With years of experience in digital marketing, Nate Freedman has built a thriving agency by helping IT support companies scale their businesses. As the founder of Tech Pro Marketing, he has refined his approach to niching down, developing repeatable systems, and creating sustainable growth strategies.
His expertise in the agency world has also led him to coach, where he now helps other agency owners break through revenue barriers and sharpen their business strategies.
Today, we’re excited to welcome Nate Freedman to discuss “How to Break the $100K/Month Barrier in Your Digital Agency.” Nate will share his journey, key lessons learned, and practical insights for agency owners focused on growing a digital agency.
Let’s get started…
Q1. To start, could you introduce yourself and share a bit about your background? What inspired you to become an agency coach, and how has your journey been so far?
Ans: My name is Nate Freedman, and I run Tech Pro Marketing, a digital marketing agency that specializes in helping IT support companies grow their businesses. I started as a freelancer, primarily getting my initial projects through Upwork. About eight or nine years ago, I discovered UGURUS and became a member. That experience completely changed the trajectory of my agency.
Through UGURUS, I learned the importance of niching down, refining my offer, and building a repeatable system that allowed me to scale. Fast forward to today, and Tech Pro Marketing has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing private companies in America, ranking #1,127 on the Inc. 5000 list.
Because of the massive impact UGURUS had on my journey, I always had the dream of becoming a coach and giving back. Now that I coach other agency owners, I find it incredibly rewarding—especially because teaching forces me to constantly sharpen my own skills.
Q2. Many agency owners struggle with breaking the $100K/month barrier. In your experience, what are the most common challenges agencies face at this stage, and how can they overcome them?
The biggest challenge at this stage is not having a scalable offer. Many agency owners are multi-talented and capable of delivering a wide range of services, but the issue is that they approach every new client with a custom plan. Recreating the wheel for every project is a major roadblock to scaling.
What helped me break through this barrier was honing in on a single offer: a $3,000 per month retainer-based service that I could repeatedly sell, streamline, and eventually have a salesperson close for me. Once I had a clear, repeatable offer, I was able to build an operations system around it, making it easier to deliver consistently while scaling.
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Q3. Scaling often requires a combination of operational efficiency and business development. What strategies do you recommend to agencies for managing growth while maintaining quality and profitability?
One of the best strategies I recommend is hiring a salesperson, and an operations lead around the same time.
Here’s why: If you are still handling sales, your clients will naturally turn to you if anything goes wrong, which can undermine your operations lead. If you only bring on a salesperson without an operations lead, you’ll end up buried in client work, preventing you from focusing on growth.
Additionally, when hiring a salesperson, don’t look for a slick, polished sales professional. Instead, find someone who understands your business, believes in it, and genuinely wants to help clients. Many agency owners aren’t natural salespeople, yet they’re able to sell effectively—so your salesperson should be someone who can replicate what you do and connect with prospects in an authentic way.
Q4. Financial planning and cash flow management can be critical to agency scalability. What advice would you give agencies to ensure they stay financially healthy during rapid growth phases?
Move to a recurring revenue model. Even if your core service is web design, rather than selling one-off $20,000 projects every few years, shift to a model where you charge $1,000 per month and provide a full website build, maintenance, and a complete refresh every three years.
This approach not only provides predictable cash flow but also increases your customer lifetime value. Project-based work is difficult to forecast financially, making it challenging to scale sustainably.
Q5. Hiring the right talent is essential for growing a digital agency. What’s your advice for agency owners to build a team that supports their growth vision effectively?
Hire people who are fans of yours, respect you, and believe in your mission.
Content marketing played a huge role in my ability to attract top talent. Many of my best team members were on my email list for months before they applied. Some were even employees at companies that were prospects of mine. When they saw a job opening, they jumped at the opportunity because they already understood and believed in my vision.
Q6. Can you share an example of a client you’ve worked with, detailing how you helped them overcome challenges and achieve significant growth? What key lessons can other agencies learn from this success story?
One of my best success stories is a client in Seattle. When we started working together, their revenue was under $2 million annually. Today, they’ve surpassed $5 million. But it wasn’t easy—it required close collaboration, humility, and continuous improvement.
In the past, I didn’t always achieve these kinds of results because I assumed success would come more easily. The truth is that getting results is extremely hard. Once I accepted that, I was able to refine my process, improve my approach, and ultimately help clients scale at a much higher level. My 2025 mission is to deliver even more undeniable results for my clients.
Q7. Technology and tools can play a significant role in improving efficiency and client satisfaction. Are there any specific tools or platforms you recommend agencies adopt to help them scale?
GoHighLevel is the best agency tool I’ve come across. It allows you to build out an entire sales and marketing system—websites, landing pages, email campaigns, workflows—and then replicate that system across multiple clients. Instead of doing custom $5,000–$10,000 projects, I now deliver a fully built marketing system for $1,500, allowing me to help more businesses while scaling my revenue.
ClickUp is another game-changer for project management. It’s highly customizable and integrates well with our systems, making it essential for managing workflows efficiently.
Q8. Partnerships can be a great way to grow a business by tapping into new audiences or resources. What types of partnerships do you think agencies can explore to expand their reach and scale effectively?
Some of my best partnerships have been with vendors in my niche. Every industry has specialized software vendors, many of whom have strong content marketing programs. Early on, I started writing a guest column for Barracuda’s Smarter MSP blog, and I now have nearly 100 blog posts there. I’ve also built valuable partnerships with sales consultants in my industry who need a reliable marketing provider for their clients.
Q9. The Cloudways Agency Partnership Program offers benefits like co-marketing opportunities, training, and dedicated support to help agencies streamline operations and scale efficiently. How do you see such programs benefiting agencies in achieving sustainable growth?
The UGURUS program, which is part of the Cloudways Agency Partnership Program, was a game-changer for me. Learning sales and marketing is critical for agency success, and programs like this provide invaluable resources to help agencies scale effectively.
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Q10. For agency owners trying to break into new markets or expand their client base, what strategies do you suggest for positioning their services effectively?
First, create a niche-focused brand. Rather than just adding a service page to your main website, build an entire brand presence—at minimum, a dedicated landing page—focused on solving that niche’s problems.
Second, leverage other people’s audiences. Write guest blog posts, appear on industry podcasts, and collaborate with influencers in your niche. Establishing credibility through existing industry platforms is one of the fastest ways to break into a new market.
Q11. Finally, what’s one piece of advice or insight you’d share with agencies striving to hit that $100K/month milestone?
Ans: You have to be good at what you do.
One of the biggest roadblocks I faced was hubris—I thought I was better at delivering results than I actually was. The moment I admitted that I wasn’t achieving the level of impact I wanted for my clients, I had the opportunity to improve. As I got better at delivering results, my business scaled naturally. Focus on results, and everything else will follow.
Abdul Rehman
Abdul is a tech-savvy, coffee-fueled, and creatively driven marketer who loves keeping up with the latest software updates and tech gadgets. He's also a skilled technical writer who can explain complex concepts simply for a broad audience. Abdul enjoys sharing his knowledge of the Cloud industry through user manuals, documentation, and blog posts.
