A few weeks ago, MP Consulting’s founder and CEO, Maddie Poteat, joined Charles Cormier on the Founder Wisdom Podcast for a conversation about building an agency from scratch, scaling it without losing your sanity, and figuring out exactly who you’re built to serve. If you missed it, you can watch the full episode here – but we wanted to pull out the moments that felt most worth sharing with the small business owners we work with every day.

Key Takeaways & Quick Summary

• The Interview: MP Consulting Founder & CEO Maddie Poteat joined host Charles Cormier on the Founder Wisdom Podcast to discuss agency growth, systems, and client strategy.
• Operations Before Scale: Documenting processes and creating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) early is critical for seamless hiring and delegation.
• Smart Growth Strategy: MP Consulting prioritizes lean internal teams supported by channel-specific specialists and automation, avoiding unnecessary headcount expansion.
• Ideal Client Profile: MP Consulting delivers the highest ROI for established small businesses (5 to 50 employees) in industries like optometry, real estate, trade services, and hospitality.
• Social Media as an Entry Point: Social media management drives immediate reach and brand consistency, serving as the foundation for broader marketing strategies like SEO.

From Early Entrepreneurship to Building a Full-Service Marketing Agency

The Vending Machine Roots of MP Consulting

Maddie’s entrepreneurial instincts didn’t start with MP Consulting. Long before Nashville, she grew up helping run her parents’ small businesses in Nebraska – restocking vending machines and managing the inventory for a handful of penny-smashing machines tucked into local tourist stops. It sounds like a small thing, but as she put it on the podcast, it “paid probably half of my college tuition.”

That early exposure to entrepreneurship – watching her parents build multiple small ventures rather than one big one – shaped how she thinks about business today. It also explains why MP Consulting has never chased a single “big win” strategy, and instead focuses on building steady, dependable value for the clients in front of us.

Transitioning from Corporate Marketing to Agency Founder

One of the more honest moments in the episode is when Maddie admits that starting MP Consulting “was never my intention.” After five and a half years in a corporate marketing role at a programmatic ads company, she picked up a few freelance clients on the side – and only realized she had the beginnings of a real business once she had three or four of them. From there, the choice was simple: keep freelancing quietly, or build it into something bigger.

She’s candid that the decision was easier because of the support system behind her, including a spouse with steady income that removed some of the risk. It’s a refreshingly honest take on entrepreneurship that skips the mythology – sometimes the leap is less about fearlessness and more about having the right foundation to take it.

Agency Operations: Implementing SOPs and Systems Before Scaling

If there’s one piece of advice Maddie repeats most often – to her own team and, on this episode, to other founders – it’s this: document everything before you think you need to.

“If you’re just starting out and it’s just yourself, make sure you’re documenting everything that you’re doing so that when you do get to a place to bring in additional people, you have that stuff already laid out and you guys can just run together.”

It’s advice born from experience. Early on, she had all of MP Consulting’s processes in her head – which worked fine until the moment she hired her first team member and had nothing concrete to hand them. Now, SOPs, a CRM, and project management tools aren’t a “someday” project for MP Consulting clients or our own team – they’re the backbone that lets the agency serve businesses across the country without things quietly falling through the cracks.

Scaling a Marketing Agency Lean: Headcount vs. Specialist Networks

Maddie also spoke candidly about how her thinking on team size has changed. MP Consulting once had a much larger internal headcount; today, the focus is on a lean core team – marketing coordinators and managers – supported by specialists and freelancers who are true experts in their channel, plus the smart use of automation and AI to avoid scaling headcount for its own sake. As she described it, the goal now is “scaling without additional headcount” by up-leveling the team already in place rather than simply adding more people.

For a marketing agency, that’s not just an internal operations note – it’s a philosophy that shapes how we build out services for clients, too: solve the actual problem efficiently, rather than defaulting to “throw more hours at it.”

Target Audience Strategy: Defining the Ideal Small Business Client

Servicing Core Industries: Optometry, Real Estate, Construction, & Local Business

Some of the most useful material in the conversation was Maddie’s breakdown of MP Consulting’s ideal client – something the team revisited formally about six months ago when they brought on their first dedicated salesperson. Rather than chasing every lead, MP Consulting has found its sweet spot with businesses in the 5 to 50 employee range: established enough to invest seriously in marketing, but not so large that the relationship becomes transactional. Clients span optometry clinics, dental offices, real estate agents, restaurants, and home building, renovation, and interior design businesses – with plenty of room for good-fit businesses outside those categories too.

But the more interesting filter wasn’t size or industry – it was mindset. Maddie described looking for clients who already place value on marketing rather than needing to be convinced of it, and who are as passionate about running their business well as they are about the craft that got them into it in the first place – the restaurant owner who loves the business of running a restaurant, not just the cooking. That combination of business savvy and genuine passion, she noted, is what makes for the kind of true partnership MP Consulting aims to build with every client, rather than a vendor relationship where work just gets “dumped on our plate.”

Small Business Social Media Management as a Growth Engine

Asked what MP Consulting is best known for, Maddie didn’t hesitate: social media management makes up the majority of the agency’s work, even though the team offers a full suite of services. But she was clear-eyed about why it works as an entry point – it’s the task most small business owners dread doing themselves, and often the one they understand least, which makes it a natural first step before deeper conversations about SEO, advertising, and the rest of a client’s marketing strategy.

She also pushed back gently on the idea that social media only pays off in vague “brand awareness” terms. For most small business clients – who don’t have sophisticated CRM or conversion tracking in place – the real value shows up in reach, visibility, and consistent engagement that makes an account feel like it’s run by a real person rather than a logo posting into the void.

Strategic Growth Across Multiple Ventures

By the end of the conversation, it was clear Maddie’s entrepreneurial streak didn’t stop at MP Consulting. She also runs Franklin Balloon Company, which complements the agency’s event and marketing work, and a coffee shop back in the Omaha area called Base Kamp – proof that the same instincts that built MP Consulting from a one-woman operation into a nationwide team show up in everything she builds.

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Want to talk to a team that treats systems, strategy, and partnership as seriously as Maddie does? Get in touch with MP Consulting to see how we can help your business grow the right way.

Watch the full conversation with Maddie and Charles Cormier on the Founder Wisdom Podcast.