Our co-founder and CEO, Jason Brewer, recently joined An Agency Story Podcast to share how Brolik grew from a college side hustle into a growth marketing agency that’s been thriving for over two decades. He talks about the ups and downs along the way—like navigating a recession, shifting to a recurring revenue model, and learning the hard way why it’s so important to invest in your own marketing.

Jason dives into how building stable, repeatable systems helped Brolik grow without burning out. The episode is packed with insights for anyone looking to scale a business while keeping things sustainable.

Podcast Transcript

Building a Business From Scratch - (0:00)

Russel Dubree:

Welcome to An Agency Story Podcast, where owners and experts share the real journey — the early struggles, the breakthrough moments, and everything in between. I'm your host, Russel Dubree, former eight-figure agency owner turned business coach. Every agency has a story, and this is your front row seat. Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Jason Brewer with Brolik with us here today. Thanks so much for joining us, Jason.

Jason Brewer:

Thank you, Russel. Good to be here.

Russel Dubree:

Kick us off right off the bat — what does Brolik do and who do you do it for?

Jason Brewer:

Brolik is a growth marketing agency. We work with mostly service-based organizations, small companies. We're really good at working directly with tightly owned, privately held, family-run businesses — working directly with owner-operators, more the C-level execs. We're kind of like that growth marketing partner. We get a seat at the table. We like to know about the ins and outs and the ugly stuff within the business, and that makes us really successful at what we do.

Russel Dubree:

I want to dig into all that, but I'm curious — Brolik. What does that mean?

Jason Brewer:

Brolik means powerful. Strength. You could also say badass. It has a slang root that comes from the Northeast United States. When I was late teens and planning to start a business, it was a term that had been used in certain circles. One of my buddies said, "What about Brolik?" And I thought, that's a great way to go with it. We decided to go with it and never looked back.

Russel Dubree:

Where did Jason get his start? What was young Jason doing?

Jason Brewer:

Next week will be 22 years in business for Brolik. We got a really early start. I was 19 going on 20, a film student at Penn State. It was a little slow to get into the major, and I didn't want to wait. I started talking to some older students — a couple of seniors who saw some of my work. We started cold-calling and walking into businesses in State College, Pennsylvania, and ended up with contracts for local TV commercials. We had three commercials running on air at once, started making money, buying equipment. And I said, "I guess I just need to incorporate and pay taxes. That's the next step here."

Russel Dubree:

Did school get finished in this journey?

Jason Brewer:

Yeah, school got finished. There were times I was really focused on my senior film projects and times I was really focused on building Brolik. If I got a C instead of an A, it wasn't the end of the world — I was going the entrepreneur route. I didn't need that A to prove to myself I could make it, because I was already building a business.

Russel Dubree:

Did the business inform the classes you wanted to take?

Jason Brewer:

I was writing feature screenplays and choosing classes based on topics I was writing about. Later in my junior and senior year, I started taking a lot of business management and entrepreneurship classes. A couple years after I graduated, Penn State actually built out an entrepreneurship minor and then a major. I would have gone down that road for sure if it had been available.

From the Recession to Recurring Revenue - (07:14)

Russel Dubree:

You've got the business going, things are moving. How do you look back on the first five years?

Jason Brewer:

The first five years were interesting. We came out of school, rented an office in Manayunk outside of Philadelphia, and about six months in the recession hit — the 2007 housing crisis. We learned very quickly that even if you're doing the right things, macro trends can wipe you out. We were young, barely had a name, weren't making enough money to survive to begin with. We had to grind. I was selling stock from a portfolio my grandfather helped me build just to pay for groceries and keep things going.

Russel Dubree:

Coming out of that rougher period, it sounds like there was an epiphany that set the trajectory. Tell us about that.

Jason Brewer:

We signed Comcast and Everlast as clients. That gave us some logos to put on our site — proof that we weren't just a couple of 21-year-olds in a thousand square foot office. We really focused on web design and development, tried to be on the forefront of responsive design around 2008-2009, built our own CMS. That had pros and cons — we didn't need to build our own CMS and couldn't support anyone's needs from a product standpoint, but we learned.

