Episodes

[Cold open [2026 Holiday Forecasts, Inflation & The Post-COVID Hangover.] ends at 07:05.] Signing new clients doesn’t get you very far if you’re constantly replacing the ones who leave. This week, we’re talking about six ways agency owners can improve client retention. We cover setting expectations before the sale, automating communication, simplifying reports, responding quickly, and knowing when to pick up the phone. These are basic things that are easy to let slide when you’re busy doing th...

[Cold open [ChatGPT UTM Drops, Disney SEO & Godzilla.] ends at 08:11.] Getting better results for your clients shouldn’t mean making less money. But if you charge a flat retainer and eat every usage fee, that’s exactly what can happen. More leads mean more calls, more automations, and more charges. Multiply that across your clients, and those pennies start taking a real bite out of your margin. Our move from HubSpot to HighLevel brought this conversation back up. We talk through how call trac...

[Cold open [Marathon Medals & Big Tech Ad Warfare.] ends at 07:30.] Before you spend thousands on a marketing course, see what you can learn for free. We both spent money on programs that didn’t deliver what we expected. This week, we walk through free courses from Google, HubSpot, Meta, and WordPress that agency owners and their teams can take. Knowing the fundamentals helps you spot when some biz bro is charging you for outdated, regurgitated information. We also cover why Google Tag Manage...

[Cold open [Google is testing bigger Local Services Ads.] ends at 06:23.] More clients won’t fix an agency that can’t handle the ones it already has. In this episode, we lay out seven steps for growing an agency. We also talk about deciding what kind of agency you actually want to run. That decision affects the services you sell and the clients you take on. We share how onboarding became such a bottleneck that we stopped taking new clients for months. Clients had already called us out for bei...

[Cold open [ChatGPT shopping fees and profit margins.] ends at 06:55.] The money in your agency’s bank account isn’t all yours to spend. This week, we walk through how we manage finances at Evergrow and how that system has changed as we’ve grown. We cover collecting payments, keeping business and personal money separate, and getting an accountant before your books become a mess. We also explain how we adapted Profit First to give payroll, operating expenses, savings, and profit their own acco...

[Cold open [Reacting to California's ban on addictive social media features.] ends at 06:20.] In this episode, we break down what actually happens when you land (or think about landing) a client that might be too big for your agency to handle. A lot of agency owners mistake the overall valuation of a client's business with the actual scope of work required. When you rush to take on massive accounts without the labor capacity to back it up, you end up compromising quality, burning out your team...

[Cold open [The Problem With ChatGPT Ads.] ends at 07:03.] Your agency already has a brand voice, even if you’ve never defined it. We learned this when a team member published the first Evergrow blog post that Cody or Jake didn’t write. The article was solid, but it didn’t sound like us. That exposed a problem many agency owners eventually face: once content and client communication move beyond the founders, the team needs more direction than “keep it casual.” In this episode, we talk about d...

In this episode, we talk about why the right .com can be worth pursuing as your agency grows. It will not instantly bring in more leads, but it can change how established and credible your business feels. That matters when you are building a real company instead of chasing short-term revenue. We walk through how to find the owner of a taken domain, determine what it may actually be worth, and complete the purchase without hiring a broker. The most important part is deciding what you are willing...

We sat down with Emily Bowie from Thorne Advisors to talk about the boring, unsexy side of tax strategy and fixing broken agency pricing. Most agency owners lump tax prep in with basic bookkeeping and ignore real strategy until Uncle Sam takes a massive chunk of their profit. Emily breaks down why tax strategy starts making sense around the $100k net mark, how S-Corp elections factor into the mix, and how to handle reasonable compensation to stay off the IRS audit list. It comes down to underst...

[Cold open [Moving to Tampa, podcast camera shaming, and getting called "AI slop" on Reddit.] ends at 12:43.] Account management might be the hardest agency skill to teach. We’re moving two experienced strategists into formal account management roles, and the hard part is not SEO, PPC, or reporting. It is learning how to communicate strategy, understand the history behind the numbers, and know when a client email needs 30 seconds or 30 minutes. Those soft skills carry more weight than most age...

We sat down with Jasmine Sotiropoulos to talk about the reality of undercharging, learning how to sell services, and niching down without torching your main agency. Jasmine started like a lot of agency owners, taking cheap jobs on task sites, grinding nights and weekends, and saying yes to everything. Everything shifted when she stopped treating design like "making pretty things" and started learning how to communicate actual business value to her clients. That shift in communication allowed he...

Mark Kelly built Inbound Revenue by doing the work other agencies were selling. For roughly a decade, white-label Google Ads made up most of his business. It reduced the sales burden and gave partner agencies a productized fulfillment system, but it also meant his team had to jump between completely different industries. Mark is now shifting toward direct relationships with outdoor living contractors. We talk about why narrowing the niche gives him more control over budgets, client communicati...

