Ep 154 – Mike Bodkin, Talent Scout – How to Build a Sellable Agency — and a Smarter Way to Hire
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Featuring: Mike Bodkin, Talent Scout
In episode 154, I sit down with Mike Bodkin, former co-founder of the full-service digital agency Giant Propeller and now co-founder of Talent Scout, a niche recruiting firm placing full-time remote senior marketing, creative, and operations talent across Latin America.
Mike walks me through nearly a decade running Giant Propeller — the doubling years, the partnership friction that eventually led to a buyout, and the acquisition that landed in his lap and pulled him onto a corporate executive team. We get honest about what a real exit feels like, why post-acquisition integration is never a clean puzzle piece, and the lessons he'd carry into any future partnership.
Then we dig into the near-shore talent model he built out of necessity and now offers to other agencies: why time-zone alignment changed everything, why he hires virtual specialists instead of VAs, and how AI-fluent talent is reshaping who actually gets hired. If you're thinking about your team, your exit, or both, this one's worth the listen.
Key Bytes
• If there's smoke, there's probably fire — Mike let partnership friction drag on far longer than it should have.
• Once you stop doubling revenue, stagnation can quietly turn a great partnership into a tense one.
• Most agencies aren't sellable, so the ones that exit usually built something worth buying on purpose.
• Post-acquisition integration is never a perfect puzzle piece, and expecting friction is half the battle.
• Networking isn't soft — a single relationship is what put Mike's entire exit in motion.
• Time-zone alignment, not just cost savings, is what makes distributed teams actually feel cohesive.
• Mike places virtual specialists, not VAs — senior people fully embedded into the agency like W-2 employees.
• The most valuable hire isn't AI, it's the specialist who knows how to use AI to enhance real craft.
Chapters
00:00 From blockbuster films to founding Giant Propeller
01:10 Becoming a full-service agency by saying yes
06:30 Partnership friction and the structured buyout
10:26 Hindsight lessons on choosing the right partner
12:14 What film production taught him about running teams
15:10 The exit that landed in his lap
17:44 The messy reality of post-acquisition integration
21:20 Discovering the Latin American talent model
26:00 Why he hires specialists, not VAs
27:25 AI-fluent talent and who actually gets hired now
34:59 Rapid-fire questions and closing thoughts
Mike Bodkin is a former agency co-founder and operator who built and successfully exited Giant Propeller, a full-service digital marketing agency, after nearly a decade of growth. His journey included navigating a partner split and closing a last-minute acquisition just days before payroll would not have cleared — a defining moment in his entrepreneurial career.
Prior to agency ownership, Mike worked in film production on major studio projects, developing a unique blend of creative vision and operational discipline that would later shape his approach to building and scaling an agency.
Today, Mike is the co-founder of Talent Scout, a hyper-niche recruiting company focused on placing full-time, remote senior marketing, creative, and operations professionals in Latin America. He helps agencies rethink team structure by prioritizing high-quality talent, meaningful cost savings, and timezone alignment — ensuring distributed teams still feel integrated and collaborative.
Learn more about Mike and Talent Scout on their website.
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Steve Guberman (00:01.276)
Welcome to Agency Bites. I'm your host, Steve Guberman from Agency Outside, where I help agency owners build the business of their dreams. This week on Agency Bites, I'm joined by Mike Bodkin. He's a former agency co-founder and operator who built and exited his full service digital marketing agency, Giant Propeller, after nearly a decade of growth. Before Agency Life, Mike worked in film production on major studio projects, which gave him a unique blend of creative and operational perspective when he jumped into entrepreneurship.
Today, he's the co-founder of Talent Scout, a hyper niche recruiting company focused on full-time remote senior marketing, creative and operations talent, mostly in Latin America. He's helping agencies rethink how they build their teams, balancing quality, cost efficiency and time zone alignment so that your agency still feels cohesive, even when your team is distributed. Mike pumped to have you here today. Welcome to the show.
Mike Bodkin (00:52.108)
Yeah, yeah, I appreciate you having me. Thanks for the intro. That was awesome.
Steve Guberman (00:57.246)
All right. So, uh, giant propeller to walk us through kind of what that trajectory was. mean, 10 years is long time to run a shop and then you went through some turmoil with your partner and exited. Talk us through some of that stuff.
