Saying no to millions. Building something real instead - Alex Holliman, Climbing Trees & Oliver Zenglein, The Boutique Agency
Episode 23 - THAT MOMENT
Most agency founders never talk about the clients they turned down. The money they left on the table. The moment they realised that winning the pitch and living with the decision were two completely different things.
Alex Holliman and Oliver Zenglein talk about it constantly.
They met through agency networks - the kind of spaces where people go when they need to process things they can't say in normal business settings. They're both in performance marketing. They're both in different countries. And they're both building agencies that look radically different from what the industry expects.
Alex spent his entire career in agencies. Three of the top five media agencies in London. A startup that grew to £25 million before he left. At 35, he thought: if I don't do this now, I work for someone else forever. So he started Climbing Trees 15 years ago. Performance marketing. SEO. Paid media. Ethical from the beginning, but it took him years to realise that ethics wasn't a marketing angle - it was the actual strategy.
Oliver took a different route to the same place. He was a touring musician in a ska-reggae band for years. Then he joined windeln.de as CMO from the very start - watched it scale, watched it prepare for IPO, felt Goldman Sachs money change the pressure in the room. When he realised the IPO timeline wasn't compatible with having a family and staying sane, he left. Founded The Boutique Agency in Munich in 2015. Performance marketing. SEA. The same discipline, different country.
What they discovered - independently, then together - is that turning away business is harder than taking it. Alex has turned down approximately £1 million worth of pitches over three years. Gambling clients. Fast fashion. Fossil fuel companies. Industries they didn't want to amplify. Oliver has a code of ethics that excludes entire sectors, regardless of financial pressure.
Most people assume this is a limitation. A constraint on growth. These two have learned it's actually a filter. A way to build something sustainable instead of something that scales and then collapses under its own compromises.
But here's what makes this episode different: they're not preaching. They're not saying the hard path is noble and everyone should take it. They're saying it's lonely, and finding someone else on the same path makes an enormous difference. That's why they've become friends. That's why they have what they call "shared therapy sessions" - regular check-ins where they talk about the weight of decisions most agency owners never have to make.
This episode tackles the uncomfortable truth that most agencies don't want to admit: saying no costs money. Building on your own terms requires sacrifice. And the only thing that makes it bearable is finding your people - the other founders who looked at the easy path and decided it would cost more than they were willing to pay.
When Saying No Becomes Your Competitive Edge:
The Money Isn't Really the Point: When you turn down a million pounds, everyone assumes you're being self-righteous. What they miss is that Alex and Oliver aren't poor. Their agencies are profitable. They're not struggling. They're making a choice about what kind of business they want to build and who they want to become in the process. The money matters - it has to, to survive. But it stops being the point pretty quickly.
Performance Doesn't Require Selling Your Values: Both agencies are performance-focused. They care about results, metrics, growth. The assumption in the industry is that you can't care about those things AND care about ethics. Alex and Oliver have discovered that's backwards. When you work only with clients whose values align with yours, when you say no to the ones that don't, you attract different talent. You build differently. You perform differently - often better - because everyone's pulling in the same direction.
The Loneliness of the Uncomfortable Choice: What Alex and Oliver both mention is how isolating it can be. You're explaining to your team why the lucrative client isn't the right client. You're wondering if you're the only one mad enough to think this is possible. You're watching other agencies take the money and grow faster and questioning whether you made a mistake. Finding each other made that conversation possible in a way it wasn't before.
Constraint Becomes Clarity: When you have rules about what you won't do, it forces clarity about what you will. Oliver decided early: The Boutique Agency would be performance marketing focused, employee-centric, sustainable. Alex built Climbing Trees around the same principles. Both discovered that having fewer clients to choose from meant they had to be better at everything else. They had to deliver harder. They had to care more. Because they couldn't rely on volume or brand name or network effects.
Purpose Doesn't Limit Growth. It Accelerates It: The biggest misconception is that ethics slow you down. Both have discovered the opposite. When you're clear about what you stand for, when your team knows the company won't compromise on principles, when clients choose you because your values align - that's when growth becomes sustainable. It's not faster short-term growth. It's the kind that lasts.
What Actually Changes When You Build Differently:
Why turning away business is actually a business strategy, not a moral stance
How finding your person across the channel changes everything about the lonely decisions
The moment you realise profit without purpose creates a different kind of cost
Why performance and principles aren't enemies - they're partners
What happens when your constraint becomes your competitive advantage
How B Corp certification forces you to make the decisions you were already making anyway
The difference between saying no because you're perfect and saying no because you're clear
From Alex's perspective as someone who's spent 15 years building an agency on his own terms, witness how the pressure changes when you know you're not the only one. He's turned down millions. He's built a team that believes in the same things. He's discovered that attracting purpose-driven talent changes everything about how an agency operates. What started as a values choice became a business advantage he never expected.
From Oliver's perspective as someone who stepped away from an IPO-bound company to build something smaller on purpose, witness how the pressure changes when you've already chosen once. He knew what Goldman Sachs money felt like. He knew what hockey-stick growth demanded. He chose differently. And finding Alex across the channel meant he wasn't the only one asking whether this was actually possible.
Alex and Oliver share what they've learned about friendship in business: it's not about doing deals together or referring clients. It's about having someone who understands why you made the uncomfortable choice and doesn't think you're naive for it. It's about being able to say the hard things without pretending they're easy. It's about knowing that somewhere else, someone else is also saying no to millions and building something real instead.
This episode addresses the question every founder wrestling with values asks: is it actually possible to build a successful business without compromising? And if it is, why does it feel so lonely?
About Supo:
Supo provides people-first intelligence software for professional services firms, helping businesses maximize profit and motivate their people through powerful, AI-enabled business intelligence dashboards. By connecting over 500+ platforms and providing real-time data analysis, Supo helps firms make better data-driven decisions about their profit, projects, and people.
For more information about Supo: www.supo.co.uk
About Climbing Trees:
Climbing Trees is a performance ads and SEO agency based in Colchester, Essex, driven to ethically deliver results for companies that will shape the future world. Founded by Alex Holliman in 2010, Climbing Trees specialises in data-driven growth for B2B organisations, e-commerce brands, and purpose-led organisations including Greenpeace and Olympus Cameras. As a B Corp certified agency with the King's Award for Sustainable Business, Climbing Trees integrates sustainability into every decision - from who they work with to how they measure impact. Their methodology seamlessly combines performance discipline with ethical practice, proving that growth and good can coexist.
For more information about Climbing Trees: www.climbingtrees.com
About The Boutique Agency:
The Boutique Agency is an award-winning performance marketing agency based in Munich, founded by Oliver Zenglein in 2015. Specialising in SEA, SEO, and paid social, The Boutique Agency helps B2B, e-commerce, travel, and purpose-driven organisations achieve profitable and sustainable growth. With a team of over 40 specialists, The Boutique Agency is B Corp certified and operates with core values of passion, transparency, appreciation, and responsibility. They've established a code of ethics that guides which clients and industries they'll work with, demonstrating that performance marketing and purpose-driven business aren't mutually exclusive.
For more information about The Boutique Agency: www.the-boutique-agency.de
Ready to discover why the hardest decisions often lead to the strongest growth? This episode isn't about morality. It's about what actually works - when you have the courage to find out.