Good Enough Isn't

Send us Fan Mail

Akash Pathak’s fix for stalled AI pilots is one added word: test and learn and scale. He spent more than 20 years leading marketing and digital teams at McDonald’s, Humana, and Trunk Club. Today he advises enterprise and mid-market companies on AI, teaches AI and marketing at Northwestern University, and writes the Growth Amplifier newsletter. He also co-hosted Level’s dinner in Chicago on getting AI past the pilot stage, and this conversation carries that theme further.

Brad Stephenson starts with the programs behind the résumé. Pathak explains why most innovation comes out of a failure rate above 90 percent, and what a leader has to do so a team keeps experimenting anyway. He walks through the McDonald’s mobile loyalty and CRM launch, where performance marketing was new to the organization. He also covers the Trunk Club churn data that showed a 50 to 60 percent gap between men and women and pushed the brand’s focus toward women. A McDonald’s coffee punch card taught him something about retention: the moment a customer redeems the free coffee is what brings them back.

The back half turns to AI. Pathak and Brad compare notes on synthetic audiences, which are useful for poking holes in an early idea before it reaches a real audience. Pathak then lays out the gap he sees between what leaders expect from AI and what teams get, citing BCG and HBR figures on CEO and employee satisfaction, and explains why executives should get hands-on with the tools every week. He covers how he prepared data for a predictive model at Humana, and why stories about results, failures included, are what move a pilot into a process. He closes with why most brands look vanilla and a book recommendation from Jim Kwik.

What You’ll Learn

• Why most innovation comes out of a 90-plus percent failure rate, and how leaders can keep a team experimenting through it
• What it took inside McDonald’s to launch a mobile loyalty and CRM program when the company was seven to eight years behind Starbucks
• Why a brand at 95 percent awareness has a different problem than one in the 20s, and how Trunk Club’s churn data redirected its focus
• What a coffee punch card revealed about loyalty: redeeming the free cup, not earning it, is the moment that brings customers back
• How to use synthetic audiences to vet early ideas and find gaps, and why Pathak would never green-light a slogan or logo on their say-so
• Why executives who get hands-on with AI each week make better decisions, and why associate-driven AI projects succeeded in a 55-project study Pathak cites
• How to get data ready for a predictive model: pull every customer attribute, find and clean the data, then run correlations against written hypotheses
• How to move a pilot into a process by telling the story with the data, reporting failures honestly, and recruiting champions so the work outlives its builder

Resources Mentioned

• Akash Pathak’s website: https://www.akashpathak.co
• Growth Amplifier newsletter: https://letsamplify.substack.com/p/growth-amplifier 
• Jim Kwik, Limitless: https://jimkwik.com/ 

Connect With Akash

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akashpathak 
• Website: https://www.akashpathak.co

Know a marketing leader whose AI pilot worked and then went nowhere? Send them this one.

About the Show

Good Enough Isn't is a podcast from Level Agency, a digital marketing agency, about the hard truths behind business growth and the people who refuse to settle for "good enough."

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-enough-isnt/id1834694172
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6S3C2V2fUxs7x4hpuq7jWf

Connect With the Show

• Level Agency: https://www.level.agency
• Myles Biggs' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs/
• Patrick Patterson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork/
• Brad Stephenson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradpstephenson/

How to Support the Show

• Subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• Share it with someone who would get value from it.
• Rate and review if it brings you value. It helps more listeners find us.

Send us Fan Mail

Featuring Mike Barton, VP of Corporate Communication & Content Marketing of AudioEye, with hosts Brad Stephenson and Mike Rubino

Episode Summary

A screen reader can only read what's in the code. If it isn't there, the content may as well not exist, and the same is now true for AI agents. Mike Barton's path to that idea runs from an advertising and English degree at BYU through Omniture, years of content and executive messaging at Adobe where, by his own admission, accessibility never crossed his mind, and building a customer marketing team from scratch at Zenoti. Today he leads corporate communication and content marketing at AudioEye and holds the CPACC credential.

Brad Stephenson and Mike Rubino dig into why the quick fix keeps failing. Barton explains why even the best automated tool finds only about half the issues on a modern site, why companies with an accessibility widget installed still end up in court, and why 80-plus binary WCAG guidelines, an average of 62 issues per page, and sites that now change daily push most teams to wait until they're sued. He also makes the case for plain copy, the hardest kind to write, and for treating accessibility as a small slice of martech spend that makes the rest work harder.

