Sara Croft and Christian Beck, co-founders of Five Four, join Paul Anthony to talk about running an on-demand marketing and design agency for early-stage startups. Sara spent years in-house, including at a nonprofit that supported Indiana tech companies, before landing at an agency where Christian hired her as head of marketing. Christian started as an in-house UX designer at Autodesk and later realized he cared more about design than the industry he was designing for. Five Four also built OpStart's brand, and now uses OpStart for accounting.

Both wanted to put their skills to work for founders rather than for a single product. Sara says working across many companies gives an agency a volume of reps an in-house team never gets. They explain why they want clients to outgrow them and hire full-time staff, and they get candid about firing clients, tying every engagement to a result like revenue, and saying no when the fit is wrong.

From there they get practical: how to shop for an agency, why founders have to keep selling while marketing gets off the ground, and how to think about a marketing budget. Christian explains why he builds client sites with AI but won't let it write the words, and Paul adds his view on why AI still needs an expert holding the reins. They close with advice for new founders: be ready to sell, and be open to a co-founder.

In this episode, you'll learn:

● Why Five Four ties every engagement to a result, and why Sara treats a prospect who can't say what they want from marketing as a warning sign

● Why they want clients to graduate to in-house hires, and why they have fired more clients than they expected

● How to shop for an agency by writing your own brief first, and why marketing specialists work like doctors

● Why early-stage marketing runs on a cycle of asking whether the audience, channel, and message are still right, anywhere from every three months to every six

● Why founders still have to sell, and why talking to buyers beats analytics for testing a message

● Why setting a goal before trying a channel, like a podcast, is the only way to know if it failed

● Why Paul says companies that raise money tend to underspend on growth, and how a marketing hire's salary can eat the entire budget

● Why Christian calls AI backwards looking and average, and how he still builds client sites with it, from Figma designs to Claude Code to Webflow

Timestamps

00:00 - Meet Sara Croft and Christian Beck of Five Four

03:12 - From in-house marketing to starting an agency

07:28 - Christian's path from UX designer to agency owner

11:41 - Letting clients graduate instead of locking them in

13:30 - What makes Five Four different

21:14 - Firing clients to protect your reputation

22:28 - How to choose an agency, starting with your brief

27:27 - Product market fit, then channel fit

31:02 - How long to give a marketing experiment

33:42 - Why founders still have to sell

41:52 - Start with a goal, not a tactic

45:04 - Marketing budget mistakes

47:08 - What AI can and can't do for marketing

1:01:19 - The most common early-stage marketing mistake

1:03:53 - Advice for anyone starting a business

Connect:

● OpStart: https://www.opstart.co

● Paul Anthony on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-anthony-8a256087/

● Sara Croft on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saracroft/

● Christian Beck on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmbeck/

● Five Four: https://fivefour.partners

● Five Four on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/five-four-partners/

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