Building the Playbook on 2AM Dunkin’ Donuts Sessions - Nexus Marketing

Brand positioning is more than a marketing exercise—it can become the foundation for growth, partnerships, and long-term differentiation. In this episode, Rafi Norberg, Founder of Nexus Marketing, chats with Russel on how a highly focused niche strategy helped build a multi-million-dollar agency, why ecosystem thinking creates powerful advantages, and how agency leaders should approach the rapid changes brought by AI.

Inside this episode:

•  How narrowing your focus can create stronger growth opportunities and clearer positioning 
•  Why building relationships within an industry ecosystem creates a competitive advantage 
•  Practical perspectives on AI adoption and why agencies must rethink how they deliver value 
•  The vision behind turning an agency into a platform that helps mission-driven organizations succeed 

Transcript

Show Intro

Russel 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.

Meet Nexus Marketing

Russel 0:32

Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Rafi Norberg with Nexus Marketing with us here today. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Rafi

Rafi 0:39

Absolutely. Excited to be here.

Russel 0:41

Well, excited to have you. Start us off right out of the gate. Tell us what Nexus Marketing does and who you do it for.

Rafi 0:48

So we are a, uh, digital marketing agency for B2B businesses selling into mission-driven sectors. So we work primarily with software and professional service f- firms that are selling to nonprofits, associations, education, and healthcare. We primarily focus on digital marketing channels, so think SEO, GEO, HubSpot, design, conversion rate optimization, basically anything that touches the conversion funnel of visitor to sale.

Russel 1:16

Okay. That is a good elevator pitch. Was that hard for you in your career and journey to get to that succinct and good elevator pitch?

Rafi 1:25

Yes, I think Well, thank you. Uh, I think so. Um, I think that a lot of it, uh, has just been we've, we've changed the agency over the years as time has gone by. So originally, we just started working with nonprofit, businesses selling to nonprofit, and then specifically on SEO. And then as the business has evolved with new services and industries within mission-driven that we serve, we actually went through an exercise earlier this year of rebranding the agency. We didn't change the name. The name remained Nexus, but thinking about our value proposition, how we wanted to talk about how s- how we were serving customers, what made us special. So we, we recently went through that exercise, so it's very fresh in my mind, and I think that helps a lot with our crisp elevator pitch.

Russel 2:11

It absolutely does. And, I think we shoulda done more rebranding efforts when I was in the agency space to make sure we were keeping that sharp and polished. So love to see that for you as an exercise. And, so yeah, good rebrand is more than a sexy logo. It's really more about that unique value proposition.

Rafi 2:27

Yeah. You get into the, the process of thinking about your business and how you wanna represent it, and as an agency, we're so often working with clients to talk through those conversations, but rarely do you turn the, the mirror inward on yourself to say, "Well, if I was the client, what would I do differently?" So we were, uh, we were fortunate. We hired, like, a new branding lead earlier this year, and she had some available time, so we got the opportunity to be the client for once. So that was, that was pretty fun.

Russel 2:52

I always love when a new team member came on to get their perspective and guidance in some ways on our business before we indoctrinated them into how we did things. A great use of a new hire there.

Rafi 3:03

Yeah.

Russel 3:04

Well, we're gonna talk more things agency and how you got to where you're at

Rafi Origin Story

Russel 3:08

today. But, before we do all that, I'd love to just hear a little bit more about young Rafi. Where and how did he come up in the world, and who did he wanna be when he grew up?

