Smart Agency Masterclass Podcast with Jason Swenk
Bi-weekly interviews, strategy, and advice for building your marketing agency the smart way.
The popular agency podcast has just turned 10 years old and covers everything from starting a successful agency to selling your agency.
#1 Agency Leadership Podcast. Check Out Our Past Guests.
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Seth Godin
Best selling Author of Purple Cow, This is Marketing, Linchpin, Permission Marketing
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Guy Kawasaki
Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva and former Apple chief evangelist
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Gino Wickman
The creator of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) and author of Traction.
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Neil Patel
Founder of CrazyEgg, Kissmetrics, and other multimillion dollar companies
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![Uri Levine]()
Uri Levine
Co-founder of Waze
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Joey Coleman
Recognized for his expertise in customer retention & enhancing client loyalty
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Mike Michaelowicz
Best-selling author of Profit First and Clock Work
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Amy Porterfield
Renowned online marketing expert and educator
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Pat Flynn
The leaders in the podcast space
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Jay Baer
Best Selling author of Talk Triggers, Hug Your Haters, and one of the best speakers
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Todd Herman
Coach to Elite pro athletes, leaders, and public figures
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Dan Martell
Author of Buy Back Your Time. Influential coach in SaaS startups.
Why Most Agencies Sound the Same and How Yours Can Be Different with David Brier | Ep #874
Most agencies don’t have a marketing problem. They have a sameness problem.
Their websites, their services, their “award-winning team” language. It’s all the same. They even have the same promises that sound impressive but mean absolutely nothing to a prospect who’s heard it 50 times this week.
Today’s featured guest has a pretty good idea of why agencies are blending into the background and how the ones that win are doing the opposite. He’ll get into differentiation, AI, pricing confidence, RFPs, and why playing it safe is the fastest way to disappear.
David Brier is the the branding expert CEOs call when their marketing hits a wall. He calls himself “rehab for brands” to help get them profitable.
How to Adapt When Your Agency Niche Stops Working with Laryssa Wirstiuk | Ep #872
Running an agency today looks nothing like it did even a few years ago. What used to work: SEO-driven inbound leads, tight vertical niches, and predictable platforms, has shifted fast.
Today’s featured guest has learned to adapt to these changes and went from having a clear and defined niche to letting clients’ needs guide the next steps for her business. She’ll talk about navigating those changes, evolving your positioning, and deciding whether you’re actually willing to do what adaptation requires.
Laryssa Wirstiuk is the owner of Joy Joya, a boutique email and SMS marketing agency that serves women-focused, product-based e-commerce brands. With more than 15 years in marketing and over a decade running her own agency, Laryssa has lived through multiple shifts in platforms, buyer behavior, and agency models.
What It Takes to Scale a 700-Person Agency Without Losing Your Mind (or Margin) with Nital Shah | Ep #870
How big do you actually want your agency to become? Does the idea of running a massive team sound exciting or completely exhausting? For many agency owners, scaling feels less like growth and more like trading freedom for complexity.
Scaling an agency isn’t about hustle. It’s about surviving the moments that almost break you, building systems that actually work, and accepting that what got you here won’t get you there. Today’s featured guest understands that running a big agency is about structure and leadership. He’s grown a global agency to 700 people without losing profitability, sanity, or culture and now he’ll unpack the hard-earned lessons that most agency owners don’t think about until it’s too late.
How to Survive Google Updates, AI Disruption, and Scale a Local SEO Agency with Joy Hawkins | Ep #869
Do you feel constantly worried about shrinking organic visibility, heavier ad pressure, and constant change? Running an agency has never been a straight line. Platforms change, algorithms shift, and what worked five years ago can quietly stop working overnight. Today’s featured guest knows that reality and will share her journey from agency employee to founder of a 43-person local SEO agency, along with her honest perspective on Google, AI, remote teams, and why growing bigger can actually create more freedom and impact when done for the right reasons.
