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The Tracks Nobody Sees, But Every Marketer Should Hear.
This podcast celebrates the hidden gems of marketing insight found across all professions—both within and beyond traditional marketing roles. Just as B-sides on a single contain brilliant tracks that are treasured by true fans, every profession contains marketing wisdom that isn't obvious at first glance but is incredibly valuable when discovered.
Tom Hootman (00:05)
Welcome, friends, to The Marketing B-Sides. I'm your host, Tom Hootman For the uninitiated, this is the podcast where everyone's a marketer and not a single solitary one of us pretends to have it figured out.
I wanna start this week's episode out with a hearty and happy bing bong to all of my Knicks fans, friends. As you can tell if you're watching this, I'm a Knicks fan. if you live here in Indiana, I don't give a shit. I'm a Knicks fan, and if you've known me ⁓ for any amount of time, you've known that I've been a Knicks fan forever.
the Knicks and their triumphant run to the NBA title is a great segue to this week's guest. Because I found out as we got in to record this episode, her family, and she is also, huge, huge, huge New York Knicks fans. And they went to the parade. I just saw it on LinkedIn. How awesome is that?
basketball aside, today's guests, Akvile DeFazio, and I have been running in the same circles for over fifteen years.
Spoke at an event that a former agency I worked at put on called HeroConf. has has been i in marketing forever. is one of the brightest minds in the business and has worked with some insane brands, has worked with some insane people. Care Bears is on the list.
has worked with some insane people like Dwayne Johnson. what I love about Akvile I'm like talking about you because you're not here and I can be all mushy, is I love anyone who runs toward helping and doing something that fills their cup.
And after spending all these years in marketing, she's really focused on education. And what I love most about it is it's in a world where everyone gets their answers from GPT and has GPT write their emails and do their work and scratch their back and start their car for them, where AI is everywhere. She's created a community where people
entry-level people, mid-level people, senior people can come with questions. An amazing little academy, an amazing little conversation group where people can walk in without fear and say, hey, I don't know the answer to this and this is on my plate. Can someone please help me? And people actually help them. it's just ⁓ amazing all across all across the way. And I mean when you think about something that came up in the conversation, she's worked with brands and they tend to stick around for
six, seven, eight, ten years with her, which I think is the greatest testament of Delivering value.
Relentlessness, continuing to push yourself to do better for people and for clients, and being honest with clients, because that's the best way to build those long-standing relationships and the friendships we make along the way. it's a remarkable conversation. I learned a lot in this conversation. I'm beyond appreciative that ⁓ Akvile made time to talk to us. So
Without further ado, like, don't like, subscribe, don't subscribe. Subscribe twice. Get your grandparents to subscribe. Get your parents to subscribe. Stand on a street corner with a sandwich board or one of those spinny boards and get people to subscribe. There's nothing in it for you, other than the joy of knowing I'll appreciate you for the rest of time. on to the episode. Enjoy this one. Go Knicks.
Tom Hootman (03:06)
Thanks for being on the show. I really appreciate it.
Akvile DeFazio (03:08)
Thank you for having me.
Tom Hootman (03:09)
⁓ aside from the fact we're both Knicks fans, huge Knicks fans, and everyone in the state of Indiana who's listening is clicking off right now and telling me to fuck myself. You and I, it's funny, like we've known each other and been in the same rooms at like conferences for like 15 years, and for some reason weren't connected on LinkedIn, and Aaron Levy pointed it out to me, and I was like, no shit.
Akvile DeFazio (03:23)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (03:32)
And we'd we'd actually never sat down and talked one to one until goodness, a few months ago. So it's like we've been friends forever, but we've never actually like just you and I sat down other than a couple times at this point. Thank you. That's the vibe. I get what you see is what you get. Trust me, when I left Brainlabs and I was like, ⁓ fuck it, let's just be me. This is it. So I love.
Akvile DeFazio (03:36)
Yeah.
I do feel like I already know you.
Ha
Tom Hootman (03:53)
The fact that you've worked with some insane brands. Training's a huge piece of what you do. But like the industry is obviously in a time of flux, we'll say. ⁓ and it's and the social side as well has always been on i in flux. So I guess.
Akvile DeFazio (03:57)
it.
Yes.