Rafi 3:17

So background on me, grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, which is a suburb right outside of DC. Went to Emory University for undergrad, which brought me down to Atlanta, Georgia. And then at Emory, originally, I wanted to be a, uh, clinical psychologist, so I was a psych major. Uh, I worked in labs over the summer, uh, and, I, I came to the realization that I really enjoyed interacting with people, and the idea of working in a laboratory just did not really match what I was interested in. So my senior year, I was unsure of what I was going to do. So I ended up getting a recommendation from a friend to apply into consulting, because that was what people who didn't know what they wanted to do could do and learn a lot. So I ended up getting a job at Deloitte Consulting, which is one of the big, you know, Big Four consulting firms, and it was a great job. I really respect the work that we would do at Deloitte and really enjoyed, I think, the, the agency model. They would call it a consultancy, but I think that was my first introduction to this idea of expert advice sold, um, within a project where you're advising a client, but you're working across multiple projects at once. Parallel pathing to my work at Deloitte, I did not see myself going down the route of becoming, like, a full-time, you know, business operations consultant. I don't think that's where my passion was for a couple reasons. I think, one, I always found myself more pulled to our mission-driven work that Deloitte would do. They would do pro bono projects that I thought, that I thought was really cool, uh, where we'd work with a nonprofit to help them with some sort of org structure related issue that we were consulting on. But then also, I, I also had an affinity for marketing, so I found myself finding little marketing side projects to do, helping a friend with their website, helping a friend, friend with their brand, helping a friend think through how to do lead gen to their website. So sort of kept working at Deloitte for, for the first couple years of my career, uh, while doing some marketing consulting on the side just for fun projects here and there. What ended up happening is I ended up getting introduced to a business within the mission-driven sector. Uh, so a business called DonorSearch that actually sold software to nonprofits. I never heard of such a thing. I never really thought about the fact that all these-- We think of them as non-for-profits, but what these really are is there's a, a lot of really big organizations with multiple millions of dollars of, uh, spend around services, technology, professional services, salaries. So it opened my eyes to this big industry that really laid at the intersection of kind of profits and purpose, and I found that to be very exciting. And DonorSearch, uh, the work was going quite well, and I, I kinda realized I was making enough to where I could quit my job at Deloitte and try to maybe focus on the consulting thing full time. And I took a pay cut when I did that, but that was really what started me down the journey of this agency building exercise within the sector. But I got the, the fortune or misfortune of starting quite young because I didn't know, uh, how hard it was going to be, but that's how I, I got my start.

Russel 6:22

Well, I, I think I was 25 too when I started, and, and I look back and yes, I was probably far more naive than I would've admitted back then. But I, I do appreciate that naivete that, you know, I think I was just far more tolerant of the, the suffering of starting a business and all the pain with that as I, I hadn't built comfort into my life yet at that point anyway.

Rafi 6:47

Oh, yeah.

Dunkin Hustle Years

Rafi 6:48

I remember going from my job at Deloitte, um, which was in this, like, beautiful building in downtown Atlanta, like one of the, one of the main buildings in the skyline. A really cool, really cool spot to have your office. And I would drive to the all-- the, uh, 24-hour Dunkin' Donuts that was by, by the, the college that I went to. And it was, it was me and, uh, the people who were, studying for, you know, their nursing or their trucking exam because they're, basically all the, all the different, like, trade schools because they didn't have a library to go to. So we would all just be at Dunkin' Donuts, and I would stay there probably till, like, two in the morning, and then I would drive home and, and then, go to sleep and do it the next day. And I did that for probably two years when we were first getting started, uh, of, uh, like seven days a week too, where it was every single night at Dunkin' Donuts for, for at least four to six hours. And I think those early years really set the foundation that I can still draw on today and be like, "Okay, this is a challenge, but we've been here before, and we can figure out how the business evolves from here."

Russel 7:52

I love that. If anyone from Dunkin' Corporate is listening, I think you owe Rafi a free year of, uh, unlimited Dunkin' Donuts or I guess they don't even call themselves that anymore. Is it just... What do they, what do they c- Dunkin'? Just Dunkin'?

Rafi 8:06

Yeah.

Russel 8:06

Okay. Yeah. Uh, and who knew? Yeah, Dunkin' is a side quest as an inc- business incubator. Yeah. We're just promoting them left and right here.

Lessons From Deloitte

Russel 8:14

I'm curious, it sounds fascinating to me when you talk about the start of your career experience at Deloitte, and I can't remember exactly how you worded it, but something to the effect of, if you don't know what you wanna do, go be a consultant helping very large organizations solve very complex business problems. What is Deloitte solving or what did you learn when you started there that allowed you to even be able to do that work? I'm very curious.

