Ep 120 – Greg Bellinger, White Rabbit – What Happens When You Niche Hard and Go All In
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Featuring: Greg Bellinger, White Rabbit
In episode 120, I sit down with Greg Bellinger, co-founder and CEO of White Rabbit, a web and mobile development agency with nearly 100 in-house employees spread across Colombia, India, and the U.S. Greg shares his journey from frontend developer to visionary CEO and breaks down how White Rabbit scaled by staying focused on one niche—supporting other agencies.
We explore why White Rabbit only hires full-time employees, how niching into agency delivery gave them a competitive edge, and the strategic thinking behind launching their own internal project financial software. Greg also talks about his passion for creation, not just in code but in culture, leadership, and future products. This one’s full of takeaways for agency owners looking to scale with purpose.
Key Bytes
• Greg shares why they only hire full-time employees and the cultural benefits that come with it
• He explains how niching into working with agencies helped them scale more efficiently
• Greg reflects on stepping away from product management and letting his leadership team shine
• He talks about the challenges of managing across three countries and how they keep their culture unified
• Greg reveals details about their custom-built project management and financial tool
• He offers insight into people management, tough conversations, and protecting your energy
• He shares his personal philosophy of “create,” from coding to building culture
• Greg discusses what entrepreneurship means to him and how it’s been part of his DNA from the startChapters
00:00 Welcome and guest intro
01:00 The origin of White Rabbit and its full-time hiring philosophy
02:30 Transitioning out of coding and project management
06:00 Working exclusively with agencies vs. going direct
07:15 Niching and its impact on growth and clarity
10:00 Scaling globally: why Colombia, India, and the U.S.
12:00 Uniting culture across three countries
14:00 Vision for the future: stepping back, launching products
16:30 Building internal software for project and financial management
19:00 Lessons in people management and entrepreneurship
25:00 Rapid fire: guilty pleasures, two-word advice, and dream hire
Greg Bellinger is the Co-Founder and CEO of White Rabbit Group, a web and mobile development agency with a fully in-house team of nearly 100 employees across three countries. His passion for technology began in childhood, leading him to hand-code his first websites in 2008. In 2016, he co-founded White Rabbit Group, building it into a trusted development partner for world-class agencies and creatives. Under his leadership, the company has earned a reputation for delivering high-quality digital solutions while fostering a close culture of technical experts.
Contact Greg on the White Rabbit website or on LinkedIn.
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Steve / Agency Outsight (00:08.409)
Welcome to Agency Bites, a podcast dedicated to helping creative entrepreneurs thrive. I'm Steve Guberman from Agency Outsite, where I coach agency owners to build the business of their dreams. My guest this week is Greg Bellinger. He's the co-founder and CEO of White Rabbit. They're a web and mobile development agency with nearly 100 in-house team members across three countries. Since co-founding the company in 2016, Greg has built it into a trusted partner for top agencies and creatives.
known for high quality digital and work and a strong technical culture. Greg, great to have you here. Thanks for joining me.
Greg (00:41.932)
Yeah, excited to be here. Good intro, Stephen. Yeah, thank you.
Steve / Agency Outsight (00:43.975)
So nearly 10 years in running White Rabbit, it was kind of the backstory. You and your partner launched it. What was the launching point for that?
Greg (00:50.222)
.
Yeah, I guess it has been nearly 10 years. So yeah, my co-founder Abilash, him and I are both technical founders. And we started YRabbit Group with the tenets of supporting agencies and creative studios. Another one of our tenets was making sure that everybody's in-house, so hiring everybody full-time. Everybody's a full-time employee. We don't hire any contractors. We don't do any...
know, part-time employees at all. And it's something that we founded the company on and it's something that we're still doing today. Pretty proud of that. And, you know, we do that for reasons of, you know, cost is one thing. The biggest thing for us is our culture and our team.
And when you have everybody that's in-house and fully dedicated, you can really harbor a great culture. So yeah, White Rabbit Group, we're both technical founders. Our team is, we're not a full service agency. We really focus on engineering. We have a small UIUX team, but not a full service. And we focus on just the engineering. So I kind of started out coding in 2008, started as a front-end developer.
