About
I started this agency because every conversation I have with an NZ broker or specialist right now sounds the same.
A long-time client rang and said "I was on ChatGPT and it told me 5.79%, can you sort it?" Another peer broker just hit top-30 nationally and posted the settlement number on LinkedIn. A 26-year-old "AI mortgage growth specialist" sent another DM about "10x'ing your lead flow with our AI bot" and got deleted before the second line. Friday night, the broker is in the kitchen wondering if their kid is right about ChatGPT and trying to remember the last time they did anything new in the marketing function. Sunday, 9pm, iPad in bed, googling "how to get more mortgage leads NZ" and finding US webinars and a couple of LinkedIn growth-hackers from Sydney. None of it useful.
Every broker I talk to is asking the same three questions. What does this AI stuff actually mean for the broker channel? Who can I trust to tell me without a sales agenda? And how do I move on it without spending another $30,000 on something I walk away from in twelve months with nothing to show?
I built this agency to be the honest answer to those three questions, run by someone who has actually grown a business under his own name.
The pivot story
The current cache of this site might still show our old positioning: lead generation for NZ insurance brokers. That didn't land. I'm telling you the full story because the alternative is pretending it never happened, which is exactly the kind of agency-class behaviour I built this version of the business to avoid.
I started with insurance because I run growth for Gerrard's Insurance as CMO. I know that market in my bones. I figured if I could install the playbook somewhere I'd already proved it worked, the rest would follow. Reasonable thesis. Wrong market.
Here's what I missed. NZ insurance brokers as a buying segment are relationship-led, slow-moving, and have an unusually quiet buying signal. The work itself was good. The clients I did pick up were happy. But the segment didn't have the buying urgency the offer needed. Every conversation took six months to mature. The owners weren't waking up at 3am worried about channels changing because their channels weren't changing fast enough yet.
Three months in I sat with the numbers and made the call to pivot. Not blow up the agency. Pivot. Same operator. Same craft. Different segment. The new lane is sales-led NZ specialists where the AI shift has already arrived at the kitchen table. Mortgage and lending brokers watching ChatGPT answer rate questions and bank apps eat the easy 20%-deposit clients. Tax advisors and insolvency practitioners watching DIY platforms and AI tools nibble the bottom of the funnel.
I don't work with insurance brokers anymore. I'm too involved in one as CMO at Gerrard's. That's also why I know exactly how this category buys, what makes the FAP / FMA / aggregator regime tick, and where a marketing pitch sets off the compliance alarm in a broker's head.
If you spend money with an operator who can't say "I tried this and it didn't work, here's what I learned," you're buying a story, not a service. I'd rather you read the full pivot here than discover it in month six.
POV
A few things I'll say on the first call so we save time if we disagree.
01
Every agency in NZ is about to claim AI capability. Most are going to lose money trying to deliver it because their starting frame is "AI is our product." It's a power tool, used by an operator who knows what the business actually needs. The brokerages that win the next five years will be the ones who pair operator judgment with AI velocity. Not the ones who let a chatbot give regulated financial advice and get the FMA on the phone.
02
Used right, it doesn't replace your people. It lets a sole-operator broker produce like a five-broker shop. It lets the principal stop being the rainmaker AND the operations manager AND the marketing department AND the AML compliance officer. The brokers who install it on purpose in the next twelve months will be sitting on a five-year lead by 2028.
03
Four of the largest digital agencies in this country were scraped before I built this site. None of them lead with AI search. None of them speak broker. That changes the day one of them moves. Until then, NZ brokers who get visibility in AI search before peers do are claiming a head-start in a discovery layer the peers don't even know exists yet.
04
Pretty website, no operator behind it, no reference accounts, no honest measurement layer, no idea what FAP / AML / CCCFA actually means. They'll look great on LinkedIn for six months and then fold. Pick an operator who's run growth inside a regulated NZ business under his own name and can show you the work.
05
US case studies don't translate. AU positioning is close but not close enough. The FAP regime, the aggregator dynamics, the CCCFA rules around advertising lending, the city-by-city competitive shape. Hamilton is not Auckland, Tauranga is not Christchurch, Queenstown is its own animal. All of it shows up in the work.
That's the POV. If any of it is wrong I want to know on the first call, not in month six.
Fit
I work best with NZ brokers and specialist advisors who are growth-focused and sales-led. People who can already close and want flow. Mortgage brokers, lending brokers, tax advisors, insolvency practitioners, niche specialists running their own book.
I don't work with relationship-only practices that are happy with referrals-only and aren't trying to grow. The pricing won't make sense. The work won't land. We'd both regret signing.
I don't work with insurance brokers. I'm CMO at one. That's a conflict that doesn't get cleaned up by a contract.
If that's you, the discovery call is the place to say so. If it's not, I'd rather we work it out in the first 20 minutes than in month six.
The credentials
Now
Running their full marketing function for years. Every recommendation pressure-tested on a P&L I'm personally accountable for. Inside the FAP-regulated world. Working with aggregators. I know what compliance looks like on a Tuesday.
Built
Multi-client growth agency. The craft of running growth across many businesses at once, learning what transfers and what doesn't between markets.
Built
My own SaaS product. So I know the founder side of growth as well as the agency side. P&L, churn, product-market fit, the works.
The pattern I keep seeing: the best growth never comes from clever tactics. It comes from someone competent owning the whole stack, telling the truth about what's working, and shipping the next thing on Monday.
Finally an agency run by someone who's actually run growth himself.
The aspirational future
I want to help NZ brokers and specialists become the kind of business that walks into 2028 with infrastructure their peers don't have. The Auckland mortgage broker the aggregator BDM puts on the conference panel. The Tauranga tax specialist who's the answer when a founder asks ChatGPT about R&D credits. The Queenstown commercial broker whose name shows up first when a property investor types "best commercial finance broker NZ" into Google's AI Overview. The Christchurch insolvency practitioner who finally has a referral pipe outside of IRD-driven work.
The version of your brokerage where Monday morning is the good part because the CRM is already queued. Where you took Friday off in February for the kid's swimming carnival and didn't check your phone twice. Where the trail book is bigger because you stopped losing clients to bank apps. Where you hired the second broker in March because the flow is real.
That's the brokerage we help you build. The next twelve months decide which brokers get to be that, and which brokers watch from the audience.