The Agency Uplift Podcast

Summary: Most agencies are obsessed with acquisition and it’s quietly killing their margins. In this episode, I sat down with Jordan Narducci to unpack why retention is the most ignored (and highest ROI) lever in your business and how he turned that insight into a fast growing agency after getting laid off the same week his child was born. Takeaways: Why retention has nothing to do with email &amp...

Summary: Most agency owners think they’re running effective team meetings but they’re actually draining energy, killing alignment, and wasting hours every week. If your “all hands” meeting is just a client roll call, you’re not leading you’re babysitting dashboards. In this solo episode, I break down the exact structure I use to turn one weekly meeting into a force multiplier for culture, clarity,...

Summary: The problem isn’t your service, it’s that you can’t prove it works. If you’re stuck at $10K/month, this episode shows exactly why and how to break through without more clients. This is a live consultation with SEO expert Benas Leonavicius, who’s sitting on a goldmine but leaving massive growth on the table. Takeaways: Why not tracking ROI is silently capping your pricing (and authority) T...

Summary: If your agency is stuck between $500K and $1M, it’s not your marketing, your offer, or even your team. It’s you. More specifically, it’s how you’re running the business that’s quietly capping your growth. Takeaways: Why being the “accountability system” is the fastest way to stall your growth The hidden danger of unclear ownership (and why your team keeps dropping the ball) How finding ou...

Summary: Most agencies don’t have an operations problem. They have a demand problem they’re trying to fix with busywork. If you’re stuck refining SOPs, tweaking delivery, and still struggling to bring in consistent clients, this episode will show you why. Takaways: The hidden reason most agencies stay stuck relying on referrals Why “being full service” quietly destroys your positioning The dangero...

Summary: Most agencies don’t struggle with revenue, they struggle with invisible losses . If your agency looks busy but your bank account says otherwise, this episode will show you exactly why. Takeaways: The dangerous lie that “more clients = more growth” Why your busiest clients are often your least profitable The simple way to uncover which clients are secretly costing you money How saying “yes...

Summary: Most agencies don’t struggle because they can’t get clients. They struggle because they say yes to too many services, too many industries, and too many different problems. In this live consult episode, I sit down with Nick Desrocher, founder of GroClix, and we break down the real challenge early agencies face: simplifying the business so it can actually scale Takeaways: Why agencies often...

Summary: Your team isn’t dependent on you by accident. In most agencies, founders unknowingly train their teams to rely on them for every decision. If you feel like you're the bottleneck in your agency, this episode explains exactly why. I break down 10 subtle leadership habits that quietly destroy ownership, slow down decision making, and keep founders stuck in day to day operations even wit...

Summary: Most agencies think the goal is higher ROAS. But sometimes the very metrics clients celebrate are the ones quietly killing their growth. In this episode, I sit down with Nikki Lindgren, founder of Pennock , to talk about what actually happens when agencies grow up from scrappy consultancy to a seven year boutique firm managing paid media, SEO, and affiliate programs for beauty brands. We...

Summary:  If you think running an agency will give you freedom, think again. Behind every “successful” agency are secrets, lost vacations, key employees carrying the business, and clients quietly draining profits. I’m exposing the 10 things agency owners will never say aloud. Takeaways: How I survived losing a critical team member without collapsing. Why your most profitable clients are subsidizin...

Summary: Most agencies don’t fail because they can’t get clients. They fail because they never simplify enough to scale. If you’re stuck juggling fulfillment, sales, and operations and feel like growth is making things worse instead of better, this episode will hit home. Takeaways: Why niching down isn’t optional if you want predictable growth The “snowball effect” that makes sales easier the more...

Summary: Feeling like your agency is running in circles? You’re not alone. Many founders think the solution to chaos is a single hire: an operations manager. I thought the same and I learned the hard way that hiring too soon can multiply confusion, not clarity. In this episode, I break down why the smartest operations hires fail when foundational clarity is missing and what to do first so they act...

Summary: If you’re great at delivery but invisible in the market, this episode is for you. Too many agency owners hide behind operations. They build amazing systems but never build their own authority. In this conversation, I talk with Kelly Schuknecht about replacing her corporate income in just one year, building a team fast, firing fast, and learning that clarity beats perfection every time. Th...