Tom Hootman (04:07)
Before we jump in, I'd like to know like how you came to this point where like you're doing what you do today, you're focused on the training piece is like really like something that that I thought was really amazing. How did you land there? And how did you like get to this point in your career? Because I do think ⁓ it's a traditional, non-traditional route that you've taken.
Akvile DeFazio (04:25)
Thank you. Yes, I feel like I was trying to do the traditional agency route and I kept feeling allergic to it and I tried and I tried, it just like, it just didn't feel genuine. So I only did Account Management and Auditing Services for Paid Search originally. And then I moved into Paid Social like the second year of my business and haven't looked back. But when COVID hit, I started having brands, you know, hesitate. Some wanted to pause. Some were asking if we could adjust our.
scope and costs and things like that. And I was like, well, I'll try consulting and maybe training some people because they're junior level people on teams that I was working with at my clients. And I was nervous to do that because I'd never done it before in that capacity. And I found out that I loved consulting and training. So I've noticed I've done that consistently through the last six years, but
Again, with the economy taking a hit in last couple of years, I've noticed an influx in consulting and training requests again because, you know, in economic instability, people looking for other services to still do advertising, but maybe get a little break on the costs. And I'm like, well, how can I still offer my services and my expertise, but at a lower cost to them. But if I break it down hourly for the packages I've built doing that, it is much more lucrative for me. And I've really enjoyed doing that. over the last year, as you know, I'm an intentionally
very small shop and it's just me and a few other like a collective of other experts and I was like how do I do this for more people at scale and I've done courses webinars and it just it wasn't my thing I was like there's so much work and then you have to market it which I get we do that with everything that we do and I was like why don't I just do a community and then I can aim it at junior level people because they can get access to me and my experience.
I can respond to them, I can do monthly office hours and kind of do consulting in a group setting. And I launched what I call Social Ad Academy about four months ago now and it's growing and I feel like this is what I was meant to do in a way where I haven't been this energized about something I've been doing at work in several years to be honest and I feel like
it's just really cool to see other people asking questions and I made it like a judgment free space to where like they could just ask anything where I think sometimes when you're working in house or an agency where you know you're like, well I gotta figure this out myself and sometimes it's a costly mistake. So I feel like I'm trying to be that liaison of information and solutions for people.
Tom Hootman (06:49)
⁓ It's fascinating to me because you talked about like the judgment free zone. And I'm a huge believer in that, in a couple of things. And I've just learned this from experience. Like when you bring in entry level talent, you always have to bring them in in pairs. You they have to have a buddy. Because when you're alone, I mean, I the joke I make is like you you you have to have someone else you could cheat off their homework a little bit, right? Like another sounding board of like, what did you do here? What am I doing? What am I not getting?
Akvile DeFazio (07:10)
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (07:15)
Because inherently their strengths and their weak spots will offset one another, ideally. And you get these groups of two or three or four at a time that would come in. And then at at Hanapin, we did this a lot, is that they come in and they almost like mentor under senior level talent that's dynamic and amazing, that helps them accelerate almost like get up to speed on like how to best approach.
Client management side and like the nurture, not nature pieces, We tend to hire like really super analytical people and then we toss them in front of clients who are way different every day and you just never know what to expect. And there's this mission of creating a comfort level, psychological safety, right? Of like knowing.
Akvile DeFazio (07:50)
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (07:58)
You can ask a question you don't know the answer to and not get judged. But then also like knowing who to ask and when to ask it, to be prepared to answer it and not asking it in front of the client, right? You know what I mean? Like there's an element of the right balance that it feels like you've kind of created with the academy. Where yeah, there's the there's the duality of like senior
Akvile DeFazio (08:16)
I hope so,
Tom Hootman (08:20)
And entry level or junior and it's it's a spot like a space they can go to and ask questions that they don't have to go to GPT or Google it or try to figure it out on their own.
Akvile DeFazio (08:29)
Yeah, and sometimes AI references old things where it might not be best practice because what technically best practice is like, what's been working for most people in the last six months on average where that does change, there's a lot of nuance to it. And sometimes I will ask it things and it'll reference something that was a best practice or old documentation from two or three years ago. Well, if you really know, you know that that's incorrect. So it's good to have somebody that actually knows the history of.
whatever it might be for additional context.
