![[Fully Managed] Rich Brooks from flyte new media Ep. 67](https://penji.co/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/BLOG-IMAGE-Rich-Brooks-1.jpg)
Welcome to the Fully Managed Podcast
Shannon Donnelly (SD): All righty. Hello everyone and welcome to the Fully Managed Podcast, the podcast where we discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you on your business journey. I’m your host, Shannon, Penji’s partnership coordinator, and I’m joined here today with a very special guest, Rich Brooks from flyte new media. Thank you so much for joining me.
Rich Brooks (RB): Shannon, absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me.
SD: Thank you. So could you please start by telling us a little bit about yourself? Anything that you think would be relevant for the audience, how you got to this point in your professional career?
RB: Sure. I started my, what I now call a digital agency, back in 1997. So we’re about 27 plus years into this journey. That’s, I think, 1,000,006 in internet years or something like that. We’re up here in Portland, Maine. If I looked out my right window, I would actually see the Atlantic Ocean and Casco Bay. It’s a very nice place to be, really any time of year.
I have a full team here. We do website design, branding, paid search, paid social, SEO, and content marketing for a wide variety of different clients. Beyond running my agency, I also have another brand called The Agents of Change, which is a weekly podcast and an annual conference. The conference just turned 10 years old this year, and that’s an in-person conference we have up here in Portland, Maine. The podcast is every week, and we’re up to about episode 560-something at this point.
SD: Congratulations.
RB: So it’s been over 10 years of podcasting—interviewing a lot of very smart people on digital marketing. That’s the gist of my professional career, as you would say.
How flyte new media Began
SD: That is really cool. I’m very happy that you have your own podcast. It’s exciting to talk to another podcast host. I might ask you more about that later. But what I want to start with is: what inspired you to create flyte new media? Or I don’t know if it was called that when you started. How do you think its focus has changed from when you started to now?
RB: Yeah, things have obviously changed in 27 years, especially in digital marketing. It actually wasn’t called flyte new media when I first started. I called it B1 Communications, for really no good reason. It was just a name I put together when I was living in Boston.
When I moved up here to Maine, I connected with some local graphic designers. Just to tell you how long it’s been—when I first came here to find graphic designers to partner with, because I had no real design skills, I opened up the Yellow Pages. That was how we used to find businesses in the 90s. I went to the graphic design section, called the first designer in Portland, Maine, and told them: “If you’re getting requests to do websites and you don’t know how, I can help. You design them, I’ll build them.”
A couple of them took me up on that. One of them eventually asked me to build their site and offered to help me with my own design as a barter. But they said, “Your name is terrible,” and offered me a few alternatives. I went with flyte new media. It didn’t have intrinsic meaning to me at the time, but I liked it. There was a paper plane logo, and we went with that, although it’s been improved since.
RB: At first, it was just me building websites. Sometimes I designed them myself, sometimes I partnered with more talented designers. As time went on, I got busier and had to hire people. That was scary, but I started figuring out company roles. I moved from design to development, then from development to marketing. These days, I don’t do much client-facing work. There are people on my team who are better than me at every position—better designers, developers, marketers.
So my job now is to lift them up, support their professional journeys, and handle business development. That’s where I find my joy these days.
Building a Strong Team
SD: It’s really lovely to be able to trust your team. I think everyone strives to reach that point. What was the process for building your team? You mentioned the Yellow Pages creatives, but how did it evolve when the tech evolved? What was your vetting process like, and what kind of people do you look for?
RB: Early on, the vetting process was just finding people who responded to my ads in the newspaper. I had no business background or acumen. I wouldn’t say I’m hyper-competitive, but I hate to lose, and that drive kept things alive, even in lean years.
One of my first hires was a designer. As the tools got better, people started putting more stock into website design, and it became clear I was a terrible designer. My skills plateaued, so bringing in a real designer was a big first step.
At the beginning, we weren’t really doing marketing. It took years before we offered SEO. Once I started thinking about how to help businesses succeed beyond just giving them a website, we added SEO and later other services.
As we got busier, I started replicating roles—another designer, more developers. I handled all the marketing for a while, then realized we needed specialists: someone focused on SEO, someone else on paid search, etc. As the industry got more complex, I needed people who could go deeper.
Eventually, I realized I have a million ideas but I’m not great at getting them done. So I needed someone to balance me out. About five to ten years ago, I brought in a project manager. She eventually asked for more responsibility, and I had just finished reading the book Rocket Fuel, which talks about needing a visionary and an integrator. I’m the visionary—I love being the center of attention, brainstorming, but not doing the work. She’s great with systems and knows when to listen or ignore me.
When I came back from an AI conference full of ideas but made no progress a year later, I realized I needed her to implement my vision. Now we’re creating systems together. It’s all about understanding your strengths and building a team that fills in your gaps. Otherwise, you become a bottleneck to your own business.
How They’re Using AI
SD: You mentioned AI earlier. Can you talk about how you’re using it?
