Smart Agency Masterclass with Jason Swenk: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies

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Arne Hurty is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of BayCreative, a San Francisco Bay Area B2B technology marketing agency he has been running for 30 years. What started as a $500 illustration job has grown into a full-service agency serving brands like Cisco and ServiceNow — with Arne's son and daughter now working alongside him.
In this episode, Arne and Jason dig into what actually sustains an agency owner over three decades: two business partner buyouts, a full pivot to remote work, and a philosophy of building the agency around life rather than the other way around.
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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.
Key Takeaways:
The pursuit of quality is a bottomless pit — and that's why it works.** Arne says he has never seriously wanted to walk away from the business in 30 years. His reason: improving communication is an endless craft. If work feels boring, he says, "you're just not looking at it enough." The pursuit itself keeps going.
Design your agency around your life from the beginning.** Arne made deliberate choices to keep BayCreative at a size that fit how he wanted to live. When COVID hit, going fully virtual wasn't a crisis — it was a natural next step that also opened the door to more diverse talent.
Plan every business partner transition before you need to.** Arne has bought out two business partners over 30 years. In both cases, the transitions were manageable because expectations were clear. If you have a business partner, get the valuation method and exit terms in writing before either of you ever considers leaving.


Let family earn their seat — don't create one for them. Both Arne's son and daughter joined BayCreative casually while in college and needing money. Their work quality is what made them permanent. Arne didn't build a role to justify hiring them; their capability justified itself.
Arne also shares how meeting someone in person at least once — even with a team that is otherwise fully remote — changes the texture of every Zoom call that follows. That first handshake, he says, carries more weight than any amount of video history.
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 to learn how to accelerate your agency growth?
https://www.agencymastery360.com/training
Leo Poitevin is the founder of Astrak, a fast-growing SEO agency based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, specializing in the French-speaking market. In just a year and a half, Leo grew his team from one to ten people — a journey that started not with a bold entrepreneurial vision, but with getting let go from a job during his probation period. In this episode, Leo and Jason get into what it really takes to go from freelancer to agency owner, how to reclaim your time as you scale, and the hard lessons of hiring your first salesperson.
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.
Key Takeaways:
Build for enterprise value, not freelance income.** The first year and a half of running an agency often means making less money than you would going solo. Leo reframed that trade-off by focusing on what he was actually building: a sellable company with real enterprise value, not just a higher hourly rate.


Get your time back by compressing from the top down.** Leo's approach: start at maximum workload, then delegate piece by piece and block more time back into your schedule. If you start at 12 hours a day, there's only one direction to go. Every six months, something that used to live on his plate no longer does.


Know what role you're actually hiring for before you post a job.** Leo discovered that "sales guy" isn't one job — it's a closer, an SDR, a full-cycle rep, and more. He and Jason break down why small agencies need someone who can do everything, and why matching your hire to your ICP matters more than industry experience.


YouTube builds trust and leads even at small scale.** Without a large following or high-end production, Leo generates consistent inbound leads through long-form screen share videos. If you're struggling with lead generation, he says this is the most underused channel for agency owners.
Leo also shares how he built his sales process from scratch using a $7 online course, competitor proposal decks, and conversations with other agency owners — and why he believes you can't survive this industry long-term if you don't genuinely like people.
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](https://flatworm-caterpillar-3mha.squarespace.com/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 to learn how to accelerate your agency growth? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training
John Jantsch is the founder of Duct Tape Marketing, a marketing agency he built over 30 years and the author of the bestselling book Duct Tape Marketing. He has since licensed his systematic marketing methodology to more than 400 agencies, consultants, and fractional CMOs around the world.
In this episode, John joins Jason to talk about the hard lessons of removing yourself from the center of your agency, why smaller agencies have a real competitive edge when they lean into being human, and why the fundamentals of marketing haven't changed; even as AI reshapes the tools we use.


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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.
Key Takeaways:
The team is the result, not you. If clients believe you are the product, that's exactly what they'll demand. John shifted the dynamic by bringing team members into discovery calls early, showing clients they were getting a team — and a better outcome — not just one expert.

