187: John Saunders: Building the ultimate operating engine for a modern agency

What’s up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with John Saunders, VP of Product at Nova / Power Digital Marketing. Power Digital is a San Diego-based growth marketing firm. Nova is their proprietary marketing technology.

• (00:00) - Intro
• (01:15) - In This Episode
• (03:26) - How an Agency Operating System Reduces Silos
• (05:47) - Why Context Driven Analytics Replaces Dashboards
• (09:15) - Building a Single Source of Truth in Marketing Data
• (16:00) - Building an AI Cockpit Before AI Copilots
• (18:26) - Why Data Accuracy and Transparency Build AI Trust
• (28:28) - Building Internal Data Products for Agencies
• (34:09) - Reducing Complexity in Martech Product Development
• (39:16) - How To Tell If An AI Tool Is More Than A Wrapper
• (46:49) - How to Build Client Portals That Clients Actually Use
• (49:50) - Finding Happiness in Building and Experimentation

Summary: Agencies are drowning in tools, dashboards, and AI gimmicks, but John Saunders has spent years building something that actually works. Nova started as an internal fix and grew into an operating system that strips away noise, delivers context with every number, and gives AI a cockpit filled with real operational data. Along the way John learned that trust comes from accuracy, speed, and transparency, and that adoption only happens when products remove steps instead of adding them. From client portals to analytics to AI, his story shows how clarity beats complexity and why agencies that chase it finally get technology that feels like leverage instead of liability.
About John

John Saunders is the Vice President of Product at Power Digital Marketing. He leads strategy, UX, operations, and AI for nova, the agency’s enterprise marketing technology platform that connects with more than 2,000 integrations. Since 2021, he has grown the technology team from 2 to 40 members, delivered more than 20 production-ready applications, and developed intelligence tools that improve client retention and increase lifetime value. He has also built partnerships with Google, Meta, TikTok, and Amazon that resulted in multi-million-dollar funding and new product capabilities.

Prior to his current role, John served as Vice President of Technology. He built the first applications that became the foundation of nova and improved scalable systems, API integrations, cloud performance, and automation for the firm. He previously worked as Software Development Project Manager at Internet Marketing Inc. (now REQ), and Co-Founder of Brightside Network Media, a platform that combined technical design with storytelling to highlight culture and music.

John has also mentored students at the Lavin Entrepreneurship Center at San Diego State University. He guided undergraduates in UX, product strategy, and agile workflows while encouraging leadership and collaboration in a hands-on environment.

How an Agency Operating System Reduces Silos

Agencies are drowning in tools. CRMs handle sales, project boards track tasks, invoicing software manages billing, and analytics dashboards measure performance. Each tool may solve a specific problem, but together they create a scattered system where every team works in isolation. John Saunders has seen this problem repeat across agencies, and his solution is direct. Build a single operating system that reflects how the agency actually works rather than relying on disconnected platforms that never sync.

John described Nova as that system. Instead of forcing teams to reinvent contracts or pricing every time, Nova uses a service library with set rates and guidelines. Automation handles the repetitive work, so teams spend less time drafting proposals and more time serving clients. Nova acts as a hub for the agency’s real workflows. It connects sales, operations, and delivery into one shared environment where everyone can see the same information.

"With an agency OS, we are trying to fix this problem where there are so many tools and platforms that people work on, and that inherently creates silos. With one system focused on operations, it provides a central spot for everybody to work from, which creates efficiency and alignment."

The need for this kind of system is obvious once you look closely at agency life. Account managers keep their own spreadsheets, sales leaders adjust pricing rules on the fly, and creative teams use tools that never connect with operations. The result is misalignment, duplicated effort, and wasted hours. An operating system forces the agency to define its rules and then codify them into the platform. That way you can cut the daily noise and create repeatable workflows that scale.

Agencies often assume the next SaaS subscription will solve their problems. The reality is that the core problems are internal. Building an operating system like Nova does not replace tools, it makes them work together. It creates one place where every team operates from the same playbook. That way you can reduce inefficiency, strengthen alignment, and free people to focus on client work instead of wrestling with tool silos.

Key takeaway: An agency operating system reduces silos by centralizing contracts, pricing, and service guidelines inside one platform. Standardized rules and automation save time, while a shared hub keeps every team aligned. Instead of adding another tool to an already bloated stack, define your workflows, codify them into an operating system, and create an environment where teams work together with speed and clarity.

Why Context Driven Analytics Replaces Dashboards

Dashboards impress people for about five minutes. They get pasted into a slide deck, admired in a meeting, and then forgotten. They look sleek but rarely change how teams actually work. John Saunders describes them as “dead weight,” and he is right. Most dashboards are static trophies, not decision-making tools.

John insists that analytics must carry a point of view. Agencies do their best work when they stop presenting raw numbers and start tying those numbers to judgment. Nova, the product his team builds at Power Digital, bakes that opinion into everything it produces. Every measurement is run through a filter: does this reflect the right way to evaluate performance? If the answer is no, it never makes it to the client. That rule sounds simple, yet it separates meaningful analytics from the noise of charts that show data without direction.

He also points out that numbers without context fail to tell the full story. Performance depends on more than what a database records. It depends on client conversations, launch dates, migrations, and campaign decisions that live outside structured tables. Nova integrates those details directly into the analytics layer. The result is data that reads like a story, not a sterile snapshot.

“Performance isn’t just the data itself. It’s everything around it.”

John sees analytics moving toward systems that feel conversational. Static dashboards freeze data in time, while teams need a living engine that blends numbers with the narrative behind them. Instead of flipping between charts and email threads, the analysis itself should surface both at once. That way analytics become a dialogue with context, not a set of disconnected metrics.

Key takeaway: Treat dashboards as disposable and focus on analytics that combine three things: a strong opinion about what matters, context from the real world, and delivery in a format that feels like a conversation. When you give your team numbers plus narrative, you give them clarity that drives decisions. Replace static charts with context driven analytics so people act faster, waste less energy, and actually understand what the data is te...