Agency Breakthrough

Welcome to Agency Breakthrough, where we bring you real, gritty stories of agency operators who found the path to get past the plateau. Whether it’s hitting on a playbook for massive growth, scaling profit margins, or finding a way to have an agency and a life, we’re here to share how they achieved it; and laugh a little along the way. Presented by ZenPilot and ClickUp, and your hosts today are Jakub Grajcar and Gray MacKenzie.

Last refreshed: July 28th, 2025 at 9:45 AM ⓘ

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Episodes

Tiffany Sauder – On Her Agency’s Comeback Through Vulnerability, Decision Making Frameworks, and “90% Execution”

In this episode, Kuba chats with Tiffany Sauder, CEO of Element Three, keynote speaker, and creator of the Scared Confident podcast, about her breakthroughs related to rebuilding her agency, leadership approach, and personal life. Tiffany shares insights on admitting business problems openly, making difficult but necessary decisions, implementing operating systems for consistency, and communicating organizational change. Problems this episode will help you solve: ✅ How to have open and vulnerabl...

Dec 21, 2023•45 min•Ep. 7

Chris Dreyer – From $0 to $13M: The 4 Cs Framework That Fueled His Agency's Growth

In this episode, Kuba and Gray chat with Chris Dreyer, founder of rankings.io, about the key breakthrough moments that fueled his agency's growth from $0 to $13M in revenue. Chris shares his framework for creating leverage in an agency using the "4 Cs": Capital, Code, Collaboration, and Content. Some highlights: 👑 Chris’ focus on winning the game of business by finding and exploiting leverage 👑 The importance of tracking revenue per employee to stay profitable 👑 Using automation and APIs to c...

Oct 03, 2023•58 min•Ep. 6

GuavaBox Story – Dramatically Scaling Traffic Using Batching

In this episode, Kuba asks Gray about the good old days of GuavaBox—an inbound marketing agency that both Gray and Andrew (ZenPilot’s co-founder) were leading back in the early 2010s. Gray told the story of a relatively simple change in their marketing workflow that led to huge pipeline results for GuavaBox. Some highlights: 🍈 How GuavaBox increased traffic from 200 to 15,000 visitors per month through disciplined content batch days 🍈 Gray's system for planning high-impact content fueled by SE...

Sep 21, 2023•36 min•Ep. 5

Nikole Rose – What it takes to scale and sell an agency (+ tips on culture and ROWEs)

In this episode we talked with Nikole Rose, Managing Partner at Gravity Global (the most awarded B2B agency in the world, 500+ strong), about her journey going from starting an agency to selling it just over a year ago. Nikole shares the key breakthrough moments that allowed her agency Mojo Media Labs to scale and successfully exit, including: 🍏 Making the courageous decision to go all in on inbound marketing in 2012 despite it being unproven at the time 🍏 Being the first agency partner for Te...

Sep 04, 2023•53 min•Ep. 4

James Carbary – From podcasts to media brands (+ company pivots and brand villains)

In this episode of Agency Breakthrough, Kuba and Gray chat with James Carbary, founder of Sweet Fish Media, about his journey pivoting the agency from a blog writing shop to a trailblazing podcast studio to now building full “media brands” for B2B companies. James shares the breakthrough moment that changed everything for Sweet Fish—realizing podcasting alone was limiting and expanding to broader media brands that allow wider reach across channels. James also discusses the books that have shaped...

Aug 10, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 3

Marcus Sheridan – The story behind They Ask, You Answer

In this episode, we ask Marcus Sheridan about his breakthrough story. Marcus is a keynote speaker, sales+marketing teacher extraordinaire, and author of “They Ask, You Answer”—regularly featured as a fundamental read for anyone looking to grow their business (e.g. by Forbes, Mashable, and BookAuthority). We cover a lot, including: Marcus’ stance on in-house vs. external content hires; the challenges Marcus faced when teaching businesses about They Ask, You Answer; and Marcus’ gift recommendation...

Jul 17, 2023•55 min•Ep. 2

Origin Story – Why we're starting a new podcast

Welcome to Agency Breakthrough, where we bring you real, gritty stories of agency operators who found the path to get past the plateau. In this episode, Gray and Kuba explain why the podcast came to life and how we’re planning to run it. We also share a round of recommendations of resources and tools for agency operators. Thanks for checking out our very first episode! Don’t forget to follow and rate us on your preferred podcast platforms. We’re also on YouTube: @ZenPilot...

Jul 17, 2023•40 min•Ep. 1

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