Agentic Shift

We talk to Sanjay Chadda, Managing Director of Canaccord Genuity. Sanjay tells us how to prepare for the marathon of selling your agency, why M&A is like a marriage, how a sale changes the way a founder runs his business, and how Sanjay's sale of his own business helped him become a better banker. Enjoy the show!

We talk to Sanj Parikh, head of client growth at Position Squared, a 200 person performance marketing agency based in Santa Clara, CA. Sanj tells us how he went from Lehman Brothers to Hollywood (including a role on Hannah Montana) and then to online marketing. He also shares the genesis of the name Position Squared (Google nerds will enjoy the story), how the mnemonic RAMP describes great client...

Kevin Lord Barry is founder of Right Percent, a B2B performance agency. Kevin tells us why doing B2B social media is so challenging, what a visual headline is and why it is so important, how he has grown a team where everyone has a minimum of eight years of experience, and why he values a low touch, high trust culture. Enjoy the show.

Andreas Muller is co-founder of BlooFusion, a performance marketing agency based in the US and Germany. Andreas tells us how he started an agency to avoid moving to Houston Texas, how he won a Fortune 500 company shortly after starting his agency, why he gives away tons of information to potential clients via his Blooprint audits, and how cool and valuable it was to have a company wide retreat in...

Josh Krakauer is the Founder of Sculpt, a B2B social media agency. Josh tells us why he thinks focusing too much on one metric is a recipe for disaster, the five roles required for social media expertise, how he builds great culture in a fully remote environment, and  why he believes in hustle and heart as two of his core metrics. An important note: Josh started his agency after graduating from th...

We talk to Chris Goward, manager director of Wider Funnel, a conversion rate optimization and experimentation agency founded in Vancouver. Chris tells us how he got fired from an agency for being too scientific, what he considers the five levers of success in CRO, why test results are often countchrierintuitive, why he believes in the hedgehog principle, why he looks for mavericks with grit when h...

John McKusick is founder of NextLeft, a digital agency based in San Diego. John tells us about his days on the high school surfing team what is was like running a digital agency in 1999, why he is making his agency a B corp, how he created amazing content for a client to get them ranked #1 for the competitive term, baseball bats, and how he came up with the name NextLeft (hint, it is surfing relat...

Jean Ginzburg is Founder of Alpenglo Digital. Jean tells us why she encourages team members to invest five hours a week in learning, why and how she responds to all client requests in 24 hours of less, how she went from being an international relations major to running an agency, and why she was recruited by the CIA out of college (and for the record, we aren’t 100% sure that she isn’t actually in...

Matt Quirie is Founder of ROIDNA, a B2B digital marketing agency. Matt tells us why every hire - even his EA - is given classes in ad tech, how client focus drove massive growth, what he means by “bring your whole self” as a core value, why he believes content is the future of marketing, and how he manages campaigns with very long lead to close times.

Martin Woolley is CEO of The What’s Possible Group, a London-based marketing group focused on growing dynamic emerging brands. Martin tells why he embraces making mistakes and the power of black box thinking, why he likes the Goffee and Jones culture model, why he’d say no to Coca Cola (and most other large companies) as a client, why he believes agencies are in the client happiness business, why...

Soso Sazesh is the founder of Growth Pilots, a performance marketing agency he sold to Wpromote in 2019. Soso tells us why most agencies aren't equipped to work with startups, why it's hard to scale an agency with startup clients, how firing one of his largest clients created a great culture, what he means by people, partnership, and adaptability, why performance marketers are convinced branding d...

Agatha Chang is co-founder of GRAIN Group, a 40-person data-driven performance agency. Agatha tells us what Type 2 fun means and why she looks for it in hiring, how a brainstorming session about vodka led to the founding of the agency, the importance of architecting data when delivering reports to clients, why she is the first interviewer for every new hire, why she's built a culture that emphasiz...

Prashant Puri is co-founder of AdLift, a 120-person performance agency. Prashant tells us how he signed PayPal as a client in his first year of business, why he interviews 75 people before he makes a hire, why focus is key to agency success, and why he emphasizes empathy and humility as core values. Prashant Puri LinkedIn AdLift Website Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future ,...

