Accelerate Your Path from Freelancer to Agency Owner
Are you struggling to operate and grow your freelance digital marketing business?
The dream of entrepreneurship is powerful. Work from home, be your own boss, and earn a great living doing the kind of work you enjoy. Grow your business and eventually sell it for the big bucks!
What could possibly go wrong?
The reality is often quite different. You find yourself working tons of hours with demanding clients that never seem to be satisfied; continually meeting with new leads but never closing them; delegating work to a team that doesn't perform as well as you do; and having to pick up the pieces when everything falls apart.
And then when you add up the revenue and expenses, you realize that you are totally burned out, working harder than you did at your old job, and making less money.
Realizing this makes you want to close the door to your home office, put your head against the wall and silently scream.
I know how it feels, because I have been there.
Hi, I’m Allison Lantz.
From 2011 to 2015, I learned my craft of SEO by working at agencies.
I was pretty good at it, and I soon started getting requests to do a little freelance work on the side.
Given that I was not making a huge salary as a junior SEO ($45K-$65k), the extra money sounded good, and it was!
By the end of 2015, I was making $144k per year in combined salary and freelance work, so I took the plunge to do freelance SEO full time!
My early approach was typical of a newbie freelancer:
Worked with anyone and everyone
Low, flat hourly rate
Brand new scope every time
No defined sales process
Create new deliverables as I go
Messy and overwhelming books
And not only that. Most days left me feeling:
☹️ Uncertain about my strategy
☹️ Clueless on how to operate a business
☹️ Insecure making big decisions
☹️ Isolated with my stress
☹️ Totally out of my league
I was earning decent money. But between broken operations and a lack of clarity, confidence and operational experience, you can imagine how things went…
I completely burned myself to the ground working 60 to 70 hours a week for 3 years.
The fundamental shift that changed everything
After burning the candle at both ends for three years, in late 2018 I took a step back, and decided I needed to make some major changes in my business. I definitely did not want to spend the rest of my life working 60 to 70 hours a week, but I wanted to enjoy a high income, and potentially even create a saleable business.
So, I adopted a “business owner”, rather than a “freelancer” mentality.
This included four key changes to how I approached my business:
Engaging in regular business planning
Creating a systemized and repeatable sales process
Standardizing operations to ensure high quality deliverables
Building out a team and a back office to do the delivery and administration
These changes were nothing short of miraculous - but it was by no means easy...
From Burned Out Freelancer to Multi-Million Dollar Exit in 4 years
(With some MAJOR bumps along the way)
I would like to be able to tell you that all you have to do is adopt this mindset and take this training, and you will be an overnight success.
I am sorry to say that is not the way it works.
In fact it is hard; you have to do the implementation, and you never know what life is going to throw at you along the way.
Six months after I started this approach, my husband was in a life threatening accident that shattered both his legs.
He was the primary caregiver to our two preschool children, and not only could he not take care of them, he couldn't even take care of himself.
I was suddenly running my business, and taking care of my entire family - completely alone.
Just when I was able to get somewhat on top of my personal situation, COVID-19 hit, and I lost several major clients, pushing me into a loss situation.
I feared that this was the final straw that was going to break my back…
But it didn't.
Because of the systems and tools I had put in place, I was able to navigate these crises, and not only survive, but grow my freelancing business to a 20-person agency and sell it in a multi-million dollar exit in 2022.
Questions? Book a free drop-in coaching session today!
How I went from frazzled Freelancer to competent CEO
As I was implementing my new business mindset, I decided early on to document everything that was working and everything that was not working. Sometimes I tried things that did not work. I scrapped those and tried new things. Some approaches worked, but they were too cumbersome to keep up with, so I simplified them. No matter what, I kept working on perfecting my approach.
Over time, through trial and error, studying and learning, quizzing mentors, and workshopping with my team, I was finally able to say that I had a comprehensive system that would take me from freelance consultant to a mid-sized digital marketing agency owner.
The system has 5 main components:
I can confidently say that once these fundamentals are in place for your freelance business, you will be ready to scale into a true digital marketing agency.
How The Freelance Alliance Was Born
After I sold my agency in 2022, I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do next.
