Advertising That Feels Like Value, Not Noise

Advertising That Feels Like Value, Not Noise

With Lonn Shulkin (President, BAM Strategy)

Episode Summary

This week, Myles Biggs and Patrick Patterson sit down with Lonn Shulkin, founder of BAM Advertising, for a candid conversation about leadership, trust, and what it actually takes to build an agency that lasts.

From Lonn’s early career lessons to BAM’s growth and eventual partnership with Level Agency, this episode explores how people-first leadership, emotional intelligence, and long-term thinking outperform short-term tactics. Lonn shares hard-earned insights on managing ego, earning trust with clients and teams, and why retention, not acquisition, is the true indicator of success.

Rather than chasing hacks or hype, this conversation focuses on building organizations grounded in values, accountability, and genuine care for people.

If you care about leadership, sustainable growth, or creating work environments people don’t want to leave, this episode is for you.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• From ego to empathy: How self-awareness and humility shape better leaders and healthier teams.
• Trust as a growth strategy: Why trust, not tactics, is the foundation of long-term client and employee retention.
• Retention over acquisition: Why keeping clients and people matters more than chasing constant new wins.
• Values-driven growth: How aligning principles made the BAM × Level partnership possible.
• Leadership under pressure: Navigating insecurity, decision-making, and responsibility at scale.
• Marketing that feels like value: Why the best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing at all.
• Culture as a competitive advantage: How strong internal culture translates directly to client outcomes.

Featured Guest

Lonn Shulkin — Founder, BAM Advertising
Entrepreneur and agency leader focused on trust-based relationships, long-term growth, and people-first leadership.

Learn More

• Lonn Shulkin on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lonnshulkin/
• Level Agency – https://www.level.agency

Takeaways for Operators & Leaders

• Start with trust, not tactics, internally and externally.
• Retention is a lagging indicator of leadership quality.
• Growth without values creates fragility, not scale.
• Ego is often the hidden constraint in leadership decisions.
• The best marketing creates value before asking for anything in return.
• Partnerships work when cultures align, not just balance sheets.

Connect With the Show

• Level Agency – https://www.level.agency
• Patrick Patterson – https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork/
• Myles Biggs – www.linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs/

How to Support the Show

• Subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• Rate & review if this conversation brought you value.
• Share the episode with leaders building people-first organizations.

Transcript

Patrick Patterson: 0:00

it's really a, comprehensive and complete solution. both of our organizations offered all of those services before. but now when you look across the board, we've leveled up all of those services to be nine and 10 outta 10. maybe before it was a four outta 10 or a five outta 10'cause it wasn't our focus. So the ability to offer truly world class services in all of those different, spots aLonng the customer journey is super exciting.

Myles Biggs: 0:24

Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast. It's your host Myles and Patrick here once again to remind you that on this show, we are driven by truth. Sometimes the hard truth. We believe it's imperative to be relentless for results because if you're not your competitor is we're obsessed with how to be better every day because that's what our customers deserve. Today our guest is Lonn Shulkin, who leads BAM Strategy, the Digital Experience Agency. For years, Lonn and his team have been obsessed with turning attention into loyalty building brands, not just to capture clicks, but to earn Lonng-term human relationships that actually stick. He didn't just build a successful agency, he built a loyalty engine, and now we're combining that with Level's performance machine. Lonn, welcome to the podcast.

Lonn Shulkin: 1:13

Very excited to be here.

Myles Biggs: 1:15

I know we're gonna talk about the acquisition integration, all that exciting stuff today. But before we do that, I wanna go back to that year Lonn, when you were starting as a marketing intern for the New York Islanders. I want to hear how you got that gig and got started in marketing in the first place.

Lonn Shulkin: 1:30

I grew up in a business house, I guess is, is the way to say it. My dad, his own business. we were always coming up. I'm, I'm, I'm the youngest of three, boys, so my mom was quite outnumbered, but. We would be constantly coming up with different business opportunities, business ideas, and all three of us, all three of me and my brothers, ended up in, in business of some format. there was never a question of being doctors, lawyers, or other kinds of professionals. at our dinner table, a lot of the talk was about sports we would talk about the stocks that were doing the best and the things that were working in business. And my dad would go transparently deep on how business was going and, even share money with us and how he was doing. that exposure led me to know that that was gonna be my future. when we were, I think I was probably 12, my father was a hand tool manufacturer, so screwdrivers.

Myles Biggs: 2:32

Okay.

Lonn Shulkin: 2:33

he, had dealings with Costco and we decided we could sell something to Costco. one of my brothers had a contact to a hat manufacturing company we got a relationship with Costco and in my basement packing hats like hockey caps in plastic little material packages so that they couldn't be stolen and selling those to Costco. And so that was sort of the early days. And then forward and, and getting through, university, I decided that I really wanted to work in sports on the business side. that's not easy. I called every single professional sports team I could find and offered to work for free. And run and be an intern. An intern at one of those. And so, the New York Islanders were the one who said yes. And I very stupidly decided I was gonna move to Manhattan with a friend of mine. I had a bunch of friends Michigan'cause I had gone to a summer camp there and I was gonna sign a year lease in New York and live with this friend of mine with no income and no real job. And a three month internship with the Islanders. every day I hopped on a bus and went cross town get on the train and then go back across town underground on the train all the way across New York, new, New York into Lonng Island, got on another bus and then finally got to, the Islanders, arena. I think it's probably one of the greatest lessons that I've learned. Because it was actually a terrible job. while I got to walk into this awesome hockey arena every day, they were on the brink of bankruptcy and about to be sold. the culture there was not great. people were not happy working there. that was my first aha moment of, it's not necessarily the thing you're selling or where you're working, but oftentimes the company's doing, how the culture is, how people are actually feeling there, which, leads to your actual enjoyment on the job. I quickly wanted to stay in New York, had a lease to pay for, and ended up finding one of the first digital agencies called Beyond Interactive. that was really my start into. real marketing and advertising again, a startup environment. But there I was starting to understand what it took to help clients drive business impact.

Patrick Patterson: 5:21

And when you took that job? Coming from a background and a family of entrepreneurs, having that experience at the Islanders, what did you bring to that job that was different than other folks? I'm sure you looked around and there were folks that didn't have that same experience you had, and maybe it was their first job or they didn't have the same upbringing as you, so what did you bring to that job that other folks didn't?