Tom Hootman (08:59)
There's this meme right now of like I'm gonna start talking to my wife or my husband or my friends like GPT. And it's like when you would you know you're like, No, I think that's wrong. Like, you're right to push back. That wasn't right. And you're like, Come on. Like you were gonna send me down this pathway that was incorrect right out of the gates. You talked about best practices. It's interesting to me.
Akvile DeFazio (09:05)
haha
Tom Hootman (09:17)
I've said this a lot when we hire people to like people shift from the the client team to new biz. It's like you have to get comfortable knowing that as of day two, your skill set starts to atrophy because you're not actively running accounts and that the ability to answer everyone's questions on day one, if you're not still in accounts, it erodes. And over the course of a year or two or five, you become more of a solutions finder or new biz rep.
and less of a subject matter expert, but you're still able to speak to some of it almost dangerously. When we talk about best practices, is there still anything that comes to mind that everyone is still blowing money on to this day that you think just doesn't work anymore or that you see that like grinds your gears, as they say?
Akvile DeFazio (09:56)
I'm not really the grind by gear type person when it comes to anything in accounts, but I do work with other brands that might be smaller or don't have a team that's really spread thin across multiple responsibilities to where they do still have hyper segmented campaigns where there's tons of overlap or they're using.
detailed targeting or lookalikes, where lookalikes, we're crushing it like two, three years ago, not anymore. And if it's doing fine, I typically tell clients keep running it, but like you also wanna test what's newer because that's the path forward and Meta's gonna, or other platforms too will like bump it down in the UI, hide it, make it annoying to get to and you know. Yes, so I do try to educate and encourage those types of clients where I'm not managing the account of like,
Tom Hootman (10:35)
Eventually get rid of it. Yeah.
Akvile DeFazio (10:44)
here's what you should be doing because you don't have all the data the platform has. I used to take things with like a grain of salt anytime there was a new feature, I'm like, okay, I'll test it because that's the nature of my work and I am curious. But the same time, like when Meta launched Advantage Plus targeting, I was like, okay, it could do this better than me.
Tom Hootman (11:00)
I love that you said that because there's this dichotomy. I was never in accounts, but I worked around account teams for quite some time. And there's this this conflict, right? Of like i've known who were incredible account managers. Master tinkerers, right? Like you could figure out a way for someone to be successful, a
brand would come to an agency or go to a person and try to find that master tinkerer for their brand and then lock them in and they'd be great forever. And it feels like to me, the master tinkerer role is one where the island is shrinking underneath them a bit because you're losing the ability to make those changes on the peripheral edges. So now when you hire new people you're talking to like entry level folks,
Akvile DeFazio (11:25)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (11:41)
What's the reality now of like how to run an account that is what skills matter when you can't just be technically proficient no matter what and let the results speak for themselves?
Akvile DeFazio (11:54)
I think that now more than ever before that value shift from the mechanical aspects to like being the decision maker, the strategist has been really amplified. Having business context, know, understanding your customers, having, you know, a lot of our work is analytical. There's a science to it, but there's also an art to it and having both sides of your brain, I feel like that really pushes you forward as an advertiser to know those things and to prove
the value of your art and the science paired together. It's all about creative strategy at this point, at least with social. If you can back up with data like, you we have a low hook rate, but a high conversion rate, let's test a different hook and adjust it. And I feel like a lot of people, when I tell them that, like you can actually break down video content and adjust pieces of it so you're not reinventing the wheel every time is really mind blowing to them. And I feel like we've kind of
had that ability for a long time, but it's really important to have those skills now because automation, AI, that's a really big part of how campaigns work really well, at least in Meta and some other social platforms. And it just comes down to your ads doing the targeting. And that's where we have that human component where we have to have an understanding of the business, the goals, the tone, who your customers are and how to kind of put it together with messaging and complimentary creative.
and that's going to do the targeting for us at this point instead of manually pressing buttons.
Tom Hootman (13:14)
Yeah. You mentioned a couple of times like getting to know the business. It's one of my
Akvile DeFazio (13:17)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Hootman (13:18)
I do I'm being hyperbolic today, pet peeves. It's not a pet peeve, but it's something that ⁓ a lot of clients will say, like, we want someone who knows our business as well as we do. and I I I'm a firm believer and I I'll say this, like, we'll we'll never know your business as well as you do, because your business is all you do each and every day. How do you bridge that gap though to know the business enough to be able to make those business decisions?
