The least efficient thing I do
The least efficient thing I do every week is also the most profitable thing I do for my clients.
It's driving to their office and sitting in a room with them.
On paper, it makes no sense. There's the drive, the parking, the coffee that goes cold while we talk. Add it up and an in-person meeting can eat half a day that a video call would have wrapped in 45 minutes. If you ran Revvia purely off a spreadsheet, you'd cut it first.
I won't, and this note is about why.
Here in North County there's a surf cam for just about every break. You can check the swell from your kitchen with a cup of coffee. It's useful. But nobody has ever learned a break from the surf cam. You learn it by paddling out, sitting in the lineup, and feeling where the sets actually come in.
A video call is the surf cam. The room is the lineup.
The photo at the top of this post is from a recent Drain Mob meeting. Their training room, whiteboards on the wall, the marketing overview open on my laptop, and their team around the table. That is exactly the setting I am talking about.
Moment for moment, I believe time in the room with a client leads to more real, measurable revenue change than anything else I do. More than the ad tweaks. More than the reports. It's the most time-consuming part of my job, and it's the part I'd protect last.
The myth: marketing is a Zoom call and a dashboard
A lot of the marketing industry has decided that being in the room is optional. Maybe even old-fashioned.
You've probably met this model. You sign with an agency you found online. You get a kickoff call, a shared Slack channel, and a login to a dashboard. Your account gets handed to someone you've never met, in a time zone you have to look up. Questions go into a ticket queue. Once a month, someone walks you through a slide deck over a screen share.
None of that is evil. Some of it is genuinely convenient. But here's what that model can't do: it can't hear what you didn't say.
And in my experience, the stuff that never makes it into the kickoff questionnaire is exactly the stuff that moves revenue. The tension between sales and operations. The product the owner quietly loves but the team never pushes. The customer complaint that everyone in the building knows about and nobody mentioned to the agency.
You don't find those things on a dashboard. You find them sitting at the table, with your laptop closed, paying attention.
That's one of the biggest advantages of hiring a local marketing company, and I think founders undervalue it. When your marketing partner is 20 minutes away, the room is always an option. When they're 2,000 miles away, it almost never is.
The best fixes come from listening to the C-suite talk to each other
Here's something I didn't expect when I started Revvia. Some of our best strategies don't come from anything I say in a meeting. They come from what the leadership team says to each other while I'm sitting there.
When a CEO talks to an agency, they give the polished version. When a CEO talks to their own operations lead, you get the real one. The worry about cash flow in the slow months. The disagreement about which customers are actually profitable. The thing frontline staff keep getting wrong that undercuts every promotion.
I spent years as a pastor before I started this company. I learned a lot more about people at kitchen tables than I ever did from the pulpit. Business is the same. People tell you the truth when they forget you're there.
One example. We were sitting with the leadership of a wellness franchise we work with, and the conversation was about pricing at the top of the menu. That's where everyone's attention was. But as the team talked it through with each other, it became clear the real problem was at the bottom: the entry point was where new customers were slipping away. We also heard how sign-ups actually worked at the front counter, which told us the trial offer needed to be simple enough that no one could get it wrong.
Neither of those insights was in a brief. Both changed the plan. And neither would have surfaced if I'd been a face in a video grid waiting for my agenda item.
That's the pattern. The C-suite tells you the problem. The C-suite talking to each other tells you the fix.
Ideas just happen better between humans in a room
I've tried to brainstorm over video calls. Everyone has. It's polite. People wait their turn. Somebody's muted when they finally say the good thing. Then the call ends exactly on time, and the half-formed idea goes with it.
In a room, ideas don't take turns. Someone sketches on a whiteboard, someone else grabs the marker and changes it, and a third person laughs and says, "What if we did the opposite?" That's usually when the good one shows up.
There's a lot you can't send through a webcam. You can see who leans in when an idea lands. You can see the owner go quiet when something touches a nerve. You can pick up a product, walk the floor, and see what the business actually looks like from the customer's side of the counter.
A good example: Peter Grimm Hats was preparing a booth for Surf Expo, the big surf industry buying show. We stood in their warehouse with the booth panels mocked up and the hat racks right there. With the real space in front of us, the layout almost designed itself: new styles for 2027 in one zone, proven sellers in another, core surf in the third. Looking at a floor plan on a screen, I don't think we'd have landed there as fast.
