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Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Have you ever lost a pitch you were sure you had won on merit? Or if you did win the account, have you ended up with clients that only want to talk to you? Today's featured guest came up through seven years as head of marketing at a lean e-commerce company, where wearing every hat was not optional. In this episode, she talks about how a story about sorting fish as a child became the deciding factor in a competitive pitch, why genuine connection is not a soft skill but a structural advantage, and what happens to your agency when you never learned to let clients connect with your team instead of just with you. Bianca Beatty is the founder of Raven+Co, a full-stack boutique agency based in San Francisco offering everything from events to go-to-market strategy, social media, and brand communications. Before launching the agency in 2018, she spent nearly seven years as head of marketing at the largest online marketplace for antiques and vintage, where she built her foundation in SEO, paid ads, email, product placement, and revenue-driven decision making inside a lean team. She is also a licensed realtor, a fly fisher, and a former child caviar industry worker. In this episode, we'll discuss: The story that won Bianca an account over portfolio The double-edged sword of being the person clients want to talk to You do NOT have to work with everyone Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. A Story Can Win the Room Before the Work Does Bianca walked into a pitch for a caviar client with strong work and solid positioning. She almost did not mention that as a child, she spent a summer on her father's commercial fish house on the water in Florida, separating fish by sex for roe sold to China. She mentioned it. She won the pitch. The client told her afterward that the story, not the portfolio, was the deciding factor. The reason that moment is worth examining is not that personal stories win pitches. It is what the story actually communicated. It showed the client that Bianca understood the product from a level most marketers never will, that she had genuine curiosity about the industry, and that she was someone the client wanted to spend time around. A competitor with equally strong work and no story was indistinguishable. Bianca was not. Proof of capability opens the door. The story is what makes the client hold it open. When Your Personality Becomes the Bottleneck Bianca is honest about the double edge of being the kind of person clients want to talk to for two hours. The connection that wins the pitch is the same connection that makes clients want to route everything through you. Calls that run long, decisions that wait for your availability, relationships that belong to you and not to your agency: these are not signs that you are doing something right. They are early symptoms of a founder dependency problem that compounds as the agency grows. When the founder is most connected person in their agency, they're also the most trapped. Every client relationship that runs through him is a ceiling on how much the business could grow without him. The structural fix is not to become less personable. It is to build a team that is also personable, to hire for the same quality of human warmth and genuine curiosity that wins clients in the first place, and to let those people develop their own relationships. The goal is a team that holds the relationships well enough that the clients stop thinking about whether you are in the room. Picking Clients Before Clients Pick You Bianca is clear on something that most agency founders only learn after absorbing a nightmare client or two: you do not have to work with everyone. Early on, the answer is yes to almost everything because the pipeline is thin and the pressure to cover costs is real. As the agency develops a track record and a clearer sense of its own values, the ability to be selective is not a luxury. It is a structural protection for the team. The version of this that holds up over time is not just about avoiding difficult clients but about actively going after the clients you want, pitching yourself to companies that interest you even when they are not publicly looking, and staying honest about fit before contracts are signed rather than after scope has been blown. When clients align with what the team genuinely cares about, the work is better, the relationships last longer, and the agency does not spend the Monday morning meeting talking about which client made last week miserable. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Have you ever pitched a client and led with everything your agency does well, only to watch their eyes glaze over halfway through? What you're missing is positioning copy that actually moves people. Today's featured guest has spent 40 years in the advertising and branding world, the last 20 of them devoted entirely to one question: why do some messages land and others disappear? In this episode, he'll walk through the storytelling frameworks he pulled from Hollywood screenwriting, evolutionary biology, and 12 years of podcasting, and then apply one of them live to Agency Mastery in real time. Park Howell is the founder of Park&Co, an agency he opened in Phoenix in 1995 and grew from a one-man operation to a team of 20 and beyond. He is now a full-time consultant, speaker, and coach on the business of story, and the host of The Business of Story podcast, which he has been running for 12 years. Park has been on the podcast previously talking about storytelling, how agencies fail to use it, and how, used, correctly it can help you connect with clients. In this episode, we'll discuss: Is your agency telling the wrong story? The And-But-Therefore Framework How learning about Hollywood screenwriting can help you improve your proposals Three Forces of Trust Your Story Needs to Build Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Why Agencies Are Telling the Wrong Story The default agency pitch goes something like this: we have the best people, the best process, and a portfolio you will love. We are customer-centric, we care more, and we will be a true partner. And simply put, if every agency in the room is saying the same thing, none of it creates separation, none of it creates trust, and none of it gives a prospect a reason to remember you when the meeting ends. The root problem is that agencies tell their story from the inside out. They start with what they offer and work backward toward why a client should care. The structure that actually works is the opposite: start with the audience, name what they want, name what is standing between them and that outcome, and only then introduce how you help close that gap. The story is not about the agency. The agency is the guide. The client is the hero. The moment that inversion happens in how an agency frames its pitch, its content, and its proposals, the entire communication dynamic shifts. The And-But-Therefore Framework, Applied Live Park gave a live example of the and-but-therefore framework using Agency Mastery as the subject. The structure is deceptively simple: agreement, contradiction, consequence. You establish something the audience knows to be true about themselves. You introduce the contradiction, the reason they do not yet have what they want. Then the therefore: what becomes possible when that contradiction is resolved and how you help resolve it. The exercise surfaces something worth paying attention to. When Park asked for the one-word theme of Agency Mastery's story, he pushed back on it being focus. Why? It's a verb, a mechanism. The emotional outcome is actually freedom. You want freedom, but you do not have freedom, therefore here is how to get it. The distinction is not semantic. Copy that leads with a mechanism asks the reader to do intellectual work. Copy that leads with an emotional outcome pulls them forward before logic enters the picture. The and-but-therefore framework makes that difference visible and correctable in under five minutes. What Hollywood Screenwriting Has to Do With Your Next Proposal Park's Story Cycle System draws directly from the hero's journey and Blake Snyder's 15 beats, the frameworks professional screenwriters use to structure everything from Star Wars to The Wizard of Oz. The parallel between those two films is genuinely worth sitting with: same structure, same emotional beats, same character archetypes, separated by four decades and completely different settings. The reason the pattern keeps appearing is not coincidence. It is the way human beings have organized meaning since the first stories were carved into clay tablets. A practical application for agency pitches. Before the next proposal goes out, write an and-but-therefore for the prospect. A single focused statement that demonstrates you understand what they want, why they do not have it yet, and what changes when they work with you. Bring that into the room instead of a feature list. The agencies that win consistently do not win on credentials. They win because they showed up having already done the work of understanding the client, and the and-but-therefore is how that understanding gets made visible from the first sentence. The Three Forces of Trust Your Story Needs to Build When the and-but-therefore is executed well, it does not just clarify a message. It builds trust across three dimensions simultaneously. The audience feels understood: you know what they are trying to achieve. They feel appreciated: you recognize why that outcome matters to them. And they feel that their current struggle is real and acknowledged: you are not glossing over the gap between where they are and where they want to be. Most agency communication fails on the third dimension. It jumps too quickly to the solution without spending enough time in the problem. When a prospect does not feel that their frustration has been fully seen, the solution that follows lands as a pitch rather than as a read. The difference between a founder who says "I just want more freedom" and a message that reflects back "you started this business for freedom and the business owns you instead" is in how heard the person on the other side of that message feels. That is what separates the story everyone remembers from the one nobody does. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

In this Ask Me Anything episode, host Amelia Phillips lays out her day on a plate to Deborah, who wants to know how she reaches her protein target (without going mad). She also answers listener questions on the best type of magnesium to supplement for sleep, muscle relief and cognition, and how to tell if chronic low-level inflammation is putting you at risk of inflammaging – even if you're not experiencing any aches or pains. About the host: Amelia Phillips is an exercise scientist, nutritionist, and published researcher (BSc, MNut) with a career spanning 26 years in health. She is the co-founder of Vitality360, a functional health platform that helps people gain deep insights into their health and make targeted changes for lasting vitality.A respected media presenter, Amelia has been featured on Channel 9’s hit show Do You Want to Live Forever? and is dedicated to helping people build a life of energy, connection, and purpose at any age or stage of life.Instagram: @_amelia_phillipsHave a question? Email: ap@ameliaphillips.com.auFind out more at: www.ameliaphillips.com.auDiscover Vitality360: https://v360.health CREDITSHost: Amelia Phillips Audio Producer: Darren RothMusic: Matt Nicholich Production Partner: Nova Entertainment Pty Ltd Healthy Her acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Have you ever hired your way into a problem? Have you promoted your best people into management roles and watched them struggle, not because they lacked talent, but because nobody asked whether that was actually the job they wanted? Today's featured guest grew her agency team to nearly 200 people before making the deliberate decision to scale back to around 75. She did it not because the business was failing, but because she had learned the hard way that headcount is not leverage. In this episode, she walks through what each stage of that growth actually cost, how she thinks about the difference between a manager and an executive, and why going all in on one service in 2017 was the scariest and most important decision she made for her agency. Hope Horner is the co-founder and CEO of Lemonlight, a video content agency based in California that produces commercials and primarily works with enterprise clients. She started the company in 2014 in her bedroom with two co-founders, betting that affordable, accessible video content would become essential for brands who had been priced out of the market. She was right. Lemonlight grew to nearly 200 employees before a deliberate rightsizing brought the team to around 75. In this episode, we'll discuss: The difference that going all in on one niche made The mistake fast-growing agencies make Distinction between manager and executive Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. Why Going All In on One Thing Was the Decision That Changed Everything In 2017, Lemonlight was doing what a lot of agencies do: offering paid advertising, web design, social media, and video production, because saying yes to everything felt safer than narrowing down. Hope and her co-founders made the call to turn all of that off almost overnight and go all in on video. This decision cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue at the time. It also removed every piece of ambiguity about what the agency was, what it was building toward, and who it should be talking to. The downstream effects of that decision compounded over years. As the agency focused exclusively on video, the quality of the work got sharper. The quality of the work attracted better clients. Better clients required more sophisticated production. More sophisticated production required higher-end talent and systems. By the time COVID hit and enterprise clients started investing heavily in video, Lemonlight had the positioning, the craft, and the infrastructure to capture that demand at a level a generalist agency never could have. The decision that felt like contraction was the one that made real scale possible. What 200 Employees Actually Taught Her About Headcount The path to nearly 200 people was not a strategic choice. It was a response to demand. When clients flooded in during 2021 and 2022, they did what fast-growing agencies do: they threw bodies at the problem. The result was a team where tasks were fragmented across too many people, ownership was unclear, and productivity per person was low precisely because the work was so divided. It looked like growth, but operationally, it was expensive redundancy. The rightsizing that followed was a correction with a clear-eyed read on what actually produces leverage. Technology replaced a significant portion of the work that had been distributed across dozens of roles. Many employees who had been promoted into management discovered they preferred the individual contributor track and, given the option to step back, they performed better in it. Some of what felt like a painful downturn was actually the agency becoming the shape it should have been earlier. As Hope says: not better, just different. The problems at 75 people are real. They are just different problems than the ones at 200. The Manager Versus Executive Distinction Most Founders Miss Until Too Late Hope has a framework for telling a manager apart from an executive. A manager is built for evolution: improving existing processes incrementally, guiding people through what already works, making the current system run better. An executive is built for revolution: seeing where a fundamentally different process or product line needs to exist and building the case for it before anyone else has named the problem. Most founders who hire senior people for the first time discover, sometimes expensively, that a great manager at a large company is not the same as an executive who can function in a resource-constrained environment. The person who ran a function at a hundred-million-dollar company and wants a team of fifteen behind them to make them look good is not the same as the resourceful operator a growing agency actually needs. Recognizing the difference before the hire, not six months after, is the thing that separates founders who build strong leadership teams from founders who cycle through senior hires and wonder why nothing sticks. The Support Group Nobody Told You That You Needed Every agency owner knows that the loneliness of building an agency is real, it is underreported, and most founders make it worse by surrounding themselves with other founders who are performing confidence rather than telling the truth. The bravado of how many employees, how much revenue, how many awards is not just useless. It actively misleads founders into thinking their own internal chaos is unique to them when it is almost universally shared. What actually helps is a room where the performance stops. Where a founder who is eight figures and structurally broken can say that out loud and find that everyone in the room recognizes the pattern. That kind of peer truth-telling is not therapy. It is the fastest way to close the gap between where a founder is and where they need to be, because the person across the table has already lived through the version of the problem that is still invisible to the person describing it. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Are you treating your podcast as one more thing on an already impossible schedule? Are you running a sales process that creates friction at every step when the alternative has been sitting right in front of you? Today's featured guest has been podcasting for over 11 years and nearly 1,800 episodes. In this conversation, he'll make the case that a podcast, run correctly, removes the sales cycle almost entirely. He also has a lot to say about what it took to step back from working 100-hour weeks in an entertainment agency and into a business that earns a healthy six-figure income on 15 hours a week. Doug Sandler is the founder of Turnkey Podcast Productions, a podcast production agency, and the host of The Nice Guys on Business, a show he has been running for over 11 years and nearly 1,800 episodes with more than 6 million downloads. Before podcasting, Doug spent 30 years as a Bar Mitzvah MC and entertainment agency owner, running an operation that handled between 700 and 900 events per year. He also wrote the book Nice Guys Finish First, which became the original vehicle for the podcast. Nowadays, he works roughly 15 hours a week and spends the rest of his time restoring classic cars and trucks. In this episode, we'll discuss: A podcast as a hub of the business The decision to stop being the founder who works 80-hour weeks Removing the friction from the sale Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. The Podcast as a Sales Tool, Not a Content Schedule Agency owners who consider starting a podcast tend to frame it as a content commitment: another thing to produce, another distribution channel to manage, another task to fall behind on. Doug's framing is different. He calls the podcast the hub of the business, not a spoke. Marketing, lead generation, business development, sales, and relationship building are all running through the same conversation. Instead of adding to those functions, the podcast replaces most of the friction those functions create. The mechanics of how he uses it to sell without selling are worth understanding in detail. Doug does not cold pitch podcast production services. He reaches out to a prospect, says he hosts a show and likes their message, and asks if they would come on. The answer is nearly always yes. The interview becomes a 30 to 45 minute relationship-building session. By the end of it, he knows whether they are a fit, they know who he is and what he does, and the question "have you ever considered podcasting as a marketing tool?" lands entirely differently than it would in a cold email. The wall that normally exists between a prospect and a vendor does not go up because the conversation never started as a sales call. What 15 Hours a Week Actually Requires Doug works 15 hours a week and earns a healthy six-figure income. That sentence tends to provoke two reactions: skepticism and envy. The skepticism usually comes from founders who have not yet identified what their zone of genius actually is, or who have identified it but have not yet hired out everything around it. Doug is direct about what made the shift possible: he stopped doing anything that did not require his specific capability and hired for everything else, including before he could comfortably afford it. The operations manager hire at Turnkey came when it was just Doug and one other person. They were paying her $40,000 a year before either founder was drawing a paycheck. That decision was possible because Doug had kept his entertainment agency running in parallel and was not dependent on the production company income yet. The broader principle holds regardless of the specific situation: the sooner a founder identifies what they should stop doing and puts someone qualified in that seat, the faster the business grows and the less the founder has to be inside it to make that happen. The Decision to Stop Being the Founder Who Misses the Kids' Doug spent 30 years working weekends as an entertainment agency owner. His children grew up with a father who was almost always working during the exact hours when they were doing the things that mattered. This was a wake-up call. The shift he made when he launched Turnkey was not about working less for its own sake. It was about not repeating the same trade-off. Revenue is not the thing you look back on. Some founders who tell themselves they are working hard now so they can be present later. We know how that story usually ends. The agency gets bigger, the demands grow with it, and the window closes before anyone decides to actually make the change. The structural path out of that loop is a hiring decision, a zone-of-genius identification, and a willingness to pay for someone to take the work you should not be doing before you feel financially ready to do it. Live on Air: What Real Sales Confidence Looks Like Mid-interview, Doug openly asked about the possibility to explore what a partnership with his podcast production company could look like. He narrates the logic as he does it: not asking means leaving a potential opportunity on the table simply because it feels awkward. Asking directly, transparently, and without pressure is not pitching. It is just an honest question between two people who have been talking for 30 minutes and have clearly established that they like and respect each other. The lesson Doug draws from it is about what podcasting actually trains you to do. Every interview is a pre-qualified sales conversation with someone who already said yes to spending time with you. By the time the recording ends, the trust is built and the friction is gone. Asking whether there is an opportunity is the natural last step, not a hard close. That is a fundamentally different sales experience than any cold outreach can create, and it compounds across every episode, every guest, and every listener who has been tuning in long enough to already want to work with you before they ever reach out. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

In this episode of Healthy Her, host Amelia Phillips unpacks one of the most common (and frustrating!) impacts of perimenopause – BRAIN FOG – with world-renowned neuroscientist Dr Sarah McKay.From poor concentration to forgetfulness and simple words, like fork, dissolving in mid-air, mid-conversation, they discuss the cognitive changes that occur in midlife and why. And Dr Sarah provides strategies to get you back to the sharp, witty, vibrant woman you know you are. About the guest: Dr Sarah McKay is an Oxford-trained neuroscientist, author, speaker and educator whose work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, women’s brain health and real life. She specialises in translating complex brain research into practical strategies we can use every day for improved health, mood, and performance. She has appeared on the Mel Robbins podcast and is the author of three books on brain health: The Women's Brain Book, Baby Brain, and Brain Health For Dummies – published earlier this year. Visit Dr Sarah's website: https://drsarahmckay.com/Dr Sarah on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drsarahmckay/ Purchase the paperbacks: https://www.booktopia.com.au/search?author=Dr+Sarah+McKay Purchase the audiobooks: https://www.audible.com.au/author/Dr-Sarah-McKay/B07C5F1X3T About the host: Amelia Phillips is an exercise scientist, nutritionist, and published researcher (BSc, MNut) with a career spanning 26 years in health. A respected media presenter, Amelia has been featured on Channel 9’s hit show Do You Want to Live Forever? and is dedicated to helping people build a life of energy, connection, and purpose at any age or stage of life.Instagram: @_amelia_phillipsHave a question? Email: ap@ameliaphillips.com.auFind out more at: www.ameliaphillips.com.au CREDITSHost: Amelia Phillips Guest: Dr Sarah McKay Audio Producer: Darren RothMusic: Matt Nicholich Production Partner: Nova Entertainment Pty Ltd Healthy Her acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Have you ever written a process that nobody followed? Or built a folder of SOPs that your team politely ignored and you quietly stopped updating? That was a big struggle for today's featured guest, but six weeks before this conversation, he and his team built something that solved a problem most agency owners have tried and failed to fix for years: an AI context engine that makes their operating procedures actually stick. In this episode, he walks through exactly how it works, how they structured shared and personal context layers, how to get your team started without overwhelming them, and why giving AI an outcome rather than a task is the thing most founders are still getting wrong. Andy Janaitis is the founder of PPC Pitbulls, a boutique digital marketing agency focused on Google Ads and Meta Ads for small to medium businesses. His background is in industrial engineering, data science, software engineering, and product management. Throughout these different stages of his career, he always worked at agencies. So naturally, when it came to starting his own business that seemed like the obvious choice. He launched the agency in 2020 alongside a former colleague, the same week his first child was born and COVID hit. PPC Pitbulls' differentiator is measurement: every ad dollar is tracked, client behavior on-site is understood, and optimization follows the data rather than intuition. In this episode, we'll discuss: Andy's solution to the common owner SOP problem Shared context vs. personal context Get next-level results by providing outcomes, not tasks Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. The SOP Problem Most Agencies Have Given Up On Every agency owner knows the rhythm. You write the process. You put it in ClickUp or Notion or a shared drive. You announce it to the team. Three months later nobody is using it, and you are back to making every decision yourself because it is faster than watching the system fail in real time. Andy has run this loop and now, just six weeks before the recording, managed to use AI to create a tool that changed everything. It was an AI context engine that pulled from every client touchpoint, including meeting recordings, email, and Slack, and converted that information into living context files the team can query in real time. The key detail is what happens when someone wants to update a shared file. Every central skills file has an owner. Changes get queued for approval rather than overwriting existing rules. What used to be a static document that slowly went stale is now a system that learns, updates, and actually enforces how the agency operates. Shared Context vs. Personal Context: Why the Distinction Matters The context gathered in this way is structured across the team in two tiers: First tier: The central bank holds client context, agency-wide skills files, and general operating rules. That lives in a shared Google Drive folder that auto-syncs to every team member's desktop. Second tier: Personal context, meaning individual rules that only apply to a specific person's workflow, like filtering certain emails that have nothing to do with the agency. The reason this distinction matters is that most teams building shared AI context run into one of two problems: the files are so locked down nobody updates them, or they are so open that updates overwrite each other and nothing is reliable. The queue-and-approve structure Andy built threads that needle. Team members can flag a better way to do something. The file owner reviews it. If it makes sense, it gets merged into the main store. The agency gets smarter without the chaos of everyone editing the same file in real time. Start With One Specific Thing, Not the Whole System Most founders decide to build an AI operating system and then make the mistake of trying to build everything at once, load too much context into a single document, and end up with a system so heavy it cannot function efficiently. Jason describes his own early version as trying to get every person in the company to approve a single letter change. The architecture was right but the structure was wrong. Andy's starting point recommendation is specific enough to actually follow: Pick one workflow. The one that creates the most friction or the most inconsistency. Open Claude desktop, describe what you want, identify the tool or source you want to pull from, and ask it to build a file structure that keeps client context organized and retrievable. The plan it generates is not perfect. That is fine. You approve, adjust, and run it. From that first working piece, everything else becomes an iteration. The common mistake is waiting for a complete vision before starting. The agencies making real progress right now started with something small six weeks ago and have been adding ever since. Give It an Outcome, Not a Task The tactical shift that runs through this entire conversation is the difference between assigning AI a task and giving it an outcome. A task is "write me a sales proposal." An outcome is "we need to win this client, here is everything we know about them, here is our agency's positioning, here is what a strong proposal from us looks like, produce a first draft." The output from the second prompt is not in the same category as the output from the first. This is the same principle that makes or breaks the first few hires at a growing agency. Most founders who have struggled with underperforming team members can trace it back to the same root: they handed someone a task without ever communicating the outcome they were trying to reach. AI amplifies both good and bad briefing habits instantly. Give it strong context and a clear destination, and it operates well above expectations. Give it a vague instruction and ignore the output quality, and the tool looks broken when the real problem is the brief. Building the context engine is how you make that outcome-focused briefing the default rather than the exception. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Are you still optimizing your agency's content for Google while your clients are getting their answers from AI? Are you charging for the execution that AI is about to make obsolete, while giving away the strategy that commands real fees? Today's featured guest works with agencies navigating the shift from traditional search to generative engine optimization. He'll talk about what the Anthropic research actually says about how much of the work agencies do today can be automated, how AI reads content differently than Google does, and the practical steps any agency can take right now to show up in AI-generated answers before competitors figure it out. Tom Lee is an AI search and SEO specialist and co-founder of Visto, a platform that helps agencies build the visibility and optimization layer for the AI search era. Tom and his team advise agencies on generative engine optimization, or GEO, and how to position their clients to show up in AI-generated answers across platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews. His background includes working inside large enterprise companies including Apple and Walmart, where he managed SEO at scale. He now works directly with SEO and GEO agencies helping them build the strategic frameworks and content systems that translate traditional search authority into AI visibility. In this episode, we'll discuss: Is your value proposition still execution? Why GEO does not replace SEO Repackaging existing content will get you nowhere Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. What the Anthropic Research Actually Says Tom referenced an Anthropic study published earlier this year that mapped out the theoretical automation potential across industries. For software development, AI can already handle around 35% of code generation, with a theoretical ceiling of 97%. For business and marketing functions including SEO, that ceiling is 94%. In his view, those numbers are not a reason to panic, but they are a reason to get clear on which part of the work you are actually selling. The agencies at risk are the ones whose value proposition is execution. Writing the content, building the links, pulling the reports: if that is what you are charging for, you are in the category that AI is actively compressing. The agencies that will hold their ground and grow their fees are the ones charging for judgment. Which topics to chase. Which content gaps matter. How to translate client expertise into something AI will actually cite. That is the 6% that automation cannot touch, and it is also the highest-margin work in the engagement. GEO Is Built on Top of SEO, Not Instead of It Something that gets lost in the noise around AI search is that GEO does not replace SEO. It extends it. Showing up in Google search results is still the foundation. What has changed is that showing up is no longer enough. AI reads content the way a human being reads it, evaluating whether the argument is convincing and whether the source is credible, not just whether the right keywords appear in the right density. That changes what good content has to do. The practical starting point Tom recommends is mapping what he calls the semantic space for a client: Identifying what topic areas people are actually raising in AI conversations that the client should be part of. From there, you translate that semantic space into specific prompts, run those prompts across the major AI platforms, and audit what comes back. Who is being cited? Where is the client showing up and where are they absent? What content is AI pulling from competitors that the client has not produced yet? That gap analysis is the strategic deliverable that commands real fees. It is also the work that no AI tool will do for you, because it requires knowing what the client actually wants to be known for. Why Repackaging Existing Content Gets You Nowhere Once you're clear about the topics your audience is looking for, there's something that will for sure not work the way many think it does. When you identify a content gap and ask AI to fill it, you get repackaged information drawn from the same sources the AI already used to generate the gap. That content does not move anything forward. AI knows where it got the data from. Recycled information does not earn citations. What earns citations is new data, original perspective, and subject matter expertise that advances the conversation rather than summarizing what already exists. The 5 step system Tom uses with his clients: Identify the content gaps Build a specific set of questions tied to those gaps Send those questions to a subject matter expert at the client Have them record a Loom or voice memo answering freely Use AI to transcribe and chunk that recording into content The raw material is original. The expertise is real. The content that comes out earns its place in the semantic space rather than competing with what is already there. Your Clients Are Training AI. Are You Helping Them Do It Right? The broader point running through this conversation is one that matters whether you run an SEO agency or not. AI systems are being trained on open-source content: social media posts, forum conversations, podcast transcripts, FAQ pages, markdown-formatted content. Every piece of content a client publishes is either building their presence in that training data or failing to. Agencies that understand this and can show clients where they are absent, who is filling that space instead, and what it would take to reclaim it, are in a fundamentally different conversation than agencies still talking about keyword rankings. The founders who will build authority in this environment are the ones creating real content from real expertise, showing up broadly enough to be present in the long tail of AI conversations, and charging for the strategic thinking that makes all of it coherent. The execution is becoming a commodity. The strategy never was. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

