Get chosen
before
the search begins.
Nine in ten reviews are decided before the RFP lands. You don't win them. You get chosen, and then a review happens.
We help independent agencies become the name the client already has in mind, so by the time the search starts, it's yours to lose.
WHO WE ARE
We've started, owned, bought, grown and sold agencies for 40 years.
We've won $500M+ in new business from the founder's chair and the CGO's.
We know how shortlists really form, and how pitches are won before they're scheduled.
-
Lifetime revenue won through net-new ARR and project sales. Not total account value, just the business we put on the board.
-
We've scaled independent agencies from 1 to 800 people, as founders, owners, acquirers, the acquired, and investors. We've been on nearly every side of the table this business has.
-
Four decades starting, owning, buying, growing, and selling agencies. We've made the calls you're facing, with our own money on the line.
-
Founder, owner, acquirer, acquired, investor. We've sat in each seat, so we read agency growth the way the people across the table actually do.
Advisory Leads
Sam Meers
Sam Meers has spent more than 40 years in advertising and marketing, most of them as the person responsible for building the business.
As founder and president of Meers Advertising, he ran an independent agency for 25 years specializing in healthcare and financial services, two categories where the stakes are high, the buyers are sophisticated, and vague positioning is a liability.
Later, after Meers was acquired by BarkleyOKRP, he helped lead one of the most successful new business runs in the history of independent agencies, taking the shop from a regional player to a national competitor going head-to-head with holding company agencies.
Along the way he developed deep expertise in growth strategy, pricing models, new business development, and the kind of positioning work that actually holds up under pressure.
Sam wants Cowboy to give independent agencies access to the same thinking that shaped some of the industry's best growth runs. He works with leaders who are ready to move but want someone who has been out there before riding alongside them. He's a member of the 4As Gold Forum, co-host of the Kansas City Marketing Legends Podcast, and a persistent advocate for change in how agencies position, price, and grow.
Jason Parks
Jason Parks was most recently a partner and Chief Growth Officer at BarkleyOKRP, one of the largest and fastest-growing independent agencies in the country, where he led new business, marketing, and the firm's expanding project and consulting work.
He spent more than a decade shaping the BarkleyOKRP brand, rising from account leadership to EVP and Managing Director before taking on growth leadership for the firm. Earlier in his career he was a partner and idea director at Adamson Advertising, leading campaigns for ESPN, Marmot, and the Missouri Lottery.
As Chief Growth Officer, he was behind one of the strongest new business runs in the independent agency world: 20 new clients in 20 months, helping drive 40% organic growth and record revenue, with wins including Planet Fitness, Winnebago, Haribo, U.S. Bank, and Motel 6.
Jason is one of the most well-versed subject matter experts in the agency growth ecosystem, with relationships across search consultants, industry publications, and network groups. He's come up against nearly every agency in North America, directly or indirectly, and been through almost every business situation there is, which gives him a keen sense of how to play and how to win.
Jason wants Cowboy to help independent agencies win the business they're built to win. He's also an investor in 19York, the "anti-holding" network backing independent agencies on their own terms. A regular voice on the Mirren and ANA stages, he's been named to Kansas City's 40 Under 40 and serves on advisory boards for William Jewell College and the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
HOW WE CAN HELP
Our Services
Four ways to work with us, depending on where you are. Some agencies need a sharper answer to "why you." Some need a plan they'll actually follow. Some have a pitch on the calendar. Some just want someone in their corner who's done this before.
-
Own the ground, not the category.
Most agencies describe what they do. The chosen ones say something only they can say. We find the territory you can hold, write the sentence that claims it, and test it against real buyers until it survives contact. You leave with your Word, a named Way, and proof for both.
-
A feasible plan you'll actually run.
Agencies sell strategy for a living and rarely buy it for themselves. This is that. A twelve-month growth and marketing plan built on the four corners of your business (market, brand, customer, culture): the three bets that matter, the ones you'll stop making, what you'll say and where, and who's on the hook for each. We build it with your leadership team in the room, so it's yours on Monday.
-
Win the room you’re already in.
Ninety percent of a pitch is decided before the deck opens. We work the whole thing: the story that sets the terms, the chemistry meeting, the team, the rehearsal that turns nerves into conviction. We've sat on both sides of the table and we know what the client is actually scoring.
-
A partner on the founder's side of the desk.
For the decisions that don't fit in a project. Monthly time with an operator who's built and run agencies: the hire you're not sure about, the client you should walk from, the partner conversation you've been putting off. Not a second agency. A second brain, on call.
What We’re Seeing
The buying moment moved, and it didn't move toward you.
Procurement got smarter. Clients run leaner. By the time a review is announced, the people running it have already talked to peers, scanned the landscape, and formed opinions they won't say out loud. The decision feels open. It mostly isn't.
Agencies still pour their energy into the part of the process that's visible: the brief, the deck, the room. The part that actually decides it happened weeks earlier, in conversations you weren't in.
AI is now a buyer in the room, and it's reading you first.
Clients are running agency proposals through AI tools to scan, score, and shortlist before a human weighs in. The same tools shape the consideration set itself, pulling from whatever your public footprint says about you. Your positioning gets read by a machine before it's ever read by a person.
Most agencies haven't noticed. They're optimizing for a human evaluator who increasingly arrives with the machine's read already in hand. Get misread by the algorithm and you're cut before anyone champions you.
The quiet killer: look like everyone, chosen by no one.
Walk the websites in any category and the language blurs together: full-service, integrated, strategy-led, results-driven. When everyone makes the same promise, the buyer defaults to the safest, cheapest, or most familiar name. Differentiation collapses right when the shortlist forms.
The agencies that get chosen early aren't louder. They're legible. A client can say what they're for in one sentence, months before a search, which is exactly when it counts.
Ready to Ride?
Our Passion
Independent agencies are where the best work in this business gets made, and where the least help exists for the people running them. Holding companies have a growth office. You have a Sunday night and a spreadsheet. We started Cowboy to be the growth partner we wished we'd had when we were building agencies ourselves, on your side of the table and on your terms.
