In the June-August 2026 issue of NZ Marketing magazine, we asked agency founders to tell us the story behind why they started their agency, their favourite thing, what they’ve learned and their best advice.
numero
- Founder: Richard Gilbert
- Year founded: 2016
Tell us the story behind founding your agency.
I worked through the ranks at a Google Premier partner, to become a “high performance sales rep”.
Under the training and guidance of Lisa Parnis, I won the Google Race to Singapore award. Unfortunately, the agency went bust. I took the skills I’d learnt and went on to found my agency the following Monday.
I signed my first client the following week, doing the production work myself. From there, things started progressing pretty quickly.
I got a team of contractors together so I could focus on sales and account management while they handled delivery. This worked for ‘cheap/entry level’ solutions. That never quite scratched the itch though, with the itch being to be at the cutting edge of performance marketing, delivering measurable ROI for ambitious marketing managers in the C-suite.
Hence progressing to our current form – numero – the performance marketing agency that’s all about your return on investment.
What’s your favourite thing about running your own agency?
Always learning. The team. The location.
Life is always good over in sunny Takapuna. We’ve got the best team we’ve ever had, and the best clients. We’re in our 10th year now, and skills have been developed over that time.
I enjoy working with systems mainly, especially building agentic workflows to reduce admin and free up creativity for the team.
What’s the most important thing you’ve learned?
How to stay level-headed in the face of adversity.
The world is constantly changing, and in digital marketing, we are right at the coal face of technology updates. Learning to thrive in this pressure – without buckling – has taken blood, sweat and tears. So embracing fast-paced change is a good skill to have as an agency founder/CEO.
I also must say that how to get the right people in the right seats is equally key.
The seat is better empty than with the wrong candidate. Since embracing this mindset, the normal comings and goings no longer take a toll – I always see them as opportunities – because experience has proven that each time a seat empties, we level up.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received or given out?
My old sales manager once heard me shutting someone down in a sales conversation, very early on in my career.
I swaggered over to him afterwards. He looked at me with a wry look on his face. He invited me to listen to the call with him. I was excited to brag about how I proved this client wrong. We got to the juicy part of the call. I was expecting a high five.
My old mentor (RIP) explained to me that my ego had won this battle, but lost the war. The goal is to get a deal closed and I’d walked out of the call without the desired outcome.
From that moment onwards, I dropped all my ego and went on to have much better sales conversations.
This story comes from NZ Marketing magazine issue 87, June-August 2026. Why not subscribe? Get four issues a year for just $50 (including delivery) if you autorenew.
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