In this Mini Motivation episode, host Amelia Phillips is back with the Microbiome Doctor, gastroenterologist Dr Paul Froomes, to find out how we can all master our gut microbiomes. Amelia asks about 'weeding and seeding', the best probiotics, and the potential of Akkermansia to support metabolic health and weight management. Plus, Dr Paul gives his go-to pre- and probiotics for a healthy, happy, balanced gut. About the guest: Dr Paul Froomes is a Melbourne-based gastroenterologist with over 30 years of experience helping patients with complex gastrointestinal disorders. Trained at Monash University and the Royal Australian College of Physicians, he has gone on to complete advanced training in endoscopy and oesophageal physiology, as well as a master’s degree in liver disease at the University of Melbourne. Beyond his hospital and clinic work, Dr Froomes has dedicated his career to finding the root causes of gut issues like IBS, reflux, and inflammatory bowel disease – publishing research, training doctors, and now building innovative treatment programs that are changing lives. Dr Froomes is the co-founder of The Microbiome Clinic™, a new age medical practice built to make his decades of learnings about the microbiome accessible to more patients and practitioners. After seeing countless people struggle with conditions that didn’t improve under standard care, he recognised the need for a model that treats the root cause – imbalances in the microbiome – rather than just the symptoms.Follow Dr Paul on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drpaulfroomes/ The Microbiome Clinic: https://themicrobiomeclinic.com.au/ About the host: Amelia Phillips is an exercise scientist, nutritionist, and published researcher (BSc, MNut) with a career spanning 26 years in health. A respected media presenter, Amelia has been featured on Channel 9’s hit show Do You Want to Live Forever? and is dedicated to helping people build a life of energy, connection, and purpose at any age or stage of life.Instagram: @_amelia_phillipsHave a question? Email: ap@ameliaphillips.com.auFind out more at: www.ameliaphillips.com.au CREDITSHost: Amelia Phillips Guest: Dr Paul Froomes Audio Producer: Darren RothMusic: Matt Nicholich Production Partner: Nova Entertainment Pty Ltd Healthy Her acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Are you still showing up for every function in your business after years because stepping back feels like abandoning what you built? Do you publish content consistently but wonder why it is not moving the needle? Today's featured guest owns a social media agency and built her client roster by getting on stage before she was comfortable doing so. She wrote a book that got her on the stages she wanted, and carved out a niche so specific that it made content marketers uncomfortable. In this conversation, she'll talk about how she landed enterprise clients with zero churn over nine years, what it actually takes to find a real differentiator, and much more. Brooke Sellas is the CEO and founder of B Squared Media, a Michigan-based agency offering social media management, paid media management, and social media customer care. Her social care practice works exclusively with enterprise brands at $5 billion and above in annual revenue, including long-term clients she originally closed nine years ago with zero churn since. She is the author of Conversations That Connect, a book built around the idea that social is a conversation channel, not a content channel. Brooke speaks at major marketing conferences, including Social Media Marketing World and now teaches AI at the University of California. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why your differentiator must be an outcome Being stuck in the Founder Evolution Framework Why hesitation regarding AI will kill your agency Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. How She Built a Client List Enterprise Brands Still Have Not Left Brooke's first two major clients came from a speaking appearance she almost did not take. She hated being on stage but agreed anyway. She closed Brother International and Miele from that first talk, and immediately made speaking her primary lead generation strategy. Nine years later, those clients are still with the agency. That zero churn across the social care practice is the result of a positioning decision made early: social is a revenue channel, not a content channel, and every client relationship is built around proving that. Getting on bigger stages required a longer game. Brooke spent years speaking for free, asked her network exactly how they were getting booked, and eventually took advice to write a book. The book cost around $25,000 to produce and self-publish. It opened stages that had been closed before. Social Media Marketing World followed because the book got in front of the right people and gave the organizer enough confidence to put her on stage. The ROI was not immediate. It compounded across years of bookings, consulting fees, and speaking revenue that now functions as a separate income stream while still generating agency leads. Your Differentiator Has to Be an Outcome, Not a Vibe Brooke is direct about what does not work as positioning. Saying your agency is a people-first agency, that you care more, that you have great culture: none of it separates you in a room where everyone is saying exactly the same thing. She spent years telling content marketers they were wrong, walking into rooms full of people who measured social by follower counts and publishing frequency, and saying the right metric is revenue from social. That took a stance. It made some people uncomfortable, and that discomfort was the signal she was in the right territory. The lesson she draws from her own experience is not that you need to be contrarian for its own sake. It is that your differentiator has to connect directly to a business outcome your client already cares about. Her agency's tagline is Conversation Not Campaign. That is a positioning claim with a revenue argument underneath it. If you cannot articulate what outcome your positioning produces for the client, you do not have a differentiator yet. You have a personality. Where She Is in the Founder Evolution Framework and What It Costs Her Fourteen years into building B Squared, Brooke is somewhere between Architect and CEO and honest about what that means in practice. She still runs most things. She knows it is holding back growth. She also knows that the identity piece is real: when you have built something for over a decade and your name is synonymous with what the agency delivers, stepping out of that role is not just a structural decision. It requires a different relationship with your own sense of contribution. What she articulates clearly is the tension every founder at this stage knows. She does not want to be the bottleneck anymore. She also has not yet handed the systems over to someone who can own them at the level she would. The move at this stage is not to wait until someone earns total trust before stepping back. It is to build the systems, put the right person in charge of them, and let the fender benders happen so the team develops the capability to solve problems without routing everything through the founder. The alternative is staying indispensable in a way that caps everything the agency could become. Stop Hesitating and Treat AI with Curiosity Brooke runs social media and paid media services. She is clear-eyed about what AI is doing to both: content that used to take weeks to produce is now a matter of seconds, and ad copy that required real craft is being generated faster and often better than agency teams can match manually. That is the honest read. The response she chose is not to protect what exists but to figure out where AI creates opportunity she was not positioned to capture before. The Gartner stat she cites is worth repeating: people who use AI to help them sell, sell 3.7 times more than those who do not. Brooke is a speaker, a consultant, and a sales-driven founder. That number is an opening, not a threat. The agencies that are struggling right now are the ones that treated the last two years as a window to observe and decide. The window is closing. Curiosity and willingness to play with new tools before mastery arrives is not optional. It is the trait that has always separated the founders who build something lasting from the ones who stay comfortable until the market moves without them. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Ever felt like you're following all the right steps but still missing something deeper?Many people walk through church doors confident in their faith yet quietly shackled to old habits, unhealed pain, or a fear of never “arriving.” Pastor Kevin describes this as the difference between getting wet and actually going swimming. Between being close to truth but not fully saturated by it.Pastor Kevin unpacks why so many well-meaning people settle for surface-level Christianity, never realizing how much God longs to set them free. He reminds us that real change, doesn't come from louder declarations or checklist spirituality, but from a daily, honest encounter with Jesus and his word.Whether you're brand new or wrestling with old doubts, you're invited to belong, to try again, and to ask, “Do I really want to be free?” There's space for your questions here, and a next step that's actually doable. You don't need to fix yourself first—just come prepared to move forward.Scriptures ReferencedPsalm 16:6; John 5:1-8, 5:14-15, 8:31-47, 15:13; Galatians 5:1; Ephesians 6:12; 1 Corinthians 1:18; 1 John 4:7Key InsightsSettling for spiritual “proximity” leaves us dry and unchanged. Full immersion in God's truth creates real transformation.True freedom is found within God's boundaries, not outside them.Excuses and busy schedules often mask the reality of spiritual bondage.Everyone is welcome to start small and step into God's freedom, no matter their past.Key Sections00:00:00 - Welcome & AnnouncementsJoin us for an upcoming Instruments of Joy benefit concert.00:02:09 - Owning Blind Spots and LoveIt's easy to mistake attempted faithfulness for true spiritual maturity, particularly in areas like love, where most overestimate their own growth and miss the lifelong challenge of loving as God does.00:07:29 - Exposing False FreedomMany Christians often parade around believing they are free while quietly living in bondage, highlighting the cultural confusion between worldly and godly freedom, and why God's limits are actually gifts that unleash joy and peace.00:12:26 - The Discipline of God's LoveWhy God disciplines those he loves, how our avoidance of authority affects spiritual growth, and the uncomfortable but freeing truth that discipline and freedom go hand in hand.00:14:37 - Lukewarm Living and Self-ExaminationLukewarm Christianity is where true transformation gets replaced by louder words or religious routines. The only real antidote is choosing daily to die to self and let God's truth saturate every area of life.00:17:49 - Do You Want to Be FreePastor Keven shares Jesus' direct challenge to the man at the pool of Bethesda, paralleling it with our own reluctance to truly seek freedom; excuses often feel safer than risking change, but Jesus calls us to “get up” and act.00:25:34 - From Proximity to Immersion in TruthKnowing about God is not the same as surrendering to his truth.. It's like moving from standing at the edge of the pool to being completely submerged, where God's voice finally becomes clearest and the old lies lose their volume.00:41:48 - Concrete Next Steps for Real ChangeImmersion in Scripture is not about religious head knowledge but letting Jesus' words shape every decision.https://springhouse.captivate.fm/episode/arise-in-true-freedomSubscribe & Follow the PodcastDownload our appOur WebsiteOnline Tithes & OfferingsJoin our LivestreamGathering TimesSundays, 9:00 AMSundays, 11:00 AMThursdays, 6:00 PMContact InfoSpringhouse Church14119 Old Nashville HighwaySmyrna TN 37167615-459-3421CCLI License 2070006

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Are you charging for execution when clients are about to stop paying for it? Are you building your sales process around your offer instead of around your prospect's trust? Today's featured guest built a growth workshop that converts 78% of buyers into long-term retainer clients. In this episode, she'll get into what that workshop actually contains, why the entry offer might be the thing keeping it from scaling, how to stop your CEO from chasing shiny quarters mid-engagement, and what happens when you position strategy as the product instead of execution. Jen Jurgens is the founder of 1 Bold Step, a revenue operations agency based in Michigan. Her background is in supply chain management, which is where she developed the belief she will die on: sales and marketing is a process, and processes can be measured, improved, and optimized. One Bold Step is a HubSpot partner and works primarily with B2B clients on pipeline growth, campaign optimization, and revenue systems. In this episode, we'll discuss: Focusing on pipeline growth as a primary metric Creating a foot in the door for Jen's growth workshop Selling the process, not the deliverable Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Toggl: Most agencies are losing 15–30% of their profit every year: lack of time tracking, messy manual timesheets, scope creep, untracked revisions, and all those "quick" client requests that never get billed. Toggl has created a fast, interactive way to uncover exactly where your margins are leaking. Start your investigation now at toggl.com/smartagency and use the code SMARTAGENCY10 at checkout for a 10% off annual plans. The Case for Charging for Strategy Before Execution Jen comes at pricing from a supply chain logic: if you can measure the outcome, you can defend the price. Her agency focuses on pipeline growth as its primary client metric because it is the number most directly connected to revenue and the one she can credibly influence within a defined timeframe. Monthly reports go out, and every quarter there is a two-hour retrospective with the client covering what was committed to, what actually happened, what worked, what did not, and what the next 90 days look like. The reason this cadence holds is that it makes the strategic layer of the engagement visible. Most agencies send reports that clients stop reading after the first month because the data is wrapped in jargon and disconnected from business outcomes. Jen's approach is the opposite: tie everything to pipeline, show up in person or on screen quarterly, and use an Agile sprint structure to keep the client's attention from jumping to whatever crossed their desk that morning. That level of structure is the thing clients are actually paying for, and most of them do not know it until it is explained to them directly. Why Your Entry Offer Might Be the Reason Deals Stall Jen's growth workshop has a 78% conversion rate from buyer to long-term retainer. That is a strong number. The problem is on the other side of the funnel: getting prospects to say yes to the workshop in the first place. The workshop is currently priced between $10,000 and $15,000, takes 100 to 120 hours of agency time to deliver, and goes deep enough that Jen describes it as showing clients not just what they want but what they actually need. It is comprehensive. It is also a significant ask before any trust has been established. The Foot-in-the-Door principle exists precisely for this situation. A $10,000 to $15,000 entry requires founder-level credibility to close and has no on-ramp for prospects who are not yet convinced. What it needs is a smaller version that a prospect can say yes to at low risk, that delivers a real insight in a short window, and that makes the full workshop the obvious next step rather than a leap of faith. The mechanics are straightforward: charge $1,000 to $2,000 for a focused diagnostic session, frame it as a mutual qualifier, and let the output do the selling. The trust the mini-session builds is what removes the friction from the larger close. Selling the Process, Not the Deliverable Jen describes what she actually does in the growth workshop as taking the client's assumptions about what is blocking their growth and replacing them with what is actually blocking their growth. Nine times out of ten, a CEO who says they need more leads is sitting on an unconverted database, a sales team sitting on two-year-old proposals, or five product lines with no prioritization. More leads into a leaky bucket is not a solution. The reason this framing is powerful is not just diagnostic accuracy. It is positioning. When Jen walks into a growth workshop, she is not selling marketing services. She is functioning as a strategic operator who knows how revenue systems work and is willing to tell the client something they did not ask to hear. That is a fundamentally different position than an agency responding to an RFP. The clients who pay $10,000 to $15,000 for that workshop are not buying a deliverable. They are buying the read, and the confidence that what comes next will be built on something real. Pricing for Strategy When AI Is Changing What Execution Costs The conversation landed on a reality every agency is navigating right now. Execution is getting cheaper and faster. Four websites in three hours is not hypothetical anymore. Clients who used to pay for time spent are starting to ask why the price has not moved if the time has. The answer is not to lower prices. The answer is to make the case clearly that what they are paying for was never the hours. It was the 20 or 30 years of judgment that knows which inputs to use, which levers to pull, and what not to build. Jen's framing for clients who push back on process costs is direct: you can manage this yourself and be the general contractor on your own build. But you will not, because you do not have the time, and if you did, you would not need us. Agencies that can hold that position without flinching are the ones that will not have their margins compressed by AI. The ones that cannot articulate what strategy is worth beyond hours delivered are already in trouble. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Do You Want to Get Well? | John 5:1–15 Texts: John 5:1–15; John 1:4; John 4:10Some questions sound unnecessary at first.When Jesus looks at a man who has been disabled for thirty-eight years and asks, “Do you want to get well?”, it almost feels obvious. But Jesus never asks empty questions. He asks questions that expose what pain, disappointment, delay, and survival have done inside of us.In this standalone message, Pastor Kevin walks through John 5 and shows how Jesus meets people in the places where they have gotten used to being stuck. This is not a message about blaming wounded people for their wounds. It is a message about the mercy of Jesus, who sees us, knows how long it has been, and still speaks life into places that feel resigned, guarded, numb, or closed.This message is a call to move beyond proximity to holy things and into surrender to Jesus Himself. Because being near the pool is not the same as being open to the Savior. And when Jesus speaks, life moves. Broad River Church | Norwalk, CT Join us Sundays: 9:00 AM & 11:00 AM (English) | 1:00 PM (Español) Learn more or take your next step: https://broadriver.church/nextstepsFollow us on Instagram: @iambroadriverchurch

In this episode of Healthy Her, host Amelia Phillips discusses navigating the storm season of midlife with someone who has dealt with profound loss, public scrutiny and reinvention amidst the hormonal upheaval of perimenopause and menopause – the incomparable Lisa Curry. From success in the pool to co-founding the thriving health and lifestyle business Happy Healthy You, the three-time Olympian and best-selling author has lived a life punctuated by some amazing highs – but also the lowest of lows. Here, she shares her hard-won wisdom on how to not just weather the storm, but emerge stronger and more resilient in its wake.About the guest: Lisa Curry AO is one of Australia’s most accomplished athletes and businesswomen; a three-time Olympian, Commonwealth Games gold medallist, best-selling author and successful businesswoman.Co-founding women's health, supplement and lifestyle company Happy Healthy You in 2015 and publishing a book by the same title in 2024 – all about balancing hormones, nourishing your body and regaining your health – Lisa has become a powerful voice for resilience and mental health advocacy.Learn about Happy Healthy You: https://happyhealthyyou.com.au/Follow Lisa and Happy Healthy You on InstagramPurchase the paperback: https://www.booktopia.com.au/happy-healthy-you-lisa-curry/book/9781460764763.html About the host: Amelia Phillips is an exercise scientist, nutritionist, and published researcher (BSc, MNut) with a career spanning 26 years in health. A respected media presenter, Amelia has been featured on Channel 9’s hit show Do You Want to Live Forever? and is dedicated to helping people build a life of energy, connection, and purpose at any age or stage of life.Instagram: @_amelia_phillipsHave a question? Email: ap@ameliaphillips.com.auFind out more at: www.ameliaphillips.com.au CREDITSHost: Amelia Phillips Guest: Lisa Curry Audio Producer: Darren RothMusic: Matt Nicholich Production Partner: Nova Entertainment Pty Ltd Healthy Her acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, I sit down with Pastor Noah Herrin of Way Church of Nashville, TN, to talk about faith, obedience, and what it means to stay close to Jesus in every season. We unpack church planting, grace, biblical conviction, disappointment, healing, and the difference between chasing your own opportunities and stepping fully into the assignment God has placed in front of you.CHAPTERS:00:00 Intro02:40 What God Is Building at Way Church07:09 Commitment to the Craft of Faith10:43 How to Keep the Fire Alive17:19 What Saturday Teaches Us About Easter25:43 Faith, Grace, and the Work That Follows33:07 The Challenge Facing Young Believers34:17 Why Biblical Literacy Matters43:11 A Simple Way to Read Scripture50:08 Stewarding What God Entrusted56:34 Do You Want to Be Healed?57:24 Theo Von, Faith, and Honest Questions01:04:15 New Wine Requires a New Life01:07:42 Assignments Over Opportunities01:10:28 How to Recognize Your Assignment01:15:55 Taking Big Swings for God01:19:11 Final Gratitude and Closing ThoughtsORDER MY BOOK HERE: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210FOLLOW:Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 25% off FOR LIFE ⁠https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/collections/performance-nutritionIG: ⁠instagram.com/nickbarefitness/⁠YT: ⁠youtube.com/@nickbarefitnessThis podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal [health or profession] advice. Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN) is not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice.This podcast may not be republished without the written consent of Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN)