Around 2010-2012, I hit a point where I realized the project-based flow of our business was really difficult. We'd have a quarter where we were super busy and didn't have enough people, then the next quarter the pipeline fell out and we were barely making payroll. So we decided we needed a recurring revenue stream. We'd been doing social media advising and SEO support in an ad hoc fashion, and we said, let's integrate it and offer an ongoing marketing retainer package. The business was just on the way up from there. We smoothed out the feast-or-famine cycle and got into a model where we could sign a client and grow with them for three, five, eight-plus years. Very predictable. Very stable.

Russel Dubree:

Transitioning from a project-based business to a recurring model — what did you have to go figure out on the delivery and internal side?

Jason Brewer:

First, you need a consistent flow of leads. Word of mouth and referrals can be great, but sometimes it's just not enough. In a recurring revenue business, you need to know where leads are coming from and that they'll be there consistently. We looked at ourselves and asked: why are we treating ourselves differently than we treat our clients? If we were looking at our own business as a client, we'd be investing more in marketing and advertising. From that day on — this was 2016 — we more than doubled our marketing budget. We created a formal budget line, put a team on it, allocated resources, and made it real. We tripled our lead volume within two months and created a consistent flow that continues to this day.

Russel Dubree:

Be your own best client. Easy to say, hard to do. What kept you fighting through it?

Jason Brewer:

It's not easy. The first client you're going to put off when you're too busy is always yourself. We had to really hold each other accountable. We defined roles and responsibilities — who's the point of contact, who's the client. I'm the client. I'm the one saying I need a consistent flow of leads, and I'm responsible for business development. Our marketing teams report to my partner Matt from a high level, but report to me as the client. We have a consistent monthly planning meeting, reporting mechanisms, a scorecard — just like we'd have for any client.

And don't pretend it's easy. The bad habits creep in. You get a new client, there's a project calling for attention, you're growing and need to hire people. All of a sudden you're shifting away from the structure. Just because the leads are there and it's not a problem right now doesn't mean you can let it slide. You've got to hold yourselves accountable.

Measured Growth, Client Health, and the Growth vs. Profitability Question - (20:08)

Russel Dubree:

Any other big shifts between when you moved into the recurring model and where you're at today?

Jason Brewer:

It's been measured growth, which is nice. We're not trying to double in size year over year. We know that 20-30% growth can be just the right amount to keep quality and client retention high. We did go through a period of really fast growth — 2021 — and it wasn't sustainable. Too much of our team was green and in training at once. We went through a hockey stick growth moment, hired people, and then it went straight down. We had to lay off team members. That's one of the hardest things you do in a small business. You feel like you failed in that moment.

Working through that, we realized we couldn't just assume all clients are good clients because they're there. So we started measuring client health outside of monthly revenue — things like: have they renewed more than once? What percentage of those clients become three-to-five-year relationships? What ensures we get through the first year successfully? We started thinking more about retention at the point of signing, not just after.

Russel Dubree:

Revenue is such a lagging indicator. What are the really important metrics that ladder up to success?

Jason Brewer:

One thing I think about a lot more now is being really clear on the growth versus profitability question. Are we in a growth year or are we squeezing out profit before heading into another growth cycle? When you try to be both at once, it's very hard. Growth requires investment and it's not going to show on the bottom line right away — it's actually going to be negative for a time before you break through. Matt and I have to remind each other: we're heading into a growth phase, we have plans to staff up or increase marketing spend, and profit may drop before it goes back up. When companies try to max out both at once, they pull against themselves.

We have this same conversation with clients. To grow in the first six months, it's going to be a lot more investment and sweat than return and profit. You have to be patient and build that foundation before you can run up the ROI numbers. Being clear on where you are in the journey matters.