The back half turns to AI. Barton walks through AudioEye's new study, in which five AI coding tools were asked to build WCAG 2.2 AA sites and averaged 55 issues per page, barely better than the web they learned from. He explains how AI agents read a site's accessibility tree and stall at the same broken forms people do, then closes with a flat-budget starting plan and a return to Homer's The Odyssey, a reminder that the storytelling principles behind a good brand haven't changed in a few thousand years.

What You'll Learn

• Why even the best automated tool catches only about half of a site's accessibility issues, and why companies with a widget installed still get sued
• Why 80-plus binary WCAG guidelines, 62 issues per page, and sites that change daily keep accessibility at the bottom of the backlog
• What happened when AudioEye asked five AI coding tools to build WCAG 2.2 AA sites, and why developers' trust in that code is misplaced
• How AI agents read a site's accessibility tree, and why a broken form stops an agent the same way it stops a person
• Why accessibility should be measured by its effect on SEO, AEO, and GEO rather than on its own, with $18 trillion in global spending power at stake
• Why plain, jargon-free copy matters for people with invisible cognitive disabilities, and why it is harder to write than long copy
• What separates WCAG A, AA, and AAA in practice, and when an image can be marked decorative and skipped
• Where to start on a flat budget: a free site scan, a partner instead of new hires, and your highest-converting pages first

Resources Mentioned

• AudioEye (free Site Scanner): https://www.audioeye.com
• AudioEye HearSay Podcast: https://www.audioeye.com/podcasts/
• 2026 Web Accessibility Litigation Report: https://www.audioeye.com/guides/2026-web-accessibility-litigation-report/
• 2026 Digital Accessibility Index: https://www.audioeye.com/digital-accessibility-index/2026
• AudioEye's AI coding tools study: https://venturebeat.com/technology/we-asked-five-ai-tools-to-build-accessible-websites-all-15-sites-failed

Connect With Mike

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omnibarton/

Also on This Episode

• Mike Rubino's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-rubino-94634210/

Know a marketer who thinks an accessibility plugin has them covered? Send them this one.

About the Show

Good Enough Isn't is a podcast from Level Agency, a digital marketing agency, about the hard truths behind business growth and the people who refuse to settle for "good enough."

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-enough-isnt/id1834694172
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6S3C2V2fUxs7x4hpuq7jWf

Connect With the Show

• Level Agency: https://www.level.agency
• Myles Biggs' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs/
• Patrick Patterson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork/
• Brad Stephenson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradpstephenson/

How to Support the Show

• Subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• Share it with someone who would get value from it.
• Rate and review if it brings you value. It helps more listeners find us.

Send us Fan Mail

Nobody Wants a Corporate Doctor: Jim Evanger on Scaling Multi-Location Healthcare

Featuring Jim Evanger, CEO and President of Foundation Partners Group, with hosts Brad Stephenson and Patrick Patterson

Episode Summary

Four out of five healthcare providers now work for a larger organization, and patients still say they don't want to go to a corporate practice. Jim Evanger has spent his career inside that tension, leading multi-location dental, orthopedic, sleep disorder, and behavioral health businesses as CEO or executive chairman. A few months into his role as CEO and President of Foundation Partners Group, which runs hundreds of end-of-life care locations, he sees the same pattern: the company is national, and every family experiences it as local.

Brad Stephenson and Patrick Patterson press Jim on how that works day to day. He lays out his "support center light" model, where finance, HR, IT, and enterprise marketing like PPC, SEO, and AI search sit centrally, while reviews, referral networks, and community presence stay with the people closest to the patient. He walks through a KPI dashboard that tracks every step from first inquiry to paid claim, explains why higher deductibles are turning patients into comparison shoppers, and describes the red "I need help now" homepage button that grew his orthopedic funnel almost overnight.

The back half turns to expansion. Jim explains why he favors acquisition over de novo growth in healthcare, and why buying practices to rack and stack EBITDA without vetting the providers is a mistake he won't repeat. He shares how to "create the hero" when a beloved doctor retires, and makes the case for clustering locations in one market, down to the river or freeway patients won't cross for care. He closes on summit night on Kilimanjaro, climbed on a broken foot, and the extra gear it proved he has.

