The Austin Agency He Quit After Two and a Half Years
The Story
Six years before founding Marketing Examined, Alex Garcia started a performance-based ad agency in Austin, Texas. The agency grew from local clients to working with brands like ONNIT, a major fitness and supplement company (Source 1).
Two and a half years in, he quit. “Agency life wasn’t for him” (Source 1). He loved media, loved people, and loved connecting the two through growth marketing, but the agency model didn’t fit (Source 1).
The decision led him to The Hustle’s growth team, where he helped scale their Daily Newsletter, Trends, and My First Million (Source 1). That experience became the foundation for Marketing Examined.
Lesson for Creators
Garcia’s agency was succeeding by conventional metrics: growing, landing bigger clients, expanding beyond Austin. He quit anyway because the model didn’t match what he wanted to build. The agency taught him growth marketing with real brands and real budgets. He took those skills to The Hustle, then to his own newsletter. The agency wasn’t a failure. It was paid training for a different career.
Related
- Learning Growth at The Hustle Before Building His Own — the next step after the agency
- From BCG and Mobile Apps to Newsletters via Two Singaporeans — Nathan May: pivot away from work that doesn’t fit, even when it’s succeeding