Lonn Shulkin: 5:43

it's interesting'cause that's probably my first real job I worked in my father's warehouse, packing tools which had lessons, but you don't actually know what you're bringing to your first job. you have no idea what you're capable of at that point. what I learned about myself is that I was sort of a jack of all trades. I could talk to clients. we were in this temp space at the beginning. It was very.com boom time. so at night, as we were adding people,'cause we were adding tens of people every week, I would run wires through ceiling in this temp space so that we could get everyone networked. I became the, tech contact in the New York office. the company was based in Ann Arbor I was able to jump in on sales, jump in on clients. I had a good capability for math. I think it was this ability to pivot really well and be, someone who could touch a lot of things and do them all. Maybe not all great, but I could get by with everything. I quickly moved up and was able to lead accounts and, at a pretty young age, be a bit of a leader in that office as we were growing so much.

Myles Biggs: 6:53

So growing up in the entrepreneurial household and you had your hat business to Costco, why go get an actual job versus just continue like building your own thing or going to work for your dad since that, I'm sure he, that was an option for you.

Lonn Shulkin: 7:08

I never thought I would work in my dad's business. I think it wasn't as exciting for me I never sought out to be a digital marketer or a marketer in any way. I wanted to move to New York and I thought that was fun. there was always an expectation in a lot of homes, especially in that time, that you're going to, get a degree and go get a job. growing up in an entrepreneurial household, I always had to have a job, had to have part-time jobs. So the idea of working not something I ever contemplated in going and getting that job. And then combining that with the excitement of being in a new big city, especially at that age when lots of partying going on and lots of having fun. I just knew that there was a path that I was going to have to, figure it out for myself. and that ended up being where I fell, but it certainly was not planned.

Myles Biggs: 7:58

And so after that first agency, walk us down the path further, where did you end up after that?

Lonn Shulkin: 8:04

So at some point when I was in New York, probably part of the expectation, I decided I was gonna do my MBA. I had no formal business training at all. I didn't know how to read a balance sheet or p and l at all, And I didn't learn it in my New York job. I had lots of hands-on experience. I knew I could manage people, I knew I can manage clients, but I felt like I needed that next step of, of formal education. And so I decided I'd go do my MBA and my brother had. I've gone to business school at Western Ontario, which is, in southern Ontario right across the border from, from Detroit and Lonndon, Ontario. at a school called we, Richard Ivy School of Business. And I went and did that. And, and the key for me actually, that, that Ivy as a business school was a hundred percent case study. I was never like this great studious reading book And we did about 300 different business cases

Myles Biggs: 9:09

Wow.

Lonn Shulkin: 9:09

they train you on how to look at a problem. no matter what class you're in, whether you're in finance, marketing or strategy, you're dealing with some sort of a business case. they're all real world cases I think that experience in general just it gives you a real ability to think on your feet and to react quickly to problems. I still remember the format. You look at your internal factors and your external factors and then there's models that you learn to do those things and very quickly you start to process business problems quickly. and then coming out of MBAI was just looking for a job in all honesty, and I got a job. I started focusing more on marketing and customer at that point. I got a job at Bell Canada, in Toronto. I had a girlfriend who's now my wife at the time. And so she was in Toronto'cause she had graduated a year earlier. And so I was focusing on Toronto and, and moved there to work for Bell and actually loved it. is sort of weird and we'll get there because it's this giant company where it's hard to tell if you're making an impact every day. I worked at Bell in product development and we were the team who launched voiceover IP when that was a thing.

Myles Biggs: 10:28

That's cool.

Lonn Shulkin: 10:29

IP

Myles Biggs: 10:29

Yeah.

Lonn Shulkin: 10:30

And such an interesting time because the incumbent telco, which was the largest in Canada, needed to decide if they were actually gonna cannibalize their own business. Because at the time, voiceover IP was being presented as a separate product and you have regulatory and you can't change pricing. And there was all these restrictions on what you could actually do. And so being on that team, we were getting CEO exposure because they were talking to us. it was Another experience where I got exposure and opportunities where I'm not sure I would have if I took a different path. what was so interesting about that job was that it was all about customer experience. Now we were really getting into how is a consumer actually gonna log in and how, how is their experience going to be when they use this voiceover IP product I got a phone call from, an old family friend who worked at this company called Rito, which is named after, the, where the, it's where the Prime Minister lives in, in Ottawa Rito was started as an awards and medals company many years ago. One of the biggest awards, was the Order of Canada, which is like your congressional Medal of honor. Rito actually manufactured that. But they had shifted over, you know, in modern time to become a software company who did employee recognition and loyalty programs. So they worked with companies across the US and Canada, Boeing, for instance, and actually had software to help those companies deliver these different recognition programs. So it could be, thanks for being here for five years. You're getting a gift. So that's a service award program or a performance loyal program where we're actually giving someone points for different behaviors that we wanna see in the company. And, worked there for three years and, ran sales and marketing. And so my entire job was, besides being on the executive team and, and continuing to get exposure and training at the executive level, was we were basically selling to, chief HR people, HR managers, and talking to them about the importance of motivating and retaining people and how that is actually your main company driver. Your main success driver in any company is that we need to ultimately, keep people motivated and keep them around. And we would get into the cost of replacing people, like the actual dollar cost of it, and the importance of recognition it's not just about giving the award, but about how we touch the human heart? How do we actually someone feel recognized, not just give them a gift? We did a lot of training. we had an expert who would come in almost a behavioral person who would work with our clients to actually teach managers how to a recognition moment the words to say, and we would do this training and there's, there's certifications and things of that nature so that we actually make people feel awesome.

Patrick Patterson: 13:48

that experience and, I've gotten to know you now for, what feels like forever, but a little while. I can tell you have really brought a lot of that to how you show up and how you lead at bam. I think you're a, a very people first. Leader, servant leader, understand the importance that, you know, we're in a people serving people business, strategic talent management, which is keeping and attracting top talent is super important. what lessons did you bring from that moment and that training that you were doing for other folks into how you eventually started, implementing that at Bam.

