The Setlist

Most business advice assumes growth is the goal. Andy Starr, co-founder of Level C alongside brand strategist Marty Neumeier, has built a business that deliberately opts out of that assumption, and he's convinced that's exactly why it's lasted.

In this episode of Fanclub Setlist, Erica talks with Andy Starr about what happens when a business stops chasing scale and starts obsessing over quality instead. Andy explains why he spends less than five minutes a day on LinkedIn and why Substack has become the more valuable platform for the kind of long-form thinking he and Marty do. He walks through the moment a fellow Level C alum offered to fund an endowment to keep the program running after Andy and Marty are gone, and why that reaction was the clearest signal that their approach was working.

The conversation moves into what Andy calls aesthetic intelligence: the ability to make decisions that other people instantly recognize as right, tasteful, or better, and why he thinks this is the one thing AI genuinely can't replicate. He also gets candid about self-management as a founder's real full-time job, and why he believes every business owner should be in therapy.

CHAPTERS

Sunday scaries vs. everyday scaries as a business owner

The rise of the "culturist, futurist, cultural futurist"

Why Andy spends less than five minutes a day on LinkedIn

Substack, long-form content, and the platforms worth your time

Knowing what you're good at (and what you're not)

Rejecting growth and scale on purpose

Managing yourself before you manage anyone else

Why every business owner should be in therapy

The Florence masterclass and the endowment offer

Defining aesthetic intelligence

Why AI can't replace taste and judgment

The two-minute test: can you explain what makes you different?

Final takeaway: don't ask any other question before this one

Connect with Andy Starr

Andy Starr's LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-andy-starr/⁠ 

Level C website: ⁠https://www.levelc.org/⁠ 

Level C on Substack: ⁠https://levelc.substack.com/⁠ 

Level C on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/levelcorg⁠ 

Most founders assume the goal is to scale as fast as possible. But for some operators, the most exciting and most valuable work happens earlier than that, in the messy, undefined stretch before a business has any real shape. That's the zero to one phase, and it's where Mikhail Alfon has chosen to spend his career.

In this episode of Fanclub Setlist, Erica talks with Mikhail Alfon, founder of Blue Light Media, a social media and content agency he built from nothing in 2014 and sold roughly a decade later. Mikhail walks through how a firing (he started a social media department without permission and got let go for it) became the origin story for an agency that went on to work with brands like Bulletproof Coffee, Nutribullet, and SharkNinja.

Now, post-acquisition, Mikhail works almost exclusively in the zero to one phase, helping founders go from an idea and a vision to a functioning team and system. He describes it as fractional CMO or fractional VP work: building out hiring, creative direction, and marketing infrastructure for early-stage companies. A major part of that infrastructure now includes AI. Mikhail shares how he uses Claude to turn raw meta ads data into creative briefs and marketing analysis, cutting down work that used to require a much larger team.

The conversation also covers the distinction between personal brand and company brand, why Mikhail intentionally built Blue Light Media to function without him at the center of it, and how his current business runs entirely on referrals rather than outbound marketing or paid acquisition.

CHAPTERS

Introduction

How Mikhail got into marketing: the local SEO job that led to a firing

The grit it took to start a business with $1,000 to his name

Personal brand vs. company brand: preparing Blue Light Media to run without him

What Mikhail's doing now: zero to one and fractional CMO work

Using AI and automation to replace a 20-person team

Advice for consultants without a referral base yet

Putting your ideas out publicly (TikTok, Instagram, Substack, LinkedIn)

Taking early clients for free to build a scope of work

Using Claude AI for meta ads creative briefs and marketing workflows

Understanding AI tools before hiring someone to build with them

Closing thoughts and where to find Mikhail

Connect with Mikhail
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikhailalfon 

Website: https://www.mikhailalfon.com/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/miqk/ 

YouTube:  https://youtube.com/@itsmiqk?si=mAzJFJ3KkJGZxEJ0

Most founders hear the same marketing advice: post consistently, build a brand, run some ads, track the funnel. But for SaaS founders specifically, the bigger question isn't whether to market. It's whether the channel they're betting on actually drives revenue, or just makes them feel busy.