My co-founder Abhilash, he is more of the backend mind. So, you know, my front end mind, his kind of backend, both technical co-founders. We went all in on supporting agencies and coding websites for them, web apps, mobile apps. And now we're, you know, just about 100 people and we're in three countries, Colombia, India, and the U.S. And still, you know, we own those three entities in all three of those countries and everybody's a full-time employee. So.
Steve / Agency Outsight (02:34.257)
Love it. So for people listening that might be like, all right, I have a small shop or I want to start a shop that kind of accidental entrepreneurs that we often talk about as technical co-founders. How many years in and maybe you're still doing it today, but how many years in were you like, I got to stop writing code and start being a CEO and running a business or are you still writing code?
Greg (02:34.495)
And yeah.
Greg (02:47.558)
Ahem.
Greg (02:53.357)
I don't consider myself a developer at all anymore. yeah, guess how many years in? I started coding in 2008. I probably hand coded the first.
you know, 10, 12 websites. And I continued to stay in the code and writing code. But by the time White App Group came around, I mean, I was still looking at code, reviewing code, and maybe even a couple of those sites, I was definitely in the code in the initial phases of starting White App Group. But one of our first hires was a developer.
Like we knew we wanted to scale, we had the business model, we knew our target market, and so we hired one of our first hires as a developer. so he was focused on writing the code initially for mainly all the projects. And I got out of it probably within a year, but my specialty and where I'm pretty good at is the product management side and project management.
So I stayed in the weeds on project management for a long time, maybe too long, managing projects, still being very client facing. And only recently in the last couple of years have I really pulled away from that. Probably maybe the last few years.
And so it's been huge stepping away and allowing our team to really manage everything, do the client management.
Greg (04:26.722)
the output and like our company as a whole has just gotten so much better since I've stepped away and let people, you our team actually do the work. And then I can focus on, you know, vision, CEO, actual CEO tasks, not actually being, you know, a product manager and being in the weeds with our design team and our development team. so, yeah, it was about a year with the code and then just about three years ago and I kind of stepped away from the day to day.
Steve / Agency Outsight (04:53.671)
What was the pivot point that said, hey, I've got to start moving away from this or like what brought you to that point?
Greg (05:00.29)
I think it's multiple things over time. wasn't like an overnight thing. But I just, know, yeah, I don't think there was kind of one moment that kind of brought me to that. It kind of slowly happened over time. But now that I'm like standing back today, it's like, it's just been so beneficial for our company. Me not being in the weeds so much. So, yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (05:16.273)
Nice, yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (05:26.993)
Yeah, co-founder also, he's out of the code and out of the back end of things.
Greg (05:31.31)
He is he is he's he's involved with a couple kind of bigger projects from the technical side But he's really handling a lot of the operation stuff. So yeah, he's he's pretty much out of the day to day We have a an amazing leadership team at this point
you know, director of marketing, partnerships, director of project management, engineering, and then delivery management from the engineering side. All those people, that's not myself or Abelash who we co-founded the company, they're they're crushing it, so yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (06:03.709)
That's amazing. And so from day one, you've always been niched into delivery for other agencies. So that's your sweet spot. You've never veered from it and going direct to brand or anything like that,
Greg (06:06.542)
Thank
Greg (06:10.828)
Yeah, that's all we do.
Greg (06:16.468)
No, we, I mean, we've, you know, we're on the directory list for Microsoft. I could probably, I guess maybe under NDA, there's a few other direct clients, pretty big names that we work with. and so we do have direct clients, but those come from our agency partners. And typically our agency partners would like, hey, White Rabbit, you know, we don't really want to have anything to do with this. We don't want to manage it. Like just start working with them and.
So the makeup is about 40 % direct client work and 60 % agency work. But those direct clients come from our agencies and our whole models, you know, and our marketing and what we're doing is supporting agencies in Creative Studio.
Steve / Agency Outsight (07:01.351)
So from a general, no, let me nix that. From a positioning standpoint, right, because so many agencies struggle with, should I niche, should I own a vertical, should I just lean into this one space and yours is other agencies? Can you talk about some of the benefits from pipeline, messaging, servicing, delivery, the benefits that you guys have seen in almost 10 years, just servicing one market?