Rafi 8:39

So the projects we would do sound incredibly boring, but they're all-- they were, they're very important business problems, which I didn't fully recognize at the time. So a good example would be Deloitte was contracted by the largest power company in the, uh, Northeast to redo their entire payroll and employee, like, infrastructure. And the process of doing that is actually really hard because if you think about a large power company, switching out their payroll software, setting it up appropriately and communicating it out to everyone and then y- basically getting those changes live and rolling them out across an organization of tens of thousands of people is a really hard problem that touches basically every part of their organization. And it also has a lot of consequences if it's not done well. So that would be a really good example of the type of project we would get brought in on. Basically, like large-scale organizational change where you were talking about tens of thousands of employees and they were trying to do something internal to improve the business that often involved the implementation and customization of enterprise-level software and then figuring out how to roll that out in the organization. In terms Of what was unique about it for me is I, I think I didn't come from a business background. So I, I think even just conceptualizing this idea that businesses are basically large organisms that have a human element, they've got a value that they're providing to the customer, and then they have a ton of infrastructure that is underpinning what they do. And they are complicated with different parts of the organization wanting different things, even though the core organizational goal is the same. So I think getting exposure to just the complexity and the interactions of both humans and software was a really, really, really helpful for me just to understand that was something that was important to be really successful. And I think at Deloitte it was, it was on a very large scale, but even within the work we do now, we're working with much smaller businesses and marketing teams of, you know, 10 to 30, not, not, uh, uh, you know, 10,000 to 30,000. The-- Still the same things apply. So that lesson of how do you, how do you get a bunch of clients to understand the goal that we're trying to achieve, what we've been brought in to do, and how they can be helpful to achieve that, which is ultimately gonna bene-benefit their organization, I think is a really fundamental lesson that has, yielded dividends across the course of my career.

Russel 10:59

Yeah. I can totally see how that ladders up and it, it seems like a benefit, too, when you started your business. I think a lot of agencies start out and their kinda core offering or, or value that they're stating they're bringing to the table is the service, versus it sounds like you got a good leap into leading with strategy and a, a level of consulting, even if services are gonna come after that, which is where I think a lot of agencies evolve to hold that strategic place with clients and how important that is.

Operator Mindset Agency

Rafi 11:28

Yeah, I think I've always viewed myself as a little bit more of an operator than a marketer, where I think that marketing is an interesting problem to solve, but ultimately it is just an operations problem. And I think that for me, with the agency, I think where that's been beneficial is sometimes I've had colleagues where they're an artist first and a really, really good artist, but taking your ability to deliver great work as an individual and then scaling it is really hard to do. And you get stuck at that, like sub-million level from an agency standpoint because it requires you to no longer be the core person who's doing the work. For me, I always thought of the agency as like this organization that we're trying to build. So there were parts of the agency that I was heavily involved in from the beginning. So account management, I was the first account manager. I was our first partnerships manager who manages our relationships, and I was our first salesperson too. But to me, all those things have always been viewed as things that can be built into a job, not something that always had to be, you know, my job per se. I think that's been really, really helpful and, I think a different viewpoint than a lot of my, my peers who have built agencies 'cause they were s-- they were a great web developer, or they were a great product designer. And, and in some ways I'm, I'm happy I, I never really, um, had that core skill that I was really good at. My skill was always just being, looking at it from the top down and figuring out how we would turn it into a little bit more of a, of an organization versus having to, to deliver the work as the sole practitioner.

Russel 12:53

Yeah. And don't discount too, you're probably your company's first janitor,

Rafi 12:56

Of course. I'm still the janitor.

Russel 12:58

That, that's true. No, it's so funny you say that. I mean, just again, where our paths sort of align is, I didn't know any trade, uh, within the agency space either when I entered it, You know, there, there were some pain points just kinda getting off the ground a little bit, but ultimately I think it was more beneficial that I couldn't do the work. I had to, I had to treat it like an operations problem and solve it with people, processes, et cetera, and I, I do find that to be a benefit in my own journey. So that resonates totally.

Rafi 13:27

Yeah, I think there's always a little bit of magic to the creation of certain brands. I think if you look at your global brands like your Apple or your Ni- your Nike, you, you have to look at them and, and see that there's something that they did fundamentally differently than, than everyone else at the core of how they, they created a brand that is something people look at and, understand is a differentiator that they're willing to pay for. The same thing with like designer bags, for instance. I think, designer handbags are just endlessly fascinating to me because it is the brand that people are paying for, and to create that brand that people value so much beyond just the bag itself is not easy to do, and there's real skill in how you do that effectively. I think in the type of marketing that we do, which is demand generation, I think it is organizing the correct set of activities in the right sequence with the right systems, with good copy and content, and then delivering it to the right audiences in a way that, they're gonna be receptive to. So there's a lot of skill that's inherent in that. There's a lot of understanding of like systems like HubSpot that's inherent in that. There's the ability to create content onsite and offsite that's gonna rank effectively. But, it is the execution of a playbook the-- more so than, than trying to discover something new. And I think that is, in many ways, what I like about it is that we know if we run the playbook, that the clients will be successful.