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Have you ever hired someone to free up your time and found yourself working more hours than before? Have you hit a point where your reputation for quality is actually the thing keeping you stuck in every project? Today's featured guest and his wife have been building their agency for over 22 years. For most of that time, the business ran on referrals, no defined niche, and two founders doing most of the work. Six years ago, they got serious about building a real team. In this episode, he talks honestly about what that transition looked like, why his technical strengths became a liability as the agency grew, how a lack of sales infrastructure was quietly making their delivery problems worse, and what the shift to actually picking clients has done for their operations. Olivier Bridgeman is the co-founder of Bridge Media, a marketing and web agency serving businesses in residential construction, renovation, and maintenance—recognized as the builders of credibility. Although it has been operating for over two decades, Olivier and his wife made the decision to build a real team and install the infrastructure that would let the business grow beyond them just six years ago. The agency now has 11 people, and Olivier is in the process of evolving out of the operator role and into something closer to CEO, working through the mindset and structural challenges that come with that shift. In this episode, we'll discuss: The expected cost of adding more people When your biggest strength turns you into a bottleneck Fixing sales to fix the delivery problem Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. Herringbone Digital: If you're thinking about exiting now, planning a few years ahead, or just want to understand your options, you should know about Herringbone Digital. They're not a typical financial buyer. They're operators who actually understand what it takes to build and scale an agency because they've done it themselves. Their approach is simple: invest in great founders, protect what's already working, and help agencies scale faster. Go to https://www.herringbonedigital.com/swenk and start the conversation. Why Adding People Made the Work Harder Before It Got Easier After years of being the sole force behind the business, the motivation to build a team was simple: bring on people, hand off work, and get time back. The reality was that the first hires created more work, not less. Olivier and his wife had to deliver their own work, review and redo the team's work before it went to clients, manage schedules, clarify responsibilities, and absorb the cost of onboarding, all at the same time. This is the Manager stage in full effect, and it is the stage where most founders assume something is broken when it is actually just the expected cost of the transition. What Olivier describes is exactly what makes this stage so difficult: you used to know what you were doing every afternoon. Now you have to manage your own calendar and everyone else's. The invisible work of managing people, training them, setting expectations, and maintaining quality does not show up on any timesheet. It just accumulates. The goal is to move through this stage quickly, not to stay in it and hire more people on top of it. When Your Biggest Strength Becomes the Bottleneck Olivier's programming ability, which was his edge at the start, became a trap as the team grew. When you are the best technical person in the room and there is a problem in front of you, the reflex is to fix it. It is faster. It is cleaner. And it quietly signals to the team that you do not trust them to solve it themselves. The pattern is common across founders who built their agencies around a specific skill. The capability that created the business eventually becomes the reason the founder cannot leave it. Every time Olivier jumped in to fix something, he was reinforcing the team's dependency on him rather than building their ability to handle it independently. The structural answer is not to stop caring about quality. It is to raise the standard through coaching and systems rather than through personal intervention. The goal is a team that can hit 80 percent of what you would have done, on their own, then coach them to 82, then 85. Perfection is not the benchmark. Capability without you is. What Fixing Sales Did to Their Delivery Problem For most of Bridge Media's existence, new business came through referrals and local relationships. That felt safe. Working some local events and being known within their market was enough for a while. In practice, it meant every client was different, every project required a different set of skills, and the team was constantly starting from scratch. The founders had to stay deeply involved because the work never became repeatable enough for anyone else to own it. Two years ago, Olivier and his wife made a deliberate shift toward building an actual sales function. The downstream effect was not just more leads. It was better client fit, more predictable project types, and a team that could finally develop real expertise in a consistent area of work. When you build a pipeline, you get the ability to be selective. When you are selective, you take on clients your team can actually serve without the founders embedded in every deliverable. Referral dependency does not just create revenue risk. It creates a structural trap that keeps founders in the operator seat far longer than necessary. The Mindset Shift That Has to Happen Before the Role Can Change Olivier knows he needs to step back, and it is still hard. Not because the systems are not there, but because the identity is hard to separate from the work. When you have spent years building a culture of teamwork and being present for the team, stepping into a more removed role can feel like abandonment, both to the team and to yourself. The reframe that matters here is not about working less. It is about what the business actually needs from you at each stage. You may think that your biggest contribution to the agency is your time, but at the CEO level your job is: Setting the vision Communicating it consistently Coaching the leadership layer Protecting the culture through behavior rather than through presence Steering direction That work is roughly 20 hours a week when done correctly. The challenge is that most founders do not believe that until they have experienced it, and the discomfort of having fewer hours filled pushes them back into the operator role they just worked hard to leave. Recognizing the rubber band effect for what it is, significance-seeking disguised as contribution, is what makes it possible to stop pulling yourself back in. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

What is it really like under Cathy's roof? For the first time ever, Cathy's daughters join her on the podcast for a full episode and nothing is off limits. In this fun, honest, and surprisingly deep conversation, Cathy, Eliza, Gabbie, and Maddie play This or That, share their favorite travel memories, talk about living through the LA fires, and get into what it actually means to manifest. From Lake Como sunshine to a school rejection that led somewhere better, they cover it all. They also dish on their Kardashian obsession, their dream careers, perfect days, and the advice they'd give each other (including what they'd tell Cathy to do differently). In this episode: Be responsible for the energy you bring into the room. Don't stress over things that don't really matter. Other people's choices are their own. God is your CFO. You're always being led to something. Design your life around the people you love most.  • Get your ticket to Cathy Heller Live: Divine Download in LA, August 2-3 cathyheller.com/summit  • Join Cathy's Circle https://cathyheller.com/cathys-circle/  • Listen to Everything is Energy on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/2JjyyM1 or Spotify https://spoti.fi/3bKK13W  • Follow Cathy on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/cathy.heller/]  • Want to work with Cathy?  https://cathyheller.com/work-with-me Timestamps 0:00 - Intro 5:02 - Phones: Good Thing or Bad Thing? An Honest Take From the Kids 7:09 - The Kardashian Obsession (And Running Into Kim in Hidden Hills) 11:05 - Cats, Dogs & the Time They Failed at Having a Puppy (Four Times) 14:10 - How Phones Are Wrecking Attention Spans (Their Words, Not Mom's) 18:07 - Sweet or Salty, Favorite Foods & a Brutally Honest Restaurant Review 22:14 - What Does a Perfect Day Actually Look Like for Each of Them? 27:46 - Who's on the "Good Energy" List (And What They All Have in Common) 33:51 - What Does Mom Actually Do? (They're Not Totally Sure) 34:28 - Manifesting in Real Life: The School That Rejected Her & What Happened Next 39:44 - Living Through the LA Fires: The Night They Had Two Minutes to Leave 46:06 - Advice to Your Younger Self (Including Some Savage Fashion Regrets) 49:02 - What Advice Would You Give Mom If She'd Actually Listen? 52:43 - The Messy, Real, Unfiltered Stuff About Their Household 57:05 - Do You Want to Live Like Me When You Grow Up? 1:05:27 - Dream Careers, Celebrity Crushes & What Each of Them Is Best At

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Are your account managers drowning because you never built the system around them? Are you still the one clients call when something goes sideways, even though you hired someone to handle that? In seven years, today's featured guest and her co-founder built a team of six and developed an account management structure that worked well enough to earn a speaking slot at Elevate. She'll break down the exact touchpoint cadence her agency uses to retain clients and grow accounts, what she looks for when hiring account managers, and what it took to actually get out of the way. She'll also share what makes a co-founder partnership work when so many of them fail. Michelle Keckler is the co-founder of KNC Marketing, a full-service digital marketing agency based in Nashville, Tennessee. She and her co-founder Danielle launched the agency after Danielle was laid off from a company they both worked at. Within two months they had enough clients for Michelle to leave her corporate job. Michelle spoke at Elevate and has been a member of the Agency Mastery Mastermind. Her focus inside the agency is on client relationships, account management structure, and building a team that can own outcomes without founder involvement. In this episode, we'll discuss: How to set your account managers for success What to look for in an account manager Why letting go is not a one-time decision Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Toggl: Most agencies are losing 15–30% of their profit every year: lack of time tracking, messy manual timesheets, scope creep, untracked revisions, and all those "quick" client requests that never get billed. Toggl has created a fast, interactive way to uncover exactly where your margins are leaking. Start your investigation now at toggl.com/smartagency and use the code SMARTAGENCY10 at checkout for a 10% off annual plans. The Account Management System That Actually Retains Clients For Michelle, the first step to setting her account manager for success is to hand off ownership of that account to them right away and make that clear to the client. After that, they rely on a structured cadence built around three consistent touchpoints: weekly status updates so clients always know where things stand, monthly meetings to review campaign metrics and look at the next 30, 60, and 90 days, and quarterly business reviews that step above the day-to-day to assess overall direction and impact. What makes the cadence work is not the frequency. It is what happens inside each touchpoint. Michelle is specific about this: the monthly meeting is more than just a metrics review. It is an opportunity to ask the client what has changed in their business, whether they made a key hire, lost a team member, or landed a new account that shifts priorities. Often agencies get so focused on delivering the work that they stop asking questions that would help them serve the client better. That gap is where accounts quietly go sideways before anyone notices. Who to Hire for Account Management (And What to Actually Look For) Account management is one of the hardest roles to hire for because it requires a combination of skills that rarely come packaged together. Michelle is direct about this: you are looking for someone who can sit in a room with a client, speak confidently about the work, handle a difficult pricing conversation, and bring enough business understanding back to the internal team to actually inform strategy. She calls it a unicorn role, and she means it. What she's learned through experience is that marketing background matters less than business acumen and leadership mindset. Several of their best account managers came from strong business backgrounds with no formal marketing experience. They hired for values alignment and problem-solving ability, then trained the rest. The interview process shifted from culture-fit questions toward situational ones: how would you handle a frustrated client, tell me about a hard conversation you navigated. Knowledge can be taught. The instinct to lead a client relationship under pressure cannot. Getting Out of the Way Is a Decision You Have to Make More Than Once Michelle is honest about the fact that letting go of account management was not a one-time decision. It was a pattern she had to interrupt repeatedly. Early on she stayed involved because she knew her first hire personally. As the team grew, the justification changed but the behavior did not. advice from Darby, Agency Mastery's Agency Scale Specialist, to take the floaties off and let her people swim, stuck with her because it named the real problem: the systems were in place, the people were qualified, and she was still hovering. The practical shift that made the difference was removing a bottleneck in the operations structure. Danielle had been handling project management as an additional layer between account managers and the internal team. Moving project management back to the account management team eliminated a handoff, sped up delivery, and forced the account managers to own the full outcome of each client relationship. That structural change did more than any mindset shift could on its own. The role became clearer, the accountability became cleaner, and the team stepped into it. What Makes a Co-Founder Partnership Actually Work Michelle and Danielle are cousins who have built a seven-year agency together, which puts them in a small category. Michelle is candid about why she believes many partnerships fail and why theirs has not. The foundation is shared values and a shared goal for the business. The operating reality is that they have very different personalities, and that difference is a feature, not a bug. Danielle is the fast implementer. Michelle is the one who wants to think it through. One is the gas, one is the brake, and the business has avoided several train wrecks as a result. What she is clear about is that a partnership is not a shortcut. It requires the same kind of honest communication and tolerance for imperfection that any long-term relationship does. There will be stretches where one partner is carrying more than the other. There will be disagreements about pace, direction, and priorities. What matters is that both people want what is best for the business and the team, and can say the hard thing to each other when it needs to be said. Michelle is not selling the partnership model to everyone. She is saying that if you find someone with complementary strengths and the same core values, do not let the fear of conflict talk you out of it. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

In this Ask Me Anything episode, host Amelia Phillips answers listener questions on the reason you're so darn tired all the time, how to hit your protein target without the calories creeping up, and whether washing down your handful of supplements in one go is really the best move – or will they interfere with each other?About the host: Amelia Phillips is an exercise scientist, nutritionist, and published researcher (BSc, MNut) with a career spanning 26 years in health. She is the co-founder of Vitality360, a functional health platform that helps people gain deep insights into their health and make targeted changes for lasting vitality.A respected media presenter, Amelia has been featured on Channel 9’s hit show Do You Want to Live Forever? and is dedicated to helping people build a life of energy, connection, and purpose at any age or stage of life.Instagram: @_amelia_phillipsHave a question? Email: ap@ameliaphillips.com.auFind out more at: www.ameliaphillips.com.auDiscover Vitality360: https://v360.health CREDITSHost: Amelia Phillips Audio Producer: Darren RothMusic: Matt Nicholich Production Partner: Nova Entertainment Pty Ltd Healthy Her acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, we reflect on the sacred wounds of Jesus, the reality of our own woundedness, and Jesus' invitation to make us well. We talk about how our wounds, so often hidden in shame or self-protection, when transformed, can actually become places of communion and grace. We also share about our personal experiences of facing fear or disappointment and how the slow, often painful, process of healing reminds us that God's ways are not our own. Jesus tenderly meets us in every broken place within our hearts and ardently desires to make all things new.   Heather's One Thing - Worship Session with Kory Miller Sister Miriam's One Thing - Life Transitions Part One and Part Two with Chris Benzinger Michelle's One Thing - The Kentucky Derby   Other Resources Mentioned: Glory: Women's Gathering The Restore the Glory Podcast The Anatomy of a Wound Series Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5   Journal Questions: Where am I self-protecting instead of bringing my wounds before the Lord? Do I think Jesus can make me well? How have my wounds impacted my outlook on life and perspectives on painful situations in my life? When have my own expectations of what Jesus should do gotten in the way of my own healing?   Discussion Questions: Are there areas that you have grown accustomed to your own pain? How have you equated healing with fixing? What has the Holy Spirit taught you about yourself through the healing journey? How has disappointment affected your trust in Jesus and His goodness?   Quotes to Ponder: "Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not, 'How can we hide our wounds?' so we don't have to be embarrassed, but 'How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?' When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers." (Henri Nouwen)    "Our brokenness reveals not a failure but a doorway through which God's healing can enter." (Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love)   Scripture for Lectio: "Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate, there is a pool, called in Hebrew Bethesda, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be made well?"  The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me." Jesus said to him, "Stand up, take your mat and walk." At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk." (John 5:2-9)   Sponsor - Seton Home Study School: Since 1982, families have entrusted their students to Seton Home Study School.  Seton is thoroughly Catholic, academically rigorous, and fully accredited with the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. Seton high school graduates have been admitted, and excelled, at virtually every college and university in the United States, including Ivy League Universities and military academies. A Seton enrollment includes thoroughly Catholic books, detailed lesson plans, grading services, transcripts, and there is no extra charge for telephone counseling.  Parents love Seton's "open and go" approach – everything you need is provided and can be trusted.  You can even customize the program at no extra charge, enrolling a fourth grader in fifth grade reading, for example. For more information, visit their website. Parents of students with special needs can find help to develop a curriculum and workload suited to each individual child. Learn about Seton's special services department here.   In addition to books and lesson plans, high school students enjoy a host of other benefits and services. Click here to learn more. Enrolled teens and Seton alumni can also join Catholic Harbor, a safe, online student-moderated community.  There they can engage in debates, spiritual discussions, and discuss hobbies and other interests.  For more information visit their website here.   Seton hosts a podcast directed at homeschooling moms.  Podcasts hosts, Mary Ellen Barrett and Ginny Seuffert, both with decades of experience, offer practical tips and ideas to make home education accessible to all.     Timestamps: 00:00 Seton Home Study School 01:29 Intro 02:15 Welcome 05:32 Scripture Verse and Quote to Ponder 06:50 "Do You Want to Be Made Well?" 10:22 Jesus is Drawn to Our Wounds 12:30 Exposed Wounds are Places of Grace 15:21 Awareness is Half the Battle 19:09 The Lord Knows what Our Healing Journey Should Look Like 24:09 All We Can Do is Take the Next Small Step 26:20 Suffering in Communion 29:12 Transforming Our Relationship with Our Wounds 32:37 The Parts of Us that don't Trust God 34:46 One Things