And not err on the side of, ⁓ shit, what did I do?
Akvile DeFazio (13:45)
Great question. I can't answer for those that have larger agencies because that hasn't been my world. But I feel like one advantage that I do have being so small and nimble is that I get really get to know the brands that I work with. I don't have the capacity to work on endless accounts. I cap myself really strictly at certain level of account management and the rest, like I'm always available for consulting and training and audits. But for account management,
Tom Hootman (13:57)
Yeah.
Akvile DeFazio (14:09)
My retention rate is like an average of like six to seven years per client. So like I really get to know them and I treat their business like my own. I know that I'm still not like their owner. I'm not in the day to day weeds of that business, but I really treat it like my own because I've done advertising for my own business and I know how important this to have every dollar work for you. So at this point in my career, I was not able to be selective in the past, but I am more selective now that I have understanding of who I want to work with.
and make this a long-term partnership, not like, oh, let's, you know, test it for three months. And sure, like there are those instances, but I really, I think that that's where my value lies where like I care. And I think it's more like, how do I optimize this campaign? It's more like, how do I get people to also care? Because I don't have a good poker face. If I genuinely think this brand is cool, is doing good things for the world or a group of people.
I don't know, it innovative, like that hypes me up. And when I get excited about things, I want to tell everybody about it. So that's what I tried to just amplify through my clients' campaigns.
Tom Hootman (15:11)
I think that makes total sense. And I think we do it as well. I realized pretty quickly when I founded Mixtape was the like who's on the other side of this contact form, right? Like what are we gonna have today? Right. Like let's crack open that nut and see. And it's really and you get to learn a lot about like really like exciting, invigorating brands that you may not have even known had been out there. And then there's also verticals that
Akvile DeFazio (15:18)
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (15:31)
you get challenged by that you're like, we could do really great work. This isn't my jam though. This is a bit tougher because you don't get as excited about it, right? And ⁓ you mentioned that you keep a team small, you stay embedded. Have you ever been tempted with because we don't do this, right? Like I from day one, I was like senior led team.
Right. Like I like would gladly have someone I can hand something to who can take it. Because the last thing I went there's a ton of agencies out there that like it's almost like they're a sieve. They're great at driving leads and they hand them to junior talent and they fall off the bottom. Was there ever has there ever been that temptation of like, man, what if what if I scale this thing? Like
Akvile DeFazio (16:00)
Yeah.
No, I tried. I had a few hires in the first four or five years of my business. And I don't know, maybe hiring's not my forte. Maybe I have trust issues. I found myself double checking things a lot and catching mistakes and then eventually being like, I'll just do it myself. Or hire experts. So I know we have a lot of those mutual friends that kind of have a similar format to
myself and we just have referral agreements set up and like I'm not the right person for this maybe this person is and I'm happy to just pass it over.
Tom Hootman (16:38)
Same. Yeah. I mean, there's always nuances of like, okay, hey, like here's how we do things a little differently at Mixtape that I need you to follow along with. But for the most part I want someone that like the subject matter expertise is kind of baked into them. And also like we have two really amazing, I won't even say recent hires. I mean they've they've been with us for a year. They went full time in January that have been like getting them the ability to work with some of the people on this team.
Akvile DeFazio (16:52)
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (17:04)
Is exciting for me. Like I'm excited to hire the next two because that's an element of the magic, like the secret sauce, the magic of like you can't you can't hire 12 of them at a time because there's like an element of like what is it you train it 100% and they'll automatically lower the absorption to 70%. And then if that person trains, you lower it another 30%. That's where things go off the rails. But I do think that as long as you are diligently
Akvile DeFazio (17:06)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (17:30)
seeking out the right entry-level candidates and bringing in a controlled amount at a time, you can replicate some of that amazingness and find the right type A's who are a little anxiety ridden, who run at client issues and want to spend their Thursday night deep diving on a client's business. Those are the folks I think that are like that to me is like the reason I want to scale it is like part of that. It's like that's exciting to me. But it's like it's gotta be very like controlled and managed.
