The Founder Who Built an AI ‘Ghost Agency’ to End the $3.5K/Month Marketing Tax
Evan Keller, Founder and CEO of Potions (full name assumed for narrative purposes), saw a hidden tax eating away at the profits and time of Small to Medium Businesses (SMBs) across New York and the nation: the Marketing Agency Tax.
For years, content creation—specifically newsletter marketing—has been a necessary but painful burden. Most SMBs spend up to 10 hours a week on it. For the 50% who outsource, the typical agency cost is around $3,500 per month, demanding another 20 hours in communication and approvals. Evan didn’t just want to build a tool; he wanted to democratize expertise, packaging the agency “secret sauce” into a system that delivers enterprise-grade email campaigns at a novel price point. His counter-intuitive approach? Stop automating the task of writing and start automating the strategy of high-performance marketing.
This is the story of how Potions is becoming the agency alternative for the modern entrepreneur, not by being cheaper, but by being strategically smarter and relentlessly performance-driven.
The “Aha!” Moment: Automating Expertise, Not Just Tasks
Evan’s journey began on the other side of the table. As an executive at a top-tier marketing agency (assumed role based on expertise), he witnessed the core disconnect: while clients were paying premium rates for “strategy,” the time spent was often administrative—status meetings, back-and-forth edits, and project management overhead. The actual high-value strategy—the data-driven structuring of subject lines, copy, and calls-to-action—was a fraction of the cost.
The true founder mindset shift came when Evan realized that the agency’s best practices could be codified. “Why should a small business owner—the engine of innovation—have to choose between a $3,500 agency or spending ten hours a week doing mediocre work?” Evan posits.
The challenge wasn’t just building a generative AI for email; it was building an AI content marketing system that embeds high-performance strategy. This is what defines Potions: a dedication to engineering an agency-quality experience that bypasses the human cost and time sink.
The Potions Performance Loop: A New Standard for SMB Marketing Strategies
To overcome investor and user skepticism—the common belief that “automation means low quality”—Evan had to prove that the system could outperform the human average. Potions’ core innovation is built around what Evan calls the “Performance Loop,” a strategy that moves far beyond basic newsletter marketing automation.
Harnessing 2X Industry Averages
Potions focuses obsessively on measurable results. Their data shows customers achieving approximately 2X the industry averages on key metrics like open rate and click-through rate. How? By systematically applying battle-tested agency techniques that optimize for the reader’s behavior, not just the sender’s convenience. The system selects and structures content based on proven engagement triggers, ensuring every campaign is not just sent, but strategically deployed.
The True Lead Nurturing Tools
A well-crafted newsletter does more than inform; it moves people down the sales funnel. Potions shines as an exceptional set of lead nurturing tools by automatically identifying and delivering a customer’s “best leads” each month.
The Lesson for Founders: Your email system shouldn’t just send bulk messages; it should be an extension of your sales team. By using engagement data (opens, clicks, time spent), Potions can flag high-intent readers, ensuring the sales pipeline never runs dry. This saves founders the precious time of sifting through data, cutting the administrative burden (saving customers 5-10 hours per week) and freeing them up to focus on product and innovation.
Actionable Takeaways for the Startup Founder
Evan’s experience offers profound lessons for any early-stage founder or business owner seeking to scale efficiently and escape the ‘Agency Tax.’
1. Identify the ‘Agency Tax’ in Your Own Business
Where are you paying high monthly fees for services that could be codified and automated? Whether it’s social media management, data entry, or a specialized technical function, look for tasks with high cost but repeatable, strategic outputs. Evan found the Agency Tax in email; where is it hiding in your P&L?
2. Automate Expertise, Not Just the Chore
True high-value email marketing for small business doesn’t come from tools that help you write faster; it comes from tools that help you write smarter. Don’t look for an assistant to do your chores; look for software that incorporates the strategic thinking of an expert.
3. Performance Over Process
Potions’ success is rooted in its performance guarantees. As you build your own company, benchmark against industry averages and seek solutions that are designed to double them, not just meet them. In the new era of automation, your competitors are not the agencies; they are the innovative newsletter marketing automation platforms that deliver superior, measurable results.
The Future of Work: Expertise as a Service
Evan Keller and Potions are pointing toward a powerful future for SMBs: one where enterprise-grade quality is no longer exclusive to those with massive budgets. The vision is clear: by collapsing the time and cost associated with high-level content marketing, Potions enables founders to stop spending time on their marketing and start spending time on their product, their team, and their long-term vision.
The next wave of SMB marketing strategies will be defined by systems that embed a powerful, performant, and cost-effective ghost strategy—not a human one. Evan’s work proves that the most valuable automation is the kind that makes the expert-level achievable for everyone.
Are you a startup founder or innovator with a story to tell? We want to hear from you! Submit Your Startup to be featured on Taalk.com.