RWL245 This Is How A Boutique Remote Firm Beats Bigger Agencies On Outcomes

Welcome to Remote Work Life, the podcast spotlighting the leaders and location-independent entrepreneurs shaping the future of work. My name's Alex Wilson Campbell. And today I'm taking a closer look at 33 Sticks, a fully remote analytics consultancy that's been quietly rewriting the rules of how digital consulting firms operate. Founded back in 2013 by Jason Thompson and Hiller De Hahn, 33 Sticks was built around a deceptively simple idea. Create the analytics consultancy they wish that had existed when they were clients. A decade later, that philosophy has led them to deliver more than 1 billion in revenue impact for over 50 global brands, all with a small, intentionally remote team. 336 sits at the intersection of analytics, business strategy, and culture. The company partners with major brands, names like Target, Viacom, Harvard Business Review, and Major League Baseball to help them make sense of their data and turn it into action. What sets them apart isn't the technology, but the mindset. Rather than billing by the hour, they use value-based pricing, aligning their incentives directly with client outcomes. They've also built their own matrix methodology, a framework that measures analytics maturity as a straight line, but across multiple dimensions of business readiness. And while most consultancies chase scale through headcount, 33 Sticks keeps its team intentionally small, a handful of highly experienced professionals working remotely around the world. And this approach, they say, keeps quality high, communication honest, and clients deeply connected to the people actually doing the work. Their model challenges the assumption that bigger is better, and it shows how remote structures can foster agility and not isolation. Let's talk a bit about what's really interesting about 33 Sticks just for a minute. The founders, Jason Thompson and Hiller Dahn, both came out of the analytics and Martec world. Jason helped build Omniture, the platform that later became Adobe Analytics, while Hiller spent years advising top brands on optimization and experimentation. When they launched 33 Sticks, they weren't just trying to sell analytics services, they wanted to redesign the experience of consulting itself. I'd say that their biggest differentiator is culture. 33Sticks operates completely remotely, not as a pandemic pivot, but as a deliberate design choice. Every team member works from home or remote offices, collaborating virtually with clients around the world. They describe their employees as rock stars who work very remotely, and it's clear they've made distributed work a strategic advantage rather than a logistical challenge. Instead of hourly billing or long reports that no one reads, they focus on transparent conversations and measurable outcomes. Their communication style, truth over politeness, as they call it, has built a reputation for clarity in an industry often cluttered with jargon. This model brings freedom and accountability into balance. Clients get senior level expertise without the overhead of large agency, and employees enjoy autonomy without losing connection. For remote entrepreneurs and leaders, 33 Sticks proves that scale doesn't mean size. It can mean impact per person. By staying boutique by design, they've protected culture, kept bureaucracy low, and delivered consistent results across 12 years in business. And the story of 33 Sticks is a reminder that remote work isn't just an operational choice, it can be a competitive advantage when it's built on trust and clarity. Their founders questioned the assumptions that drive most consultancies. Why charge by the hour? Why require an office? Why hide behind layers of management? By stripping those things away, they built a model focused on outcomes, relationships, and craftsmanship. For leaders building or scaling remote businesses, there's a simple takeaway here. Deliberate constraints can spark innovation. Limiting headcount forced 33 Sticks to create processes and methodologies that scale impact, not bureaucracy. As somebody who's spent years interviewing remote founders, I see the same pattern again and again. The best teams succeed because they design for autonomy and clarity from the start.