Russel 14:47

And that makes sense, smaller organizations, their business is an operations problem of doing things consistent and kinda staying in between the guardrails and activity period, but then as you share the right sequence of activities being important and being really an operational, if not scientific process to figure out, that, that makes a lot more sense. All right.

Finding The Niche

Russel 15:08

Well, you know, I, I hear so many companies talk about working with mission-driven organizations, but you've, you've got a slight variance on that niche. How did you actually evolve into who you focus on as, as your agency?

Rafi 15:21

So we, we started with this idea of working with the businesses that sell into mission-driven sectors very early in, in the history of the agency. So we got this, this first client donor search, and they were selling to the nonprofits. And what we found, uh, when we were delivering SEO to them is that the-- one of the core differentiators that we could bring is we reached out to all of their partners in the sector. Plus, I went to a bunch of conferences and met a bunch of other companies in the sector. So very early on, I was able to take the relationships that they had and the relationships we could go source for them and use those for building offsite authority for their business through a variety of different things, largely like win-win partnerships involving content. And the ability to do that in a very sector-specific way was a true differentiator that they saw major results from. So what happened organically is they introduced us to a bunch of their friends, within this sector who, had had a great experience with us, um, were continuing to work with us, and we ended up working with a few of the businesses that, that they introduced us to, which happened to be in the same sector, which then compounded this idea of the network effect, where we're building this proprietary network of relationships within mission-driven. But I think I realized fairly early that, like, this was the special sauce. Being able to have relationships that are industry specific was something that nobody else had. So at that point, really decided to just focus in on mission-driven, um, sectors as the, the people who our clients were targeting and, and who we really wanted to stay focused on. And then there's this nice flywheel effect where oftentimes our partners who we're using, um, and collaborating with to help market our clients oftentimes become clients later, um, 'cause our partners, there's usually like a free relationship there that we're brokering on behalf of the client and the partner. So I think the function of who we decided to focus on as like our core ICP was it, it really comes down to where we saw the biggest differentiator for us as an agency that would allow us to keep growing. And then the other piece is that I, you know, I like the industry. I think that, like, it is cool to work with businesses that are doing good things. I think that all the clients we work with are helping to solve the problems of the mission-driven sector and help nonprofits do more, help them achieve their outcomes, uh, more effectively. So the people who you meet on the client side are both marketers and business professionals, but they chose to work at a mission-driven business, and that is generally a pretty great person to work with. So I think, yeah, the, the reason, you know, we grew this, it's a, it's a good way to approach the problem, but then also we like the people who we're getting to work with and work on behalf of.

Russel 18:08

I think that's what does attract a lot of people to work on mission-driven. But I don't know, there's some things I'm picking up on as you're sharing that, that this, this-- I don't know why, like a, almost like a biodome is the imagery that's coming to my mind of just all this a-activity happening that you can just kind of recycle and go through and connect and provide direct and indirect value by, by working in this network.

Nexus Network And AI Search

Rafi 18:34

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it even gets the name of the agency, like Nexus. We wanna sit at the nexus of, you know, the mission-driven sector, basically. There you go. So, but yeah, we, we call it the Nexus Network, and, and that is core to the way that we approach a lot of the especially, like, organic visibility things that we do. And I think with the rise of AI, AI is a way that people discover solutions and the convergence of traditional search and AI search, this idea of citability is becoming even more important. So we always viewed it as a core differentiator within search, but I think now just with general-- with, with the way that AI has changed the way people are searching for things and where we see it going, I think this idea of being able to be cited in as many places that are relevant as possible becomes even more important. So for us, like, it-- we, we are doubling down on this idea. Like, our goal is to grow our network to a thousand relationships, so it's really unparalleled p-over the next, two years.

Russel 19:25

Yeah. Well, and it's like you're... It's almost like you're, you're in a room where you're not at odds with anyone. Your clients have the same mission as who their clients are. You're all trying to help nonprofits get better, and so that, that seems to just lessen the load, and it's for all a do-good cause, so it's really lessening the load of, uh, any sense of competition or, or really just, uh, some kind of zero-sum game. You're, you're really operating from a place of unlimited abundance, it seems like almost.