Mike Bodkin (01:10.027)
Yeah, Giant Propeller was such an amazing experience. Something I wouldn't trade for the world. But I think like any business and anything we do, especially in the agency world where I come from, had a lot of ups and it certainly had a lot of downs as well. But as you mentioned, we started Giant Propeller in 2015.
coming off of making some pretty big blockbuster films. I was out in LA for that specifically, but decided I did not want to be working for people. Got to Entrepreneurial Bug and started Giant Propeller, which was originally intended as a creative agency. And we kind of bootstrapped it, got the business really up and running based on me and my partner's ability to...
know, do a lot of like content creation work. So, you know, we were doing brand videos in the beginning. couple music videos, we shot a huge music video for an artist named Little Dicky, you know, kind of put us on the map. So did a lot of like that type of stuff. But where my partner was really leading the creative charge, I was much more on the business side and...
as we were kind of working with more of this 2015 Silicon Valley brands and kind of went, that part of the world was so significant. You know, I remember they were, can you do this? Can you do that? Kept coming up. And I eventually was like, yes, we can do that. I think it's a typical agency moment of existential crisis. Like, what do we do here? What do we don't do here? But we ended up saying yes. And
I think that email marketing was the first thing that we added on. And then from there, it just kind of spiraled into us becoming a full service agency, meaning everything in the digital marketing sphere, like strategy, creative, performance, brand work, you name it, it's what we ended up becoming.
Mike Bodkin (03:16.846)
We focused specifically on direct-to-consumer brands. That was kind of like what we did. More towards the end of it, we were in some fashion and fashion adjacent spaces, but worked with some great brands. Brands like Meundies in the beginning, right? Which is a big brand out of LA, which was great. Another brand called Le Jeans, which is a big women's fashion brand out of
But then we also worked with some pretty small no name people as well, just kind of keeping that trajectory going. But I would say through that whole cycle, like you were mentioning, there was a lot of growth. There was a lot of contraction. But I think one of the major stories about all of that, well, I think there were two major stories. Now I think about it. One was that I had some partner issues that
unfortunately ended up in a separation, more like really towards the end of things. That was kind of a big thing that we had to deal with him and I directly, but also inevitably as a team. And then obviously COVID, right? I was very, very like, you work for me, you come into this office every day. I was in LA, people didn't drive from Santa Monica. I was like, then you can't work here. And to a, like a lot of us did, right?
a fully remote entity and everybody kind of spread out across the world and in the country. Me, I landed in Miami as an example. That's where I am right now. So that's a bit about it, just kind of sort of contextual level. That's kind of what we were. And then I had, like you said, bit of an issue with my partner.
Steve Guberman (04:53.373)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Mike Bodkin (05:06.764)
we had separated and then I had a really amazing, fortunate circumstance after moving to Miami. I'm part of the Entrepreneurs Organization and through some relationships within that, one of the people that was in my chapter in South Florida,
was consulting for a manufacturing and licensing company up in New York. And they had just gone through a big acquisition strategy in 22. They had bought a fairly, you know, fairly significant shoe brand. had bought a...
a big skincare company, a jewelry company, and then they're like, how are we going to get all this stuff done? I got tapped on the shoulder, said, hey, would you sell your business? And I was like, yeah, I might. So the conversation happened. from there, I sold Giant Propeller to them and then stayed on with them for two more years following that until March of last year. Thank you.
Steve Guberman (06:05.199)
Awesome. Well, congrats on the exit. Definitely want to dig a little bit more into that. that's, I mean, &A buzz is huge and most founders that I speak to are like, yeah, we've been running this thing for X amount of years. I'd love to sell it. know, newsflash, most are not sellable. So you, you obviously put some things in place that it was attractive to a PE firm. Cause that's, those are, that's kind of like the
Mike Bodkin (06:23.021)
Yes.
Steve Guberman (06:32.088)
ultimate microscope to take an agency under. They know what they're looking for. They're not gonna buy a dog pile necessarily. the partner navigation I'm curious about because there's a ton of partnerships out there. It's like a couple of friends, a couple of romantic friends, whatever, college roommates, whatever. Hey, let's start a business. Sounded like you guys had some good compliment to one another, not a ton of overlap, right? They were creative, you were more the business side of things, so that's great.
