Zac Gregg with Jason Barnard on Fastlane Founders And Legacy. Signal Over Noise

Zac Gregg talks with Jason Barnard about signal over noise. Signal Over Noise! Zac Gregg—Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Vital Design—Reveals How to Cut Through Industry Confusion and Find Your True Market Focus Zac Gregg, co-founder and managing partner of Vital Design (one of New England's top digital marketing agencies), shares the strategic pivot that broke his company through the dreaded $1 million ceiling. Drawing from his 20+ years of leadership experience taking multiple companies public, Zac reveals how to identify genuine market signals hidden within industry noise and build unstoppable growth momentum. Get ready for a deep dive on: Breaking the $1M ceiling: How specializing in digital marketing instead of traditional branding transformed a project-based business into a $25M recurring revenue machine The signal vs. noise framework: Why clients say they want rebrands and websites but really need traffic, leads, and revenue—and how to hear what they're actually asking for Industry specialization secrets: The bold Cardinal agency case study that threw away 19 industries to dominate one—and why the algorithms reward laser focus The cobbler's children principle: How Vital invests $50K monthly in their own marketing to become the biggest sandbox for client learnings AI-era positioning strategy: Why being a generalist is "a very bad place to be" and how to become the expert content that powers LLM models The 80/20 specialization rule: How Vital focuses 80% on higher education while strategically maintaining 20% in B2B manufacturing and e-commerce Niche-down decision framework: The one, three, and five-year goal system for strategic focus without abandoning profitable existing clients This episode delivers battle-tested strategies for agency owners, service providers, and entrepreneurs ready to break through revenue plateaus by finding their signal in the market noise. #SignalOverNoise #DigitalMarketingAgency #BusinessGrowth #MarketingStrategy #IndustrySpecialization #FastlaneFounders #ZacGregg #VitalDesign #AgencyGrowth #BusinessScaling #MarketingFocus #RevenueGrowth #EntrepreneurStrategy #BusinessPivot #MarketingAgency #BusinessBreakthrough #NicheMarketing #AgencyLife #BusinessLeadership #MarketingExpert What you’ll learn from Zac Gregg This episode was recorded live on video September 16th 2025 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1X1EHRhFLw Links to pieces of content relevant to this topic:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-368-scaling-digital-marketing-for-specialized/id1193085635?i=1000684866511https://open.spotify.com/episode/7G0gdfm3qbgofWxhXzaS6tZac Gregg Transcript from Zac Gregg with Jason Barnard on Fastlane Founders And Legacy. Signal Over Noise [00:00:00] Zac Gregg: We spend about $25,000 a month on paid media, which for a small service business, a hundred and plus people these days. We're about a $25 million company. A hundred and some odd employees. We had to spend about 25,000 a month in paid. We are doing about $15,000 a month in what we would consider SEO or our AI search optimization, as well as content marketing. And then we spend about $10,000 a month on our just projects and updates, which we consider like supporting HR, supporting our sales team, those types of things. So we put our money where our mouths is, we try to learn the lessons our clients need to learn before they learn them. And that was a big part of what came next as well is we gotta do this for ourselves, guys. So we ask ourselves tougher questions than our clients do all the time.  [00:00:58] Narrator: Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard. Each week, Jason sits down with successful entrepreneurs, CEOs, and executives, and get them to share how they mastered the delicate balance between rapid growth and enduring success in the business world. How can we quickly build a profitable business that stands the test of time and becomes our legacy?