Greg (07:13.006)
you
Greg (07:27.246)
Well, I mean, the benefit is we've scaled up, you know, a hundred people and we're profitable and we're doing really good. We're successful. And I can't stress enough about, you know, a company choosing a niche and area to go all in on. And there's successful companies that are doing it all, but the ones that are, they're massive. I they're 10,000 plus companies. And when you kind of get muddled into doing too many things, you're just, you can't really speak to the right person.
in terms of messaging and who you're talking to. And you can't focus on getting good within a certain area. A big thing for us is delivering quality. We know how to work with agencies, we know how to write code, so we stay in that lane. And again, I kind of start off with we're not a full service agency. It's something that I want companies that we work with to instantly know that's not what we do. We don't even do SEO. We do onsite SEO, we'll write the code properly, but we don't do offsite SEO, we don't do marketing.
obviously we don't do branding. We focus on what we do. And a good story that I could kind of tell is before founding White Rabbit Group, I kind of had my hands in a lot of, you know, multiple companies doing a lot of different things. My agency before White Rabbit, we were full service. We did SEO. You know, I used to be really good at SEO personally. We did SEO, we did the branding, we did the business cards, we built websites, right? We did it all.
I mean, there was success in there for sure. You know, I made money, but nothing like, you know, White Rabbit, when I basically cut everything off, went all in, Abelash and I, like nothing else, literally not another side company, nothing, all in on White Rabbit Group. And I think that mindset totally changed, you know, the trajectory and success of what we're doing. So.
So not only mindset, like don't be all over the place mindset and then if you can niche the business model, it's just a double win. So yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (09:20.625)
That's an awesome testimony.
Steve / Agency Outsight (09:29.204)
Yeah. Yeah. That's an awesome testimony for it. Um, I'm a big fan of it. And when I had my shop, it took us way too long to realize the benefit of. The niching and owning a few verticals. Um, so yeah, I'm grateful to hear that the results are in your corner for that. Um, yeah. It, and it, I think it takes what it takes when you finally realize it, there's a freedom that you find in it and the ability to.
Greg (09:39.873)
you
Yeah, took me years. So it sounds like you and me both. Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (09:56.143)
market to your direct audience and service and deliver to that same audience. So the benefits are massive. What about, I mean, so three countries, about a hundred people focusing on culture. Are the three countries you're in strategically chosen or is it just where you found talent and then you're like, we're going to double down on Columbia because we found amazing people there.
Greg (10:04.598)
Yeah.
Greg (10:17.838)
The only country that was, yeah, good question, the only country that was strategically chosen was Colombia. We were looking at Latin America and we looked at Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, even Brazil, Mexico, we were looking at all these countries. We honed in on Colombia, up and coming, high.
High population is the third largest country in Latin America. Costa Rica for us, we nixed it because it was smaller population, higher cost as well. The employee pool is pretty saturated from a hiring perspective and trying to hire people.
Steve / Agency Outsight (10:54.781)
Mm-hmm.
Greg (11:03.502)
So Columbia was strategic. India was not really strategic in it being India could have been any country before founding whatever group I worked with a lot of different engineers in different countries. But my co-founder, he's from India and he happened to be in India. And so him and I co-founded the company. And so we set up base in India where he was located. He now lives in California. And then we set up kind of the client management where I was
which was in California at that time, we co-founded White Rabbit. So it just happened that he was in India and he had an engineering mind and so we went in on hiring our engineering team there and then doing the client management from the America side.
Steve / Agency Outsight (11:52.551)
So can you talk about some of the, I guess the secret gems that you figured out on managing and pulling culture together across three, two continents, I guess, but three countries, different languages, different cultures within them and how do you kind of unify that company culture? Yeah, different time zones, everything.
Greg (11:59.212)
you
Greg (12:07.928)
different time zones. Yeah, it's a difficult one. I think we're doing it pretty well. There's still things that we could do better at as there always are. I don't know, the simple answer is we care. I care a lot about our culture and our team and our people. And I think that gets felt all the way through. We genuinely...