Stop answering, start asking. John stopped giving his team the answers and started turning questions back on them. It felt uncomfortable at first, but over time it built a team that thinks independently and holds him accountable to staying in his lane.

Scaling a methodology requires radical simplification. When John began licensing Duct Tape Marketing, he discovered that what lived in his head was 90% too complicated to transfer. It took 5 to 7 years of documentation, iteration, and simplification before the system was truly teachable by others.

Marketing fundamentals don't change — delivery does. After 30 years, John's north star is the same: get someone who has a need to know, like, and trust you enough to buy. AI changes how you reach that outcome; it doesn't change what you're trying to accomplish.

John and Jason also dig into why trying to look bigger is often the wrong play for smaller agencies, how John grew key team members internally over 10 to 13 years rather than through traditional hiring, and why agency owners need to own a leadership seat with their clients — not just a tactical one.
Want a quick overview of John's system? Grab his free ebook at dtm.world/7steps.
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 to learn how to accelerate your agency growth ? 
https://www.agencymastery360.com/training
What if your biggest growth bottleneck isn't your team—but how you're leading them?
Laura Lee Jones built Lion Share Marketing into a 45-person healthcare agency with an extraordinary retention record by focusing on people before processes. Rather than forcing employees into predefined roles, she learned to build roles around their natural strengths, creating an environment where team members stay for decades, leaders stay in their zone of genius, and the business continues to grow profitably.
In this episode, Laura shares how shifting from task management to strength-based leadership transformed her culture, why founder role clarity drives long-term growth, and why profit—not revenue—is the metric that ultimately matters.
What You'll Learn
Why treating employees the way you want to be treated creates long-term retention.
How managing people around their strengths outperforms assigning work based on organizational charts.
The leadership shift from directing every task to building complementary teams.
Why founders should protect the work only they can do—and delegate everything else.
How staying focused on profit instead of revenue leads to healthier decisions.
The connection between founder role clarity, team stability, and sustainable agency growth.
Key Takeaways
Great retention isn't created through perks—it's built through consistent leadership and genuine care for your team.
Stop trying to make people fit every role. Build roles around the strengths your people naturally bring.
Founders become bottlenecks when they refuse to let go of work outside their highest-value contribution.
Revenue growth means very little if profit, team health, and founder fulfillment are declining.
Long-term agency success comes from designing a business where the right people are doing the right work—and the founder stays focused on the responsibilities only they can own.

Have you been losing good people and telling yourself it is the market, the economy, or bad luck? Maybe you've been watching revenue numbers so closely that you forgot to ask whether the profit and the life underneath them were actually working.
Today's featured guest runs a 45-person data-driven healthcare marketing agency she starting building just four days after being fired from an agency job. She'll get into why she intentionally built her agency thinking about employee happiness and fulfillment, how she evolved from drill sergeant to leader who plays to people's strengths, and what she has learned about staying profitable and mentally steady across three decades of business cycles.
Laura Lee Jones is the CEO of Lion Share Marketing, a Kansas City-based agency specializing in data-driven marketing for the healthcare industry. They build large patient and prospect databases, layers proprietary software on top of them, and uses front-end analytics and back-end ROI measurement to drive healthcare marketing decisions.
Laura Lee started the agency in 1995 after being let go from a firm she had run for ten years. She has grown Lion Share to 45 people with a retention rate that is genuinely unusual: some team members have been with her for close to 30 years, and several who could not join immediately due to non-compete agreements came over as soon as they could.
In this episode, we'll discuss:
The standard that makes people want to stay 30 years

