[Top Agency Series] Building Global Creative Teams for Modern Brands With Jamie Read

Jamie Read is the Founder and CEO of BriteBirch Collective, a global integrated marketing and business consultancy established in 2018. With over 17 years of experience, he has built award-winning marketing teams and campaigns across Canada, the Middle East, and Asia. Before founding BriteBirch, Jamie held leadership positions at prominent agencies such as Edelman and Ketchum, working with global clients in the healthcare, technology, and consumer goods sectors. In addition to his role at BriteBirch, he serves as Communications Chair for the Canada-ASEAN Business Council, promoting diversified trade and business opportunities.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [03:18] Jamie Read discusses the mission and structure of BriteBirch Collective
• [05:38] Key lessons learned from working at large agencies like Edelman and TBWA
• [09:39] Cultural experiences working around the globe
• [16:18] The impact of extensive travel on Jamie’s career and cultural adaptability
• [17:36] Launching BriteBirch and landing the first client
• [22:01] The tech stack BriteBirch uses for communication and project management
• [26:30] Challenges in building team dynamics and managing diverse talent
• [33:43] Attracting and vetting over 300 marketing experts for BriteBirch
• [36:52] Launching BriteBirch to support and mentor the next generation of freelancers
• [41:12] Tips for building company culture 
• [46:29] BriteBirch’s customer success stories

In this episode…

Traditional marketing agencies often rely on rigid structures and outdated processes that limit creativity and flexibility. These models prioritize internal politics and overhead costs over client needs, leading to bloated teams and inconsistent results. How can agencies streamline operations while fostering collaboration and delivering tailored solutions?

Jamie Read, a marketing expert, recognized these gaps after years of working in major global agencies and sought to create an agency model that breaks free from conventional barriers. By assembling a curated network of over 300 seasoned marketing experts worldwide, he designed a flexible, project-based collective that matches senior-level talent directly with client needs. His focus on eliminating agency politics, promoting collaboration among freelancers, and using modern tools ensures seamless communication and high-quality results. Jamie also emphasizes the importance of building a strong culture within a decentralized team and has launched a community-driven initiative to mentor the next generation of freelancers and help them thrive in an evolving marketplace.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Jamie Read, Founder and CEO of BriteBirch Collective, about how he’s redefining the agency model by blending the freedom of freelancing with the power of collaboration. Jamie shares his journey from working in traditional agencies to building his global collective, explains how he attracts top talent, and discusses how BriteBirch structures client teams to deliver bespoke solutions.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Jamie Read on LinkedIn
• BriteBirch Collective

Special Mention(s):

• Second Bite Podcast
• Slack
• Wrike
• HubSpot
• Zoom
• Google Workspace

Related episode(s):

• “[Sweet Process Series] How to Save Hundreds of Hours a Month Using Top Productivity Tools with Adi Klevit of Business Success Consulting Group” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “Agencies aren’t about fancy offices or parties — at their core, they’re about talent, culture, and solving client problems creatively.”
• “Freelancing can be isolating, but when you create spaces for collaboration, it unlocks incredible potential for complex projects.”
• “The future of agencies isn’t about bigger teams, it’s about right-sizing talent to fit the client’s specific needs.”
• “I built BriteBirch to strip away politics and focus on what really matters — people, perspective, and purposeful work.”
• “You don’t need complex tools to manage great work; sometimes a simple spreadsheet outperforms the most expensive platforms.”

Action Steps:

1. Prioritize flexibility in team structures: Design project teams based on specific client needs, ensuring the right mix of skills and expertise without unnecessary overhead.
2. Leverage global talent networks: Build a diverse pool of experienced freelancers and consultants to tap into a wide range of perspectives and specialized knowledge.
3. Simplify your tech stack: Use accessible tools like Slack, G-Suite, and project management software to streamline communication and maintain efficient workflows.
4. Foster a collaborative culture: Create spaces for freelancers to connect, share ideas, and work together, reducing isolation and encouraging creative problem-solving.
5. Adapt to evolving market trends: Continuously evaluate industry shifts, like the rise of AI and remote work, and adjust strategies to stay relevant and innovative.

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:00

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Jamie Read of BriteBirch. You can check him out at britebirch.com.