Jason Brewer:

And you have to have leading indicators, not just lagging ones. To track monthly profit well, you have to see quality leads increasing. To see that, you need to see quality sessions on site. It's a chain. Clients need to be able to look at things that show success is on its way. Don't cut your spend too early. Don't give up on a campaign too early. Let the team find their way. Sometimes that takes six months or more. Nobody wants to hear it, but if you're just a little too impulsive, that's why some potentially great engagements never make it past the first six to eight months.

Leadership, the Investor Mindset, and What's Next - (27:45)

Russel Dubree:

As your team grew, what was a big leadership lesson you had to learn?

Jason Brewer:

Leadership is so much about empathy — being able to understand different perspectives, putting your own beliefs aside and just listening. Whether it's where the business is headed or whether your team is happy, in the right seats, in a position to succeed. If you're in an organization where people feel safe and when you ask, "How are you doing?" they can actually tell you — you have a good business. You have a good dynamic.

Matt and I have focused a lot on making sure we're a place where people feel good about what they're doing and trust the team around them. Maybe 15 years ago it was all "we're a family, we eat together." That can't always be how it is. But having each other's backs and being willing to listen — that's huge. A lot of businesses, even successful ones, are struggling with that behind the scenes. And what it shows up as is client churn, employee churn, more discontent. If the team feels like leadership is listening and valuing them, you have a lot less of that.

Russel Dubree:

Did empathy come naturally to you, or was it something you had to develop?

Jason Brewer:

Very natural for me. Being a good listener, caring about people — not for what I can get out of it, but just making sure they're taken care of. I'm a nurturing person. I look at my team and I want them to succeed as individuals. When they feel protected and valued, they do their best work. It works out for everybody.

Russel Dubree:

There's also this investor mindset that seems to come naturally to you and has shown up in unique ways. Tell us about that.

Jason Brewer:

Investing has always been a hobby for me, starting with trading equities as a teenager with help from my grandfather. In more recent years, that turned into something bigger. I work with a lot of early-stage companies, helping them establish brands and find their first customers. So it was natural that conversations started happening with founders who couldn't fully pay us. We explored creative deal structures — sometimes an equity stake — but we realized through the first couple of times doing this that there needs to be a cash component, or we need to be in a much better financial position to invest.

In recent years, we structured a deal with an ocean wave energy company called Atargis — underwater turbines that harness 24/7 energy from the sea. They were about to raise another funding round, and we decided we didn't just want to rebrand them and build their new site — we wanted to be part of it differently. So we worked out a cash-plus-equity deal structure. Whether Brolik uses itself as an engine for investment or diversifies its portfolio by owning percentages of other businesses, it's all positive. You could go 0 for 10 — that's very possible. But one winner can make up for everything.

Russel Dubree:

Last major question — what does the future look like? What's the end game?

Jason Brewer:

The end game is my family. I have three kids now, my oldest starting middle school. Fifteen years ago, I worked all the time. Now the business has purpose beyond just building something — it's for my wife, my kids, our future. I don't expect to retire in three years. I genuinely enjoy what I do and can see myself advising business owners in some capacity even when I'm an older man. I'm not opposed to building to sell, and I've had those conversations. I've also thought about whether any of my kids might want this someday, or whether the more valuable lesson is starting your own thing. I'm 42. I don't feel like I'm out of gas or anywhere close. But my mindset on why the business exists has definitely changed over the last 10 years.

Russel Dubree:

One last question. Are entrepreneurs born or made?

Jason Brewer:

Born, for sure. There's something about it — a risk tolerance that I don't think can be taught. You gravitate toward things that don't feel comfortable and you can't explain it. It can be nurtured, but without that base desire, I don't think you can teach it.

Russel Dubree:

If people want to know more about Brolik, where can they go?

Jason Brewer:

Check out Brolik.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn, and if you're interested in joining the team, brolik.com/careers.

Russel Dubree:

Thank you for sharing all of this today, Jason — being your own best client, embracing where you're at and investing in your growth, the role of empathy in leadership, and so much more. Really appreciate it.

Jason Brewer:

Thank you so much for having me, Russel.