Stephanie Harris is CEO of PartnerCentric, a 60 person affiliate marketing agency. Stephanie tells us the difference between being an agency COO and agency CEO, why her top core value is professional intimacy (and what exactly that means), how to measure speed to value for customers, why she sees negative feedback as a gift, and how to identify people who want to work remote for the wrong reasons....

Mike Nelson is co-founder of Four15 Digital, a performance marketing agency with offices in Long Beach and Walnut Creek, California. Mike tells us how he went from being a high school math teacher to an SEM expert, why he loves auditing potential clients’ accounts, why he values mindset diversity in this company, how COVID has made people more comfortable with agencies, and why he thinks client re...

We talked to Steve Weiss, founder of MuteSix, a performance marketing agency that is now part of iProspect and Dentsu. Steve tells us how he was borderline homeless when he started learning Facebook ads to promote his standup comedy with jeans in LA, why he invented a holiday called National Dry Cleaning Day for one of his clients, how a vacation convinced him to make his first hire, and how sneak...

Jesse Pujji is  Co-founder of Ampush, and Jon Oberlander is CEO of Ampush. Jesse and Jon tell us how they scaled their agency to $25 million in revenue in five years, why Jesse decided to step down as CEO, and how he chose Jon to replace him, how they utilized their 427-person-strong alumni network, why discovering your zone of genius is so important, and why they like their team to always be on a...

Tim Ringel is Founder and CEO of Meet the People, a 500+ person agency group that started in late 2021. Tim tells us why working at a boring job at a German bank inspired him to become a startup founder, why he believes in-housing comes in waves, why he gives all of his employees equity, why he believes agency should go after the next 500 companies after the Fortune 500, how to build a great cultu...

We talk to Tim Ash, founder of TimAsh.com. Tim tells us about the pros and cons of being 10 years ahead of key marketing trends, why working with clients sometimes feels like marrying an insane person, why one of his clients turned down a clear $17 million optimization opportunity, what his time as a child in the Soviet Union taught him about account management, and why he believes ageism is a pro...

Janel Laravie is Founder of Chacka Marketing, a performance marketing agency based in Tampa, Florida. Janel tells us about some of her unusual, but effective hiring questions, why she thinks Zoom calls are beautiful, how the ugly side of business prompted her to start her agency, how her agency work directly led to 50 new jobs in a small Ohio town, and what exactly Chacka means. Sadly, it’s not a...

Alex Porter is CEO of Location3, an 80-person Denver-based agency that helps franchises with their online marketing. Alex tells us how he went from snowboarding bum to CEO, how he overcame digital advertising skepticism in the franchise space, why he wants to make sure his clients’ kids can go to summer camp, why he applies his company's core values to clients, what a TSS budget is and why it's so...

Joe Lakin is a partner with Victory Enterprises. Victory does online marketing for political campaigns and social causes and is based in Davenport, Iowa. Joe tells us why he calls his clients guaranteed to go broke startups, the similarity between a startup’s founder story, and that of a politician, how his agency helped defeat Steve king, the controversial longstanding Iowa Congressman, and why h...

David Canington is co-founder of Ardent Creative, a web design and creative agency based in Fort Worth, Texas. David tells us how past jobs as a car salesman and Christian rock musician influenced his career, why he believes process is more important than the product, why he hires for fit over talent, why he calls back inbound leads within five minutes, and why a prospective employee showed up for...

Isaac Rudansky is founder of Adventure Media Group, a 40 person performance agency based in New York City and Philadelphia. Isaac tells us how his challenges selling his impressionist art led him to discover online marketing, why he covered his ceiling with tinfoil in the name of marketing education, what he means by idiotic optimism, the difference between giving everyone a voice and valuing expe...

Lance Loveday is the founder of Closed Loop, a performance marketing agency based in Sacramento, CA. Lance tells us why he decided to build his own technology, what it means to have an anti-fragile organization, why he believes in the power of no, how assuming the best in people reduces his stress, and how he evaluates candidates based on the GWC methodology from the Entrepreneur’s Operating Syste...