UnF*cked Agency

Brad Starnes

Most agency owners don't have a marketing problem. They have a delegation problem. You started your agency for freedom, and somewhere along the way you became the bottleneck. Every deliverable runs through you. Every fire gets put out by you. Growth just means more work. The UnF*cked Agency is the show for agency owners ready to fix that. Every week, host Brad Starnes sits down with the operators, founders, and specialists who've cracked it: people who built teams that actually deliver without the owner buried in the work. We get into the real stuff like delegation, hiring, systems, retention, and the boring infrastructure that quietly scales an agency. It's honest, occasionally uncomfortable, and built for owners who want an agency that runs without them.

Episodes

  1. Jul 9

    The Loom Close: How Frankie Fihn Sells Agency Clients Without Calls

    Every agency owner has the same calendar: sales calls you dread, discovery calls that go nowhere, and proposals that die unread in someone's inbox. Frankie Fihn deleted all of it. Ten-plus years in, he runs a $150K–$300K/month operation with a team of just two to five people — and he closes clients with a single five-minute Loom video. No calls. No proposals. No chasing leads. But here's the part that fits this show: scaling rapidly broke everything. Frankie got unfucked by doing less, but better. Brad gets him into the "Loom close" and why it actually works — busy, successful buyers don't want to book a call three weeks out and sit through a pitch, they want to know what it is, what it costs, and how to buy it. Frankie's had clients sign up at 1 a.m. from bed. He breaks down the three parts of a video pitch, the two spots where almost everyone blows it (the open, and the "here's exactly how to pay me" close), and how he went from 200 booked calls a month down to six — and closed more. Then there's the part nobody puts on a highlight reel: 20 months without making a dime, sleeping on his girlfriend's couch, burning his first agency to the ground after a decade of burnout, and rebuilding it smarter the second time. If you're drowning in sales calls and sick of trading hours for offers, start here. 🔗 Connect with Frankie Fihn: subscribe on YouTube at youtube.com/@beyondagencyprofits, connect at BeyondAgencyProfits.com, or grab his book at BeyondTheAgencyBox.com. 🐺 Join The Unfucked Agency Facebook group (free) — real talk with agency owners done living on sales calls: facebook.com/groups/unfckedagency ⚡ Brought to you by TalentFuze — pre-vetted offshore talent for scaling agencies, with real onboarding, a dedicated VA mentor + success manager, and a replacement guarantee. Stop doing $15/hour tasks from a $200/hour seat. Scale at TalentFuze.io. 👉 Watch the full video and subscribe to The Unfucked Agency on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UnfuckedAgency?sub_confirmation=1 Are you an agency owner that is looking to scale through global talent? Connect with us at talentfuze.io or join our facebook group "The UnF*cked Agency".

    The Loom Close: How Frankie Fihn Sells Agency Clients Without Calls
  2. Jun 18

    Kicked Out On Purpose: From $50M Sprint Territory to a Seven-Figure Agency Exit

    Matt Coffey was a corporate warrior managing a $50 million territory for Sprint before he pounded the table one day and walked out. He started consulting in 2010 with no real plan, built himself a website to show off his chops, and discovered nobody wanted the consulting; they wanted the website. His dentist became his first recurring client while he was in the chair getting a tooth filled. That accident of a business became Customer Bloom, then Practice Bloom, a multi-seven-figure medical marketing agency he scaled to 30+ people doing $250K a month at its peak. Then he sold it. Kicked himself out of his own company on purpose, took multiple seven-figure bids, and walked. He calls it the hardest thing he's ever done, like selling off a child. In this episode, Brad and Matt get into the actual mechanics of building an agency worth buying and then letting it go: why he started planning his exit two years early by trading marketing for broker advice, why he deliberately made himself removable from day-to-day ops, and the brutal lesson that nearly sank him at his peak (bringing on 30 clients a month with no way to keep them). Now rebuilding as Profit Engines, he's running the exact same playbook a third time, and he's blunt about who he'll let near it. In this episode: Why he repeats the same agency pattern on purpose instead of chasing something newThe two-year head start every owner needs before trying to sellWhy churn, not new business, is the real determinant of what your agency is worthThe "high transaction value, high velocity" filter that decides which niche to chaseWhat performing on stage taught him about business that an MBA never couldThe boat rule: how he vets every customer, employee, and vendor before they get on boardIf you've ever wanted to build something you could actually walk away from, this one's for you. Are you an agency owner that is looking to scale through global talent? Connect with us at talentfuze.io or join our facebook group "The UnF*cked Agency".

  3. Jun 11

    Too Stupid to Quit: From College Dropout to $300K/Month Law Firm Marketing Agency

    Cyle Patnode started the same business three times before it finally worked. He dropped out of college at 21, got left holding the bag when his marketing franchise went bankrupt, and ended up broke at 23. He was waiting tables and valeting cars in a new city. Then the Pennsylvania AG came after him over a lead-gen play gone wrong. Then COVID wiped out every client he had except one. That one client was a personal injury attorney. It's the entire reason Case Engine exists today; a law firm marketing agency doing around $300K a month with a team of 30+. In the first episode back since the relaunch, Brad walks Cyle through the full "f****d" era and how he clawed his way to "unfucked": why he resisted niching down for years (and what it cost him), the one ad that signed a $5K/month client in week one, and why he's betting the agency's future on AI search; getting law firms cited inside ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini before the rest of the industry catches up. In this episode: Why building the same agency three times beat starting something newThe real cost of waiting too long to niche downHow a single case study turned one surviving client into a growth engineThe first three moves any firm should make to get cited by AI searchWhy top talent (not automation) is still the bottleneck to real growthIf you've ever launched something that blew up in your face and wondered whether to go again, this one's for you. Are you an agency owner that is looking to scale through global talent? Connect with us at talentfuze.io or join our facebook group "The UnF*cked Agency".

About

Most agency owners don't have a marketing problem. They have a delegation problem. You started your agency for freedom, and somewhere along the way you became the bottleneck. Every deliverable runs through you. Every fire gets put out by you. Growth just means more work. The UnF*cked Agency is the show for agency owners ready to fix that. Every week, host Brad Starnes sits down with the operators, founders, and specialists who've cracked it: people who built teams that actually deliver without the owner buried in the work. We get into the real stuff like delegation, hiring, systems, retention, and the boring infrastructure that quietly scales an agency. It's honest, occasionally uncomfortable, and built for owners who want an agency that runs without them.