The Marketer's Exit

TMT Network
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Welcome to The Marketer’s Exit: Your Front-Row Seat to Going Solo Ever wondered what life looks like beyond the 9-to-5? The Marketer’s Exit is the podcast for marketers curious about freelancing, side hustles, and solo entrepreneurship. Hosted by Tas Bober (former in-house) and Tim Davidson (former agency), we’re pulling back the curtain on the reality of going solo. We share the stuff no one puts in their LinkedIn posts—the smooth parts, the scary parts, and the "group chat only" secrets.

  1. 3 days ago

    Nikhil Hunshikatti on Building a Fractional CMO Practice the Right Way (Ep. 26)

    Nikhil Hunshikatti ran a billion-dollar consumer revenue portfolio at Gannett before going fractional. He did not plan to go fractional. He tried three in-house leadership roles first, lost all three to internal candidates, and only then decided to hang his own shingle. Three years in, he has built a model that works, but not without losing 50% of his revenue in one quarter and spending 18 months too heads-down to do any pipeline work. 0:00 – Intro 1:50 – Background: USA Today, Gannett, and running a billion-dollar consumer revenue portfolio 3:52 – The moment that made him leave and why survival mode was the breaking point 5:12 – Going fractional by accident after three failed in-house leadership bids 8:26 – How the first client came in and why the Pro Football Hall of Fame made sense 12:11 – How fractional CMO engagements are structured and why it is different from a retainer 17:08 – The five Ps framework he runs through in every immersion workshop 23:04 – Sitting at the C-suite table as the only fractional and what that dynamic actually looks like 34:12 – Year one: three clients, full capacity, zero pipeline work, and what he would do differently 43:37 – Losing 50% of revenue at once and how he is navigating a slow market right now 44:51 – His advice for fractional CMOs who cannot find their first client #FreelanceMarketing #FractionalCMO #ConsultingLife Links: • Tim Davidson – linkedin.com/in/tadavidson41 • Tas Bober – linkedin.com/in/tasbober • The Marketer's Exit – themarketersexit.com

  2. 21 Jul

    How Ademola Adelakun went from Magician to building 14 Different Businesses (Ep. 25)

    Ademola Adelakun is a former professional magician who has started 14 businesses, appeared on Canada's version of Shark Tank completely blindsided, survived 93 days with zero revenue without telling his fiancée, and now runs A2 Media, a conversion-focused video agency doing roughly a million Canadian dollars a year. This episode is the full story. Timestamps 0:00 – Intro 1:28 – Former magician, 14 businesses, now running a media company 3:19 – University of Waterloo, the entrepreneurship culture, and the first co-founder 7:11 – Going on Dragon's Den and getting blindsided on stage 9:43 – The 14 businesses: dog beds, cookies, mining Bluetooth vests, and more 17:08 – Why he went in-house and how he used corporate jobs as capital to fund his next move 20:44 – Why video and how Vidyard shaped everything 36:48 – How A2 Media works, who they serve, and why they never hold a camera 43:17 – The partner model and how half his revenue comes from referrals 47:31 – Average deal size, retainer structure, and the revenue numbers year over year 49:35 – The 93-day cash crisis and what finally made him ask for help 1:01:46 – Most overrated advice for going out on your own 1:03:12 – What he would tell anyone thinking about making the leap #FreelanceMarketing #SoloFounder #ConsultingLife Links: Tim Davidson – linkedin.com/in/tadavidson41Tas Bober – linkedin.com/in/tasboberThe Marketer's Exit – themarketersexit.com

  3. 14 Jul

    7 Proven Ways to Get Clients Before You Quit Your Job (Ep. 24)

    Nobody tells you how to build a client list while you are still employed. The advice always starts after you have already handed in your notice. This episode fills that gap with seven specific plays, including ones that your company might actually sign off on. We cover: 1:13 – The situation that prompted this episode and why it is more common than people admit 7:14 – Creating content without getting flagged, including the anonymous account play 22:27 – Networking, the DM script, and why your past coworkers are your fastest path 31:16 – Industry events your company is already paying for 33:23 – The free mentorship play and why charging for it is the wrong move 38:30 – How to use your in-house title in communities before you no longer have it 47:22 – Brand deals while employed and how influencer agencies work in your favor 49:31 – Setting up referral triggers so other people are incentivized to send you business 51:54 – The full 7-step summary #FreelanceMarketing #SoloConsultant #B2BMarketing Links: Tim Davidson – linkedin.com/in/tadavidson41Tas Bober – linkedin.com/in/tasboberThe Marketer's Exit – themarketersexit.com

  4. 7 Jul

    250k Followers, Brianna Doe Built an Agency Without Ever Selling (Ep. 23)

    Brianna Doe has 250K followers on LinkedIn and almost never posts about her influencer marketing agency. She built Verbatim, a team of eight, and a client roster that includes multi-seven-figure programs entirely off content about mental health, entrepreneurship, and being a woman of color figuring it out in public. This episode is the business side she rarely shares. We cover: • Why she hired a career coach to help her manage up and ended up mapping her corporate exit instead • Getting laid off two weeks before she planned to quit anyway • Starting full service, hating graphic design and blog posts, and niching to influencer marketing • Charging $1,500 a month for a client spending $45K and how pricing has evolved since • The accountability coach at $3K a month who mostly just texted her things she was going to do anyway • Why not trusting herself was the most expensive mistake she made early on • Checking payroll math at 4am even when the business is stable #FreelanceMarketing #InfluencerMarketing #SoloFounder Connect with the hosts: • Tim Davidson – linkedin.com/in/tadavidson41 • Tas Bober – linkedin.com/in/tasbober

