I just got back from Málaga.
The whole team flew in from across North America and Europe.
People who usually only see each other on Slack and Zoom were suddenly sharing meals, whiteboards, long walks along the Mediterranean, and the occasional late-night debate about what Foundation looks like in three years.
We booked this beautiful Airbnb for three days of planning, strategizing and breaking bread with the team. The AirBnb had a Sauna (one of my current obsessions) and a heated pool. It had something wild like 10 individual bedrooms each with their own bathroom. It had two kitchens. And I don’t think I saw every corner of this place. It was stunning.
Here’s my favorite two pictures of our team enjoying a dinner with a private chef:
This was the kind of trip that reminded me why I started Foundation.
It’s all about building the team and the people that make it happen…
My goal for the last year and for the foreseeable future is all about teaching, building & inspiring great leaders.
Over the last few months, our team has grown and the leadership team has been absolutely on fire supporting our clients and helping them achieve their goals. Whether it’s increasing visibility in the LLMs or driving pipeline from Reddit… Our team has been executing with excellence for everything from some of the largest businesses in SaaS to some of the largest brands in the country.
It’s been a year worth celebrating.
Hence the reason we made the trip to Spain…
Foundation was recently named to the Clutch 100 and the Culture 100. I’m super proud of this even though I’m not big on awards:
The whole team should be proud of this… It’s all on them.
Our mantra at Foundation is that we’re more like a championship team than a family. It’s something I shared and restated during planning but want to put the words on paper here so everyone can understand the sentiment and why I say that.
I’ve had some people suggest its harsh to suggest that your company is not a family but I say this with real intention.
Let me explain:
Why Foundation is not a Family – it’s a championship team
The family metaphor has always been a trap. Families tolerate dysfunction. Families keep people in roles they’ve outgrown. Families avoid hard conversations because harmony feels safer than truth.
Championship teams are different. Championship teams have high standards and hold each other to them. They celebrate wins loudly and learn from losses openly. Every person on the roster knows their role, knows the game plan, and knows the teammates they can count on.
At Foundation, we are building a championship team. That means we hire people who raise the bar. We give honest feedback because we want each other to get better. We make decisions based on what’s best for the work and the client, not what’s most comfortable.
And when someone is ready for a new stage… Whether that’s a senior role here or a chapter they need to write somewhere else: we celebrate that, too… Because that’s what championship teams do. They develop and celebrate greatness.
The work we do is getting better every single day
The brands we’re serving right now are the kind of brands I used to write about in case studies, wishing we had them as clients.
Now we do.
We work with some of the worlds biggest banks.
We work with some of the worlds most influential tech.
We work with some of the worlds most successful platforms.
And we strive to deliver ridiculous value for these clients every single day…
Over the last few months the majority of our work falls into these types of efforts:
- AI visibility strategy & execution, so when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude a question in our clients’ categories, our clients are the answer.
- Reddit strategy & execution, because that’s where our clients’ customers actually hang out and ask real questions.
- YouTube strategy & execution, because the next decade of demand capture is going to happen on video.
- On-site optimization, the unsexy foundation that makes every other channel work harder.
- Net-new content at scale… blog posts, landing pages, research reports, full content libraries engineered to rank, get cited, and convert.
We’ve been early to a lot of shifts. Reddit in 2018 when most of the industry thought we were weird for it.
AEO and GEO months before most agencies could even spell the acronyms…
The team is bigger and better
I’m not a believer that more headcount always equals more success. I think it’s actually a bigger signal that there’s areas of improvement that can be made than it is a signal of meaningful growth. BUT… Even with the adoption of AI…
Our team is meaningfully bigger than it was twelve months ago.
Double-digit growth year over year.
The Senior Leadership Team is something I’m genuinely proud of
One of the most important shifts over the last eighteen months is that Foundation now has a real Senior Leadership Team.
Every core function of the business has an owner who’s better at their function than I am.
Sales. Delivery. Operations. Finance. Partnerships.
They’re all covered, and they’re covered by operators who push the work forward whether I’m in the room or not. I’m excited about what this leadership team continues to build. It feels like every day I’m seeing Foundationites get promoted and launch new things. I’m seeing celebrations of clients milestones being met months earlier than expected. And I’m seeing old Foundationites return.
We’re doing something right.
And I think it all starts with this group of leaders living our values every single day…
Speaking intentionally this year
This year we’re being more intentional about where we show up in person.
I just wrapped up SEO Week in New York. That was a blast. What a time…
I’m saying yes to fewer events because my kids are growing up and I want to enjoy the time I have with them. I can’t say yes to everything any more. I wish I could. But I have to keep my priorities aligned with my values and life goals.
The rooms where the future of search is being debated right now are ones I’m excited to be in. And the work Foundation has been doing is aligned perfectly with the current discussion around AI visibility.
What I love even more is that more of my colleagues are getting on stages too. Several Foundationers have started publishing their own points of view, getting invited to speak at events, and building real personal brands in the industry. I might be biased, but these are some of the sharpest minds in B2B marketing, and it’s good to see the industry starting to notice.
Augmenting ourselves with AI
The other big theme out of Málaga was AI and how we invest in it.
We were early adopters of Jasper.
We just announced our partnership with Profound:
And are excited about what else is in store…
We’ve already promoted two people internally to sit in seats exclusively focused on innovation through AI.
The roles are prioritizing finding edges with this technology. We built a transformation team in-house whose whole job is figuring out how Foundation augments itself with AI across every part of the business… research, writing, editing, distribution, account management, reporting, and the quiet middle-office work nobody brags about.
Every function at Foundation is being rebuilt with AI in the workflow. It’s making our people faster, sharper, and capable of doing work we simply couldn’t do before. We’ve been early on enough shifts to recognize what early feels like. This is one of them.
Giving more back
Because the business is healthy, we’ve been able to give more back to the community this year than we ever have before. More mentorship. More donations. More free ideas. More support for causes and creators we believe in. That part means a lot to me personally.
I think a lot about the idea of conscious capitalism and think it’s the best way for entrepreneurs to give back.
If it wasn’t for conscious capitalists… I don’t know where I’d be.
But I’m grateful for the conscious capitalists who gave back when I was a youngin’ trying to make it.
And now… It’s my goal to help others do the same.
What’s This Year Going To Bring…
Málaga reminded me of something simple.
I’m surrounded by the best team, the best clients, and the best work Foundation has ever had. And we’re still hungry.
I’ve been running Foundation for a long time. I’ve never been more excited about what’s coming next.
Ok. Back to work.