What You'll Learn

• What Jim keeps at the support center (finance, HR, IT, PPC, SEO, AI search) and what he leaves to local teams (reviews, referral reps, community social)
• How one red "I need help now" button on an orthopedic homepage grew the funnel almost overnight and pushed cost per conversion down
• Why his KPI dashboard tracks every step from first contact to paid claim, and how it exposed a business where lead volume held steady while conversion to patients fell off
• Why Jim wants his own team handling review management instead of an agency, and how the way you treat employees shows up in patient reviews
• How rising employer health costs, which Jim puts at 9 to 15 percent higher in 2027, push patients into high-deductible plans and consumer-style shopping
• What Jim checks before acquiring a practice, from provider age and turnover to secret shopping, and why buying on EBITDA alone backfired
• How to "create the hero" around new providers when a beloved doctor retires, using published results and patient testimonials
• Why clustering locations in one region works better than scattering them, and how rivers, bridges, and freeways act as psychological barriers to care

Resources Mentioned

• Foundation Partners Group: foundationpartners.com
• Level Agency Virtual Insider Series recaps, including sessions with Profound and Reddit: 
  • Profound Session: youtu.be/yQOIRT3YTGA
  • Reddit Session: youtu.be/r453GebnJ9E
• Level Agency blog on multi-location healthcare search visibility: level.agency/perspectives/improving-local-search-and-visibility-for-multi-location-healthcare/
• Tim Tebow Foundation: timtebowfoundation.org

Connect With Jim

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jimevanger

Connect With the Show

• Brad Stephenson's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bradpstephenson
• Patrick Patterson's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork

How to Support the Show

• Subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• Share this one with a marketing or operations leader growing a multi-location healthcare brand.
• Rate and review if it brings you value. It helps more listeners find us.

About the Show

Good Enough Isn't is a podcast from Level Agency, a digital marketing agency, about the hard truths behind business growth and the people who refuse to settle for "good enough."

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-enough-isnt/id1834694172
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6S3C2V2fUxs7x4hpuq7jWf

Connect With the Show

• Level Agency: https://www.level.agency
• Myles Biggs' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs/
• Patrick Patterson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork/
• Brad Stephenson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradpstephenson/

How to Support the Show

• Subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• Share it with someone who would get value from it.
• Rate and review if it brings you value. It helps more listeners find us.

Send us Fan Mail

Intent Is the New Code: Artem Koren on Why the Next 100 Years Belong to Communicators, Not Engineers

Featuring Artem Koren, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Sembly AI, with hosts Myles Biggs and Patrick Patterson

Episode Summary

AI is great at information. It still can't meet you for coffee. That tension sits at the center of this conversation with Artem Koren, whose path to Sembly AI runs through a childhood chess obsession, a management consulting exit, a too-early 2009 machine learning startup, and a 2019 moment in his uncle's spare room when a transformer running on a single GPU summarized a news article and convinced him the technology had finally arrived.

Myles Biggs and Patrick Patterson dig into what changed between that moment and now. Artem argues the last century of progress belonged to STEM and the next belongs to whoever can shape intent most sharply, information technology giving way to what he calls intent technology. They trace what that means for a team of skilled engineers who couldn't make the leap to large language models on their first attempt, why the flawless investment-bank PowerPoint was always a trust signal rather than the point, and what happens to that signal once anyone can generate a polished deck in minutes.

The back half turns to Sembly itself. Artem walks through Sembly 3.0 and the new Studio product, where meetings become just one data source among many and the real interface is a stated intent: name the client, name the goal, get back a branded, sourced, client-ready deck or document. He closes on the career pyramid reshaping into something closer to medicine, junior work still needed but the middle thinning, and why taste and judgment stay human longer than most people expect.

What You'll Learn

• Why "intent technology" is replacing information technology as the core skill of the next era, and what a loosely specified intent actually costs you
• How the OpenAI to Hugging Face agent swarm incident illustrates the risk of underspecified intent at scale
• Why a team of strong classical engineers failed to adapt to large language models in their first year, and what mindset shift actually worked
• What the perfect PowerPoint really signaled for consulting firms and investment banks, and what happens to that signal once AI can produce one in minutes
• Why the career pyramid is warping into something closer to an Eiffel Tower, with junior work intact but the middle getting thinner
• What Sembly 3.0's Studio does differently from Gamma, Claude, or ChatGPT: never starting from scratch, and deriving a client's branding and tone automatically
• Where taste, judgment, and real-world endpoints still sit outside what AI can fully absorb, at least for now

Resources Mentioned

• Sembly AI: sembly.ai

Connect With Artem

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/akoren

Connect With the Show

• Myles Biggs' LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs
• Patrick Patterson's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork

How to Support the Show

• Subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• Share this one with someone thinking about AI and the future of work.
• Rate and review if it brings you value. It helps more listeners find us.

