The marketing agency AI workshop that stopped them watching and got them building

Most agencies know AI is reshaping their world. Very few have got their whole team actually using it. Digital Surfer did, and within a week of our workshop, one of their people had built a working profitability app on his own.

This is how we did it, and why marketing agencies are the businesses I most love helping right now.

The client

Digital Surfer is a digital marketing agency in Burleigh Heads. They do SEO, paid ads, web design, the lot. The owners, Pete and Renée Curran, with their GM Ryan Chilton, could see where AI was heading, and they did not want to be late to it.

Their problem was the one every agency has. They knew AI mattered. They just hadn't turned that into their team actually using it, day to day, in their real roles.

An agency is ten specialised jobs

The SEO specialist, the paid ads manager, the web developer, the salesperson and the finance owner all need completely different things from AI. A generic "here's ChatGPT" session helps none of them.

On top of that, a lot of their team had never really used AI. Where there's something new, there's resistance. As Renée put it, some staff had never touched it, so there was a natural pushback to work through.

"We got Chris from Proactive to come into our business to help us take it to the next level with AI. Not to take over our business, but to make it more productive and in line with what the market actually needed. A lot of our staff had never used AI, so there was a bit of resistance. Chris gathered information on their hurdles and where they could improve, then ran a workshop with a personalised workbook for every one of them, specific to their roles."

Renée Curran, Owner & CFO, Digital Surfer

I don't run generic company workshops

Here's the method we used with Digital Surfer, and it's the same one I bring to any agency.

• We surveyed and interviewed every person first. What they know about AI, what their role really involves, and the mundane tasks that bore them. That single step drove everything else.
• We built an individual worksheet for every person, tuned to their exact role. Pete in sales, Kyle in SEO, Niina in paid ads, Venus in technical SEO, Todd in web dev, Renée in finance, Ryan in operations. Pete's feedback said it best: he was so glad it wasn't generic.
• We built it around their actual tech stack. Windows, Google Workspace, Asana, Toggl, HubSpot, Xero. Not a stack from a slide.
• We gave everyone a 90-day plan they could run solo. Just them, their worksheet, and Claude. No hand-holding.

It ran across two sessions. The first was strategy with Renée and Ryan. The second was a three-hour, on-site session with the whole team, plus Venus dialling in from the Philippines.

The results speak for themselves

Here's the part I care about. It worked without me in the room.

Ryan took what he learned and, inside a week, built a working profitability app on his own: clients, campaigns, costs, hourly rates and capacity. Renée got invoice deposits running through the AI tool in Xero. Two real tools, built by the team, on their own machines.

"For all the different roles that we have here at Digital Surfer, from our SEO specialists, web designers, paid ads, through to our management team as well, it's given us a whole range of different use cases that we can actually implement on a day-to-day basis. In the first month since our workshop with Chris, we've been able to develop a whole dashboard that's tracking profitability and time tracking. The team upstairs is using it for pretty much everything, day to day."

Ryan Chilton, General Manager, Digital Surfer

That's the difference between a workshop and an integration. A workshop teaches. An integration leaves the business building on its own the week after.

"It's had an amazing impact on our business, especially from a management point of view. Every staff member being proactive and loving using Claude to take their job to the next level, getting results for clients easier, because they're not doing all the mundane tasks. I would recommend it to any business owner. Don't be fearful of AI. It's not taking over anybody's roles. It's actually making everybody's roles easier."

Renée Curran, Owner & CFO, Digital Surfer

Why I love working with agencies

Two reasons.

First, this is my world. Thirty years in marketing, multimedia and digital strategy. I understand what an SEO specialist, a paid ads manager and a web developer actually do all day, so I can point AI at the real job, not a demo of it. I even wrote a book on marketing strategy and have been hands-on with the marketing and advertising tactics.

Second, after owning an agency for 20 years, I can appreciate just how different the maths for an agency is. You don't lose your expertise to AI; you multiply it. Everyone can use AI now. What they can't do is be you, using AI, with thirty years of craft behind it. Your profitability goes up while your administration hours go down. That's not a threat to an agency; it's the best productivity lever you've had in years.

To anybody who thinks that agencies using AI are cheating the client, it's not. Many clients pay for a result. It's up to the agency to deliver that result for the contracted amount. In most cases, agencies have been losing money and time for years. Finally, agencies can better track their time and performance and accurately quote and deliver projects thanks to the assistance of AI.

The bit most agencies are missing

While you're integrating AI into how you work, AI is also changing how your clients get found. Search has splintered into Google, social and AI, and more buyers now ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity who to trust before they ever open Google.

That's a whole new service line for an agency, and a whole new way to keep your own clients ahead. We call it AI Search Visibility, and it's the GEO, AEO and LLMO work that gets a brand named inside the AI answers. If your agency wants to add it, or just wants to understand it, that's exactly what our AI Search Visibility pages walk through.

Bring it to your agency

If you run a marketing agency and you're tired of watching AI from the sidelines, this is what I do. I come in, work out what each person actually needs, and leave your team building real tools inside a week.