Mike Bodkin (06:39.981)
Yes.
Steve Guberman (06:59.741)
The resolution though, was this like a strategic buyout? it, you know, did it amicably? How did that all get played out?
Mike Bodkin (07:06.966)
Yeah, I mean, it ended somewhat amicably. It was definitely tense. was... The way that it all kind of unfolded, like you said, from a complementary standpoint was that...
I, which I'll take a lot of responsibility for, ultimately was not feeling like, look, we had an amazing first, second, third year, like literally doubling revenue, doubling, you know, that story. was like week, ski trips to like go and do our like monthly, our yearly planning. it was like, what are we doing? We're, we're, we're going to double it next year. Right? Like that's, that was the mentality always. And was, it was really, really positive. But I think that,
once you get over a certain revenue threshold, at least in my perspective, stagnation kind of comes into play. And then, you you can't just double revenue every month, every year, which is what we're used to. And then it wasn't the case. And I think that kind of started to sort of unwind some of the friction a bit because I had some expectations from a partnership standpoint.
Steve Guberman (08:06.321)
Yeah.
Mike Bodkin (08:20.194)
that to be fair may have been unjust, but I was like, hey, like, you know, this is what my expectation is. and that kind of continued to bubble up into sort of, you know, more friction as a relationship went on. his responsibility really fell more into the sales category, right? So you plateau and then you have attrition and you want to keep going and not doubling anymore. And, and so there's always, we're looking for sort of these reasons. So I'm there.
Steve Guberman (08:39.933)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Mike Bodkin (08:49.686)
sort of operating the business, if you will, and hoping for more revenue to come in. it wasn't happening kind of as frequently as I had wanted to keep that doubling pace going. so that caused, I think, was the onset of friction. then...
I'm not one to like take a back seat and be like, like it is what it is. It's my business. you know, it was our business. It was our livelihoods. I've got a family and all the things that we, you know, we have as we grow. And I wanted to continue to see success. And so I brought that to the table as an issue. And I was kind of, you know, relentless about it and the fact that I expected more.
And that eventually just kind of led to an unwinding, which again, we crafted a deal that, you know, was advantageous for him to leave. was a structured bio of his portion of the business. So all is well that ends well, so to speak. But I think if we had both looked back on it, like, I would assume, right, we would both have wanted a different outcome. You know, we were,
Steve Guberman (09:54.023)
Sure. Yep.
Mike Bodkin (10:05.772)
You know, we weren't best friends. We had known each other through a previous relationship and it worked well for a while until it didn't work. so that's kind of how it unwound and what happened. So when the company was ultimately acquired, he was not there for that portion. But he was still, you know, taken care of through the process as well.
Steve Guberman (10:26.205)
Sure. From hindsight, because again, partnership conflict happens, whether it's, you know, two folks or, you know, a married couple running a shop or whatever. What kind of lessons can you kind of share? Whether it's hindsight saying, man, if I'd seen this or if we had communicated better or like just from like a resolution, not resulting in a buyout. Any lessons in the hindsight?
Mike Bodkin (10:49.462)
Yeah, think that what I've heard many times is if there's smoke, there's probably fire. And I really let it drag on for a while.
I'm hoping that there was a resolution, but I think that ultimately the resolutions that I kept presenting were just like added friction, right? Like on top of it, rather than ripping the bandaid off, it was just more of a slow burn. And I think that that's something that I would have, you know, reflecting back on to say, you know, I think that we could have resolved it much cleaner than it ultimately ended up becoming.
I also think like, you know, from a partnership standpoint, it is extremely important to make sure that you are choosing the right partner and really, I think, understand what that ultimately means. We did compliment each other very well when we had met, but we did not know each other very well either. I think that in retrospect,
now being at this point in my career, I wouldn't just get into business with anybody just to get into a business and be like, like I'm an entrepreneur now. Like, hey, here, you want to be, cool. Like, let's do this thing together. I would be much more thoughtful in that decision-making process for sure. So I think those are two major things that I would point back to.
Steve Guberman (12:14.941)
Love it. then so before launching giant power, you were in film production and, and on the creative side of that, how did that help as far as running teams, building the agency, things that you brought in from, you know, pre, uh, you know, owning an agency.
