Claim OwnershipThe Digital Agency Growth Podcast
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Rated in the top 3% by ListenNotes and going strong for nearly 300 episodes since 2018, The Digital Agency Growth Podcast is dedicated to helping marketing agency owners and executives build stronger firms so they can grow, get acquired, or enjoy more peace of mind. Hosted by agency veteran and Sales Schema CEO Dan Englander, each episode features interviews with successful agency founders, industry experts, and business strategists who share insights on client acquisition, team building, offering optimization, operational efficiency, and sustainable growth models.
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Learn the small shift that makes referrals repeatable. Check out our new video training. -- What happens when years of planting seeds finally meets the right market moment? Alexis Trammel is Chief Growth Officer at Stratabeat, a B2B SaaS organic growth agency. She recently transitioned from account management into a biz dev role. But the real story is how timing and preparation collided. For years, Stratabeat was doing the unglamorous work: niching down, building LinkedIn pr...
When clients start asking "What am I paying you for?", most assume they have a pricing problem on their hands when they're actually facing an operations problem. Leah Leaves is the founder and CEO of Alderaan Operations, where she embeds operations directors and part-time digital project managers directly into remote agencies. In this conversation, she reveals what's happening when clients question an agency's value - asking for more deliverables, questioning reports, or wondering...
Looking to build a repeatable, referral-focus biz dev system inside of your agency? Check out our new video training: https://hey.salesschema.com/opt-in-mw-referral-engine -- What if successful agency business development isn't about having the perfect system, but about showing up consistently in the right conversations? John Caruso is the Director of Business Development at Vendilli, where he's spent the last six years navigating the messy reality of agency growth. With a decade of BD experi...
Here's what nobody tells you about referrals: the real value isn't the introduction, it's identifying who will keep referring you for years. In this episode, Dan breaks down why the classic "let me know if you know anyone who needs our services" approach fails almost every time, and walks through a systematic process for turning your existing network into a consistent source of warm introductions, tastefully. What You'll Leave With: Why asking "know anyone who might need our services?" ...
New Video Training. Referrals already work for your agency, but you've never optimized them. Learn how in our latest video training: https://hey.salesschema.com/opt-in-mw-referral-engine -- This year-end review distills the most important lessons from a year of conversations with agency owners, researchers, and growth experts who've been in the trenches. What You'll Leave With: Why trust has replaced awareness and differentiation as the scarce resource in agency growthThe counteri...
![From Reactive to Predictable: Systematizing Agency Referrals [Encore Episode]](https://storage.buzzsprout.com/y7ah6u9cf4gt5yinxbqwc46mm0ef?.jpg "From Reactive to Predictable: Systematizing Agency Referrals [Encore Episode]")
Chances are referrals work for your agency. Maybe they're the only thing that ever has. But you've never optimized them. [Note: this is an encore of an episode originally aired 12/3/25]. If your agency is stuck in "the Cobbler's Children phase", where you deliver great work for clients but new business feels chaotic and reactive, this episode offers a way out. I'm sharing my referral workshop from the All In Agency Summit, condensed from 60 to 30 minutes of pure strat...
if you're using the holiday break to plan for a strong Q1, this conversation will reshape how you think about pipeline. [this is an Encore Episode originally aired December 3, 2025] Nick Petroski, founder of Promethean Research and the industry's go-to source for agency market data, spent years studying what actually drives growth for digital agencies. Not best practices or guru advice, but real numbers from real shops. What he found challenges conventional wisdom. The agencies getting th...
What actually drives agency growth when pipelines are noisy, buyers are skeptical, and everyone sounds the same? In this episode, Dan Englander sits down with Alex Marshall, a longtime agency growth leader with two decades of experience across holding companies and independents, to unpack what really moves the needle. They explore why trust and relevance matter more than tactics, how storytelling shows up late in the sales cycle, and why relationships compound over time even when results aren...
What if the agencies that crush Q1 aren't working harder in January, they're making one or two critical decisions right now, in December? In this solo episode, Dan reveals why Q1 consistently catches agencies off-guard and what separates those who stumble into the new year from those who hit the ground running. The secret isn't about working through the holidays or setting ambitious goals—it's about installing a systematic referral system during Q4's quieter moments. What You'll L...
