MP3s, Madmen, and Marketing: My Origin Story

Hey you—

There are about 7,000 new faces in here...

And I just realized most of you have ZERO clue who I am.

Or why this thing you signed up for is called Agency Insider...

Instead of something like "Funnels 4 Freedom" or "Scale Your Biz Daddy."

So let me fix that real quick.

Here's my origin story. Should take you about 90 seconds.

(The uncut version involves music tech, Wall Street, betrayal, and me screaming about scope creep in a office bathroom.)

So here's how this mess started.

1999: I launched a company called PDDJ.
We made digital DJ tools back when iTunes didn't exist...

And "downloading music" meant starting the download, going to lunch, and praying it finished before dinner.

Somehow I got millions of downloads.

Nile Rodgers joined my board. (Dude created over $4 billion in global music revenue... co-founded CHIC... produced Madonna, Bowie, Diana Ross... and wrote more hits than your Spotify Wrapped could handle.)

I went on the Warped Tour.

Even got Ice-T to endorse our gear and trained Evil E on it. This was back when Ice-T was still doing Leprechaun movies...
Not solving crimes while wearing really expensive suits.

Eventually I started an agency.

I was sharp. Scrappy.

And completely unprepared for how fast client work turns into glorified adult babysitting.

Then I took that agency public.
Pro tip: Sounds glamorous until you're explaining Q4 numbers to investors... While eating vending machine almonds at 2AM in some soulless conference room.

That's when I learned something...

You either build systems that work FOR you...

Or you become the system that works for everyone else.

So I built tools. SOPs. Frameworks. GPTs that actually don't suck.

Stuff to help agency owners avoid burnout, time vampires, and that sinking feeling...

That you work FOR your clients instead of WITH them.

Which brings us to this newsletter.

Every Tuesday, I drop one idea that helps you build a smarter, saner, more profitable agency.

No hype. No "scale to 7 figures in 7 days" nonsense.

Just the stuff that makes real agency life less chaotic...

And more cash-positive.

Recent hits include:

→ How to say "no" to nightmare clients (without being a complete jerk)
→ Cut revisions by 90% with one simple onboarding tweak
→ What AI should actually be doing in your agency (spoiler: not everything)

Next week I'm covering how to qualify leads before they waste your calendar slots.

If you’re new:

📥 Grab the free Scope Defender GPT
🛠️ Bookmark the archive
💬 Reply and tell me what kind of agency you’re running—I actually read and answer all email.

And if you’ve been here a while—thanks for being one of the smart ones.
Let’s keep building.

Till next week,
Laura