ABOUT EPISODE

Daniel Weiner runs You Should Talk To, a consultancy that pairs brand marketers with the agencies that fit them. In this conversation with Adam Weil, Daniel lays out a take that earns him heat on LinkedIn pretty regularly: the work doesn't matter until it does. Sure, you have to be reasonably good at what you do, that's table stakes. But with over 100,000 agencies in the US alone, doing great work is the price of admission. What gets you hired is the relationship, the chemistry, and showing up consistently.

Daniel has spent the last six years sitting in the middle of brand and agency conversations, and he's earned a reputation for being "disgustingly honest" with both sides. He gets into where matches actually fall apart, and almost none of it has to do with the creative output. Misaligned expectations on budget. Account people who turn over every six months. Agencies who drink their own Kool-Aid and tell brands they're "the best at X" without ever explaining what that means in practice. When a brand fires an agency, the work is rarely the first thing they bring up. It's everything around the work that broke them.

The conversation also gets into what wins pitches: making it 99% about the brand and 1% about yourself, telling a cohesive story start to finish, and showing up so excited that the brand feels it in the room. Daniel and Adam talk about niching without going so far that every agency starts to look the same, why a CEO needs to be in the pitch without making it about themselves, and how AI has made everyone want everything yesterday without really moving prices much. If you're an agency leader wondering why some pitches close and others die, Daniel's answer is direct: pick up the phone, give without asking, throw the dinner you wish someone would invite you to, and remember that nobody hires you because you're brilliant. They hire you because they like you, trust you, and want to genuinely work with you.

GUEST BIO

Daniel Weiner is the founder of YouShouldTalkTo, a consultancy that pairs brands/marketers with vetted agencies for marketing and tech needs. Daniel has led or supported agency searches for brands including Denny's, Blaze Pizza, Wayfair, Edible, Supply House, and many more. After spending time agency side leading business development for a boutique agency, Daniel built YouShouldTalkTo around a different kind of search process, one that sits between traditional consultants and matchmakers, and runs on radical transparency.

Daniel also hosts the YouShouldTalkTo podcast, where he interviews CMOs and VPs of Marketing about what they want from their agency partners. He also runs YouShouldEatWith, a private dinner series that brings marketing leaders together for off-the-record conversations. He's a regular voice on LinkedIn, where he shares his takes on agency life, brand marketing, and the underrated practice of just picking up the phone.

RESOURCES

• LinkedIn