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Leslie Silverman is the co-founder of Hive 180, a strategic marketing agency based in Colorado that serves expert service businesses including architects, contractors, attorneys, medical professionals, spas, and high-end consultants. She started her career in print media at Condé Nast and Hearst in New York City before eventually co-founding Hive 180 almost by accident.
In this episode, Leslie and Jason dig into what it actually takes to stop being a generalist, why individuality is your most durable competitive advantage in the age of AI, and how she rebuilt her agency model around project-based strategic work instead of retainers.
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E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.
Key Takeaways:
- The fastest path to burnout is saying yes to everyone. Leslie learned this firsthand after years of taking on clients across every industry and every type of work. The shift that changed everything was auditing her client list for profitability and genuine fit, then deliberately walking away from the ones that didn't qualify. Saying no to the wrong clients is what created space for the right ones.
- Your individuality is a competitive advantage AI cannot replicate. Leslie argues that the age of AI makes differentiation more urgent, not less. Generic capability is becoming a commodity. What cannot be commoditized is a specific point of view, a distinct voice, and a narrowly defined niche. She calls this being a "category of one" — the same concept behind her own podcast — and it applies to both her agency and the clients she serves.
- Project-based strategic engagements beat retainers for specialist agencies. Leslie moved away from hourly and retainer models toward defined strategic projects. This shift changed how clients perceive the value of the work, reduced scope creep, and made it easier to price based on outcome rather than time. It also forced clearer scoping conversations upfront, which improved project quality overall.
- AI needs your voice before it can sound like you. Leslie uses AI as a productivity tool but insists on feeding it custom voice guidelines, brand rules, and tone examples before trusting any output. She treats AI as a capable junior writer that needs significant direction, not a replacement for human judgment and creative instinct. The agencies that benefit most from AI are the ones that already know what makes them distinct.
Leslie also shares how she designed Hive 180 around the life she wanted rather than letting client demands dictate her schedule, and why doing deep discovery before any engagement decision has become non-negotiable for her team.
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