Hydra

Hydra is a consulting firm focused on helping agency owners from 100k to 10MM/yr streamline & accelerate growth, achieve more revenue and profit, and reduce stress by implementing a systems-first approach that unlocks growth.

This leads to higher profits, higher founder satisfaction, better employee retention, and gives founders the opportunity to sell or hold for higher, more predictable cash flow.

Co-Founder

Howl Campfires

We exist to keep the forest and the campfire experience alive. 

At Howl Campfires we love traditional campfires, and know just how much spending time around a campfire has positively shaped our lives. Due to the acceleration of climate issues and the almost guaranteed burn bans in the National Forest, we understand the opportunity to burn wood in the forest is becoming limited. 

So we set out to build a propane fire pit that gives you the best qualities of a wood fire: Actually warm, take it anywhere, but operates legally in a burn ban.

As a company Howl Campfires designs and manufactures technologies that make liquid-fuel firepits as enjoyable to use as wood-burning campfires. 

These pits enable users to have no-compromise campfires in the midst of burn bans, without jeopardizing or degrading the land.

Margle Media

I served as President & Co-Owner of Margle Media, a full-service social media advertising agency servicing DTC brands and Fortune 500 clients. Margle works with brands to improve awareness, conversion, and the bottom line by:

-Producing digital content at scale
-Deploying paid social campaigns that convert users into customers
-Configuring systems to improve customer retention & LTV growth

https://www.marglemedia.com/

President & Co-Owner

Pixsuls

We help business owners leverage a proven, results-driven social media strategy to generate more leads, add more clients and increase revenue.

We believe in helping business owners reach their full potential by optimizing their company's online presence. We do so by transitioning our clients into the world of online advertising and captivating audiences through engaging content. 

We know that a company's most powerful asset is its brand story. In a world where consumers become loyal to stories, not products, we strive to put yours at the forefront of every timeline and newsfeed. 

We help our clients develop these stories through strategic messaging and creative content that gives potential customers a reason to click, read, watch, and devote themselves to the story that represents our clients and their businesses.

Pixsuls was acquired by Margle Media in January of 2019.

Founder

West Corporation

•Presented complex data solutions to businesses and took a consultative, solution-based selling approach to fulfill customer needs
•Managed and continually educated a small group of 4-6 Account Executives to ensure they were meeting or exceeding sales quotas
•Responsible for selling high-ticket offers to new and existing clients with contract values exceeding $500,000+ of revenue

Technical Account Manager

•Sold various technology products to new and existing clients over the phone through cold calls
•Built deep customer relationships resulting in regular repeat business
•Finished each month as an Account Executive at or above 100% to quota in multiple categories, best month finishing 400% to quota
•Promoted to Technical Account Manager within two months of hire, also achieved the Rookie of the Month award for exceeding sales targets

Account Manager

Co-Founder @ Hydra | Co-Founder @ Howl Campfires | I Help Agencies & Professional Service Firms Scale Revenue & Profit

Want to know how we're adding 20-40k in new MRR to agencies in 120 days? Let's talk: 

https://grow.workwithhydra.com/leadgensystems?el=nlinkedin

What I'm currently building: 

-Hydra, our consulting firm for digital marketing agencies to increase revenue, profitability, growth & operational efficiency. 

- CleanBooks, a bookkeeping and fractional CFO firm for digital marketing agencies. 

- HOWL Campfires, a 100% made in the USA, utility & design patented, portable propane fire pit that feels just like a wood fire.

Connect with me on Instagram & Twitter: @kirchnr

If you disappeared for 2 weeks, would your agency survive?

But let’s be real...

Most wouldn’t make it 2 days without you.

If you’re a founder and your phone is the heartbeat of your business... you’re not running an agency. 

You’re the bottleneck. 

The firefighter. 

The “just send it to me, I’ll fix it” guy.

➝Every proposal. 
➝Every client emergency. 
➝Every piece of strategy.

All roads lead back to you.

And that’s the silent killer of most agencies: the owner becomes the system.

➝You built it. 
➝You love it. 
➝But now it owns you.

