Agency Culture Conversations

Kevin Delano has been building agencies since 1988. He's had three successful exits, including one that grew to over 400 staff and 100 million in revenue. His current agency, Karma Casting, is his fourth. This time, he chose to build lean, using a tech platform to serve 110,000-plus gig workers across Canada and the U.S. with a team of just 28 people. In this episode, you'll learn: ▸ Why Kevin bui...

Kelsey Iverson didn't start in HR. She started as a hostess at 15, worked her way up through hospitality management, and now runs HR at Midwest Direct, a 43-year-old family-owned company with over 200 employees. Along the way, a philosophy-teaching bar manager named Alex saw the leadership in her before she saw it herself. In this episode, you'll learn: ▸ How a philosophy-teaching mentor shaped he...

Julia Cunha is the operational engine behind Agência Lebbe, a 40-person creative agency spread across Brazil. She has spent nearly 30 years moving between advertising agencies and film production, and today her job is to translate a visionary founder's ideas into something the entire team can actually execute. In this episode, you'll learn: ▸ The story behind the name Lebbe and the "less but bette...

Emma and Courtney both joined Working Planet as account managers, one in 2014 and the other in 2017. Ten years later, the agency's original founders retired and handed them the keys. Today, Emma is the CEO and Courtney is the COO of a 23-year-old performance marketing agency that has managed growth for over 200 clients. In this episode, you'll learn: ▸ How two account managers became CEO and COO t...

Seventeen years ago, German started a four-person media consultancy in Uruguay. Today, WildFi is a 300-person creative performance agency with offices across eight countries in Latin America. In this episode, German sits down with two of the leaders who helped him build it: Lil, a partner who started as an entry-level campaign manager 15 years ago and worked her way up to Director of Business Inte...

Irina spent nearly two decades in the agency world, going from intern to strategy director at one of the largest agencies in Brazil. Along the way, she learned that the technical work is only half the job. The other half is making people actually buy your ideas. In this episode, you'll learn: ▸ Why technical work alone is never enough in creative industries ▸ The Foucault definition of power that...

In 2022, Natasha and Sam were a marketing pro and a college sophomore who started a conversation at a family reunion. Three years later, The Viral Group is a 24-person global influencer marketing agency. In this episode, the two co-founders sit down to share how they built it, how they hire, how they handled the HR manager who faked interview scorecards, and the lessons they have learned about cla...

Gaspar has spent more than 30 years inside advertising agencies. He started as an intern, helped bring CNN to Mexico, built an internal agency at Herbalife Nutrition that supported marketing across 93 countries, and today leads global operations at 121, a worldwide agency with over 200 employees. In this episode, you'll learn: ▸ Why alignment beats talent and process every single time ▸ How to bui...

Kesley Smith joined Zoek Marketing three years ago when it was primarily a Wix partner agency. Today, Zoek is a 120-plus person fully remote, full-stack digital marketing company, and Kesley is the Director of Marketing and Business Development, leading two completely different teams. In this episode, you'll learn: ▸ How a 120-person fully remote agency built a culture of trust without micromanage...

In five years, Brandon Scott and his co-founder built CarbonBox Media from a two-person operation into a 70-person digital marketing agency. The biggest jump came in the past 12 months alone, when the team grew from 15 to 70 employees. Brandon admits the scale broke his early systems, so he brought Israel Alarcon on to rebuild the foundation underneath the growth. In this episode, you'll learn: ▸...

Katelyn started her career in corporate law before pivoting into people operations. Today she's the Director of People Operations at Aloha, a 100-plus person agency that's won the Inc. 5000 award six times in a row, and she just rolled out a custom AI agent named "Ali" that handles the repetitive HR questions her team used to spend hours on every week. In this episode, you'll learn: ▸ The three tr...

Chris Fink didn't found his agency. He joined it as a strategist after 23 years in automotive management and a stint running operations at a med spa. Years later, he's a partner running multiple sister agencies under one roof, and he has strong views on what makes the team-to-leader transition work. In this episode, you'll learn: ▸ Why "clarity over comfort" is the most important shift a new leade...

When Eric Ritter walked away from a stable career at Johns Hopkins to go all-in on his agency, the people closest to him didn't understand why. Ten years later, Digital Neighbor is a 14-person hybrid team built on a culture so specific it has its own clause inside every client contract. In this episode, you'll learn: ▸ How to know when your side hustle is ready to become your main hustle ▸ The Jef...