The Foundation we Built in 2025

The Foundation we Built in 2025 Speaker 1: Hello everyone and welcome back to the Better Advertising with BTR Media podcast. Today I'm incredibly excited to have a special guest, a special returning guest on the podcast. Just a few times. I told you, we're getting you on stage, we're pushing more speaking, more content. You're really the personality behind BTR. No one knows it. Speaker 2: Oh, no, no. Gosh, yeah. I'm happy to do more of these. I enjoy these with you. These are always fun. I love walking away from these after we do them. Speaker 1: The podcasts are fun. And if you haven't picked up on this perfect radio host voice, it's actually Alex. My COO, my partner in crime, like the one and only operational integrator behind the scenes man making everything happen has joined us. Speaker 2: Yes. Pleasure to be here. Speaker 1: And we have a lot to talk about. I think one of the things that we are really excited to be in person to chat about is just looking back on everything we accomplished in 2025. It's a lot. Speaker 2: We went on a little walk around the neighborhood to prep for this. Those are those small moments where we really zoom out like, wow, yes, okay. We start putting numbers behind some of the things and some trends we saw. That big picture comes back to us really quickly here and it's fun. This is my favorite type of thing to do with you on the pod together is recap. You've got that strategy stuff so down, packed and locked. Speaker 1: And what a year it was for ad strategy alone. The fact that we are able to grow as individuals and as a company while also maintaining the chaos that is our industry, I think is enough to give ourselves a really quick pat on the back. Speaker 2: Yeah, most definitely. Speaker 1: So let's share some of the updates. Like you said, you want to start high level. What are the two to three biggest call-outs that you would say really defined Better Media's 2025? Speaker 2: So something we're thinking a lot about now is, you know, it's been two years since we rebranded from Better AMS to Better Media. And I think the phase that if I look back on the last 12 months, I feel like we have As part of that rebrand, when we look at the ICP we were going after, I think we have definitely moved from finding market fit to we have market traction. That's reflected in our revenue growth, our retention rate, the scope of services we're offering our clients, everything that you said ad strategy-wise. It's so different. The conversations we're having now are drastically different than the ones we had 12 months ago, let alone 36 months ago. We wouldn't even recognize that. But high level across the board, how is some of that measured? Our run rate, that tends to be the more common metric we look at in our industry is up 61%, while our total revenue for the year is up 65 compared to last year. All while growing headcount only 21% this year. Speaker 1: Yeah, and I would say that's a testament to two things. We joke a lot about our space and what it's like working agency side and the chaos and the diminishing culture and the diminishing vibes that are required when you grow that quickly. And we definitely felt some of that friction, I will say. Like that's something we'll be very candid about is there was what kept us up at night, what kept me up at night is worrying about our team and our culture and mental health in our space. But we invested really heavily and I think two key initiatives that helped us grow in that regard. And one is We really leaned into just hiring exceptional talent, being a little bit more diligent around who we are bringing on to the team, not saying yes to anyone and everyone because things were on fire. We really invested in exceptional talent from A-plus players. That allowed us to scale revenue while still, I would say, improving our margins. The second thing is investing in technology. This is always a funny conversation because we don't speak a lot about it. So I think there's always some misconceptions in the space around like BTR Media, who we work with, the SaaS behind us and what that looks like. At the end of the day, we've built incredible technology, but it's not always the shiny retail media things. I mean, we never want to compete directly with the retailers. That was feedback we got early on. I'm not going into our tech, which is called Nexus, and recommending that Dustin builds out a mechanism that I know Amazon's just going to build out in a few more weeks, right? So all of our technology is really focused on a few things, and one of them is operational efficiency. What is our team doing over and over that they need assistance to do more consistently and more efficiently? But also it's investing in what do our clients need to see? What kind of conversations are we having in the day-to-day that we could solve with better visualizations of data and insights? That's a big one that I don't think we shout loud enough because everyone knows we're an education-first company. That's not going to change. We are very big in community content and education and we want to continue to do that, but that means a lot of the brands that come our way. Are very aware of our strategies, but also working with us because they want strategic leadership and education. So when we're able to provide them a portal that allows them to access some of the insights that we're using to strategically make decisions and accounts, it builds so much trust that it gives our team more bandwidth to do what they do best. And that's make strategic recommendations and grow and be thought leaders where I think a lot of our competitor agencies go in the opposite direction. Things get tough and they decide to withhold information from their accounts and they decide to hire younger talent that can't speak as eloquently but they can manage more. We did the exact opposite. Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%. I think there's one kind of theme that we come back to around tech and development, especially from an investment POV. That's definitely a place that got a lot of dollars this year. We're educators, like you said, and the core of that is relationship building, strategy, but the human-to-human element of that part too. And that question is, I think, probably the number one driving force to everything we do with tech is, what story are people telling? How are we telling it and how do we make it easier for them to tell it? And that's something that we can come back to right now. It feels like quarterly, but at least every six to 12 months, because what we built to answer that in 2023 was very different than 2024 and is going to be very, very different for 2026. As we, when we opened the podcast, somehow our scope of works are different. The retailers we're supporting are growing. That story that we're challenging our team to tell that their clients need to hear. The data that we need to have to make that as easy as possible for them so they can continue to focus on the part that they enjoy the most, it's evergreen. Speaker 1: It was an amazing year. We've known that we are Amazon advertising experts. It was rooted in our name. Better AMS, Amazon Marketing Services. To push the needle on our offer and our strategic insights and the depth of our knowledge when it comes to retail media networks was our bet that we made in 2025. Yeah. And a fun little fact that I think backs into just how well we were able to grow into that new vision of better media and BTR is that We've had this crazy expansion in scope, crazy expansion in the clientele in our offer, and we've maintained it at a 98% client retention rate. So a really big piece of feedback we got at the beginning of the year is, okay, you've proved that you can close these deals. Now prove that you can provide the level of service they're going to be looking for. And I think our team has done that exceptionally. This year, in my opinion, it has been probably one of my proudest moments is seeing how well they have nailed service delivery in that regard. Speaker 2: 100%. That was our big challenge coming into the year is do focus on, if nothing else, just how you've attracted the business. Now keep it. And now more of it's coming in the door, which is setting the ground for 2026 very high. Speaker 1: Which I think leads us to this next section. We've talked a lot about the good. In your opinion, speak from your personal perspective first and then maybe zoom out to better media. Speaker 2: Sure. Speaker 1: What do you think some of the hardest lessons we learned this year were? Speaker 2: I think my biggest struggle for 2025 was as COO, the operator, I'm very much your right-hand integrator as the visionary. This is the year I feel like we transformed probably the most into executives more than We haven't been super hands-on, I would say, in the last 24 months, not to where you and I were in the trenches a few years ago. But so much of being an operator, my identity is in the doing. And I'm finding myself, you know, the most important part of our day is conversations we're having or conversations we need to have or do. And so, for me, there's this identity shift of even though as an operator and integrator, I'm losing a little bit of what I know. That comfort zone of like, OK, I know if I wake up today and do this, it's going to be a good thing. It's going to be valuable. That is getting a little more. There's a little bit more gray area there. It's not so much. I need to log in and do payroll tomorrow or check on this client account or make sure this thing it's oh, hey, there's a bridge. There's a big disconnect happening across these three departments that involves these four people and these conversations. And it's not a it's not an immediate fix. So I think. That's probably my biggest thing, I think, personally, like the identity piece there and then also in the business, continuing to challenge myself on how am I showing up for the business every day, giving it my best and what it needs to continue. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great call. I would say mine's a little bit similar, but different. My strengths are really, I think, in the leadership, the vision, the culture side. That's something I'm incredibly passionate about. And I came to the realization that sometime in the middle of the year, I was like, you know, we are putting ceilings on our people, not because we don't think that they can do it, but because we are concerned it's too much on their plates. And that was kind of an eye-opening moment for me because I am very passionate about our culture. Alex and I are not building this company just for the sake of revenue growth. We enjoy every day of what we're doing in the team that we're working with. And that's a really key piece, I think, to how we've built our core values, how we've attracted talent, the clients that we decide to work with. And there were a few moments, quite a few moments this year where it was like, Oh my gosh, we just signed another contract and we need to