Future of Agencies

Yesterday I got back from a *quick trip* to Phuket for the Phuket AI Marketing Summit 3-5 Apr '26 (Note: There is really no such thing as a quick trip from Denver to Phuket; nearly 30 hours of travel both ways, but it was totally worth it.) The conference was fantastic, the people were wonderful, and the setting was beautiful. I got to hang out with Jes Scholz, Alan CladX, Tamara Dinneen, Navneet Kaushal, Metehan Yeşilyurt, Ashish Dasharathi, Rishi Lakhani and so many more amazing people. I definitely recommend that you keep this one on your radar for next year; it was such a special experience! Thanks so much for everything Ashish Dasharathi!

Just wrapped up at the Phuket AI Marketing Summit 3-5 Apr '26. People were heads down maxing out their Claude tokens, vibe coding their dreams whilst learning. Everyone was friendly, curious, and open - exactly what a conference should be. It galvanised something I already believed: building a brand with real traffic across multiple platforms is the way to go for AI Search. Thanks to Ashish Dasharathi and team for putting it together.

I've recently come back from Phuket AI Marketing Summit 3-5 Apr '26, organised by Ashish Dasharathi. There are few things I can imagine being better than spending time at a stunning five-star resort in Phuket alongside 100+ experts in Tech, AI and SEO - discussing the future of search, marketing, and branding. I had the privilege of speaking on a panel alongside Cindy Krum and Georgia Tan, brilliantly moderated by SEO legend Navneet Kaushal. The willingness to sacrifice, the resilience to endure, and the ability to rise after failure are what separate good business owners from great ones.

Honored to be invited as a speaker at the Entrepreneur Future Summit. It was a privilege to share practical insights on GenAI best practices for rapid distribution and Adobe Firefly agentic flows with a highly driven group of entrepreneurs and GTM teams. I have learned plenty from the success of founding NK Bigstar as North East India's first OTT platform, as well as the eventual failure of my crypto app. Through both experiences, the biggest takeaway remains clear. Building has become easier, but distribution is king. Thanks to Ashish Dasharathi for putting together a fantastic summit with a stacked speaker lineup and an incredibly engaged audience. Looking forward to more.

I spoke at Entrepreneur Future Summit last week. In my talk, I picked Shopify as a case study for how remote work actually gets built - not adopted. Here's the one thing employers miss: Shopify went remote because of a problem, not a vision. The problem was not covid! Night shift customer support reps were burning out. Attrition was rising. So they let people work from home in off-hours. Then they moved hiring to Kingston, Ontario. Then Galway, Ireland. 300+ support reps across all of Ireland. Fully remote. Thriving. What made it work? ↳ Trust as the operating system, not a value on a slide ↳ Home office setups taken seriously (they video-call new hires' home offices before Day 1) ↳ Team-level self-regulation over individual surveillance ↳ Over-communication as a leadership discipline, not a meeting And the stat that shuts down every "remote doesn't work" argument: 8,400 employees. Remote-first. $45.5B in GMV in Q3 2024 alone. Remote didn't slow Shopify down. It scaled with them. The question isn't whether remote works. It's whether you've built the infrastructure for it to.

Starbucks killed an AI system across 11,000 stores in 9 months. The same company runs a different AI that's been thriving for years. That contrast was the heart of my talk at Entrepreneur Future Summit 2026. The lesson isn't "AI is overhyped." And it isn't "AI changes everything." It's where AI sits in your organization matters more than which AI you use. Top-down "company brain" projects keep failing, not because the technology is bad, but because it's pointed at the wrong problem. The real wins are quieter. The hundreds of small decisions your field reps, planners, and procurement managers make every week. Make those slightly better, at the exact moment they're made, and it compounds into a fundamentally different business. But the talk was only half of the day. Summits like this are rare - a room where you get to learn from everyone in it. The speakers sharing what's actually working. The audience asking sharp questions. Even the service providers running the event. Everyone's hustling. Everyone's learning. The energy is contagious. I came to speak. I left having learned just as much.

60% of AI solutions don't survive past MVP; not because the model fails, but because enterprise needs more than a good looking model. CMOs know the product alone can't close the gap; it's the infrastructure around it that does. Great sharing Merkle MENA's AI Infrastructure Adaption roadmap at the Entrepreneur Future Summit. Thanks for inviting me, Ashish 🙏

I went back to school last week. No textbooks. No exams. Just 48 hours in Phuket with 20+ of the sharpest minds in AI and marketing. Self-care is not always about the spa or the gym. Sometimes spending on learning something new is the best thing you can do for yourself. Massive thanks to Ashish Dasharathi for organizing something offbeat and refreshing that adds a broader perspective on AI and marketing.

What an experience at Phuket AI Marketing Summit 3-5 Apr '26. Three days in a room full of operators who are actually building. Not just talking about AI. Learned a huge amount, met incredible people, and left with a notebook full of systems to ship. The day before the conference, we built a #LeadRevival system from scratch - then ran a live workshop on it on day one.

What an incredible event this was! Being part of the Phuket AI Marketing Summit 3-5 Apr '26 was genuinely one of the most memorable experiences of the year so far. The quality of sessions, the speakers and the people in the room all reflected how much care went into making this happen. Events like this don't just happen - they are built by people who truly care about the community they are creating. Looking forward to what comes next and hope to be back for the next edition!