The Agency AI Moment: Less Panic, More Leverage

AI has become the defining conversation in the agency world. In this episode, An Agency Story host Russel Dubree shares his experience attending Vistara, an AI-focused conference for agencies, and unpacks what’s real, what’s hype, and what agency owners should actually be paying attention to right now.

From AI-first agencies and operational shifts to outcome-driven positioning and the future value of human strategy, this episode offers an urgent, but calming perspective on how agencies can approach AI with less panic and more leverage.

Inside this episode:

•  What's poppin' with AI in the agency space at the current moment
•  Perspective and tips from Vistara speakers
•  How AI-first agencies may reshape client expectations and what to do about it
•  Why outcome-driven agencies are best positioned moving forward 
•  The difference between using AI for efficiency versus strategic advantage

Transcript

Welcome to the Podcast

Speaker 0:01

Welcome to An Agency Story podcast, where owners and experts share the real journey, the early struggles, the breakthrough moments, and everything in between. I'm your host, Russell Dubree, former eight-figure agency owner turned business coach, who sold my agency and now helps agency leaders create their ideal business. Every agency has a story, and this is your front row seat. This is An Agency Story.

Why AI Feels Different

Russel 0:32

There's no doubt about it, AI has occupied a pretty strange place in the minds of agency owners for the better part of two years. And we've navigated from this thought of existential s- threat to taking over our entire lives, to just being something we might hope and want to ignore and won't matter all that much at the end of the day. But th-there's certainly been a shift, I think, in the last few months where AI wasn't just a nice, nifty little helpful writing tool and a side topic of something to pontificate about, but it became the topic. And I think you could attribute that to there's been some pretty big, onslaughts refinements if you will, of some AI-driven tools that are coming to market and really probably more importantly, tools like Claude Cowork and Lovable, things like that, that have really democratized and made technology creation and all these tools all the more accessible. And look, at the end of the day, there is no shortage of shifts, for those that have been in the game from some time going back to the last 20, 25 years from Google algorithms to social media changes, latest design trends, and now we have the onset of AI, and that's all on top of everything else we're trying to navigate in our business And I, like anyone else or any other business in this world that's a little bit future-forward trying to navigate my own experiences with the technology. Certainly experimented and, I've seen some impressive demonstrations over the years.

Why I Went to Austin

Russel 2:05

It was time To move just beyond conversations and go somewhere where people were directly talking about it, looking at it, and, deciding what to do with it. So that ended up bringing me to Vistara in Austin a couple weeks ago to a conference hosted by E2M, and really just focused around AI for agencies. And so no shortage of agency owners, agency adjacent folks in the room all asking the same question: What are we gonna do about these very big, powerful two letters in our lives? But underneath all of that too was, is this ever-increasing fear of am I falling behind? And I really showed up to the conference not to have any de facto stance on anything, but just to observe, to learn, to have conversations with people, to just see how they were using this technology, to see how they felt about it. And so the recap here on this conversation today is divided it into two parts. The first part being just what I saw, just of some of the specific information shared by folks. A couple thoughts on those as otherwise Detective Joe Friday calls, "Just the facts, ma'am." And then the second part will be my own interpretation after my own two decades in the agency space, hundreds of conversations with owners at every stage of growth, just my perspective on where I would be sitting today if I had an agency or otherwise what I guide folks on within their own businesses.

Conference Disclaimers

Russel 3:43

And so let me start before we get into all this as a disclaimer. Number one, nobody knows where this goes. Not the speakers, not the product builders, not the agencies and companies that are all trying to implement different levels of A- AI technology. And everyone's gonna have their own different level of confidence in how they're thinking about this. But the unavoidable truth is everyone is speculating. Some may be right in the end, many will be wrong, but I think we always just have to look at that lens of what's someone's incentive to how they're looking and feeling and talking about AI. Number two, from the information that I'm gonna share in terms of how the speakers were curated, that this was hosted by e2m, which is a large white label fulfillment company specifically for agencies that have a wide range of disciplines they offer. And there's no doubt e2m has aggressively positioned itself around being AI first and that moving in that direction of helping or being their own version of an agentic agency. Again, doesn't frame how everything is done, but it is a lens of which to and not to and validate any of the content either Overall, I just Want to say I thought this was a pretty good conference, certainly worth the time, energy, and effort that I personally invested and from what I spoke from a lot of folks too that got a lot of benefit out of it. So let's start with the journey itself and what I