I play guitar, and this is the closest thing I know to a jam session. You can record your parts separately and email them back and forth. It works. But the magic happens when everybody's in the same room, reacting to each other in real time.
If you read my last Founder's Notes on AI, you know I believe the marketing superpower is human creativity. The room is where that superpower works best.
Deeper relationships make better ideas
There's one more reason I keep showing up, and it might be the biggest.
Relationships that meet in person go deeper. You shake hands. You meet the team. You hear about someone's kid's soccer game before the meeting starts and remember to ask about it next time. With five kids of my own, I've learned the real conversations at our house don't happen at the scheduled family meeting. They happen at the dinner table, when nobody's performing.
Client relationships work the same way. When trust is deeper, people stop editing themselves. They tell you the campaign idea they're secretly embarrassed by. They tell you the number that's keeping them up at night. And they'll actually let you push back, because they know you're on their side.
That's where the best ideas come from. Not from a smarter agency, but from a more honest conversation.
I'll be a little vulnerable here. Walking into rooms doesn't always come naturally to me. When I started our Built in San Diego series, I'd walk into local businesses to offer them a free feature article, and honestly, the first few times, it scared me. I'd sit in my car an extra minute working up the nerve. It still takes effort. But every single time, the conversation in person went further than any email ever could have.
In person, people stop treating you like a vendor and start treating you like part of the team. That shift is worth more than any tactic I know.
The honest trade-off
I want to be straight about the cost. Meeting in person is the most time-consuming thing I do. It limits how many clients we can take on. It's a big part of why we'll never be a massive national agency, and why I'm fine with that.
We don't meet in person for everything. Quick check-ins, approvals, and status updates are perfect for a call. Respecting a client's time matters too. But the meetings that decide strategy, the ones where the real problems and the big ideas live, I want to be in the room for those.
If you're a founder choosing a marketing partner, here's what I'd ask:
- Will I meet the person actually running my account? Not the salesperson. The person doing the work.
- Will you come to us? Can they show up at your office, your shop, or your warehouse when it matters?
- Will you sit in on our leadership conversations? The best partners want to hear how your team talks, not just what your team tells them.
- Have you walked our floor? You can't market a business you've never seen from the customer's side.
- Who do I call when something breaks? You want a name and a face, not a ticket number.
The room isn't nostalgia. It's strategy. It's where the real problems come out, where ideas build on each other, and where trust gets deep enough to say the hard thing. In my experience, that's where revenue starts to move.
If you're a business in San Diego County and you want a marketing partner who actually shows up, Revvia is a founder-led growth studio in Carlsbad. I'll bring the coffee.
God Bless,
Tim Holt - Revvia Marketing
Frequently asked questions
Why does Revvia meet with clients in person?
Revvia meets clients in person because the most useful insights often come from hearing a leadership team talk to each other, seeing the business firsthand, and building deeper trust. In Revvia's experience, that time leads to more meaningful revenue changes than any other single activity.
What are the benefits of hiring a local marketing agency?
A local marketing agency can meet you at your office, walk your location, and join leadership conversations in person. That makes it easier to understand your customers, uncover problems no one put in a brief, and build a working relationship where honest feedback flows both ways.
Are in-person marketing meetings better than video calls?
For strategy and brainstorming, often yes. In a room, ideas build on each other faster and people speak more openly. Video calls still work well for quick check-ins, approvals, and status updates, so Revvia uses both and saves in-person time for the meetings that shape strategy.
Does Revvia only work with San Diego businesses?
Revvia is based in Carlsbad and focuses on businesses across San Diego County, where in-person meetings are always an option. It also works with direct-to-consumer brands on the West Coast.
What should I ask a marketing agency before hiring them?
Ask whether you'll meet the person actually running your account, whether they'll come to your business, whether they'll sit in on leadership conversations, whether they've seen your business from the customer's side, and who you call when something breaks.
What does Revvia Marketing do?
Revvia Marketing is a founder-led growth studio in Carlsbad, California. It provides fractional CMO leadership, paid ads, SEO and AI search visibility, social media, branding, and in-house photo and video production, on month-to-month partnerships with no long-term contract.