Rafi 19:54

Yeah, we've got positive relationships with a lot of folks. You still run into the issue where, you know, we won't take on certain clients 'cause they're too competitive with others. Like, you can't work with too many donation tools, for example. Yeah. But for us, we try-- What it allows us to do is even if we're not gonna work with someone, we can still collaborate with them from a marketing standpoint. And I think being able to, uh, act as that, as that broker across a bunch of different types of companies has been really beneficial for, for us and our ability to serve the clients well.

Russel 20:21

Yeah. So, so maybe, and folks, and look, if you're, if you're listening to this and you haven't caught on to the positioning game, quite yet, the train has far left the station, and it's time to get on soon. But, just this bent on it is looking at it also within the ecosystem you can play, not just who's your end client, I think is really fascinating, uh, to hear how that's

Focus To Reach 10M

Russel 20:41

playing out for you. Well, go back just real quick to just bring this all home from importance. You know, you said you came to this very early, which is somewhat unique in itself. Um, you know, sometimes it takes longer to evolve to this stronger level of positioning. Talk about just once you made that decision, like what was the sort of clarity and how did that inform how, how you took that idea and ran with it?

Rafi 21:04

Yeah. I think it has informed us with how we go to market. So we, we, you know, very early on focused only on going to conferences that were, you know, very sector specific in what we were doing. We originally were very focused in what we did, so around search specifically, like SEO, we were, we were highly focused there, so all of our hiring and process improvement was really focused on that. That choice took us from, zero in revenue to multiple millions of revenue. Um, and now we think about where we are today as a business. I think our goal is to get to ten million in revenue. Um, that's the next big goal, goalpost for us. So what that has required is we are evolving the business significantly and have been for the past two years or so, where we went from being historically an SEO agency that worked primarily with like businesses that sold to nonprofit, to now this broader idea of we work with businesses that are selling to, nonprofit association, education, and healthcare, um, specifically businesses that are probably, a little bit larger, often have institutional capital backing them, and then we bring a full range of services across the demand gen funnel, not just search. I think it has helped a lot in just clarity of who we're trying to serve, and then that makes it much easier to think about a sales conversation and think about the positioning of the business in that sales conversation. I think it has helped a lot as we roll out new services, integrating how we talk about those and the value someone's gonna get because they're all targeting very similar customers. I think the focus has, has helped us just Limit the scope. This is gonna sound silly, but like being so focused has allowed us to have conversations and be very productive with bus- like implementing things into the business quickly, 'cause we are limiting the number of variations that our team is having to interact with. But As I look forward over what's gonna get us to the next level, it's an even greater unrelenting, um, focus on serving exactly this one type of clients that are doing exactly this thing in the digital demand gen funnel. And if we can just say no to all the other work, I think we will grow much faster.

Russel 23:12

Yeah. Well, for the folks listening, just go back and if you're uncertain about whether you need to do positioning or not and focus just go back and listen to what Rafi just shared. I think you, you hit all the highlights of why it's so important. And then, you know, one of the things I, I share, right, and the, the world's as noisy as it ever has been, and every day it seems to get a little noisier. And so the ability to focus, uh, is just so powerful. And, and yeah, as you're going through that journey, it's so much easier to look at every option, every opportunity as a, does, does this provide value to my core audience or, and how we go about it and what the value we deliver, or does it not? And it makes it so much easier to, to answer those questions. And then it just seems like you've done just a really amazing job, and just going back to even parts of our other conversation of just really living in this ecosystem, in this environment of serving and, and it's not just a, it's not just a label to get more clients. You're, you're, you're sitting in it, immersed in it, and genuinely, um, for and thinking about improving this, this overall industry and, and ecosystem that you're in.

Rafi 24:18

For sure. I, I think we view ourselves as embedded within these mission-driven industries and, um, it is integral to the success we've seen and I think our future success.

Russel 24:27

No, that's amazing.

AI Tsunami For Agencies

Russel 24:29

Well, I wanna get to another topic that I imagine might take a minute to talk about, and, and I know this is, this is the hot topic of every agency seems like in the world right now when we talk about those two letters that either get people excited or make people shiver and talk about AI. There's a very interesting terminology that, I know you use is trying to break the business and how you're looking at using AI. Let's just open that can of worms and just start off and talk about how you're looking at this AI world that we're staring down the barrel of.