Travel and Community Night

Russel 5:11

saw there. But day zero, as I like to call it, was simply just the travel day. I ended up not getting there in time to, partake in the, like at a kayaking activity and actually decided to hop on with the Vonlane. For those that don't know, it's a luxury bus that runs between Dallas and Austin because quite frankly, Dallas to Austin is the worst drive you can possibly do on the planet. Just picture bumper-to-bumper, 80-plus miles an hour the entire way. And listen, if I don't have to do that, I won't do that. So nice little luxury bus experience to get there. And probably with gas prices right now, equated to the same level of cost. But they had a nice little community event there that first night, and that's something was extremely obvious early on, was that this was more than just cramming people in a room and throw content at them, but that there was some community building, that there was some, let's help agencies be better together type approach to this. So always pretty cool to see that in the wild.

Day One Kickoff

Russel 6:10

So let's get to day one. I think Austin is one of the greatest, most nature-driven cities you might find in the world. I'm always inspired to get out and walk the trails, get near Lady Bird Lake. So started my day with that, and then hopped up to the conference area for some breakfast tacos, just in time for the first presentation, which really wasn't a presentation. It was more of a show of sorts, I guess. Um, think, you know, maybe Cirque du Soleil meets samurai sword performance, meets dancers. Or Another way I might have thought about it is EDM concert meets Lord of the Rings in a very small way. But I thought it was pretty cool, interesting vibe to start the conference. And then Brent Weaver popped on the stage as, he's the CEO of E2M and got us back down to reality out of this fantasy world we had just lived in for only a hot moment. I actually expected him to be the samurai guy, but, once the guy started swinging the sword pretty intricately, I was like, "Maybe this is not gonna be Brent." He kicked It off with just a good reminder and note of the historical references that every era of the agency world believes it's witnessing the end of itself. We go back to WordPress was supposed to kill development. Apps were supposed to kill websites. Social media was supposed to kill it all. No-code tools arriving online, and that really just AI is another onset of the same era.

AI Execution Gap

Russel 7:35

And then ano- great first talk after that I thought was pretty good with Brittany Muller of Orange Labs, who spoke about what she called the AI execution gap. And you could argue, and certainly the more engineered-focused folks in the room might say it was a little rudimentary, but I thought for a lot of non-technological-- technologically savvy people, it was a great way to sort of crawl, walk, run into how we might better leverage AI into our agency. So she started with a pretty common formula: start with a problem, find, um, repetitive work, identify friction, and manually create, a better outcome before thinking about automating And a pretty good subtle reminder then too is, look, AI isn't going to be doing all that. It's, one, taking that process and certainly when we're in the process of actually solving that problem, it's got a role to play, but it isn't the role. And I thought that was a pretty good reminder that, it's just a guide to help democratize some of this execution

Selling AI Services

Russel 8:38

Next up was Dale Bertrand with Fire&Spark. Pretty smart dude I've known for a few years, and, he gave a pretty pragmatic talk on how to start thinking about maybe selling AI-related services, into your, existing clients was, which what he was advocating for. And not selling it just to sell something, but I think you could feel the underlying tone is to walk alongside or otherwise maybe even get ahead of clients in terms of how they might be going to market or looking at needing, more AI guidance in their business. And his formula for that was just to walk alongside them, help train them on what this tool is and how it's being used in the world. I'm sure some of you have had this experience of clients maybe a little bit overusing, over-hyping, or over-believing that what it could eventually replace. So you get ahead of that with training, find a pilot, and, help bring that pilot to life, and then basically just implement that and rinse and repeat from a sort of training pilot building to creation and implementation process. But probably the biggest point in there is don't sell that by the hour. Do that at a premium. Part of that you are actually replacing future work that you may or may not be doing, um, but that has a high value. So definitely sell that at a very high margin. So all in all, good takeaway there