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Are you running multiple things at once and wondering why none of them are moving as fast as they should? Are you still the one every project, every client, and every decision routes through, no matter how many people you have on your team? Over nearly three decades, today's featured guest didn't just run an agency. He turned it into an incubator, spinning up multiple SaaS companies, a mobile app, and an accessibility tool, all funded and validated through a model most founders have never tried. In this episode, he'll get into how he built products without outside investors, why the bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle, and what it actually took to step out of the operator seat after 28 years in it. David Carnes is the co-founder of Arcstone, a digital agency based in Minneapolis that has been operating since 1997. Over the course of his career, he has launched multiple companies from inside the agency, including a SaaS platform for associations built as early as 2000, a document management system called Wonderfile that was acquired by Blue Tie in New York, and NC, an accessibility scanning tool built initially for Arcstone's own quality assurance needs. His wife now runs Arcstone as CEO. David currently sits in the CFO seat, operating across all three businesses as an advisor and strategic layer rather than a day-to-day operator. In this episode, we'll discuss: Creating the structure to run several businesses and not be in the middle of everything Why the founder bottleneck is a trap you can learn to avoid Understanding the importance of creating dedicated AI roles Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. Herringbone Digital: If you're thinking about exiting now, planning a few years ahead, or just want to understand your options, you should know about Herringbone Digital. They're not a typical financial buyer. They're operators who actually understand what it takes to build and scale an agency because they've done it themselves. Their approach is simple: invest in great founders, protect what's already working, and help agencies scale faster. Go to https://www.herringbonedigital.com/swenk and start the conversation. Funding Products Without Giving Up Equity One of the most practical lessons owners can take from David is how he funded multiple software products without investors. The model is straightforward: go to existing clients or a relevant group, identify a shared problem, and ask them to collectively fund the build in exchange for lifetime access. For AMO, six or seven associations each kicked in eight thousand dollars. For a later mobile event app, fifteen associations each contributed five thousand. In both cases, David had enough capital to build, immediate users providing real feedback, and zero equity given away. The reason this works is the same reason the Foot in the Door methodology works inside agency sales. A small, committed financial investment creates accountability on both sides. The customers who fund it show up with feedback because they have skin in the game. The builder ships something real instead of overbuilding in isolation. David was explicit that his own tendency to overcomplicate a product shrinks significantly when real users are in the room from day one. Too Many Plates, Not Enough Structure Building multiple companies inside one agency creates a specific kind of chaos. David called it too many plants in one pot. The companies start competing for the same resources, the same attention, and the same management bandwidth. His early answer to this was to stay in the middle of everything, which meant every decision still ran through him. The shift did not come from a framework or a book. It came from maturity and, eventually, necessity. When his wife stepped into the CEO role at Arcstone and dedicated management teams formed at AMO and NC, David moved into the CFO seat and took on what he called a monster back role, someone who can move across the whole field without being anchored to any single function. That is not a role most founders reach quickly, and he is honest about the fact that he still gets pulled back in when a longtime client or friend asks for something. The trap is familiar: you step in, you mean well, and in doing so, you signal to your team that you do not trust them to handle it. Founder Bottleneck Is a Pattern, Not a Personality Flaw David does not pretend he solved the founder bottleneck problem cleanly. In reality, patterns of it showed up repeatedly. You build structure, you step back, something pulls you in, and you disrupt the system you built. David described it as spiral growth rather than linear progress. You see the same lesson again. You handle it a little better. You move on. What makes the pattern more manageable is having a framework that names it. When you can recognize "this is the trap I have fallen into before," you can course-correct faster. That is exactly the work the Founder Evolution Framework is built to do. Operator, Manager, Architect, CEO, Owner: each stage is a distinct role, not just a job title. Revenue does not move you up the ladder. Removing yourself from the critical path does. David is living proof that even experienced operators with 28 years in the seat have to be intentional about each stage of that progression. AI: Surf the Wave or Get Pummeled By It David does not treat AI as a theoretical topic. He attended a ten-thousand-dollar immersive course shortly after Claude introduced persistent context, specifically because he wanted to understand what was actually possible, not just what people were saying about it. His takeaway was concrete enough that he created two dedicated roles inside Arcstone: an AI Architect and an AI Operator. The distinction is worth understanding. The Architect builds the agents and workflows. The Operator runs them, keeps the human in the loop, and catches the errors. Because AI still makes mistakes, and the founder who knows that firsthand is the one who can train a team to work with it well, not just use it. The agencies that will benefit most are not the ones that hand AI to someone and walk away. They are the ones who build internal capability, document their models and prompts as assets, and treat the technology as a force multiplier on a team that already knows what it is doing. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training What if hiring smart people and getting out of your way was not enough to build a self-managing agency? Today's featured guest will talk through the decisions most agency owners get wrong: when to stay involved, when to let go, and how the absence of rigor compounds into structural problems you won't even notice until you're stuck. He'll talk about how bad hiring decisions led him to become the bottleneck, how he's trying to fix that, as well as why your "number" for how much your agency is worth is probably based on nothing, and the one financial habit that gives you genuine optionality. Scott Leff is the founder of Leff, a B2B content marketing agency serving global professional services firms and nonprofits for over 16 years. His background spans business communications working as a managing director for a big brand, as well as a 22-month stint leading communications for Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympic Games. When the bid failed in the first round, he found himself in a period of reinvention. With the gig economy just taking off, he decided it was time to hang up his shingle. He started to take freelance work, which eventually led to hiring and forming his own business. This agency grew steadily, exploded during COVID, and is now navigating the reassessment most established agencies are facing in a shifting market. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why becoming the bottleneck isn't always about control The hiring rigor every owner should have Which metrics are you tracking? Why declining revenue doesn't equal failure Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Toggl: Most agencies are losing 15–30% of their profit every year: lack of time tracking, messy manual timesheets, scope creep, untracked revisions, and all those "quick" client requests that never get billed. Toggl has created a fast, interactive way to uncover exactly where your margins are leaking. Start your investigation now at toggl.com/smartagency and use the code SMARTAGENCY10 at checkout for a 10% off annual plans. Knowing What You Should Never Have Delegated For the first ten-plus years of his agency business, every meaningful decision flowed through Scott or his business partner. That wasn't always a problem, but as the agency grew and decision-making had to push down through a management layer, cracks formed. Not because the team was incapable, but because they were being handed authority without the context, direction, or support to use it well. Hiring is the clearest example Scott points to. He gave department managers the autonomy to bring in their own people, which was a reasonable call on paper. But in a culture-driven organization like an agency, where your people are both your product and 80% of your overhead, that's the one decision you can't outsource and expect to get right. The fix wasn't micromanaging the process. It was figuring out the specific places where the founder's perspective is irreplaceable, and staying in the conversation there, even when it's uncomfortable to be involved. Hiring Rigor Is Not Optional and Most Agencies Are Winging It Scott attended a conference session led by someone who'd overseen hiring at Amazon and other large organizations. The biggest takeaway was a story about Jeff Bezos showing up to a debrief with three to four pages of handwritten notes on candidates, while everyone else showed up with nothing. That level of intentionality is what most agencies are missing entirely. The real problem isn't that agency owners don't care about hiring. It's that they go in underprepared, unclear on exactly what they're looking for, leaning on gut instinct, and writing role descriptions that don't reflect the actual job. To ensure you're getting applications from candidates that truly align with your agency and the required role, every part of the hiring process should be a test. Attention to detail? Bury the real application instructions at the bottom of the job post and see who finds them. Hiring a senior exec? Don't tell them much, give them a week and ask them to come back with a 90-day success plan. If they dive into answers before they ask a single question, that tells you everything. The point isn't the process for its own sake. It's that rigor on the front end reduces the cost of being wrong, and in an agency, being wrong on a hire is expensive for a long time. Watch Who You're Hiring From: Big Agency Talent Doesn't Always Travel Well There's a version of agency hiring that looks like a smart move: pull experienced people from larger, more established shops and let them install what's already working somewhere else. Here's why that doesn't work: You end up with talented people who are skilled at operating inside infrastructure, not building it. When there's no large team to direct, no resource pool to draw from, no SOP baked in for the last decade, they stall. The answer when things aren't cut and dried can be "that's not my job." And then it's nobody's job. Scott saw a version of this play out during the Olympic bid. Big consulting firms had seconded teams into the organization, and the ones who thrived were the ones who could operate in ambiguity. The ones who couldn't were waiting for a structure that was never going to show up. The lesson isn't that experienced people from large agencies are bad hires. It's that the ability to figure things out without a system to lean on is the filter. And you have to test for it explicitly, because someone's resume will not tell you whether they have it. Declining Revenue Doesn't Equal Failure, but You Have to Know What You're Actually Measuring Your revenue may seem like the only metric that felt like it matters when it's going up every year. However, a modest drop of five or ten percent, can be a big psychological blow even though profit improves and client impact is strong. That's a vanity metric doing its job: making growth feel like identity. Scott hit a similar inflection point when a former client asked him a simple question, why are you growing? Scott didn't have a clean answer. He'd been operating on the assumption that growth was inherently the goal, not a means to something else. The conversation points to a structural reality: if revenue is the only number you track, you'll optimize for it even when it costs you margin, leverage, and time. The healthier question is whether the agency is building toward the outcome you actually want, more optionality, a sellable asset, or just more control over your calendar. Revenue is a lagging indicator of that. Not the scoreboard. The Decision to Sell Your Agency Has Nothing to Do With Your Number Most agency owners carry a number in their head of what they want to walk away with when they sell. The problem is that the number is usually arbitrary, the market timing is unpredictable, and nobody warned them about the identity crisis that hits the week after closing. The right time to sell isn't a target revenue year or a specific EBITDA multiple. It's when you know exactly what you're walking toward and when the thought of running the agency has stopped feeling like a challenge and started feeling like a weight you've been carrying for six months straight. On the valuation side, Scott's question about what agency owners get wrong surfaced a hard truth: if your EBITDA is under a million dollars, your multiple takes a significant hit, and the buyer math looks very different than what you've been calculating off top-line revenue. Build the foundation like you intend to sell it. Get rid of what you hate. Make it structurally independent. Then you have real options,  whether or not you ever actually sell. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

In this episode of Healthy Her, host Amelia Phillips gets to the guts of your digestive issues with leading Australian gut health expert, microbiome doctor and gastroenterologist, Dr Paul Froomes.From bloating to constipation, gas, reflux and more, Dr Paul explains why gut symptoms often emerge or intensify in midlife women, and how you can identify the root causes of your discomfort.He answers questions about diet, microbiome mapping, testing and the link between gut health and mood, and outlines the steps to restore balance – when nothing else has worked. About the guest: Dr Paul Froomes is a Melbourne-based gastroenterologist with over 30 years of experience helping patients with complex gastrointestinal disorders. Trained at Monash University and the Royal Australian College of Physicians, he has gone on to complete advanced training in endoscopy and oesophageal physiology, as well as a master’s degree in liver disease at the University of Melbourne. Beyond his hospital and clinic work, Dr Froomes has dedicated his career to finding the root causes of gut issues like IBS, reflux, and inflammatory bowel disease – publishing research, training doctors, and now building innovative treatment programs that are changing lives. Dr Froomes is the co-founder of The Microbiome Clinic™, a new age medical practice built to make his decades of learnings about the microbiome accessible to more patients and practitioners. After seeing countless people struggle with conditions that didn’t improve under standard care, he recognised the need for a model that treats the root cause – imbalances in the microbiome – rather than just the symptoms.Follow Dr Paul on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drpaulfroomes/ The Microbiome Clinic: https://themicrobiomeclinic.com.au/ About the host: Amelia Phillips is an exercise scientist, nutritionist, and published researcher (BSc, MNut) with a career spanning 26 years in health. A respected media presenter, Amelia has been featured on Channel 9’s hit show Do You Want to Live Forever? and is dedicated to helping people build a life of energy, connection, and purpose at any age or stage of life.Instagram: @_amelia_phillipsHave a question? Email: ap@ameliaphillips.com.auFind out more at: www.ameliaphillips.com.au CREDITSHost: Amelia Phillips Guest: Dr Paul Froomes Audio Producer: Darren RothMusic: Matt Nicholich Production Partner: Nova Entertainment Pty Ltd Healthy Her acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training What separates the agencies growing through the AI wave from the ones quietly shrinking? Do you think you are on the right side of that line? Today's featured guest claims his agency has grown faster than ever in these recent years of AI ubiquity. He'll break down how 24 years of process obsession set him up to capitalize on AI before his competitors even stopped panicking. We get into the real mechanics of building SOPs that survive scale, why founders keep sabotaging their own teams (and how to stop), and how personal branding turned his sales calls into qualification calls. If you're running a $1M+ agency and still feel like the bottleneck, this one is going to sting a little, in the right way. Navneet Kaushal is the founder and CEO of Page Traffic, a white label SEO agency he's been building since 2002. He's since navigated every major algorithm shift, scaled through multiple hiring cycles, and now uses AI to encode decades of institutional knowledge directly into his systems. He's also built a recognizable personal brand through conference speaking worldwide and a growing YouTube channel, a move he credits as one of the top three drivers of his agency's recent growth. In this episode, we'll discuss: Building systems early on When founders undermine their teams Life after leaving the operator role: focusing on personal brand Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. Herringbone Digital: If you're thinking about exiting now, planning a few years ahead, or just want to understand your options, you should know about Herringbone Digital. They're not a typical financial buyer. They're operators who actually understand what it takes to build and scale an agency because they've done it themselves. Their approach is simple: invest in great founders, protect what's already working, and help agencies scale faster. Go to https://www.herringbonedigital.com/swenk and start the conversation. Building Systems That Outlast the Founder Navneet has been doing SEO since before Google Penguin existed, back when keyword stuffing and reciprocal link building were legitimate strategies. Back then, barely anyone knew what SEO was and training people took a long time, so Navneet started growing his team by investing in three-day training sessions and hiring only those who would, by the end, understand basic SEO concepts. This initial investment in training also led him to focus on building SOPs since 2002, with his first being a printed sheet for reciprocal link building. That early process obsession became the foundation everything else was built on. More recently, he develops new SOPs by explaining the process to someone sitting next to him while simultaneously recording a Loom video. That method forces clarity. If he can't explain it simply enough for someone else to follow in real time, the SOP isn't ready. His onboarding process reflects the same rigor as Navneet's agency has grown to a 120+ person team and is regarded as one of the largest dedicated SEO agencies in India. Every new hire goes through a minimum six-to-eight-week onboarding, and every training module ends with a 100/100 quiz requirement. No partial credit or exceptions. That standard has kept quality consistent as the team scaled. The system doesn't bend to accommodate shortcuts. The hire rises to meet the standard, or they don't make it through onboarding. The Rubber Band Effect: When Founders Undermine Their Own Teams Even after he had the systems, the team, and the leadership layer in place, Navneet still felt the pull to go back and do the work himself. Not because the team wasn't capable but because SEO has always been his hobby. He genuinely enjoys it. So he'd chime in, jump back into SOPs, insert himself where he no longer needed to be. That's the rubber band effect. Your identity is still attached to the version of you that built the thing. Even when your role has shifted to CEO, part of you still wants to be the architect. The problem isn't the instinct, it's the impact. When a founder steps back into a team member's lane, it creates confusion about ownership, slows the team down, and signals that their work isn't trusted. Navneet's saving grace is that his longest-tenured employees have been with him for 17 to 20 years. They know his temperament and don't rattle. But for any founder with a younger team, this behavior hits harder. The goal isn't to never feel the pull, but to recognize it before you act on it. How AI Became a Force Multiplier, Not a Threat When most agencies were panicking about AI killing SEO, Page Traffic was using it to scale five times faster than before. The reason comes down to what Navneet had already built: two decades of documented processes that could now be packaged thanks to AI. He was able to transfer his entire knowledge base into software, so the institutional knowledge that used to live in his head (and required him to train people personally) is now embedded in the tools his team uses every day. New hires don't need Navneet in the room. They follow the process, and the process has his judgment baked in. This is the distinction matters because agencies panicking about AI are usually the ones that never systematized their knowledge in the first place. They're realizing that if AI can do what they do, they never had a real moat, just execution. Navneet had the moat. AI just made it easier to deploy. He's also building AI agents and automation services for clients, which created an entirely new revenue line. All because his agency already had the structure to absorb AI and deploy it fast. Personal Branding as a Pre-Sales Mechanism Navneet made a deliberate decision a few years ago to build his personal brand in parallel with his agency's brand. He started speaking at conferences around the world, doubled down on YouTube, and made sure that when people in his market searched for SEO expertise, they found both his company and his name. The result: he's now one of the only SEO leaders in India known both by agency name and by personal name. The business impact is direct. When a prospect reaches out to Page Traffic having already watched Navneet's content, heard him speak, or followed him online, they're not a cold lead, they're pre-sold. The qualification call replaces the sales call. You're not convincing them; you're deciding if they're a fit. That shift changes the entire dynamic of how deals get closed and what kind of clients come through the door. Founders who skip personal branding because it feels uncomfortable or "not their thing" are leaving their best pipeline tool on the table. People buy from people they already trust. The question is whether you're showing up in the places where that trust gets built. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Do You Want to Die Not Knowing? One Artist's Leap Into Art as Service and HealingHave you ever had someone ask you a question that completely changed the direction of your life? In this episode, I talk with commission artist Shawn B. Standley, whose wife asked him exactly that kind of question — and it launched him into a new chapter as a full-time artist dedicated to healing and community service.Shawn's journey is anything but a straight line — from aerospace engineering student to carpenter, Navy veteran, restaurant manager, and Alaskan wilderness dweller — before finally committing to his true calling: creating deeply personal commission art that captures people's stories, memories, and life transitions.Now based in Conway, Arkansas, Shawn is partnering with wellness organizations, end-of-life doulas, and medical institutions to bring the healing power of art to people navigating major life changes. He also oversees the urban farming and community garden program at the Faulkner County Library — proof that art and service can take many forms.In this episode we cover:(1:42) How Shawn's father discouraged him from pursuing art as a career — and how he found his way back(11:51) Dropping out of aerospace engineering school and the winding road that followed(13:17) Moving to Whidbey Island and finding his first real artistic community and mentor(16:03) Going to art school at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle — and why he left(18:11) How Alaska got under his skin and changed everything(22:07) The question his wife Shell asked that became the turning point of his artistic life(23:54) Discovering the profound emotional power of commission art and creating work that tells someone's personal story(24:40) Why Conway, Arkansas — and what surprised him about building an art practice there(28:45) Finding his why through the Artist Inc. fellowship and the Artists in Business mentorship program(32:15) Partnering with end-of-life doulas, the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences wellness program, and the Arkansas Wellness Network(37:55) His vision for combining art and healing as a full-time practiceConnect with Shawn: Website: shawnbstudios.com Social media: @shawnbstudiosConnect with me: arthealsallwoundspodcast.com | SubstackMusic by Ketsa and Lobo LocoSupport the show

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training How can you build an agency that outlasts your involvement in it? And what happens to your identity when you finally make that shift? Over the course of 22 years, today's featured guest grew a one-person freelance operation into a full-service digital agency doing eight figures and then sold it. In this conversation, he'll unpack the real lessons from that journey: the painful transitions between operator, manager, and architect, the hiring decision that finally unlocked his ability to step back from the work he loved, and why the question isn't just who you need on your team — it's who you need to become. Dave Benton is the founder and former CEO of Metajive, a full-service digital agency specializing in complex digital products and platforms. With over two decades of experience, Dave built his agency from freelance beginnings into an eight-figure business, eventually leading to a successful exit. Today, Dave is focused on innovation, particularly in AI, and how agencies must evolve structurally to remain competitive in a rapidly shifting landscape. In this episode, we'll discuss: Operator to owner evolution Recurring revenue as a growth lever AI as an operational requirement, not a competitive advantage Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Toggl: Most agencies are losing 15–30% of their profit every year: lack of time tracking, messy manual timesheets, scope creep, untracked revisions, and all those "quick" client requests that never get billed. Toggl has created a fast, interactive way to uncover exactly where your margins are leaking. Start your investigation now at toggl.com/smartagency and use the code SMARTAGENCY10 at checkout for a 10% off annual plans. When Freelancing Becomes a Business Building an agency wasn't a single decision for Dave. It was an evolution that happened only after making several key decisions. It took him nearly eight years before the business truly felt like a company, not just a collection of projects and contractors. This delay wasn't due to lack of opportunity, but rather the absence of structural clarity. Like many founders, he initially relied on freelancers and partnerships to extend capacity. It wasn't until he introduced stability, through a small team and operational support, that the business began to compound. His experience reinforces a critical principle: agencies don't become scalable when revenue increases, but when structure stabilizes. The key mistake many founders make at this stage is avoiding the discomfort of responsibility. Hiring a team introduces fixed obligations in a variable revenue model, which forces a shift in thinking. The Founder Evolution Problem (Operator → Architect) Dave candidly describes this transition as "slow and painful," largely because he attempted to skip stages, trying to build a leadership team before the business could support it. This misalignment is common. Founders hear advice like "hire great people" or "get the right people on the bus," but apply it prematurely. Without the revenue, clarity, or systems to support those hires, it leads to inefficiency and frustration. The business must earn the right to complexity. Dave also dealt with the challenge of redefining his identity within the agency. He deeply identified as a creative director, which made delegation difficult because of his personal attachment to the work. This is the hidden bottleneck in most agencies: the founder's self-concept. The breakthrough came when he hired an exceptional executive creative director, someone good enough to replace him at a level he respected. This evolution required letting go of control, redefining his role, and shifting focus from output to system design. That transition, from doing the work to building the machine, is where real scale begins. Recurring Revenue and Stability as a Growth Multiplier Another critical unlock Dave shares is the role of recurring revenue in accelerating growth. His agency's trajectory changed significantly when they secured a long-term relationship with a major enterprise client, embedding a dedicated team within that organization. This shift introduced predictability, which is often underestimated in agency growth. Project-based revenue creates constant volatility, forcing founders to stay involved in sales and delivery. Recurring revenue, on the other hand, creates operational breathing room, allowing leadership to focus on systems, talent, and long-term strategy. Stability reduces decision fatigue, smooths cash flow, and enables more strategic hiring. Without it, agencies remain reactive. With it, they can become intentional. AI Is the New Baseline Both Jason and Dave challenge the common narrative that AI is a competitive edge. Instead, they position it as a requirement, similar to the shift from traditional to digital agencies years ago. Dave shares several striking data points: a growing percentage of B2B buying journeys now begin with AI-driven platforms, and a majority of deals are effectively decided before human interaction even begins. This changes the game entirely. If your agency isn't visible or credible within these AI ecosystems, you're excluded before the sales process starts. Internally, AI adoption requires structural integration and must go beyond tools. Dave's agency is experimenting with agents across functions, from development to QA to leadership coaching. The goal isn't efficiency alone, but capability expansion: turning team members into orchestrators rather than executors. However, this transition introduces a leadership challenge. Founders must balance urgency with stability, pushing teams to adopt AI without creating fear around job security. The agencies that succeed will be those that reframe AI as an amplifier of talent, not a replacement for it. Building an AI-Enabled Organization (Not Just Using AI) Many founders are using AI to enhance their own performance, but failing to distribute that capability across the organization. This creates a bottleneck, where the founder becomes even more central, not less. Dave is actively working to avoid this by equipping every department with tailored AI tools and training. Developers, designers, and producers each have different use cases, and the goal is to elevate the entire system, not just individual output. This aligns with a broader shift in agency structure: from teams of executors to teams of orchestrators. The future agency isn't defined by how many people it employs, but by how effectively those people leverage systems and automation to produce outcomes. The long-term implication is that agencies that fail to operationalize AI will face margin compression and reduced competitiveness. Those that integrate it deeply will unlock new levels of scale without proportional increases in headcount. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

In this Mini Motivation episode, host Amelia Phillips welcomes Layne Beachley back to talk about challenging childhoods – and how they shape you. Adopted as a baby, and very sadly losing her adoptive mother to a brain haemorrhage at age seven, Layne has overcome significant challenges to achieve her dreams and live her purpose, and she believes you can too. Whether you have your own scars or are the mother of a child going through a tough time, we want this discussion to be a message of hope. About the guest: A former seven-time world surfing champion, Layne Beachley is a sought-after speaker, fearless advocate for mental wellbeing, gender equality and environmental action, and a proud ambassador for organisations including Black Dog Institute, Gotcha4Life, and WWF Australia. As the founder of Awake Academy, she is on a mission to help a million people thrive and live happier, more purposeful lives through online programs, workshops and her new book co-written with Tess Brouwer, Awake Academy – Know Yourself, Grow Yourself.Learn about Awake Academy: https://www.awakeacademy.com.au/Join the Awake Collective: https://www.awakeacademy.com.au/awake-collective-salesFollow Layne and Awake Academy on InstagramPurchase the paperback: https://www.booktopia.com.au/awake-academy-tess-brouwer/book/9781761345869.htmlPurchase the audiobook: https://www.audible.com.au/pd/Awake-Academy-Audiobook/B0DJSL2XY5 About the host: Amelia Phillips is an exercise scientist, nutritionist, and published researcher (BSc, MNut) with a career spanning 26 years in health. A respected media presenter, Amelia has been featured on Channel 9’s hit show Do You Want to Live Forever? and is dedicated to helping people build a life of energy, connection, and purpose at any age or stage of life.Instagram: @_amelia_phillipsHave a question? Email: ap@ameliaphillips.com.auFind out more at: www.ameliaphillips.com.au CREDITSHost: Amelia Phillips Guest: Layne Beachley Audio Producer: Darren RothMusic: Matt Nicholich Production Partner: Nova Entertainment Pty Ltd Healthy Her acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

High-powered law offices and old-timey America.Stories about Sumo as a time-travelling immortal. The voice of Satan for the show.A political solution to the world's problem won't work. Protesting is peasant-coded.Silent film stars, fat people then vs fat people now, crazy names in the past.The SPLC situation.Pro-wresting is real and the world is fake.Sumo has boots in many puddles.Citizenship.Sumo's milking it so hard.People don't like being poked in the axioms.What if there's nothing to figure out?Sumo's theory that Trump will be literally or metaphorically assassinated by someone in his inner circle. The universe runs on drama.What if the real red pill is that there is no red pill, the search for authenticity.If you're going to live in a world of fake identities why not make up your own.Pursuing your true self, getting out of the jar.Pluribus TV show.Professional wrestling is so fake it's real. It also predicts U.S. election results.Drama for drama's sake.We're all in this together.LinksHistory as: Do You Want to Live in a Jar?Why Wrestlemania Will Determine the Next ElectionSupport the showMore Linkswww.MAPSOC.orgFollow Sumo on TwitterAlternate Current RadioMAPSOC back on YouTube Again!Support the Show!Become a True FanBecome a Micronation CitizenSubscribe to the Podcast on GumroadSubscribe to the Podcast on PatreonSubscribe to the Podcast on BuzzsproutSubscribe to the Podcast on SubstackBuy Us a Tibetan Herbal TeaSumo's SubstacksHoly is He Who WrestlesModern Pulp

