Should You Hire a Freelancer or an Agency? | EMC #31

Both of us are freelancers. So we said that out loud before we started. Jimmy opens with the complaint he hears most from brands leaving an agency, which is that they had a different account manager every couple of months and someone was always relearning the account. He covers the seniority ladder nobody explains at the pitch, why agencies offering every channel are often strong in none of them, and the setup he rates above both models. Charles is a freelancer too, so this is not a debate. But he ran an agency and used to hire freelancers himself, which means he can name where the freelancer model genuinely falls down. There is a hard capacity ceiling, and he watched contractors he hired take on too much work and quietly get worse. Anyone claiming to do your SEO, ads, development and design is outsourcing part of it. They disagree on one thing worth hearing: whether an agency really does give you cover when someone is off sick. 00:00 Why we are both biased, and saying so 01:10 Charles ran an agency before going independent 02:17 The account manager you keep replacing 03:00 Why you will not get a senior operator under $100k a month 04:11 How much of this is the buyer's responsibility 05:33 One agency for everything: the real pro and the real catch 07:00 The account spending 90% of budget on the wrong keywords 09:00 What agencies charge against what freelancers charge 10:30 Why freelancers feel like part of your team 12:00 The capacity ceiling nobody mentions 13:00 Why the best practitioners leave agencies 17:11 Weekends, grand finals, and who actually picks up the phone 20:03 The thing that matters more than either model 26:32 Building a team of specialist freelancers 28:43 Niche fit, and niches inside niches 31:00 Why case studies are mostly useless We are bringing an agency owner on for a follow-up to argue the other side properly. If you have hired either, tell us how it went in the comments. Connect with us: Charles Travers, Ecommerce SEO and AI Search https://www.charlestravers.com   / charlestravers     / charlesltravers     / charlesltravers   Jimmy Dalgleish, Google Ads for ecommerce https://www.snapbackmedia.com.au   / jimmydalgleish   🎧 Prefer to listen on the go? Ecommerce Marketing Chats with Charles Travers and Jimmy Dalgleish is on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and every major podcast app. All episodes: https://www.ecommercemarketingchats.com #ecommerce #shopifyseo #googleads #ecommercemarketing #hiringanagency #freelancer #dtc #shopifymarketing