#68: Thriving Through 38 Years of Change: The Smart Finds Story
Most agencies don’t fail because they’re bad at marketing.
They fail because they can’t adapt fast enough when the ground shifts underneath them.
I’ve seen agencies reinvent themselves every 6–9 months just to stay relevant. So when I sat down with Melih Oztalay, CEO of Smart Finds Marketing, my goal wasn’t to talk tactics, it was to understand how an agency survives for 38 years in an industry that constantly eats its own.
What followed was a masterclass in agency scaling, operational decision making, and why AI isn’t optional anymore, it’s assumed.
This conversation wasn’t about trends.
It was about what actually keeps an agency alive when everything changes.
The Real Secret to Agency Longevity: Relentless Adaptation
Smart Finds Marketing didn’t last 38 years by being sentimental about how things “used to work.”
Melih started in traditional media, moved into internet services in the 90s, became fully digital by 2004, and hasn’t looked back since. That transition wasn’t gradual, it was decisive.
Here’s the key insight most agency owners miss:
Stability comes from changing faster than your clients expect you to.
When budgets shifted away from traditional media, Smart Finds didn’t try to defend a shrinking revenue stream. They exited it entirely. When ISPs stopped making sense as a business model, they sold that division. When digital became the core growth engine, they committed fully.
This is agency scaling done right, not adding services for the sake of growth, but cutting aggressively to focus on what compounds.
Why Early Adopters Win (And “Wait and See” Agencies Lose)
One thing became very clear early in our conversation: Melih is an early adopter by design.
And that’s not a personality trait, it’s an operational strategy.
In agency land, waiting for something to “prove itself” is usually code for falling behind. Whether it was SEO in the early 2000s, social media in the late 2000s, or AI today, the agencies that win are the ones willing to move before the market fully understands what’s happening.
Melih framed it simply:
You don’t adopt technology because it’s shiny
You adopt it because the market is already shifting
Straight lines don’t work in this industry. You turn left or right or you get run over.
AI Isn’t a Value Prop Anymore, It’s the Baseline
One of my favorite moments in this conversation was around how agencies talk about AI.
If your website still says “We use AI”, you’re already behind.
That’s like saying “We use the internet.”
Melih made a critical distinction that every agency owner needs to internalize:
Clients don’t care that you use AI. They care how it changes revenue.
Smart Finds doesn’t sell AI as a feature. They embed it directly into client outcomes, especially lead generation.
They built an AI powered buying journey that adapts in real time based on how prospects interact with a website:
Time on site
Pages visited
Visit frequency
Funnel stage behavior
Instead of static CTAs, prospects see contextual prompts that evolve as buying intent increases.
Top of funnel? Soft education.
Bottom of funnel? Direct sales pressure.
This isn’t automation for automation’s sake. It’s AI as a conversion accelerator.
A Real AI Lead Generation Case Study (With Numbers)
Let’s talk about results because vibes don’t pay the bills.
Using this AI driven system, Smart Finds worked with a B2B technology company and delivered the following over 12 months:
Daily leads doubled (2.5 → 5 per day)
94% increase in U.S. leads
198% year over year growth in global leads
Annual leads jumped from ~1,000 to 3,500+
And no, this didn’t happen in 30 days.
It happened through disciplined execution:
Continuous A/B/C/D testing
SEO driven content
Behavioral AI insights
Funnel-specific CTAs
Ongoing optimization across every key page
This is what scalable client acquisition actually looks like when AI is used strategically not as a novelty.
The Financial Crisis That Nearly Ended Everything
Every long running agency has a scar.
For Smart Finds, it was the 2008 financial crisis and Detroit was ground zero.
Clients stopped paying overnight.
Six figures disappeared in 30 days.
Even a year of operating expenses wouldn’t have saved most agencies.
The hardest part wasn’t the revenue loss, it was letting go of people.
That moment reshaped the agency forever and led to two critical operational decisions:
1. Exiting B2C Completely
B2C projects were chaotic, emotionally driven, and unpredictable. Even when revenue looked good, stress and volatility were off the charts.
2. Going All In on B2B
B2B brought:
Longer term thinking
Better ROI dynamics
Fewer closed deals needed to be profitable
More predictable operations
Fourteen years later, Melih hasn’t looked back.
This shift alone dramatically improved agency profitability and leadership sanity.
The Hiring Philosophy That Built a 14 Year Team
One of the most actionable lessons from this conversation was around hiring.
Instead of cold resumes, Smart Finds hires almost exclusively through referrals and then compounds that approach.
The Referral Hiring Loop:
Hire someone you trust
Ask them who they trust
Repeat
“Birds of a feather flock together” isn’t just a saying, it’s a hiring strategy.
Since 2011, this approach built a 25 person team that’s worked together for over a decade. They may argue across departments but they can still sit at the same dinner table.
That’s real culture.
And it’s rare.
What Actually Matters When Hiring in a Modern Agency
Degrees don’t matter nearly as much as most founders think.
Here’s what does matter:
A deep understanding of the internet
Baseline marketing literacy
Comfort with systems, processes, and iteration
Ability to work inside structured workflows
Creative instincts and strategic thinking are harder to teach than tools. Technology can be trained. Taste and judgment can’t.
Strong agencies don’t hire for credentials, they hire for foundational understanding and adaptability.
The Big Takeaway for Agency Owners
If you remember one thing from this conversation, let it be this:
Longevity isn’t about being right. It’s about being early and willing to let go.
AI is not a trend.
B2B focus isn’t a niche.
Process beats heroics every time.
Agencies that survive the next decade won’t be louder, they’ll be more operationally disciplined, more adaptive, and more honest about what actually drives revenue.
That’s the playbook Melih has been running for 38 years.
And it’s still working.
If you’re ready to uncover your agency’s biggest bottleneck and start scaling intentionally, I offer a free Agency Mini Diagnostic. It takes 3-5 minutes and reveals exactly where to start to unlock growth.
Check it out here: agencyuplift.co/mini