And Jamie, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast. People should check out some of the you know, this is part of the top agency series, some of the fan favorites on that. I had Adi Klevit. Adi Klevit is a done-for-you agency that helps you document SOPs. It’s interesting. So people come. They want to smooth out their onboarding of clients, onboarding of staff process. She’ll come in and do that. We geeked out on our favorite productivity tools software.

So that was a fun episode. Another one that was good was Todd Taskey. Todd Taskey helps pair agencies with private equity. So he helps sell agencies. And so we geeked out on you know, the agency space, the valuation space, M&A. He’s got the Second Bite Podcast. So he’ll walk through actual acquisition stories so people can learn from those as well. So that was a great episode two. So check out more on inspiredinsider.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25.

At Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the accountability, the strategy and the full execution.

So, Jamie, we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the hosts so they are hosts. They can create amazing content, amazing relationships. Most importantly, run their business. You know, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways and ways on how I can give to my best relationships, and I found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and the companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on.

So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should. If you have questions, go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. I’m excited to introduce Jamie Read. He’s the founder of BriteBirch Collective. BriteBirch Collective is a global integrated agency, and it’s made up of over 300 marketing experts of various disciplines, sectors, backgrounds.

This is a very different type of agency, right. And Jamie designed it to lean into the new trends around how people want to work, while obviously providing clients with curated teams that are the right size for their budget and their needs. So it’s really will be really interesting to hear his take and how he’s structured everything. Jamie, thanks for joining me.

Jamie Read 03:06

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 03:09

So just start us off and I’m going to share the BriteBirch website as you’re talking. But talk about BriteBirch Collective and what you do.

Jamie Read 03:18

Yeah. So BriteBirch Collective is a new kind of agency that I started after having worked in big agencies around the world in various capacities, in marketing and advertising and things like that. And it was through sort of that experience that I started to understand the inner workings and the challenges that big agencies face. A lot of times hidden from what clients get to see. And at the same time was starting to see how people wanted to work was changing.

And this idea of freelancers was becoming less of a dirty word. And so as we, You know, started to kind of come together. We realized like, well, what if, you know, we were able to organize ourselves differently around client work and instead of being a PR agency, for example, and when you’re in an advertising agency, that solution is always an ad. And having been someone who worked in an integration capacity in a lot of these agencies, I always understood that the mix was much bigger and that the solution should be multifaceted and that it shouldn’t just be cookie-cutter. But that’s not always easy to do, especially in big agencies.

So started BriteBirch after I left the last agency, which was Edelman in Singapore, moved back to Canada and in doing so started to kind of build out this new model. And it started small. And it’s, you know, our network has been growing, as you mentioned, up to 300 plus, you know, more than 300 people now around the world, everyone’s got a minimum of ten years’ experience. So we’re trying you know, we’re trying to do much more up-value work for Work for clients. It doesn’t mean that we’re, you know, we don’t get our hands dirty as well.

And that’s really just the difference is that we’re able to provide those senior level resources that you tend to kind of not get access to when you’re working with, with larger agencies that you may need to be able to work in more complex capacities.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 05:14

I’d love to hear what you learned from the, you know, from the large agency. I think Edelman’s like been around since the 1950s, I think, and it’s got thousands and thousands of staff. And I know you were in Singapore, which is cool. Right now you’re in Canada. What did you learn?

What were some things that you learned working there? I’m sure there were some valuable things, insights.

Jamie Read 05:38

Yeah. I mean, Edelman was an amazing experience. One thing I definitely learned is that, you know, it wasn’t just Edelman. You know, I worked at TBWA as well as Ketchum in the Middle East for many years as well. So I was within like Omnicom Group.

I was within, you know, Edelman, by the time I was joining, was already becoming the world’s largest digital agency and not just PR. And so, you know, what I really learned was that at the end of the day, what an agency is, is and what clients want out of an agency is really talent and culture. And, you know, different companies, different agencies would have different sort of combinations of that. Sometimes talent was focused on a specific domain, sometimes, you know, but it was always about the people and the talent. And at the end of the day, how do they organize themselves and how do they believe in what they’re doing together and sort of writing the same, the same train together and moving down the valley?

Right. So that wasn’t difficult to recreate. Right. And a lot of people think agencies have to do with big fancy offices downtown and having fancy Christmas parties and going out for drinks every night. And there is a lot of that, don’t get me wrong, but that’s not what clients want to pay for, right?

