Agency Land

Nobody knows exactly what they’re doing. Some people are simply more comfortable moving before they have the complete picture.For Nichole Provatas, confidence is not certainty. It is knowing what you know. Knowing what you don’t. Then getting on with it.Now Managing Director, Australia at Sling & Stone, Nichole joins Jye to talk about saying ambition out loud, becoming a beginner again and the luck, trust and discomfort that polished career stories tend to leave out.She also makes the case for a different kind of communications practitioner. Influence no longer sits in one place. It moves between mastheads, creators, newsletters, Reddit threads, podcasts and AI search. The job is no longer simply to broadcast. It is to understand culture well enough to make the right match.A conversation about confidence without certainty, and why good leaders listen before they change anything.Got a question, topic or guest suggestion? [email protected] or visit youregoodgetbetter.com — Special thanks to DOUBLESTAR.CO and thanks to PhaseOne and Fat Cat Music for the use of their track Crash & Burn feat. Northlane.

Stanley Johnson has spent more than three decades in advertising, from writing commercial-real-estate ads and mastering the discipline of hundreds of headlines, to leading creative teams across agencies, technology businesses and brand transformation projects.In this conversation, Stan unpacks the difference between being a good creative and being a creative leader; why a creative director’s job is to help make ideas happen; the internal doubt that can keep you sharp; and what burnout taught him about choosing clients, culture and work worth doing. He also talks about MYOB, @BrandDNA, AI as an intelligent assistant rather than artificial intelligence, and why agencies need to rebuild their commitment to nurturing young talent.With special thanks to Carla Martin and Jarra Vreman-Naughton of DOUBLESTAR CO for their support and contribution to the production of You’re Good, Get Better.Music featured in this episode: “Crash & Burn” featuring Northlane, by PhaseOne, courtesy of Fat Cat Music.

Oliver Weidlich has spent decades years inside every major shift in how humans and computers talk to each other, from triple-tap Nokia keypads to Palm Pilots, from the iPhone moment that finally made UX matter, to spatial computing years before Apple Vision Pro existed. He built Contxtual (formerly Mobile Experience) not to scale into an agency of hundreds, but as what he calls a “lifestyle company,” small, specialist, and deliberately built around the work he wants to do rather than the work that pays. In this episode, Oliver traces his path from psychology undergrad to UX pioneer, explains why empathy is a teachable skill rather than an innate gift, and gets candid about the hard, unglamorous grind of building an independent practice with no big brand behind him. He also lays out where spatial computing is headed, and the very real ethical dangers, from pupil-dilation tracking to advertiser access to biometric data, that come with computers that finally understand the physical world around us.Thanks to Carla Martin, Jarra Vreman-Naughton and DOUBLESTAR CO.Special thanks to PhaseOne and Fat Cat Music Group for the use of their song, “Crash & Burn” ft. Northlane.

Stop Asking Your Client To Do Your Job For You!Strategy Hotline is back. Sophia Brockman returns with real questions sent in from agency people, brand side, freelancers, and consultants around the world, and Jye answers them live, no prep, no mercy.This one covers building in public (and when not to), whether to take the podcast ad partnership, what to do when a client hands you a brief for "everyone 25 plus," and a new closing segment where Jye puts Sophia on the spot with zero warning. Her answer might come back to haunt her.Thanks toPhaseOneFat Cat Music — "Crash & Burn feat. Northlane"

Jayden Garcia did agency land backwards. Studied finance and law, worked at Westpac, then started a run club with his two best mates called Runday. The content took off, so they quit their jobs, started a production company, picked a name so safe it meant nothing, then rebranded to Pool Party. Now they run a creative studio and music venue out of Erskineville and never asked anyone's permission to do it.This one's about looking good as a strategy, friendship as the foundation and the liability, and why you should get out and do it before you talk yourself out of it.Hosted by Jye Smith Special thanks to PhaseOneFat Cat Music — "Crash & Burn feat. Northlane"