Rafi 25:00

I think The tools have gotten good enough, specifically within the last three to six months, to where the businesses that choose to implement them will be able to deliver far more value to clients for the same retainer and will retain and grow their relationships with clients. And if you can't do it, you're gonna lose those clients because you will be slow, and you will be able to do a lot less than another agency, or, their internal team. I also think there's a real opportunity for agencies because what we bring is expertise plus knowledge around execution through seeing the same business problem across a variety of different circumstances. And then we can take that knowledge and expertise and use AI tools to basically deliver that in a, a, a much faster way, in a much more holistic way than we, we previously could. It's like a deck creating a series of recommendations. If you ask Claude, "Tell me how to improve the SEO of my site," you're gonna get 20 ideas, and five of them are gonna be good. And the question is, is can you figure out which five they are? That is a problem for internal marketers if they're not seeing SEO. There are internal marketers who can do it, but I think where we can provide a lot of guidance is to say, "We, we've literally seen this exact problem across 20 businesses just like you, and we've tried 19 of these solutions, and these are the five you need to implement." So I think for businesses like ours, where we're, we're, you know, thought leadership companies, it is such a cool opportunity to be able to figure out how we implement these things within our organization. I think for us, what we are doing is we are basically looking at each of our core delivery teams, and we are rebuilding the way that we deliver a lot of our core work with the usage of a combination of different tools. I think, you know, if we were talking six months ago, we were talking about, like, Zapier and Make, which, you know, are, are basically, like, workflow tools where you're building, like, a series of different workflows that connect. I think today where we're at is the implementation of agents, um, that are connecting to MCPs. And basically, uh, like, all that really means is we're creating very detailed, uh, like, operating procedures and then really detailed context and then explaining how to connect that to the tools that our team is already using that happens to have released an MCP. And then where we're at today is just delivering more to the clients. So, you know, our average client is receiving 25 to 50% more than they were previously, and I think our goal is, as we continue to iterate on these things, be able to eventually go to the clients and say, "Here is our holistic approach to AI, uh, that we believe is m-much more impressive than what you're seeing within the market, um, or what most teams are doing internally. How can we do more with you? So for me, I, I feel like we're, we're part of the way through the journey, but I am excited about what we've been able to accomplish so far. But it's hard. It's like, it's like a rethinking of everything, a relearning of a lot of core skills. It causes a lot of stress internally on the team, uh, but it is existential, so I don't think you have an alternative. Um, I, I don't feel like I have an alternative other than to go forward and figure out how we implement these things.

Russel 27:56

Yeah. Great take on it, and I, I actually just got back from a AI conference for agencies this past week, and, uh, so it's hot on my mind and just thinking how agencies are and are not using it. Um, but the couple key takeaways, it sounds like, look, you gotta get on this train one way or another. While it can Add efficiencies, it's where can it add more value in, in this world that agencies are all moving to, that we're not just providing services anymore. It's, it's the strategic value. It's the, as you shared, the whittling down 20 options in the world they can go do, deciding what's right, being able to get to whatever those five are, whatever they need to go do quicker. And then we can add more execution to make that happen because we can do that faster, easier, more cost efficiently. I'm definitely Walking away like, y-yeah, you gotta get on the bus. The bus is there. It's gonna be leaving soon, and it's time to get on.

Rafi 28:49

I think that the analogy that I like is the tsunami that's coming. It's like everyone sees the wave in the distance- Yeah and everyone's talking about the wave. It's like, "Isn't that a big wave? Wow, you think we should do something about it?" And it's like, if you saw a tsunami coming in, would, would you not be trying to get to higher land? It's like, now's the time. You gotta move.

Russel 29:05

Yeah. Yeah, and I come to that slowly because I don't wanna be a fearmonger at the end, I don't know where you stand on this. I'm, I'm not in this camp that AI is gonna take over everything we do someday. What it is gonna grab up the lower floor, maybe a tsunami's a great example. It's gonna wash away some of the lower land, but we've gotta sit at the higher land, and that is that strategic value, and that is that outcome-driven focus. And those are the agencies that are gonna do better, have been doing better, I should say, and will continue to do better in this AI world.