And so that was definitely one thing that I learned was that when you strip it all away, agencies are in service of the shareholders. And, you know, by the time I was leaving. Sort of the agency world we were hearing about in Asia particularly, you know, a lot of advertising agency executives, young executives were starting to commit suicide. They were starting to have, you know, a lot of overwork. They’re really, you know, being pushed to the bone.

And I just felt like the culture generally. And again, this isn’t an Edelman thing. This is more just generally in marketing agencies was getting to be a bit toxic. And so, you know, how can we recreate that. I mean, for the many years that I’ve been working in these, these different places, I’ve been part of sort of, you know, teams to try to pilot new ways of designing the agency, thinking about what the agency of the future looks like.

And it was funny because I had never considered that, that it could just be, you know, stripping everything away and just making it about the people and the culture. So, yeah, that was definitely one, one main aspect. And then there’s a lot of other practical things too, like multinational global holding companies. They may say that they can bring all these different pieces together for a company. And in these big pitches, and on paper they can.

But there’s a lot of PNL issues from, you know, markets don’t like playing nice with each other. Different divisions within these companies don’t like playing nice with each other. So there’s a lot of politics and there’s a lot of it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 08:31

Not as cohesive as it may seem on the surface.

Jamie Read 08:34

Exactly like they put, they paint a great picture about it. And so that was another thing that kind of struck me like when I was working in the Middle East and I wanted to, you know, have a client that wanted to do some activation in, say, Egypt. It’s like pulling teeth trying to get the Egypt team to do anything because it wasn’t they weren’t the main agency. And so. And it was that always used to bother me.

And so again, BriteBirch was like, well, let’s take away all the politics, let’s take away the PNL issues. And so now if you want to work with someone in a market, we’ll put someone directly from that market on the team. And so the idea is that we’ll build the team around the perspectives that you need to solve your problem.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 09:16

I want to get into, you know, fostering culture and what you do at BriteBirch. But talk about a little bit, you know, you were in different countries, right? Like Singapore, you were in Singapore, Dubai. What was it like just being in a different country culturally compared to Canada or maybe the US?

Jamie Read 09:39

Surprisingly, it’s not as different as we would like to think, or even sometimes try to make it ourselves, right? Like when I first went to Dubai, there was obviously that culture shock. And I started, you know, quite low in the marketing rung. And worked my way up. I was, you know, my first apartment was actually like the maid’s room of someone’s villa.

Like, it really sort of not very glamorous, but the one thing I really, really did realize, and I don’t think it’s just agencies, but definitely agencies help create the opportunity is that if you’re willing to work and you’ve got a good head on your shoulders and you can and you’re and you’re open-minded and able to kind of just jump in and help out and put your hand up. When someone asks for something, you can very quickly sort of be recognised for being someone who can get things done. And because of that, there’s just an opportunity to grow your career in places like that. Emerging markets, I think generally are like that. But how did that come about?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 10:40

How did you make it? Yeah, Dubai is like that. That position in the first place. Yeah.

Jamie Read 10:46

So that’s more that’s like on a personal level. So when I first I mean I can I my story starts back I guess in the summer of 2003 when I graduated university, I wanted to go into news media. I wanted to be like a, I guess, like a news TV producer. And I had a whole bunch of interviews lined up with some, some major Canadian broadcasters. But then that summer, the war in Iraq and in Toronto, we had SARS.

I don’t know if anyone remembers SARS, but SARS was kind of like before COVID. We had SARS, which was the severe acute respiratory system, and it shut down, you know, major cities like, I think Hong Kong, Singapore. But Toronto was one of the major hotspots. And so that’s where I was based. And the whole city shut down.

I couldn’t find a job. The only job I could find was as a SARS screener at a hospital. And so, you know, wearing a mask and goggles and gowns. And at 5:30 in the morning, I’m taking the temperature of every nurse that’s coming into the hospital. And so that’s how I got started out of university into healthcare.

And I had never wanted to be in healthcare. I had no real interest in healthcare. But at the end of the summer, when SARS had gone away, I knew I was going to have to find a job. I noticed there was a marketing department in the hospital, so I went upstairs, talked to, you know, the director managed to get a job there. And, you know, started my marketing, the.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 12:12

Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. I’m like, I don’t think he was doing rehab. He’s not in the science background, but the marketing piece.

