Lauren Ridgley, CEO of Left Hand Agency in Portland, Oregon, never meant to start an agency. In March 2021, she set out to build a one-woman media buying consultancy. The business had other plans — by October, there was more work than one person could handle, and Left Hand reorganized as an S corp.
Today, the eight-person, fully remote team works with CPG brands like Meiji America and Kirk’s Soap, alongside nonprofits such as Feeding America and a handful of park systems. The throughline is awareness — building the kind of mental availability that turns shelf space into sales.
“We feel like we’re coming out of adolescence,” Ridgley says. “We figured out all of these systems internally that help us move more efficiently for our clients.”
Five years is also long enough to answer the question every young agency hears: will you still be here next year?
From consultancy of one to agency of eight
Ridgley’s career began at an independent media buying shop, and she has never worked anywhere else. That turned out to be an advantage. Not knowing the holding company rulebook meant never picking up its habits — like arbitrage, which Left Hand doesn’t do.
Growth came from the indie community as much as from clients. Roundtables and peer introductions taught her that biz dev headaches and HR puzzles look similar whether you’re a media, creative or packaging shop. Other founders also taught her the power of saying no when a project isn’t right.
“There’s competitors all in the same room,” she says, “but we all have a shared common goal of growth for indie agencies.”
Known for: the top of the funnel
Left Hand calls itself an awareness agency. For CPG clients expanding distribution, that means building mental availability to meet physical availability — making sure shoppers already know the brand when they find it in the aisle.
The agency runs full-funnel strategies too, but it lives at a specific intersection. Some brands arrive having over-invested in performance, watching returns flatten as their audience pool shrinks. Others manage performance in-house and need a partner to shore up the awareness side.
Either way, the job is the same: widen the pool so there’s room to grow.
3 things Left Hand does differently
Marketing science. Clients tell Ridgley their ROAS and click-through rates don’t show up anywhere on the balance sheet. Left Hand reframes measurement around real business outcomes and the media’s impact on them.
Media strategy. Solving the measurement equation goes hand in hand with planning where the dollars go.
Managing the whole picture. “We’re not just executing media,” Ridgley says. “We’re executing a bigger picture strategy that has layers to it.” That means owning the process with the client, not handing off a flowchart and hoping for the best.
No game of telephone
Independence is the only model Ridgley has known, and her clients feel the difference. Many come to Left Hand worried that a holding company would assign an account director to check boxes on their behalf.
At Left Hand, the strategists building the plan are the same people who show up on the call. “There’s not a game of telephone,” Ridgley says.
The agency’s size is deliberate. Small enough for high touch, big enough to bring real strategy — and clients get to know every person working on their business.
Why brands should call: they’ll learn something
Ridgley assumed brand managers and CMOs would arrive fluent in media mechanics. It turned out to be a mixed bag. Left Hand’s strongest relationships are with marketing teams it teaches along the way — what the agency is doing, why it works and which benchmarks matter.
That extends past the scope of work. If a client needs a third-party vendor, Left Hand points them to one.
The other lesson is alignment. Misfires happen when a brand asks for awareness, then demands ROAS once the campaign launches. Nothing happens in a vacuum — out of home plus connected TV behaves differently than either alone — so Left Hand has the messy-middle conversation early.
Why talent chooses Left Hand: nobody emails after 5 p.m.
The team has ranged from eight to 13 people, with a ninth hire coming soon. Freelancers and partner agencies cover specialties like SEO — and even audit Left Hand’s own accounts to find what it could do better.
Ridgley hires for curiosity: people who watch a fast-changing industry and ask good questions. In return, they get a supportive remote team with firm boundaries. “A lot of us have come from places of burnout,” she says. “We don’t want that to happen to our team.”
It’s working. Seven of the eight employees have been there since the beginning or close to it. CFO Ryan, a 20-year Target corporate veteran, built the promotion paths and insists on regular one-on-ones — even though Ridgley admits she’s terrible at them.
A weird underdog from Portland
Personally, Ridgley is a weirdo. Professionally, Left Hand is an underdog — a Portland media buying agency competing against shops that are mostly East Coast, big-city and holding company-bred.
The agency’s answer is generosity over hard selling. Left Hand invests in learning resources for CPG brands, less about closing business today and more about showing who the team is.
“We’re helpers at our core,” she says.
Told she can be more than one category, Ridgley didn’t hesitate. “Well, then I’m a weird underdog.”
Dear Good Culture: we buy a lot of your cottage cheese
Ridgley’s dream client is Good Culture, the cottage cheese brand whose strategy and growth she has admired for years. She buys it constantly, and founder Jesse Merrill has responded — they just haven’t had a real conversation yet.
She also shouted out Jeremy Solly, former CMO of Powell’s Books, a fellow marketing nerd who will happily dive into Byron Sharp and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s findings on brand growth. “Anytime I find a fellow marketing nerd who will really dive in,” she says, “it’s a kindred spirit.”
One more thing: don’t expect Ridgley to update the contact page. She’s banned from touching the website.
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Lauren Ridgley LinkedIn
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