Carissa Richardson on starting your own marketing agency, paid advertising transparency, and building a business around the life you actually want.

Carissa Richardson spent more than twenty years inside traditional and digital media agencies. Then her school district moved to half-day kindergarten, she had two kids back to back, and no version of the job worked anymore. She left without a plan. What grew out of that is Kindred Strategy, a paid advertising agency built on two convictions: clients should understand exactly where their money goes, and great work should not cost you the parts of life that matter most.

In this special member edition of The Power Lounge, Amy Vaughan and Carissa get practical about what it actually takes for women in digital to build the thing they wish had existed. Charging what you are worth. Why transparency is strategy and not a nice to have. Growing only as fast as the life you want allows. And how community, not cold outreach, built an entire referral based business.

WHAT YOU WILL TAKE AWAY

• Efficiency pays you differently depending on who you work for. Inside an agency it earns you more work. On your own it earns you more money.
• Transparency is a business model, not a personality trait. Clients own their ad accounts, reporting leads with an executive summary, and optimization targets the metric the client actually cares about.
• Charge what you are worth from day one. The knowledge came with you when you left.
• Growth is a choice. Carissa has grown only to the edge of the life she wants, and her revenue tracks her kids’ school schedule on purpose.
• Guardrails hold. Published working hours in her email signature, scheduled sends after five, and a hard stop when the bus pulls up.
• A business plan can work as a safety net when you give up the salary and the insurance.
• Community is business development. The referrals that built this business came from community first, clients second.

FROM THE EPISODE

“I immediately made back my salary because I’m actually getting paid for every hour that I work and my efficiency is equaling more money now.” Carissa Richardson

“I really think my business would not be here if it wasn’t for community.” Carissa Richardson

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Welcome and why this is a special member edition
02:29 Two decades in agencies and the wall that ended it
05:21 Capable versus confident when you go out on your own
08:04 Why transparency felt urgent enough to build around
11:32 The hardest assumption to break: charging what you are worth
12:58 Efficiency pays more when you work for yourself
15:01 Transparency in practice: client ad accounts and real reporting
18:04 Growing only as much as the life you want allows
21:56 Guardrails, working hours, and the schedule send
25:38 Delegation, the competence trap, and what to hand off
30:38 Turning convictions into structure, and the business plan as safety net
38:12 How community built the business
42:44 What to know before you take the leap
45:34 Where agency models go next
47:34 Power round

CONNECT

Carissa Richardson, Kindred Strategy: https://www.kindred-strategy.com/

Carissa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carissarichardson/

Together Digital: https://togetherindigital.com

The Power Lounge on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@togetherindigital3269

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Marketing channel integration, clean customer data, and the AI search work that actually moves revenue.

Most teams do not need more marketing activity. They need their channels to talk to each other. In this episode of The Power Lounge, Amy Vaughan sits down with Amanda Friedt, founder of FRDTLAB, to unpack what an integrated growth system really looks like when SEO, paid media, content, email, and social are all running at once.

Amanda has spent twenty years building the infrastructure underneath growth, and her answer to the complexity question surprises most marketing leaders. It is not as complicated as you think. What breaks is rarely the strategy. It is naming conventions, tag management, disconnected customer data, and the quiet assumption that AI can just handle it.

This one is for every woman in digital holding a fragmented tech stack together with willpower and a spreadsheet.

What you will learn

• Why the biggest misconception about marketing channel integration is that it is complicated
• How signals work, why humans create them, and what that means for your naming and tagging
• The competence trap, and what happens when one capable person quietly becomes load bearing
• Where to start when you inherit a fragmented or legacy tech stack
• Why clean customer data decides whether your paid ads work at all
• How to align siloed search, paid, and content teams when you do not control the swim lane
• What Amanda tells marketing leaders heading into a quarter of budget cuts

From the episode

Thinking they can just automate it. Can AI just do it and automate it? And they miss the fact that you need orchestration layers and control points that are overseen all the time. Amanda Friedt

At the right time that they need it. Not when you posted it, when they need it. Amanda Friedt

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome to The Power Lounge

01:33 Overwhelm, back to school, and building agents for your own life

04:27 The biggest misconception about connected channels

06:11 Naming, tagging, and why systems cannot talk to each other

08:56 Governance layers for agentic workflows

11:13 Visibility and revenue up 67 percent in the first 30 days

12:38 The competence trap and load bearing people

16:13 Where disconnected systems create real gaps

19:10 Inheriting a fragmented tech stack, where to start

23:59 Getting siloed teams and budgets aligned

28:05 What clean customer data actually changes

32:31 Momentum over one viral post

34:07 Authenticity, divorce, and the relationships it built

40:02 The biggest mistake leaders make integrating tools

41:55 The unexpected gap she uncovers most often

44:01 One practical first step you can take today

47:38 Power round, the metric almost nobody tracks

49:28 Advice for marketing leaders facing budget cuts

54:59 Where to find Amanda

Connect

Amanda Friedt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandafriedt/

FRDTLAB: https://frdtlab.com/

Together Digital: https://www.togetherindigital.com/

The Power Lounge: https://www.togetherindigital.com/podcast/

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A VP of strategy and innovation on career pivots for women in digital, and why you are never starting from zero.

Shannon Lewandowski has moved from software developer to IT manager to digital agency leader to AI and product consulting, and she says none of it was starting over. She joins Amy Vaughan on The Power Lounge to talk career transitions for women in digital, how to tell ordinary restlessness apart from real curiosity, and where to start with AI when you are convinced you are already behind. This is also the first episode of a new Power Lounge series featuring the women of Together Digital.

Key takeaways

• You are never starting from zero. Consulting, coaching, athletics, and even your own life as a customer are all experience you carry into the next role.
• Restlessness and curiosity feel different. Restlessness is unease with where you are. Curiosity pulls you toward something specific.
• Leaders do not need every answer. The work is bringing better questions and surrounding yourself with people who see it differently.
• Start with AI where you are annoyed. Hand over the task you could do in your sleep, then spend that time on work that needs your judgment.
• Women do not need to get better at doing everything. Release the expectation and build the support system instead.
• “I truly believe you’re never really starting from zero.”
  Shannon Lewandowski
• “I don’t think women have to become better at doing everything.”
  Shannon Lewandowski

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome and a new series featuring Together Digital members
01:32 Meet Shannon Lewandowski
02:26 Why a pivot is never starting from zero
05:04 How her relationship with change changed
08:22 Restlessness versus curiosity
13:23 Mentors, coaches, and the coaching program that reframed fulfillment
16:49 Why investing in yourself is worth it, and the time study
21:08 Where to start with AI when you feel behind
25:00 Service design applied to your own career
29:03 Ask, Give, Grow and the gift of asking for help
31:43 What actually holds women back
36:57 Values, energy, and where to start when you feel stuck
40:33 Where her curiosity is leading now
41:47 Power round
43:39 Live audience questions
50:28 Closing

Connect with Shannon Lewandowski
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shannonlewandowski
Ingage Partners: ingagepartners.com

Connect with Together Digital
Website: togetherindigital.com
Podcast: togetherindigital.com/podcast

Support the show