About the Show

Good Enough Isn't is a podcast from Level Agency, a digital marketing agency, about the hard truths behind business growth and the people who refuse to settle for "good enough."

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-enough-isnt/id1834694172
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6S3C2V2fUxs7x4hpuq7jWf

Connect With the Show

• Level Agency: https://www.level.agency
• Myles Biggs' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs/
• Patrick Patterson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork/
• Brad Stephenson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradpstephenson/

How to Support the Show

• Subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• Share it with someone who would get value from it.
• Rate and review if it brings you value. It helps more listeners find us.

Send us Fan Mail

AI Search and Student Enrollment: Steph Gallo on Closing Higher Ed's Visibility Gap
Featuring Steph Gallo, Corporate Director of Marketing at Pima Medical Institute, with guest host Brad Stephenson, SVP of Marketing at Level Agency, and Stacey Heubeck, AVP of SEO at Level Agency.

Episode Summary

Google didn't change the rules. Students did. That's the premise behind this conversation with Steph Gallo, who brings three decades of marketing and brand development across healthcare, CPG, manufacturing, and higher education to a problem every enrollment marketer is now facing: prospective students are doing the bulk of their research before they ever touch your website, and most of that research is happening inside LLMs, on Reddit, and in third-party content that schools have never invested in.

Brad Stephenson and Stacey Heubeck join Steph to unpack what that shift actually demands. They dig into the 59-point gap between branded and non-branded AI visibility, why schools show up fine when someone searches their name and vanish in program comparison questions, and how to make the case to a CFO who only wants to talk about last-click cost per enrollment. Steph gets specific about the internal work required, including the case she made to compliance and academics for publishing tuition, financial aid detail, and certification information that institutions have historically kept behind an admissions conversation.

The back half turns operational. Stacey breaks down SEO versus GEO in plain terms and names the three metrics her team actually tracks. Brad walks through where paid and organic overlap turns into waste, and how a holdout test surfaces it without tanking performance. Steph closes on first-party data, the 90-day learning curve on value-based bidding, and why so many marketers abandon ship two weeks in. This one is built for career education and higher ed marketing leaders, but the playbook travels to any category where the buying decision starts long before the site visit.

What You'll Learn

• Why branded AI visibility looks healthy while non-branded visibility collapses, and what that gap costs you in students you never knew were searching
• The three metrics to track for AI visibility (visibility rate, citation rate, brand mention and share of voice), plus the direct-traffic signal that reinforces the story for your CFO
• SEO versus GEO in plain language, and why brand consistency, entity recognition, and answer-first content now matter more than exact-match phrasing
• How to build the internal case with compliance, academics, and leadership for publishing tuition, financial aid, and certification content you used to hold back
• Why neutral, one-size-fits-all program content makes you invisible, and what program-level and state-level specificity looks like in practice
• How to audit branded and non-branded keyword overlap, run a holdout test, and redeploy wasted spend without hurting paid or organic performance
• What it takes to get clean first-party enrollment data into value-based bidding, and why the first 90 days feel like failure before they start working

Resources Mentioned

• 2026 Career Education Benchmarks Report from Level Agency: info.level.agency/career-education-benchmarks-2026
• Level Agency: https://www.level.agency
• Pima Medical Institute: https://pmi.edu

Connect With Steph

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/stephanie-gallo

Connect With the Show

• Brad Stephenson's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bradpstephenson
• Stacey Heubeck's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sheubeck

How to Support the Show

• Subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• Share this one with an enrollment or higher ed marketing leader.
• Rate and review if it brings you value. It helps more listeners find us.

About the Show

Good Enough Isn't is a podcast from Level Agency, a digital marketing agency, about the hard truths behind business growth and the people who refuse to settle for "good enough."

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-enough-isnt/id1834694172
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6S3C2V2fUxs7x4hpuq7jWf

Connect With the Show

• Level Agency: https://www.level.agency
• Myles Biggs' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs/
• Patrick Patterson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork/
• Brad Stephenson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradpstephenson/

How to Support the Show

• Subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• Share it with someone who would get value from it.
• Rate and review if it brings you value. It helps more listeners find us.

Send us Fan Mail

Episode summary

Most marketing leaders can walk into a room and defend their channels, their campaigns, and their creative. Far fewer can walk into the CFO's office and defend their budget in the language that office actually speaks. In this episode, Jon Morris makes the case that this gap is the single biggest thing holding marketing leaders back, and he hands over the benchmarks and mental models to close it. Jon turned a $10,000 business plan prize into Rise Interactive, one of the largest independent digital marketing agencies in the world, at nearly $40 million in revenue and a nine time Inc. 5000 run, before an impressive exit. He now runs Fiscal Advocate and Engine BI, building the financial infrastructure marketing organizations too often fly blind without.