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training What if scaling your agency didn't mean hiring more people or building a bigger team? What if the path to more freedom was actually designing a business that needs less, not more? In this episode, today's guest challenges the default assumption that growth requires headcount. She breaks down how she's built a highly specialized, one-person agency and why, when positioned correctly, that model can outperform much larger teams. But this conversation goes deeper than staying small. It's about intentional design. We unpack how niching down becomes a forcing function for simplicity, the hidden cost of staying stuck in the operator role, and why your evolution as a founder, not your team size, is what ultimately determines whether your agency creates freedom or quietly becomes a trap. Madison Carr is the founder of Creative Chameleon, a one-person branding agency focused exclusively on private schools. After spending years grinding as a generalist designer, taking anything and everything, she eventually niched into the education sector and built a reputation as a specialist. Today, she operates as both strategist and executor, working directly with school leadership teams on brand positioning, identity, and rollout, without a traditional agency structure behind her. In this episode, we'll discuss: Finding a promising niche The ups and downs of running a one-person agency Why founder identity is the real constraint Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. Herringbone Digital: If you're thinking about exiting now, planning a few years ahead, or just want to understand your options, you should know about Herringbone Digital. They're not a typical financial buyer. They're operators who actually understand what it takes to build and scale an agency because they've done it themselves. Their approach is simple: invest in great founders, protect what's already working, and help agencies scale faster. Go to https://www.herringbonedigital.com/swenk and start the conversation. Niching Isn't About Marketing After a short-lived stint as an in-house designer, Madison knew her next step was to become a freelancer. She went straight to Craigslist, got some opportunities, and spent the next five years taking as much work as she could, without giving much thought to specialization. That phase is necessary. But it comes with a cost: inconsistent revenue, constant prospecting, and zero predictability. When you're taking any project that shows up, you're not building a business; you're renting income. As the industry continued to change, Madison recognized having the necessary business and marketing skills would be the only way to stay ahead. And once she did start to learn, all the advice seemed to point toward niching down. The problem was that no niche seemed promising enough to start saying no to other work. That is, until she landed a school client and leaned into it. Not because of strategy, but because the timing was right. Most niches are found, not planned.. Once she committed to that niche, everything changed. Sales got easier. Positioning got clearer. And most importantly, the business stopped relying on hustle. Instead of chasing work, she started operating inside an ecosystem where she understood the budget cycles, buying seasons, and decision-makers. The One-Person Agency: Freedom or Bottleneck? Madison made a deliberate decision to stay small. Not because she couldn't grow, but because she values being in the creative process. She doesn't want to become a full-time manager. She wants to build, not just oversee. For her, staying small meant she could keep doing what she truly loves, instead of either climbing a corporate ladder or running a bigger agency where she'd pass the creative work to junior designers. That's a valid choice. But it comes with tradeoffs. The upside is clear: direct client relationships, no overhead, higher margins on certain projects, and strong positioning as a specialist. For her clients, schools, working directly with the expert is a major selling point. The downside is just as real. Capacity is limited. Pressure is high. And certain opportunities, large, multi-disciplinary projects, are simply out of reach. The Real Impact of Niching: Operational Simplicity For Madison, one of the most underrated benefits of niching down has been that it greatly reduces operational complexity. Before, every project was different. Every client required a new sales process, new education, new expectations. That creates friction everywhere: sales, delivery, pricing. After niching, patterns emerged. She now understands: When schools buy How they make decisions What they actually value That eliminates a huge amount of wasted energy. Instead of reinventing the wheel every time, she's operating within a known system. And that stability reduces the emotional volatility most agency owners deal with, the feast-or-famine cycle. Founder Identity Is the Real Constraint It's important to distinguish whether the business is designed intentionally or just a reflection of the founder's current identity. Madison enjoys the pressure. She thrives in the tension. Right now, the business fits her. But that won't always be true. Every agency hits a ceiling when the founder stops evolving. If your role doesn't change, your business can't scale beyond you. It will either stall or start breaking under the weight of your involvement. This is the core idea: Your agency doesn't outgrow you. It gets limited by you. Whether you stay solo or build a team, the question isn't "what's the best model?" It's: Who do you need to become for the next stage of the business? AI Is Not the Threat, But Your Positioning Is Madison's approach to AI is: understand it, but don't blindly adopt it. Some clients want it. Some don't. Some see it as efficiency. Others see it as risk. As a tool, you can either use it to enhance your work or to undermine your value. This is something Madison has thought about as she prepared a talk for college students who will, at some point, become creatives entering the industry. How could she help them build skills that AI can't replace? Her advice was to use their brains and critical thinking, but not ignore AI and integrate it into their workflow. In the end, her clients aren't hiring her to generate assets faster. They're hiring her for judgment, strategy, and industry-specific expertise. That's the protection. If your value is tied to execution, AI will pressure your margins. If your value is tied to thinking, positioning, and decision-making, AI becomes leverage. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Does growth break agencies or does it expose underlying issues? It happens more often that founders expect. Even with momentum, scrappy decisions, loose roles, and unspoken agreements eventually become the very thing that holds the business back. And by the time it's visible, it's no longer a small fix. It's structural. Today's featured guest pulls back the curtain on that transition. He dives into the messy reality of starting an agency, navigating partner exits, building leadership layers, and the constant internal battle founders face when trying to let go. This isn't about tactics, it's about identity, structure, and the discipline required to stop being the bottleneck. Matt Nelson is the owner of First Tracks Marketing, an agency specializing in e-commerce, web development, and digital marketing programs. Unlike many agencies that niche down aggressively, Matt has built his firm around a repeatable process that adapts across industries. Over the years, he transitioned from being an employee to the sole owner, buying out partners, rebuilding the company's structure, and installing a leadership team that allows him to step back from day-to-day operations. In this episode, we'll discuss: How he learned to create a proper framework for a partner exit The lack of vision in his agency's early days The most significant shift: A leadership layer Two CEO traps that mess with the agency's growth Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Toggl: Most agencies are losing 15–30% of their profit every year: lack of time tracking, messy manual timesheets, scope creep, untracked revisions, and all those "quick" client requests that never get billed. Toggl has created a fast, interactive way to uncover exactly where your margins are leaking. Start your investigation now at toggl.com/smartagency and use the code SMARTAGENCY10 at checkout for a 10% off annual plans. A Reactive Start That Created Complexity Down the Line Matt didn't start his agency with a grand strategy. Like many founders, it began out of frustration, leaving a poorly run agency and deciding to "figure it out" on his own. In his case, he worked at an agency that resisted change. In 2008, they still regarded digital work as a fad they would outlast. This frustrated Matt, who sensed this technology was the future of agencies. He wasn't the only one who felt this way, so he joined a couple of co-workers who decided to leave, rented an office across the street, and started their own business. This group had the vision but lacked structure, and this was evident early on. There were no operating agreements, unclear roles, and partners bringing in uneven value. At the time, it worked because momentum masked the problems. But as the business grew, those gaps became liabilities. This is where most founders get caught. They assume early success equals a solid foundation. In reality, early-stage growth often hides structural weaknesses, until scale forces those issues to the surface. If you don't build structure early, you'll pay for it later, either in painful partner exits, stalled growth, or both. Partner Misalignment Is a Structural Risk, Not a Personal Issue As the current sole owner, Matt has had to navigate multiple partner exits in the years since joining the business as an employee. These mostly happened not because of conflict, but because of misalignment. Different timelines. Different expectations. Different levels of contribution. The first exit was messy because there was no framework. There was no agreement or predefined process. Just emotion and negotiation. The second exit was different. By then, they had implemented an operating agreement, defined terms, and created a clear path for transition. That structure turned what could have been chaos into a controlled process. Most founders avoid these conversations early because things feel "fine." But without clear agreements, you're building risk into the business from day one. Why Lack of Vision Breaks Agencies Before Matt became the sole owner, the agency lacked a clear direction. They were doing good work and clients were happy. But there was no defined trajectory. That's a dangerous place to be. When there's no vision, the business defaults to activity. Projects get done. Revenue comes in. But nothing compounds. Matt's turning point came when he pushed for a strategic shift, relocating the agency to access better talent and reduce costs. He was thinking beyond execution and into positioning, hiring, and scalability. This is where founders start to separate. Operators focus on output. Leaders focus on direction. You Don't Scale Until You Build Leaders Under You The biggest shift in Matt's agency came when he installed a leadership layer: Creative Director Director of Development Director of Marketing Each owns a function, manages their own team, and is accountable for outcomes. It's a shift many founders resist. They hire doers, but not leaders, and then wonder why everything still runs through them. But real scale happens when decisions are pushed down, not escalated up. That's the difference between having a team and having a business that runs. Letting Go Isn't a Skill, It's a Discipline Even with structure in place, Matt still feels the pull to jump back in. Checking tickets. Fixing issues. Responding to clients. That instinct doesn't go away. What changes is how you manage it. Instead of stepping in directly, he routes issues through his leadership team and tries to reinforce accountability. It's still difficult for him and it's a point where most founders regress. They install systems, but break them under pressure. Choosing not to step in, even when you could, is about restraint. Because every time you do, you train the business to depend on you again. The CEO Trap… Boredom or Interference? Once you reach the CEO level, there are two ways you can get in the way of your agency's success: You jump back in to feel needed. You disengage because you feel irrelevant. Both break the business. Matt's solution has been creating structured involvement, quarterly planning, defining "rocks," and aligning the leadership team around long-term direction. This keeps him engaged at the right level, without collapsing back into execution. The goal isn't to remove yourself completely. It's to operate at the level the business actually needs. Incentives Drive Behavior, Not Motivation Matt is very aware that the agency's success lies with the team and their involvement and motivation. That's why he implemented a profit-sharing model. Not as a perk, but as alignment. When the team benefits directly from performance, they think differently. They take ownership. They care about outcomes, not just tasks. Most agencies struggle with engagement because there's no connection between effort and reward. With this model, he's managed to flip that. If the business wins, the team wins first. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

In this Mini Motivation episode, host Amelia Phillips is back with financial expert Mel Browne to discuss the ins and outs of starting your own business. Should you take the plunge and leave a secure job (especially in this economy!)? And what are the things you need to put in place before you send that resignation letter? Mel shares her priceless wisdom in this must-listen chat. About the guest:Melissa Brown is the founder of Mel Browne Money, where she’s on a mission to simplify finance and help women feel confident, informed and in control of their financial future. With over two decades of experience in financial services, she has worked across accountancy, financial advice, strategy and education. She’s the author of five books, including recently published Dare to Be Wealthy, a book that empowers women to grow wealth in a way that aligns with their life and values. Follow Mel on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melbrowne.money/Resources: https://www.melissabrowne.com.au/healthyher FREE 25 ways to find $10k download: https://www.melissabrowne.com.au/find$10kin12months About the host: Amelia Phillips is an exercise scientist, nutritionist, and published researcher (BSc, MNut) with a career spanning 26 years in health. A respected media presenter, Amelia has been featured on Channel 9’s hit show Do You Want to Live Forever? and is dedicated to helping people build a life of energy, connection, and purpose at any age or stage of life.Instagram: @_amelia_phillipsHave a question? Email: ap@ameliaphillips.com.auFind out more at: www.ameliaphillips.com.au CREDITSHost: Amelia Phillips Guest: Mel Browne Audio Producer: Darren RothMusic: Matt Nicholich Production Partner: Nova Entertainment Pty Ltd Healthy Her acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training What if growth isn't actually about more clients, more hires, or even more revenue? What if the very thing driving your success right now is also the reason you'll eventually stall? Agency owners tend to chase the usual milestones: bigger deals, a growing team, rising top-line numbers. And for a while, that works. But there's a breaking point most founders don't see coming when the business can't grow any further because everything still runs through them. Today's featured guest will unpack what actually happens as you move from freelancer to agency, and then hit the ceiling most founders never see coming. We dig into why layering account management changes everything, how referral-driven growth can both sustain and trap you, and the real reason many founders resist scaling past a certain size. This is a conversation about control, identity, and the uncomfortable truth: the thing that got you here is exactly what's holding you back. Brandon Harrar is the founder and creative director of HRVST, a boutique agency he started 14 years ago from a $500 project he had no formal experience delivering. Since then, he's built a steady, referral-driven agency focused on design and development, intentionally keeping the team lean (around 12–15 people). His journey is a case study in sustainable growth without outbound sales, and the tradeoffs that come with it. Brandon brings a grounded, operator-level perspective on hiring, leadership, pricing models, and why not every agency should scale the same way. In this episode, we'll discuss: Making an early role shift Learning to set the right expectations for clients Managing vs leading Why referral growth is structurally fragile Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. Herringbone Digital: If you're thinking about exiting now, planning a few years ahead, or just want to understand your options, you should know about Herringbone Digital. They're not a typical financial buyer. They're operators who actually understand what it takes to build and scale an agency because they've done it themselves. Their approach is simple: invest in great founders, protect what's already working, and help agencies scale faster. Go to https://www.herringbonedigital.com/swenkand start the conversation. The First Real Shift: From Freelancer to Agency The first constraint most founders hit while growing their agencies is capability, and for Brandon, it happened almost immediately. He realized he wasn't good enough at design to deliver the level of work required. That forced the first identity shift: from doing the work to building a team that could. This is where most freelancers accidentally become agency owners. Not because they planned it, but because the work demands it. And once you make that shift, everything changes. You're no longer optimizing for output, you're optimizing for people. The second shift came from something most founders don't expect: emotional friction with clients. Brandon realized he didn't want to be the one receiving raw feedback, which often implied having to go along with changes he didn't necessarily feel were correct. So he inserted account management as a buffer. That's a structural decision most founders delay too long. Without that layer, you stay emotionally entangled in delivery. With it, you start building a system. Learning to Set the Right Expectations Another lesson Brandon learned fast was that one of the fastest ways to destroy a project is misaligned expectations. Presenting work as "the best we've ever done" may feel like confidence. In reality, it sets an impossible bar. When the client doesn't love it, the gap between expectation and reality becomes unfixable. That's the mistake most founders make early on. They try to sell certainty instead of framing a process. Because the truth is clients don't actually know what they want. They think they do. But what they're really buying is your ability to interpret, challenge, and guide. If you position your work as "perfect," you remove space for that collaboration. As Jason explains, the real shift happens before the project even starts. Reframe the sales conversation to: "We're going to use your data, apply our expertise, and challenge you." That single expectation changes the entire dynamic. Now the client understands that this isn't order-taking. This is a partnership. And more importantly, it gives you permission to push back when needed. Managing vs. Leading. Where Most Founders Get Stuck There's a subtle but critical difference between managing tasks and leading outcomes. Early on, most founders default to control: "Do it this way." "Follow this process." But Brandon describes a shift that changes everything: Giving direction, not instructions. Instead of prescribing how work gets done, he provides context, lets the team execute their way, and asks that they document their process. That does two things: It builds ownership It evolves the system organically This is how you move from being the bottleneck to building a machine. It won't be easy. Mistakes will be made and founders many times fall into the trap of stepping in too early with the solution. You see the mistake coming. You know how to fix it in 10 seconds. So you jump in. But that 10-second save creates long-term dependency. The team learns: "Wait for the founder." The real discipline is letting small mistakes happen so the team builds confidence. You're not preventing failure, you're designing learning cycles. Why Referral Growth is Sustainable, But Structurally Fragile Brandon's agency has grown for 14 years without outbound sales. That's rare, and on the surface, ideal. In his case, the engine has been consistently delivering work that leaves clients satisfied enough to refer. This creates a steady flow of opportunities without the pressure of building a sales machine. But there's a hidden constraint: lack of predictability. Every January feels like starting over. That's the tradeoff with referral-based growth. It's stable over time, but volatile in the short term. You don't control demand, you inherit it. The other key lever is clarity in positioning. Brandon's agency doesn't do everything. They focus on design and development. That specificity makes referrals easier: "You need X? Talk to Brandon." Without that clarity, referrals become vague, and vague referrals don't convert. Why Founders Resist Scaling Brandon openly says he doesn't want a 50–100 person agency. That's not what success and growth look like for him. In fact, he sees having a bigger team as adding risk, complexity, and responsibility. But is that necessarily the case? That fear usually comes from operating at the wrong role. At 15 people, if everything still comes to you, scaling feels impossible. You imagine 100 people all needing your input. That's overwhelming. But that's not what scaling actually looks like. At scale, problems don't come to you, they get solved without you. Leadership layers handle execution so you can focus on direction. If you're still the manager at 15 people, 50 feels terrifying. If you become the architect, 50 becomes easier than 15. The Real Conversation Isn't Hourly vs. Value Brandon believes the debate between hourly and value-based pricing misses the point. It's up to every agency owner to decide which works best for their business. For his part, he's currently running a hybrid model, since there are advantages to both. When done right, the hourly pricing agency model can work very well. And, with the right client base and infrastructure, so can the value-based model. However, both Jason and Brandon agree on one non-negotiable: You must track time. Without data, you can't understand efficiency, capacity, or profitability. From there, the model depends on context: Unknown scope → hourly Repeatable work → fixed or value-based How you price determines how clients see you. Hourly pricing positions you as a task executor. Value-based pricing positions you as a problem solver. And that distinction shapes everything, from client expectations to margins. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Are you struggling to scale your agency or are you unknowingly the thing holding it back? At what point does your growth stop being a systems problem and start becoming a leadership one? Today's guest shares what it to break through those ceilings. After scaling quickly off the back of a strong network, he made the critical decision to systemize everything before growth turned him into the bottleneck. By leveraging documentation in a smart, intentional way, he built a foundation that allowed the agency to grow without everything running through him. In this conversation, he unpacks the realities of working with enterprise clients, the often uncomfortable shift from operator to CEO, and why—despite all the noise, AI is actually increasing the need for human judgment, taste, and leadership, not replacing it. Ted Harrison is the CEO and founder of Neuemotion, a fast-growing B2B creative agency working with enterprise brands. Before launching his agency, he spent seven years at Twitter (later X), where he led advertiser production, helping global brands create better-performing content at scale. After navigating the chaos of a major corporate transition, Ted left to build an agency where he could control decisions, scale creative impact, and architect a business on his own terms. In this episode, we'll discuss: Avoiding the trap of confusing early traction with a scalable model Leveraging documentation early Enterprise clients as a double-edged sword Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Toggl: Most agencies are losing 15–30% of their profit every year: lack of time tracking, messy manual timesheets, scope creep, untracked revisions, and all those "quick" client requests that never get billed. Toggl has created a fast, interactive way to uncover exactly where your margins are leaking. Start your investigation now at toggl.com/smartagency and use the code SMARTAGENCY10 at checkout for a 10% off annual plans. The Hidden Trap of Scaling Expertise Leaving Twitter a year after the acquisition ultimately created opportunities for Ted's newly founded agency. Many had left long before him, had already found new jobs, and proved to be valuable contacts for potential clients. Ted tapped into this powerful network, and the access to enterprise clients helped him build momentum and fast growth. However, that same advantage creates a structural risk: those clients don't initially trust the agency, they trust you. This is where most founders get stuck. They confuse early traction with a scalable model. In reality, they've just extended their personal brand into a slightly larger container. The real challenge is transferring trust. If you don't systemize your thinking, your decision-making, and your taste, every new client reinforces dependency. The agency grows, but so does the founder's involvement. And eventually, growth slows, not because of demand, but because of capacity. Documentation as a Scaling Weapon (Not a Nice-to-Have) Luckily for Ted, by the time he started the agency, he already understood the importance of documenting processes, which has helped him greatly as he initiates his transition out of operations. Instead of relying on shadowing, tribal knowledge, or ad hoc training, Ted documented his thinking through a book, internal frameworks, and structured onboarding. Every new team member consumes that context upfront. This does two things most agencies miss: First, it compresses onboarding time. Instead of months of "figuring it out," team members immediately understand how decisions get made. Second, it creates consistency without rigidity. The team isn't copying Ted, but they're operating from the same mental model. This is the difference between delegation and true scale. Without documentation, you're forced to stay involved because no one else "thinks like you." With it, you create a system where people can make aligned decisions independently, while still bringing their own perspective. The Operator → CEO Shift Is Uncomfortable (But Necessary) Ted is currently in the most dangerous phase for any founder: the transition from doing to leading. At ~20–30 employees, the cracks start to show. You can't be in every decision. You can't touch every client. And you can't be the quality control layer anymore. This is where many founders regress. They step back in when things break. They reinsert themselves into delivery. They become the "fixer" again. But that behavior reinforces the very bottleneck they're trying to escape. The real shift is identity, not activity. As an operator, your value comes from execution. As a CEO, your value comes from clarity, structure, and direction. If you don't make that shift intentionally, the agency will stall right at the point where it should scale. AI Is Not Replacing Agencies, It's Exposing Them At his agency, Ted's team is using AI in two ways. At the client level, they're mostly building agents, using it to clean up audio and video, and using its output as a starting point. Internally, they have their own "TedGPT", which has proven to be a great tool to scale knowledge. When it comes to how his enterprise clients are using it, Ted has seen that rather than replacing agencies with AI, they're hiring agencies to fix what AI broke. Why is this? Because AI lacks taste, context, and lived experience. It can generate and optimize. But it can't decide what matters. That's where agencies still win, if they position correctly. The real risk for agencies is doing work that AI can replace. Low-level execution, undifferentiated production, and generic output are already commoditized. Enterprise Clients Are a Double-Edged Sword Something Ted wishes he'd known before working with enterprise clients is that it introduces a level of complexity most founders underestimate. Long payment terms. Free pitch work. Endless stakeholder input. Constant shifting priorities. It's both harder and structurally different. Like most founders who have worked with enterprise clients, Ted eventually realized that the bigger the client, the more operational friction you inherit. That doesn't mean you shouldn't work with them, but it does meanyou need to build systems that protect your agency from them. Without strong positioning, pricing discipline, and process control, enterprise clients will consume your team, and your margins. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Altin Gün Gel Yanıma Gel 3:40 Garip 2026 Fauna En munfull sand 5:28 Taiga Trans 2026 David Bowie Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) 5:02 Scary Monsters 1980 David Gilmour Blue Light 4:26 About Face 1984 Seawind of Battery James Bernard – Daytime Campfires 3:05 The Perilous Fight – Vol. 3: United We Stand 2026 Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection The Three Magnets 5:52 Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection 2 2023 Minutemen Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Truth ? 1:48 Double Nickels On The Dime 1984 Emergency Group Drums > Improvisation 17:01 Live at Westbeth 2026 Massive Attack Angel 6:15 Mezzanine 1998 Sinéad O’Connor I Am Stretched on Your Grave 5:29 I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got 1990 Apodemus Monk 11:26 Monotone 2024 AUTOHAUs Horizons of Their Minds 11:54 Shoot the Moon 2026 floromancy leaving 3:32 The Perilous Fight – Vol. 2: We the People 2026 Dark Leaves Grantchester Meadows 5:49 The Perilous Fight – Vol. 2: We the People 2026 Echoes of Distant Stars Anomos 20:07 Tower of Echoes 2026 Yuri Gagarin Crystal Dunes 7:58 The Outskirts Of Reality 2020

