THE PRACTICE — WHO RUNS IT
ADMEN started by selling rankings. That is not what we sell now.
HX — WHAT CHANGED
What changed, and why
Our founder, Cody Baird, built his first website in 1997 — a landing page for his cell phone stores. Around 2003 he connected with a partner from the wireless industry and built hundreds of exact-match-domain microsites for a commodities brokerage. In 2009 he was diagnosed with cancer and had to leave the brokerage. He started building sites for dental practices that had bought Cone Beam CT, and optimising them for implant patients so the practices could recoup a heavy equipment investment.
Admen began as a search-engine-optimisation shop and nothing else, on retainers between $299 and $1,199 a month. We sold rankings, because that is what the market bought and what we knew how to deliver.
That work found its footing inside one of the three largest dental distributor networks in the world, and it compounded the way it does in specialty medicine. Oral surgeons referred orthodontists. Implant practices referred cosmetic dentists. Specialists referred their GPs. Manufacturers came along too. Before long, 80% of the roster was general and specialty dental — oral surgery, ortho, endo, pedo, cosmetic — with platform work for two of the four largest dental distributors in the world, plus three of the largest dental-equipment manufacturers.
What changed the firm was watching rankings improve and schedules fill at one practice and not fill at the same pace at another. A practice can hold position one and still lose the patient at a front desk that does not pick up, refuses to give pricing, books them an appointment four weeks out, or converts a fraction of the consultations it gets. Healthcare growth is mostly an ops problem dressed up as a marketing one — and we only learned that by selling the marketing half first and watching where it stopped working.
So the service accreted, deliberately and slowly: paid media, then intake and call instrumentation, then measurement and attribution, then the examination that now precedes any spend at all. The approach today looks nothing like the one we started with, and that is the point. An agency that has not changed its method since 1997 is telling on itself. Every engagement runs through someone who has done the work. We bill operators, not vanity. We measure in multiples, not awards.
POLICY — CLIENT CONFIDENTIALITY
CLINICAL-GRADE
Why no client is named here
ADMEN no longer names clients. We did in the past — and our clients were reluctant. Many would succumb anyway, because of the relationship.
One of our tenured clients, who started with us in our first year and is still with us today, pulled Cody aside and explained why doctors are private, why he should respect that privacy, and that he did not need to follow the traditional agency mantra of using case studies as the benchmark to validate expertise. Engagement records share the data, not the names.
It's the same discipline our clients apply to their patients. We apply it to them. The CONFIDENTIAL stamp on every page is policy, not chrome.
ATTENDING — FOUNDER
Who does the work
Cody Baird
Founder
Building since 1997.
Started by selling search rankings to dental practices, learned the hard way that growth is an ops problem in a marketing wrapper, and rebuilt the firm around what that actually implied. Every engagement still runs through him or someone he's trained personally.
1997
FIRST BUILD
$299/mo
WHERE THE PRICING STARTED
~80%
SPECIALTY DENTAL, EARLY ROSTER
multi-vertical
TODAY
We bill operators, not vanity. We measure in multiples, not awards.
LOCATIONS
Where we are: Austin and Salt Lake City
Two offices, Austin and Salt Lake City, and clients across the United States and Canada. The work is done remotely except for the parts that cannot be — the examination puts somebody in three of your locations and a week in your call centre, and that is not something that can be done over a video call.
Neither city is a coincidence. Both sit in the middle of the group and platform activity this firm was built around, and both are close enough to a meaningful share of the client base that a site visit is a flight rather than an expedition.
If you are local and would rather start in person, say so on the application.
CAPACITY
Why six engagements a quarter
Because the examination is six weeks of somebody's actual attention, and because every engagement runs through a partner rather than past one.
The limit is arithmetic rather than positioning. Six weeks in three locations, a week in a call centre, four board decks read properly, and then a document written by the person who did the reading — that is what one engagement costs at the front end, and there is a fixed number of those in a quarter. Taking a seventh would mean the seventh gets a template.
It has two useful consequences we did not design but will not give up. The filter is real, so applications get read as applications rather than as leads. And the engagement can be declined after the examination without anybody's revenue depending on it, which is what makes "we found nothing worth fixing" a sentence we are able to say.
EXCLUSIONS
What we will not take on
Work billed as an open-ended retainer. Every engagement runs to a quarterly recommitment and one of the two available answers is to conclude it.
Groups where the constraint is capacity rather than demand. If the schedule is full four weeks out, more demand is a longer wait time reported as growth.
A logo refresh as a standalone project, award-bait creative, content produced by volume, and white-label work delivered under somebody else's name.
Anyone who needs the client list before the first call. The names are sealed permanently, and that protection only means anything if it is unconditional — which is also how yours will be handled.
And any market where we cannot measurably help. Some businesses are won on payer contracts, referral politics or real estate. Marketing is a rounding error inside them, and we would rather forfeit the fee than instrument a lever that does not move.
CONTACT
How to reach us
New engagements start at the application. It is read by a partner on the Monday after it arrives, and you get an answer — yes, no, or a conversation — by that Friday. There is no discovery call before it, because the application is what the call would have covered.
Existing clients have their partner's direct line and do not use this page.
For anything else — a figure you think is wrong, a source you think we should be citing, a press or speaking request — write to the address in the footer. Applications sent to that address get forwarded to the form.