What advice do you have for someone looking to start their own digital marketing agency?

Unless  you're really a stickler for working 10 plus hours, work 24 hours a day on monitoring things and mostly for peanuts since there's always someone who will underquote you, better to partner with an existing agency that needs growth and learn the ropes of how to make money on digital rather than jump in directly thinking digital = Facebook or Instagram or where you want to put up a post of the day. The hype on digital Is huge but most agencies are still not making money on it. Social is the worst.

To be honest, I could probably write a book on this question, haha. There's so much info that you could benefit from! So, I'm gonna condense it into (what I think is) the 3 most important pieces of advice: You're not too young or naive. There's no such thing. If you can provide value to a client, they won't care if you're 12, 20 or 200. Simple as that. Read. Consume information. This may seem obvious, or not. But from my experience - you can gain a year's worth of experience in one week by reading the right book. Read "Creativity Inc", "Brain Surfing", "Business Adventures", "One Plus One Equals Three". Even Gary Vaynerchuk's stuff will help. Start NOW. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to have successes. You will learn from both and you will get better. But you can only do that once you've started. Good luck! I hope to get an email from you in 10 year's time, inviting me for a drink on your yacht in Cannes after Publicis has bought your agency for big bucks.

Well, just try to imagine: you need a heart surgery and you’re looking for a doctor. You make a phone call to the clinic and the doctor says: “Yes, I also do a heart surgery. But right now I have 4 appendicitis patients and 2 patients with a toothache. Nevertheless, if you sign up for the next month, I’ll do a heart surgery for you with 15% discount!” Unfortunately, nowadays many forget about such an important point as "specialization". But it is essential to cut off the wide range of competitors and to fit the specific needs of the given industry in order to get any revenue.What I think: Evaluate market reach (estimated number of potential customers); Consider your experience gained during previous  projects (you have told you've some experience working as a digital marketer); Analyze the competitive environment and entry barrier. Some words about competition: on the one hand, competitors create certain complexity for entering the market, on the other – the fact of their presence confirms that niche is potentially profitable. It is much more dangerous when your potential niche is free. In most cases, it meansthat someone had tried this niche before and he failed. Also, consider the fact that if you have no competitors at all, you do not have anyone to analyze. Entering the market without any data means exposing yourself to unnecessary risk.