NC Tweener Talks

This week on Redacted, we bring on our fourth guest: Ben Eckerson, founder of Agentcy, an AI-enabled consultancy helping small-to-mid-market companies close the gaps between the software they already pay for. Ben spent roughly 20 years in client services, including time at the ad agency McKinney, running Viget's Durham office, and co-founding Savas Labs, before launching Agentcy in early 2026 alongside business partner Eric out of the 24 and Up venture studio in downtown Raleigh.

Most of the episode is a live demo: Ben walks through the internal tool he built from scratch, which turns a raw meeting transcript into extracted pain points, pricing and staffing estimates, and a styled, client-ready proposal deck. From there, the conversation turns into a real debate about whether it's worth building your own AI-native tools instead of buying an off-the-shelf AI CRM, what gets lost when you strip away the UI and go headless, and how much of client work still comes down to a human reading the room.

It's a practical, behind-the-scenes look at how one small agency is actually using AI to run its business day-to-day, ending on a genuinely optimistic note about what all that automation is supposed to free people up to do.

Timestamps
00:00 Cold open
00:43 What Redacted is about
01:09 Meet guest #4: Ben Eckerson, founder of Agentcy
01:44 Housekeeping + an Offline update
02:52 Ben joins the show
03:34 20 years in the agency trenches: McKinney, Viget, Savas Labs
04:58 What Agentcy does and "humans doing the robot work"
05:29 The real problem: tool sprawl at client companies
07:59 From stealth to launch: Agentcy's first year, with partner Eric at 24 and Up
08:33 Demo time: inside Agentcy's homegrown CRM
10:01 Where the tool started: turning Fathom transcripts into next steps
12:11 Building a new lead: the WellCare walkthrough
14:27 Adding a call transcript and hitting "Analyze"
18:58 The internal TLDR: stage, stakeholders, pricing
22:15 One click to a client-ready proposal deck
24:41 Exporting to Claude, Manus, or GPT for design polish
26:32 What's next: living inside Claude Projects
28:15 Why build your own AI CRM instead of buying one
33:45 Going headless: is the UI just a commodity now?
38:41 Meeting clients where their AI maturity actually is
41:35 The future of human work and the last-mile problem
44:27 Where to find Ben and Agentcy


Show notes from the episode: https://github.com/instanttaylor/redacted-podcast

Where to Find David:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshaner/

Where to Find Taylor:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorcotner/

More about Offline: https://www.linkedin.com/company/offline-media-inc-/

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This episode of Redacted is hosted by David Shaner and Taylor Cotner, and presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund.

We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: 

Platinum: 
NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org

Gold Sponsors: 
- Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs 
- EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com 
- Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com 
 
Silver Sponsors: 
- Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co 
- Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html 

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