Akvile DeFazio (17:55)
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (17:55)
So the marketing education business. So there's how do I say this? So you go to LinkedIn, you've heard of LinkedIn. This is platform where people say things. Yeah. there's a lot of junk on LinkedIn.
Akvile DeFazio (18:01)
⁓ yeah, think so, yeah.
Tom Hootman (18:07)
When you look at that space, number one, like what did you want to do differently? And then number two, how do you differentiate yourself from the hustle grind AI bro culture. Because I know you wake up to it every day, as well. You get like five, six like connection requests or emails about lead gen or we'll fix this problem for you, or
Akvile DeFazio (18:25)
yes.
Tom Hootman (18:28)
AI assistants that can help close rates by 60%. And it's all junk. I see you as like someone like this genuine article building something great in a sea of scandalous scurrilous pirates. How do you differentiate yourself?
Akvile DeFazio (18:42)
I think you just said it out loud. I bring the humanness to it. for some people, maybe those things are more attractive. Maybe they do provide insight, like not for me. And I've tried to do courses before. I feel like information changes so quickly that I also have very limited bandwidth. So I'm like, where do I want to dedicate it to between my roles as a business owner, as a mom, like as a friend?
I really give 100 % to everything the best I can. And I feel like I've put time in courses before and I didn't see the fruits of my labor. And I feel like I'm much better one-on-one or in a group setting and sharing and answering. And consulting has taken off so much that I was like, well, can I translate this into a broader sense?
I've looked for other similar things and there are other communities out there but more for agency owners, big tech founders, things like that. And I feel like there's such an opportunity for people that are maybe greener, maybe have experience with paid search or starting their first agency job and they just don't have that support because some people are at smaller or medium-sized agencies where maybe they'll be the person on the team that does this or they're a paid search agency looking to
expand into social because maybe they sign on a client and the client's like, do you also do social? And they're like, we'll figure it out. So there's a lot of scenarios, right? So I was like thinking, how do I do this and provide everything I typically do consulting, but make it more affordable for people on a monthly basis that could use that type of support. And it's not a course, you know, I may put courses in it in the future, but I was like, let's start and see if this
Tom Hootman (20:01)
Yes, we do.
Akvile DeFazio (20:21)
has some feet to it and we already have like 15 people in there in the first three months and I'm really excited because they're active, they're posting things, they do monthly office hours. I put my entire like resource vault of all the tools, templates, reports that I've ever had for different types of clients over the years so they can just take it, revise it. Like I'm really trying to fast track these people because they're the next generation and I really wanted to do good by them because I didn't have that
growing up in my career, per say. There's something to this because there's a lot of AI, a lot of people are feeling maybe overwhelmed because there's so much and everyone's just experimenting, which is great. I feel like we're still kind of in the infancy of it, but that human component or sometimes like a lot of those AI things that you can talk to chat to you if you want or whatever AI platform you prefer. But the end of the day, it's like,
Tom Hootman (20:49)
Okay.
Akvile DeFazio (21:11)
When you call customer support on the phone, you're like, human, operator, whatever, like zero, zero, zero. People just wanna ask efficiently and effectively, like, here's my problem, I'm stuck, I've tried X, Y, Z, what do I do now, it's not working. The fact that I can jump in there and tell them, they're like, this is worth more than the first month's rent on this, essentially.
Tom Hootman (21:15)
Z zero, zero, zero. Yeah.
Yeah. I think people are inherently a bit more impatient now and in the past six years, COVID, life. And I I think that it cuts through a bit of fluff. And I think that there's a like, I just need an answer to this question. Like people I think are more comfortable now, like I just need an answer to the question. ⁓ I get it with GPT where I'm like it's halfway through an answer and I'm like, uh-huh, yeah. This is no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Finish your answer so I can redirect you.
Akvile DeFazio (21:39)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (21:59)
Today at the vet even was reading to me, was literally reading to me the prescription bottle for my dog. And I'm like, uh-huh, I can read it. I can read. I'm not gonna remember anything you're saying. I'm gonna read this bottle at six PM. Because that's my thing. Bullet points is my thing. Can we can you give me three bullets and let me like scan it? I was in one of those, I think it was Pavilion was one of those communities for
Akvile DeFazio (22:09)
Give me three bullet points.