I just genuinely care about everybody that works at WireAvid Group. But we have certain things that we do. One of the things that comes to mind is we flew everybody to Bali a few years ago. The whole team got everybody in person, rented out a place in Ubud, Bali.
had the whole resort to ourselves and it was, you we were there for almost a week and it was just a really good time and getting people in person and building those in-person connections are key. Every relationship that I've had after I've met them in person, it's always changed.
Steve / Agency Outsight (12:58.535)
Wow.
Greg (13:11.158)
I don't know if you've experienced it yourself, getting people in person is important. We obviously can't do that even every year is tough, but we try to have local meetups and when we can every kind of two, three years we have them planned for next year. We try to get everybody in person together.
Steve / Agency Outsight (13:30.459)
Yeah, that's a huge lift to do every year, but every few years I love that. Do each of the countries do their own kind of local culture, local events, holidays, things like that?
Greg (13:34.274)
Yeah.
Greg (13:38.87)
We do, yeah, they meet up, we're doing local meetups every year. So, yeah, yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (13:43.729)
Yeah, that's awesome. Are you still involved in the hiring process?
Greg (13:50.126)
Not so much. No. I used to be I used to have the final final interview for every single person that we hired I think until we hit like 50 to 70 It was for a pretty long time
It was one of those things, you know, maybe it was necessary, but maybe not. It was one those things where I'm trying to hold onto it. And our team's crushed right now with the interview process and bringing on people that are like mighty, because we've defined our culture and then we hire against it. And so I don't need to be in those interviews anymore, but I did hold onto that for quite a while. But no, I'm only involved in, you know, director level, pretty key hires. So yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (14:36.655)
And so, owning vision, owning kind of the CEO role, what some of the things you've got on the horizon for the agency and growth or new products, things like that.
Greg (14:45.966)
Yeah, my goal for White Rabbit Group in a very positive way is to step away as much as possible and allow the company to operate without me as much as possible. We've set the vision for us is scaling, continuing to scale, grow our team. We see some pretty good growth happening over the next couple of years. And what I'm spending my time on is
really kind of future vision stuff. Right now we're working on a product that our entire company is operating on. It's a project management financial tool that we're actually planning to launch and bring to agencies as soon as next year. We kind of, you know, I'm sure you've experienced this, but we looked at a lot of different softwares for our company to run and manage and it ended up
Steve / Agency Outsight (15:31.494)
Wow, cool.
Greg (15:43.662)
you know, we had to run five different softwares to run our agency. And so we just ended up building our own.
And our entire company is running on it right now. It's again a project management financial tool. So that's something that I've been kind of heads down. I love love building things from the ground up. So that's been fun. We're also going to be launching a new service company this year as well. So a whole new vertical. It is niche again, kind of staying in the niche lane. And then and then of course, I'm still spending time to EO vision and working with our leadership team at White Rabbit Group. And so that's what I'm spending
a lot of my time and you know taking us as a company not just why I would do but then scaling and building other other companies so yeah
Steve / Agency Outsight (16:28.997)
Love that. think the IP, owning your own IP, mean, somebody, we've seen so many tools come out of agencies saying there's just not a good fill in the blank, you know, base camp launched from that, you know, from 37 signals a hundred years ago. And, you know, a ton of other tools that have come about like that. So knowing that you've built something, I air table might've come about like that, but monday.com, some of these other guys, but, so do you have software that you've built that you're running client?
Greg (16:41.998)
Yeah, 100 years ago. Yeah.
Greg (16:51.511)
Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (16:56.669)
IP on client websites things like that or using other open source or closed box systems
Greg (17:06.38)
So it's custom built software that helps kind of answer what you said. And it's totally internal, so we don't have any clients accessing or having any kind of access to what we're working on. So it's an internal tool. Just our team is working on it. And it's a project management tool that has a high focus on project financials and giving the power to manage a profitable project to the project management team. And then pulling those insights up
Steve / Agency Outsight (17:22.973)
Mm-hmm.
Greg (17:36.394)
to the owner, which is me, and seeing, how is our company doing? How are all of our projects doing? Can I go down the list and just instantly see the health of all of our projects? And trying to do that as simple as possible and it all being encompassing in the same software. And it's custom built from the ground up.
