Rip up the playbook: Kathryn Byberg, Little Leaf | Ep:008

FREE AGENCY VALUATION (5-min assessment, PDF report): https://moveatpace.com/agency-valuation/Kathryn Byberg founded Little Leaf Agency (https://littleleafagency.com/) in 2021 after 10+ years inside the sexual wellness industry, including a Shanghai posting as Global PR Manager at LELO. Five years later, Little Leaf is a 14-person fully remote team across the UK, Europe, the US and Canada, the only specialist PR agency in the world for its category. Kathryn won XBIZ Marketing Executive of the Year in January 2026.Every marketing channel most agencies rely on is either restricted, censored, or closed off entirely. Google Ads shut off overnight. Instagram accounts with 700,000 followers disappear without warning. Times Square billboards refuse the campaign. The standard playbook does not apply, so Kathryn built a different one.In this episode we talked about:The career path from science to journalism to sports PR to Shanghai to founding the agencyWhy the marketing funnel isn't a funnel anymore, it's a web, and how AI summaries forced the shiftWinning the two or three product slots inside an LLM answer (and why Reddit, Substack and YouTube are suddenly load-bearing)The Bolesa Instagram account that vanished overnight with 700,000 followers, and what platform risk really looks likeBuilding a 14-person remote team by cherry-picking former colleagues and category peers, not posting jobsServing competing clients inside a small niche using siloed pods and clean Chinese wallsGuerrilla PR wins the paid channels could never deliver (a sex toy on ITV's This Morning on Valentine's Day)Why the recognition (Cannes Lion, Executive of the Year) opens doors the category usually keeps shutThe Spain expansion this year and Germany nextKathryn did not set out to build a sellable business. She set out to build a better one. The result is the same. This episode covers what that looks like for two levers: client concentration (how a niche specialist serves competing clients without losing either) and repeatable delivery (productising a playbook for an industry where the old playbook is banned).Want to work with me?Take the free Agency Valuation and find out what your agency could be worth: https://moveatpace.com/agency-valuation/Join 200+ agency owners getting weekly frameworks: https://moveatpace.com/newsletter/Connect with me: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/c-mca-0a9b6b160/ Website: https://moveatpace.com Podcast hub: https://moveatpace.com/podcast/ Email: [email protected]