Sponsors and Social Mixer

Russel 10:04

The buzz and the hype started to die down a little bit right before lunch. I get it. Conferences need to let sponsors have a seat at the table. And so, the content there was just a quick reminder that we probably could all do a little bit better tracking, following up, and engaging with our leads, and that we're probably not always the best in the agency space at, giving our kids shoes, as the cobbler would say, or otherwise just building the same systems and ideas and concepts we advise on our clients. So always a good fresh reminder on that front. And then quite honestly, by the time some of the afternoon content rolled around, I opted for stepping out, taking a couple calls, and just focusing more on writing and thinking and reflecting on what I'd seen so far rather than just go cram new information into my brain pan. And so getting back into the more evening festivities, again, more community building, pretty good little social mixer of getting us to, gather our drink tickets from the sponsors who all did a pretty good job of having a reason to go to them other than the drink ticket itself, offering some raffles and whatnot. I thought the winner of the day was Dot Co, a E2M subsidiary that provides fractional account management. I'd heard of them before, didn't realize they were actually part of E2M now. But they've certainly won the conference day. They had cookies, with the logos of all the attendees of the conference there. Except mine, unfortunately, or as luck would have it, and as painful as that was, I'll find another day or time to eat my own logo. And then, at the end of the day, Ubered off to a Michelin-rated barbecue restaurant, right? Because of course, Austin has a Michelin-rated barbecue restaurant and, pretty good food. A little pricey, you know, 50 bucks or so for w- pound of brisket, of which they were out of, but had some good tri-tip. Great overall meal there with my friend Garrett. Laid my head down on the pillow that night just saying, "Look, how much is AI fundamentally changing agencies, or is it just really accelerating trends that were already happening?"

Day Two ATM Analogy

Russel 12:13

Wake up spunky and ready to hit the ground running on day two. Did my usual walk along Lady Bird Lake, and got back a little earlier to claim a better seat for today's conversation. And they kicked off the morning keynote with E2M founder Manish. But he leaned Heavily into what I thought was a good analogy for, a way to look at this. But he used ATMs and the banking industry going back 40 or so years ago, and this concept that ATMs were supposed to replace the need for brick-and-mortar banks or really disrupt the entire banking system at large. And when he talked through that as a, as an example that when onset of ATMs, obviously we know today that did not in fact happen, but that all the entire ecosystem that built around the onset of ATMs. Entirely new categories of expertise from those that had to install it, those that had to build the software to run it, and just all the other moving pieces that had to make ATMs work so we could all just drive up and get our cash at a moment's notice. Just think young folks out there, that was a revolutionary concept that I could go put a thing into a machine and it would give me money. What a world we live in today. But you could draw that conclusion all up in a good tone for day two is that it's not that AI eliminates work, it's what changes where the value of work lives

AI Search and Winning

Russel 13:38

Next up, we had Andy Crestodina with Orbit Media, who gave a pretty technically driven presentation on AI search or AEO or GEO, whatever you want to call that. And Andy talked fast, as I liken it to, auctioneer being chased by bees. But, underneath all that, what's two takeaways beyond just the technical nature of how you might think about AEO for your business is that decisions are going to continue to happen further and further inside AI before people pick up the phone or call or even look elsewhere. And so it would be good for us to start to understand that interaction, that interface, for our clients' businesses, but even for ourselves What is our brand presence? How does the robots of the world read our business? And are we catering to that with how we're developing our own digital presence, et cetera? But you Could probably boil just up Andy's approach to how he probably approaches his whole business, but I thought this was a pretty insightful quote. He said, "I'm not trying to do it faster. I'm trying to win." And I think that goes even further beyond AI, that we have to be more outcome-driven. And speed only matters once we know what that outcome and value looks like, then yes, we can figure out how to run faster to it without decreasing that value or that outcome. And so Overall, pretty good conversation. He's a pretty entertaining s- talker. And, I'm not getting into all the technicalities of what AEO g- and GEO looks like and how to do it. You can certainly go out in the world and find that for yourself. But th- that... Going back to just that quote being the main takeaway of what does winning look like, not what does doing more faster look like.