We sat down with Matt Aldrich of Pet Engine Marketing to break down how he built a six-figure niche agency using trade shows and a $2,500 monthly minimum retainer. Cold outreach flopped in his industry, so Matt pivoted to trade shows to build face-to-face trust with local business owners. He eventually turned those connections into paid speaking gigs that positioned him as an authority in the space. Most local clients did not even understand what a real marketing budget was, so educating them b...

[Cold open [Steroids, workout hacks, and AI-flagged social content.] ends at 08:25.] Stepping away from your agency before you have a proper scale built out is a fast track to lost revenue and client churn. In this episode, we break down a recent post from our friend Caesar, who lost $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue after taking six weeks off. While he attributed the lead drop to pausing client acquisition, the cancellations exposed what happens to deliverable quality when the owner steps ...

We sat down with another competitor, Tyler Hoyt of Fast Break Digital Media, to compare how two niche agencies can serve similar clients while building completely different businesses. Tyler explains how he grew from managing every account himself to running a lean team built around revenue share, contractors, a VA, and a setter. We talk about getting out of fulfillment, hiring people who are better than you, and dropping the belief that you need to control everything. We also break down the r...

[Cold open [Paintball, sick kids, and the problem with barber fades] ends at 05:58.] The agency model built on evergreen content and one reliable acquisition channel is starting to break. Last month, 25% of our Google ad spend went to LSAs, something that would have been unheard of a year ago. Now ChatGPT Ads, AI search, and changing platforms are forcing agencies to rethink both service delivery and client acquisition. We talk about why authority matters more than generic content, and how br...

[Cold open [Jake is moving... Again] ends at 10:40.] Google Ads feels weird right now, and we’re trying to figure out what changed. In this episode, we talk about what we’re seeing in real local lead gen accounts. LSAs are getting more attention, standard search ads feel weaker, CPAs are rising, and clients are asking fair questions. We also get into what we’re testing next, including AI Max, target CPA, Google-hosted lead forms, ChatGPT ads, and better reporting. No perfect answers here. Jus...

We sat down with Nicklaus Conley to talk about what happens when marketing works faster than the business underneath it. Nick scaled his hardscaping company toward $3 million in contracts before a massive chunk of that revenue vanished in weeks. The crash wasn't a marketing failure; his operations and cash flow simply couldn't absorb the rapid growth. It is a harsh look at how high lead volume can give you dangerous, false confidence. We also broke down why bragging about cost-per-lead is mean...

This week, we brought on Ezra from Green Frog Web Design to talk about what agency owners usually avoid: competitors, pricing, retention, and what “enough” actually means. Ezra works in the same lawn and landscape space we do, which is exactly why we wanted him on. Most agency owners treat competitors like enemies. We think that’s usually a barrier you made up yourself. We got into his path from lawn care and cold calling to building a niche web design and SEO agency with a low-friction monthl...

[Cold open [Jake turns Iowa’s football stadium into a paintball field] ends at 10:39.] We’re trying to figure out what the next version of our agency actually looks like. SEO and Google Ads are still the foundation, but marketing alone has a ceiling. Adding more lead sources does not help much when clients only see the bad leads, follow-up is inconsistent, and everything gets compared to high-intent search. In this episode, we talk through what we’re testing right now. That includes Google AI...

[Cold open [Jake’s 7,000-word schema study] ends at 11:56] AI is making clients question what they used to pay agencies for. In this episode, we talk about how clients are starting to look at agency work differently now that AI can give them a first draft, a basic design, a legal answer, a finance answer, or a marketing opinion in seconds. It does not have to be perfect to change how they think. That is the part agency owners need to pay attention to. The real threat is not always what AI can...

[Cold open [Bad shaker bottles. Creatine. Gemini as a personal trainer.] ends at 08:43.] Cody and Jake talk through the weird spot agency owners hit when the business is growing, but the work starts feeling less fulfilling. This episode gets into the reality of running a productized agency at volume. More clients, more accounts, more expectations, and more moments where “just manage expectations better” stops being a useful answer. They also talk about what the next evolution of Evergrow migh...

[Cold open (Music opinions, Spotify habits, and Mr. Brightside trauma) ends at 09:40.] AI has given clients just enough language to sound confident, but not always enough context to be right. In this episode, we talk about what happens when clients start using ChatGPT, Gemini, or other LLMs to audit the work they already pay an agency to do. Sometimes the questions are fair. Sometimes they are just AI-generated checklists dressed up as strategy. We get into SEO advice, Google Ads testing, sch...

We sat down with Jackie Studor from Make Model Marketing to talk about the absolute grind of running a niche digital agency in the automotive industry. The automotive niche isn't built for standard agency plays. Jackie explained how her team navigates massive manufacturer compliance rules and co-op dollar systems where a simple error can cost a client thousands. Because of this intense nuance, they strictly hire account managers who have actual dealership experience. They also do something mos...