Operations
Running an OFM agency: build the processes before you hire
Running an OFM agency gets harder with every new creator. Set up onboarding, document tracking and deadlines before you hire, not after things slip.
By Olivier Maciejewski
3 min read
An OFM agency can double its roster in a few months. Recruiting creators, managers and chatters is the visible part of that growth. Keeping track of who signed what, who has access to which account, and until when, is the part that tends to break.
Most agencies notice the problem late. Everything works while the founder handles each onboarding personally and remembers every detail. Then the team grows, work is shared, and the knowledge that lived in one person's head has nowhere to go. This article sets out the processes worth putting in place before the next wave of hiring, not after.
Why processes come before people
Hiring feels like the answer to growth. More creators need more chatters, more managers and more support. But each new person also brings new documents, new access rights and new dates to watch. Without a shared way of working, every hire adds to the confusion instead of reducing the workload.
A process does not need to be complicated. It needs to be written down, followed in the same order every time, and owned by someone. When those three conditions are met, a new team member can pick up the work without asking the founder how it was done last time.
Onboarding a creator, step by step
Every new creator should go through the same steps, in the same order. A typical sequence looks like this:
- an identity check, with a copy of the documents kept in one place;
- a signed agency agreement that sets out roles, revenue share, duration and exit;
- the consents and confirmations the platforms ask for;
- payment details and how revenue will be split and paid;
- a clear record of who manages the account and who can log in.
Writing this down once, as a checklist, is what lets a team follow it when the founder is no longer in the room. It also shows quickly where an onboarding stalled: a missing signature, a document still to come, an access not yet granted.
What the agreement itself should contain is a question for a lawyer. What the agency can control is that no creator starts working before every step on the list is complete.
Documents and consents have an expiry date
Identity documents expire. Consents may need to be renewed. Agreements come to an end or roll over. An agency working with twenty creators and their teams quickly has hundreds of documents, each with a date attached.
A spreadsheet works for a while. The risk is the one renewal that nobody noticed, discovered only when a platform, a bank or a partner asks for the document. At that point the agency is no longer choosing its timing: it is reacting under pressure, sometimes while an account is on hold.
The fix is simple to describe: every document has an owner, an expiry date and a reminder that arrives well before that date. The hard part is keeping it up to date as people join and leave. We covered this in more detail in tracking compliance in a growing agency.
Chatters and team members count too
It is easy to focus on creators and forget the people who work on their accounts. Chatters, managers and freelancers often have direct access to sensitive content and conversations.
Platforms and partners pay increasing attention to who actually operates an account. For the agency, a few points deserve the same discipline as creator onboarding:
- a written agreement with each team member, including confidentiality;
- a list of who has access to which account, and from when;
- a clear step to remove access the day someone leaves.
When a chatter leaves on a Friday and still has access on Monday, a step is missing from the leaving process.
Tools that keep it under control
Once the steps are written down, the question becomes where the information lives. Shared folders and spreadsheets can hold documents, but they do not tell anyone that something is about to expire.
LegaFlow was built from real agency cases to do exactly this: one place for agreements, consents, ID documents and deadlines, per creator and per chatter, with alerts before anything expires. It replaces the spreadsheet that one person updates when they remember to. You can see how it works on legaflow.io.
A tool only helps if the process behind it is clear. That is where OMAZEO comes in: we help agencies define how onboarding, document tracking and team access should work, and how the organisation should evolve as the roster grows. For questions about the content of agreements or consents, we work alongside lawyers rather than in their place.
What to do this month
If your agency is about to hire, start with a short review before the first interview:
- write the onboarding checklist for creators and for team members;
- list every document you hold, with its expiry date and an owner;
- check who has access to each account today;
- decide where this information will live from now on.
Processes are not the exciting part of building an agency. They are what allows the exciting part to continue. If you want a second view on how your agency is organised, get in touch with OMAZEO or read more about our approach.
