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 12 years old and covers everything from starting a successful agency to selling your agency.

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The Invisible Ceiling Most Agency Owners Never See Coming with Brandon Harrar | Ep #898
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The Invisible Ceiling Most Agency Owners Never See Coming with Brandon Harrar | Ep #898

What if growth isn’t actually about more clients, more hires, or even more revenue? What if the very thing driving your success right now is also the reason you’ll eventually stall?

Agency owners tend to chase the usual milestones: bigger deals, a growing team, rising top-line numbers. And for a while, that works. But there’s a breaking point most founders don’t see coming when the business can’t grow any further because everything still runs through them.

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Burned Out Agency Owner to AI Architect: The Real Shift Founders Must Make With Austin Armstrong | Ep #888
Scale Your Agency Jason Swenk Scale Your Agency Jason Swenk

Burned Out Agency Owner to AI Architect: The Real Shift Founders Must Make With Austin Armstrong | Ep #888

How are you protecting yourself from the real risk of owner burnout?

Agency owners often burn out because they built a business that depends entirely on them.

Today’s featured guest is a former agency owner turned AI SaaS founder. He'll unpack what really caused his agency collapse, what he learned from it, and how he rebuilt from a completely different role.

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How to Step Out of Day-to-Day Client Work Without Breaking the Agency with Brent Weaver | Ep #822
Scale Your Agency Jason Swenk Scale Your Agency Jason Swenk

How to Step Out of Day-to-Day Client Work Without Breaking the Agency with Brent Weaver | Ep #822

Are you still you agency’s “product”? Maybe you’ve thought about stepping back from the day-to-day but feel terrified you’ll break what’s working. Out featured guest is the newly appointed CEO of E2M Solutions and he shares what it’s been like going from being the main “product” at an agency he built and grew, to stepping in to run a 300-person white-label agency.

From losing the fear of breaking what already worked to accepting it’s better if he’s usually not in client call, he shares how he’s become comfortable with his new role: coaching the core leadership team, amplifying culture, and making sure hundreds of projects and thousands of tasks get executed well. Brent’s journey is packed with lessons on what real leadership looks like when you’re ready to grow.

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How to Get Out of the 24/7 Grind and Scale Your Agency Smarter with RJ Huebert | Ep #820
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How to Get Out of the 24/7 Grind and Scale Your Agency Smarter with RJ Huebert | Ep #820

Are you working harder than ever, but still can’t turn your brain off—even on weekends? Today’s featured guest is one of the many agency owners who has found it hard to find the right balance to take care of himself as well as the business. Like many agency owners, he made the leap from building someone else’s business to finally building his own. But trading a cozy corporate job for the chaos of running an agency with dozens of clients wasn’t as easy as it looked.

He shares the real challenges of sales, why speed is still the secret to winning leads, and how he’s figuring out how to convert prospects who aren’t quite ready to buy. Most importantly, he opens up about the ongoing struggle to find the right balance between health, family, and keeping the agency growing.

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When Growth Isn’t the Goal: Rebuilding for Freedom, Not Burnout with Blake Denman | Ep #806
Jason Swenk Jason Swenk

When Growth Isn’t the Goal: Rebuilding for Freedom, Not Burnout with Blake Denman | Ep #806

Have you ever found yourself grinding endlessly, only to pause and think, “Is this really what I signed up for?” Maybe you started your business chasing freedom—only to end up feeling trapped by the very thing you built. It’s a common trap: the belief that working harder and enduring more pressure will eventually earn you the right to enjoy life after a big exit.

But as today’s guest discovered, you don’t need to wait 10 more years to start living. What you really need is a clearer why, a stronger structure, and the right people around you—people who understand your vision and support your growth.