Agentic Offer and Case Studies

Russel 15:25

The next, couple hours Was some case studies and ultimately a pitch around what I knew was eventually coming one way or another, E2M's help and guidance to helping agencies become more agentic. And all in all, it was a fair offer. Adding a guide, he- helping agencies crawl, walk, run into this. I think it was somewhere in the realm of 10 grand. Apparently, that was an offer you could only get that day, Or you could do that in nice three easy payments of 3,000 or whatever. And so some of the conversation that followed just seemed to reinforce the need or the desire to want to, engage in that service. And, case studies, wh- which were interesting in terms of real-world examples of how folks were using AI or integrating more technology into their business, focusing on more outcomes, and some of the tools they were building in the process. Interesting nonetheless.

David Baker Get on the Bus

Russel 16:13

But the highlight of the conference, and no surprise, was the, closing keynote to some degree. David C. Baker got On the stage. And for those that don't know David you might have heard his podcast, "2 Bobs." He's written a number of pretty good books on the agency space, particularly "The Business of Expertise," which I highly recommend. But if Nothing else, I kinda consider him a godfather of thought leadership in the agency space. He's been Doing this for a long time. I actually started following his newsletters and white papers back in the late 2000s, and we actually brought David on at one point in a consultant to do his business review in our business in, back in 2016, big old decade ago. But his title and talk was called "Get on the Bus," and you might already be able to discern where he stands on the topic of AI. I've... By the way, I'll mention more at the end of this, but He put his slides on LinkedIn, and I've shared those, on the blog post I have about this same recap. He started off and got a pretty good laugh in the room of basically saying that AI is moving so fast, you have to be unemployed to keep up. Which does feel a little true, quite honestly. But I think he continued to reinforce and went through several of our own sort of what he called creative destruction moments of technology evolving and replacing outdated concepts, mindsets, et cetera. And that we All just believe we're one step away from the next evolution that's gonna kill us or make us billions, whatever the case is. But Ultimately, where David sits and I tend to agree is that AI isn't replacing human thinking, but simply elevating it And he's big on this idea and has been for a long time that, execution is a tough game to play in the agency space more and more as, technology and capabilities are expanding and talent pool, being more global is expanding, that is true and that agencies have needed to and will continue to need to move into a more strategic outcome-driven focus So overall good talk. Highly recommend going and checking out the slides. He's got a I guess a, a dry, sarcastic wit about him, which is always entertaining. Love to hear David speak.

Build Your AI Action Plan

Russel 18:35

But they rounded out the day, the conference, with what I thought was a pretty good practical next step in terms of how you go about, what do you do, I should say, with all this information that you've now, loaded into your brain. And so just walked through some guides to create some action steps around some problems you might be having, and otherwise build your AI action plan. So I had to leave right after that, hopped on my bus back to Dallas and started just capturing my own notes and thoughts on where is this all taking us.

My Take as a Coach

Russel 19:11

So this next part of the conversation is basically that. Me as an agency coach, this is a combination of what I not only observed and learned at the event, I've navigated several technological shifts in my own journey. Host of a hundreds of episodes on "An Agency Story" podcast. But most importantly, My role in helping guide agency owners navigate, not only AI, but many and all the other challenges that go along with agency life. So let's talk about the future I wanna go back to the early disclaimer. Nobody knows where this is going. We are far more in the state of unknown and going back to that lens, we have to remember all the information, all the hype. We have to look at what's their incentive behind why they might be sharing or feeling that way However, what does become increasingly clear is that AI is providing a meaningful shift in how we operate, how and what value we create, and ultimately how we're gonna make decisions. But I look at this far more with an optimistic lens, that this isn't a new trend, it's merely accelerating what was already in place, and that we have to just remain adaptive, stay thoughtful, and if nothing else at the end of this, just be a little more intentional about where that's going and how it's guiding our agency.