Lonn Shulkin: 14:26

the most pivotal moment in, my professional career is coming to the realization that the company is not that important to our people. they ultimately have their whole life, which should be put ahead of the company. And then as a leader, you start to question and say, okay, but how am I gonna motivate them to wanna stay here and actually care about this place? Because shouldn't care about it more than their family. They shouldn't care about it more than all the challenges we all have in regular day life. Whether it's a sick parent or, child who needs help or whatever it could be. There's so many challenges that are actually more important than the company to the entrepreneur, though the company's like the center of our lives, right? It's like part of our ego. so we have this imbalance of how important we think it is versus how important the employee actually thinks. I think I probably lost my way during the first six months at BAM I have a human people side. I am also a type operating person I definitely came in and wanted to operationalize a lot of things. I'll never forget reading the book the first 90 days. it's a great book that tells you all the things you should and shouldn't do when you join a company for the first 90 days. I totally ignored it.

Patrick Patterson: 15:46

You did all the things you shouldn't

Lonn Shulkin: 15:47

messed up everything. And I remember leadership team at that time, which weren't necessarily my people. And I joined, Chris, who's been my partner all these years and, treats people incredibly, but very quickly I was like the new guy coming in and I was like, we're gonna put things in spreadsheets and we're gonna operationalize things. And within six months, I remember being in an office with. The seven or eight leaders at the time, and just that heart to heart of what they were feeling and what wasn't going amazing. And it was at that point that I went back to, my read experience and there's a book, I'll bring it into Level at some point. it's called The 12 Elements of Great Managing. it's by the Gallup organization who interviewed, 10 million employees in the US and determined that there were 12 elements that motivated people. I started using that book with different groups at BAM, we would read a chapter, come back together every week and talk about what we could do at BAM to motivate people better and actually come up with action plan. So I operationalize it, I actually come up with action plans I came across the photos the other day. I have screenshots of what are all our issues? and started going through that and getting back to, I think my, my read roots of what we actually gonna do to motivate and keep people here and what are we gonna do to get people excited about what we're trying to do and how we're trying to grow.

Patrick Patterson: 17:26

How did you see the before and after from that? Right. So you know. it takes a certain type of leader to realize that what they're doing is not working. and to actually implement a fix that is maybe outside of their core type A personality. what did you see happen? what were you doing wrong? Because I think actually talking about the things that we were doing wrong, are, is great so we can learn from'em and other leaders can learn from'em. Because there's probably some people listening to this are starting a new position, starting a new role, going to a new company in their first 90 days or maybe have screwed up their first 90 days like I have a bunch of times. So what did you do? What did you learn? What did you fix? and then what did you see afterwards?

Lonn Shulkin: 18:09

first of all, I was lucky that Chris, had embarked on a leadership training program with an external, consultant. And I think within those first six months we had our first sessions he did the classic Myles, he did the classic and a bunch of other assessments, and I had done that during my MBA the first realization for those people who are starting their 90 days or have screwed it up or lost in their career is once you accept that you're like, that we're all flawed, or maybe we're all perfect, whatever, you know, however you wanna look at that, and you can actually understand yourself well, like with a, with a low ego about it, then you can start using that to disarm yourself and your ego, but also other people. the biggest thing for me there was, I don't like to let things linger. part of my A type, like I, when I, when I have to like resolve things very quickly and I like to, as you know, you know, and we've, we've talked over the year or two, like if, if I had an issue I would call you right away. I wanna get it off my chest immediately Part of that's honesty, but part of it's just my own processing of, of information. And I started to learn that if you share the things that you're weak at people, will trust you.'cause they know you're not hiding things. But number two will help you actually overcome or supplement where they are strong for instance, Within those first six months, I would have a weekly leadership team meeting we would get together Tuesday morning open a spreadsheet and I would say, here's all the tasks and here's all the things I tracked. And I would lead us through that. And when I did, a deeper Myers-Briggs where you actually get into things you used to stop doing, things you should continue doing. And what I learned is, is that I can dominate meetings and I remember the moment of seeing that and saying, I'm gonna flip this meeting. I will be the last to talk and I'm gonna let everyone else go first. And all of a sudden, like that small little tactic. Now I have leaders who are empowered who are owning things and we can still get it on a sheet, but they can type it in. I don't need to be the one who types it in. I don't need to micromanage it. And now I have true engagement, empowerment happening off of one little change on one little meeting. And the other cool thing is by the end, I had nothing to say'cause everyone else covered it.

Patrick Patterson: 20:53

It's a good feeling,

Lonn Shulkin: 20:54

And it's the best You realize that they can do the job for you it's not a lazy thing, I came from, and this, goes back to my father as well, if you're truly empowering people the top leader, shouldn't have a ton to do. That doesn't mean you have no work, but like running the business, you added the right set of empowered leaders, they'll be able to run the business and you'll be very aligned with them. I think that was, one example and just introspection, then exposing that to people changing some of the tactics. I think that's really the key is like really getting down into say, what am I practically doing that I can change that can make a massive impact.

Patrick Patterson: 21:36

you talk about. Being vulnerable, talking about your weaknesses. this is a topic that keeps coming up on this podcast it's really difficult to do in a world where you think everyone's judging you for your strengths, right? you only want people to see the strengths because if they see any weakness, then they'll think you're bad at everything. it's this, fixed mindset. was it the coach, the leadership? Chris? what encouraged you to step out of that fixed mindset into a growth mindset? Be open and vulnerable, with your staff? Was there a specific moment?

Lonn Shulkin: 22:08

I think it's an evolution that's still happening, It starts in the home. Like we just had a really open house maybe'cause it was four guys who would do all the nasty things they shouldn't do at the dinner table. everyone just shared, I call my mom every day and share how we're feeling, that existed from an early age where I always shared my feelings a lot. then ego jumps in at certain points in your career starts to do what you said. Like, you have to perform, you have to show off, you have to, you know, you have to do that. And so for me, at least once I was in this position that I guess at power, it actually did the flip for what it might do for a lot of people. Because I had nothing to lose by sharing, where when you're not in a position of power, you often feel like I need to perform

Patrick Patterson: 22:59

It's

Lonn Shulkin: 22:59

all.