Let’s me be brutally honest for a second. 

➝You can’t scale chaos.
➝You can’t sell something that collapses the second you step back.
➝And you definitely can’t enjoy success if you’re too busy holding it together with duct tape.

Here’s how to start breaking free from the “Founder Trap”:

➝ Systemize what you repeat. If you’ve done something twice, it needs a process. Stop relying on memory, and build a machine instead. 

➝ Get out of client work. You’re not the “deliverable.” If clients can’t get results without you in every meeting, your business model is broken.

➝ Delegate outcomes, not tasks.Your team doesn’t need more to-do lists. They need ownership. Hire people you trust, then actually trust them.

➝ Build for freedom, not control. If your goal is to own everything, you’ll end up owning nothing, especially your time.

So, ask yourself, if you took a month off, would your agency grow... or crumble?

Your answer tells you everything you need to fix.

Nicholas Kirchner

Built 3 Agencies | 1 Exit | Founder @ Hydra Consulting | Founder @ HOWL Campfires

With our first agency incubator deal underway…

Here’s what we’re implementing to get new clients 👇

Mind you, we're starting from nearly complete scratch. 

But I practice what I preach, so here's what me & the team are doing: 

→LinkedIn Outbound (25+ connection requests per day, DM all connections)
→Lead Magnet Giveaways (Case study on how we helped a roofer go from $0-1.1M/month) 
→Cold/Warm Calling (Pick up the phone and dial all opt-ins) 
→Meta Ads (Running ads to a video sales letter funnel) 

Here’s our results so far: 

→ 19 discovery calls
→ 13 showed calls
→ 4 closed deals
→ $9,200 in MRR with performance deals for additional upside 

Everything starts somewhere. 

Excited to watch this grow over time 💪🏼

CC: Adam Artemis

Founders: Focusing on work that doesn’t drive results and takes tons of time are the lowest ROI tasks you could be doing. 

And you might not realize how much revenue is slipping away…

Because your CRM is still doing the bare minimum.

Copper released 5 new features that are saving me tons of time. 

If you want to move faster, close more, and automate the grind out of your sales workflows, this is for you.

Your CRM shouldn’t be a database.

It should be a driver, pushing work forward while your team focuses on conversations, deals, and relationships.

Here are the 5 levers your team will actually feel:

➝ Automations that actually save time.

You know how every CRM touts “automation?” 

Most of the time, it’s form over function. 

With Copper I can create, edit, pause, resume, or draft email sequences right from the Pipeline. 

Even trigger workflows from Company filters or rekindle cold leads with smarter time-band rules.

➝ Task management that matches how humans work.

Drag-and-drop reordering, subtasks, grouping by date or owner, and pipeline record linking so nothing slips through the cracks.

➝ Forms that turn traffic into revenue.

A full-screen builder, spam protection, auto-tagging, and the ability to auto-create tasks or pipeline records.

➝ AI where it counts.

Surface smarter contact suggestions. Use Copper GPT(currently in beta) for instant insights or CRM actions.

➝ Your workflow on LinkedIn, finally unified.

My favorite feature they introduced this year is the Quick Add Contacts feature, profile matching, and Email Finder Beta. 

Puts prospecting here on easy mode. 

The result?

Less clicking.

Less tab chaos.

Less “Where does this live again?”

And more selling, responding, following up, and building relationships, the activities that actually move the needle. 

If you want 2025 to be the year your CRM stops slowing you down and starts accelerating your sales ops…

Copper just removed every excuse.

Check it out in the comments below!

Your cold email campaigns shouldn’t die from burnout.

But most do. 

Not because of bad copy, but because your mailboxes get torched halfway through scaling up.

It’s the most frustrating thing when you’ve got traction, and now your performance falls off. 

That ends today.

Maildoso just launched Self-Healing Mailboxes a game-changer for anyone sending at scale.

Here’s how it works:

 → Your mailboxes are split into two groups.
 → For 2 weeks, Group 1 sends while Group 2 rests.
 → Then they switch — Group 2 sends, Group 1 rests.
 ↳ If any mailbox gets burned, Maildoso automatically replaces it with a fresh one.