In this episode of Healthy Her, host Amelia Phillips discusses all things motivation with sporting legend, mental health advocate and bona fide national treasure, Layne Beachley. From adopted baby to a seven-time world surfing champion and the only surfer (male or female) to win six consecutive world titles, Layne’s is a journey forged through grit, guts and a commitment to personal growth. Having grappled with injury, mental health challenges and personal loss, Layne knows more than most what it takes to do hard things. Here she shares her hard-earned insights and challenges us all to dig deep to find that missing motivation.About the guest: A former seven-time world surfing champion, Layne Beachley is a sought-after speaker, fearless advocate for mental wellbeing, gender equality and environmental action, and a proud ambassador for organisations including Black Dog Institute, Gotcha4Life, and WWF Australia. As the founder of Awake Academy, she is on a mission to help a million people thrive and live happier, more purposeful lives through online programs, workshops and her new book co-written with Tess Brouwer, Awake Academy – Know Yourself, Grow Yourself. Layne on the catwalk! https://www.instagram.com/p/DVUZzSUE703/?igsh=cnlobTJrdWlzdnR6Learn about Awake Academy: https://www.awakeacademy.com.au/Join the Awake Collective: https://www.awakeacademy.com.au/awake-collective-salesFollow Layne and Awake Academy on InstagramPurchase the paperback: https://www.booktopia.com.au/awake-academy-tess-brouwer/book/9781761345869.htmlPurchase the audiobook: https://www.audible.com.au/pd/Awake-Academy-Audiobook/B0DJSL2XY5 About the host: Amelia Phillips is an exercise scientist, nutritionist, and published researcher (BSc, MNut) with a career spanning 26 years in health. A respected media presenter, Amelia has been featured on Channel 9’s hit show Do You Want to Live Forever? and is dedicated to helping people build a life of energy, connection, and purpose at any age or stage of life.Instagram: @_amelia_phillipsHave a question? Email: ap@ameliaphillips.com.auFind out more at: www.ameliaphillips.com.au CREDITSHost: Amelia Phillips Guest: Layne Beachley Audio Producer: Darren RothMusic: Matt Nicholich Production Partner: Nova Entertainment Pty Ltd Healthy Her acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Why are more agencies selling right now? If this trend has made you think about selling, is it because the market is hot… or because you've outgrown your role? If you're seriously thinking about selling your business, you should know that it'll ultimately come down to whether it can survive without you, and whether you want it to. Today's featured guest breaks down what's really driving the surge in agency acquisitions right now. He goes beyond surface-level multiples and unpacks what buyers actually look for, why most founders sabotage deals during diligence, and how AI is quietly separating premium agencies from the rest. This conversation will challenge how you think about growth, ownership, and your role in the business. Azim Nagree leads M&A Origination at Herringbone Digital, a private equity-backed platform acquiring and scaling digital marketing agencies. Originally trained as an M&A lawyer in Australia, Azim quickly realized he didn't enjoy the legal side of deals, but loved the strategy and deal-making behind them. Over the past 5–6 years, he's focused exclusively on agency acquisitions, working with founders navigating exits, partnerships, and scale. He brings an operator-meets-investor perspective, understanding both what founders want and what buyers actually value. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why are PE firms interested in agencies? 3 filters most agencies won't pass. The silent deal killer Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. Herringbone Digital: If you're thinking about exiting now, planning a few years ahead, or just want to understand your options, you should know about Herringbone Digital. They're not a typical financial buyer. They're operators who actually understand what it takes to build and scale an agency because they've done it themselves. Their approach is simple: invest in great founders, protect what's already working, and help agencies scale faster. Go to https://www.herringbonedigital.com/swenk and start the conversation. The Real Reason Agencies Are Getting Acquired Right Now There's a massive misconception in the market that agency acquisitions are happening because agencies suddenly became more attractive. That's not the full picture. What's actually happening is a capital problem, not an agency problem. Private equity is sitting on over $1 trillion dollars of unallocated capital. That money has to be deployed. And agencies, when structured correctly, check a lot of boxes: recurring revenue, strong margins, and fragmented markets ripe for consolidation. That's why you're seeing more deals. Not because every agency is valuable, but because capital is aggressively looking for places to go. However, you can't assume that just because deals are happening, your agency is ready to be bought. It's likely not. Buyers aren't just looking for revenue. They're looking for structure, predictability, and independence from the founder. If your business still relies on you for sales, delivery decisions, or client retention, it's not an asset. It's a job with revenue attached. And buyers know the difference immediately. 3 Filters Every Serious Buyer Uses Most founders think deals come down to valuation. In reality, every serious buyer is evaluating three things before they even care about price: 1. Strategic Fit Why does this deal exist? If there's no clear reason, new market, new capability, better economics, it's dead on arrival. Buying (or selling) just because it "feels like the right time" is how bad deals happen. 2. Cultural Fit This is the one founders underestimate the most. You're not just selling a business. You're entering a relationship that could last years. If there's friction early, it doesn't get better later. And forcing alignment for the sake of a deal almost always ends badly. 3. Financial Reality This is where the truth shows up. You can't "position" your way past bad numbers. Buyers will find churn issues, margin leaks, and unstable revenue during diligence. Trying to hide it just wastes months, and kills trust. The strongest sellers aren't perfect. They're transparent. The Silent Deal Killer: Founder Behavior During Diligence Here's something most people won't tell you: Deals don't usually fall apart because of numbers. They fall apart because of founder behavior during the process. Diligence takes 3–6 months. And during that time, many founders mentally check out. They assume the deal is done and take their foot off the gas. They start thinking in terms of "their problem soon, not mine." That's where things break, clients churn, and revenue dips. Key employees sense uncertainty and start looking elsewhere. And suddenly, the business the buyer evaluated is not the business that exists anymore. From the buyer's perspective, that's a red flag. The rule is simple: Run the business like you're never selling it, even when you are. Ironically, that's what makes it sellable in the first place. The Real Question: Should You Sell? Selling isn't just a financial decision. It's also a personal one. The best founders who sell have clarity on two things: What they want to do next Whether they've truly outgrown their current role  Regarding the first one, there's no wrong answer. Some buyers are looking to transition the founder out of the business in just 3-6 months. Some are looking for founders who want to stick around for a few years. The important thing is to be honest about your plans. Without that clarity, selling often creates more problems than it solves. Because removing yourself from the business doesn't automatically create purpose. AI Isn't Increasing Valuations. Bad Thinking Is Lowering Them A lot of PE firms are buying agencies based on their use of AI. Now, what these firms are looking for is AI as strategy, and using ChatGPT for content is not a strategy. That's a tool. Buyers don't care if you use AI tools. They care if AI shows up in your business fundamentals. This means that effective use of AI would show up in: Higher margins  Lower cost of delivery  Increased retention  Better client outcomes  Faster execution  If AI isn't impacting those metrics, it's irrelevant. The agencies commanding higher multiples right now aren't "AI agencies." They're system-driven agencies using AI to enhance leverage. They've embedded AI into workflows, decision-making, and delivery, not just content creation. A powerful example shared in the episode: One agency built a custom AI model for every client using all available data, sales conversations, onboarding insights, business goals. That model informs everything: Campaign strategy Reporting Communication style Execution  The result is that every client feels like the only client, without increasing workload. That's leverage. And that's what buyers pay for. Ultimately, most founders understand they need to wrap their heads around the use of AI as a strategic advantage. Whether they're really doing it or not is another issue. So ask yourself if, other than requiring your team to use AI, you're actually investing in it, whether through training, creating roles centered on AI experimentation, or providing resources to support that learning curve. If not, you won't actually affect the metrics that matter. The Bottom Line on Agency Acquisitions The agencies that sell well aren't lucky. They're structured. They've built: Predictable revenue  Strong margins  Low founder dependency  Systems that scale  Selling is just a byproduct of that. Want to Know If Your Agency Is Actually Sellable? If you're thinking about selling, or just want to build a more valuable, less dependent agency, you need to understand where your bottlenecks actually are at a structural level. If you want to map that out with real numbers, real operators, and a proven sequence, the next step is simple: Join a room where this is the standard, not the exception. Check out Herringbone Digital to start a conversation. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Are agencies becoming obsolete? We don't think so. However, the traditional agency model isn't just evolving, it's breaking. Today's featured guest believes the core of every business is dying and that agencies that want to adapt and win need to adopt the mindset of rebuilders. He shares why agencies have been in decline for over two decades and what it actually takes to rebuild a business that survives AI, commoditization, and shifting client expectations. Tactics alone won't help because, at its core, this shift is about identity, positioning, and stepping into a new role as someone who doesn't cling to the old model but actively creates the next one. Jonathan Lewis is the President of McKee Wallwork, a brand strategy and implementation firm. Starting as an unpaid intern, Jonathan worked his way up to eventually acquiring the agency from its founders. Over the past decade, he's led the firm through a major repositioning, moving away from traditional agency work toward upstream strategic advisory. His perspective is shaped by firsthand experience navigating succession, industry decline, and the current AI-driven disruption. In this episode, we'll discuss: The declining agency model Why identity is the real problem Moving upstream The rebuilder mindset Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Toggl: Most agencies are losing 15–30% of their profit every year: lack of time tracking, messy manual timesheets, scope creep, untracked revisions, and all those "quick" client requests that never get billed. Toggl has created a fast, interactive way to uncover exactly where your margins are leaking. Start your investigation now at toggl.com/smartagency and use the code SMARTAGENCY10 at checkout for a 10% off annual plans. The Agency Model Has Been in Decline for Years Most agency owners think the pressure they're feeling is recent, but it's not. Jonathan makes a strong case that the traditional agency model has been declining since the early 2000s, starting with the collapse of mass media dominance and accelerating through the rise of the internet, social media, and now AI. The old model was simple: control distribution, create decent creative, and scale results through reach. That model is gone. Today, agencies are fighting for perceived value in a world where clients question everything: speed, cost, necessity, and even whether they need an agency at all. This shows up in commoditized RFPs, price pressure, and constant comparison to cheaper or faster alternatives. The frustration many founders feel isn't personal failure; it's structural misalignment. They're trying to win using a model that no longer works the way it used to. The Real Problem Isn't AI, It's Identity A lot of agency owners are blaming AI for the disruption. That's not the real issue. The deeper problem is identity. Most agencies are built by craftspeople, designers, developers, media buyers who tie their value to the tools they use. When those tools become automated or commoditized, it creates an identity crisis. If your value is "I build websites" or "I run ads," you're in trouble. Because now those things can be done faster, cheaper, and in some cases better, without you. Your value is not the tool. Your value is the thinking before and after the tool, the judgment, the strategy, the ability to define what should be built and why. Moving Upstream: From Execution to Worldview In 2018, Jonathan and his team made a critical shift. They stopped trying to compete on execution and moved upstream into strategy, specifically, helping clients define their worldview. This is where things get interesting. AI can generate outputs. It can execute tasks. But it still depends on inputs, the prompt, the context, the perspective. That's where agencies have leverage. Instead of being the ones producing deliverables, they became the ones shaping direction. Helping clients answer: Who are we? What do we stand for? Who are we actually trying to reach? What matters most? From there, everything downstream becomes easier, whether it's done by internal teams, AI, or external vendors. This shift moves the agency from vendor to strategic partner. And more importantly, it removes them from the commodity trap. AI Is a Multiplier, Not a Replacement Jonathan takes a grounded view of AI. AI increases productivity dramatically. But historically, when something becomes more accessible, demand increases. Lower cost per unit doesn't eliminate demand; it expands it. The opportunity isn't in resisting AI. It's in integrating it while strengthening the human layer around it. You can use AI to analyze markets, generate insights, and accelerate content creation, not to replace thinking, but to enhance it. The real advantage comes from combining: Pattern recognition (AI) Judgment (human) Perspective (worldview) Agencies that only use AI for execution will get commoditized. Agencies that use AI to amplify strategic thinking will gain leverage. The "Rebuilder" Mindset Jonathan wrote a book around the idea of becoming a "rebuilder" because that's how he sees people getting through these times of reckoning in the business. Every major shift, from the internet, social media, COVID, and AI, breaks existing models. Most people respond by resisting, waiting, or reacting. Rebuilders do something different. They accept that the old model is broken and take responsibility for creating the next one. That means: Rethinking how you create value Redefining your role in the business Rebuilding your offer, positioning, and delivery model Leading your team through uncertainty instead of avoiding it It's ownership at a different level. And it's the difference between agencies that survive disruption and those that disappear with it. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

In this Ask Me Anything episode, host Amelia Phillips answers listener questions on how to beat a sugar addiction (something she's personally struggled with!), easy ways to reduce inflammation as a tired and busy mum, and exactly how many sets and reps of weights will help you get stronger sooner. *Clarification on Q3 on Pyramid sets: The recommended Pyramid set Amelia is referring to is 12reps, then increase weight, 10 reps, then increase weight again, 8 reps at your heaviest weight, then finish with 12 reps at your lighter starting weight. About the host: Amelia Phillips is an exercise scientist, nutritionist, and published researcher (BSc, MNut) with a career spanning 26 years in health. She is the co-founder of Vitality360, a functional health platform that helps people gain deep insights into their health and make targeted changes for lasting vitality.A respected media presenter, Amelia has been featured on Channel 9’s hit show Do You Want to Live Forever? and is dedicated to helping people build a life of energy, connection, and purpose at any age or stage of life.Instagram: @_amelia_phillipsHave a question? Email: ap@ameliaphillips.com.auFind out more at: www.ameliaphillips.com.auDiscover Vitality360: https://v360.health CREDITSHost: Amelia Phillips Audio Producer: Darren RothMusic: Matt Nicholich Production Partner: Nova Entertainment Pty Ltd Healthy Her acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training What actually breaks an agency first, growth or the founder's inability to evolve with it? And at what point does hiring more people stop creating leverage… and start creating chaos? Today's featured guest dives into why he decided to close his first business, which he had grown to 22 employees, and start again solo. He needed to get away from the chaos of managing a large team, but what is the crucial mistake he can avoid if he ever wants to scale an agency team again? Beneath the tactics, it becomes clear that the role of a founder must grow if they want to build a business that doesn't collapse without them. Chris Seminatori is the founder of Get Geofencing, an advanced digital marketing technique that helps small and large-scale enterprises meet their sales target effectively and efficiently. Chris shared his journey from scaling a 20+ person operation in Beverly Hills to intentionally stepping away from team-heavy growth after experiencing the hidden cost: constant management chaos. He talks about the evolution of advertising, from geofencing to connected TV, and how emerging technologies like AI are reshaping both service delivery and agency efficiency. In this episode, we'll discuss: The trap of hiring to grow What was the crucial mistake? Control vs. dependency What the Navy got right Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. Herringbone Digital: If you're thinking about exiting now, planning a few years ahead, or just want to understand your options, you should know about Herringbone Digital. They're not a typical financial buyer. They're operators who actually understand what it takes to build and scale an agency because they've done it themselves. Their approach is simple: invest in great founders, protect what's already working, and help agencies scale faster. Go to https://www.herringbonedigital.com/swenk and start the conversation. The Trap: Hiring Only to Manage Chaos Chris's first business followed a familiar trajectory: start small, gain traction, hire quickly, and scale to over 20 employees. On paper, it looked like success, but it quickly became unsustainable. Each hire introduced new variables—different expectations, skill levels, and problems—until Chris found himself spending his days putting out fires instead of building the business. This is the inflection point many founders hit but don't anticipate. Growth creates complexity, and without structure, that complexity compounds. Instead of gaining leverage, Chris became the central node for every decision, issue, and escalation. The deeper issue wasn't the team itself. It was the absence of systems, clarity, and leadership infrastructure. Without those, hiring just amplifies chaos. Chris ultimately shut the business down, not because it lacked demand, but because it lacked structure. Why Most Founders Break When They Try to "Scale" Like many founders, Chris operated intuitively and ended up hiring before systemization. The "system" lived in his head, from how to deliver, solve problems, and serve clients. When he brought others in, they lacked the context and frameworks to operate independently. This created a loop: the team needed constant input, which pulled Chris deeper into operations, which prevented him from building the very systems that would free him. As a result, more hires led to more dependency, not less. Founders often misdiagnose the problem as "needing better people," when the real constraint is a lack of documented processes and clear direction. Without those, even great hires require heavy management. Scaling isn't about adding people. It's about reducing decision-making friction through structure. Without that, every new hire increases the founder's workload. The Alternative Model: Control vs. Dependency After shutting down his first agency, Chris rebuilt with a completely different model. This time it was lean, contractor-based, and highly controlled. This allowed him to maintain quality and ensure clients received the level of service he expected. The upside is clear: consistency, control, and alignment with his vision. There's no dilution of standards, no miscommunication layers, and no dependency on internal managers. For a founder who values craftsmanship and direct client impact, this model works. But the trade-off is equally clear. The business is entirely dependent on him. If Chris steps away, everything stops. Growth is capped by his capacity, and the business cannot function independently. This is the other side of the spectrum: instead of chaos from too many people, it's constraint from too much centralization. Both models reveal the same underlying truth: the founder's role has not evolved. The System Gap: What the Navy Got Right Looking back, Chris wishes he had implemented some of his Navy experience into his management. For instance, the military operates on clear objectives, defined processes, and structured decision-making. In that environment, the objective is explicit. Everyone understands the goal, the constraints, and their role in achieving it. Teams are encouraged to think and propose solutions, but within a defined framework. That balance creates both autonomy and alignment. Chris recognizes that he failed to bring this structure into his agency. Without clear objectives and documented processes, his team couldn't operate independently. Every deviation required his intervention. This highlights a critical shift: leadership is not about doing the work or even managing people, it's about designing systems that enable others to execute without constant oversight. The Future of Advertising: Precision, Data, and AI Chris also shares how his current agency is evolving alongside major shifts in advertising. Geofencing allows businesses to target users based on physical location, creating highly specific audience segments. Combined with connected TV (CTV), this enables precise ad delivery across devices, including household televisions. Traditional mass advertising is being replaced by targeted, data-driven distribution. Agencies that understand how to leverage this can deliver stronger results with lower spend, increasing their value to clients. Also layered on top of this is AI, which Chris used across the entire workflow, from creative development to campaign strategy. What once took hours or days can now be executed in minutes, often with better output. But while these tools increase efficiency, they don't solve the core structural problem. AI can enhance execution, but it doesn't replace the need for systems, positioning, or leadership evolution. The Real Constraint: Founder Dependency Across both versions of Chris's business, the 22-person team and the lean solo model, the same constraint appears: the business relies entirely on the founder. Whether that dependency comes from poor structure or intentional control, the outcome is the same: the business cannot grow or operate without the founder. This is the core challenge most agency owners face. It's not hiring, lead generation, or even service delivery. It's the inability to transition from operator to architect. Until that shift happens, every model, large team or solo, remains limited. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