The heart of the conversation is a simple, uncomfortable truth: you will not grow faster than your competition if you spend less on sales and marketing as a percentage of revenue than they do. Jon lays out the benchmarks he coaches leaders to, walks through the only three ways to actually grow revenue, and explains why marketing that can't connect to one of those levers has a short shelf life. He also gets into "difficult is good," his framework for finding a real differentiator and then investing behind it until it becomes a moat, including the two question test that exposes whether your "we're data driven" positioning means anything at all.

Threaded through it all is Jon's philosophy of being "awesome at boring," the process discipline and data driven management that compound quietly over years, and a grounded take on AI: not a replacement for marketers, but a multiplier for the ones who bring human taste, judgment, and orchestration to the tools. For any marketing leader or founder trying to fund growth, prove impact, and build enterprise value rather than just revenue, this one is a masterclass.

What you'll learn

• The three KPIs that actually matter and the only three ways to grow revenue: retain existing customers, upsell them, or win new business
• Why marketing that can't be tied to a measurable business outcome struggles to earn a seat at the leadership table
• The benchmarks Jon coaches to: roughly 20% organic growth, 20% EBITDA, and an 8% of revenue average spend on sales and marketing, and why growth leaders sit on the "spend more" side of that line
• How to build the case for a bigger marketing investment when your CFO doesn't already share that philosophy
• The "difficult is good" approach to differentiation and the two question test that separates real positioning from cookie cutter claims
• What "awesome at boring" looks like in practice, and why data driven management is the unglamorous engine behind durable growth
• A realistic view of AI in marketing: where human taste and judgment stay irreplaceable, and how orchestration becomes its own differentiator
• The mindset shift from running a revenue business to building enterprise value, and why that changes the bets you make

Featured guest

Jon Morris is the founder of Rise Interactive, which he grew from a $10,000 business plan prize into one of the largest independent digital marketing agencies in the world, reaching nearly $40 million in revenue, around 250 people, and nine appearances on the Inc. 5000 before its acquisition. He stepped down as CEO in March 2020. Today he is the founder and CEO of Fiscal Advocate and Engine BI, where he functions as an outsourced finance department and data infrastructure partner for marketing agencies and services businesses, helping leaders make better decisions with better numbers. A self described student of business and champion of being "awesome at boring," Jon is a frequent voice on agency economics, growth strategy, and the financial side of marketing leadership.

Connect with Jon

• Website: fiscaladvocate.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jonmorrisramsayinnovations

Connect with the show

• Level Agency: level.agency
• Patrick Patterson on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork
• Brad Stephenson on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bradpstephenson
• Meet our CRO, Howard Diamond Episode

How to support the show

If this episode was useful, here is how you can help more marketing leaders find it:

• Subscribe to Good Enough Isn't wherever you listen
• Share this episode with a colleague who owns a marketing budget
• Rate and review the show, it genuinely helps others discover it

About the Show

Good Enough Isn't is a podcast from Level Agency, a digital marketing agency, about the hard truths behind business growth and the people who refuse to settle for "good enough."

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-enough-isnt/id1834694172
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6S3C2V2fUxs7x4hpuq7jWf

Connect With the Show

• Level Agency: https://www.level.agency
• Myles Biggs' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs/
• Patrick Patterson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork/
• Brad Stephenson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradpstephenson/

How to Support the Show

• Subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• Share it with someone who would get value from it.
• Rate and review if it brings you value. It helps more listeners find us.

Send us Fan Mail

Featuring: Patrick Patterson (CEO, LE), Howard Diamond (CRO), and Pat Van Gorder (Chief Partnerships Officer) of Level Agency Host: Myles Biggs

Episode Summary

Level sent three leaders, CEO Patrick Patterson, CRO Howard Diamond, and Chief Partnerships Officer Pat Van Gorder, to Cannes Lions this year, and this episode is their debrief. Rather than a straight recap of the world's biggest creativity festival, the conversation centers on a question every marketing leader is quietly asking right now: as AI absorbs more of the work, what actually stays human, and what does that mean for how brands should be building their teams, their agency relationships, and their creative?