hire and or oh my gosh, I don't know if that person is quite ready to take the leap and go lead their first webinar or speak on stage. And I realized that we are preemptively putting glass ceilings on our people when in reality what we found is we hire A-players. The majority of our team is truly ex-collegiate athletes. I think over 80% of our CS team played collegiate sports. Which is incredible. And what we realized is if we give them the challenge, they'll figure it out. And if they can't figure it out, that actually teaches us where we need to improve our systems or education. And if we communicate that ahead of time and we're incredibly candid around the type of culture being fail fast, then our people step up to the plate without fear of failure, fear of making mistakes. And they figure it out and they figure out how to do it almost better than we had because they're starting without this perception of how something should be done. And that's been really, really incredible. I mean, we've had talent that's been with us for, you know, less than 12 months and we're like, go take this on. You got this. Like you're absolutely crushing. And when we stopped putting those ceilings on our people, I think it was one of the biggest growth opportunities. And what we found is they're not going to leave. Well, I mean, knock on wood. If you have a better offer, obviously take it. But it didn't diminish our culture in the way that I thought it would because we're still providing a lot of support. We're not throwing tasks on them and then getting mad if they do it wrong. We're throwing tasks on them and then helping them grow. And that's caused so much career development. I think it's balanced some of the insecurity that you typically see. Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%. And time and time again, when we zoom out or we take a step back and we let them grow and step into that, we're more than made proud, right? We always joke, especially when we're building confidence with new hires, like, look, no one's ever been fired for making a mistake. People have misspent money. We've seen it all at this point. The things get bigger and more challenging as we go. And I think that's a really cool thing for you and I. As we empower people to do these things, not only are they doing it incredibly well, but it's making our lives so much easier to be more effective where we need to be as well. And we would be okay even if it was done, I'd say, 80% as well, just for that same sake as well. Speaker 1: That's something that I think we have been able to do well because we didn't come from a normal corporate background or we were able to come into it with a little bit of Naive optimism. I mean, you and I got started on Amazon seven years ago, and now we're running questionably one of the most well-known agencies in Amazon advertising and retail media in general, probably. And it's because of that naive optimism. We're like, if we can figure if we can do this, then like, just give other people the opportunity. And we've given a lot of guidance and education and trust in our team, knowing that, hey, they may not do it 100% the first time, but they're going to figure it out. And that allows us to lean into our strengths, which is I would say, you know, if there's any small agency owners leaning in, there's two big pieces that I think have been the number one driver in our growth. One is we made a lot of short-term sacrifices that are paying off for long-term opportunities. We priced ourselves lower in the market in order to win some deals that we Maybe she could have priced higher, but the retention was incredible and it led to referrals and an incredible reputation in the space. We're still 100% inbound led agency because of that. The second thing that we did is we made a lot of sacrifices in things like revenue and profitability in order to take care of our people. It's a stressful space and it's not easy. And we wanted to maintain amazing talent because we knew how hard it is to train people on BTR standards. And I think, again, that was a risk that we took and it's incredibly paid off for us because now we are known for having some of the highest standards in the space. Speaker 2: We went opposite, I think, of most of the advice people would tell you early on, right? We hired really well. We paid probably more than we could have or should have at the time. And we empowered a lot of people really soon, right? Say, look, here's your book of business. Take it and run. To your point, right? We signed deals probably way too cheap. Where if that deal would have just been 30% higher, it would have maybe made some things happen a little bit quicker in the early days. But now, as we've seen the spiderweb of all this, we just have an army of people out there who had really good experiences, have continued to stay connected. And that's exactly how we end up where we're at today with a completely inbound referral-based pipeline that we really can't keep up with at the moment right now. Speaker 1: Small things like giving away your time for free. