Amplify Relations

Brian Baderra was 19 years old, working as a staff assistant at a boutique political ad agency when the 2008 recession hit hard. Four days into the economic downturn, he was laid off. But timing, as it turns out, can work in your favor. One of the agency's clients—desperate to keep their political advertising going despite the collapsed economy—called Brian and asked if he'd continue the work for a couple hundred dollars a month. "Just like that at 19 years old in a college apartment, I was in business," Brian recalls.

Brian and his co-founder bootstrapped Amplify Relations (originally called Grassroots 2.0) entirely on student loans. Their first year revenue was around $11,000 to $12,000—modest, but real. The early years were spent servicing political campaigns for major clients like the Koch brothers and Americans for Prosperity, doing advertising creative and media buying for candidates and causes. Brian had spent months working on the McCain campaign earlier, which is how he'd entered the political advertising space in the first place.

What truly differentiated Amplify Relations early on was a strategic licensing deal. Brian licensed a robocall system from a Canadian company and brought it to the US market, taking advantage of how phone lines operated between the two countries. This created an incredibly high-margin product: a project that might cost a client $500,000 (say, calling every voter in Florida) would only cost Amplify Relations $50,000-$75,000 in actual phone time and production costs. That 90% gross margin became a cornerstone of their business model.

The first customer came organically—that former client willing to pay to continue their work. From there, Brian's experience in political circles opened doors. Working with political campaigns, super PACs, and government entities, he built relationships with high-budget clients who needed full-service solutions. Political campaigns operate lean, typically with only 2-3 direct employees and 10-15 external consultants and agencies. They need partners who can handle the entire toolbox: creative, media buying, PR, and activation. Amplify Relations positioned itself as the agency of record that could deliver soup-to-nuts solutions.

The political niche was incredibly lucrative—by 2015, the company had grown to 13 full-time employees and done just shy of $2 million in revenue. Their pricing model was straightforward: 15% of ad spend plus creative and PR fees on traditional TV and radio, but much higher margins (up to 90%) on the robocall products. The business model worked because campaigns don't have time to shop around; they need trusted partners who can execute fast and handle complexity.

However, Brian recognized a ceiling. As he tells it, "Without politics, who are we? We're four guys or we're 10 guys who know how to run Photoshop and buy ad time. And we're like every other ad agency in America." This realization drove Amplify Relations to expand into the corporate and startup spaces, though politics remained core to their identity and a source of contention with some potential clients (they lost a pitch with a British beer company because of their Republican-aligned political work).

At 27 years old, married, and having bootstrapped the company from nothing, Brian was using QuickBooks Online to manage finances and running what had become a multi-million dollar agency. He remained focused on executing large mass-market campaigns that required changing public opinion or public behavior—whether for political campaigns, health departments, or increasingly, startups and corporations. His advice to younger entrepreneurs: patience and timing matter as much as hustle. "Sometimes you just have to take a deep breath and wait for things to work themselves out. You can't always force it."