You absolutely do not need to work at an agency before starting one of your own! I have never worked in the industry at all before and just started offering digital marketing to companies a few months ago and already have 9 clients - literally starting from nothing.

You don't even need to know HOW to do the marketing like Adwords, SEO, etc, because you can outsource all of that. You just need to start by reaching out to companies with over $500k/yr in sales that have a poor internet presence, and have an average sale of over $800 and you can help them grow for sure.

If you need help, I can set you up with the contractors to outsource to, and give you some pointers on how I landed my first client 3 months ago. You can do it!