Mike Bodkin

Before I was ten years old, I was directing. My dad's VHS camcorder, whichever friends showed up, and our homemade Saturday Night Live remakes. Nobody asked me to make anything. I just couldn't stop. That itch turned into fifteen years in Hollywood. I was employee number 30 at Stereo D, the studio that converted films like Titanic and The Avengers to 3D, and four years later we were 1,500 people worldwide. That is where I learned what scale actually feels like from the inside. Then I caught the entrepreneurial bug, and it never let go. In 2015, I started Giant Propeller with a partner: a full-service digital marketing & creative agency, and we were eComm-centric, back when eComm was the coolest place on the internet. We grew to 40 people at our peak. In March 2023, I sold the business to a group in New York and stayed two years to hand it off right. Look, I bootstrapped the whole thing. I know what it feels like to be on the edge of missing payroll. I know what a rough partnership feels like from the inside, because I had one, worked through it, and picked a better partner the second time. And I know the feeling when the team clicks, and the work sells itself. All of it is still in my bones. The move that changed my business happened almost by accident. I moved to Miami during COVID, and somewhere in a conversation, another founder said the sentence that changed everything: "Have you tried Latin America?" I hired one graphic designer to find out. Same output, about 70% less cost, and it changed how I thought about my agency, my business, and my future. By the time I exited, a third of my staff was senior LatAm marketing talent. Today that is my whole company: Talent Scout (www.gettalentscout.com), where we hand-pick senior marketing, creative, and ops specialists in Latin America and embed them inside North American agencies and brands. To be clear about what I'm not: I'm not the guy who plugs in the keywords, designs eye-popping creative, or runs your paid media. I am the guy who built the machine around all of it. Pricing, resourcing, hiring, selling, scaling, exiting. The visionary side of building and growing businesses. Who do I love talking to? Agency owners anywhere from just-an-idea to 50 million in revenue, founders doing their own selling, and marketing leaders building their first real senior team. Bring me bootstrapping, team building, selling your agency and what buyers actually look for, or what happens after the exit. I stayed two years. Ask me anything. I am part of Entrepreneurs' Organization, Post Exit Founders, ProVisors, and the Captain of the Miami Speakeasy Mastermind chapter. What I like most is putting those networks to work for the people I mentor. The calls that changed my path were with people a few steps ahead of me who told me the truth without dressing it up. That's the call you'll get from me. Book a session and let's get to know one another! I am looking forward to helping you on your journey.

• 

  Bootstrapping

  Every company I have built was bootstrapped. No investors, no safety net, and yes, a few nights staring at payroll math. I got to an exit anyway. If you are funding growth out of cash flow and every hire feels like a bet, that is a conversation I have lived a hundred times. Bring me the real numbers and we will figure out the next move.

• 

  Building a team

  I grew my agency to 40 people, and the smartest thing I did was rebuild the roster: 12 of those seats became senior Latin American specialists, same output, fraction of the cost. Now I build teams for other agencies every day. Tell me what is breaking and I will help you figure out which hire actually fixes it, and which hire you should not make yet.

• 

  Career guidance

  Twenty years in filmmaking, then post-production exec, then agency founder, then an exit, now a recruiter. None of those leaps felt safe when I made them. If you are staring at your own leap between industries or from operator to owner, I am happy to compare notes. The jump is usually smaller than it looks from the ledge.

• 

  Leadership

  I have led inside a 1,500-person company and inside a room where the whole company fits at one table. I have had a strong partnership, a rough one, and the strange two years of working for the people who bought my company. The hard people calls are the job. Bring me yours and I will tell you what I actually did, not what the books say.

• 

  Operations

  Real talk: operations is not my strong suit, and admitting that is why my companies worked. I found partners who love the machine so I could stay on vision and revenue. Ten years of agency P&Ls taught me where the money actually goes. If you are trying to figure out what seat you should be in, that is my favorite conversation.

• 

  Remote work

  My whole company runs remote across four countries, and it works because of one thing: time zones. Everyone is at the table all day, not handing work off overnight. I learned it with one hire and rebuilt two companies around it. Happy to get into the practical stuff: sourcing, onboarding, rituals, and what nobody writes down.

• 

  Webflow

  2 years of experience

  Talent Scout's whole site runs on Webflow, and I treat it as a growth channel, not a brochure. This year we rebuilt our SEO and AI-visibility program on it page by page, and it is turning into real inbound, including our first booked call attributed to ChatGPT. Happy to talk about treating your site as pipeline.

• 

  Claude

  3 years of experience

  I run big parts of my company on Claude, from research and content to the operations behind our recruiting engine. It changed how I think about staffing: the winning team of the next five years is senior people plus AI leverage. Happy to show you exactly how I use it day to day, and where it still falls flat.

• 

  Pipedrive

  2 years of experience

  Pipedrive is my CRM and it is where founder-led sales lives or dies. Every call, every check-in, every follow-up cadence for Talent Scout runs through it, and my lead source field is how I know exactly where every deal came from. Happy to show you how I keep a whole pipeline moving as the founder doing the selling.

• 

  Creative Agency

  Started one in 2015, grew it to 40 people, sold it in 2023. Now agencies are my clients: shops from 2 to 50 million in revenue, plus solopreneurs with an idea and a laptop. I have sat in almost every seat an agency has.

• 

  E-Commerce

  My agency came up in the golden age of ecommerce, and we built the whole shop around those brands, from scrappy DTC startups to very large ones. I have lived the margin squeeze from the agency side of the table.

• 

  Digital Marketing

  Ten years running a full service digital marketing agency. I was never the one plugging in keywords. I was the one building teams around the people who did, and making the numbers work at the end of the month.

• 

  Recruiting

  Talent Scout is what I do all day now: hand-picking senior marketing specialists in Latin America for North American agencies, including a New York performance agency doing over 50 million. I built it as an agency operator, not a headhunter, and that is the whole point.

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/eosouthflorida_eosoflo-trailblazerofthemonth-entrepreneurship-activity-7486458201631096832-ZaYu/
• https://www.agencyoutsight.com/podcast/episode-154
• https://canvasrebel.com/meet-mike-bodkin/
• https://rossdrakes.com/podcasts/radeo-65-mike-bodkin-the-unexpected-roi-of-checking-your-entrepreneurial-energy/
• https://www.citybiz.co/article/879029/south-florida-serial-entrepreneur-mike-bodkin-scores-his-next-success-with-talent-scout/