RB: I can talk about how I’m using it. We’re still figuring out how to implement it company-wide. I don’t use AI for writing. I still think humans, myself included, write better.
But I use AI for research, for structuring blog posts, and especially to identify gaps. AI reminds me of things I might’ve forgotten to include. On the backend, I use it for SEO optimization, grammar, flow—basically for feedback.
I also use it to review landing pages. I feed content into ChatGPT, prime it with what I want in a high-converting page, and get recommendations. It’s not that I or my team can’t do it without AI, but this speeds up our process. It’s an input, another voice in the room. Great for brainstorming or clarifying thinking when starting a new project.
Future Trends in Digital Marketing
SD: What kind of trends or changes in digital marketing are you excited about?
RB: AI is going to be the biggest story for a long time. It’s disrupting everything—especially SEO. People are creating way more content, but AI can’t offer personal experience. Google is looking for real, lived experience in content.
Meta and Google are shifting ad platforms toward AI, limiting human control. That could eventually make some agency roles obsolete. So we’re now focused on where human creativity still matters—messaging, landing pages, emotional resonance.
AI will take over repetitive tasks, and hopefully free us up to focus on where people still need people.
COVID and the Pivot to Remote Work
SD: I touched on COVID earlier. Since you’ve been around for so long, how did you navigate that?
RB: Like everyone else, we had to go remote. That was a big shift. But we were fortunate because businesses needed digital help more than ever.
We reached out to clients, offered free consults, published content, took leadership roles. That helped our visibility and strengthened relationships.
We even hired people remotely, which I’d never done before. It worked well. When we met in person later, it was wild realizing I didn’t even know how tall my team members were.
Now we’re navigating hybrid work and respecting everyone’s preferences. It’s ongoing, but we’ve learned a lot and grown stronger because of it.
Client Experience Matters
SD: I think the client experience is almost equally as important as the work you deliver—if not more.
RB: I’d agree. It might sound crazy, but a client who has a great experience is more likely to stick with you—even if the work isn’t perfect.
And if the work is amazing but the experience is bad, they won’t come back. Relationships really are everything in the service world.
If clients trust you and feel like you have their best interests in mind, they’ll be open to your ideas.
Final Thoughts
SD: Well, I think this is a perfect point to end on because we’re out of time. But I love the advice you’ve shared. Thank you so much.
RB: My pleasure, Shannon. Thank you.
SD: And thank you everyone for watching or listening. Please don’t forget to like and subscribe to be educated every episode, just like I get to be. Thank you so much.Welcome to the Fully Managed Podcast
Shannon Donnelly (SD): All righty. Hello everyone and welcome to the Fully Managed Podcast, the podcast where we discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you on your business journey. I’m your host, Shannon, Penji’s partnership coordinator, and I’m joined here today with a very special guest, Rich Brooks from flyte new media. Thank you so much for joining me.
Rich Brooks (RB): Shannon, absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me.
SD: Thank you. So could you please start by telling us a little bit about yourself? Anything that you think would be relevant for the audience, how you got to this point in your professional career?
RB: Sure. I started my, what I now call a digital agency, back in 1997. So we’re about 27 plus years into this journey. That’s, I think, 1,000,006 in internet years or something like that. We’re up here in Portland, Maine. If I looked out my right window, I would actually see the Atlantic Ocean and Casco Bay. It’s a very nice place to be, really any time of year.
I have a full team here. We do website design, branding, paid search, paid social, SEO, and content marketing for a wide variety of different clients. Beyond running my agency, I also have another brand called The Agents of Change, which is a weekly podcast and an annual conference. The conference just turned 10 years old this year, and that’s an in-person conference we have up here in Portland, Maine. The podcast is every week, and we’re up to about episode 560-something at this point.
SD: Congratulations.
RB: So it’s been over 10 years of podcasting—interviewing a lot of very smart people on digital marketing. That’s the gist of my professional career, as you would say.
How flyte new media Began
SD: That is really cool. I’m very happy that you have your own podcast. It’s exciting to talk to another podcast host. I might ask you more about that later. But what I want to start with is: what inspired you to create flyte new media? Or I don’t know if it was called that when you started. How do you think its focus has changed from when you started to now?
RB: Yeah, things have obviously changed in 27 years, especially in digital marketing. It actually wasn’t called flyte new media when I first started. I called it B1 Communications, for really no good reason. It was just a name I put together when I was living in Boston.
When I moved up here to Maine, I connected with some local graphic designers. Just to tell you how long it’s been—when I first came here to find graphic designers to partner with, because I had no real design skills, I opened up the Yellow Pages. That was how we used to find businesses in the 90s. I went to the graphic design section, called the first designer in Portland, Maine, and told them: “If you’re getting requests to do websites and you don’t know how, I can help. You design them, I’ll build them.”