The panel keeps returning to one phrase: irreplaceably human. It surfaced constantly at Cannes this year as agencies, brands, and platforms all tried to name what AI genuinely cannot replicate: taste, judgment, curiosity, and one-to-one connection. The group unpacks the split they saw play out at the festival itself, a creative side focused on craft and human insight, and a media and technology side focused on scale and automation, and argues the two are only getting more valuable when they're built together rather than treated as separate disciplines.

From there the conversation turns practical. The panel discusses why creative is becoming the clearest competitive differentiator in a market where every brand has access to similar AI tooling, how client conversations about AI have shifted in six months from "are you using it" to "how are you proving ROI with it," and why award-winning creative work correlates with measurable business outcomes rather than existing as a vanity exercise. They also make the case for indie and scaled independent agencies having a real moment at Cannes this year, not just attending, but presenting, partnering, and winning.

What You'll Learn

• Why "irreplaceably human" became the unofficial theme of Cannes Lions 2026, and how the panel defines what that actually means (taste, judgment, curiosity, and relationship, not just craft)
• Why creative is becoming the differentiator that separates brands when everyone has access to the same AI and algorithmic tools
• How client expectations around AI have matured in just six months, from proving you use it to proving it drives value and ROI
• Why award-winning creative work correlates with real business impact, not just recognition, and what that means for how brands should evaluate creative investment
• The rise of "brandformance," the blending of creativity, media, and performance into a single discipline instead of three separate ones
• Why scaled independent agencies had a breakout year at Cannes, from panel stages to award shortlists, and what that signals for brands evaluating agency partners
• A practical framework for evaluating new AI tools and models (their own internal evaluation process, covering discovery, testing, safety, and measurable outcomes)
• Why the next frontier for brands isn't just AI content, but conversational and agent-facing brand experiences (business messaging agents across Google, Meta, and TikTok)
• Why "permission" to put creative back at the center of strategy, not as an afterthought to lead volume and cost per lead, was a real takeaway for how the panel is changing their own approach

Featured Panelists

Patrick Patterson is CEO of Level Agency, where he leads the agency's overall strategy and its approach to applying AI across marketing operations and client work.

Howard Diamond is Chief Revenue Officer at Level Agency, leading the agency's sales and client growth strategy.

Pat Van Gorder is Chief Partnerships Officer at Level Agency, leading the agency's strategic partnerships across technology, media, and platform relationships.

Connect With Our Panelists

• Patrick Patterson: linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork
• Howard Diamond: linkedin.com/in/howarddiamond
• Pat Van Gorder: linkedin.com/in/patrick-vangorder

Connect With the Show

• Level Agency: level.agency
• Myles Biggs on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs

How to Support the Show

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to Good Enough Isn't wherever you get your podcasts, share it with a colleague who's thinking about creative and AI, and leave a rating and review. It helps more marketing leaders find the show

About the Show

Good Enough Isn't is a podcast from Level Agency, a digital marketing agency, about the hard truths behind business growth and the people who refuse to settle for "good enough."

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-enough-isnt/id1834694172
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6S3C2V2fUxs7x4hpuq7jWf

Connect With the Show

• Level Agency: https://www.level.agency
• Myles Biggs' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs/
• Patrick Patterson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork/
• Brad Stephenson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradpstephenson/

How to Support the Show

• Subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• Share it with someone who would get value from it.
• Rate and review if it brings you value. It helps more listeners find us.

Send us Fan Mail

The Power of Story: What AI Can't Replace
Featuring LaQuita Cleare, Founder of Clear Communication Academy

Episode Summary

In a world where AI can generate content on demand, the ability to tell a genuine, human story has never mattered more. LaQuita Cleare, founder of Clear Communication Academy and a communication coach who has worked with leaders across more than 50 countries, joins Myles and Patrick to make the case that storytelling has moved from important to essential. The conversation opens with a sharp observation: AI has leveled the playing field on information, which means the only thing that separates a forgettable leader from a memorable one is the stories they tell and how well they tell them.

LaQuita traces her path from an eight-year-old rejection outside a Chicago theater workshop all the way through years in Hollywood as an actress and producer, and explains how those experiences shaped the framework she now teaches executives. She unpacks what she calls the Engagement Code, connection plus content plus delivery equals engagement, and walks through why most leaders skip the connection piece entirely and wonder why their teams, prospects, and audiences are not moved. The Hollywood analogy runs throughout: leaders who do not know who they are outside of their title cannot tell a compelling story, and audiences can feel that immediately.