Mike Bodkin (12:30.882)
Yeah, actually me and my partner were both. So we had both kind of come from that world, funny enough. But I think what I ultimately went on the film side, was in what we would call the producing or the production side of things. So I was used to building teams. I was used to operational workflows. And the company I was at previously was a pretty large post-production machine.
Steve Guberman (12:34.609)
Okay.
Mike Bodkin (13:00.191)
And what that means is it had a procedural pipeline. had a lot of output going through it.
And there were a lot of people involved in that entire process. I think that what I learned was a, how to facilitate workflows in sort of the most efficient way that I possibly could. think that was a big lesson from just the visual effects world. And I also learned to deal with artists, right? And how they work as well. again, when you, you know, my partner aside, right? Like the other people that were working at our company, these sort of high end specialists at what
whatever their thing was that they were great at, learning how to work with them, right? In a situation in an environment that was sometimes highly complex or highly pressurized, but allowing them to get the best results out of what they brought to the table in sort of their more creative capacity to the marketing side of the business. I think that's really what that all kind of taught me. As well as...
client services, right? Like we were, I mean, was, I was on the forefront of, you know, you know, tap myself in the back here. I got to present to Steven Spielberg in a one-on-one meeting once. I got, like, I got some major opportunities. So again, from a client management perspective as well, just being able to understand what it means to really service your clients properly from an agency standpoint. Again, I think there's always.
Friction with clients to some degree but how to minimize that in a way That you can still get what you're what you need out of it But also make them feel like they're winning and getting what they need out of it as well
Steve Guberman (14:44.657)
Yeah, it's just, it's a tricky strategic thing to be able to do that. So to bring that from being on the production side into an agency side is probably super valuable. Yeah. so talk about kind of, you know, without getting into the nitty-gritty details of the exit, what was that process like for you as, you know, the seller and post, sale into the integration and like, what was that whole process like?
Mike Bodkin (14:53.516)
Yeah.
Mike Bodkin (15:10.944)
Yeah, I mean from a sale perspective, like I said, this was, it was not something that I was like prepping for or ready for. So I felt very much like this thing had just fallen under my lap.
Steve Guberman (15:19.622)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Bodkin (15:27.414)
And then, I was just like extremely lucky to have even been in a conversation just by from a network. It made me realize just again how important networking is and like just letting people know who you are and communicating those things and just how valuable that is just as its own independent skill set. But yeah, I felt like, again, I felt lucky, but then I also felt like it had run its course. Right. I was not I was I was.
very much ready to also simultaneously move on. I don't know that I would have made that decision independent of this thing happening to me, but as soon as it was a possibility, the decision-making process on my end became relatively easy as far as making the decision to let go of the baby. Like that became a...
much easier than I had thought that it was going to be. Again, you got to remember, I'm just coming off of kind of partner issues, right? Like, you know, getting that thing unwound, right? This thing falls in my lap. I get made a, you know, a great offer, right? This opportunity.
I try to look at all the positives. They were part of the whole deal that I structured was everybody is staying on, there's no consolidation, that everybody was gonna be able to come with us.
Steve Guberman (16:46.546)
Nice.
Mike Bodkin (16:50.86)
Then it was New York and, I get to fly up to New York once a month. Or I'm to be on this executive team at the corporate level. Right. Just looked at it from like, wow, there's like all this like additional exposure that's going to happen. And here's this company that's like in this massive, like acquisition strategy that now I'm going to be part of the executive team and be part of that as well. So when I look at it, right, it all felt like, again, it all felt very lucky. It all felt like very,
Mike Bodkin (17:22.973)
very form-fitting as I kind of like thought about it more. was like, well, this actually does feel like a super good opportunity knowing that it wasn't that difficult for me to go. I could part ways with this, right? I just looked more at the sort of positive side of all the opportunities, right? Obviously there's the financial side of it, but like the growth side of it from an opportunity as well.
Steve Guberman (17:24.402)
Yeah.
Mike Bodkin (17:44.431)
So yeah, that's how that's I guess, I don't know if that answers, but that's how I was like feeling about that whole situation going into it. Yeah, and then the acquisition happens and hopefully I'm not the first person to say this, but you know, it's they're complicated. They're not easy. I think that there's a bit of a...