Summary: Most agencies don’t fail because of bad sales. They fail because of uncontrolled complexity. If you’re offering SEO, paid ads, web design, email, AI automation, CRO, branding, and “whatever else the client asks for” this episode is going to hit hard. I break down the exact structure I use to decide what services stay in house and what gets eliminated. Takeaways: Why full service positioni...

Summary: Most agencies don’t fail because they lack talent. They fail because they scale chaos. In this episode, I sit down with T. Christian Helms, founder of Helms Workshop, to unpack how he rebuilt his agency after a near fatal health crisis and how that reset helped him land global brands like Disney, Harley Davidson, and Jack Daniel’s. This one is about agency scaling the hard way. Takeaways:...

Summary: Are you running your agency like a firefighter, constantly putting out fires, chasing updates, and feeling like you’re the project manager for everything? You don’t need another core values workshop to fix this. You need practical operating principles that drive accountability, action, and communication. Takeaways: The exact three principles that transform any team into a self managing po...

Summary: Most agencies don’t fail because they lack talent. They fail because they scale the wrong way, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons. In this episode, I sit down with Ryan Burch, founder of Tobie Group, to unpack what it really looks like to build a values driven agency that grows deliberately without hype, without fluff, and without backing yourself into a corner. Ryan didn’t start wi...

Summary: If SOPs actually fixed agencies, most founders wouldn’t feel this frustrated. I’ve spent years growing and operating a 50+ person agency, and coaching other agency owners through scale. One pattern shows up constantly: founders leaning on documentation instead of leadership. In this solo episode, I explain why processes solve clarity problems but never people problems. Takeaways: The real...

Summary: Your agency can look “successful” on paper and still be one bad quarter away from collapse. In this episode, I sit down with Greg Shuey, a 14 year agency veteran who’s been through every version of agency pain: rapid growth, COVID whiplash, client churn, and the brutal transition from “easy revenue” to sustainable profit. Greg doesn’t sugarcoat it. He breaks down what actually happens whe...

Summary: Your agency isn’t broken. It’s behaving exactly the way you trained it to behave. And that’s the hard truth most agency owners don’t want to hear. In this solo episode, I break down the uncomfortable lesson it took me nearly a decade to learn: no system, hire, or framework will fix your agency if you don’t fix how you show up as the founder first. I’ve coached dozens of agency owners thro...

Summary: Most agency owners don’t fail because they’re bad at delivery. They fail because they build a business that can’t survive success. In this episode, I sit down with James Kwon, founder of Figmints, to unpack what actually happens after you land clients and why hitting your first revenue goal can be more dangerous than missing it. James shares how his agency hit $250K in its first year then...

Summary: Most agencies think growth comes from doing more . More services. More platforms. More promises. In this episode, I talk with Matt Dorman, co-founder of Ndevr, about why his agency took the opposite approach and why it may be the smartest move in today’s market. We break down what happens when you intentionally avoid full service, focus on technical depth, and use consulting as a strategi...

Summary: Building an agency gets harder before it gets easier and no one warns you when the rules change. This is my 100th episode, and I pulled together the most important insights I’ve learned from founders who’ve scaled through chaos, complexity, and inflection points most agencies never survive. These are the lessons I wish I had earlier. Takeaways: The moment early momentum turns into operati...

Summary: You don’t hate agency life, you hate the decisions you made to survive it. In this episode, I break down the two mistakes that quietly drain profit, destroy morale, and make agency ownership feel unbearable. I’ve spent over 8 years building and operating a 50+ person agency, and I’ve paid a massive “idiot tax” learning these lessons the hard way. If you’re exhausted, buried in client requ...

Summary: You don’t fail as an agency owner because you’re bad at marketing. You fail because you accidentally build something that can’t survive you. In this episode, I sit down with Tim Keen, who scaled a DTC growth agency to $2M+ ARR, churned every client and every employee, worked himself to the brink and still sold the business. This isn’t a highlight reel. It’s the messy middle no one warns y...