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: That's always your first piece of advice an entrepreneur is, you know, I was hopping on webinars and answering questions for competitor agencies. I spent so much time on LinkedIn responding to DMs, teaching people how to run sponsored brand ads. We waived a lot of fees. For brands, even if results were good, but maybe not perfect, we went out of our way to waive fees to make sure people left with like the best taste in their mouth. Because I think we saw so early on, you know, our whole business, again, driven off content education influence. We saw if we just take care of people, yes, it hurt in the short term, but in the long term, I think it's been one of the number one growth drivers is just having that mindset of we're building something that is going to be here five years from now and that momentum and that positive flywheel is definitely spinning. Speaker 2: Yeah. Doing the unscalable. Yeah. And as we get to a point where we're scaling and we need the process, it's a really, I think one of the fun dynamics I love right now with our leadership team is picking those areas like, hey, we're The whole reason where we're at today is because we did the unscalable. And so for you, what is that? What is the most exciting thing we don't want to lose? Obviously, we need to have a little more structure and SOPs and accountability. None of that goes away. We need that to continue to deliver excellence. But what are those things that will let us keep this white glove Ritz-Carlton effect that we're trying to build at BTR? Speaker 1: Absolutely. And I think it's only going to Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm not wrong. But as AI disrupts our space, what is going to allow agencies to stand out are strategic thought leaders who take the time to understand context and build relationships. It is not a competitive advantage to hit a ROAS target anymore. AI can do the math, assume the algorithm, the creative, a lot of that. But AI needs the context. They need to know what leadership's trying to achieve. You know, what are the market conditions? You know, how well does your creative speak to a specific audience? AI can help with that. But you need human led context. And that's what probably I'm most proud about, most excited about in 2026 is we're seeing A lot of disruption in space, a lot of layoffs in the space because headcount's incredibly high because they had a lot of button pushers on the team. That was something you and I were very adamant about not wanting to do early on. We wanted to hire people that are strategic leaders We're a team of people that are passionate about the industry. So when Amazon announces 23 announcements at Unboxed that completely change how we're viewing search ads, our team's already been in the betas because they were thought leaders and excited and they found an ad console three weeks ago and started playing around with it before it was live. It puts us in a good spot, I think. What do you think you're most excited for when it comes to 2026 and the better media that has built this foundation and is going to show up in 2026? What are you most excited for? Speaker 2: Looking back on 2025, this was probably the most rewarding and most fun It's been a great year that we've had. And it was also reflected in a lot of ways. If we speak candidly here, we've always been having fun in the journey and growing. We finally saw that reflected pretty meaningfully on the financial side this year. And so if we continue even half of the pace that we're at right now, we're getting to that point where those numbers really start to scale and it really starts to get quite a bit more meaningful. When we think about just the things we want to be doing, continuing doing with the team, There's a lot more of that that will be accessible, right? We're still in a period sometimes where we have to pick one thing or over the other or we've got four good ideas and we can go after one or two of them. And so as the business stays on that trajectory, being able to say yes and then trickle down that we were just talking about of empowering our leaders to challenge themselves to go find those new ideas. I love that piece. We've started sprinkling in some themes for 2026 and, you know, the flip side of my earlier comment around, you know, what you think what the struggle was or like the identity thing. Even as like putting aside the operator integrator piece of my role, what I am excited about 2026 is the people aspect. 2026 is going to be our year of people. And I'm sorry if I'm stealing your answer. We're going to tackle it both, I think, different ways because of our different personalities. But the reason for me it's exciting is because a lot of the day-to-day operator things that I was saying, it's a little bit of a struggle. I know that I don't have to wake up and do these things anymore. There's a whole different set of challenges. Now that some of that's not lingering in the back of my mind, as I try to focus on people, at least my foresight into 2026, people should be able to get the best of my attention and not be split across seven other disciplines of the business, just trying to keep everything afloat. And so I'm excited to give a better version of myself to our people as we look to continue to grow and hire and whatnot, giving more time to that aspect. Speaker 1: I completely agree. And I think my take on it is seeing how empowered our people have been in the last year and how well they stepped up to the plate for some really big challenges. That has been so exciting. I mean, we got the feedback at some point this year that, you know, you're going to need to put some gray hairs on some accounts. And we laugh about that frequently because it was good advice, good feedback. There's something to be said about someone who just knows how to speak the language. But we have some incredible young and hungry talent that have done some incredible