Agentic Shift David Rodnitzky

We talk to Bryan Wish, founder and CEO of Arcbound, a full service personal branding firm. Bryan tells us why publishing a book doesn’t magically build your personal brand, why getting press in major news outlets is sometimes great and sometimes not, the importance of building a community around you, the importance of hiring a great operator to partner with a visionary partner, and the number one lesson he’s learned in scaling his business.

We talk to Michael Seidler, founder of Madison Alley, an investment bank with deep experience in the agency M&A space. Michael tells us why some agencies will benefit from AI and others won’t survive, how he has used thought leadership to grow his firm, why consulting firms are shockingly more valuable than agencies, the most important factors that drive agency acquisitions, and how to manage your agency effectively during a sales process. Enjoy the show!

We talk to Jonathan Smith, EOS Implementer and Negotiations Trainer and Coach with the Black Swan Group. Jonathan tells us why the EOS system is so powerful, the importance of having an EOS implementer, and how to make EOS work for you for years after your initial implementation. He also tells us how he met and agreed to work with Chris Voss, the founder of the Black Swan Group and the best selling negotiating book, Never Split the Difference, and he teaches us some great negotiating tips from the book. I also share my riveting story about how I used the book to several hundreds of dollars in a car rental negotiation. Enjoy the show!

We talk to Pat McKenna, CEO of DMI Partners, a 100 person agency based in Philadelphia that focuses on affiliate and CRM marketing. Pat tells us why they tend to offer a single solution service offering to clients, why it’s important to maintain quality as you scale, the one sentence that describes his agency culture, what he means when he says you should avoid a zero sum agency, why differentiation matters, and how COVID forced him and a client to make an incredibly fast pivot.

We talk to Sherrick Murdoff. Sherrick ran worldwide alliances and channels at Salesforce. Over more than a decade, he invested in over 80 different companies across 13 countries. Sherrick tells us why Salesforce was open to making minority investments in service companies, why he always wanted to make sure that everyone involved in a transaction felt it was a good deal for them, why so many of his investments did not have competitive bids from other investors, what he thinks distinguishes great private equity firms, and how he ended by investing in service companies alongside Sequoia Capital. Enjoy the show!

In this episode of Agentic Shift, we talk to Keith McCracken, founder of McCracken Advisory Partners, an international M&A advisory firm. Keith tells us about his early life in Liverpool, England (yes, he did cross paths with the Beatles on many occasions), his experience growing, selling, and then buying back an agency, as well as buying other agencies as part of a roll-up, why team members leave after an acquisition (and whether you should be worried), why selling a factory is easy, but selling an agency is hard, and why timing really is everything in agency M&A.