In this episode of Fanclub Setlist, Erica sits down with Jeffrey Zhao, founder of Ordinal, a social media management platform built to help SaaS companies and agencies drive real results and revenue on social. Ordinal works with over 1,000 fast-growing teams, including Mercury, Clay, and Zapier, and the conversation traces how Jeffrey's thinking on marketing evolved from a side pain point into a company-defining bet.

Before Ordinal, Jeffrey ran Slope, a design and marketing agency doing brand work and organic social services. The team kept hitting the same wall: the scheduling and publishing tools on the market were built ten or fifteen years ago, around assumptions about social media that no longer held. So they built their own tool to solve their own problem. That tool was originally called Assembly, and it didn't even have scheduling at first. It was built to solve a coordination and visibility problem for teams trying to manage a growing, more complex content workload.

One of the more counterintuitive parts of the conversation is the rebrand story. Assembly became Ordinal not because of an emotional rebrand, but a tactical one. The name was too generic to rank for, too easy to confuse with other companies, and people genuinely struggled to find the business after hearing about it secondhand. Jeffrey is direct about his philosophy here: most names are neutral vessels you build equity into over time, not the emotional core of a brand. Visual identity and brand strategy deserve strong opinions. The name itself should mostly be ownable, pronounceable, and searchable.

The conversation's centre of gravity, though, is LinkedIn. Jeffrey argues that social media has shifted from a brand-awareness checklist item into an actual go-to-market channel, especially for B2B SaaS. Some of the highest-valuation teams using Ordinal report that the majority of their leads come directly from LinkedIn organic content, driven by founders, salespeople, and entire teams posting in a coordinated way rather than relying on a single company page.

Erica and Jeffrey also dig into what kind of content actually works, why even Ordinal struggles to post on its own platform consistently, and where Jeffrey sees marketing heading as AI tools get folded into the workflow. The episode closes with Jeffrey's advice to founders weighing whether to start a SaaS company at all: stop optimizing on paper, and start building.

CHAPTERS

0:00 – Introducing Ordinal and founder Jeffrey Zhao

0:56 – The problem that inspired Ordinal and Assembly's early days

3:45 – First customers, YC lessons, and building through feedback

6:04 – Why Assembly became Ordinal and what makes a good brand name

10:53 – SEO vs. LinkedIn: Building a SaaS marketing strategy

14:17 – What actually works on LinkedIn (and why consistency is hard)

17:53 – AI, composability, and the future of marketing

19:45 – Advice for first-time SaaS founders

Marketing advice often sounds simple on paper. Build a website. Create content. Post on LinkedIn. Run ads. Track your metrics. But after a few years in business, many founders and marketers discover that marketing isn't just about tactics. It's about trust.

In this episode of Fanclub Setlist, Erica sits down with Caleb from Anchor Group to explore the realities of building a brand that people genuinely connect with. Their conversation moves beyond marketing theory and into the lessons learned from years of experimentation, mistakes, and growth.

Caleb shares how his marketing journey began from an unexpected place. Originally trained as a mechanical engineer, he found himself drawn to problem-solving, sales, and digital marketing. Like many marketers, he initially believed standing out meant criticizing competitors or creating negative content. It didn't take long for him to realize that approach felt completely disconnected from who he was.

Instead, he shifted toward building relationships, emphasizing kindness, authenticity, and genuine care for customers. That philosophy became a cornerstone of Anchor Group's growth.

The conversation also explores one of today's biggest marketing challenges: balancing AI with human connection. While Caleb uses AI tools for efficiency, from transcripts to ad scripts, he believes trust is built when real people remain visible. Video content, personal involvement, and authentic interactions create a level of credibility that automated content simply cannot replicate.

Erica and Caleb also explore the ongoing debate around founder-led marketing. While many startups rely heavily on founders as the face of the business, Caleb argues that sustainable growth often comes from elevating the entire team. Building trust in multiple voices creates a stronger brand and makes future transitions easier for the business.