Pairing people with the work they want to do

Why revenue is not the number that matters the most

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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 People Stay for 30 Years
Laura Lee does not have a complicated theory about retention. She built her agency around a standard she had for herself: treat people the way you want to be treated, and then actually do it rather than just saying it. When she wanted flexibility because she was going to be a mother, she built it into the culture for everyone. When she wanted to leave early on summer Fridays, she made two o'clock the standard. When she needed childcare, she added a daycare to the building so anyone on the team who needed it had access.
The outcome of that consistency over 30 years is a team that has watched each other's children grow from birth to college graduation. That kind of tenure is not built through perks or compensation alone, but through a founder who did not treat the team differently than she wanted to be treated herself, and who kept that standard even when the business hit years that were harder than expected. People can tell when a policy is real and when it is marketing.
Learning to Lead Instead of Just Direct
As Laura Lee herself admits, her early leadership style looked like a drill sergeant with a checklist, trying to fit square people into round holes. The evolution away from that happened as she paid more attention to what people were actually good at rather than what she needed done. Her agency's standard now is pairing people with the work their natural strengths fit, not assigning tasks based on organizational convenience and hoping it works out.
The specific example she gives is herself: she does not take detailed notes and never will. So she pairs herself with someone who does it well, gets the net summary she needs, and stays at the altitude where she is most useful.
That same principle applies across the team. The grumpy programmer who is brilliant at the work does not need to be socially engineered into a different personality. They need to be left in the seat where the grumpiness does not matter and the brilliance does. That is a structural decision that keeps the right people doing the right work and reduces the friction that makes good people leave.
Revenue Is Not the Number That Matters
Laura Lee has grown her agency every year but one in thirty years and she believes this is because she stays in the relationship and business development role that only she can fill, and she does not let herself get pulled into operations. The moment she drifts from that job, the numbers move. That clarity of role is the structural discipline behind the growth consistency.
For most founders, a revenue dip triggers alarm regardless of what is happening to margin. The more honest measure is whether the business is generating real profit, whether the team has what it needs, and whether the founder is actually enjoying the work. Laura Lee frames it the same way: you are the one who picks what your life looks like, whether you are an owner or not, and you can always pick again. Thirty years in, she is still picking.
Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?
Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out ourAgency 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 to learn how to accelerate your agency growth ? 
https://www.agencymastery360.com/training

What happens when two founders build a successful marketing agency without ever clearly defining who owns what?
In this episode, John Scheer shares how eight years of overlapping responsibilities created hidden friction inside Herman-Scheer, and how a simple role clarification transformed the business. He explains why moving upmarket after the 2022 downturn required a completely different level of strategy, why bringing in a third partner accelerated growth instead of creating complexity, and how his agency is approaching AI as an amplifier of expertise rather than a replacement for it.
If you're leading an agency that's outgrown founder improvisation, this conversation is a masterclass in evolving your leadership before it becomes your biggest bottleneck.
What You'll Learn
Why undefined founder roles create invisible bottlenecks, even when there's no conflict.
How a 360° leadership review helped two co-founders finally divide ownership and improve decision-making.
What it really takes to move a digital marketing agency from startup clients into Series A and enterprise engagements.
Why adding a third partner succeeded after previous senior hires failed.
How to evaluate executive talent beyond impressive resumes.
Why AI should accelerate strategic thinking, not replace it.
The 10-80-10 framework for using AI without sacrificing creativity or expertise.
Key Takeaways
Clear ownership creates leverage. When founders stop sharing every responsibility, the team gains clarity, decisions move faster, and each leader can operate at a higher level.
Market changes often demand business model changes. Herman-Scheer's shift upmarket after 2022 wasn't just about larger clients; it required stronger strategy, operational discipline, and deeper industry expertise.
The right partner fills capability gaps, not title gaps. Their third partner succeeded because she wanted to build alongside the digital agency team instead of managing from above.
Great branding is driven by judgment, not just creativity. AI can accelerate execution, but differentiation still comes from human insight and strategic thinking.
Founder evolution is less about doing more and more about creating the structure that allows others to lead with confidence.