Patrick Patterson: 23:00

Yeah, I remember reading, I forget what book it was at this point. my mom's a child psychologist, and she would have her psychology hat on when she was at work and then her mom hat on at home. I read this book in my early thirties about insecurity as a leader and how that can drive things like micromanagement and not being able to share vulnerability it took me eight tries to get through this chapter because I would get so mad while I was reading it. I remember calling her up after I finished that chapter and I was just like, why didn't you tell me I'm wildly insecure? Like, why didn't you say this to me? She's like, I figured you'd figure it out at some point. and so I was like, come on, that could have saved me so much time and effort. but it's that realization. and what's funny is I do kind of remember that, you know, being in a position where you're continuously having to prove yourself to get promoted and then you're in a position of power and you don't have to prove yourself. you can take the veil off a little bit and be like, okay, it's just okay to be human. and then seeing people's reaction to that

Lonn Shulkin: 24:00

So.

Patrick Patterson: 24:00

is maybe the most rewarding thing in my career, right. Where it's like you realize. These people who you work with every day that do have their own lives actually do care about the organization, you know, and that world where then all of a sudden we're all working together to pick each other up. if I look back at the past 25 years of my career, those are some of the most rewarding moments. And, you know, it's awesome. So if you would go back to Young Pat Young Lonn Young Myles and give them, you only have two sentences to change their lives, what would those two sentences be? what are the lessons that you would try to impart?

Lonn Shulkin: 24:45

Everyone's insecure, so that's I think very rarely. there's a few very lucky people who are not, and you probably need to discover it like your mom forced you to do. and I think my parents did as well, and I think that's part of the evolution that I was talking about and to be yourself. But those are the two things, everyone's insecure, so be yourself, I'm not sure I regret the performance moments'cause they do get you into, you know, those ego, like the ego helps you also, it's not only, a bad thing and I think it gets you into some of those opportunities that I, to me, have been some of my biggest learning lessons, everyone's struggling with something, everyone's got a problem. I remember very clearly my, the CEO at Rito, again was a family friend. He knew, he knew my dad well. he came to me and said, what's amazing with you is that you talk to the people in the factory the same way you talked to me, the CEO. I said, that's always what people told me about my dad. I observed, boys' relationships between my dad and his warehouse workers where they would fist bump and talk about life and just realizing that we have different jobs, but we all have those challenges problems and insecurities. if you can let. Those go, you build trust and trust builder relationships. once you have relationships, then you get, if you want to talk business, then you get retention because people want to stay with you because they trust you and they care for you. And that's, really the key. the key of where we've taken BAM is that we've definitely had our challenges, as all agencies do, We have our ups, we have our downs, we win tons of clients, we lose tons of clients that's the agency world. But when we look at retention, which has always been our key metric of success, it's always been really high because we've always overinvested, whether emotionally or financially in that area to make sure that people feel connected.

Patrick Patterson: 26:58

So looking at, let's go to the BAM chapter of the Lonn book. obviously retention being a key metric, but what was the thing that BAM was trying to solve? what was the reason that clients said, yeah, I gotta work with bam.

Lonn Shulkin: 27:12

Not what people are gonna expect. there was this concept when I joined and Chris had started this, of, we're just gonna care so much about your business that we're just gonna get shit done for you. Like, that's not technical, it's not business speech, it's just like it's coming out of Chris as the entrepreneur in his parents' basement, building little websites. To I'm gonna win on awesome customer experience, like customer relationship. I'm gonna build, like my customers have tons of stuff to do. They're resource constrained as we all are. So I'm gonna be an extension of them and make sure we get their shit done. And that theme was always more important than doing awesome creative building a great media plan. And so I, I believe that theme obviously gets harder as you get bigger and more processes. but that theme of just having sewn into the culture that making sure we are, that extension of our clients is, is to me, we used to call it making their life easier. We did our own mission vision, and one of our pillars was, we're gonna make their life easier.

Myles Biggs: 28:30

How do you sell that before you have a chance to prove it? It's easy to prove once you have their business but you have to get it first.

Lonn Shulkin: 28:36

So you'll see it even today. our history of sales, at least until 2020, was word of mouth. we were not out there driving new business and having a new business process. It was our clients who, we were lucky enough to work with. For instance, the first big one was Procter and Gamble, who have massive marketing expertise and a huge ecosystem of people who then move on. But that sort of p and g diaspora would deliver other clients and clients would talk to other people and we would get new opportunities through that. We were never getting 30 RFPs a year that we were applying to. It was not the way we would grow our business. It was through relationships that either we had, or through former clients that moved around. And so we just got this reputation for yeah, they do good work and they get shit done. digital marketing's changed so much. I mean, back then it was, you know, a lot, some of our work for p and g was just repurposing US assets to Canadian assets. literally swapping out a model, like they would have the rights to a US face and we would need to change it with the Canadian face. and then slowly but surely we got into p and G's bigger. What would now be CRM programs, but at the time they were database driven marketing efforts. that was the shift for us because we actually started building our own platforms to help clients with doing that better and connecting with customers through data in a better way. At a very early

Myles Biggs: 30:19

So.

Lonn Shulkin: 30:19

probably earlier than most digital agencies, we were that you could collect information, in a positive way from clients and, end customers, and then give them more personalized offers. And like p and g started that with couponing and then they did with sampling. we were involved in those programs from an early age where you would ask clients, do you have a dog or a cat? And then you're gonna give them. dog food or cat food, and that was like early days of CRM.

Patrick Patterson: 30:50

That's awesome. So as the business is growing from, Chris's basement to where you are today, what were some of the, I've talked to enough leaders now to know that there's usually three or four pivotal moments, in that journey. that you choose one direction or you choose another direction. It's a 50 50 choice and you have no idea whether you made the right one or, something happens in the business and you have to react. And if you don't react a certain way, the business might not be around. Right. And I don't think folks really understand, like when you get to a certain size, how many extinction events you have, dodged to get to where you are and to keep the business growing and alive. So, has bam had those pivotal moments. And can you share one or two with us?

Lonn Shulkin: 31:37

I think getting the right people on the bus was the first pivotal moment for me as a leader. really understanding who can help lead the company. you can empower as much as you want, but you need people who can be empowered and who can lead. they are an extension of you. And when you join a new company, they're not always the right people. That doesn't mean they're not great people. But identifying that talent is the theme throughout the whole time, right? how do we keep upskilling and identifying. Helen, if you look at our leadership team, I think it's, I joined BAM, 16 years ago, At least 10 of them. We've been together with the same four or five people. The second piece is that brutal transparency with those people so that they can evolve. we've had a few different pivotal moments. the first my mind goes to is that we acquired, a small agency in Montreal in 2016. we wanted to take the next step to grow they had some awesome talent and a few actually really awesome clients who are still clients today. we had lost a client, right as this transaction was closing

Patrick Patterson: 32:49

Of course.

