In good news for Malcolm Turnbull’s innovation and digital transformation announced last week, a recent B&T survey that asked respondents if they wanted to start their own agency found 44 per cent were working on plans as we speak with “digital” the most popular choice for going it alone.

The survey was published online in early November and all the results are in the latest edition of B&T out now.

A further 29 per cent said they had plans to start their own agency but felt current economic conditions meant now wasn’t the right time to be doing it. Worryingly, 56 per cent said of friends/colleagues who’d started their own agency believed it never got past being average, while six per cent said the venture was an “abject failure”.

Apart from digital (20 per cent), the other ideas for businesses for those wanting to go it alone was video (18 per cent), strategy/planning (17 per cent) and creative (14 per cent).

But what would your current employer think of staff buggering off to do their own thing? Forty two per cent said “they’d kill me” and “they’d shit themselves I’d take all of their clients”; while 31 per cent said “I’d go with their blessing”.

Understandably the biggest concern of starting an agency was “no reputation” and “no client pool”. However, respondents believed the smaller independent agencies had a bright future as clients got more senior people employed on their work and smaller agents (when compared to the multinationals) tended to work harder and were cheaper.

One agency-land employee who started his own thing was Mark Livings who started Kinetic Marketing. He recently told B&T of the venture: “It’s romantic to think about running your own business, developing a culture that attracts and retains great staff and delivering work you’re proud of, but as I’m sure you’ve heard, it’s also hard.

“Think about the hardest you’ve ever worked. Then multiply it by 10. Then add on top of that, managing situations outside your control, developing staff, recruiting, and all the other requirements of a new business owner and also ensuring you keep the quality of your work high.

“It’s tough. Damn tough. So get your headspace sorted. It’ll be seriously hard going for at least a year, if not two,” Livings revealed.

The latest print edition of B&T is now now.