Steve / Agency Outsight (17:54.151)
So from an... Got you. And the financial aspect of it isn't necessarily billing or replacing QuickBooks. It's more the financial health of all your clients and projects. Yeah.
Greg (17:58.641)
Ahem.
Greg (18:04.536)
Correct, but we do have invoicing integration so that is happening and could replace QuickBooks. But we do have a QuickBooks integration right now for us internally.
Steve / Agency Outsight (18:17.627)
Was the challenge that this answered that projects and clients were kind of slipping in profitability and you're like, we got to get a better grip on this or was it literally there's no good tool for this?
Greg (18:28.032)
Yeah, we wanted more insight into the projects. And at the end of the day, we believe in processes and software and using it and combo boards and having a place for people to communicate. And
What we found is, again, we needed like four or five hundred software from like time tracking to project management to the financials to QuickBooks. And then we needed a CRM integration. We needed all these different software that don't really talk well with each other. And we even hired a consultant to help us from the project management side to get streamlined. We just knew we were scaling. wasn't like an exact problem that we were solving.
Steve / Agency Outsight (19:02.493)
Mm-hmm.
Greg (19:15.692)
like, okay, we have weak project financials, we need to get better at it. It was more like we're scaling, we know where we're going, and we need to have better processes. And as we went down that path, we just found that there's nothing out there that we either trusted or fit the bill of what we needed. So we just built it. Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (19:34.907)
Yeah, I love it. That's awesome. Thinking over the almost 10 years and so now you've got it planted in your ear that, man, we'll come up on our 10 year anniversary. We're gonna have to have a big celebration, big party. But back over the past 10 years, what are some kind of, I say mistakes, but major lessons that you've learned in acting, in being CEO of a growing, thriving agency?
Greg (19:52.407)
Ahem.
Greg (19:59.076)
that's a really good question.
Greg (20:05.666)
Yeah, one of the advice or at least something that I've learned over the years that I've had to do is, is I kind of have a saying like I've, when it comes to employee management and having tough conversations, I've learned to kind of take my heart and put it in a box and like set it aside.
you know, in the beginning, whether it having a tough conversation, letting somebody go, somebody quitting, it really got to me, just emotionally. And, and I knew that we were, you know, we're going to continue to grow and scale and hire people. And it's just part of people management. And yeah, I guess my advice is just, and how I do is how I learn is just, I kind of take my heart and put it in a box and set it aside and having those types of conversations.
And I've been surprised over the years as an agency owner, just with people management, the trust that can be broken by people that you fully trust. And with people management,
Steve / Agency Outsight (21:11.826)
Mm-hmm.
Greg (21:15.306)
that's inevitable. mean, when you're working with 100 people, that's going to happen. You have to be okay with that and you have to figure out how to kind of navigate that. I think for lot of entrepreneurs, scaling into people management, don't really know. It's a...
As you become an entrepreneur and you scale things, people think entrepreneurship is like this, you know, it's a...
It has this really positive light, but there are lots of ups and downs. And I think a lot of that comes with the people management and you have to be okay with it. And a lot of people aren't really made for that, I think, especially even like entrepreneurs that like to stay kind of in their lane and working on things at the ground level. So people management is, I've learned a lot over the years. And for me, I like it, I enjoy it.
My kind of word is for like, if I were to pick one word that I try to live by, it's create. I just love creating things from the ground up. And initially that joy for creation started with writing code, right? Pushing it to a server, pointing a domain, and the whole internet could see what I just built.
And now my passion, you know, which is create has kind of morphed into creating this culture and profitable business. And I just, I love it at this point. But yeah. So.
Steve / Agency Outsight (22:48.443)
Love that. It's a great answer. I do think a lot of creative professionals, business owners adopt the word entrepreneur almost like synonymous with I own a business, so I'm an entrepreneur and curious how do you define entrepreneurship?
Greg (23:02.733)
Yeah.
How do I define it? Well, you asked that question. What went through my mind? How do I define entrepreneurship? Well, obviously, I would say my quick answer is creating something from nothing.
and following through with it. And I think profitability and entrepreneurship and building something that's sustainable is key. And so to me, that's entrepreneurship. But I think there's another side of entrepreneurship that, like when I was going through college, the first time I heard the word entrepreneurship was in college.
