What does it take to build a digital marketing agency from a $500 website to a million-dollar business, and then reinvent it for the AI era?

In this episode of The Spark, Mark Scrivner sits down with Michael Epps Utley, CEO of GoEpps, a Nashville-based digital marketing firm. Recorded at the Creative Assembly studio in East Nashville, Michael traces the origins of his business philosophy back to his father's systems-thinking approach and shares how that inheritance has shaped everything from how he builds products to how he evaluates partnerships.

Michael and Mark cover the real state of SEO in an AI-dominated search landscape, why "SEO is dead" is a fundamental misread of the market, the business case for human-in-the-loop AI, how to maximize content ROI through post-production strategy, and the one mindset shift that separates agencies that grow from those that stall. Whether you're building an agency, navigating AI adoption, or looking to sharpen your content strategy, this conversation delivers the kind of grounded, earned perspective that only comes from 14 years in the trenches.

Episode Highlights:
01:56 – Michael traces his journey from a creative writing degree to founding GoEpps
07:00 – The systems-thinking philosophy his father built — and why Michael has spent his life trying to replicate it
11:46 – GoEpps launches AEO: a dashboard for tracking AI search results across competitors
14:24 – "It's not gonna replace SEO, but it might replace Google" — Michael's take on the AI search landscape
21:56 – The $783 moment: how a single instinctual phone call closed GoEpps's first million-dollar year
26:15 – How resilience through recessions, a Nashville tornado, and a global pandemic shaped the business
29:07 – What great partnerships are actually built on: demonstrated behavior vs. delivered information
36:11 – Why the biggest missed opportunity in video isn't production — it's post-production strategy
44:37 – "The answer is go" — Michael's core advice for agency owners and entrepreneurs at any stage

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