  Have you ever wondered how to strike that balance between managing your team and ensuring success for your clients? Today's featured guest is here to talk about what it actually takes to evolve from doing the work to building a team that can win without you. The conversation cuts through common agency myths, like hiring better clients first or relying on RFPs, and instead exposes the real drivers of growth: team strength, leadership evolution, and structural leverage. Matt Kovacs is the president of Blaze PR, a boutique agency for lifestyle brands hungry for a piece of the market share. Kovacs brings a grounded, operator-to-leader perspective shaped by years of building and scaling a lifestyle PR agency across industries like CPG, restaurants, and real estate. His focus is on people, systems, and the subtle shifts that move an agency from founder-reliant to team-driven. In this episode, we'll discuss: Which comes first, better clients or a better team? The founder evolution from doer to developer of people How Matt's team is integrating AI Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Toggl: Most agencies are losing 15–30% of their profit every year: lack of time tracking, messy manual timesheets, scope creep, untracked revisions, and all those "quick" client requests that never get billed. Toggl has created a fast, interactive way to uncover exactly where your margins are leaking. Start your investigation now at toggl.com/smartagency and use the code SMARTAGENCY10 at checkout for a 10% off annual plans. The Real Constraint: Founder-Centric Teams Most founders believe their growth problem is external, more leads, bigger clients, better positioning. But the real constraint is internal: everything still runs through them. Matt describes the shift from doing everything to stepping back into leadership. In the early years, he was deeply embedded in delivery, client work, and execution. That's normal. But the shift could only happen once he changed his willingness to let go. The turning point came when the agency had enough team strength and client quality to create space. That space allowed him to focus on mentoring, business development, and strategic oversight instead of execution. This is where most founders stall. They try to grow while staying embedded in delivery. The result is bottlenecks everywhere. Sales slows down. Team development stagnates. Clients remain dependent on the founder. When this happens, growth doesn't break the bottleneck. It amplifies it. The Misdiagnosis: "We Need Better Clients" What should come first, better clients or a better team? A common belief among agency owners is that landing bigger clients will solve their problems. Kovacs challenges that directly: better clients come after a better team, not before. Without a strong team, bigger clients actually make things worse. They increase pressure, expose gaps, and force the founder to stay involved at an even deeper level. Instead of elevating the agency, they trap it. This is why agencies experience the "rollercoaster": win a big client, scramble to deliver, neglect everything else, then lose momentum. The sequence is wrong. It should be Stronger team → better client experience → higher-quality clients. Not the other way around. And that shift requires a founder to stop thinking like an operator and start building like an architect. The Hidden Cost of Not Evolving If you stay stuck in delivery, your team never fully develops, clients remain tied to you, and eventually, growth slows. This is where many agencies plateau between $1M–$3M. They have revenue, but no real structure. They're busy, but not scalable. And the founder becomes the most expensive, and least scalable, resource in the business. The Structural Shift: From Doer to Developer of People Kovacs' approach to leadership is focused on understanding people. For him, managing a team isn't one-size-fits-all. Some team members need daily interaction. Others need autonomy. Some respond to recognition. Others to responsibility. This level of awareness is what separates managers from leaders. But the deeper shift is this: the founder's job becomes developing people, not producing work. For instance, he recently stepped back during a major pitch and allowed a junior team member to lead a critical part of it. She had developed deep expertise through personal interest, and instead of controlling the outcome, he created space for her to step up. They won the account, but more importantly, this gesture strengthened the entire organization. When founders hold onto control, they limit the ceiling of their team. When they create opportunities for others to lead, they expand capacity, without adding headcount. The New Environment: AI Won't Save You Matt explains how his team is integrating AI carefully, with guardrails, reviews, and intentional usage. It's a tool to enhance output, not replace thinking. He understands that AI amplifies whatever system already exists. If your agency is chaotic, AI makes it faster chaos. If your agency is structured, AI becomes a force multiplier. This is why some agencies will compress timelines, increase margins, and outpace competitors, while others fall further behind. The difference isn't the tool. It's the operating model behind it. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

https://media.blubrry.com/thesuccessfulmindpodcast/ins.blubrry.com/thesuccessfulmindpodcast/TSM718_MDM_Feb26_26.mp3   The seek the truth mindset is one of the most powerful shifts you can make in your life. Yet most people resist it. Why? Because it requires letting go of the emotional stories we've attached to ourselves and the world around us. In this episode of the Successful Mind Podcast, I explore a simple but demanding principle: if you want to grow, you must train your mind to ask one question over and over again—what is the truth? That question forces you to step back from your emotional reactions and examine what's really happening. And when you learn to separate emotion from observation, something remarkable happens: your awareness expands. Instead of being pulled around by triggers and opinions, you begin to see situations more clearly and respond from a higher level of consciousness.Why the Seek the Truth Mindset Matters NowDeveloping a seek the truth mindset is becoming more important than ever. As technology evolves and artificial intelligence makes it harder to distinguish reality from manipulation, emotional reactions will become even easier to exploit. The discipline of seeking truth protects you from being led by bias or misinformation. It trains your mind to pause, reflect, and examine what is actually real rather than reacting to appearances.Training Yourself to Seek the TruthThe seek the truth mindset begins with self-reflection. Instead of blaming circumstances or other people, you start asking deeper questions about your own reactions. Why did that trigger me?Why does that situation upset me?What belief inside of me is being activated? Through that process, you begin to recognize that many of your reactions are not facts—they are programs built from past experiences and repeated ideas stored in the subconscious mind.Living With a Seek the Truth MindsetAs you develop the seek the truth mindset, judgment begins to fall away. You stop reacting automatically and start seeing both sides of a situation with clarity. That clarity brings freedom. You become more disciplined in your thinking, less reactive emotionally, and far more effective in every area of your life. And ultimately, that discipline leads you to a powerful realization: the truth isn't outside of you. It begins with your willingness to look honestly within. Episode 684 – Stop Seeking External Validation Episode 518 – Do You Want to Know the Truth or Do You Want to be Right? Episode 187 – Reality vs. Truth HERE’S THE TRUTH:YOUR BUSINESS ISN’T BROKEN. YOUR MINDSET IS.You’ve built something real. You’ve got clients, revenue, maybe even a team. But every morning, you wake up feeling like you’re pushing a boulder uphill — working harder for smaller wins, watching others leap ahead while you grind in place. This May, I’m opening the doors to The Elite Mind — a proven daily practice that rewires the mental patterns keeping you stuck in the feast-or-famine cycle, and transforms your relationship with success from the inside out. We’ll strip away the self-sabotage, the fear of your own potential, and the unconscious limits you’ve accepted as “just how business is.” You’ll discover why strategy alone never works (and what actually does), and walk away with the mental framework that separates those who sustain success from those who chase it forever. Ready to stop working harder and start thinking differently? CLICK HERE to find out more! If you like the show, would you be so kind as to leave us a short review on Apple Podcasts? It takes less than a minute and really makes a difference in helping me spread the Successful Mind message around the globe.  LEAVE A REVIEW Check out David's book! Get Your Copy Today! Miss anything? Don't forget to subscribe to the show to keep up with your own successful mindset. We're available wherever you listen to podcasts:   Apple Podcasts Spotify Pandora iHeartRadio Amazon Music Life is Now wants you to get SOCIAL! You can find us on the following platforms:  Facebook X-twitter Instagram Linkedin Youtube The post What Is the Truth? The Mindset That Changes Everything appeared first on The Successful Mind Podcast.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how agencies operate. But the real shift isn't just about tools. It's about structure, mindset, and leadership. Today's featured guest has taken the time to explore how agencies are adapting to AI, why many agencies will struggle to survive the shift, and how founders must evolve alongside the technology. From building AI-native workflows to maintaining authentic brand connections in an automated world, the conversation highlights a central theme: agencies that stay curious and adaptable will win. Those that cling to "the way we've always done it" won't. Brian Hansen is the founder of Rocket Pilots, a marketing agency focused exclusively on helping law firms grow their revenue through targeted marketing strategies. Unlike generalist agencies, Rocket Pilots operates within a single vertical, allowing the team to develop deep industry expertise and deliver highly specialized services. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why it's a good idea to be fully AI-native. The cultural shift your agency should be making. Why average agencies will struggle the most with the rise of AI. Why the future belongs to curious founders. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Toggl: Most agencies are losing 15–30% of their profit every year: lack of time tracking, messy manual timesheets, scope creep, untracked revisions, and all those "quick" client requests that never get billed. Toggl has created a fast, interactive way to uncover exactly where your margins are leaking. Start your investigation now at toggl.com/smartagency and use the code SMARTAGENCY10 at checkout for a 10% off annual plans. Starting Out Without a Niche in Mind Brian didn't start his agency with a legal niche in mind. In fact, he openly admits he ended up finding his current niche by doing it 'the hard way'. Early on, his agency worked with multiple industries and offered a wide range of services. But over time, he realized that focusing on what the agency did best, and who they served best, produced better results for both clients and the agency itself. That insight led to a clear decision: narrow the offering, specialize in the legal space, and deliver exceptional outcomes. Today, he is focused on the next evolution of agency operations: building an AI-native agency environment that allows teams to work faster, smarter, and more efficiently. Why Agencies Must Become "AI Native" Right now, Brian is focused on his agency becoming fully AI native, which goes far beyond occasionally using ChatGPT or experimenting with AI tools. Instead, becoming AI native means designing your agency's internal systems and workflows so that AI can effectively operate within them. This includes something as foundational as how documents are stored and organized. If agencies want to use custom AI models or assistants to help with strategy, writing, research, and execution, those systems need structured data and clear documentation. Without that foundation, AI cannot function as a true multiplier. Because of this, Brian's team is currently restructuring their internal systems from file organization to documentation so AI tools can access the context needed to support their work. When done properly, AI doesn't just speed up tasks; it becomes an operational layer that enhances every role in the company. In other words, agencies shouldn't simply "use AI." They should build their operations around it. The Cultural Shift Agencies Need to Make Technology alone won't determine which agencies succeed in the AI era. Culture will. Founders are often the first people inside an agency to explore new technologies. They test tools, build systems, and experiment with new capabilities long before the rest of the team adopts them. But that dynamic can create a dangerous knowledge gap if the rest of the organization doesn't follow. Brian believes agencies must actively create a culture where employees are encouraged and even required to experiment with AI tools and share what they learn. Teams should be discussing new workflows, sharing AI "wins," and constantly asking how the technology can improve their work. Employees who treat AI as a partner, rather than a threat, will become dramatically more valuable inside modern agencies. Instead of replacing talent, AI often amplifies it by allowing team members to operate like high-level project managers directing intelligent systems. Agencies that embrace this cultural shift will gain a major competitive advantage. Why Average Agencies Will Struggle At the start of the internet era, traditional agencies that dismissed how this new development would change agencies forever were the ones to set themselves up for failure and many of them disappeared within a few years. Likewise, the agencies most at risk in the coming years are the ones stuck in the middle. They aren't exceptional specialists. They aren't deeply innovative. And they rely on the same processes they've used for years. History has shown what happens to businesses that ignore major technological shifts and Jason believes AI represents a similar moment. Agencies that remain average, offering undifferentiated services without leveraging new technology, will find themselves squeezed by faster, more efficient competitors. At the same time, the agencies that thrive will be those that use AI to enhance strategy, creativity, and efficiency rather than simply automate low-level tasks. The future won't belong to agencies that resist change. It will belong to those that adapt faster than the market expects. Authentic Branding Still Matters in an AI World Despite the rise of automation, and maybe even because of it, authentic human connection remains essential and is becoming even more valuable. As AI-generated content becomes more common, audiences are becoming increasingly skilled at recognizing it. Automated comments, generic posts, and AI-generated personas rarely create real engagement or trust. That's why personal branding and authentic communication will continue to matter. Agencies that build real relationships with their audience through thoughtful content, real insights, and genuine expertise will stand out in a crowded digital environment. While AI can accelerate content production, it cannot replace credibility, experience, or trust. Those elements must still come from real people. The Role Evolution Every Agency Founder Must Make Beyond technology, Jason has seen that agency growth ultimately depends on the evolution of the founder's role. Most agency founders begin by doing everything themselves. They sell, deliver work, manage clients, and handle operations. Over time, they may become managers overseeing teams. But long-term agency growth requires another transition from manager to architect and CEO. At that level, the founder is no longer executing daily work. Instead, they design the systems, structure, and strategy that allow the organization to scale independently. Eventually, the ultimate goal is reaching the role of true owner, where the agency can operate successfully without constant founder involvement. AI tools can accelerate this evolution by automating operational complexity, but the mindset shift still has to come from the founder. Technology alone doesn't create scale. Leadership does. The Future Belongs to Curious Founders If there's one trait that will define successful agency leaders in the coming decade, it's curiosity. The AI landscape changes almost weekly. New tools, new capabilities, and new opportunities appear constantly. Founders who stay curious, experimenting, testing, and learning, will continue to find ways to adapt. Those who assume they already know enough will fall behind. For agency owners, the challenge isn't simply adopting AI tools. It's building organizations that evolve alongside the technology. The agencies that do that won't just survive the AI era. They'll lead it. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Do you assume a very complicated report will guarantee clients appreciate all the work you're putting into generating leads for their business? It may end up having the opposite effect. Many agency founders assume their biggest challenge is generating leads or improving campaign performance. However, a deeper issue becomes clear in today's conversation: most agencies end up losing clients due to unclear values and outdated operating models. Our featured guest will unpack how agencies and financial service firms face strikingly similar structural problems. From vague service promises to bloated processes and inefficient teams, both industries are being forced to evolve, especially as automation and AI raise expectations around speed, clarity, and decision-making. Nathan Jenson is a former agency owner, current CFO of Badass Bookkeeping, and CEO of askQuick.ai, a service that connects with QuickBooks to show you what's really going on in your business. He's made it his mission to connect business owners to their numbers so they can make smarter decisions. Nathan has appeared on the podcast before, and since his last visit, he rebuilt his business model using a very different philosophy, one centered around automation, operational simplicity, and minimizing dependency on large teams. Having sold a previous company that relied heavily on people and manual processes, he focused on building a scalable financial services business that runs on systems, not headcount. His experience working closely with agency owners gives him a unique perspective on where agencies get stuck and why many founders unknowingly create the very bottlenecks holding their companies back. In this episode, we'll discuss: Are you earning clients' trust? How complex reports just confuse clients How automation is reshaping expectations Why headcount is not a measure of success Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. Herringbone Digital: If you're thinking about exiting now, planning a few years ahead, or just want to understand your options, you should know about Herringbone Digital. They're not a typical financial buyer. They're operators who actually understand what it takes to build and scale an agency because they've done it themselves. Their approach is simple: invest in great founders, protect what's already working, and help agencies scale faster. Go to https://www.herringbonedigital.com/swenk and start the conversation. Why Clients Lose Trust in Agencies Many agencies assume clients judge them primarily on campaign performance, but the reality is more nuanced. Often, clients cannot tell whether the agency is succeeding or failing because it fails to clearly communicate what success should look like in the first place. In his experience as a client, despite spending significant money on paid advertising, social campaigns, and LinkedIn outreach over several years, Nate found he was getting almost no meaningful leads. As a client, the experience felt like throwing money into a black box. When this is the case, the disconnect typically originates from one of two traps: Agencies fail to deliver meaningful results Or they fail to communicate the results they did deliver In both cases, the outcome is identical: clients feel uncertain about the value they are receiving. This communication gap becomes even more dangerous in an era where AI tools can produce reports, insights, and dashboards instantly. If agencies continue delivering confusing reports full of jargon or technical metrics, clients will increasingly turn to tools that can interpret their data more clearly. Simply put: clarity is now a competitive advantage. Are You Proving Your Expertise or Just Confusing Clients? Nate has stories from practicing in accounting agencies that perfectly mirror what happens in marketing agencies. A business owner once hired him to replace a fractional CFO who had been sending him financial reports packed with complicated spreadsheets, amortization schedules, and technical accounting data. The problem wasn't that the reports were wrong. The client just had no idea what any of it meant. From the client's perspective, the reports were useless. This behavior exists across many professional services industries. Experts often overcomplicate reporting to demonstrate expertise, but this usually has the opposite effect. When a client receives pages of technical information they cannot interpret, they assume one of two things: Either the service provider is hiding something. Or the service provider doesn't understand the client's real priorities. What clients actually want is simple: Are we improving? Are we losing money somewhere? What should we do next? If agencies cannot answer those questions clearly, they risk looking indistinguishable from competitors who truly underperform. Automation Is Reshaping Operational Expectations Nate rebuilt his current company around one principle: automate everything that doesn't require human judgment. In accounting, that means allowing software to categorize transactions, generate reports, and monitor financial performance automatically. Tools like QuickBooks already provide rule-based automation that eliminates much of the manual work bookkeepers traditionally perform. By implementing these systems, Nate reduced massive amounts of operational labor. For example, many of his financial analyses once required one to two hours of preparation per client each month. Now, automated systems can generate those reports instantly, allowing him to spend his time interpreting insights rather than compiling data. This shift mirrors what is happening inside agencies. Marketing platforms, analytics tools, and AI assistants increasingly handle tasks that once required teams of specialists. Campaign reporting, performance insights, and forecasting can now be generated in seconds. This means that the agencies with the biggest advantage will be the ones with the best systems, not with the biggest team, as it used to be. In fact, automation allows firms to grow without proportional increases in staffing, which dramatically improves profitability and scalability. Why Headcount Is a Dangerous Measure of Success Like many founders, Nate used to think that growth meant hiring more people and building a larger organization. Eventually, his company reached around ten employees, and the reality of management set in. Instead of freedom, he experienced something different: constant oversight, quality control issues, and the stress of managing people who struggled to perform consistently. Some employees were exceptional and could operate independently. Others required constant supervision. The experience revealed a harsh truth about scaling service businesses: more employees do not automatically mean more leverage. In fact, hiring the wrong people often creates new bottlenecks for the founder. When founders must constantly review work, answer questions, and correct mistakes, they become even more central to the business than before. That realization pushed Nate to design his new company focusing first on systems and automation before expanding the team. The Evolution of the Founder's Role When it comes to owners who end up reviewing everyone's work and involved in every decision, we all know this happens too much in the industry. This is basically a failure in evolving the founder's role as the agencies grow: Operator – Doing everything yourself Manager – Hiring and supervising people Architect – Designing systems, processes, and structure CEO – Leading strategy and company direction Owner – The business runs independently True scalability begins when founders transition into the architect role, designing systems that allow the company to operate consistently without their constant involvement. The Structural Next Step for Agency Founders The agencies that struggle over the next few years won't fail because of marketing tactics. They'll fail because their operating models never evolved. Clients expect clearer outcomes. AI is compressing timelines for analysis and reporting. Automation is reducing the need for manual work. The founders who win will be the ones who stop trying to scale effort and start designing leverage. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Most agency owners say they want to sell someday… but they're building something completely unsellable. The mistake? Not only a lack of a clear vision for the future of their agency, but also a lack of understanding of what they'll need to build a sellable agency. If you're an agency owner planning to sell one day, do you understand what buyers are usually looking for? Do you know which type of buyer you're hoping to attract? Today's featured guest understands that most agencies are acquired by private equity and built the private equity partner he felt was missing in the space. He'll talk about what actually drives valuation, what kills deals, and how to build an agency that buyers want to compete for. Ben Gaddis is the former founder of T3, a digital agency he sold to private equity in 2019. After going through multiple acquisitions himself, he now runs an operator-led private equity firm focused exclusively on tech-enabled service and agency businesses. As a former owner who's been on both sides of the table, he knows exactly what buyers are thinking. In this episode, we'll discuss: What are private equity companies looking for in agencies? Recurring revenue vs. retention What would actually increase your agency's valuation? If the goal is talent, should you consider an acquisition? Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Toggl: Most agencies are losing 15–30% of their profit every year: lack of time tracking, messy manual timesheets, scope creep, untracked revisions, and all those "quick" client requests that never get billed. Toggl has created a fast, interactive way to uncover exactly where your margins are leaking. Start your investigation now at toggl.com/smartagency and use the code SMARTAGENCY10 at checkout for a 10% off annual plans. What Private Equity Actually Looks For (It's Not What You Think) The reality is that most private equity companies are looking to buy a couple of agencies to slam them together and eventually sell them for more. Based on this, agency owners have an idea of what these buyers want and mostly focus on revenue or EBITDA. According to Ben, however, buyers are looking at a few core things first: Client concentration Recurring or predictable revenue Net revenue retention Founder dependency (aka key-person risk) Clear vision and differentiation Let's start with client concentration. A lot of owners panic if one client makes up 20% of revenue. Some PE firms get nervous at 10%. But Ben brings nuance here. If you've landed and retained a $2–3M client for years, that's proof you can serve at a high level. That's powerful. The issue isn't just one big client. It's when your top 3–5 clients make up 50–60% of revenue. That's where it gets risky. If you're in that position, you already feel it. One bad email. One procurement shift. One budget freeze. And your stomach drops. That's not a valuation problem. That's a freedom problem. Recurring Revenue vs. Retention (The Smarter Metric) Everyone argues about contracts. "Should I lock clients into 12 months?" "Should we go month-to-month?" Ben argues that the real metric is net revenue retention. If you're at 90–100%+ retention, buyers don't care as much about contract length. He shared a case where they bought a company with almost zero recurring revenue but 115% net revenue retention. Clients kept buying more. The business was healthy. The packaging just needed to change. This is huge for agencies stuck in custom project hell. Sometimes it's not your service. It's how you position and sell it. Are you framing projects as standalone deliverables or as phases in a longer journey? If you're stuck working in the business and scrambling for the next sale, this is where to look first. Integration > Financial Engineering There are two types of buyers: Financial engineers smashing agencies together to increase multiples Operator-led firms building real integrated offerings Ben sees a lot of "fake integration." Agencies get acquired, but nothing truly connects. No shared systems. No real cross-sell. No operational synergy. Sophisticated buyers see through that immediately. What actually increases valuation? Additive capability. Does one service naturally lead to another? Does it solve a deeper problem for the same buyer? Does it expand wallet share within the same account? If you're thinking about acquisitions, don't buy revenue. Buy strategic fit. Otherwise, you're just running two companies under one logo. Growing Through Acquisition (And When Not To) A lot of 7-figure agency owners hit a wall where they can't hire fast enough and start to feel overwhelmed. The team depends on them. Growth feels capped. So they think: "Maybe I should acquire" and figure they should start small, as it seems easier than going through a big acquisition. Buying a bigger company or doing a merger of equals is certainly complicated in terms of defining who's in charge and which brand should remain. So, it should be a very complementary offer with a clear leader for it to make sense. This would be much clearer when buying a smaller business. However, here's the thing: Small acquisitions are just as hard as big ones. The legal, the integration, the emotional complexity, it's all real. If you've never done one before, the odds of it going smoothly are low. If the goal is talent… why not build offshore first? With AI and real-time translation tools, the global talent pool is radically more accessible than it was even five years ago. A lot of agency owners avoid offshore because it failed before. But the game has changed. If your bottleneck is hiring, you might not need to buy an agency. You might need to rethink your talent strategy. How to Prepare for a Sale (Even If You're Not Selling) This is where most deals fall apart, and Ben believes it's important for owners to try to cover any gaps in knowledge. Try to learn as much as you can about the process and the buyer to better understand their expectations. And if you still have questions, then don't hesitate to ask! Some aspects that owners may not understand and that you should start learning about: Working capital expectations Accrual vs. cash accounting Quality of Earnings (QofE) reviews Data cleanliness Revenue tagging Furthermore, Ben recommends something most owners never do: Run your own QofE before going to market. Know your skeletons. Track secured revenue. At the start of each year, how much revenue is already locked in? If that number consistently grows year over year, that's powerful. Buyers will ask about revenue by capability, revenue by sales rep, revenue by region, and client concentration by top 3/5/10. If your data is messy, you lose leverage. And if you're thinking, "I'll figure that out when I'm ready to sell," you're already behind. Vision Is the Real Multiplier Right now, Ben is seeing a lack of vision + execution alignment. AI is reshaping agency models in real time. Entire categories of services didn't exist a few months ago. The agencies that win won't just be efficient. They'll have a tight, clear, communicated vision. Agencies won't scale just because of a tactic. They'll scale because the vision was clear enough that the team could make decisions without the owner. If your team can't make decisions without you, that's not a people problem. That's a vision problem. And that's also why you're still stuck in fulfillment. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Father Hudgins' homily: Do You Want to be Well?

