I'm about to leave a $94k/year corporate job to start a digital marketing agency and I keep going back and forth on whether to invest in tools like Semrush or Ahrefs before I have a single client paying me. My logic is that I need to look credible on discovery calls, but I'm honestly not sure if I'm just rationalizing spending money to feel busy. Did any of you build out a full toolset upfront or did you start with free tiers and upgrade only when a client actually needed something specific? I've been tracking this for about 6 weeks and I still haven't committed either way.

I'm about 4 months out from leaving my corporate job to start a digital marketing agency and I keep getting stuck on the ops side before I even have a single client. Right now I'm looking at something like GoHighLevel for client management but the $97/month feels weird to commit to when my revenue is literally zero. I also can't tell if I'm overcomplicating this early, like maybe a shared Google Drive and one Notion workspace is fine until I hit client number three or four. Honestly just trying to figure out what you wish you'd set up on day one versus what you wasted money on before you had proof the business was working.

I'm about 4 months out from leaving my corporate job to start a digital marketing agency and I keep getting stuck on the tooling side of things. Right now I'm looking at something like GoHighLevel for client management but I genuinely can't tell if that's overkill for someone with zero clients yet, or if setting it up properly now saves me from chaos later. My bigger problem is I don't want to sink $300-400/month into a software stack before I've closed a single deal, but I also don't want to look unserious when I'm trying to land those first clients. Anyone here who started solo, what did you actually use in month one versus what you added once money was coming in?

I'm about 4 months out from quitting my job to start a digital marketing agency and the pricing thing is breaking my brain. Right now I make $87k and I keep going back and forth on whether to price low to get first clients or just charge what the work is actually worth and risk losing people who don't know me yet. I've seen advice that says don't undercharge or you attract bad clients, but I also have zero case studies, so I'm not sure I have the standing to charge premium rates on day one. Honestly just trying to figure out if anyone here set their first retainer price based on what they needed to cover monthly costs, or if there's a smarter way to think about it.

I'm about 3 months out from leaving my corporate job to start a digital marketing agency and the chicken-and-egg thing is killing me. Every potential client I've talked to informally wants to see case studies, but I can't build case studies without clients. I've thought about doing 2-3 projects at a steep discount or even free just to have something to show, but then I go back and forth on whether that just trains people to undervalue the work from day one. Has anyone actually solved this, or did you just grind through an awkward first 6 months with no good answer?