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.
#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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Dan Martell
Author of Buy Back Your Time. Influential coach in SaaS startups.
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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
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.
Your Agency Partner Wants Out. Now What? with Tim Bouchard | Ep #915
Have you ever sensed that you and your business partner want different things, but neither of you has been willing to say it out loud yet? Today’s featured guest bought out his co-founder in 2020. During a pandemic and two months after his first child was born. In this episode, he walks through what that transition actually required, how a black widow client almost derailed the whole thing, why niching into healthcare unlocked a sales clarity he had never had before, and more.
Your Agency Does Great Work So Why Do Clients Choose Someone Else? with Bianca Beatty | Ep #914
Have you ever lost a pitch you were sure you had won on merit? Or if you did win the account, have you ended up with clients that only want to talk to you? Today’s featured guest came up through seven years as head of marketing at a lean e-commerce company, where wearing every hat was not optional. In this episode, she talks about how a story about sorting fish as a child became the deciding factor in a competitive pitch, why genuine connection is not a soft skill but a structural advantage, and what happens to your agency when you never learned to let clients connect with your team instead of just with you.
The Storytelling Framework That Makes Agencies Impossible to Ignore with Park Howell | Ep #913
Have you ever pitched a client and led with everything your agency does well, only to watch their eyes glaze over halfway through? What you’re missing is positioning copy that actually moves people. Today’s featured guest has spent 40 years in the advertising and branding world, the last 20 of them devoted entirely to one question: why do some messages land and others disappear?
Built a 200-Person Agency, Why Cut It in Half? With Hope Horner | Ep #912
Have you ever hired your way into a problem? Have you promoted your best people into management roles and watched them struggle, not because they lacked talent, but because nobody asked whether that was actually the job they wanted?
Today’s featured guest grew her agency team to nearly 200 people before making the deliberate decision to scale back to around 75. She did it not because the business was failing, but because she had learned the hard way that headcount is not leverage.
What If Your Podcast Was Closing Deals While You Slept? with Doug Sandler | Ep #911
Are you treating your podcast as one more thing on an already impossible schedule? Today’s featured guest has been podcasting for over 11 years and nearly 1,800 episodes. In this conversation, he’ll make the case that a podcast, run correctly, removes the sales cycle almost entirely. He also has a lot to say about what it took to step back from working 100-hour weeks in an entertainment agency and into a business that earns a healthy six-figure income on 15 hours a week.
What Happens When Your Agency's SOPs Finally Have Teeth with Andy Janaitis | Ep #910
Have you ever written a process that nobody followed? Or built a folder of SOPs that your team politely ignored and you quietly stopped updating? That was a big struggle for today’s featured guest, until he created an AI context engine that makes their operating procedures actually stick. In this episode, he walks through exactly how it works, how they structured shared and personal context layers, and more.
Does Your Agency Sell Work That AI Does for Free? with Tom Lee | Ep #909
Are you still optimizing your agency's content for Google while your clients are getting their answers from AI? Are you charging for the execution that AI is about to make obsolete, while giving away the strategy that commands real fees? Today’s featured guest works with agencies navigating the shift from traditional search to generative engine optimization. He’ll talk about what the Anthropic research actually says about how much of the work agencies do today can be automated, how AI reads content differently than Google does, and the practical steps any agency can take right now to show up in AI-generated answers before competitors figure it out.
9 Years, Zero Churn: The Agency Positioning That Turns Clients Into Long-Term Partners with Brooke Sellas | Ep #908
Do you publish content consistently but wonder why it is not moving the needle? Today’s featured guest owns a social media agency and built her client roster by getting on stage before she was comfortable. In this conversation, she’ll talk about how she landed enterprise clients with zero churn over nine years, what it actually takes to find a real differentiator, and much more.
What Does a 78% Close Rate Actually Tell You About Your Sales Process? With Jen Jurgens | Ep #907
Are you charging for execution when clients are about to stop paying for it? Are you building your sales process around your offer instead of around your prospect's trust?
Today’s featured guest built a growth workshop that converts 78% of buyers into long-term retainer clients. In this episode, she’ll get into what that workshop actually contains, why the entry offer might be the thing keeping it from scaling, how to stop your CEO from chasing shiny quarters mid-engagement, and what happens when you position strategy as the product instead of execution.
Why Your Agency Grows Slower When You’re the Best Person on the Team with Olivier Bridgeman | Ep #906
Have you ever hired someone to free up your time and found yourself working more hours than before? Have you hit a point where your reputation for quality is actually the thing keeping you stuck in every project? Today’s featured guest and his wife have been building their agency for over 22 years. For most of that time, the business ran on referrals, no defined niche, and two founders doing most of the work. Six years ago they got serious about building a real team. In this episode, he talks honestly about what that transition looked like and more.