Over the subsequent months, I spoke to many friends and former co-workers struggling in their freelance businesses. Many of these folks were coming to me for informal advice and mentoring, and I truly enjoyed helping them out and sharing my knowledge and systems on a one-on-one basis.
It was then that it dawned on me that there are thousands of digital marketing freelancers out there going through exactly the same pain that I did - and that the knowledge I developed could help them succeed faster than they otherwise would be able to.
So, as a way to more broadly share what I learned on my freelancer-to-agency journey, I created the Freelance Alliance.
Everything you need to succeed is included
I wanted this program to be more comprehensive than most generic “courses” that are saturating the market. To that end, I developed each session to build on the prior sessions, and the progression mirrors the way that I used them to build my digital marketing agency.
The Freelance Alliance Course Curriculum
As comprehensive as these video trainings are, and as useful and powerful as these templates are, I don't expect you to make this transition alone.
I had lots of help along the way from mentors and peers, so I decided to replicate that level of support in this course with coaching and peer support.
24 Hours of Coaching and 24/7 Peer Support and Interaction
24 Hours of Coaching
Over the three month duration of this program, in addition to the above materials, you will have 24 hours of access to me for drop in coaching. I will personally help you with questions specific to your business, and give you guidance on how to implement the things you are learning from the training.
Private Slack Channel
On top of that, you will have exclusive access to the private Freelance Alliance Slack Channel. Here you will be able to see what questions your peers are asking, and give and receive advice not only from me, but from all the other freelancers taking the course. This multiplies your learning exponentially.
To my knowledge there is no other similar training program that offers so much coaching and peer interaction as the Freelance Alliance. I have designed this training to ensure members of the Freelance Alliance have EVERYTHING they need to make the leap from freelancer to agency owner.
Who is This Program For?
The Freelance Alliance was designed with digital marketers in mind. My background is in SEO, but the fundamental concepts will be beneficial for freelancers in the following fields:
Will I Really Use the Material in This Program?
One of my favorite sayings is: “It is simple to make things complicated, but complicated to make things simple”.
It would have been simple to make this course 30 hours of jumbled recorded material, with dozens of random documents and let the freelancers wade through it all on their own and try to pick and choose what is really useful.
That is not what you are going to get in this course.
Instead you will get:
- 12 instructional videos that average about 20-30 minutes each. Years of learning boiled down to about 6 hours.
- 14 useful downloads. Each one took hours to create, ensuring that they are simple and practical tools that will actually get used.
- 3 months of weekly drop in coaching, totaling 24 hours of mentorship!
- Slack group membership to network with peers and contact me for help.
This encompasses everything I can think of that digital marketing freelancers need to professionalize their business and grow it into a real digital marketing agency.
What Graduates Are Saying About The Freelance Alliance
Two Ways to Try the Course for Free
I know money is tight when you are starting out as a freelancer, or just scaling your agency. The last thing you need at this point is to buy a training program that does not enable you to really transform your business.
And, frankly, this program is not for everybody. Professionalizing your business will require work on your part. You will need to invest the time to watch the videos and do the hard work to apply the training to your business. If you aren't willing to do this, DON’T take this program.
That’s why I decided to offer two ways to try the course for free so you can decide:
First 3 Lessons Free
Dive into the course’s first 3 impactful lessons that cover goal setting, business planning, and refining your value proposition & sales process.
4 Downloadable Tools and Templates
Access 3 Lessons Instantly
Try Informal Drop-In Coaching
Get some free advice on problems you are having in your business, snag a free template to help you out in your freelance business or just get a feel for my approach and style of mentoring.
Book Your Coaching SessionIf it's not for you, you will get some free training, and you can go back to what you have been doing.
If you decide that it is really going to transform your business, you can pay and unlock the rest of the course and be on your way to going from freelancer to digital marketing agency.
How Much Does it Cost if I Decide to Take the Full Program?
Most of the Alliance members are targeting clients worth $2,500 per month and up. If you sell just one incremental client using the materials that I share in this program, you will pay for the class in the first month with that new client!
If that client stays with you for a year, you will pay for the course 12 times over!
During that time, you will also have an opportunity to get free coaching with me.
And, by the end of the free trial you will have all the information you need to make an informed decision about whether the course is right for you or not.
