Aaron Nava
The
Full Arc
Most people are built for one thing. I was built for all of it.
Before a pitch begins, someone has to make the case for why your agency belongs in the room. That's where I thrive. The hard questions, the honest answers, the moment where trust either forms or it doesn't. 90% of those conversations turn into a formal invitation to pitch. Then we win 0% of those.
We're talking $1.5M to $20M deals. The kind that change a company's trajectory.
But I never promise what we can't deliver. Not for integrity's sake alone. Because promising the wrong thing is how you win once and lose everything after.
After the close comes the harder work. I build the systems that let organizations actually deliver on what they just won. I've taken teams from 6 people to 1,200. Grown a $35M capability to $115M. Maintained 15-20% organic growth for four straight years. Across 33 acquired agencies, I unified the go-to-market, the messaging, and the way we showed up to clients. One voice. One narrative. One way to win.
None of that happened by accident.
And when it's running, I develop the people who can take it from there. Because the real measure isn't what happens when I'm in the room. It's what happens after I leave.
Building
Circus
The Situation
Circus had offices across LATAM. The US operation was six people and small accounts. The opportunity was wide open. The mandate was simple: grow the US footprint and prove we could compete at the highest level.
I didn't just believe in the vision. I saw exactly how to build it.
The Build
It started with Spotify. I inherited the account and immediately saw what it could become. I grew it from a single relationship into a full Social AOR partnership. When the opportunity came to lead the launch of Viva Latino — one of Spotify's most significant platform initiatives at the time — we were ready. Not because we got lucky. Because we'd spent months positioning ourselves as the only logical choice.
That became the playbook. Cultural fluency as a competitive advantage. Social-first thinking as the entry point. Find the gap in an existing relationship, bring multicultural relevance and creative depth, and expand from there.
Then came California Lottery. A formal government RFP. Six months of competing against agencies twice our size. When we won, it changed everything. It proved that a six-person US office could walk into any room and compete at any level.
Two years. 6 people to 100. $5M to $30M+. Ready for acquisition.
Integrating
Monks
The Situation
When S4 Capital began integrating agencies in 2019, it started with five. By 2022 the organization was growing fast. By 2023 we reached 8,500 people and $1B+ in revenue. I was inside that growth, building the social-first capability from the ground up.
Thirty-three agency founders. Each with their own identity, their own clients, their own way of winning. The capability was fragmented across regions and teams that had no reason to trust each other yet.
The mandate: unify the go-to-market. Build one coherent capability. Make sure that when we walked into a room, we walked in as one.
The Build
I started by listening. Not presenting. Not forcing. I asked questions. I learned how each team worked, what they knew about their clients, where the real expertise lived. Trust came before alignment. It had to.
The resistance was real. Founders protect what they built. That's not a flaw, it's human. But after a year, the data broke through what conversation couldn't. Better qualification meant fewer pitches and higher close rates. Bigger opportunities meant bigger deals. The win rate climbed to 0%. The math became the argument.
Then came the global build. NAMER. LATAM. APAC. EMEA. I wasn't overseeing it from a distance. I was building it from the ground up. First hires. First freelancers. Leadership teams built region by region, role by role. Every market started the same way — with the right people and a clear system for how we win.
Over time, something shifted. We had built a reputation as a world-class social-first organization. Clients started coming to us. Connections inside an 8,500-person global network would surface opportunities and route them our way. The pipeline filled itself because the work earned it.
For three consecutive years I personally anchored 22 to 25 major global pursuits annually. We grew from $35M to $115M in revenue. Our capability became the second highest revenue driver for the entire organization. At our peak, 1,200 people.
What People Say
150+ brands. Every category. Every scale. One standard.
15 Years
of
Building
- IntrapreneurConill
- Co-Founder & P&LJoe Agency
- 6 to 100 peopleCircus
- $115M RevenueMonks
Some people manage the business. Some people build it. I've always been more interested in the architecture.
Four builds. Each one bigger, messier, and more complex than the last. Conill taught me how to launch a new capability from scratch inside an existing organization. How to find the white space, build the case, and turn a blank mandate into a revenue line. Joe Agency taught me the P&L the hard way, which is the only way it actually sticks. Circus was the proof of concept. Six people who grew into a focused, competitive agency that could walk into any room and win. Monks was the global enterprise test. The one where the stakes are real, the teams span continents, and the margin for error gets very small, very fast.
Each one left me with something the previous one couldn't teach. That's always been the point.
Here's what I've learned about building teams that most people figure out too late: the goal was never to be needed. The goal was always to make yourself unnecessary. Build the right people, give them the right systems, and get out of their way. The ones who figure that out early build things that last. The ones who don't become the bottleneck.
I've also learned that profit is the outcome, not the objective. Get the people right. Build something worth delivering. Earn the right partners. The numbers take care of themselves. Every time.
Culture isn't a targeting parameter for me. It's how I think. I'm bilingual, bicultural, and I've built campaigns for Hispanic audiences at the highest level — for brands like Toyota, Dodge, Spotify, and California Lottery. I don't need a brief to understand the market. I am the market.
I've been deep in AI for a while now. Not as an observer, but as a builder. I was part of the team that integrated Monks.flow into our capability, connecting AI infrastructure across a global organization. I've built agentic workflows inside live teams. I hold an MIT certification in AI and Business Strategy. But more than credentials, I have a point of view: the role of the pure specialist is shrinking. The next generation of high performers will be generalists who know how to direct, manage, and scale AI agents. That shift is already underway. And I'm already building for it.
The machine that runs without you. That's always been the goal.
Let's Talk
The best conversations I've had started with someone saying "we have a problem we can't quite solve." If that's where you are, I'd love to hear it.