u/Business_Bill_4710

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who works in the fashion industry. He's been freelancing for over 10 years, serves the biggest brands in the world. But he's "just" a freelancer by title.

We got into the pros and cons of being a freelancer vs being a business owner. He held his ground hard. As a solo freelancer he says he has less stress, more profit, and more control than any of his agency-owner friends. He doesn't see a world where running a business is the better play.

That doesn't match my experience as a video agency owner.

On the freelance side, sure. But being solo means doing the WHOLE process for the client alone. Discovery, pre-production, shoot, edit, color, deliverables, revisions, invoicing. I know hiring contractors helps with the load, but that's still not the same as having a full-time team that's actually invested in the work.

So I'm genuinely torn after that conversation. He's not wrong about the freedom and the margins, and I'm not wrong about the scale and the support.

For anyone who's worked both sides, solo high-end freelance vs agency owner. Does any of this match your experience? And where was my friend actually right, vs just defending his own path?

I run a small studio, we're 4 people including me. Two senior editors, a producer, a junior who's mostly assisting, and myself. We've been operating for around 2 years with recurring content retainers and bigger quarterly projects.

After closing last year's balance, I had the idea of raising the salary of my 2 senior roles by 20% with the goal of incentivizing them to stick around, but now theire salary is above the market avg.

I haven't lost anyone yet, but I'm planning the next 12 months and I'm not convinced that if a competitor offers them another role they would stay.

I've already talked to some other founders about this, and they tell me that usually senior roles quit within the 2nd or 3rd year, and you can't do much about that, just need to accept it. I can't help but think they're wrong about that, but I'm not sure.

Has anyone here been able to keep their editors/producers past the 2-3 year mark? If so, what did you do? What do you recommend?

I've been shooting videos and photos for about 10 years on and off, currently based in a smaller market doing a mix of fashion, events, and local commercial work. The local rates are stuck and I've maxed out what I can charge here, so I'm moving back to a bigger market in a few weeks.

The plan is to start a small video production company. Lead with mini-docs and music videos (that's what's been bringing me inbound). The actual revenue comes from monthly content retainers I sell on the back of each doc.

On top of that, I also want to freelance on bigger productions. 2nd shooter, camera op, set work for established shops. Mostly to be on bigger teams and learn from people working at a level I'm not at yet.

The problem people keep bringing up: these two can't happen at the same time. Run my own company and I can't take last-minute freelance calls. Also if I'd take freelance calls, my clients would slip.

Anyone done both? How did the first year actually play out?

Last year I made some changes in my business that seemed minor at first. Talked to enough successful agency owners and kept hearing the same things, so I decided to test them out.

Idk about you, but when I was a freelancer taking care of 5-7 clients, I was so busy with the "product" itself that I could not see it as a business owner. So here I'm gonna share the 4 most important changes I made going from a freelancer with clients to an actual business.

1. Stopped taking every project that came in

When I was taking every project that came in, I had 4 different service types running at the same time. Every client needed something slightly different. Once I stopped offering everything to everyone and focused on one type of deliverable for one type of client, projects stopped starting from zero every time

2. Separated my price from my time

I billed hourly for way too long. The better I got, the less I made per project. I was literally getting penalized for being good at my job. Switched to project pricing then retainers

3. Built a system before I hired anyone

I almost hired too early. What I actually needed first was to explain my own process clearly enough that someone else could follow it. Spent 3 months documenting it before the first hire

4. Started measuring more things than revenue

I had my best client bringing 40% of my revenue. After I actually tracked the hours, they were taking 60+ hours of work, revisions, back and forth, calls... Divided the monthly payment by the hours spent, my worst-paying client was actually this one. Just let this client go to bring in better projects, best decision

Hope this helps someone