We recently connected with John Florey and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, John thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about the best advice you’ve ever given to a client?

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever given a client didn’t actually have anything to do with ads, even though we were running their entire performance marketing stack.

At the time, we were managing Meta and Google for a family-owned coffee brand doing high seven to low eight figures annually. From a marketing standpoint, the account was healthy. We were consistently generating over a 4x return on ad spend, acquisition costs were well within target, and retention on the backend was strong. By every performance metric we track, the machine was working. My SAMA Labs team was crushing it from our lens.

Then one day, we got an email asking us to stop all marketing immediately. The reason given was that the business was “bleeding cash,” and the implication was that marketing was hurting the company.

It didn’t make sense. The numbers weren’t lining up.

Instead of going back and forth over dashboards or defending our performance, I asked the owner if we could look at their P&Ls together. Once we did, the real issue became clear. As the business had grown, certain areas of spend outside of marketing had gone largely unsupervised. There were operational costs and discretionary expenses quietly draining cash without clear accountability. When a business reaches that size, especially in a family-run environment, those things can get overlooked.

Marketing wasn’t the problem. It was one of the few areas where spend and return were clearly tied together.

We helped them step back, recalibrate expenses, and put better financial guardrails in place across the business. After that, marketing was turned back on with more clarity and confidence. They ended up staying with us for another two years, and over time sent us more referrals than I can count.

The advice itself was simple: don’t default to cutting the most visible cost when things feel tight. Follow the math first.

That moment shifted the relationship from vendor to partner, and it reinforced something I still believe today; sometimes the most valuable help you can give a client has nothing to do with the service you’re being paid for.

John, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I didn’t get into marketing to run an agency…I got into it by building and scaling my own businesses. Early on, I was on the operator side, where every dollar mattered and marketing was either a growth engine or a liability. That experience shaped how I think about this industry. I learned marketing by living with the outcomes, not by studying theory.

Over time, that operator mindset evolved into a focus on performance marketing through a full business lens; acquisition costs, margins, retention, and cash flow, all tied back to the P&L. As other founders started asking for help, SAMA Labs naturally took shape.

Today, we work with established e-commerce brands, typically doing seven to eight figures in revenue, and partner with them on performance-based growth. We manage paid media across channels like Meta and Google, but what we really provide is clarity and accountability. Growth only matters if it’s profitable and repeatable.

What sets us apart is that we don’t operate like a traditional agency. We don’t hide behind vanity metrics or attribution debates. We tie our work to real performance, which forces honest conversations. If marketing isn’t the problem, we’re willing to help identify what is.

What I’m most proud of is the trust we’ve built with our clients. Many relationships have lasted years, not because of a single win, but because we show up when things get hard. We think like owners, not vendors, and we care about the overall health of the business, not just our line item.

That’s the perspective we bring to every partnership.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Early on, especially as the business grew, I treated every client email like an emergency. If something came in late at night, my mind would start racing. Not every message was a problem, but the possibility that it might be was enough to keep me up. I felt a constant sense of responsibility to respond, support, and solve, sometimes at the expense of my own sleep and clarity.

Over time, I realized that being constantly “on” didn’t actually make me more helpful. It made me reactive. The best decisions, the ones that actually move a business forward, rarely come from exhaustion or anxiety.

I had to learn to create boundaries, not because I cared less, but because I cared more. If I wanted to show up the next day with perspective, focus, and the ability to solve the real opportunity in front of us, I couldn’t treat every moment like a crisis.

Unlearning that urgency made me a better partner, a better leader, and ultimately allowed me to bring a calmer, more intentional version of myself to the work.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

LinkedIn has been one of our best sources of new clients.

There’s a lot of noise on the platform, but when you focus on creating real, thoughtful conversations instead of pitching, it works. When you engage with people who actually align with how you think about business and growth, the barrier of trust drops pretty quickly. By the time a conversation turns into a call, it already feels like there’s context and mutual understanding, not a cold introduction.

For us, LinkedIn has been less about volume and more about relevance. Fewer conversations, better fit, and stronger relationships from the start.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sama-labs.com
• Instagram: @samalabs
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jflorey