Lonn Shulkin: 32:50

and.

Patrick Patterson: 32:50

Right.

Lonn Shulkin: 32:51

Yeah, always. but this time, like, we acquired their big client literally as we were losing a big client to some global decision that happened. And I think that moment would've been one of those if we didn't make that acquisition

Patrick Patterson: 33:09

Well.

Lonn Shulkin: 33:10

we actually then took their client and blew it up. it just became awesome in a good way. it just, we were able to go in, company we acquired did some stuff. We did a lot more. if we didn't make that acquisition, I think that would've been a pivotal moment of getting a lot smaller. not that you need to be big or small, but you get used to a certain scale and can do a certain amount of things, it gets really hard to get smaller. you have dreams of getting back there and you need the infrastructure to do that. You start to contemplate, okay, am I gonna keep that extra HR person? Am I gonna keep that, extra finance person? Those are

Myles Biggs: 33:43

Yeah.

Lonn Shulkin: 33:43

non-billable, but you'll need if you land that next client. So that acquisition was critical for us. lots of learning lessons from it, but also critical. Then, the second one was, we were starting to find that the Canadian market, which was where 90% of our focus was, we had some extension clients at the time. So we worked with Pepsi, Canada and we got extended into Pepsi, us we started building our Pepsi US relationship, but we didn't have any direct US clients that we had, you know, started from our own and we were looking at the Canadian market and kept fi finding that it was the same. We were very enterprise focused and there's just not that many opportunities. And there's lots of agencies and it was just very saturated. And I remember very clearly talking to a friend slash consultant that we worked with a little bit and saying, should we get like an amazing biz dev person Canada who can just be another leader and help us grow? should we take this shot with a former coworker when I lived in New York, Pete, who's one of our partners, and expand into the US and like take this bigger salary on and we have to start a company because of us and Canadian laws and like a lot, lot more complicated than just hiring a guy who could work or not. And I remember the consultants so clearly saying to me, very few Canadian agencies have success succeeded going over the border. Like, why do you think you're going to, and it came down to the same thing that I've already talked about, which is I knew that that person was the right person. Like I had worked with him. He's one of the handful of people I stayed in touch with 20 years. I knew he was not a traditional sales guy by any means, but a relationship guy who would be able to bring many more relationships. so Pete came on board, as a partner. the US has doubled our business. it's about 60% of our revenue now since that move. without that move, we would still be in a much more flat lined. Position trying to go after the same Canadian clients. it's interesting because I always joke that I'm sort of an American in Canada, and I've said that to you guys, right? I'm NFL fan and I'm, anyways, all the, all the stereotypes I guess. I never knew that the concept of having someone on soil, like it's a huge lesson. having Pete in New York would make such a psychological difference.'cause we, we had the right, we had Pepsi, we had p and g, we had lots of clients, we had the right to talk to, a lot of big global clients. But having someone there has made a huge difference. That for me was our pivotal time of growth and taking what we do to the next level.

Myles Biggs: 36:47

We're in the middle of another pivotal moment, for both companies right now. Joining forces. what brought you to this idea of joining forces with Level Lonn? what made this go from an idea to reality?

Lonn Shulkin: 37:00

So many years ago, we brought on, I saw him as a consultant, but he's ultimately, an m and a advisor. And we brought him on not to sell the business, but to look at our business, our p and l help us, give us advice on what are the things we should be thinking about and doing if we eventually want to sell this business. And I'm talking, I think it was 12 years ago, once you start looking at houses, you probably end up buying a house.

Patrick Patterson: 37:32

Yeah.

Lonn Shulkin: 37:33

'cause that's his job, right? I mean, ultimately he's gonna start bringing different people. And over the 12 years he did, he would say, Hey, I talked to this person at wherever all the big agencies you can name, and we should have a quick chat. many of the years we would have a quick chat and, get other calls. we each get a thousand emails a week of like, Hey, we're this, and we're trying to do this and talk to us. and so there was not a single moment that we're like, we're selling, we're joining another agency. We're merging. Like there was no moment. There was, I think a lot of shopping around, from the outside actually to us A year ago or so, I guess a year and a half ago now, probably. we got an opportunity to meet Patrick and I had been talking to someone else as well, so I was double dating. Sorry.

Patrick Patterson: 38:23

It's all good.

Lonn Shulkin: 38:24

I keep coming back to the same topic. There was something in the relationship between Patrick and I was different and special that just kept Level in my head and kept Patrick in my head. it took us another year or so before we had the infamous in New Jersey and we hadn't ever met in person actually. And Pete in New York came with me. And the other Patrick came with this Patrick, and we came away from that saying I love these guys. They're awesome. besides, and I can get into all the business reasons, but just that personal which in all honesty, when you talk to the big agencies or the big private equities you don't get a lot of relationship stuff, for me, I think I'm young still, and if we were gonna do this, I wanted to be somewhere that so selfishly me could make an impact, but somewhere that I actually believe our people would. that was critical for us. we weren't ever entertaining those big five agencies because I think we would be sucked into an abyss and there would be growth opportunities for some. ego wise, it would've been awesome. you sell to the big agency. but we had passed that need our main motivation was, we have this opportunity with great people where our people could make a real impact. Partially even just because of size, you know, partially'cause the relationship that we had, but partially gonna be able to make a bigger impact in a 250 person organization than in a 10,000 person organization. You're able to grow and see things better. that's the main driver. the business, part of why I was and still am so excited is that the words Patrick said about where he believed the business needs to go we're exactly the words we feel about agencies. it's not about we should take BAM or Level or Bain Level or was a, a core belief that agencies need to be focused on engaging customers across the entire customer journey. we have this opportunity, especially with AI to do that in a smart, efficient way to drive. business impact, for our clients. that's what's gonna keep us around, right? It's, it's still get shit done for them, but also like make the money. And if we don't make the money, we're just not gonna be around. Like that's, you have to prove that you're helping sell whatever they're selling. we believe, engaging and bringing value to customers and not just advertising to customers. Like we actually need to understand what a customer is going through B2B, B2C, it doesn't matter. Like what are the challenges we can solve for them and deliver value against those challenges. And if we can't do that, we're just not gonna have value for the customer in the Lonng term.