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Hiring a Sales Team? Why Most Agency Owners Sabotage Themselves (and How to Get it Right) with Travis Hoechlin | Ep #797
Scale Your Agency Jason Swenk Scale Your Agency Jason Swenk

Hiring a Sales Team? Why Most Agency Owners Sabotage Themselves (and How to Get it Right) with Travis Hoechlin | Ep #797

Most agency owners screw up their first sales hire. Why? Because they either hire the wrong person, or refuse to let go of control.

Travis Hoechlin used to think building a sales team was a waste of time—until he realized he was the bottleneck. In this episode, you’ll hear how he went from solo closer to leading a performance-driven team that fuels his agency’s growth.

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What Happens When 2 Burned-Out Founders Finally Join Forces? with Devon Hayes & Amanda Joyce | Ep #791
Jason Swenk Jason Swenk

What Happens When 2 Burned-Out Founders Finally Join Forces? with Devon Hayes & Amanda Joyce | Ep #791

What if scaling your agency didn’t mean more stress, but less? Discover how Devon Hayes and Amanda Joyce turned partnership into freedom—and how you can, too. If you’re an agency owner ready to stop grinding and start growing, this episode is for you.

These two entrepreneurs joined forces as partners specifically to navigate this growth journey together—and witnessed how this strategic decision created the growth, impact, and freedom they had always envisioned. Tune in to discover their realization that scaling represented not an additional burden but rather the crucial shift from merely sustaining their businesses to expanding them intentionally and the ongoing challenges they continue to face as they adapt to this exciting new chapter in their entrepreneurial journey.

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Growing the Right Agency Team to Win Back Your Time with Jacob Baadsgaard | Ep #782
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Growing the Right Agency Team to Win Back Your Time with Jacob Baadsgaard | Ep #782

Do you have the right team in place to remove yourself from fulfillment and sales? What about a partner that may no longer be aligned with the agency’s vision or culture? Today’s featured guest figured out a perfect niche for his abilities in data analytics and went on to create his agency. Along the road, he was met with unexpected challenges, like finding out the right employees are not necessarily the ones with the most expertise, ending partnerships that turned out to be fundamentally misaligned, and the best way to ensure he’s always working with his ideal audience. Learn about the lessons he’s learned with each bump on the road, and the most important lesson about losing clients to a price increase.

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The Secret to Keeping Clients for Over 20 Years with Pinaki Kathiari | Ep #775
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The Secret to Keeping Clients for Over 20 Years with Pinaki Kathiari | Ep #775

It’s always easier to retain existing clients than constantly landing new ones. Do you want to know the secret one agency has that has helped them hold onto clients for over 20 years? This interview highlights an agency owner’s whose client retention philosophy involves a candid, honest, and sincere approach which has helped them retain some clients for over two decades.

In this conversation, we explore his struggle to balance entrepreneurial business development with satisfying his creative instincts. He reveals how he eventually established systems that removed him from being the bottleneck in agency operations while allowing him to choose his involvement in the processes. He also shares the clarity he found that inspired a subscription-based product offering that maintains healthy cashflow.

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Using Acquisition to Grow Your Agency and Expand Your Client Portfolio with Luke Szkudlarek | Ep #772
Scale Your Agency Jason Swenk Scale Your Agency Jason Swenk

Using Acquisition to Grow Your Agency and Expand Your Client Portfolio with Luke Szkudlarek | Ep #772

Would you consider a merger or acquisition as a growth strategy? What does it look like to acquire another agency? How can you ensure success for the buyer, seller, and existing clients? Today’s featured guest demonstrates how this approach can be highly effective when executed thoughtfully. He started his agency after realizing he would never get the recognition he deserved while working for somebody else, which drove him to establish his own agency where he now thrives.

Recently, he expanded through the strategic acquisition of three agencies, focusing primarily on their client portfolios. His acquisition strategy emphasizes the importance of relationship continuity, specifically seeking arrangements where previous owners remain involved during the transition period, allowing his team to gradually build trust with the inherited client base. Learn from his valuable insights on entrepreneurship and the strategic use of acquisitions for agency growth.

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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.