Rafi 29:34

I mean, I think I agree with you. I don't think AI is going to take people's jobs. I think people's jobs are gonna be taken by people who know how to use AI, and I think it is imperative as a business owner that we are doing our best to make sure that the teams that we have are on the forefront of usage of these tools. Because I think for everyone, including myself, figuring out how to use these things is, like, the skill of the future. It's like, we got computers, we gotta get off typewriters, and I think it is wrong as, like, an owner to not really be pushing this, even if it's painful for the company, because we are helping people become more competitive in the labor market for literally the rest of their careers. So for me, I'm, you know, if-- and if someone doesn't want that's okay. You know, they don't have to work, they don't have to work at the agency. I'm totally okay with that, like, if someone doesn't wanna get those new skills. But I don't view it as leading from fear. I view it as this is a skill of the future, and my hope is that everyone who works at Nexus is part of this, like, top 20% of talent who figures out how to adopt these tools first, and then the team members who work at the business can do a great job delivering that for our clients. And if they choose to leave in the future, they capture the upside of those skills over the entire course of their career. Like, I think they'll make another, you know, multiple millions of dollars over the course of their career if they get really good at this stuff now.

Russel 30:52

Well, and, I'm sitting here trying to think, and so right when I started my agency, we were a little bit behind the, the digital era and I'm trying to think, okay, what's the comparison then? And I haven't thought through this deep enough quite at the moment yet, but I don't know. I'm just thinking of some practices or tools back then that, you know, there's certainly some first mover, just even the ability to code, right? The people that were first to that captured a market advantage because they could do something complicated that not everyone else could do. Obviously, some of that's been democratized over time. But when I think of some of the youth today, technology and coding and that mindset is already, it's almost baked into their brain in some ways in, in terms of that skill set. And so just this idea that, you know, no-nobody's shying away from the tools that were created 20 years ago. Those are just commonplace now. This is, this is the tool that everybody will use, not even 20 years from now, but sometime in the, in the near future.

Future Of Brand MCP

Rafi 31:47

Yeah, I mean, the tools are getting so much better. It'll be Interesting to see where it all shakes out with which one of these platforms ends up being the leading platform. But the nice thing is that the, the, the infrastructure of how you, how you use these tools effectively really just comes down to writing out really detailed instructions, having really good context, and being very specific with your thought about how you pull in different, like, data points from tools that you use. And I think, um, that this will eventually extend to brands where we today work on websites, but where we're seeing things evolve is that getting a clear vision of what your brand does, who it does it for, and, and why you have the right to win is really important for successful performance within AI visibility. So there is a future, just like you have an MCP for your product that is the link-up to all your data, that there is a brand MCP that is the link-up to your brand. So I think the companies that start thinking about themselves in this way and start creating the infrastructure of, like, what is your brand guidelines that you can use to optimize for, like, AI search specifically, I think that becomes then the building block of a future brand MCP. Um, I don't think websites are going away tomorrow. I think, you know, websites will continue to exist. But I do believe as the tools get better, there's a real world in which each company has a website but also has a brand MCP that can be directly accessed, um, when people are looking for the tool that best suits them and their situation, which will be understood really well by the AI tools. Oh, no. So I, I do see some interesting convergences on the future here, and I, I think it, like now's the time to figure out how you build that foundation so that when we get there, your business is able to evolve with it.

Russel 33:32

Yeah. That's already apparent in, in, in learning some of this and, and how folks are approaching AEO, GEO. It's setting up websites to be at least the, the first point of that interface today. And I think just to put it in perspective from a historical layer is, I mean, I just think even the design tools, it's not about the tool, it's about the, the, the mindset and the, and the way you're approaching and the tools will always change. But right, Photoshop was so cool and sexy in the late two thousands and then, um, you know, SketchUp and then Figma, the tools will always change. It's the mindset and the ethos and the philosophy of which you're approaching it.

BHAG Platform Vision

Russel 34:09

All right. Well, You've already laid down some goals when you think about the, where you're trying to take your agency. What is the end game or the BHAG or when is Rafi done? When has he achieved everything he set out in the world to conquer?

