or a traditional agency.

Great post. There was a group of people that tried this in Las Vegas and pretty much failed. Their model was this, they have the brick and mortar and all of them had other businesses. The problem is that it became more of a referral for their other businesses. The new agency charged x amount for a certain amount of hours. On top of that their clients were billed separately for any work done by the individual entrepreneur's company. They had a ridiculous amount of unhappy clients as the agency never seemed to do anything except prepare a report on what the client was doing incorrectly (which people said was helpful) and then referred to the entrepreneur to fix it. They did have networking events but they only promoted the agency.

This model can work very well. Some of the problems that can exist are when clients only need one part of the offerings of the agency meaning that some people are putting in their 20 or so hours while others are not. I agree that is has to be a brick and mortar setting as virtual would only really be a referral type business.

Would love to see how you make it work.

Suzanne

Actually, we are an online PR 2.0 startup that works pretty much in this way. (We don't call ourselves an agency.)

A thought on 1. How would the agency work in terms of equity? Who puts how much time into what. There's your equity share on a job.

And the CEO position. Why do you need a CEO? We don't. Just lots of great minds working collaboratively. Each with his speciality. It just takes a different headset.

Luckily (?), I have always worked client side. I have engaged pretty much all the major pr & communications in Europe, Middle East and the US at one time or another. By learning what does and doesn't work for the client, we have taken those, and circumnavigated them by using a model very similar to what you propose.

Nice to see a like mind Congrats on the the thoughts!

Steve Seager
we do communications

The issue there? Agencies like to be involved with any strategy with the client for implementation. They can't execute without first engaging with the client. Which could lead to you getting cut out of the potential business.