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (22:20)
growth officer SVP level. I was in it for a year and a half, two years, and it was great. I used it a handful of times. The the downside was over over the course of time I realized it was mostly SaaS growth people in growth in SaaS and executives in SaaS and there weren't a lot of services people in there. And that was the feedback I gave when ultimately I was like, hey, I'm gonna take a break from this. it it feels like and when I think about what you're talking about now, it's like that quick
Akvile DeFazio (22:25)
Nice.
Mm.
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (22:43)
Give me the I let me see if I can find the answer myself. If not I can ask somebody. And I I I like that it's a I mean, fifteen people. Like do you vet the people who are in it? Is there an application process? I mean, is there have you kicked anyone out yet? I don't know.
Akvile DeFazio (22:55)
⁓ I launched with a vetting process. You had to apply to become a member. And then I realized that it caused some friction. then I, yeah, like people weren't signing up. So then I took it down and said, you wanted to sign up and pay for it, go for it. And I emailed those people back and they signed up within an hour. And I was like, ⁓ okay, great. And they're a great fit.
I feel like I did a good job on my landing page explaining who it's for and who it's not. So I guess that worked out well in my favor. There is one person that is kind of a hybrid. He's a business owner, but it's not meant for business owners. It's meant for people like they're the ones who be doing the advertising. That is their primary job. But he also wants to learn Meta ads because he's doing it for his business, but he wants to offer it to...
his friends who also run businesses and he has like 10 business owner friends where he lives. So I was like, you're not the exact fit, but like you're close enough. like, if you're okay with it, there's an in-house discussion forum there. There's also one for agency because some of the things vary. I haven't had to kick anyone out yet. I do have really good, it is young. I feel like it's gonna come, it's natural, but I've really tried to explain exactly what it is, who it's for, what you're gonna get out of it.
Tom Hootman (23:58)
Day is young.
Akvile DeFazio (24:06)
And then there's guidelines of like, don't be rude. You know, if that if you're harassing anybody, like you're out, like don't DM anybody inappropriately. Like I really tried to take what I've learned, cause I used to work for in-house events prior to launching my agency. And then I feel like I've taken bits and pieces of things over the years of like, what kind of place do I want to build and what guardrails do I want to set around it? But as long as it can be.
Tom Hootman (24:10)
Don't be a dick. Yeah.
Akvile DeFazio (24:31)
relevant and helpful to somebody and they want to sign up, try it out for a month, great. There's no free trial, but if you do sign up for a year, you get two months free, so. End promo.
Tom Hootman (24:38)
Plug good good plug. No, I was gonna
ask you for a plug. Where can people go? Let's just say it now. Like if someone's interested, where should they go to sign up?
Akvile DeFazio (24:46)
Akvertise.com
Tom Hootman (24:47)
akvertise.com It's interesting you brought up the very interesting case of like the business owner is like our ICP, like when a client's not a fit, and I could I could sense your hesitation very like trepidatiously walking that path is
Is when the the founder or owner has managed the performance media side of the business and wants to be involved.
The ideas or the results they expect, general expectations are misaligned and they might be dated by a few years, which can be tough. And we look a bit for that when we're vetting clients and like, are they a good fit? Because that can be that can be tough sometimes, brutal. In your long and illustrious career.
Akvile DeFazio (25:16)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, a little bit. Yeah.
Tom Hootman (25:27)
What's one belief that you held near and dear to your heart earlier that now you think just might be bullshit?
Akvile DeFazio (25:32)
more.
I For me capacity is like a strategic constraint, not just operational. And I felt like I needed to follow the traditional route of scaling with people. And it took me reading a book like years in to actually give me permission to just like, why am not doing my business the way I want? So.
I felt like I was going to fail if I didn't do the traditional route because it seems like that's what everybody does and for their own reasons. And I think there's pros and cons to both sides, but I feel like for me and my lifestyle and like the way that my life is, I finally got permission to like do it my way. And I figured, you know, if I'm going to fail at this by being so small and, you know, luckily I got to the point where I'm able to be more selective, which is great. But I feel like...
I've created other goals and I've accomplished them year over year. I'm like, to me, that is my success. It may not be everybody's definition of success, but for me, like I found what works and I'm like proud of what I've built, even though it's intentionally small, but it's, it's mighty.