Five Ways to Use AI

Russel 20:40

So I'm gonna break this down into five things that I would suggest and recommend that agencies be leveraging AI in the current landscape The first is being outcome-driven. I go back to that this is not a new concept. This is an evolution into being more positioned, more specific, more differentiated about what you do, and who you do it for, as far as your clients are concerned And that the market is going to want demand and assert- eventually become the, just the lay of the land is looking for outcomes instead of buying activity. And that the agencies that are gonna remain successful in this new and interesting environment are gonna be the ones that adapt and leverage that the most and are the best... I won't say the best, but really good at creating outcomes for the specific group of people they serve. But my Concern out there, and if you're wondering if this is a wake-up call, it absolutely is that agencies that aren't meaningfully leveraging AI beyond simple prompting and not moving their business in more of an outcome-driven type mindset are not just a step behind, that they're two. And those are two very big steps to overcome. But step one, going back to the problem to solve, be more outcome driven, and then figure out how to get AI to let you do that faster, easier, better.

AI as Your Next Hire

Russel 22:11

Number two, don't know if this is unique or not, but the way I'd start looking at AI is simply like your next hire, but not for complicated and convoluted type jobs, micro jobs. As a quick example, I recently hired, air quotes, Serif AI to help manage my inbox. So for $50 a month, I basically hired a, a version of an assistant that helps me organize emails, categorize conversations, write some drafts, create to-do lists and reminders about different conversations I'm having through email. And not replacing my thinking, I'm still responding and writing in my own voice, but it did take away some low-value, high-friction work And that's where I think a lot of this-- what's happened recently with the onset of these tools, we've got Cloud Cowork, we've got Lovable, is that they've democratized and opened up the opportunities to find these micro problems, these micro jobs, and then hire technology or AI to do it Someone recently described AI as the super intern, and I think that's how you can start to look at it in terms of what would you give a, if you knew it was very technologically savvy, what would you give a super intern to do for you? And what Kind of jobs would that unlock in your mind? And so we go back to this idea, its value is not replacing work, but it's expanding and enhancing what your business is capable of doing and what you're capable of doing and what your team is capable of doing. So here's some quick questions I would just ask to find some of those challenges, those micro jobs to do. What repetitive task in your business consume time but don't require human creat- creativity or strategic thinking? If you could hire that, capable intern for 50 to $200 a month, what would you want them handling every single day? Where are your team acting like more like processors than thinkers? What information, insight, or reporting do you wish you had access to all the time? And then more in the dream state too, this is not all again about finding efficiencies. What opportunities would you pursue, if time, energy, and effort were less of a constraint? What could your business be known for if you had, and your team had dramatically more capacity, speed, and insight available to you? So there's a litmus test there to find some of those micro jobs, and like anything else, start with one and you can find two, three, four so much easier.

Get Ahead of Clients

Russel 24:45

Number three, this one's, this one might feel a little uneasy at first, but I think it's gonna be important, is that we get ahead of clients on this. And I'm sure many of you have already had to navigate, the client coming to you, handing you a, uh, LLM-driven strategy or idea or concept and asking you to do it or evaluate it, whatever the case might be. We All know that's not necessarily an effective use, but nonetheless, clients are gonna do it. And then we have a second problem that I think is gonna be a little more pervasive, and that's we have the rise of AI-first, AI-driven agencies. Not different than the digital-first agencies that emerged in the early to mid-2000s, including my own, and they're gonna sound, they're gonna sound good, the same way we probably did back in the day for we, we just are a little more tuned in, leading with focus about how this is gonna be really great, about how we know best, and all these others that are trying to adapt to it are behind. And by the way, we can all do that quicker, faster, better. And we know that's not necessarily true, just like there were a bunch of startups that made those claims back then that are no longer today, that it's going to be far more about the ability to create outcomes, that business acumen, that business savvy that's going to make that prove true. But it's going to sound too good to be true to those clients. The near-term value or savings it costs, the long-term savings costs, it's going to be something to contend with. And so in the face of that, my recommendation, do not be defensive, be offensive in client conversations around AI so that you're more firmly in the seat when the, than when those conversations come knocking. And that's really just about being transparent. They're trying to navigate their business in the same way you are and we are, and can you be a guide in that reality for them? Can you get a seat at the table, understand how they're looking at it, be transparent about how you and are looking at it, and how you're leveraging it in the business? And that might sound a little scary, but at the end of the day, what I think you do have to be comfortable with is if you do help them along that journey in a meaningful way, one, when those others come knocking and calling, they are going to believe they have their guide and their answer, and it's you. And on top of that, it will and should replace some of the execution work that your agency is doing today, but that's okay. It doesn't mean we need to decrease our dollars. It might mean we even need to increase, but they're going to pay us more for that strategy because that's where the shift is. And we can be transparent about that as well, that the world is getting noisier. There's more and more difficulty in landscapes to navigate from a competitive standpoint. And so you're not shifting that time and those resources, away to nothing. You're shifting it to better thinking in that seat.

