“One of the most rewarding things about building an agency is to be in touch with so many people from so many different industries and being able to help them either convert an idea into an app or a software. It’s great to help them make their first dollar or just launch something that they’ve had in their minds for years. I also really enjoy being able to hire people and help people learn more and make a better life for themselves and for their families. Helping our clients and seeing our team grow and them becoming experts in their fields has been extremely rewarding.”
Three years ago, Jesus was working as a freelancer and looking for a tool to help him build an app from a Google sheet or a spreadsheet when he came across Glide. Today, he runs LowCode, one of the largest Glide agencies. LowCode builds around a hundred glide apps per year for clients worldwide.
Jesus started the agency when he hired his first developer Thinh Dinh from Vietnam. Then they spent quite a few months together, building LowCode and becoming Certified Glide Experts. Their first few clients were friends and family. Jesus started pitching a new tool that could make a robust app in just a few days that could look great for way less money and time than traditional development. After securing his first few clients, Jesus became a Certified Glide Expert. Being listed as a Glide Expert brought in a few first clients. At that point, he started doing outbound and building the team so that they could focus on building the apps while he ran sales for LowCode. LowCode has 14 employees across project managers, design content marketing, sales, and developers.
One of his most significant pieces of advice for aspiring agency builders is to document your processes. Some people say we have too many steps, comparing how we build apps at LowCode to other freelancers. We spend a couple of days scoping each project up front and wireframing. In the beginning, the output of putting in those hours is worth it. Spending time on scoping and wireframing dramatically affects the time saved. I think that's why we as an agency have been able to grow and get better, larger clients because they have a confident expectations regarding quality and professionalism.
Energetica
Energetica, a large business in Mexico that manages energy efficiency projects, contacted LowCode to help them manage their field operations. Their business was built around helping companies with factories or industrial facilities become more efficient in their energy consumption, either by installing solar panels or making the electrical equipment more efficient. As part of that process, they would send people out to the facilities to fill a number of forms based on the company's requirements. This involved creating a WhatsApp group with the client, uploading pictures to that group, and trying to remember which images corresponded to different factories or buildings based on memory. Field agents would store measurements somewhere else—maybe in their Notes app or a physical notebook and go back to the office to input everything into a Google sheet that they would send to someone else so that they could scope the project. This highly manual process would take days and be incredibly inefficient.
So LowCode built a glide app where the field agents could start filling in all the documentation through the Glide app. Depending on the type of project, they could bring up a form with specific required and non-required fields that agents could fill out. Instead of just taking pictures and guessing what the picture was about, agents already had a format they could follow. They also saved time because data was being synced back to the back office as soon as they completed the form so they could start scoping and assigning sales agents to specific projects. This helped streamline their entire field sales operation.