Navigating Corporate Terrain: Lessons on Leadership and Identity

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Is your agency falling behind in the AI revolution—while competitors pull ahead? If you’ve handed off AI adaptation to your team and progress still feels sluggish, you’re not alone.

The uncomfortable truth? Delegating AI could be the biggest threat to your agency’s future.

Today’s guest, Brandon Na, has seen firsthand how agencies rise—or fall—in the face of disruption. From early SEO days to the AI era, he’s learned what it really takes to lead through change. And it starts with not outsourcing the future.

Many employees feel more fear than excitement about AI—worried it could signal the end of their careers. Instead, agency owners should be very involved in this process and actively try to identify team members who are excited to learn about AI and already experiment with it on their own time. The agencies that will thrive aren't the ones that delegate AI innovation down the chain of command but the ones that build transformation strategies around those natural innovators.   

Brandon Na is the founder of Seattle Organic SEO, as well as a venture capital pro and acting CMO. His path into agency life started with a simple desire to never have to do cold sales. So instead, he hacked his way into visibility through SEO. This path took Brandon to South Korea, where he helped scale an education company by 1,400%. He eventually returned to the U.S., launched his agency, and dominated the search rankings in a matter of months—all from a handshake mentorship deal with a guy exiting the space.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• How you can avoid losing your way after ‘making it’.

• Will SEO survive AI?

• Why you shouldn’t delegate AI adoption. 

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From Amazon to Agency Life (And What Jeff Bezos Taught Him About Leadership)

Brandon started out working at future giants like Amazon and Expedia and could’ve had a very different career had he stayed. Working at tech giants like Amazon and Expedia might sound glamorous today—but back then, it wasn’t. Low pay, stock options that seemed worthless, and a corporate culture that left him unimpressed taught Brandon an early lesson: big titles don’t equal strong leadership.

From his experience with Bezos, he learned that big titles don’t always mean big character and that leadership—true leadership—isn't about prestige, but about clarity, adaptation, and purpose.

Next, Brandon had his first try at entrepreneurship with a real estate practice before he ever touched agency work. Knowing by experience that sales was just not for him, he wondered how to get people to find him, which naturally led him to find SEO.

In the early days of SEO, Brandon decided to master the craft before launching his agency. He took a few years to learn, test his skills, and leverage some contacts before starting his agency.

Why So Many Leaders Lose Their Drive After Hitting Big Milestones

Seeing how big CEOs started and how they’ve evolved, one wonders how they manage to turn it all around. How do they get to a point in their leadership where the stories go from being terrible at managing employees to making history? For Brandon, it’s about never getting too comfortable once they have the money.

These trailblazers who have managed to conquer the world will not just retire and live a quiet life, they’ll just choose other ways to create and make an impact. Many of them eventually move into venture capital or find other passions. It’s an advisable path for agency owners who end up selling their businesses, because otherwise they can end up losing their sense of purpose.

If you’re chasing the next milestone remember that if you don’t define your purpose beyond the hustle, the success will feel hollow.

Growth Comes from Pressure - So Turn It Up

Although living through the pressure of working in tech during those early years was not easy, Brandon now looks back and can see it with different eyes. As he has learned from his work as CMO: “If you’re stuck on a problem—make the problem bigger.” Because being too comfortable, you can lose your edge. It may take time, since with AI, market shifts, and internal team chaos pulling us in every direction, it's easy to lose clarity, but if you focus on finding that problem you’ll grow.

It can sound counterintuitive, but in his experience bigger problems force bigger focus, more urgency, and better thinking. It’s easy to spin your wheels when you’re “fine”—but when the pressure’s real, you find out what you’re made of.

Can SEO Still Win in an AI World?

When a friend of Brandon told him he barely used Google anymore, he assumed it was because as a computer engineer, he was just ahead of everyone else in these trends. However, just five weeks later he realized he also was now using AI. After years in SEO, even he finds himself turning to AI tools like ChatGPT instead of even opening Google.

So is Google still relevant, or has AI already taken the crown? The bottom line is the way people find information is changing. And that has massive implications for how your agency helps clients get found.

Whether you’re creating blog content, developing ad strategies, or running full-scale marketing campaigns—AI is in the mix now. Platforms like Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and even custom-trained agents are already out in the wild. And they’re fast.

Ultimately, the game is changing fast, and agencies that aren’t adapting might already be falling behind.

If your agency is still running fully human-powered workflows while other teams are using agents to ideate, write, design, test, and iterate faster than you can blink, you’re already behind.

But don’t panic. The solution isn't panic—it’s leadership.

Don’t Delegate the Future—Own It

One of the biggest traps agency owners fall into is just telling their team to “Figure out how to use AI,” and walking away. The reality is your team may not be motivated to lean in. Many employees view AI as a threat to their job—not a tool to make them better.

Instead, try:

• Identifying the team members already experimenting with AI tools.

• Giving those people the mandate and the resources to go deeper.

• Investing in training and testing to see what works—and what doesn’t.

• And most importantly, lead the charge yourself.

The agencies that survive the next 3–5 years won’t just be the ones doing better creative—they’ll be the ones moving faster, thinking smarter, and leading with tech.

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