Rafi 34:22

Uh, it's an interesting question. I think today, the, the way I, uh, the way I sort of view my own career and, you know, is even pre starting the agency is I'm, I'm just really interested by s- like getting to solve fun little problems that I find interesting with people who I enjoy working with. So I don't think I look at Nexus as this thing we're trying to build to a certain point and then go sell to a conglomerate, like, or sell to a, an agency roll-up. I think what we're building is a really interesting platform in the mission-driven sector for, uh, brands that are trying to do good for nonprofits. I think the, the next goal is let's get, let's get to ten million in revenue, be able to solve all the challenges related to the demand gen funnel, and then we can figure out what's next from there. I think ultimately what would be a really good spot to get to is someone comes to us with an idea, um, where they say, "I want to start this business that's serving doctor's offices," or, "This business that's serving associations," or, "This business is serving universities." And we can help take that, that idea from Like a kernel of an idea with a good operator who wants to execute on it and build their entire, you know, digital presence, build a viewable product, execute their marketing campaigns, really act as a platform and a partner in doing that. I think we are part of the way to that journey today, but I, I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of additional things we need to get in place before we can do that effectively. But if it, you know, uh, beyond just like agency growth, a problem I would love to solve is how do you just create a platform to start another hundred businesses solving problems for nonprofits, associations, and other mission-driven orgs? So I guess that would be the, the hairy and audacious goal is, is get Nexus to go from being the agency to the platform, but that is in the future.

Russel 36:05

Nice. Well, I, I have every belief that will happen and, and can't wait to see how your journey evolves.

Born or Made?

Russel 36:13

So I guess one last big question then for you, Rafi. Are entrepreneurs born or are they made?

Rafi 36:18

I think they're made, to be honest. I, I think, uh, I think a lot of... In my world, I've interacted with a lot of CEOs and a lot of business owners who come with completely different backgrounds and mindsets, and I think a lot of people-- And I didn't even think I would be an entrepreneur. I sort of was an accidental entrepreneur. I think there are some core traits that are important. Like, I think you need an excellent work ethic. I think you need a desire to wanna do it. I think you need a sort of a semi-delusional ability to keep working on something even when you're facing failure. But I think those can be learned skills. I think that w- taking the right person, put in the right situation, I think a lot of people can become really successful entrepreneurs, leveraging skills that are unique to them, that may not be the skills that I'm really good at. Some of my best friends are highly analytical business operators, where they're not salespeople. They're not, you know, a person who, wants to go on a hundred calls, and they're really good operators, but in an entirely different way than, than I am. Like, I, I love chatting. I love talking to people, going to conferences. Like, for me, I get a lot of energy from that. So I think it is too-- I-- If, if entrepreneurs were born, I, I just to me, it's like, it's y- it's made through the series of circumstances and opportunities that you get, and you could take someone who never thought they could be an entrepreneur, and I think they could be an entrepreneur if given the right opportunity.

Russel 37:33

Well said. I love that. And if you have a Dunkin' Donuts in your vicinity, it's very impactful to that making process, it sounds like.

Rafi 37:42

Yeah. If you Listen, if you're willing to be there every night, you will get a lot of shit done, I will tell you that.

Russel 37:48

There we go. All right. All right. People will be flooding the Dunkin' Donuts left and right as we speak.

Where To Find Nexus

Russel 37:53

If people wanna know more about your journey and Nexus Marketing, where can they go?

Rafi 37:58

Yep. So our website is nexsmarketing.com. We're on LinkedIn. We're posting a lot of different content around digital visibility and, and, like, digital marketing tactics targeting these different mission-driven sectors. So those are probably the, the two best places to check out and learn more.

Russel 38:12

Nice.

Wrap Up And Outro

Russel 38:13

There you go. Thank you for sharing that. And thank you for sharing probably no shortage of insights, but really just creating a powerful story behind positioning, building your own ecosystem through that positioning, leading with strategy. And if we didn't say it already, get on the AI train. The time is now, and that maybe we just have to be a little bit delusional to run our businesses, and maybe that's okay. Really appreciate you taking the time to share that with us.

Rafi 38:39

Yeah. Thank you, Russel. It was fun.

Russel 38:42

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

Rafi 39:03

This one time we were working with this business, and it was a business that was multiple thousands of people doing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, and it was a call with

Sauna Zoomin'

Rafi 39:13

me and the account manager and the CEO of the business, and this was during COVID, uh, right when Zoom was relatively, you know, newly adopted across, across the businesses. And, uh, we're talking to the CEO. He's, he's giving us a bunch of feedback, and then he accidentally presses the Show Camera button, and the guy is in a sauna shirtless, and he just he realizes what we-- what he's done, turns off the camera, we go right back to the conversation. No one, no one me-uh, mentions it, acknowledges it whatsoever.