54. Beers With Friends Over Boring Meetings, with Dana Hork, Founder, Beers With Friends

What if agency work felt like having beers with your friends instead of a boring meeting? Dana Hork started Beers With Friends because she was tired of the traditional agency model. As a former brand-side marketer, she knew what modern brand builders needed: speed, focus, great people, and a seat at the tables that matter. So she built an agency around 5-day creative sprints called "beer runs." Clients hire them for exactly one week at a time. The team brings the right experts. The client brings their best people and their brain. Everyone shows up ready to go. No black boxes. No three perfectly polished ideas in round two. Just real, fast, collaborative creative work. This week, host Lauren Douglass sits down with Beers With Friends Founder and CEO Dana to talk about why constraints fuel creativity, how to say no to the wrong clients, and why your biggest weakness might also be your superpower. Dana unpacks what clients get wrong about agencies, what agencies get wrong about clients, and why the old Don Draper way of doing things is dead. If you're thinking about starting something or are just curious about a totally different way of doing creative work, this one's for you. Let's get into it.