No downtime. No lost deliverability. No manual juggling.

You keep sending safely, continuously, and with 98%+ deliverability across Gmail and Outlook.
And if that wasn’t enough…

Maildoso just made it easier than ever to start.

They’ve added a monthly subscription option:

 → Same price per mailbox as quarterly.
 → Just pay domains annually.
 → More flexibility. Same results.

Add that to Maildoso’s core stack:

 ✅ AI Warmup (real browser actions, not IMAP)
 ✅ Daily inbox monitoring
 ✅ 50%+ cheaper than Gmail ($1.8/mailbox)

…and you’ve got a deliverability setup that literally maintains itself.

If you fish with too many lines in the water...

None of the bait looks good.

Your cold emails aren’t failing, your infrastructure is.

But most teams don’t realize it’s not the copy… it’s the mailbox behind it.

If you've watched perfectly crafted emails die in spam, you know the pain. 

You rewrite. 

You warm up longer. 

You send less. 

Still… spam. 

Gmail and Outlook weren’t built for outbound at scale. 

They flag you the moment your volume looks “non-human.”

That’s exactly why I switched to Maildoso, an ESP built specifically for cold email sending. 

The difference was instant: 98%+ inbox placement on average, even to Outlook.

Here’s why Maildoso works so well: 

 ➝ In-house SMTP infrastructure: No low-quality reseller servers.
 ➝ IP rotation: Keeps your sending reputation high.
 ➝ Daily reputation monitoring: Spots issues before mailboxes burn.
 ➝ Automated setup: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MX handled automatically so you can launch 100+ mailboxes in minutes.
 ➝ Free domains included: No more domain shopping or setup headaches.

And their new Self-Healing Mailboxes automatically rotate and replace any mailbox that gets burned, before you even notice something’s wrong. 

 ➝ Your campaigns keep running. 
 ➝ Zero downtime. 
 ➝ Zero scrambling.

If you’re tired of unpredictable deliverability, Outlook spam traps, or overpaying for mailboxes that can’t handle outbound volume, it might not be your email… 

It might be your infrastructure.

The result? 

With Maildoso, my inbox placement stabilized, replies increased, and outbound finally became predictable instead of chaotic.

The agency market isn’t saturated. 

Your ads just look like everyone else’s.

If you run an agency, you know the "Cobbler’s Children" syndrome is real. 

We build incredible ads, funnels, creatives, websites, etc. for clients, but our own client acquisition strategy is often just... generic.

If you want to lower your CAC and book more qualified calls, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. 

Here are the 4 ad frameworks every agency who wants more clients should consider rotating into their ad account to get more clients as soon as next week:

1. The Founder Video (The "Who") People buy from people. Founder ads are always top performers within an account, because they buy you before they buy what you do. 

The Creative: A simple face-to-camera video with captions. 

The Goal: Build trust. Explain your agency’s mission, your approach to getting results, and why you’re qualified to serve them. What’s different about you compared to everyone else? 

2. The Static Case Study (The "What") In a world of big claims, receipts are the ultimate currency.

The Creative: A screenshot of a Stripe dashboard, a ranking graph, or a lead inbox.

The Goal: Undeniable proof. Don't tell them you're good; show them the result you got for someone just like them.

Then link to the actual case study/lead magnet and explain HOW you got those results, which proves competence even further. 

3. The Us vs. Them (The "Why Us") Your prospects have been burned by agencies before. 

Validate that fear.

The Creative: A split comparison table. Left side: "Traditional Agencies" (Long contracts, junior staff). Right side: "Your Agency" (Senior talent only, founder-led). Can easily turn this into a solid video script as well. 

The Goal: Differentiation. Position yourself as the antidote to the industry standard.

4. The Unique Mechanism Video The "How". Service businesses often feel like a "black box" to clients. Fix that.

The Creative: A diagram, flowchart, or pyramid visualization of your proprietary 3-step process.

The Goal: Logic. Turn your intangible service into a tangible product.

Which of these 4 is currently missing from your ad account?

