I’m tinkering with an idea for 2024 that I’m calling the Loosely Coupled Agency, let me tell you a little more about it.
I ran an agency called WP Dude as some of my dear readers will know. I built up the recurring revenue in that business and was able to sell it, but the things was I hated running an agency, the stress of bringing in enough work to cover payroll each month and the hand holding of team members was not something I relished.
So why am I talking about building an agency again? I want to build something new that brings together a bunch of people with my work ethic that will enable me to scale by taking on more work without the stress of a traditional agency where I have full time employees.
Enter the Loosely Coupled Agency (LCA)
This idea is based around concepts from a book that is no longer available to buy called Noded, an LCA is a group of freelancers that come together to work on a project as if they were an agency.
No-one member of the LCA is in charge, there is no boss, we are a collective of equals. But there is leadership on a project basis.
One person becomes the project manager when they win a project and parts of the project are sub-contracted to other members of the LCA.
The individual members of the LCA take on their work and deliver it with excellence.
We don’t hide the fact these people are not working for a traditional agency. They are trusted sub contractors.
There is no obligation for members of the LCA to accept a project. Thy run their own businesses and have their own priorities and availability. This needs to be taken into account so redundancy needs to be built into the LCA, have two web designers for example.
We don’t mark up other people’s time to make a profit. We add some project management costs at our own personal rate.
The financials are not hidden to members of the LCA, the books are open on a project by project basis.
Here are some pointers I’ve cut and pasted from the Noded e-book.
- Long term personal goals. Short term organisational goals.
- Individual values, vision and culture. The combination of them is put to the test in every project.
- Rotating leadership (Noded teams have structure and “hierarchy” but it changes from project to project)
- Equal team membership
The Skills I Need in my LCA
I’m a WordPress developer obviously and I get projects around building sites, but there are a bunch of skills I don’t have that go into building a site.
I get asked to refer graphic designers, web designers and SEO people all the time. There are also parts of WordPress dev projects I’m not that keen on doing and sometimes struggle tech skills wise. Those are the skills I need to bring into my network.
I don’t have these contacts (seo for example) so I’m looking to build an LCA that includes these missing skills
So my LCA will contain
- Back end developer – me
- Front end developer – me, and I would like to outsource this more
- SEO specialist – I don’t do this and I’m often asked about this.
- SEM specialist – A specialist in online marketing to raise the awareness of a site, think ads, social media marketing that type of things
- Graphic Designer – someone who can create images, logos and other graphic designs.
- Web Designer – someone who can create designs for websites and then hand them over to the back end / front end developer, note Graphic Designer and Web Designer could be the same person.
Wrap Up – The Loosley Coupled Agency
If you are interested in learning more I would be happy to “lend” you a copy of my Noded e-book for you to read, get in touch if you do. It’s not in print anymore and you can’t buy and download it so I can’t imagine the authors would have any problems with me doing that.
If you are a freelancer with the skills I need to refer also get in touch.