The Growth Desk | Leadership, AI & Marketing for Business Growth

Legacy Over Leads: Sean Boyle on Breaking the Family Cycle and Scaling an Agency

Sean Boyle, co-owner of Momentum 360, started out as a teenage caddy at his father's golf club. He learned early that people buy from those who make them feel heard, and he built that lesson into a multi-seven-figure marketing agency.

In this episode, host Dana Foster talks with Sean about how he went from switching majors at Penn State to cold-calling his way into an internship a year early, then earning equity and a partnership at Momentum 360. He shares what he's learned about scaling an agency, including why he's moving toward higher-value clients, why Google Local Service Ads (pay per lead, not per click) are worth a look for service businesses, and why consistent messaging matters more than the newest ad tactic.

Sean also opens up about the bigger picture: building a business that fits your life, staying human in the age of AI, and setting out to change his family's trajectory. He talks about his new nonprofit honoring his grandmother, which supports students pursuing careers in healthcare.

In this episode, you'll hear why asking great questions and truly listening closes more deals than any pitch, how the "plant seeds, don't count harvests" mindset builds a business over time, and how to stay authentic as AI floods the market. Sean also explains why it matters to know who you are outside your company, and why founders should think in years and decades rather than days and weeks.

Growth Augment benchmarks and publishes how founders are adapting to the AI search era. If you want your numbers on the record, find us at growthaugment.com.

Stephen Gurgovits will be the first to tell you his career wasn't linear. Before he co-founded Tecum Capital, he bussed tables for exactly one day, loaded kegs at a beer distributor, trained as an accountant at KPMG, and at one point reported to Quantico for the FBI.

In this episode, Stephen walks us through the winding path that led him to private equity, from helping finance PNC Park to launching a merchant bank inside a publicly traded bank, then spinning it out on his own in 2013. Today Tecum is on its fourth SBIC fund with a team of 16.

He shares why real mentorship means checking your ego, how a good CEO learns to see around corners, and why he still invests in people before spreadsheets. Plus his take on bringing AI into a relationship-driven business without losing the human side. As he puts it, we all want to win the game, but sometimes you just go win the play.

Growth Augment benchmarks and publishes how founders are adapting to the AI search era. If you want your numbers on the record, find us at growthaugment.com.

John Marcus started his business in an actual broom closet in 1997. Two folding tables, a phone, and a whole lot of cold calls. 29 years later, Lakefront Futures & Options is still going strong.

In this episode, John walks us through building a Chicago commodities firm from the ground up, back when trades still happened in a shouting pit instead of on a screen. He shares the hiring rule a mentor gave him that sounds brutal but might be the smartest thing you hear all week, the one belief he swears makes the numbers take care of themselves, and how a 15-cent raise at his first busboy job shaped the way he treats everyone he works with.

We get into farmers and futures, riding out nonstop market swings, adapting to AI, and why he still believes that leading with your heart is what makes a business last.

Growth Augment benchmarks and publishes how founders are adapting to the AI search era. If you want your numbers on the record, find us at growthaugment.com.

Everyone told Marlene Silva that the middle of a pandemic was the worst possible time to start a business. She did it anyway. With two clients and a lot of word of mouth, she built Clearly Clean into a seven-figure cleaning company without ever running a single marketing campaign.

In this episode, Marlene shares how she went from disinfecting one house at a time to running five active teams in under six years, and why learning to let go of the reins was one of her hardest lessons as a founder. We get into why hiring is the single biggest challenge in her business (and why she always hires double what she needs), how she keeps a five-team operation feeling like a family, and where she's taking the company next as she moves into commercial cleaning.

She also opens up about building trust when your team walks into people's homes every day, growing up as the child of immigrants, and using AI as a practical tool while keeping the human side of her business front and center.
Marlene's story is a reminder that steady work, genuine care, and a willingness to fail forward can build something that lasts.

Find Marlene and Clearly Clean:
Facebook: Clearly Clean 757

Growth Augment benchmarks and publishes how founders are adapting to the AI search era. 
Want your numbers on the record? Contact us at growthaugment.com.