Let me know in the comments. 👇

Unpopular opinion: The reason most agencies stay stuck at $1-2M has nothing to do with sales or marketing.

It's because they're using $100K systems to solve $1M problems.

Here's what I mean:

At $500K → You need to be good at delivery 
At $1M → You need to be good at sales 
At $2M → You need to be good at hiring 
At $5M+ → You need systems running everything

Most agencies never make that last jump.

That's why we built the Phoenix Program, the complete operating system for scaling agencies.

For the first time ever for Black Friday, I'm making it available outside our private clients. 

And for Black Friday, I'm offering it at 50% off:

→12 modules covering everything from pricing to team building to owner independence
→50+ templates you can implement immediately
→Systems that have generated millions for agencies
→Everything you need to scale past $5M

As an added bonus, the first 10 people also get a 60-minute 1-on-1 with me to customize this program to your agency. (Clients routinely pay more than the entire cost of the program for this one bonus) 

But here's the thing - this is only available today through next Monday.

After Cyber Monday, it goes back to private clients only.

If you've been stuck at the same revenue for months or even years, this just might be the breakthrough you need. 

Link in the comments.

If you're under 1M/yr. in revenue...

Here's exactly what I'd be doing:

the hard part about being an early stage DTC brand is that unless you have prior experience, it's VERY hard to discern which agencies can actually help you build and those that are training on your dime. 

As someone who's operates a DTC brand and consults dozens of agencies, here's a few universal rules I'd follow when selecting one:

- Understand who you're working with. Not the person selling you on the phone, not the personal brand your following, the execution team. The worst is paying big $ and being passed to someone junior who doesn't know what's going on. 

- Make sure you're aligned on the numbers you define success as. Nothing worse than unmet expectations from your side, and nothing worse as an agency than thinking you're winning when you aren't. 

- Do they/will they understand your P&L at a level similar to you? If not, it's going to be very hard for them to impact growth and think about things the way you are as a founder. Ask how they think about setting targets. 

- Are they proactive communicators or only message when you're the one to initiate? The best agencies are sharp, on top of it, and leading you. Not you leading them. 

- Do they have a team that you can tell is passionate, bought-in, and want to be there? Meet them during the sales process. You can quickly tell the morale & culture of a team. If you want them to care about you, make sure they care about their company + job. 

- Is there a clear owner over your account? Who does the buck stop with? Unless there's a clear leader who can step in and handle things, it's going to be a frustrating experience.

Anyway, there's a million more lines I could write here, but these are a few that are top of mind. 

Brand owners, what would you add? 

Agencies, these are some of the things brands want but don't always know how to ask for.

I’m going back to my roots.

Which is why Hydra Consulting is officially launching its agency holding company. 

We’ll be building & incubating new agencies internally from the ground up.

Using all of our systems frameworks and process to scale new agencies.

Of course, still advising other agencies on how to scale further & faster. 

I’m excited to get back to building high quality, client focused agencies that actually win for people.

Happy to announce we’re backing Adam Artemis in our first deal serving residential roofing contractors as this space is ripe for disruption and better strategy & execution. 

I’ll be documenting the journey here on our learnings 📄

99% of the time, you already know what you need to do to scale. 

You're just avoiding it because it's not exciting. 

Or you're looking for someone else to tell you that something else is the answer. 

But this thinking stifles your growth. 

Most of the time, you're going to not love what's in front of you. 

And that's ok. 

That's a feature, not a bug. 

And accepting that is the biggest thing you could do for your business this week, month, and year. 

This is just the nature of building something.

Built 3 Agencies | 1 Exit | Founder @ Hydra Consulting | Founder @ HOWL Campfires | DM me “Grow” to learn how I can help you scale 🚀

Client Budget:🐴
Client Expectation: 🦄

This is your weekly reminder to simply charge more for the work you do. 

You attract better clients.
You can afford better talent. 
You're motivated to do your best work.

The bar is still so low to be a good agency.

Underrated client retention hack:

Be reliable and do what you actually said you would when you closed them.

Happy Thanksgiving! So much to be thankful for.

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