The discussion eventually turns toward SEO, content strategy, and one lesson Caleb wishes he had learned earlier: understanding keyword intent. Traffic alone doesn't create growth. The right traffic does. Learning how to identify keywords with service intent can dramatically impact lead quality and long-term business results.

Throughout the episode, one theme remains constant: marketing works best when it reflects who you truly are rather than who you think you're supposed to be.

CHAPTERS

00:00 – Introduction 

00:47 – People Connect With Personality

01:32 – Data Meets Human Connection in Marketing

02:54 – From Marketing Mistakes to Authentic Content

07:16 – Why Team-Led Brands Outlast Founder-Led Brands

12:02 – Building a Brand People Actually Trust

15:02 – The First Marketing Strategy Every Founder Needs

18:18 – Compete Better, Not Bigger

Building a business is supposed to come with a marketing playbook. Post consistently. Optimize your profile. Use AI to scale your content. Stay on brand. But somehow, the posts still feel hollow. The engagement still feels transactional. And the thought of putting yourself out there, your actual self, not the polished LinkedIn version, still feels like too much of a risk.

That's exactly where this episode begins.

In this debut episode of Fanclub Setlist, brand strategists Erica and Steph skip the formal intro and do something most podcasters wouldn't dare: they introduce each other instead. What emerges isn't a rehearsed bio. It's a live demonstration of the exact philosophy the show is built on: the most powerful brand signal you can send isn't what you do, it's how you make people feel.

The episode moves quickly into one of the biggest tensions founders are navigating right now: AI. Not whether to use it, but how. Steph draws a sharp distinction between using AI as a get-out-of-jail-free card,  prompting and posting without thinking and using it as a sparring partner that sharpens your own ideas without replacing them. The danger, he argues, isn't just that AI content sounds generic. It's that the more you outsource your voice, the harder it becomes to find it again.

Erica brings it back to something more fundamental. The reason founder-led marketing matters isn't a trend or a tactic. It's a shift that's been building for years: people don't want to connect with businesses. They want to connect with humans. And yet most founders are still marketing like it's the other way around, leading with the product, hiding the person, and wondering why nothing lands.

The fix, as both hosts see it, isn't a better content calendar. It's permission. Permission to be irreverent. To stumble. To post the thing that feels a little too real. Erica talks about how alopecia forced her to get creative with her identity and how what started as something she feared became one of the most distinctive parts of her brand. Steph talks about Beanie Ortiz, the doodle mascot he built for his consultancy, and why leaning into something that "might seem silly" turned out to be more memorable than anything conventionally professional.

Both hosts have spent years in brand strategy working inside companies, alongside founders, and through the messy, emotional sessions that, as Erica puts it, have a way of turning into therapy. That experience shapes everything about how they approach this podcast.

This is what Erica and Steph call founder-led marketing. And the first step isn't a strategy document or a content audit. It's deciding that your weird, your real, and your unpolished are not liabilities to manage. They're the whole point.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

00:25 Why Brand Still Matters in the Age of AI

04:07 Using AI Without Losing Your Authentic Voice

11:41 How to Build a Human Brand That Stands Out

16:32 Overcoming Fear & Showing Up Authentically 

20:29 The AI Alter Ego Experiment & Final Takeaways

You’ve heard the stories of the founders with massive audiences, polished personal brands, and advertising budgets big enough to make sure you know their names.

Fan Club Setlist is about everyone else.

Hosted by Erica, the podcast introduces you to the real founders behind growing businesses, interesting products, and brands worth rooting for. These are people who built something meaningful without a perfect roadmap, unlimited funding, or a guaranteed path to success.

Each episode starts with the story behind the business: where the idea came from, what nearly went wrong, what finally worked, and what it actually takes to keep building when nobody is paying attention yet. Somewhere along the way, expect honest lessons, unexpected tangents, strong opinions, and the occasional complete derailment.

It’s part founder story, part behind-the-scenes business conversation, and part fan club for the people doing work that deserves a bigger audience.

The first episode of Fan Club Setlist drops August 1.