Steve Guberman (17:44.913)
Was there? Yeah.
Steve Guberman (18:02.397)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Bodkin (18:09.878)
misalignment sometimes with like the company that's being acquired and acquiring company only from a standpoint of it's not it's never a perfect puzzle piece right like it's always a puzzle in business but like just because you bought this thing it doesn't it's not that corner piece that you're just like looking for and just plug it in right
Steve Guberman (18:15.965)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Bodkin (18:30.38)
you know, the administrative onboarding process in itself, right, has its own complications and benefits. And like, yeah, there's that side of it. But then on the other side of it was also, you know, from my perspective,
was, you know, there's all these brands and now I'm the new guy in the room, right? Now I'm the marketing guy in the room with these brands. And that was a thing that had to get resolved from a relationship building standpoint. Nothing that I was uncomfortable with, but it wasn't like, oh, cool, like, here you go. Now run all these brands that have their own CEOs and their own teams. it was...
I think, you know, in knowing a bit about, you know, the P world and how these things can typically go, it felt very normal, run of the mill for those types of situations. But ultimately, you know, it worked out really well and, you know, things settle down, people settle in, and the opportunity then starts to present itself. And then you start to understand like, okay, I need to be here, not there, right? We should be doing this, not that, you know, just sort of the tactics, right? And execution starts to kind of bubble to the top.
Steve Guberman (19:24.817)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Bodkin (19:40.78)
And then, you know, hopefully you start collaborating well, which was what happened.
Steve Guberman (19:45.918)
Yeah, and those kind of frictions, post acquisition, the integration period is, so there's always gonna be some challenges. There's always gonna be like learning new ways of doing things. You're being brought into an ecosystem that already has back office support and like you said, HR support. And so you've got to learn their ways of doing things. That's how they're gonna make it profitable with economies of scale and consolidation. But for you it was important like, all right, my team's got to come along. These are my must haves. And you're able to get those boxes checked, which is beautiful.
Mike Bodkin (20:15.308)
Yeah.
Steve Guberman (20:15.517)
And a lot of those like, all right, not the puzzle piece, you know, not the exact puzzle piece fit, but a lot of that stuff can also be pre-vetted through doing proper due diligence, proper agency audits, things like that. Most deals don't happen. So the fact that this was like, hey, do you want to sell? Yeah. And it worked out. That's a beautiful thing. Like that's a one-for-one shot. It typically does not play out like that. So a little uncomfortability post-acquisition in the integration period.
Mike Bodkin (20:35.746)
Yes.
Mike Bodkin (20:40.209)
Yeah.
Steve Guberman (20:44.669)
Three six months whatever it is like that's acceptable. That's okay and then to your right
Mike Bodkin (20:46.54)
Yeah. Yeah. And it was expected to, like you said, it was, I wasn't, wasn't, didn't go in there blind going like, this is all going to be perfect. So I think I had my head on straight about knowing that that was, that that was inevitable and that was coming.
Steve Guberman (21:01.713)
Yeah, and so a big component of probably that led to profitability and production and systems with giant propeller was the kind of near shore talent model that you had built out that you're now running through talent scouts. So kind of talk about what you learned running your agency with this model that you've now leveraged into supporting other agencies with.
Mike Bodkin (21:20.334)
Yeah, for sure. know, it's, Talon Scout, you know, has been, has been wonderful in like a lot of ways. And, but I would have never, this is, this is the things about life when you kind of look at the butterfly effect and things that happen. Like if COVID didn't happen, Talon Scout would have never happened. I didn't tell you that much, right? Like one of those things, I always look at things before, you know, BC before COVID and after COVID, right? So, right.
Steve Guberman (21:47.101)
Yep.
Mike Bodkin (21:49.783)
COVID propelled me into Miami. Miami then introduced me to the Latin American talent market. If you're an agency owner, even if you run a business, you're probably looking for operational cost savings in many different ways. And one of those typically ends up being outsourcing something in your business.
And we outsourced a lot of stuff in the business. We had partners all over the world at different points in time. The Philippines and India and Eastern Europe. And all people are great. People are great everywhere in the world. find that like anywhere, people in place X are great at Y and people in place Y are great at X. And that's just like how it goes.