Patrick Patterson: 41:37

in a hundred percent. Advertising is not advertising if it brings value to me, right? It doesn't feel like advertising. If it's valuable, if it's truly bringing value to me, it's something I want to see. It's something I want watch. It's something I want to interact with. I think there's just, a tremendous opportunity right now. we've never had, it's so exciting, right? Where we can be like we, we can use the data that we have truly bring something valuable. To the person viewing that, that piece on the other side of the screen or on the TV or whatever it might be. I remember being on the client side 20 years ago when you could just put up a crappy landing page run a Google ads campaign and leads would rain from the ceilings at that moment, I used to say things like, Hey, what are we trying to do for the customer? Like what value can we bring them? this is right before jab, jab, jab, right hook with Gary V how can we give them something? How can we prove that? at that point you had three personas and it was so expensive to advertise for those three personas. You could only create two of the campaigns that you wanted. now we can create a million campaigns and make it truly valuable. It's such a cool time to be in advertising. if you actually enjoy that part of it,

Lonn Shulkin: 42:51

I remember beyond interactive, I'm in New York, I'm 22. I was told to read Permission Marketing by Seth Godin,

Patrick Patterson: 43:00

Oh, great.

Lonn Shulkin: 43:00

I ended up having the opportunity to start what we called dialogue management, which was CRM. it was all about delivering value to customers. how do we get personal with customers? What's incredibly exciting is that we can do it so efficiently now with all the tools. for the last five years we've had great tools, Whether it's Salesforce or Eloqua, all the different CRM tools, and they've all dropped in some sort of AI because everyone needs to right now. But I don't even think AI has brushed the surface on what we can do to deliver value to the end customer. People ask me all the time, isn't it creepy? is my Alexa listening to me? and then I see an ad on my phone. But the opportunity is to give people less noise, That I don't, people aren't advertising opposed, they are opposed to seeing stuff that they don't wanna see. And how do we actually deliver and understand that value and get better at that? And AI is just gonna take us to a whole new level so that we get people really, really precise information on at the time the place, which is marketing 1 0 1, that they actually want to see that and need, they actually need that. actually always, as an aside at Bam, had this before we had, this word curiosity that we, we came up with, which was being really curious and caring for people deeply. Including consumers. If we cared for them deeply, we could build awesome journeys and understand where we could deliver value. But before that, it grew out of this concept of connecting people with what they love. And we always talked about connecting people with a, a place like bam, a place they could work that they love our customers with a, a company that they love. So that was like make their life easier and they would love us relationships, but how do we connect consumers with stuff they love? And I talk consumers'cause we've done a bit more consumer, but it, when, when we worked a ton with 3M on B, two B products, it was the same B2B. Someone sitting in a la a food testing lab, they need a product that works really well. And actually always thought that we have a bigger purpose.'cause everyone's like, oh, what we do is not that important. But we actually bring products and services to solve challenges in their life. dish soap cleans your dishes, right? baby formula feeds a hungry baby we are trying to connect those consumers at the right time with a product that works for them. If the product doesn't work, no one's gonna buy it.

Patrick Patterson: 45:36

Yep. I'm gonna tell this story. if the person who I'm talking about is listening to this podcast, I apologize. I was at a conference and, they had us break out into tables, it was a marketing conference. It was a bunch of marketing leaders, well-known marketers that have written books, And I have no idea why I was invited into the room. I had no business being there, but it was really cool. so we're sitting around at a table of like seven, and there's some people sitting around this table that I respect and that I know and, and our thought leaders and the question that was posed to all the tables was what is your best marketing hack? I actually have a LinkedIn post about this, I listened to seven of the top marketers in the country literally go around and tell, talk about how they're tricking consumers into doing things. Literally. And this was a very eyeopening moment for me. And you know, like, hey, if you do this, you can, you know, and it's just like, and I was like, it got to me and I, and you know, and I was like, I literally was like, guys, I don't think we should be doing any of that. they all rolled their eyes at me. then I went to the next person and they talked about black hat SEO's crap that they were doing. and people were feverishly taking notes as well. And I was just like, man, that is the. That is the wrong type of advertising. there are companies out there that want to hire those types of organizations, right? that want the, Hey, how do I, you know, download the data from China that gives me X, Y, or Z without permission to do X, y, or Z. And it's just like, no, those are the opposite of our clients and the opposite of the marketing I want to be in the world. Because I think all of that marketing a really, really bad name. Right? and it's, it's been an interesting, I think for Level, and I think I, I think one, you and I have actually talked about this a lot. Like, I think for Level it's, it's finding the balance between testing those things, Because some of those hacks, quote unquote, are actually really good. Practice around targeting and innovation and all of those things, but then coupled with permission, coupled with bringing value, coupled with empathy, curiosity, all of those things, like that's true. 2026 advertising, 2025 advertising, whatever it is. I don't know when this podcast is coming out, but, it's gonna come out somewhere around there. So, so I think it's, I think it's super important. I think you and I definitely at the, at the weird Sopranos lunch that we had, in, in, in New Jersey, which is awesome. I love that place. I want to go back. that's when we talked a little bit about that and I'm super passionate about it you talk about. numbers and discount, cash flow models, and there's all these things that you do to value a business. the true value of a business is are we going to work together well afterwards? do we share values? do we think that the combination of these two things is better than either one of us by ourselves it's a lot more relationship driven. And that's kind of been a lesson that I've learned now doing our third acquisition. a lot more relationship driven than I thought it was gonna be. and that has proven to be the right choice, I think at least so far.

Lonn Shulkin: 49:01

I think one of our key KPIs in both our companies is keeping, two key KPIs. How do we keep clients? How do we keep employees, how do we actually make both of those groups happy? that's all relationship. it doesn't manifest in, how do we hold onto them and lock them what's interesting, going back to that book 12 about people for a second, is that compensation is not part of the 12.

Patrick Patterson: 49:28

I was always had this thought. It was like, you know, people enough that compensation is not a conversation that comes up every day. Right.

Lonn Shulkin: 49:38

so when,

Patrick Patterson: 49:38

Like

Lonn Shulkin: 49:39

take money away

Patrick Patterson: 49:40

I.

