Episode Details

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Do you feel underpaid, misunderstood, or stuck explaining why your work costs what it costs? Most agency owners don't wake up one day and decide, "You know what sounds fun? Running an agency." They stumble into it, usually because the job market fails them.

That's exactly how today's featured guest got her start. In this episode, she'll unpack how slowly building her confidence as she gained more experienced changed her perspective on pricing and why most "thought leadership" content does more harm than good.

Alicia Disantis is the owner and creative director of 38th & Kip Studio, a dual branding and design studio celebrating 15 years in business. She founded the agency during the 2008 recession, which is about as pressure-filled a launchpad as you can imagine.

Before building a sustainable agency, Alicia wore a lot of creative hats: video game character artist for early mobile games, comic book artist for an urban vampire/werewolf series, and unpaid intern at a graphic design. These experiences heavily shaped how she thinks about value, pricing, and positioning today.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• Why agency pricing should feel scary.

• Educating clients who think your work is "easy."

• An approach to thought leadership that actually creates value.

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Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

Creating a Unique Path that Lead to Agency Ownership

Like many agency owners, Alicia didn't start with a master plan. She started with a student loan bill that arrived a month before graduation and over a hundred job applications that led nowhere.

When the traditional path failed, she did what resourceful creatives do: she pieced together work wherever she could find it. Freelance gigs turned into repeat work. Repeat work turned into confidence. And eventually, confidence turned into a business.

She went from being an unpaid intern, to game designer, to a comic book designer, and forged a unique path, going from charging just $200 for her first freelance job to earning the confidence she needed to believe she could build her own business.

Most agencies are born from survival more than a carefully thought business plan. The danger is that when you start that way, you often carry survival pricing and survival thinking far longer than you should.

That early context matters, because it explains why so many agency owners struggle to raise prices later.

From $200 Clients to Pricing That Feels Scary (In a Good Way)

Alicia's first client paid her $200. She also did a lot of free work, because at the time, that felt like the only way in.

What changed over the years wasn't some magic pricing formula. It was confidence.<