But I moved to Miami and somebody was like, have you ever like tried Latin America? I, you know, thinking I was the smartest person in the room always, I was like, I don't even know what you're talking about. And I go like, there's great talent down there. So kind of jumped in, tried it. And it like literally blew my mind to such a degree that a third of my, a third of my team, you know, 12 people when I sold were all from Latin America. That's how like,
That's how much I fell in love with it. And to the point where I had kind of gone in there and my hires 11 and 12 were account managers, like running my books of business with clients. Like I allowed that to happen. That's how comfortable I was with it. But you know, I'd asked my, my, um,
Steve Guberman (23:15.772)
Wow.
Mike Bodkin (23:22.286)
my COO at the time, we had kind of tried it with a couple of people. We didn't get the results we were hoping for. So he kind of took it on his shoulders and went down and basically built this internal recruiting engine, if you will. He's now my partner at Talent Scout, but we went down there and the cost savings obviously are great. The quality is amazing in Latin America. And then the time zone alignment was like literally what changed everything for me.
Again, we were full service, we had a lot of clients, a of stuff going on. The ability to collaborate with people, these senior people that understand what's going on every day was much more valuable to me and my team as an agency owner and servicing clients than knocking out a punch list, right? Like that was a big, big fundamental difference. so we ended up doing that. And then, you know, I...
I fell in love with this whole process and sort of the gap that I saw coming out of that was, look, there's people that do these types of businesses forever. I'm not inventing the wheel here, but what I found was I had a two-year transition out. So I wrapped up my relationship in earlier last year and I was like, I think that this is the need, right?
that is something that agency owners specifically, if they're not leveraging it, they need to be leveraging it. And so we niche into marketing, right? Like our whole value prop is based off of being hyper specialized in marketing and marketing specialists. So.
That's the value that we now bring. And that's what I learned through this whole process was servicing my agency, right? And I come from this world. I like to tell people like, we're not like a VA company and VA's get thrown out there. We're a VS company, a virtual specialist company, because that's the people we tapped into. We've had this organic network now down there for five years. And again, it's just been a wonderful experience because it's also a rarity.
Mike Bodkin (25:29.87)
of how this particular model gets leveraged from the standpoint of clients are saving a ton of money with great results. I'm making money as a business. And then we're actually employing these people that are making more money in their individual countries, right? Then they would get an opportunity to make anywhere else. So they're very happy to be servicing and working for these companies as well. So it just, makes me good, right? To like be part
Steve Guberman (25:42.567)
Mm-hmm.
Steve Guberman (25:54.504)
So these are, yeah, so they're not VAs, they're not taking over somebody's email bin, they're creative directors, production artists, marketing strategists, PPC, SEO, AI integrators.
Mike Bodkin (26:07.904)
All we look at it as all specialties, just like I had a time propeller. It was the exact same thing. Like that's, that's, we just replicated what we had. Right. So when we went down there, like my first hire was a graphic designer. Now we place AI enabled graphic designers. Cause it's kind of times have changed. Right. But that, but yeah, paid SEO, right. They're paid search, paid social SEO, right. Like affiliate managers, anything in that marketing stack specialty realm.
That's what we focus on because that's what I've been doing, right? For a decade at Giant Propeller. And that's what we know. And so our value is, like any recruiter should be, our ability to find really specific people with the really specific skill sets that we would have hired at our agency, like we did. And that's really where the value comes from.
Steve Guberman (26:52.103)
Yeah. And they're getting plugged into the agency as a full-time team member, not as a part-time remote task taker. They are fully integrated as employees. Yeah.
Mike Bodkin (27:03.786)
Exactly. Fully embedded into their teams, right? they're at like, I always have people like optically, right? Like they should, everybody needs to feel like a W-2, right? And they need to be working collaboratively with these teams every day in their specialty, in their role, providing value now to those agencies clients, right? Just like they did to us.
Steve Guberman (27:25.927)
Yeah, ton of value to that. love it. What are you seeing as far as, know, just kind of leaning into AI a little bit as far as training for junior to mid level creative talent, you leaning into AI curiosity, AI native skills, developing those before people are, you know, putting themselves on the market. What are you seeing as far as that?