AI as a Business Layer

Russel 27:47

Next is thinking of AI as a strategy and then a layer. And so I think we're gonna have this window of time here, and depending on where you're currently sit, where, yes, it's okay from either a service perspective or even just from your own internal initiatives to really focus on where and how you can leverage and use AI or more technology to solve problems in your business. But then very quickly, once you get up to speed for the moment, don't think this is-- you can't catch up outright, but you can start to bake it into your, framework and structure of your business, is that AI simply becomes a layer. In the same way that whenever work needed to be done or outcomes we needed to create before, where we would have a process, a team, contractor software, that we would now just have an agentic system be another layer in that And it's not the thing we do, it's the integral part of how we solve problems And th- there's a whole realm of this and how we navigate and do with this that I won't go in today, but ultimately we start to think of, yes, it is absolutely true that AI should and will promote humans to do the jobs that AI can't do.

Dedicated AI Owner Role

Russel 29:10

Last but not least, I think it's important to start looking at having a dedicated resource, uh, within your business that is focused on guidance or specifically implementing AI initiatives And it's gonna feel like a new cost in a sea of what you might already feel like are tons of costs, but eventually and very quickly, I think it's gonna become a dream role. Because if you can dream it and you have a problem that needs to be solved or a series of a set of problems need to be solved, all you need to do is give it to this role, and their job should essentially be to solve that leveraging technology and AI. And so whether that needs to start just with a part-time person, a fra-fractional person, or contractually, you can decide that. You can increase it over time, or maybe you just stay as is because it's just constantly helping solve problems as is. But ultimately, I do think it's important to have a resource in this specifically focused on that, even if it's someone on your existing team that's really excited about AI.

Final Takeaways and CTA

Russel 30:15

So what do we boil this all up to? And so walking away from Vistara, and what's happening in the agency world is I don't think it changed how I see the future of this. One, I go back to we don't know, and number two, this is still showing in every sense of the word in the past that it's a tool, albeit a powerful tool. But that of 20-plus years in the agency space, seeing those are successful, those are not, in my own experience, that the fundamentals will always remain supreme. Clients are still gonna value trust and working with people they know and like That they're gonna continue and will pay a premium for people that will solve their problems and be a, a helper on their side, giving the insight, wisdom, leadership, helping them move the needle and navigate the complexity of their business And so the conference didn't change and nothing I know to be true about the world we live in today to change any of that. But it did heighten my sense of urgency in terms of ensuring that the folks that I am close to and connected to and work with, and would encourage others out there to get on the bus, as David Baker said, and start figuring out how to be more outcome driven and leverage AI to do that in their business. And these are the agencies that are going to be able to weather the storm regardless of how the shifts or different technologies or different, other landscapes that we can't even perceive yet, are going to occur in the future. This is what's going to build the meaningful long-term advantage So the shift is real. Pay close attention to it. Don't be scared, and just be willing to evolve alongside of it and get started sooner than later. I hope this was helpful. If, if you have more questions, I've written a pretty similar recap, on my website. Go to anagencystory.com. And if you just wanna have a conversation about how to be more outcome-driven in your business or how to leverage AI in your business, click that Let's Talk button on the top of the page. I'd love to have a conversation to see how I can be of help. Hope this was helpful. Have a great day. Less panic, more leverage. Go forth and conquer.

Speaker 32:44

Thank you for listening to An Agency Story podcast, where every story helps you write your own. Subscribe, share, and join us again for more real stories, lessons learned, and breakthroughs ahead. What's next? You'll want to visit anagencystory.com/podcast and follow us on Instagram at An Agency Story for the latest updates.