  5. 30 Jun

    Andy Milligan on Going From $40K to $200K Without an In-House Background (Ep. 22)

    Andy Milligan is 25, and built a WebFlow micro-agency to $200K in year two entirely on referrals and local relationships. He did not have a LinkedIn audience when he started. He did not have a safety net. He just kept showing up, and this episode is what that actually looked like from the inside. We cover: • Getting laid off but using that experience to get a client • Showing up to in-person referral networking groups every Tuesday at 7:30am for over a year • The person he said goodbye to on layoff day who became a client two years later, with that single project paying more than his entire time at the company • The first $2,000 project, the bad-fit client, the harsh Loom review, and refunding the whole thing • Posting 165 weekly podcast episodes and 439 YouTube videos, including monthly P&L breakdowns, without caring about view counts • What niching into WebFlow for healthcare actually changed about the business • His most overrated piece of advice for going solo: ""You can work whenever you want"" Connect with the hosts: Tim Davidson – linkedin.com/in/tadavidson41 Tas Bober – linkedin.com/in/tasbober #FreelancingLife #SoloFounder #ContentMarketing

  6. 23 Jun

    From Teacher to Agency Owner. Brendan Hufford Explains How and Why He Went Solo (Ep. 21)

    Brendan Hufford spent ten years as a teacher, became an assistant principal, looked up his salary and confirmed he was the lowest paid one in the state of Indiana, and decided enough was engough. He started creatinig content, going in-house and eventually started a solo consulting business that has been through genuinely scary moments he does not always talk about publicly. He talked about them here. We cover: • How teaching trained him to keep his head down and ask permission • The 100 Days of SEO project and how building in public before it was a cliche opened doors he was not expecting. • What it was like working under the best editor he had ever seen at Active Campaign • The goalpost problem and why his wife's math lesson was the thing that finally cut through it. • Moving from strategy-only to strategy plus production after realizing clients were not executing anything he gave them • What the CRM data actually shows about where his clients come from and which leads are the hardest to convert • The loneliness, the imposter syndrome running in both directions at once, and the goldfish memory that helps him forget the bad months faster than most people can 🎧 Full episode of The Marketer's Exit linked in comments. #FreelanceMarketing #ContentMarketing #SoloConsultant

  7. 16 Jun

    How Solos can Scale their Time with Codex and Claude. (Ep. 20)

    Tas and Tim pulled back the curtain on how they are actually using AI in their day-to-day businesses right now, including some use cases that made the other person immediately want to switch tools. This one is practical, specific, and aimed at solo consultants who are not AI developers and do not need 22 agents to get things done. We cover: • What MCPs are and how they let you pull data from multiple tools directly into your AI without exporting a single CSV • Tim's Fibbler MCP client dashboard that filters out renewals and expansions to show only the new business metrics clients actually care about • Tas's Codex plus Fathom plus Gmail workflow that turns a client call into a polished follow-up email in under 10 minutes • Why Tas says her email perfectionism was the biggest time sink in her business and how Codex solved it by reading all her past emails first • The moment Tas completed a full workday and still had 87% of her weekly Codex usage remaining on the $20 plan • Tim's airport border control line story and what building dashboards in a two-hour queue actually looks like • Why verifying AI outputs is where experience actually lives now, not in doing the analysis yourself • The Codex pet mascot that notifies you when a task needs approval without interrupting what you are working on • Why Tas has moved almost entirely to Codex while keeping Claude for mobile and content brainstorming Connect with the hosts: Tim Davidson – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tadavidson41/Tas Bober – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tasbober/#AIMarketing #FreelanceLife #SoloConsultant

  8. 9 Jun

    Episode 19: Four Signals You Should Consider Going Back In-House as a Solo

    Going back in-house after going solo is one of the most loaded decisions in the freelance and consulting world, and one of the least talked about honestly. Tas walks through the four-signal framework she used on a real call with a friend who was weighing a tempting offer against a business that was already working. Then both Tas and Tim share what is actually new in their businesses right now, including updates that are genuinely useful for anyone running their own thing. We cover: • The four signals that tell you going back in-house might be the right call for your specific situation • Why comparing a solo income to an in-house salary is never as straightforward as the headline numbers suggest • The friend who woke up to 27 messages from a company before she had even said yes, and what Tas told her it really meant • Why the ego fear around doing the reverse exit is almost always worse than what people actually think of you • How to keep side clients even after taking an in-house role and when you have the leverage to make that part of the deal • Why Tas dropped her core website offer after months of beta projects that were stacking up stakeholders, dragging out timelines, and quietly killing her margins • The end-to-end campaign sprint she replaced it with, how the partner model works, and what it starts at • Tim's mortgage warning for any solo founder thinking about buying a house before they have two years of business tax returns A free plug for Eric Holland, a product marketer who did a voluntary exit with a real plan and built two ventures after leaving. Connect with the hosts: Tim Davidson – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tadavidson41/Tas Bober – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tasbober/

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About

Welcome to The Marketer’s Exit: Your Front-Row Seat to Going Solo Ever wondered what life looks like beyond the 9-to-5? The Marketer’s Exit is the podcast for marketers curious about freelancing, side hustles, and solo entrepreneurship. Hosted by Tas Bober (former in-house) and Tim Davidson (former agency), we’re pulling back the curtain on the reality of going solo. We share the stuff no one puts in their LinkedIn posts—the smooth parts, the scary parts, and the "group chat only" secrets.

Information

  • Creator
    TMT Network
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    26
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © TMT Network
  • Show Website
    The Marketer's Exit

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