101 Tips When Starting a Digital Agency
According to Pao
TL;DR
Building a creative agency from the ground up isn't a glossy highlight reel; it’s an emotional, chaotic masterclass in resilience, gut checks, and learning by doing. In this raw and unfiltered list, Paohaus founder Pao breaks down 101 real-world truths gathered from years of running a design and development studio. From crying outside banks, firing bad clients, and painting warehouse floors "diva pink," to dropping your ego, valuing your team, and trusting the process when the odds are stacked against you, this post is a reminder that every founder goes through the exact same mess. If you're building something great, stay empathetic, ditch the bullshit, and just keep going.
Hi Design and Dev World (or whoever),
I’m Pao, founder, lead product designer, and creative director at Paohaus.
It’s wild for me to think of how many years have gone by and and that we are 100% still in business. Despite all the ups and downs, we’ve learned an incredible amount, and we’ve had some mind-blowing experiences. Those experiences are the things that inspired this massive list.
I hope that this post can make some of you laugh and that some of you can relate and feel less anxious about what you are going through. Remember: We’re all going through the same shit. Just keep going ❤
101 Tips When Starting a Digital Agency
- Always say yes, but always figure it out
- Hire good people
- Fire shitty people with bad attitudes
- Pay people on time
- Don’t outsource
- Try to learn it yourself first
- Document shit
- Stay late (ish)
- Come in early (unless you run on Mexican time like me)
- Spend time with your family
- Learn something new
- Cry outside of a bank because you don’t know how it’s going to go on
- Lose an incredible designer that you loved
- Gain an incredible designer that you love
- Make partnerships
- Omfg acquire someone
- Leave the company because you want to go learn more
- Realize you already learned enough but you were just trying to validate yourself
- Make really dope systems people will be happy to work for
- Notice the little details
- Trust. All. Your. F****g. Employees.
- Love your clients
- Fight with your business partner
- Realize you love your business partner
- Do more
- Help everyone
- Fire someone
- Fire a client and get a bad yelp review
- Get some fuckin’ awards
- Take 5 years to redesign your website (oops, still workin' on it)
- Move offices 7 times minimum
- Try to get an app but realize the client thought it was in pesos and lose the client.
- Still get the client
- Be fucking nice to people
- Be empathetic
- Realize everyone has other shit going on
- Bring. Snacks.
- Bring more snacks
- Never take more than 24 hours to respond to an email unless you’re like the guy from the movie 127 hours
- Don’t be afraid to talk on the phone
- Design in person with your client
- Admit your mistakes (be vulnerable)
- Tell the truth
- Possibly take some brain enhancers to learn how to code a whole app but don’t tell anyone
- Clean your office every Friday
- Have a dope service agreement
- T R A N S P A R E N C Y
- Detach all emotions from work unless you’re working on an experience
- Design experiences, not websites
- Rage quit condescending assholes
- Say no to scammy work
- Love those who trust you
- Miss a deadline
- Have an epic 2 year anniversary party and realize 5 years later that you actually made it.
- Spend money on developers with shitty code when you were desperate and realize you should’ve just done it yourself
- Meet some cool designers at cool conferences
- Give a talk and poop your pants
- Keep going even if the odds are against you
- Eat lentils for 2 years
- Paint the floors of a horrible warehouse “diva pink” (image below)
- Be punctual
- Be late to the graphic designer position interview by 30 minutes
- Stop lowering your rates
- Critique yourself
- Set goals
- Pee a little when you get your biggest client ever
- Have the office next door play “get lucky” 47747549 times and hate them
- Try to throw a day at the races party with a promoter in town but realize that was a BIG mistake
- Have the intern use a TV tray as a desk because you’re so poor you don’t have money to buy a new desk
- Give raises because YOU CAN
- Have a dope culture and work/life balance
- Make coffee and forget to drink it
- Go to conferences and come back super inspired
- Spend a ton of late nights working
- Google what the hell is SSH seven years before you deep-dive into web development
- Try to get bought out by two companies
- Meet some rad people
- Don’t use people
- Value your people
- Celebrate success
- Have weekly manager meetings
- MOTHER F****G COLLABORATE WITH EVERYONE BECAUSE EVERYONE HAS GOOD IDEAS
- Build people up
- Leave your damn ego behind
- Don’t have an ego
- God. Did I say stop having an ego
- Stop being so hard on yourself
- Sign up for learning platforms
- Keep innovating
- Help your friends
- Worry about money
- Don’t worry about money
- Be reliable
- Have a dope team that has your back
- Freak out cause you don’t know what you’re doing
- Be excited cause you have experience
- Wear whatever your want to work
- Don’t work with anyone who gives you a bad vibe
- Make mistakes. Make More Mistakes.
- Cry all the time but realize you’re building some thing great
- Add inline styling to your code because you want to watch the world burn