If you’re planning your 2026 biz dev strategy without real market data, you’re guessing. In this episode, I talk with friend of the show Nicholas Petroski, founder of Promethean Research and creator of the Digital Agency Referral Playbook, about what the numbers actually say—and how top agencies are using referrals, account growth, and GTM clarity to build next year’s plan. This is the clearest look you’ll get at what’s really moving the needle heading into 2026. 🧭 What You’ll Learn The refer...
Most agencies try to fix pipeline by working harder, but not by working smarter. This conversation digs into why outbound has gotten tougher, what’s changed in the last decade, and how agencies can build a healthier, more defensible acquisition motion. We cover the shift from brute-force outreach to signal-driven, trust-based systems, why TAM size changes everything, and how sales and marketing need to operate as a single unit for mid-market deals. It’s a clear look at the mechanics behind wi...
In this episode, Dan Englander sits down with Garrett Jestice, former CMO and founder of Prelude, to unpack how to turn that randomness into a repeatable Go-To-Market (GTM) system that actually compounds. Garrett helps B2B agencies and service businesses replace scattered marketing efforts with a focused GTM strategy built on customer proof — clarifying audience, offer, messaging, and channels so growth stops being a guessing game. They break down why most agencies start with the wrong things...
👉 Want to build referrals systematically instead of relying on luck? Grab my book 📘 Relationship Sales at Scale: https://salesschema.com/book -- In this episode, Dan Englander talks with Brooke MacLean, CEO of Marketwake, one of the Southeast’s fastest-growing digital agencies and a five-time Inc. 5000 honoree. Brooke shares how she bootstrapped Marketwake from a solo consulting gig into an 80-person powerhouse serving clients like Yamaha, University of Georgia, and Machete Jewelry — all thr...
In this solo episode, Dan Englander breaks down a truth most agency owners quietly suspect: the majority of sales and marketing advice out there was never written for firms like yours. Most “agency growth” tactics are built for high-volume, productized services with large addressable markets—not for boutique, complex-service agencies selling trust, nuance, and strategy to a few hundred ideal clients. Dan calls this dynamic “The Great Mismatch.” He unpacks why the standard playbooks fail, what...
Every few months, I like to pause and look back at the ideas that resonated most with agency owners on LinkedIn — the ones that got people talking, DM’ing, and quietly saying yeah, that’s been my experience too. This episode isn’t about tactics. It’s a quick tour through the lessons that seem to keep coming up again and again in our world, the stuff we all wrestle with if we’ve been selling complex services for a long time. Stuff I cover The trouble with the awkward commission pitch and...
In this episode, Dan Englander welcomeed Carl Smith, community builder and leader of The Bureau, for a wide-ranging, no-BS conversation on where the agency world is headed. 🧭 What You’ll Learn The “Philosophical Futurist” Mindset How to face rapid change—especially around AI—without fear or cynicism.Inside The Bureau The story behind one of the most influential agency communities and how it evolved from a 24-person retreat to a 1,400-member ecosystem.The New Agency Model: Guilds & Partn...
Most agencies don’t have a lead generation problem—they have a leverage problem. In this episode of The Digital Agency Growth Podcast, Dan Englander dives deep into how agencies can grow faster by amplifying what they already have: past clients, case studies, frameworks, and relationships. Forget chasing the latest marketing fad or new sales channels; sometimes the fastest path to growth is working smarter with the assets already in your hands. What You’ll Learn in This Episode: What “leverag...
In this episode, I sat down with @Sharon Toerek from Innovative Agency to talk about the real shifts happening in agency business development — and the constant evolution that comes with them. We unpacked why 2025 is the year agencies need to get honest about their positioning, how trust — not information — has become the key currency, and why specialization isn’t just smart, it’s essential for survival. ⏱️ Timestamps 0:00 – Welcome and introduction: why the agency landscape feels confusing i...
In this episode of the Digital Agency Growth Podcast, I’m joined by Brock Murray, co-founder of seoplus+, a digital marketing agency he launched back in 2012 that has grown into a 50+ person team serving clients across North America and beyond. Brock shares the arc of his journey, from launching his first web hosting business at 14, to building seoplus+ with his partner Eddie, to scaling through multiple growth stages while navigating the challenges of delegation, client specialization, and l...
Most agencies live and die by referrals. But here’s the catch: They usually happen randomly.When you do ask for intros, it feels like giving people homework.And even if you’re consistent, it’s hard to know where the real opportunities actually are.In this solo episode, I share my journey from the “analog networking” days of wandering trade shows… to running hundreds of cold campaigns during the trust recession… to finally cracking the code on how to make referrals systematic, scalable, and pr...
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