397: Should I Start a Freelance Business or Build an Agency?

A service business is one of the fastest side hustles to get off the ground, and you can scale it by hiring other people to deliver the work.

But is there an advantage to staying a solo operator?

In this Side Hustle Showdown we're looking at freelancing vs. building an agency.

For this debate, I invited a couple members of The Side Hustle Nation community who both run cleaning companies:

• Chris Schwab from ThinkMaids.com represented the agency side. We last heard from Chris in episode 294, where he talked about how he’d built his cleaning business to $60k a month in revenue, and scaled back his own involvement to just 10 minutes a day.
• Ken Carfango from SoloCleaningSchool.com represented the solo freelance side. Ken’s a former engineer and a father of 5 who’s got his cleaning business dialed in where he can knock out the work himself in just a couple days, and enjoy 5-day weekends with his family.

Tune in to hear both Chris and Ken discuss which business model is best for:

• Getting started
• Finding new clients
• Scaling
• Start-up costs
• How to exit
• And more

If you’re trying to decide which path you want to take, stick around to learn how to avoid the dreaded “valley of despair” that often afflicts service businesses, and how to get started on the right foot.

Full show notes