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Jake Neske
Company
Hustle
Location
Jersey City, New Jersey, United States
Bio
Fractional chief revenue officer, who specializes in business development, marketing strategies, and community building for top international experience design agencies. -Chief strategic partner to launching Media.Monks in the US, helped the company grow from 50 to over a 1000 before becoming the largest acquisition in production company history. -Over a ten year relationship with Jam3, led partnership efforts as team expanded from 8 to 200 before their merger with Media.Monks. -Tool of North America has been an Ad Age A-List nine of the ten years they've been under our management.
Fractional chief revenue officer, who specializes...
description
Hustle is a strategic business development and management agency representing best in breed linear and immersive storytellers.
Hustle is a strategic business development...
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Actionable Takeaways
The Production Ecosystem Nobody Knows Exists:
Behind every TV commercial is a sequence of approximately 7 specialized companies — director, editor, VFX, design, audio, and more — each with their own talent management and sales function; Hustle operates in this world as an outsourced sales department for the production companies themselves, a layer of the advertising industry that brands and marketers rarely interact with directly.
Breaking International Companies Into the US Is Its Own Expertise:
The US advertising market is so large and relationship-dependent that even world-class international agencies (Media Monks, Jam3) need a dedicated local partner to build pipeline; Hustle's track record of growing Media Monks' US team from 40 to 1,100 people is a direct result of this specialized capability.
Talent Arbitrage: Follow Where the Best Talent Is Forming:
Creative talent clusters are shaped by geography, culture, and government policy — Canadian government funding created Moment Factory and Cirque du Soleil; Swedish cold weather drove top creative talent to Minnesota agencies in the 1990s; Buenos Aires produces bilingual design talent because of great institutions; knowing which countries are generating what kinds of talent is a continuous competitive advantage.
The Buying Culture Moment: Brands Are Over-Investing in Cultural Events:
As traditional advertising becomes harder to break through, brands are flooding into cultural moments — Coachella, Super Bowl, Victoria's Secret — acting as "remora fish" on major events to attract eyeballs and drive sales from the cultural halo; Jake's 2026 goals reflect this trend directly.
Success in Sales Requires Understanding Both Sides of the Table:
The most effective creative sales people understand what a CMO wants (product sold, stock impacted) AND what a creative director wants (award-winning work that advances their career); aligning both motivations in a single pitch is what separates Hustle's relational approach from transactional production matchmaking.
AI as a Business Thinking Partner for Small Teams:
For a 7-person agency, large-scale data infrastructure and enterprise analytics are out of reach; Jake uses LLMs as a sparring partner for business model decisions, compensation structure analysis, and strategic scenarios — compressing what would take a week of analysis into hours, without needing a dedicated analyst or consultant.
Relationship Sales Cannot Be Optimized Away:
Jake's business depends on knowing what every person in his network wants — from a junior animator's career ambitions to a CMO's quarterly objectives — and the buying process for major productions is still entirely human; AI can help with research and prep, but it isn't participating in the decisions, making Hustle's relational advantage more durable than algorithmic approaches.
Owned Events as Thought Leadership — Not Just Content:
Rather than just producing content, Hustle has organized 30-40 events over the last three years focused on AI and experiential — positioning itself as the agency that helps clients think about emerging trends, not just execute existing ones; this creates client relationships that extend beyond any single project or production.
Conversation Highlights
Jake Neske, founder and partner of Hustle, has spent 15 years doing something most of the advertising world doesn’t know exists: representing the production companies that make the ads. While brands hire agencies and agencies hire directors, Jake and his team of seven are the connectors — the outsourced sales department for world-class creative studios, helping companies like Media Monks scale from 40 people and $500K in US revenue to 1,100 people and the largest production company acquisition in advertising history. In this episode, Jake talks about the talent arbitrage that drives global creative excellence, why every brand is over-investing in culture right now, and what it means that his two biggest goals for 2026 are the Super Bowl halftime show and the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.
Topics Discussed
- Jake’s unconventional path: college → teaching English in Japan → TV Asahi (7 years covering US news/documentary for Japanese audiences) → production company representation → founding Hustle
- What Hustle actually does: outsourced sales and business development for creative production companies — the ecosystem most marketers don’t know exists
- The production ecosystem explained: every TV commercial involves 7+ different companies (director, editor, VFX, design, audio) — Hustle represents that talent to brands and agencies
- 25 creative partner companies represented; projects ranging $50K to 7-8 figures
- Success stories: Media Monks (40 people/$500K US revenue → 1,100 people, largest production acquisition in advertising history); Jam3 (11 people → 250 before merging with Monks); Addition AI agency (taken to exit with R/GA)
- Why international agencies need US representation — the US market is too large and relationship-driven for foreign companies to break without local expertise
- Talent arbitrage across geographies: Nordics for creative, Argentina for bilingual design talent, Canada for government-funded immersive arts (Cirque du Soleil, Moment Factory)
- The “buying culture” moment — every brand is over-investing in cultural moments (Coachella, Super Bowl, Victoria’s Secret) because traditional advertising can’t break through as reliably
- “Remora fish” strategy: latching onto impactful cultural events to attract attention and drive sales from the surrounding halo
- AI at Hustle: LLM as sparring partner for business modeling and compensation structures — the sales process itself remains fundamentally human
- 30-40 AI and experiential events produced by Hustle over the last 3 years as owned thought leadership
- Business cycle reality: feast-or-famine, great Q1/Q4, challenging Q2/Q3
- 7-person team; expansion constrained by the difficulty of training someone to do relationship-based creative sales
- •2026 goals: Super Bowl halftime show and Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show for Hustle’s clients