Lonn Shulkin: 49:41

from both the client relationship and the employee relationship, it forces us to say, what actually motivates the client to stay? And what actually motivates the employee to say and that, and then we start getting to their journey. what's our client's journey with us and what's our employee's journey with us how are we gonna deliver value to both? they're not gonna stick around. they're not gonna buy our product. Right. And it's the same thing that we try and apply to our and clients and to the consumer, is just how, how are we actually gonna make an impact in their life? that's what's gonna keep them.

Patrick Patterson: 50:16

A hundred percent. So, we have that lunch, we talk for, what felt like seven years, which was, seven more months. Any good deal dies three times before it happens as well. And we, have had some of those moments, where we weren't sure whether it was gonna happen both trying to make sure that it did, so it finally happens. you probably have some expectations of that day, and you probably had some expectations on what it was gonna be like after that. can you walk us through how that day felt and what you were hoping for, and in the aftermath or the next weeks were those expectations met? what have been your learnings from that?

Lonn Shulkin: 50:55

I've told you several times, getting to that day is probably the hardest thing I've professionally done. and I don't mean that that 15 or 16 years of getting to that day, I mean the six months of trying to manage a business and also trying to a tremendous amount of information to other parties and lawyers I was. Probably in a weirder situation than other people because I was, in a hotel room in Pittsburgh, on the final day. there's an incredible sense of, of accomplishment and fulfillment though of a, I got to the end of this six month race, that's how you feel, but exhausted. I think people do not understand what goes into m and a and I didn't. it is a difficult job in its own, including running your own job but what a great opportunity to be with you guys for the next. Two days. the timing could not have been more perfect because I certainly did not have those expectations. That would be crazy to think that we would hit the exact day because you keep getting moved by a day or two because of lawyers and a bunch of different stuff that happens. And then we dropped into two days of literally wall to wall planning for Level for 2026 and I'm on no sleep. we went back to my roots of what I just talked about with BAM and, and Rito, which is that of a sudden I'm sitting there with six other or seven other people and not only are we doing the technical planning part of things, but leadership development Team building exercises and going back to building those relationships. So my first two days with Level is going back to the roots of what I say was my greatest reason for success. So like, check for me right there. at that point, we haven't yet talked to employees and I haven't hugged my wife and my kids those things will come when I get home in a few days. already seeing so many opportunities for people and clients. it's unbelievable the amount that we both wanna take from each other in a good way those were my expectations going in, and so far they are being fulfilled. We have people who are able to do something they wanted to do that they weren't able to do before. We have opportunities with clients where they might have done one thing with us, but we can bring them more value, and that's literally happening within weeks of us being together. And so that's just, I think at the tip of the iceberg as far as what the opportunity is and fulfilling what my expectation was, which, you know, as I said, was giving an opportunity for our people to grow. Giving an opportunity to do more for clients.

Patrick Patterson: 54:00

I remember the day that we sold, and there was no parade, I wasn't in a hotel room. there was no parade. I remember waking up the next day and being like, oh, yeah, it's another day. now with a lot more. Support and surrounded by some of the smartest people I've gotten to work with in my career that are, helping me get better. Right. there's no reason to try to do it all by yourself if you can drop that ego how do I bring in people that are way better than me? we've done that recently with Howard Diamond as our, our, as our Chief Revenue officer. you know, very excited that I get to work with you, Pete, and the rest of the team at bam. there is a lot of opportunity. It's also, not gonna be all rainbows and sunshine, right? Like it there, just like running a business prior to this, there's gonna be ups downs, there's going to be, Frisbees from nowhere as, as a member of our team likes to say. And, you know. you know, I'm, I'm sure there's gonna be a few, bam folks that are listening to this, this podcast, if you've made it this Lonng. Thank you. But, what is your, your advice to them going forward? What are you telling your team? I think we've all heard what an empathetic, passionate, caring person you are, how does that show up in this moment?

Lonn Shulkin: 55:22

So first I'll validate that there is no parade, especially in a hotel room.

Patrick Patterson: 55:27

Yeah.

Lonn Shulkin: 55:27

I think we need, to make everyone feel safe. The human brain is amazing but when there is change, we go to fight or flight mode we're trying to show people, that everything's good and you're safe a member of your team said. The best line and we've repeated it to our team, this is happening so we can strip things away and cut it apart and like scale something down and, and cut people and services. This is happening'cause we both want to grow. We're incredibly motivated to grow and for you as people to grow. week one they believe you week two they start to see different things and worry goes up and we have to say it again. ultimately what we need to continue doing, and I think we've been doing is, keeping those one-to-one relationships going and, and asur reassuring and assuring people that have a great opportunity here. And those Frisbees, they came when we were with j Bam. Change in business is inevitable. We've lost clients. We've had people quit, we've had problems. We've, you know, every business has them. And so a different set of Frisbees, and actually we have more resources to deal with'em. We have more hands to catch'em. And they should actually feel more secure, not less secure than a month ago. we have, values, so our decision making is consistent and we just have more resources now and that makes everyone safer. And, and they're great people. And I think they're gonna have a place in a, in a growing high performing organization if they're a great high performing person. And that doesn't mean everyone's gonna stay here and wanna stay here because, and they wouldn't have before. And so that's, you know, not a, you know, people move, people change and, so do companies. I'll continue to say what I've been saying, which is, you're safe and we're gonna take care of you. And we care a ton. Both sides care a ton for the people, and make sure that everyone, has a great outcome.

Patrick Patterson: 57:43

I get the question a lot. people are scared, people have concerns. what can you do? you have to say the same thing over and over again about 8, 9, 10 times. important to that, is how you show up every single day and how they see you react to situations, right? Like if I'm like, Hey, I'm gonna be empathetic leader, and then the next 10 interactions you have with me, I'm not empathetic, then you're like, I'm not gonna trust the things that this person says or, or whatever it might be, right? So I think showing up every day being the people that, a, we aspire to be, but also we say we are, being humble, being all of those things you talked about at the beginning of the podcast. puts people at ease. three months from now they're like, every interaction I've had with Pat or Myles or Lonn, they've, proven to me that when something happens, this is how they're going to react to it. And so I know that I'm safe because this is how they've reacted to situations. And that's hard. That's putting in the work, that's going to the gym every day. and ensuring holding yourself to a high standard and hitting that high standard every single day. You're never gonna be perfect. you're not gonna react perfectly in every situation, but that's the thing where the trust builds over time. And that's the hard work you're going through and we're all going through right now to, showcase that we're worthy of that trust. and it takes time.