How to Choose the Right Agency Niche and Stick With It Through Uncertainty with Filip Lugovic | Ep #868
Starting with a clearly defined niche can make all the difference when you’re landing your first clients and deeply understanding that niche can carry you through the toughest seasons of agency life. Today’s featured guest built his agency on exactly that foundation.
Before launching his firm, he spent years working as a consultant for governments, UN agencies, and the European Commission. Along the way, he identified a clear gap in the market.
That expertise proved invaluable during the pandemic. While uncertainty hit many agencies hard, he trusted his understanding of the space and chose to weather the slow months, confident the work would return. His patience paid off as demand surged later in the year.
He’ll share the lessons learned from more than 20 years of building and running a thriving niche agency in one of the most political and complex markets in the world—and why focus, patience, and deep domain knowledge remain his greatest competitive advantages.
What 2025 Taught Us: Top Agency Owner Interviews of the Year | Ep # 867
What a year. I sat down with over 100 incredible agency owners and the insights were unreal. From million-dollar breakthroughs to hard-earned lessons, these founders brought the real talk. In this special year-end episode, I’m sharing the top 5 interviews that stood out most.
To everyone who tuned in, shared an episode, or took action from something they heard—thank you. This show is for you, and because of you.
Here’s to a smarter, stronger, more scalable 2026.
How to Keep an Agency Partnership from Blowing Up with Andy Crestodina | Ep #865
What do you do when a business partnership fails? Do you try to engineer the perfect agreement so the exit is clean, or focus on alignment long before anyone signs anything? The truth is, most agency partnerships fail because owners rush into them without slowing down to see the cracks. Preparing for the worst is not pessimistic. It is how you protect the business you are trying to build.
SEO Is Over. AEO Is Here: How Agencies Stay Visible When AI Chooses the Answers with Kasim Aslam | Ep #863
As a user, do you still use search engines or have completely defaulted to AI? How will this shift reshape the agency world? How will ads work when people are only getting the one answer they need? Most agency owners are still treating SEO like it’s 2012 — optimizing keywords, buying backlinks, and praying to the Google gods. But search has already changed.
People are asking AI for answers, not Googling for links. And if you want your agency or your personal brand to stay visible in this new era, the rules are completely different. Today’s featured guest will unpack the shift from SEO to AEO and why most businesses are invisible to AI without even realizing it.
Why the Most Profitable Clients Aren’t Always the Biggest: Selling Smarter with Charlie Clark | Ep #862
Have you ever felt like enterprise clients were running your agency instead of the other way around? Buried in endless proposals no one reads, forced into rushed timelines, or watching your margins shrink every time a project drags out? Today’s featured guest opens up about how he broke out of that exhausting cycle. Instead of over-delivering just to keep big clients happy, and seeing little return, he made the bold decision to focus on smaller, more committed clients who were ultimately more profitable and easier to build long-term relationships with.
Why Clients Keep Asking for Deliverables and What They Actually Need with Niecolas Biggi | Ep #861
Why do clients keep asking for deliverables they don’t actually need? How to get them to focus on the outcome instead of the task list? Every agency owner has had clients show up asking for a website, SEO, or a million social posts, when what they actually need is something much deeper: more leads, more profit, more time back, and a business they’re proud of again.
Today’s featured guest broke down how he built an 11-year-old shop that delivers exactly that. We dig into why small businesses really hire agencies, why “selling SEO” is a trap, and how simplifying complex work can make your agency more profitable, more trusted, and a hell of a lot easier to run.
About the Show
The popular agency podcast has been around since 2014 and covers everything from starting a successful agency to selling your agency. What makes this podcast a must-listen is Swenk’s background as the founder and CEO of an agency for over a decade. Swenk brings his own experience to the table, besides the expertise of his guests. He mostly covers topics that help growing agencies scale to the next level.
YOUR HOST
JASON SWENK
Smart Agency Masterclass
Jason is a family man who also happens to have created a couple big marketing agencies, helped thousands of agency owners, and had a big agency exit too.