Steve / Agency Outsight (23:31.517)
Mm-hmm.
Greg (23:46.798)
I mean, before that, had not had a job since I was 18. I mean, I've kind of always done my own thing. I've built things, started companies, sold things. I was in real estate notes, like flipping real estate notes a long, long time ago.
And I looked at that word and I was like, okay, I guess that's like who I am as a person. Like it's, kind of built in me. And I always felt a little bit weird because there's a lot of people that are like, I'm an entrepreneur. try to be an entrepreneur, but it's, I don't know if it's fully built in them. And I would say there's, there's a side to entrepreneurship that is just in people, just like to the core. And so yeah, I don't know. Entrepreneurship.
Steve / Agency Outsight (24:29.019)
Yeah. I think you nailed it. mean, from my perspective, I think different people have different perspectives, but I mean, since I was in fifth grade, I can remember selling my dad sold school supplies. And so I would take his leftover samples to school and I would sell like Trapper Keeper folders for like Def Leppard and Quiet Riot and like all these hair bands. And we'd go to maybe it was BJ's at the time and buy a giant thing of lollipops. And I'd take them to school and I'd sell them for a quarter each. And it was all about profit.
Greg (24:36.758)
you
Greg (24:50.498)
Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (24:58.769)
So I think people that have that young bug that just chases them through life to like build something and do something. To me that's, and I think you nailed it. Yeah. You're always looking for that next thing that you can build. So yeah, I love that perspective. I'm glad you shared it. I want to just jump to a couple of rapid fire questions real quick, just to keep it on on time and wrap it up with something fun. So these might stump your brain. Cause some people are like, I don't know about this one, but here we go.
Greg (25:11.554)
Yeah. Yeah. Love that.
Greg (25:18.414)
Okay.
Steve / Agency Outsight (25:27.951)
What's your go-to guilty pleasure TV show or movie?
Greg (25:28.526)
K.
Greg (25:32.928)
My go-to guilty pleasure.
Greg (25:43.53)
I don't really want I don't you said TV I don't really watch too much TV I don't know maybe scrolling on Instagram every now every now and then I don't know yeah I think that's the only guilty what's that
Steve / Agency Outsight (26:03.101)
You're dialed in, you're not in front of screens.
You're pretty dialed in. You're not watching and consuming too much, are you?
Greg (26:12.622)
I'm not, no, keep everything pretty streamlined at this point. I have a pretty set way of how I live. Like I wake up cold plunging and in the sauna every single morning. know, whatever, it's a lot of people, it's like a fad right now, but honestly, I have so much energy waking up every morning. Working out is really big for me. I don't know, you said guilty pleasure and I was like, I don't know.
What came to mind was like running or mountain biking, but those are not really like guilty pleasures. That's just what I like to do. So yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (26:46.877)
Sweet, you're dialed in, I love it. If you could send a two word text to your younger self, what would it say?
Greg (26:55.734)
Oof.
Greg (27:03.66)
Stay on the path, it's forwards.
Steve / Agency Outsight (27:06.705)
Take it, it's worth it, yeah. Stick to the path, I like it. And then finally, if you could hire any famous person to work in your agency, who would they be?
Greg (27:07.778)
Yeah.
Greg (27:19.074)
Hmm
Greg (27:30.07)
Any famous person.
Greg (27:37.26)
I don't know. We gotta go after sales and I think Steve Jobs is a phenomenal salesman. So I'd bring him on and grow sales. So, yeah. Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (27:46.801)
Yeah, he could sell pretty much anything. He was a closer. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you racking your brain for those last three. Greg, I love what you've been building. It's an inspiration to a lot of agencies. I'm sure you support tons of agencies that also benefit from what you've built and you and your team have built. So thank you for joining us and sharing about your process in building what you're having over the past decade. So thank you very much. I appreciate you.
Greg (27:56.237)
Yeah
Greg (28:00.002)
Yeah.
Greg (28:13.014)
Yeah, thank you Steve. It's pleasure. Pleasure chatting.