Jamie Read 12:20

Yeah. And it was cool because, you know, first of all, Canada has a public health system. So I couldn’t understand, like, why are we marketing?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 12:26

Like that’s a great question.

Jamie Read 12:29

And it turns out that Toronto rehab it’s now called something else. It’s part of the University Health Network. But it was always a teaching hospital of University of Toronto. So there’s a huge research department. And when we talk about rehab, it’s not like drug rehab.

It’s actually physical and mental and cognitive rehab. So if you have a stroke, if you have Alzheimer’s, if you have osteoporosis, they had programs to help people reintegrate into society and to be able to be self-sufficient and overcome, you know, how to learn how to use a spoon again. So there was some really cool exposure to major disease areas like heart health, brain health and things like that. Plus, I was able to — it was the beginning of social media and the internet as part of a marketing thing. So they kind of gave me free rein to like, you know, manage the intranet.

And I started getting them onto social platforms. I started to run the courses as well. So I was working directly with the researchers to help build out, you know, the event space and dealing with, you know, B2B stuff all of a sudden. So it was really, to be honest, it was a great first job. And I used to, you know, but I’d get bored because the hospitals are still, you know, public and they’re slow moving.

And I was a young go-getter. And so everyone was like, oh, you should work for an agency. And I was like, okay, let me see about that. But I would quit my job every two years and travel. And the first time I did that was to Asia. The second time I did that was to the Middle East. And when I went to the Middle East.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 13:57

Traveling for when you quit your job, how long were you going to travel.

Jamie Read 14:00

First? First one was like a year in Asia. Yeah. And then the second one in the Middle East was maybe, I think about five months, four months. And then when.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 14:09

You do that, do you end up working somewhere locally or what do you do?

Jamie Read 14:15

No, not at all. No. The Asia trip I started on my birthday in Tokyo and I ended in Bangkok on my birthday a year later and flew back home. It was just sort of like a figure myself out kind of year. I needed to, I needed to do it. And I think I did figure myself out pretty good when I was out there, and it helped expose me to Asia and to the world.

So it was great. But yeah, the second time I did that same sort of thing in the Middle East and traveled all around, and then my buddies in Abu Dhabi and Dubai were kind of like, you know, Dubai is booming. You should look here for work. And so that’s where I got hired on by TBWA and that kind of because I had the health care background. They’re like, well, we need a health expert.

And that kind of lasted my whole career. It’s also why I got headhunted and brought into Singapore also was kind of because of the healthcare background. And so despite, you know, not really wanting to be in healthcare or having a particular love and, and desire to be a healthcare marketing expert, I, you know, it was fortuitous that SARS happened when it did. And I took the opportunities as I saw them. And I think that goes to like one of my main lessons in life is have goals, but don’t restrict yourself to a pathway towards those goals and be open to opportunities to say yes to things and things and try things.

And if they don’t work, the worst thing. You know, when I moved to Dubai, my dad’s like, the worst thing that can happen is in six months you move back, right? Like there’s really no nothing to lose. And I realized, like, you know, pretty much everything in life is like that. There’s — you can always try something new.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 15:53

So it’s a super interesting trajectory. And when you were going to travel, you weren’t expecting, oh, I’m going to stay here and live. But it just happened that that took, you know, the path took you there from Dubai. And then that path took you to Singapore. And then eventually you moved back to Canada when you were young. Jamie, were you always like, I want to travel the world or that just came about later on in life.

Jamie Read 16:18

I think I wanted to be a photojournalist when I grew up. I was into like National Geographic and stuff, so I did think I wanted to. It wasn’t like a travel itch, so to speak. It was just sort of like I knew that whatever I did, the world was so big, I moved around a lot as a kid, like within Canada and Ontario and stuff, so I wasn’t afraid to be in a new place and try to meet new friends. And like I had already learned a lot of those skills.

But yeah, more than anything, I think you start to realize that humans are humans. We’re all motivated by the same things. We’re all more alike than we are different. And sure, there are differences, but those differences are something to be celebrated. And so, you know, I would never trade.

Sometimes I think like, oh man, if only I would have invested in Bitcoin or bought a property in Toronto or something when I was young and used that travel money for that sort of thing. But at the same time, it’s like, I don’t think I would ever be able, like I would never give back that opportunity because it was just a great experience.

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