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training How are you protecting yourself from the real risk of owner burnout? Agency owners often burn out because they built a business that depends entirely on them. Today's featured guest is a former agency owner turned AI SaaS founder. He'll unpack what really caused his agency collapse, what he learned from it, and how he rebuilt from a completely different role. Austin Armstrong is the owner of Syllaby, a tool for social media marketing that helps users create their very own realistic digital clone to personalize their marketing efforts, allowing them to forge a deeper connection with their audience. Austin spent over a decade in the agency world, working his way up from intern to running an agency before launching his own. For a while, it worked, until the cracks appeared. His agency was built around organic marketing and heavily centered on his personal brand. High months meant hiring fast. Low months meant wondering if payroll would clear. When a few large clients (that accounted for about 60% of monthly revenue) churned, the instability became unbearable. So Austin made his tech pivot and moved to starting Syllaby, which also came with a role pivot. More recently, he just released his first book Virality and is the co-founder of the upcoming AI marketing World conference. In this episode, we'll discuss: From agency failure to early AI adopter Why the founder bottleneck is emotional The founder evolution model AI exposes weaknesses Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. Making the Decision to Be an Early Adopter When he started Syllaby, Austin could already see the writing on the wall with AI. He was already not happy navigating the agency world, so the question was, "Do I want to place a bet as an early adopter of this technology? Potentially cannibalizing my own agency?" He spoke with several clients and business owners and came to the conclusion that most people hire an agency because they know they need to create content to be relevant, but didn't know how to pick the right topics, and in many cases didn't want to be on camera. They needed help staying consistent and accountable. Some of them don't even have the money to hire an agency, but still have a message and an expertise to share. So Austin started to look for ways to automate those processes using AI. The Founder Bottleneck Is Emotional Before It's Operational The emotional weight of the unraveling of Austin's agency was real. Nightmares about client complaints. Constant vigilance. Inability to disconnect. Eventually, he decided to make a bet on AI and launched Syllaby, an AI-powered content platform designed to automate much of what agencies manually execute, from topic discovery to scripting to publishing. Now, looking back, he sees his agency's failure came from several mistakes. It wasn't bad marketing or lack of demand. It was structural dependency. The agency relied on: His personal brand His client relationships His decision-making His emotional capacity When large clients churned, revenue collapsed because concentration risk hadn't been designed out of the model. When delivery required nuance, he couldn't step away because "he stirred the pot." This is the Operator trap. The Founder Evolution Model Most founders believe they own an agency. In reality, the agency owns them. What is supposed to happen as your agency evolves is that your role in it evolves as follows: Operator → Manager → Architect → CEO → Owner At the Operator level: Sales depends on you. Delivery depends on you. Escalations go to you. Pricing goes through you. And when you focus on one area, another suffers. Systems Create Freedom But They Also Create Identity Shifts As the owner, being needed feels good and letting go feels disorienting. Austin acknowledged this tension. In his agency, clients wanted him. Even with SOPs, some work required nuance. Some of it was ego. Some of it was positioning. Some of it was hiring the wrong people in the wrong seats. Having learned his lesson, things look very different in his SaaS company, where he can rely on strong partners, defined ownership, AI-supported workflows, and clear decision rights. Now he can disappear for two weeks, go skiing with family, speak at events, and the business doesn't break. AI Exposes Weakness All over the industry owners agree that AI isn't replacing strong agencies. It's exposing weak ones. At Syllaby, Austin has integrated AI so much is hard to think where he DOESN'T use it. He automates what many agencies sell manually: SEO-based topic discovery Script generation Video creation Scheduling and publishing For smaller businesses, this lowers the barrier to entry. For agencies, it creates leverage. Which tool are owners using? This varies from time to time. What you should be doing is testing them all out to see which ones work better for you, as well as creating a brief with all the information you'll need in case you decide to migrate to a different tool. Jason calls this his "AI Operating Brief", a master document loaded with: Company positioning Customer data Success stories CRM insights Transcripts Strategic principles Once embedded into AI tools, it eliminates repetitive context-setting and removes founder bottlenecks. Austin does something similar with what he calls his "Austin Codex", years of content, frameworks, and intellectual property housed inside AI models. The result is institutional memory without constant founder involvement. Time Audits Reveal the Hidden Ceiling Austin is a big fan of the full-time audit exercise: For one to two weeks, document: Every task Start and end times Whether it's mandatory or optional Your enjoyment level The dollar value of your time The outcome is uncomfortable. Once you're done, you'll see which $10 tasks eating $1,000/hour time, the emotional drain disguised as "important work", and the distractions masquerading as urgency. He outsourced email management, calendar coordination, travel booking — all consolidated into a daily executive summary delivered where he actually spends time. Not because he can't do it, but because he shouldn't. The bigger lesson: you don't scale an agency… you outgrow your role. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Are you winning exciting projects but still feeling exhausted at the end of every quarter? Does your agency look successful from the outside, yet feel fragile or chaotic behind the scenes? For most agency owners, the real struggle isn't creativity. It's sustainability. The real challenge begins after the win, when you have to deliver consistently, protect your margins, manage your team, and somehow still have the energy to lead. Michael Boychuk is the founder and creative director of DNA&Stone, a creative agency that deals in real emotion and embrace the hard truth, understanding that brands that connect emotionally see 50% higher revenue growth. He'll talk about scaling creatively led agencies, navigating mergers, embracing productive conflict, and integrating AI without sacrificing emotional storytelling. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why creative isn't enough The merger process Embracing tension & clear swim lanes in partnerships Set audacious goals or stay average Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Toggl: Most agencies are losing 15–30% of their profit every year: lack of time tracking, messy manual timesheets, scope creep, untracked revisions, and all those "quick" client requests that never get billed. Toggl has created a fast, interactive way to uncover exactly where your margins are leaking. Start your investigation now at toggl.com/smartagency and use the code SMARTAGENCY10 at checkout for a 10% off annual plans. Leaving Amazon to Start a Creative Agency Michael's career began in small, strategy-led creative shops before moving to Leo Burnett in Chicago. Eventually, he crossed to the client side as Global Executive Creative Director at Amazon, working closely on major brand initiatives. While many creatives were moving in-house at the time, Michael saw the gap in how external agencies worked with internal creative teams. Even the most respected agencies struggled to collaborate effectively with in-house counterparts. So he made the decision to leave Amazon to start his own agency. He co-founded Little Hands of Stone (later merging to become DNA&Stone), building a nimble, creatively driven agency with operational discipline at its core. The goal wasn't to be another agency in a crowded market. It was to build one that worked differently. The Project Roller Coaster: Why Great Creative Isn't Enough In the early years, Michael and his partner excelled at landing high-impact project work. The agency would scale up quickly, execute powerful campaigns, and then scale back down. The upside: Strong margins. The downside: Revenue volatility. Some months were record-breaking. Others were terrifying. This feast-or-famine model made it difficult to invest in long-term infrastructure, particularly account management and relationship-building functions that sustain retainer revenue. As Michael put it, scaling into projects and rapidly reducing afterward may be profitable, but it's not easily sustainable. That realization set the stage for a major shift. The Merger: Combining Creative Firepower with Account Stability After years of competing against DNA, Michael's firm began merger conversations. His six-year-old, creatively led shop was volatile but high-impact. DNA, a 26-year-old agency, had stable retainer revenue and strong account leadership. They were opposites and that made them perfect. The nine-month merger process was far more complex than expected. Michael describes it as "drawing up a marriage certificate." But strategically, it functioned like a time machine, instantly solving growth limitations both firms faced independently. However, merging on paper is easy. Operationalizing it while "building the plane during barrel rolls" is the real challenge. One year later, they're still refining the model and balancing creative ambition with financial discipline. Account Management vs. Creative Leadership One of the biggest lessons Michael learned post-merger is the value of strong account leadership. Creative leaders tend to chase the next exciting idea. Account leaders think in terms of long-term relationships, financial discipline, and sustainable growth. You need both. Rather than avoid tension, the four partners embrace it. Michael believes healthy conflict is essential. If there's no disagreement, you're probably not addressing the real issues. But the key is respectful conflict rooted in trust. They operate with: Clear swim lanes (each partner has decision authority in their domain) Open debate before decisions 100% alignment after decisions are made No back-channel dissent or lingering resentment. Only unified execution. Embrace the AI Wave But Protect the Emotion Michael doesn't sugarcoat his views on AI. If agencies aren't actively integrating AI into workflows and developing proprietary approaches, they risk irrelevance. But he also warns against overcorrection. Yes, AI improves efficiency and enhances pre-visualization and brainstorming. Yes, it can increase margins. But creative agencies aren't data-processing factories. They're emotional engines. In his view, the industry is currently drowning in data while starving for emotional resonance. AI can create competent output but it often carries a detectable "stink," a subtle lack of human nuance. He chooses to use AI to: enable better creative. improve efficiency. remove bottlenecks. However, it should not be used to replace emotional storytelling. Because humans still crave human connection and no algorithm can replicate lived experience. Set Audacious Goals or Stay Average The biggest lesson Michael took from his time at Amazon working directly with Jeff Bezos was to set ambitious goals. After campaigning to have an Amazon ad during the Super Bowl, he got Jeff's attention and set out to create a top-five Super Bowl ad. But during development, director Wayne McClammy challenged him: "Why aim for top five? Why not number one?" That shift in ambition changed everything. Every decision became filtered through one question: Is this the move that gets us to #1? The resulting product was the "Alexa Loses Her Voice" Super Bowl spot featuring Cardi B and Anthony Hopkins. And, yes, it was ranked the number one Super Bowl ad that year. The lesson for him was about standards. If your goals don't make you nervous, they're not big enough. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training AI is either the end of agencies… or the biggest opportunity we've had since the internet. Most agree it's the second one. Agencies that are winning right now are combining SEO, GEO, AEO, and LLM optimization so they show up everywhere decisions are being made. They're using AI to increase leverage, not replace thinking. And they're restructuring their teams around strategy, insight, and proprietary data instead of repetitive task work. Today's featured guest will discuss why SEO isn't dead (it just grew up), the biggest mistake agencies are making with AI, how to 10x output without adding headcount, and why your unique data is the unfair advantage that separates you from every other agency prompting ChatGPT and hoping for magic. Terry Zelen is the founder of Zelen Communications, a 35-year-old agency that pivoted aggressively into AI over the last three years. He's helping clients win visibility across both search engines and large language models (LLMs) and even building AI tools internally to reduce hallucinations and improve accuracy. Terry has a degree in marine biology, so marketing wasn't the master plan. After college, he tried breaking into the creative world with zero portfolio and got laughed out of the room; until one person gave him a shot. He worked for free, proved himself, connected with a freelance rep, and slowly worked his way up through the agency ranks. He eventually transitioned from freelancer to agency owner by acquiring his own accounts and building relationships locally in Tampa. Fast forward three decades and now he's helping clients navigate AI, LLM visibility, and what modern SEO really looks like. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why SEO is more complicated now, but agencies willing to adapt can still win How LLM visibility will win you business AI: The greatest leverage small businesses have ever had Building an AI consensus engine Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. SEO Is Not Dead. It's Just Way More Complicated There's a lot of noise right now around "SEO is dead" or "zero-click internet." But that's an oversimplification. SEO isn't going away. It's evolving. Today, it's not just SEO. It's: GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) Local SEO EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust) Search intent In other words, visibility is the game. Not just ranking in Google, but showing up in LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. Terry points out that while snippets and AI-generated summaries are increasing, people still want to verify sources. They're not buying a couch because an LLM told them it's the best. They'll still visit sites, compare options, and validate credibility. Backlinks, structured content, schema, quality. It all still matters. What's different is that now you're playing the game with Google and the LLMs. How LLM Visibility Actually Wins Business This isn't theoretical. Terry shared a story of a client who builds modular classroom buildings. A school district searched for "best mobile building producer in Florida" and the client showed up in a snippet. That visibility led directly to a new contract. So you're no longer optimizing just for rankings. You're optimizing to be the referenced authority when AI generates an answer. That means you better have structured content, clear positioning, backlinks, authority signals, and presence on surfaces LLMs scrape (including platforms like Reddit, though that's evolving). The agencies that understand this shift can bolt on new services like AI SEO or GEO and, in some cases, significantly increase revenue. But there's a catch. This space is evolving fast. What works today might not work next quarter. That's why Terry avoids gray-hat tactics and focuses on fundamentals. AI Is the Greatest Leverage Small Agencies Have Ever Had Terry believes this might be the most exciting time ever for small agencies because AI has eliminated barriers that used to require massive budgets. When a small restaurant client wanted a red snapper on a black background for their website, stock photography didn't cut it and real shoot would've required a diver, photographer, cooperative fish and a significant budget. Instead, they used Midjourney to create the image. Then they animated it so the fins and gills subtly moved. The client was blown away. For a small restaurant, this level of visual production used to be impossible. Now it's affordable and scalable. That's the opportunity. Agencies can deliver higher-quality creative, faster, and at lower cost if they know how to use the tools. A Very Real Fear for Future Marketers Terry regularly speaks to marketing students who are worried AI will take their jobs. What he tells them is that AI won't take your job, but someone who knows how to use AI will. The key is not blind reliance. It's intelligent leverage. AI is excellent at: Research Proposal drafting Competitive analysis First drafts of content Summarizing data What used to take weeks can now take hours. That frees your team from repetitive, dreaded tasks and allows them to focus on strategy, creativity, and client impact. But there's a danger in over-reliance. Too many agencies are slapping "AI" on everything without adding original thinking or proprietary data. Your edge isn't that you use AI. Your edge is your data. Every agency has unique client data, performance metrics, positioning, and experience. When you combine that with AI, that's where real leverage happens. Building a Consensus Engine to Reduce AI Hallucinations One of the more advanced things Terry is experimenting with is what he calls a "consensus engine." The problem with LLMs is that they're probabilistic, not deterministic. Ask the same question twice and you'll get two slightly different answers. They also hallucinate. To combat this, Terry built a workflow using N8N (a Zapier-like automation tool) that runs content through multiple LLMs. One writes it. Another critiques it. The final output must pass both systems before it's considered valid. If they disagree, it's sent back through with adjusted parameters. He's also exploring how different LLMs perform best in different roles: Perplexity for real-time research ChatGPT for writing Claude for programming Instead of treating AI as one tool, he's assembling a stack of specialized tools. That mindset shift, thinking like a systems architect instead of a prompt typist, is what separates surface-level AI use from strategic advantage. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Most agency owners don't fail because they're bad at delivery. They fail because they underprice, overcomplicate, and build businesses that trap them instead of freeing them. Today's featured guest unpacks the type of life he envisioned when he set out to start an agency, it took to scale from charging $2,500 a month to closing $45,000/month retainers, surviving a market collapse, and making the counterintuitive decision to split one agency into two. Eli Rubel is the founder of Matter Made, a B2B SaaS marketing agency, and No Boring Design, a premium design studio serving high-growth tech companies. He entered the agency world in 2019 after burning out on the venture-backed SaaS model, despite a previous exit. What drew him to agencies wasn't prestige or scale; it was a desire to take control over his time, lifestyle, income, and location. Agencies, when built correctly, offered the fastest path to freedom without sacrificing ambition. Over the next few years, Eli scaled MatterMade aggressively, navigated a brutal tech downturn, and rebuilt his business with sharper positioning, stronger pricing, and clearer operational boundaries. In this episode, we discussed: Why hiking prices was the right choice early one How and why he decided to create his second agency The reason that shared services failed fast Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Toggl: Agencies could be losing 15–30% of their profit every year without seeing it. The usual suspects are time tracking, messy manual timesheets, scope creep, untracked revisions, and all those "quick" client requests that never get billed. That's why Toggl created the Agency Profit Heist, a fast, interactive way to uncover exactly where your margins are leaking. Start your investigation now at toggl.com/smartagency and use the code SMARTAGENCY10 at checkout for a 10% off annual plans. Why Agencies Beat Venture-Backed SaaS (If You Want Freedom) After years in venture-backed SaaS, chasing growth at all costs, Eli was done with a model he realized was grinding him down. The pressure, the lack of control, and the delayed payoff didn't align with what he actually wanted: family, flexibility, and financial independence. Agencies offered speed to cash and autonomy, which SaaS didn't. Instead of swinging for a hypothetical future exit, Eli chose a business model that paid well now and let him design his life intentionally. It was a shift he made with eyes wide open and clear expectations. The "best" business model depends on what you want your life to look like. For Eli, agencies weren't a step down. They were a strategic upgrade. Hiking His Prices Relying on Capacity and Confidence Eli's agency launched at $2,500 a month, not because that was the "right" price, but because he backed into a simple income goal. Sixteen clients at $2,500 got him to $40,000 a month. On paper, it worked. In reality, it broke fast. As soon as clients started saying "yes" too quickly, Eli knew something was off. The work was heavy, margins were thin, and building a team at that price point wasn't sustainable. Instead of obsessing over competitive pricing, he leaned into price sensitivity testing. Every time the team hit capacity, prices went up. If prospects said no, it didn't matter, they couldn't take on more work anyway. If prospects said yes, it justified hiring and scaling. Over three years, pricing climbed from $2,500 to $45,000 per month. What he learned was that underpricing doesn't just hurt margins. It traps you in constant hiring, delivery stress, and low-leverage work. Raising prices isn't greedy, it's operational discipline. What Actually Changes When You Raise Prices Eli didn't wake up one day and charge $45,000 for the same work he was doing at $2,500. Early on, the offering was vague: "We'll help with demand gen." Strategy was loose, scope was unclear, and the team was tiny. As pricing increased, the delivery model matured into a defined pod structure with paid media, design, strategy, and leadership baked in. However, once his agency hit around $15,000 per month, the services didn't change much after that. What changed was credibility. Case studies stacked up. Results became undeniable. Sales conversations shifted from "this is a great deal" to "this is what it costs to remove risk." Eli was upfront with prospects: MatterMade would be $10,000–$15,000 more per month than competitors, and nothing about the deliverables would look different. The difference was the track record. For buyers who weren't cash-sensitive, that pitch landed hard. They weren't paying for tasks. They were paying for certainty. Why Splitting One Agency into Two Was the Right Move At its peak in 2021, MatterMade was flying high, with $4.2M in EBITDA, tech clients everywhere, and acquisition talks underway. Then the tech market collapsed. Almost overnight, VC-backed clients cut agencies, froze spending, and hunkered down. They went from crushing it to losing nearly $200,000 a month. Eli held on too long, assuming it was temporary, and paid dearly for it. During the restructuring, Eli noticed something interesting: design had become a bottleneck across tech companies. Designers were laid off, but the need for creative work didn't disappear. So he spun up No Boring Design as a separate entity, fast. New brand, new site, launched in a weekend. Within months, it was profitable. Separating the businesses allowed each to have crystal-clear positioning. MatterMade stayed focused on growth marketing. No Boring Design became a premium creative solution for companies stuck in hiring freezes. Trying to keep design tucked inside the marketing agency would have slowed everything down. Separation created speed, clarity, and growth. Why Shared Services Across Agencies Sound Smart and Fail Fast One of Eli's biggest mistakes came after the split. He tried to create a shared management company to handle leadership, recruiting, and operations across multiple agencies. On paper, it looked efficient. In practice, it was chaos. Each agency had subtle but important differences in how it worked. SOPs drifted. Leaders got stretched thin. The "squeaky wheel" agency got attention while others suffered. Eventually, Eli unwound the entire structure. The hard truth: unless your companies operate almost identically, shared services create more friction than savings. Clarity beats efficiency. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

What happens when you come face to face with death and are forced to make a choice?Ethan sits down with Jamie to unpack a raw, deeply personal story about sobriety, self-worth, and survival. Jamie opens up about being a highly functioning alcoholic, the quiet rationalizations that kept her drinking, and the medical crisis that nearly took her life. What followed was a moment of clarity that changed everything and led to a commitment she could not ignore. This conversation is honest, emotional, and unfiltered, exploring pain, meaning, and the power of choosing to stay.For more reflections like this, subscribe to Ethan's newsletter here:https://ethansuplee.substack.com/subscribeSHOW HIGHLIGHTS00:00 Wired Headphones and Small Talk00:26 Jamie's Journey to Sobriety01:31 High-Functioning Alcoholism Explained03:13 The Illusion of Control05:54 Drinking as Medication06:07 The Question of Rock Bottom09:03 Dating, Anxiety, and Drinking Before the Date10:38 Accidentally Sober in a Snowstorm15:10 Withdrawal, Denial, and Pushing Through18:03 Severe Appendicitis and Ignored Pain21:44 Facing Death in the Operating Room25:54 “Do You Want to Stay or Go?”29:43 Surviving Against the Odds31:18 Choosing to Stay Alive36:26 Power, Perspective, and Agency41:30 Self-Kindness as a Practice47:24 Meaning, Suffering, and Choice53:57 Toxic Positivity vs Real Empathy58:04 Sobriety, Growth, and Closing Reflections Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.