The episode closes with a nuanced take on AI in the storytelling space. LaQuita draws a clear line between using AI as a ghostwriter (reductive, often damaging) and using it as a thought partner to mine your own experiences and find the stories worth telling (genuinely powerful). Patrick shares how he extracted years of meeting transcripts to surface the stories he was already telling without realizing it, and LaQuita ties it all back to what AI cannot replace: presence, authenticity, and the willingness to fully commit to your own story.

What You'll Learn

• Why LaQuita says storytelling went from "important" to "essential" in the age of AI
• The lesson she took from her first rejection at age eight and how it still shapes her approach today
• What Hollywood taught her about separating personal identity from professional outcomes, and why more leaders need to make that separation
• How the Engagement Code (Connection + Content + Delivery = Engagement) applies to everything from sales calls to company town halls
• Why small, everyday stories are often more powerful than blockbuster moments, and how the belief you have in your own story determines how others receive it
• The right way and the wrong way to use AI in your communication and storytelling practice
• Why every leader needs their own value story, not just the company's version of it

Featured Guest

LaQuita Cleare is the founder of Clear Communication Academy and the creator of the Engagement Code framework. She has coached CEOs, politicians, royal families, and Fortune 500 leaders on the stages and in the boardrooms of more than 50 countries. Before building her academy, LaQuita spent years in Hollywood as an actress and producer, where she learned the mechanics of storytelling from the inside out. She holds a master's degree in psychology and brings together the science of human behavior and the art of performance to help leaders communicate in ways that inspire action, not just understanding. Her work is rooted in a simple conviction: brilliant people lose the room every day because they lead with logic and skip the connection.

Connect With LaQuita

• LinkedIn
• Clear Communication Academy
• laquitacleare.com

Connect With the Show

• Follow Good Enough Isn't
• Connect with Myles Biggs on LinkedIn
• Connect with Patrick Patterson on LinkedIn

How to Support the Show

If this episode hit, the best thing you can do is leave a review and share it with one person who needs to hear it. It helps more people find the show, and it means the world to the team.

About the Show

Good Enough Isn't is a podcast from Level Agency, a digital marketing agency, about the hard truths behind business growth and the people who refuse to settle for "good enough."

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-enough-isnt/id1834694172
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6S3C2V2fUxs7x4hpuq7jWf

Connect With the Show

• Level Agency: https://www.level.agency
• Myles Biggs' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs/
• Patrick Patterson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork/
• Brad Stephenson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradpstephenson/

How to Support the Show

• Subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• Share it with someone who would get value from it.
• Rate and review if it brings you value. It helps more listeners find us.

Send us Fan Mail

People-First AI Transformation: Mohammad Anwar and the HUMAIN First Framework Featuring Mohammad Anwar, President & CEO of Softway and Culture+, and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author

Episode Summary

Mohammad Anwar is the President and CEO of Softway and Culture+, a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and one of the more honest voices in a conversation about AI that tends to be dominated by hype. Mohammad built Softway from a one-man software shop he started at 20 -- out of necessity, not ambition -- into a 300-person firm, only to nearly lose it all by 30 when the chip on his shoulder calcified into full-blown arrogance. The turnaround came from an unlikely place: a University of Houston football comeback where the coach credited love as the reason his team won. That moment launched a three-year behavioral transformation that tripled Softway's revenue, improved EBITDA margins by 43 percentage points, and eventually produced two Wall Street Journal bestselling books and an entirely new business, Culture+, built on the idea that love is not a soft concept but the most powerful strategy a leader has. In this episode, Mohammad and Myles go deep on why 78% of workers believe their jobs are not safe in the age of AI, why 90% of AI pilots are failing, and why the answer in both cases is almost never the technology -- it is the people. Mohammad walks through his HUMAIN First framework, unpacks the critical difference between efficiency and effectiveness, and makes the case that the organizations most likely to win the AI era are the ones willing to put humans at the center of the strategy first.

What You'll Learn

• Why 90% of AI transformation initiatives fail -- and why the root cause is almost always people, not technology
• How Mohammad's HUMAIN First framework resequences AI rollouts to lead with human readiness before process and technology
• The difference between efficiency and effectiveness, and why measuring AI success through volume or token usage is the wrong metric entirely
• Why "behaviors eat culture for lunch" -- and how behavioral change, not strategy, is what actually drives organizational performance
• The concept of "choose your hard" and why the path that feels easier today almost always becomes the harder one tomorrow
• Why the leaders best equipped to understand and deploy AI are those who understand humans -- because AI is, at its core, built to mimic human intelligence
• How AI, when used intentionally, can make us more human at work rather than more robotic -- and why that reframe changes everything about how you approach adoption

Connect With Mohammad

• Softway: https://www.softway.com/
• Love as a Strategy: https://www.loveasastrategy.com/
• Books: "Love as a Business Strategy" and "Love as a Change Strategy" -- available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all major retailers in print, audio, and ebook formats
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manwarsoftway/

Connect With the Show

• Level Agency: https://www.level.agency
• Myles Biggs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs/

How to Support the Show

If this episode resonated with you, hit subscribe so you never miss another conversation. Leave us a review wherever you listen. It helps more people find the show and keeps us bringing guests like Mohammad to your feed.