Tom Hootman (26:33)
That's wonderful. It's interesting that you said that because it's the
That traditional path is like the benchmark, right? Like, and it's like, what's what's your ARR and how many employees do you have? And you're like, just go away. I could have 20 entry level people and be going insane and putting them in difficult positions that that are tough to succeed with clients versus having, you know, six mostly like senior driven people who are
Akvile DeFazio (26:38)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (26:57)
who I know are in it to win it, don't want to go anywhere and want to do great work. And if you're judging a company by how many employees they have, it's like a silly, silly rule of thumb. Silly, silly. What was the book, if you won't mind me asking?
Akvile DeFazio (27:07)
Yeah, I agree.
⁓ Company of One by Paul Jarvis.
Tom Hootman (27:12)
I'm making notes.
Last question for you,
If your career had a a playlist that was two to three songs long, which songs would you include and why did you choose those?
Akvile DeFazio (27:21)
Scenario by A Tribe Called Quest in the beginning. It's creative, fast, collaborative. I felt like I immersed myself working in-house for a number of brands and absorbed everything and became part of a team and like really learned everything at that point. Not everything, but like, you know, like the first few jobs you have where you're like, yes, like I'm in my groove. I'm finding the thing that I'm really into.
Tom Hootman (27:43)
it's like a it's like keeping with the Knicks theme with A Tribe Called Quest.
Akvile DeFazio (27:47)
I mean, yeah, so we go way back.
Tom Hootman (27:48)
One of my first cassette singles that I used to listen to when I first got my license was Scenario. Song number two.
Akvile DeFazio (27:54)
Song 2, Bring the Pain, Method Man. Learn that there's no shortcuts. You have to be real. I feel like this is like the chapter of me starting my agency and have never worked in an agency prior to that where it was a... and I had to dig into a lot of the new things and become very technical and refined and I feel like...
The early years were challenging, but I found my groove.
Tom Hootman (28:16)
Love it. Great choice. I love these choices, by the way.
Akvile DeFazio (28:18)
⁓
And when I'm not on calls, ⁓ I always have my headphones on and I'm always listening to drum bass. It just, I don't know, like it helps me focus really well, but I feel like anything drum bass, I'm like Netski, SubFocus, ABC, Brooks Brothers. I feel like it brings the momentum and like I'm this chapter of like momentum for my career, my business, like new things launching. And I feel like.
I'm in my groove.
Tom Hootman (28:41)
I love it. Three amazing choices. And I would agree. I think what you're doing now is phenomenal. And I mean, I told you this. You were kind enough to ask me amongst a few other people to like some early questions about it. I continue to be super excited about it. I think it's fantastic because I've having been on the agency side and only on the agency side for so many years, I've seen how do I say this? You you bring them in in pairs and then they kind of mentor under people, and I've seen how.
Good the mentorship, their entire approach really does take on like a Padawan almost, like they become that Jedi someday. and it's incredible to me to see them get the same strengths and also sometimes the same areas of opportunity or weaknesses. And I think that having this community allows people outside of the day to day structure of these are the people I work, especially in a small agency.
Akvile DeFazio (29:17)
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (29:28)
Where you have you have to have trust of at least one or two people to be able to ask questions of and then those one or two people have to have the time and the energy and the bandwidth to be able to answer them. And that's that's a that's a lot to ask of people, to like to hope and pray and connect. You can make all the connections all day long, but if the their mentors swamped and they don't have time, then people start to feel like they're on an island. And anything to make people feel less like they're on an island to me is like the key. I
Akvile DeFazio (29:54)
Yeah,
Tom Hootman (29:55)
Shout out to Grace Kay real quick who was the senior managing partner at Brainlabs and I was the only one in North America and I kind of was just like, what do I do with my hands? Right. Like what is the and then she came over from the UK out of New York and immediately having just another peer to be able to say, Welcome to this island of misfit toys. How would you do this? And she is brilliant like I became so much better by having her there to lean on.
and show me things that she's done for UK clients before she came over to North America. And it just gave me the freedom to feel like I guess it gives people the freedom to feel more confident in their decisions. I love it.
Akvile DeFazio (30:26)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I appreciate all your thoughtful feedback and your time doing that. So you're a big part of it.
Tom Hootman (30:32)
I appreciate it. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Akvile DeFazio (30:33)
Thanks for having me. Great to talk to you.