things. And seeing them get a little bit of confidence has been really fun and exciting because I think it's only going to continue to empower us. I think that There's going to be a few hurdles and you know that operational aspect of managing people because there's a very big difference in being a good leader and a good manager. I think that was a lesson that we had in the last year is we may be great leaders, but we need to improve our management skills. Speaker 2: 100%. Speaker 1: We've been able to skirt on by without improving our management skills because we've hired A-players. If we hadn't hired A-players, this year would probably look quite a bit different. Yeah, but empowering our people in attracting the level of talent. We are I mean, we just yes, it's a it's a testament to where the markets at But also being able to have the conversations with the right people on what we're trying to achieve and then being like, I want to be a part of that. That's been really cool. Our culture has kind of had this ripple effect. We got a lot of feedback and unboxed it like, wow, your team just has a vibe. And Amazon leadership sat down with me and was like, I don't know how to put it into words other than your team just has this vibe. And continuing to maintain that at scale, that's one of the things that's like, how do you do the unscalable? Maintain the culture and vibe that we have carried in now. If we continue to do that, we'll be in a really good spot two to three years from now. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. Speaker 1: Anything else that you feel like we missed or any other feedback you want to give the industry? Speaker 2: Good self-realization on our part for the pod and everybody listening. We will definitely pat ourselves on the back for being good leaders, but definitely poor managers. And to the team, coming back to why we did the things and hiring A-plus players, we wouldn't have gotten away with that if we didn't do that thing. So did it pay off in the end? Yes, absolutely. Speaker 1: I'll use Colby as an example here. When he asked us for KPIs, the KPI I gave him was just 10X our name, our reach. Unknown Speaker: What does that mean? Speaker 1: I don't know. We've served a couple million impressions in the last year. There's 10x it. And he has, but intuitively. And that's a growth area for us for sure. That's something that we've spent all day putting into place, better parameters, because we need to learn how to communicate better with people who need those guardrails for sure. But if you're listening in, you can We grow so much by just being a good person and taking the time to understand your vision. I'll give a good shout out to our advisors, them telling me that I need a vivid vision when we're making decisions around, you know, um, something along the lines of, should we sign this client? Even though they're not an ideal fit, we're able to pull out that vivid vision and say, no, they're not an ideal client, which means they're probably gonna be more difficult to manage. We're not well serviced to, or we don't, we don't have the chops to serve them. And they're going to turn and it's going to hurt our retention rate and the same thing with our people. We have a very specific, vivid vision around our culture and we may interview someone and they may be amazing on paper but an asshole. We've chosen to walk away from that and we've learned a lot of lessons along the way around hiring. If anyone wants to do a little hee-hee in the audience, I know our name still comes up in that regard. But I think if you really just stay close to your values, stay close to your vision and take care of your people internally, externally, I think you can go pretty far and we're a testament to that. Speaker 2: Absolutely. Something that I am proud of is that we look at that ICP fit as well from an internal lens with employee retention. To your point earlier of not just growing for revenue's sake, but nobody wins by bringing in the crappy client that's not a good fit. Speaker 1: Your revenue looks good for 45 days. Speaker 2: And then they turn out and then your employees are unhappy. But if we're getting too close to closing remarks, we have to throw out, I think, a subtle hiring plug. You've heard us talk. We're excited about sentiment and people and we're continuing to grow. Send us resumes, hello at BTR Media. That will go to Cal who leads up HR and will get you screened. If you're new to the industry or young on experience, we love the collegiate athlete background. We also love some good serving or retail background, country club server. And if you've got three to five years of hands-on keyboard experience actually doing the search media or programmatic media buying, we would love to hear from you. Speaker 1: And if you're not looking at working at Better Media in the next year, I want to give a big thank you for listening in. As mentioned, we are still 100% driven by inbound growth and that is solely due to the people that have evangelized us and who have shared our content and listened to our podcast. My best friends are in the industry and it's been really, really cool to see so many people reach out and be like, you know, your guys' story is incredible. I've loved what you've done. Something as small as a like, a share can be a really big difference in our business. So again, thank you all for listening in. Alex, thank you for holding on. This was amazing as always. Speaker 2: Love doing it. Speaker 1: Awesome. All right. Speaker 2: See ya.