Have you and your co-founder been stepping on each other's toes for years, not because of conflict, but because nobody ever drew the line between your roles?
Today's featured guest moved across the country to Santa Monica after his current partner called him and asked him to take a chance on building something of their own instead of "working for the man". It took eight years of figuring out what not to do, a 360 review that finally split their roles, a niche into healthcare and wellness, and eventually a third partner to unlock what the agency is today. He'll walk through how the role division changed everything, why going upmarket after 2022 forced a more rigorous kind of work, and what he actually thinks AI is doing to branding.
John Scheer is the co-founder and chief creative officer of Herman-Scheer, a branding agency based in Los Angeles focused on healthcare, self-care, and well-being. They work with clients at three inflection points: zero to one startups, high-growth companies around Series A and beyond, and enterprise legacy businesses looking to regain relevance. Two and a half years ago they brought on a third partner with 20 years of operational and insights experience, which shifted the agency's growth trajectory significantly.
In this episode, we'll discuss:
Two founders. No defined roles.

The decision to move upmarket as a response to a shifting market

Why the third partner hire worked

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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 Two-Headed Monster Problem
For eight years, John and Chapin ran Herman-Scheer without defined roles. Neither of them was trying to undermine the other. They just both did everything: sales, creative direction, project leadership, client management. Clients did not always know who to call. The internal team did not always know who to go to. And both founders kept stepping into the same spaces without realizing it was costing the agency something real.
The shift came from an outside advisor who ran a 360 review and surfaced the pattern clearly. Chapin got voted in as chief executive and John got voted in as chief creative. The way John sees it, they both got promoted at their own agency.
This way, clients knew who handled creative direction and who set operational direction. The internal team had a clear routing system. And for the first time, each founder could fully commit to a lane without the other one also running it. That kind of clarity is not just organizational tidiness. It is what makes both roles more effective and makes the agency feel less like two people doing the same job.
Why Going Upmarket After 2022 Required a Different Kind of Agency
John's agency spent several years focused primarily on zero-to-one startups, building deep roots in the Los Angeles venture capital and entrepreneurial community. It worked well until 2022, when the economic environment shifted and early-stage funding dried up. Founders who had been raising millions to launch consumer products suddenly could not. The client base Herman-Scheer had depended on was no longer buying at the same rate.
The response was a deliberate move upmarket toward Series A and beyond, and eventually toward enterprise legacy brands looking to regain relevance. That shift required closing the gap between brand strategy and execution, getting closer to conversion rather than staying in the lofty world of brand identity alone, and integrating more rigorous insights work into the process.
The outcome is that Herman-Scheer no longer competes on portfolio or personal chemistry alone. The decision to work with them is a decision to work with people who understand the healthcare and wellness consumer, the mechanics of those businesses, and what brand actually has to do at each stage of growth.
The Third Partner Hire and What Made It Work
John and Chapin hit another plateau several years after the reset. Revenue was solid. Growth had stalled and they both knew they did not have what it took internally to push through it. At this point, their advisor introduced them to Allison Servey, who had been head of strategy and insights at a major agency and had reached the point where her job was managing people and traveling rather than doing the work she was good at.
They'd already tried with big-company hires and failed, but hiring a senior person who wanted to roll up her sleeves again was the filter. People who come from large organizations where 10 people supported a single role often struggle in lean agency environments. Allison came in wanting to be close to the work, not above it. Within two and a half years she had helped manage out the people who were not a fit, brought in strong people from her network, and shifted the agency's operational foundation in ways that made the growth trajectory possible.
What AI Is Actually Doing to Branding
John is confident enough in his work to know that AI is not a replacement for creative thinking. What it has done is allow people to get ideas out more efficiently, which is genuinely valuable when used correctly. The problem is what happens when junior people or clients start treating the output as the finished work rather than as a starting point.
Herman-Scheer now includes language in their contracts preventing clients from submitting AI-generated onboarding forms. This means clients were doing it, submitting AI-filled questionnaires without reading them, and expecting the agency to build a strategy from questions answered by a chatbot with no real context about the business.
He makes sure AI usage at his agency complies with the 10-80-10 framework: 10% great thinking and prompting going in, 80% of the lifting done by AI, and 10% refinement and judgment coming out. That ratio requires real expertise at both ends. Without it, the middle 80% produces the average of everything the model has seen, which is not a brand strategy. It is a synthesis of other people's brand strategies.
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.