This week on Agencies Drinking Beer, Kevin and Kyle interview Viktor Purolnik, co-founder of Rolique, a web development agency based in Ukraine. Rolique focuses on large scale web app development. Viktor talks about the struggles of running an international business, outsourcing offshore talent, and why one of Rolique’s clients had the FBI on their doorstep for doing business with them.

This week on Agencies Drinking Beer, we interview Aaron Whitman, founder of Able Sense Media based here in our hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia. An award-winning digital agency, Able Sense specializes in creating e-commerce solutions and customer experiences for clients across North America and Europe. Aaron talks about how Able Sense has capitalized on their Shopify expertise to create two of their own apps, Exportify and Teleport, that extend Shopify’s core functionality, and provide steady recurring revenue for the agency. Tune in to also hear the secret to Kevin and Kyle’s enduring partnership.

This week on Agencies Drinking Beer, Kevin and Kyle interview Floyd Peyton, an inbound marketer from Kula Partners, a HubSpot certified agency here in our hometown of Halifax. Floyd’s had an eclectic career path that led her to inbound marketing at Kula Partners.​ She was the host of a very popular morning radio show, she’s been a professional MC, she worked as a legal researcher, she studied journalism, and she’s a self-proclaimed hobby scientist who created her own skin and healthcare products. As Floyd jokes, “My career’s been a series of mistakes on the part of whoever was doing the hiring.” In this fun, Seinfeld-esque interview, Floyd talks about what she learned in radio that’s helped her as an inbound marketer and suggests maybe there’s a wizard living across the street from Proposify’s new office.​​ You're probably going to want to start following her on Twitter.​

This week on Agencies Drinking Beer, Kevin and Kyle interview Gray MacKenzie, co-founder of GuavaBox, a Hubspot certified inbound agency, and co-founder of DoInbound, a productivity tool for inbound agencies. Gray talks about how the pain points he and his GuavaBox co-founder encountered running their agency led to the development of their SaaS product, DoInbound. He also talks about the benefit of assignment selling and the importance of streamlining the client journey. BONUS: Kyle does a Stallone impression.

This week on Agencies Drinking Beer, Kevin and Kyle interview Shrad Rao, CEO and co-founder of Wagepoint, payroll automation for small business. Wagepoint has been working for the past 2.5 years on disrupting the payroll industry. Shrad talks about how and why they started the company (it’s super gratifying to solve someone’s problem), what they’ve learned along the way about building a business (you need to know who you are before others can help), and how product market fit is as much about emotionally connecting with your target audience as it is about features.

This week on Agencies Drinking Beer we interview Emília Chagas, co-founder and CEO of Contentools, a content marketing platform with offices in Brazil, and San Francisco. Contentools offers companies everything they need to streamline, centralize, and manage content creation. Emília talks about the struggle almost every company faces when it comes to integrating and managing all the facets of content marketing, and the challenge of getting people to change their established internal process, regardless of how inefficient they might be. Plus, pop the champagne cuz it’s our 40th episode of Agencies Drinking Beer!

This week on Agencies Drinking Beer, Kyle interviews Bill Wilson, CEO of MindSea, an award-winning mobile app design and development agency based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Since 2007, MindSea has specialized in creating apps for media companies and startups across North America. Bill talks about how constantly improving MindSea’s product development process and forging strong, mutually beneficial partnerships have been the key ingredients to profitable app builds. Tune in to also find out which rom-com is Bill’s favourite. (saying it stars Hugh Grant isn’t much of a hint, is it?)

This week on Agencies Drinking Beer, Kyle is off sick so Proposify’s marketing manager, Jennifer, joins Kevin for a germ-free podcast. They interview Mary Nichols, Account Director at Murmur Creative, a full-service agency based in Portland, Oregon. A winner of the American Marketing Association’s Master of Marketing award, Mary was bitten by the marketing bug as a little girl, sitting in on her real-life Don Draper dad’s pitches at the famed Leo Burnett agency. Mary talks about how her father instilled in her the importance of loyalty and enthusiasm for client brands, giving an example that because Burger King was one of her father’s clients, she wasn’t allowed to eat at McDonald’s. Mary credits loyalty and enthusiasm for her success working client-side with brands like Coors Brewing and Celestial Seasonings Tea, and now agency-side at Murmur Creative. She also shares her secrets for the perfect pitch.

This week on Agencies Drinking Beer Kevin and Kyle interview Marcus Murphy, Partner Development Manager at Infusionsoft. Tasked with Infusionsoft’s passionate mission to help small businesses succeed, Marcus travels the world in search of partnerships with people and companies who share this passion. Marcus talks about what he feels is the true power of partnerships: “As small business owners we can get in silos where we think we have to do everything and make sure we’re micromanaging life, and it’s really freeing when you find someone to take you to the next level but who is equally as talented.” Marcus also shares what he thinks is the secret to be being great public speaker (vulnerability) and there’s an epic superhero debate.

This week on Agencies Drinking Beer, Kyle and Kevin talk with Thomas Rankin, CEO, and Michaela Atkinson, Brand Strategist from Dash Hudson.​Dash Hudson​ started out as a mobile men’s fashion app who initially leveraged Instagram to acquire content and new users. But very quickly they realized that the technology and insights they were developing to better understand how well Dash Hudson was doing on Instagram were actually way more valuable than their consumer app itself. That’s when they realized THAT was their business, not men’s fashion. Now Dash Hudson works with aspirational lifestyle brands to provide insights and ROI measurements to ensure success on Instagram.​