Mike Bodkin (27:48.567)
Yeah. So, so AI like for all of us is a really interesting thing to be a part of, especially when it comes to the marketing function. The training component of it, I think is role dependent, right? Like I think the two primary things that in my opinion, I'd love to hear yours, that you hear people talk about when it comes to marketing specialties are SEO slash AEO, GEO, whatever. you want to kind of tag onto that. That's one.
And the other is the creative side of things, right? There's not a lot of like performance driven AI. It's like really like performing that well, right? There's obviously there's sorry, there's content creation as well. But again, let's look through a very particular lens, you know, that I think, you know, needs to be, you know, more highly audited for, for now, but from a training perspective and like what we're seeing is the way that people are asking for
for people are most specifically in, like I said, in the SEO and making sure they have that AO. But on the creative side, these AI enabled people that can come in and bring that sort of traditional skill set, but also bring in that AI component to it. Like we're all using from a generative AI perspective. what we're recommending to our network and people, right, is to start learning those tools and those skill sets, which will help them increase their probability of placement within the network.
that we're going on. So that's how we look at it. mean, we're not a training company. We're not saying, hey, you have to do this, or this is the process you have to run through. But when we are talking with our network, that's the things that we're recommending most specifically is learning to become a traditionally trained specialist, but then adding these AI components and tools into their tool belt.
Steve Guberman (29:39.036)
Yeah, it to me, it's just a fascinating time because you know, there's agencies that are adamantly know we're not going to use AI for creative, but we use it for operations or efficiencies or automations or whatever. And that stuff's really cool. And then there's other agencies that'll say, yeah, we are using it for creative for generative, generative AI for creative delivery. We're upfront about it with our clients and our clients are not saying, well, we'll pay you less if you're having robots do it, that kind of stuff. Most things are not production ready.
You can do a video prompt in a half an hour, but you're doing a hundred prompts to get the right thing. So prompt engineering is very vital. So it's not there, but I do think that it, I was in the city yesterday, we're having a lot of conversations around the younger talent pool. What's happening to the younger talent pool and how are we nurturing them? And that nurturing of skillset has got to be focused on AI. So agencies have to have the latest models and the latest tools so that
you know, and carve out time for the young talent to literally play and learn and deliver. And so, yeah, it's just an interesting time where it's like, used to need to know Adobe Creative Suite, now you need to know a million other things, you know.
Mike Bodkin (30:47.992)
Yep. Yeah, no. mean, listen, you're, you're, you're spot on with all that. And we've seen it. We've seen both sides of that coin as well, when it comes to the people that we're working with. But yeah, I mean, like I'm a big believer in AI. I'm like, I'm a steadfast, like this is the future, like get on board, right? Or you're going to be left in the dust. And I think, you know, I mean, I think that trends are sort of, you know, going in that direction with people that I speak to, even though some people, you know,
are more, you know, adverse on adopting it. But at the end of the day, I think the true winners, right, we talk about prompt engineering, right? Super important, super valuable thing when it comes to any of these skills. Where I find the most value though, and especially my business with how we're dealing with still, you know, upon a human capital is the best person of that's using AI.
Steve Guberman (31:28.818)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Bodkin (31:44.911)
is the specialist of that particular thing that knows how to use AI. And that's what I was talking about before. Right? Like, what would I rather have a graphic designer that knew how to prompt really well, and then could use their traditional tool set to enhance what they've just generated, or me typing a bunch of stuff into whatever, you know, generative AI tool that I want. Right? Like I think that choice is pretty obvious. I know that there's a lot of talk about like job replacement and all that stuff, but to me,
Steve Guberman (31:49.423)
Absolutely. Yeah.
Mike Bodkin (32:14.828)
I think there's always optimization when it comes to anything in the world. And I think that, even if there is a compression from a job perspective, in the long-term, I don't really think it's going to be extremely impactful when we kind of look back on it. But I people that are preparing themselves the best, right. And the people that should be hired the most are the ones that can have it in their tool belt and are ready to deploy it and not create friction around it and say, yeah, like I can do this stuff. And, by the way, here's some examples, here's some sample work, right?
of these, like we just did a test for a client where, you know, they sell like athletic apparel. This girl came to the meeting with like all these videos, right? And static images of that apparel on people using it, right? And the person who she was presenting to was blown away. like, this is amazing. And it's like, yeah, well, this is what they're capable of, right? And that's a really, really positive thing for.