Lonn Shulkin: 59:07

To those first days, right? we have a lot to do. there's a ton to do to integrate companies and systems and all the technical stuff. we keep talking internally about making sure to catch ourselves in those first 90 days, right? we have to remember what those key elements are. How are we gonna keep people happy? How are we gonna keep clients happy even though we have to do spreadsheets and forecasts and systems and all of these other technical things. success isn't gonna come from that as much as it's gonna come from us continuing to catch ourselves like I had to in my first moments. we have to keep doing that so we're working hard to do that, but it's a challenge, like everything, so we gotta just keep on that.

Patrick Patterson: 59:54

A hundred.

Myles Biggs: 59:55

so we talk about challenges and the last back and forth between two was very internal facing, which is important. we've alluded to this and I'd like to go a little bit deeper. There's obvious alignment between how Level thinks about business and how BAM thinks about business. And that's one of the reasons why the deal happened. So for customers who we're talking about really caring about them and caring about their business, what are the specific things they can expect? now that the two organizations have come together, what does the future look like for our clients? And what growth opportunities will they see as a result of this?

Patrick Patterson: 1:00:26

Yeah,

Myles Biggs: 1:00:27

you could both answer it,

Patrick Patterson: 1:00:28

maybe I start and then you fill in the second part of it. at Level, we have always been focused on, you know, kind of end-to-end customer journey marketing an eye towards performance. Right? and one of the things over the past three to four years, you know, we've always kind of pushed the importance of first party data in CRM. but when you, if you've been paying attention to technology over the past three years, that data, that information, that access, we require it to even work with us at Level. that information. Enables us to do a lot of the advanced value driving advertising that we've been talking about on this podcast. we had a thesis, a year ago, year and a half ago, like, if we're really going to do this the right way, need to have a service that, that is way more build out than we, than we have today. That really dives into what it means to do that relationship and personalization advertising, specifically within A CRM. So, we set out to find, how do we find a partner that can really accelerate what we're doing and, and kind of, you know, a, share our values, but b really, really help our customers their data. At a, at a different level. And then the second part of that is, as we've seen consumers evolve, whether it's B2C or B2B, it doesn't matter, the expectation of what advertising in has gone way up. And so the days of having a crappy ad that shows and going to a crappy landing page, like literally, you don't even see those as you're browsing the web anymore, so the ability to have creative that stops the scroll Is, is truly world class, also was a very, very important, evolution for us. So those were two things we were looking for. And when I remember, talking to law the first time and looking at the organization, it's exactly the company that had built those things. it was those things with technology and how that can enable this whole process as well. And that is rare, right? To have this strategy, creativity, and technology combination. we looked at a bunch of other agencies and they had two of the three. to truly, have all three, I thought was a great unlock for our existing clients. And so it was, that was the initial kind of thought of how we can do this and Lonn, how has that played out and what did you see as you were going through it?

Lonn Shulkin: 1:03:16

I think there's all of that and an additional piece of clients to get results. They need a more hands-on approach with an ability to pull multiple levers. And for both of us joining together gives us many more levers we can pull. And we're still trying to stay nimble and small enough that we can actually service them at a very, very high level.'cause that's not what they're getting from the holding companies. That's not what they're getting from the big agencies.

Patrick Patterson: 1:03:55

right.

Lonn Shulkin: 1:03:55

They're getting some mass and maybe some savings but they're not getting an ability to actually impact their business. not every client we work with are these giant behemoth businesses where you can't get your arms around them. Some of them, need applications for schools, Or they need signups for a loyalty program. And we have the ability to drive actual results for them. joining gives us more ability to do that. And I think that's ultimately what's great for clients. And I will add. like our employees have worries of change, we're doing the same thing with our clients, assuring them that this just brings them more opportunities, more resources. we've tried to do as a good of a job as we can with keeping the mass of our employees who work on clients out of anything to do with our integration because we want'em to focus on our clients. And I think that's really important yes, we're gonna bring them new opportunities, new capabilities, but not introduce all of this process and, and things that are gonna slow down what they need from a, from, from us as a client. So it's the mix of all of that and being, aware of that customer journey with us that I think is gonna really benefit them.

Patrick Patterson: 1:05:20

And I think we just had recently our first joint, conversation like that where, the BAM team's coming in and talking about all the amazing stuff that you guys are doing. some Level folks coming in and talking about, generative, SEO and paid search and paid social and programmatic and, those types of things. And it's really kind of a, comprehensive and complete solution. both of our organizations offered all of those services before. but now when you look across the board, we've leveled up all of those services to be nine and 10 outta 10. maybe before it was a four outta 10 or a five outta 10'cause it wasn't our focus. So the ability to offer truly world class, services, in all of those different, spots aLonng the customer journey, is, is super exciting. And it goes back to that you and I want to do, which is add value to the person that's seeing the ad. Right. and cut the noise, cut out the marketing hacks, and just do great advertising, for our clients. I am so excited I get to work with you every single day and going forward, what's, one thing a lot of people don't know about you? What is one fact as we get to know you and we're all part of the team here together. what's something most listeners wouldn't know about you, that you'd like to share?

Lonn Shulkin: 1:06:35

I am a 48-year-old who's trying to complete the Lonng trail in Vermont with only two trips every year, approximately, sometimes less. it's really hard I love being out there and having that challenge and, and trying to piece it together.'cause I don't have, you know, 30 days to go out there and do it in one part. that's probably the, one thing a lot of people don't know about me.

Patrick Patterson: 1:06:59

how many miles do you have left?

Lonn Shulkin: 1:07:01

I'm Canadian, I talk in kilometers, but, we've got about 90 K to go. it's about four 50, so we should finish in 2026 hopefully, and cross that, finish line. And then looking for the next one.

Patrick Patterson: 1:07:16

It's amazing. this has been great, man. I appreciate it. Thank you. Myles. I'll let you wrap us up.

Myles Biggs: 1:07:22

if you liked what you heard today, please hit that subscribe button wherever you're listening to a podcast so you can hear more conversations like this one. also be sure to go and check out the Level Agency Linked In Page, because that's where you'll see content about the integration journey between BAM and Level and how we're continuing to level up Until next time, we'll talk to you later.