THE Water Heater Company

Over the first several years of building THE Water Heater Company, I partnered with multiple digital marketing agencies. Every one of them taught me something, and every one of them helped us get to where we are today. This isn't a story about good agencies versus bad agencies. It's about what I learned while searching for the right strategic partner.

When we were preparing to launch THE Water Heater Company in January 2019, we had already hired a digital marketing agency to build our website and help us establish our online presence. About a month before launch, they unexpectedly dropped us as a client due to a conflict of interest. Overnight, we found ourselves scrambling to find a new agency while trying to launch a brand-new business.

Like most startups, we didn't have the luxury of slowing down. We hired another agency, and they helped us get our company off the ground. They built our first website, designed our original van wraps, and were genuinely great people to work with. Looking back, though, I realized something that would become a recurring theme throughout my marketing journey.

I thought I was hiring experts so I wouldn't have to become a marketer myself.

Instead, I found myself spending an enormous amount of time thinking about digital marketing because I was the one bringing the strategy.

The work got done, but I was constantly asking the questions, bringing new ideas, and trying to figure out where the industry was headed. That wasn't what I thought I was paying for.

Over the next several years, we partnered with other marketing agencies. Every one of them had talented people, and every one of them brought something valuable to the table. But I kept running into the same feeling.

It wasn't that anyone was doing anything wrong.

It was that every agency seemed to be operating from the same playbook.

Two blogs per month.

Standard SEO.

Monthly reports.

Best practices.

Everyone was moving at roughly the same pace, following roughly the same strategy.

That led me to a question I couldn't stop asking myself:

If every agency is doing the same things at the same speed, how does anyone ever get ahead?

Around that time, I had started experimenting with AI. This was long before it became mainstream. ChatGPT had just come out, and even though it couldn't browse the internet yet, I knew something significant was happening.

I started looking for agencies that weren't simply reacting to where marketing was today. I wanted someone trying to understand where marketing would be tomorrow.

That's how I found CI Web Group.

My first meeting was supposed to be with Mike.

About fifteen minutes into the call, Jennifer Bagley joined.

She said something simple.

She had noticed THE Water Heater Company on their calendar, thought the name was interesting, and wanted to meet us.

That meeting lasted nearly three hours.

What struck me wasn't the technology.

It wasn't Webflow.

It wasn't AI.

It wasn't a sales presentation.

Jennifer spent most of that conversation trying to understand me.

She wanted to know how I thought.

She wanted to understand our business model.

She wanted to understand why we existed.

She wanted to understand where we were trying to go.

At one point, her son and daughter-in-law arrived with their baby. Jennifer held her grandson while we continued talking for hours about business, leadership, technology, and the future of marketing.

That conversation told me far more than any product demo ever could.

Two months later, just before Christmas, we scheduled another meeting.

December 23rd.

Three o'clock in the afternoon.

Most people were mentally on vacation.

Jennifer and Mike still took the time to spend another two-and-a-half to three hours talking through our business.

By the end of that meeting, we had made our decision.

Not because of software.

Not because of features.

Because of people.

A few weeks later, Jennifer introduced me to Hydra.

My immediate reaction wasn't, "Sign me up."

My reaction was, "Let's talk."

I wanted to understand the risks.

Hydra wasn't fully mature yet.

It was ambitious.

It was evolving rapidly.

I asked a lot of questions.

At the end of that conversation, I realized something.

I wasn't betting on software.

I was betting on Jennifer.

I believed in her vision.

I believed in the way she thought.

I believed she was building for where the industry was going instead of protecting where it had been.

Being an early adopter always carries risk.

Sometimes you pay a price for being early.

Other times, it becomes a competitive advantage.

For me, the decision wasn't really about Hydra.

It was about trusting the person building it.

I won't pretend the onboarding was easy.

In fact, it was probably the hardest onboarding process I've ever gone through.

Hydra was evolving incredibly fast.

Every time I thought I had completed everything, there seemed to be another layer. Some days it felt like the platform was improving by the hour.

Trying to keep up while also running my company wasn't easy.

But looking back, I understand why.

We weren't onboarding into a finished product.

We were participating in the creation of something new.

Today, our website has only been live for a few weeks.

It's far too early to claim massive business results.

What I can say is that our organic performance had already improved year over year while CI Web Group was simply hosting and maintaining our previous website. Now that our Hydra website is live, I believe we're just getting started.

The bigger change, though, has happened inside me.

Jennifer introduced me to an entirely different way of thinking about AI.

Not as a shortcut for creating generic content.

Not as a replacement for people.

But as a force multiplier for creativity, collaboration, speed, and execution.

That changed me.

I had been using AI since ChatGPT was first released, but working with Jennifer opened my eyes to what was actually possible.

Since then, I've built AI tools for our team.

I've fundamentally changed the way I think about solving problems.

I've been introduced to other founders and experts who continue expanding my perspective.

Instead of bringing fully formed projects to my marketing partner, I now bring ideas.

Together, we build them.

Iterate on them.

Improve them.

Many of the initiatives we're working on today never would have existed if Jennifer hadn't challenged the way I think.

One text message from her perfectly captures the culture she's built.

After I sent over a long list of ideas, she replied:

"Let me see what I can do, lol. I'll try anything. Break everything. It's my specialty."

I've never worked with another agency that responds that way.

What's been equally impressive is realizing that Jennifer isn't the exception inside her company.

She's the standard.

Mike.

Camille.

The rest of the team.

They all approach problems with the same curiosity, collaboration, and willingness to experiment.

That tells me this isn't one person's personality.

It's the culture.

One of the things I admire most about CI Web Group is something I deeply believe in myself.

Jim Collins calls it the Hedgehog Concept in Good to Great—finding the one thing you can be the best in the world at and relentlessly focusing on it.

Most marketing agencies try to be everything to everyone. They build websites, run PPC campaigns, manage social media, oversee Google Business Profiles, handle Yelp advertising, produce video content, and offer dozens of other services. The result is often a company that's competent at many things but exceptional at very few.

CI Web Group has taken the opposite approach.

They've intentionally stripped away the things they don't believe they can be the best at so they can focus on becoming world-class at building authority, creating advanced websites, and helping home service companies dominate organically.

As someone who built an entire company around specializing in one thing exceptionally well instead of trying to become another general plumbing company, that philosophy resonated with me immediately.

The last several months have been difficult for many home service companies.

Lead volume has slowed across the industry.

We're experiencing those same market conditions.

But my confidence has never been higher.

Not because everything is easy.

Because I believe we're building the right things.

My marketing partner no longer feels like a company that maintains my website.

It feels like a strategic partner helping shape the future of my business.

Looking back, I also realized something about how I choose partners.

Early in my career, I evaluated companies based on their size, their reputation, and how many services they offered.

Today, I evaluate people.

Companies don't innovate.

People do.

Culture doesn't innovate.

People create cultures that innovate.

If there's one lesson this journey has taught me, it's this:

Find someone who thinks better than you do.

Find someone who asks better questions than everyone else.

Find someone who is genuinely curious about your business before they're interested in selling to it.

Find someone who's willing to challenge your assumptions, expand your perspective, and help you see around corners you didn't even know existed.

Because you're not just hiring a marketing agency.

You're choosing a strategic partner.

I thought I was hiring a marketing agency.

What I actually found was a strategic partner who changed the way I think about my business.

For me, that's been the biggest impact CI Web Group has had on THE Water Heater Company—and I believe that impact will continue compounding for years to come.