Steve Guberman (33:02.652)
Wow.
Mike Bodkin (33:12.706)
I think everybody, what we're all trying to accomplish.
Steve Guberman (33:15.485)
Yeah, I'm a big fan. love it. It's fascinating and it's moving at the speed of light. And so it's not like years, it's like months, weeks, like things are changing so quickly and yeah, it's crazy. All right, want, go.
Mike Bodkin (33:26.872)
You have a tool that you use? you got a thing that you like is in your tool belt that is your like go-to, anything special or unique?
Steve Guberman (33:35.902)
Honestly, it had been chat GPT and so I'm not doing like creative generation of things. Most of it is kind of feedback on strategy. built in kind of like a GPT for doing client onboarding and I built a ton of automations using Zapier, but I'm currently like switching from chat GPT to quad because I felt like chat GP just kept veering off my instructions and reining it back in was just not happening. Like here's a set of things that I need done.
Mike Bodkin (34:04.919)
Yeah.
Steve Guberman (34:05.809)
podcast production, example, here's, here's what I need done every episode. And it would like veer away every time. so trying to migrate over to Claude and figure that out. and it's just, you know, I built an app for myself to manage my referral system and follow ups and prompts and things like that. And like, yeah, it's just mind blowing. Yeah.
Mike Bodkin (34:26.872)
Did you build a referral on Clawd with like, yeah, interesting. That's awesome.
Steve Guberman (34:30.235)
Yeah, yeah. So it runs locally, it runs in my browser, it connects to my database, which is a Google spreadsheet. And yeah, it prompts me for follow-ups, for invoices, for tracking things, it's crazy. And I'm not a developer, like sure, I can do HTML and CSS, I don't know any of this other crap. yeah, yeah. All right, I wanna wrap up real quick, jump into a couple of rapid fires just to wrap things up.
Mike Bodkin (34:51.916)
Yeah, that's amazing.
Mike Bodkin (34:58.2)
Good.
Steve Guberman (34:59.197)
So first is what's a belief that you held early in your career that you've completely changed your mind about?
Mike Bodkin (35:05.838)
that I was gonna be a creative. would say that that's a belief that I had. I believed that I was going to do something completely different. I thought I was gonna be a director of films and that is not where things ended up.
Steve Guberman (35:20.933)
Interesting love that what's and this can be physical digital or personal or professional But what's a tool that that you use in your day-to-day that you look back and you're like, how the heck did I live without this thing?
Mike Bodkin (35:43.663)
I was okay. The reminders app on my iPhone. I'm a constantly like, remind me to do this, remind me to do this, remind me to do this because I'm going a million miles an hour and like, if I didn't have that particular tool, I would forget so many things to do for sure.
Steve Guberman (35:48.701)
Hmm.
Steve Guberman (36:02.577)
right there with you, especially when I'm driving, I'll just be like, hey, remind me to do this when I get home. And it's like, sure, when you get home, we'll tell you to do this. I love it. Yeah.
Mike Bodkin (36:10.062)
I preach to everybody that's like the most underutilized thing in the iPhone. So yeah.
Steve Guberman (36:13.691)
Yeah. Yeah. And then on the heels of that, what's one habit or routine that you swear by that most people would probably roll their eyes at or just not even appreciate?
Mike Bodkin (36:29.378)
I think Transcendental Meditation is pretty awesome. Something that I got into last year. And I think that that's been a pretty awesome thing to add into my routine. So I would say, you know, I think that's a front runner for me right now.
Steve Guberman (36:43.837)
Big fan of that. Yeah, I've got a daily meditation. I'm not in the TM, but I've explored it. But yeah, big fan of that. Awesome. Mike, Talent Scout, big fan of that. I love what you guys are doing there. I'm augmenting creative talent from anywhere in the world. There's talent everywhere and you're bringing it to agencies. So thank you so much for joining us today and for all the information you shared.
Mike Bodkin (36:50.498)
Yes. Yeah.
Mike Bodkin (37:06.144)
Appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me. It was great.