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Agency Forward

Chris DuBois

Agency Forward explores the future of agencies as tech and AI drive down the cost of tactical deliverables. Topics include building competent teams, developing strategic offers, systemizing your business, and more.

New episodes delivered every Tuesday.

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21 episodes
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Avg 33 min
English

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#125
Yesterday · 31 min
125 Albert Banks: Run Your Agency Like You're Going to Sell It
Apertus founder Albert Banks, who has sold two agencies himself, breaks down why fewer than 1% of agencies ever reach a real exit and what actually has to be true for one to be sellable.
- Transcript
#124
September 8 · 18 min
124 Three Ideas: Green Pen Strategy, the 10/80/10 Rule, and Finding the Room
Three ideas in one sitting: a strategy-making order borrowed from the Army, a delegation split that also fixes how you prompt AI, and why your marketing keeps landing on a platform instead of in a room.
- Transcript
#123
September 1 · 41 min
123 Chris Bolton: Cancel Your SaaS Stack and Build Your Own
Diviner founder Chris Bolton cancelled almost every software subscription his agency was paying for and spent a year building the replacements himself, and he is straight about what that bought him and what it cost.
- Transcript
#122
August 25 · 36 min
122 Dave Plunkett: Why You Don't Need More Partners
Collaboration Junkie founder Dave Plunkett explains why agencies collecting partners get almost nothing back from them, and how to run referrals and partnerships as a deliberate system instead of a founder-led accident.
- Transcript
#121
August 18 · 42 min
121 Bryan McAnulty: Run AI Agents Like an RTS, Not a Chatbot
LatchLoop founder Bryan McAnulty explains why treating AI agents like a real-time strategy game, not a chatbot, unlocks far more leverage without the burnout.
- Transcript
#120
August 11 · 31 min
120 Park Howell: Why AI Makes Storytelling a Bigger Moat
Storytelling coach Park Howell breaks down why AI can't commoditize a great story, and shares the And-But-Therefore framework that's driven double- and triple-digit growth for his clients.
- Transcript
#119
August 4 · 32 min
119 Rich Matukaitis: The Agencies Winning With AI Aren't Cutting Corners
Rich Matukaitis, partnerships lead at Rebuy, joins the show to break down why the agencies winning with AI are using it to increase capacity instead of cutting corners, and why trust is becoming the ultimate competitive edge.
- Transcript
#118
July 28 · 39 min
118 Nicholas Petroski: The Real Reason Digital Agencies Don't Scale
Nicholas Petroski, who has surveyed thousands of agencies through his research since 2015, breaks down the real data behind why agency margins shrink as they grow, why specialization has become table stakes, and why "scale" and "growth" are not the same t
- Transcript
#117
July 21 · 37 min
117 Mike Montague: How to Stop Making AI Marketing Slop
Mike Montague, founder of Avenue Nine and host of the Human First AI Marketing podcast, explains why so much AI-generated marketing content turns into slop, and shares his framework for using AI to make marketing better instead of just faster.
- Transcript
#116
July 14 · 40 min
116 Emily Hatton: How to Build an AI Operating System for Your Agency
Emily Hatton, founder of AI in Agencies, explains why most agency founders are using AI wrong, how to build an AI OS that actually embeds into your operations and culture, and what changes for the founder once it's working.
- Transcript
#115
July 7 · 41 min
115 Dustin Riechmann: The Five Ps of Profitable Podcast Guesting
Dustin Riechmann of Seven Figure Leap breaks down his Five Ps framework for turning podcast guesting into a real growth channel for agencies, coaches, and consultants, not just another vanity metric.
- Transcript
#114
June 30 · 37 min
114 Tom Lee: How to Turn GEO Into a New Agency Revenue Stream
Tom Lee, CEO and co-founder of Visto, shares what agencies actually need to know about GEO — the mechanics behind getting cited in AI answers, how to build a GEO retainer, and why SEO isn't dead, just incomplete.
- Transcript
#113
June 23 · 39 min
113 Roger Nairn: How to Build a Branded Podcast That Actually Works
Roger Nairn, founder of JAR (now JAR Podcast Solutions), explains why most branded podcasts fail to build an audience, how the JAR system actually works, and what the next era of branded content looks like beyond download counts.
- Transcript
#112
June 16 · 35 min
112 Davidson Wicker: Why Your Project Management Tool Isn't Working
Davidson Wicker breaks down the most common work management mistakes agencies make and explains why the tool is rarely the problem — the missing ownership is.
- Transcript
#111
June 9 · 33 min
111 John Morris: The Financial Blind Spots Killing Your Agency
Jon Morris, founder of Rise and creator of the CPR Score, shares the financial frameworks he used to scale an agency to $40M — and the blind spots most agency owners never see until it's too late.
- Transcript
#107
June 2 · 39 min
110 Jonathan Stark: Why Hourly Billing Is Costing You a Fortune
Jonathan Stark, author and consultant at Jonathan Stark Consulting, makes the case that time-based pricing is costing agencies real money and explains how to transition to value pricing without losing clients.
- Transcript
#109
May 26 · 18 min
109 Speed to Informed: The Hidden Lever in Agency Ownership
Most agency owners think their problem is workload. It isn't. It's latency, and the metric that fixes it is Speed to Informed.
- Transcript
#108
May 19 · 33 min
108 Garrett Jestice: Your Best Client Is Already Your GTM Strategy
Garrett Jestice joins Chris to break down why your single best client is the most underused growth lever in your agency, and how to unlock multiple leverage levers that grow revenue without working more hours or hiring more people.
- Transcript
#107
May 12 · 31 min
107 Mike Grinberg: Why Positioning Is Really a De-Risking Problem
Mike Grinberg, founder of Proofpoint Marketing, breaks down why positioning is an operational discipline — not a messaging exercise — and how agencies can use buyer research and de-risking frameworks to win more deals and stop getting ghosted at the finis
- Transcript
#106
May 5 · 18 min
106 The So That Gap: Why Your Positioning Stops at the Homepage
Most agency positioning work stops at the messaging layer. In this solocast, Chris introduces the So That Gap — the distance between what your homepage says and the operating decisions underneath — and gives you a diagnostic plus five-gap map to start clo
- Transcript

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