A couple of them took me up on that. One of them eventually asked me to build their site and offered to help me with my own design as a barter. But they said, “Your name is terrible,” and offered me a few alternatives. I went with flyte new media. It didn’t have intrinsic meaning to me at the time, but I liked it. There was a paper plane logo, and we went with that, although it’s been improved since.
RB: At first, it was just me building websites. Sometimes I designed them myself, sometimes I partnered with more talented designers. As time went on, I got busier and had to hire people. That was scary, but I started figuring out company roles. I moved from design to development, then from development to marketing. These days, I don’t do much client-facing work. There are people on my team who are better than me at every position—better designers, developers, marketers.
So my job now is to lift them up, support their professional journeys, and handle business development. That’s where I find my joy these days.
Building a Strong Team
SD: It’s really lovely to be able to trust your team. I think everyone strives to reach that point. What was the process for building your team? You mentioned the Yellow Pages creatives, but how did it evolve when the tech evolved? What was your vetting process like, and what kind of people do you look for?
RB: Early on, the vetting process was just finding people who responded to my ads in the newspaper. I had no business background or acumen. I wouldn’t say I’m hyper-competitive, but I hate to lose, and that drive kept things alive, even in lean years.
One of my first hires was a designer. As the tools got better, people started putting more stock into website design, and it became clear I was a terrible designer. My skills plateaued, so bringing in a real designer was a big first step.
At the beginning, we weren’t really doing marketing. It took years before we offered SEO. Once I started thinking about how to help businesses succeed beyond just giving them a website, we added SEO and later other services.
As we got busier, I started replicating roles—another designer, more developers. I handled all the marketing for a while, then realized we needed specialists: someone focused on SEO, someone else on paid search, etc. As the industry got more complex, I needed people who could go deeper.
Eventually, I realized I have a million ideas but I’m not great at getting them done. So I needed someone to balance me out. About five to ten years ago, I brought in a project manager. She eventually asked for more responsibility, and I had just finished reading the book Rocket Fuel, which talks about needing a visionary and an integrator. I’m the visionary—I love being the center of attention, brainstorming, but not doing the work. She’s great with systems and knows when to listen or ignore me.
When I came back from an AI conference full of ideas but made no progress a year later, I realized I needed her to implement my vision. Now we’re creating systems together. It’s all about understanding your strengths and building a team that fills in your gaps. Otherwise, you become a bottleneck to your own business.
How They’re Using AI
SD: You mentioned AI earlier. Can you talk about how you’re using it?
RB: I can talk about how I’m using it. We’re still figuring out how to implement it company-wide. I don’t use AI for writing. I still think humans, myself included, write better.
But I use AI for research, for structuring blog posts, and especially to identify gaps. AI reminds me of things I might’ve forgotten to include. On the backend, I use it for SEO optimization, grammar, flow—basically for feedback.
I also use it to review landing pages. I feed content into ChatGPT, prime it with what I want in a high-converting page, and get recommendations. It’s not that I or my team can’t do it without AI, but this speeds up our process. It’s an input, another voice in the room. Great for brainstorming or clarifying thinking when starting a new project.
Future Trends in Digital Marketing
SD: What kind of trends or changes in digital marketing are you excited about?
RB: AI is going to be the biggest story for a long time. It’s disrupting everything—especially SEO. People are creating way more content, but AI can’t offer personal experience. Google is looking for real, lived experience in content.
Meta and Google are shifting ad platforms toward AI, limiting human control. That could eventually make some agency roles obsolete. So we’re now focused on where human creativity still matters—messaging, landing pages, emotional resonance.
AI will take over repetitive tasks, and hopefully free us up to focus on where people still need people.
COVID and the Pivot to Remote Work
SD: I touched on COVID earlier. Since you’ve been around for so long, how did you navigate that?
RB: Like everyone else, we had to go remote. That was a big shift. But we were fortunate because businesses needed digital help more than ever.
We reached out to clients, offered free consults, published content, took leadership roles. That helped our visibility and strengthened relationships.
We even hired people remotely, which I’d never done before. It worked well. When we met in person later, it was wild realizing I didn’t even know how tall my team members were.
Now we’re navigating hybrid work and respecting everyone’s preferences. It’s ongoing, but we’ve learned a lot and grown stronger because of it.
Client Experience Matters
SD: I think the client experience is almost equally as important as the work you deliver—if not more.
RB: I’d agree. It might sound crazy, but a client who has a great experience is more likely to stick with you—even if the work isn’t perfect.
And if the work is amazing but the experience is bad, they won’t come back. Relationships really are everything in the service world.
If clients trust you and feel like you have their best interests in mind, they’ll be open to your ideas.
Final Thoughts
SD: Well, I think this is a perfect point to end on because we’re out of time. But I love the advice you’ve shared. Thank you so much.
RB: My pleasure, Shannon. Thank you.
SD: And thank you everyone for watching or listening. Please don’t forget to like and subscribe to be educated every episode, just like I get to be. Thank you so much.