About the Show

Good Enough Isn't is a podcast from Level Agency, a digital marketing agency, about the hard truths behind business growth and the people who refuse to settle for "good enough."

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-enough-isnt/id1834694172
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6S3C2V2fUxs7x4hpuq7jWf

Connect With the Show

• Level Agency: https://www.level.agency
• Myles Biggs' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs/
• Patrick Patterson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork/
• Brad Stephenson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradpstephenson/

How to Support the Show

• Subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• Share it with someone who would get value from it.
• Rate and review if it brings you value. It helps more listeners find us.

Send us Fan Mail

What Google Marketing Live 2026 Really Means for Marketers

with Bill Buchanan and Nicole Jennings

Google Marketing Live 2026 dropped a wave of announcements that left the marketing world buzzing. In this episode, Brad Stephenson sits down with Level Agency President Bill Buchanan and EVP of Service Delivery Nicole Jennings to explain what actually matters, what brands should do right now, and what they'll wish they had started sooner.

Bill attended GML in person, including a rare behind-the-scenes session with Google's keynote team. Nicole brings her perspective from Brand Performance and her leadership over Level's full service delivery organization, which spans media, SEO, creative, and development. Together, they unpack why Google's pace of change is unprecedented even by Google's own standards, and what it signals for where search is headed. This episode was recorded just before Brad took the stage at SMX Advanced to speak on unifying the search experience.

The conversation covers how AI mode is reshaping the funnel from top to bottom, why the new ad formats are less important than the foundational infrastructure beneath them, and why the brands that get the data foundation right now will have a compounding advantage heading into the back half of 2025. Bill and Nicole also walk through what CMOs in higher education, healthcare, home services, and financial services need to prioritize, and close with the one thing everyone will wish they had done sooner when they look back at this moment a year from now.

What You'll Learn:

• Why Google's shift to AI mode is unprecedented even by its own historical standards, and what "ripping the Band-Aid" really means at this scale
• The three things Bill says every brand will wish they had done earlier: fix the data foundation, compete for AI citations, and treat SEO, paid, and content as one unified solution
• Why YouTube strategy and AI Max are the two things Nicole says to pressure test your agency on immediately
• How AI is blurring the line between SEO and PR, and why brand mentions are the new backlinks
• What QFCs, attributed brand searches, and Meridian mean for CFOs who still believe in last-click attribution
• Industry-specific takeaways for higher education, healthcare, home services, and financial services
• Why Nicole's single highest-leverage move for a CMO this quarter is a scalable, repeatable YouTube strategy

Featured Guests:

Bill Buchanan is President of Level Agency. With decades of experience in digital marketing and a front-row seat at Google Marketing Live 2026, Bill helps shape the strategic direction that guides how Level partners with clients across SEO, media, data infrastructure, and AI adoption.

Nicole Jennings is EVP of Service Delivery at Level Agency, responsible for the full range of client-facing services including media, SEO, creative, and development. Nicole brings a practitioner's perspective to big-picture platform changes, translating what Google announces on stage into what brands actually need to do on Monday morning.

Connect With the Guests:

Bill Buchanan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wbuchanan

Nicole Jennings: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolejennings/

Connect With the Show:

Level Agency: level.agency

How to Support the Show:

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone on your marketing team who is trying to make sense of AI search.

About the Show

Good Enough Isn't is a podcast from Level Agency, a digital marketing agency, about the hard truths behind business growth and the people who refuse to settle for "good enough."

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-enough-isnt/id1834694172
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6S3C2V2fUxs7x4hpuq7jWf

Connect With the Show

• Level Agency: https://www.level.agency
• Myles Biggs' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs/
• Patrick Patterson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork/
• Brad Stephenson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradpstephenson/

How to Support the Show

• Subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• Share it with someone who would get value from it.
• Rate and review if it brings you value. It helps more listeners find us.