Scaling to 18 then back to 15: David Kieran, Zoma

David Kieran started Marketing For Me from his attic in Dundalk in 2016 and went door to door selling websites when other digital marketers refused to leave their laptops. Nine years later he is the founder and MD of Zoma, a 15-person full-service agency, front of shirt sponsor of Dundalk FC, and actively exploring a US office and an AI sub-brand.

In this episode David talks through why he rebranded from Marketing For Me to Zoma in a Dundalk pub during COVID and why they defined the brand values before picking a name. The 10-person danger zone: scaling from 3 to 18-20 people, finding they were less profitable than at 10, and deliberately scaling back to 15. The €500 photoshoot that turned into a €100,000-a-year client. Becoming the first Shopify partner in Ireland in 2016, two years before most of the Irish market caught up.

We also get into how wellbeing culture (rooftop fitness fundraisers, social clubs, a fit-meal canteen) became a hiring moat in a rural location an hour from both Dublin and Belfast. Producing the most viral jersey launch video in League of Ireland history for Dundalk FC. Why he is looking at the US during economic turmoil (“when there is economic turmoil, that is when you have a real chance to enter a market”). And how Zoma uses Notion plus AI automation to free creative time, and why he will not let AI run client relationships.

If you are an agency owner trying to grow without losing the things that made the business work in the first place, this one is full of decisions worth stealing.