From zero to top life sciences agency: How Sheldon Zhai scaled Supreme Optimization

Sheldon Zhai is the founder of Supreme Optimization, one of the fastest-growing full-service life sciences marketing agencies in life sciences.

In this conversation, Sheldon shares how he landed his first clients, scaled Supreme Optimization, and navigated the challenges of building a high-growth agency. We also dive into his recent acquisitions, his vision for AI in life sciences marketing, and his approach to hiring top-tier talent—including why he insists on hiring PhD-level scientists as marketers.

And if you're thinking of starting your own life sciences marketing agency, Sheldon has some blunt, no-nonsense advice on what it really takes to succeed.

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The interview below is based on the transcript of our conversation but has been edited and rearranged for conciseness and clarity.

How Supreme Optimization started

What inspired you to start Supreme Optimization back in 2015?

Sheldon Zhai: To be honest, what inspired me the most was that I wanted to make a little more money. I've always been entrepreneurial, but it’s not like I had some genius idea or identified a massive gap in the market.

I was working as a busboy in Los Angeles at the time—cleaning tables, making something like $8 or $10 an hour. I wanted a job with more flexibility, something outside of a typical office setting. So, I started asking friends and family about different skills I could learn that were in demand.

I had worked in a lab before—I was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for four years as an undergraduate research fellow. I handled lab products, ordered reagents from companies like Qiagen, Thermo Fisher, and Promega, so I was already familiar with the life sciences space.

That’s when I thought, why not try marketing? And that’s how I got started. Not a huge inspirational story—it just kind of happened.

Finding your first client as an agency

How did you land your first client?

S.Z.: The easiest way is to leverage your network and get referrals. And the reason is because no one's going to respond to you with cold emails.

It’s always the hardest to go from zero to your first 10 clients. Once you have 10, things start getting easier because you have a system and a track record. But that first batch? You really have to tap into your network, get referrals, close deals, and deliver good work.

For me, I got my first referrals—just one or two—I charged a small amount per month, delivered great results, and asked if I could use them as references. Then, I built a website overnight, kept getting more referrals, and that’s how it took off.

What kind of services were you offering in the beginning?

S.Z.: Just SEO and digital marketing. It was easy to measure success. I’d charge $500 a month, and my goal was simple: when someone searched for a keyword, my client’s website would show up. After a few months, I’d show them the results: Here’s your website, and here’s the keyword you wanted to rank for.

And that’s really valuable for companies. Many of the companies I worked with early on were really small. I still work with some of them today—over 10 years later. Many of them got acquired by bigger companies because they grew, and people found them. It worked.

Common challenges for early-stage agencies

What were some of the biggest challenges in the early days?

S.Z.: Everything was a challenge! Running a business means you have to figure out everything: finding leads, handling finances, operations, maintaining client relationships, delivering great work, scaling up… It’s a never-ending list.

To put it simply, you’re responsible for managing every single challenge in your business. It’s not just one specific thing—it’s the fact that you’re doing all of it at once.

It seems like, from the beginning, you were thinking about building a scalable business rather than being a freelancer. Am I right?

S.Z: Yeah, though it took me a few years to fully commit to that. If you're good as a freelancer, demand will eventually outpace your capacity. That’s when you realize: I need to start hiring.

That transition from freelancer to business owner is tough. Many people can be great independent consultants, but very few can actually build and manage a business. Once you bring on employees, suddenly you're responsible for everything—hiring, HR, operations. And if you’re bootstrapping it, you have to actually become pretty good, not just like average, but pretty good at every single job function at a company.

Key milestones in the growth of Supreme Optimization

Supreme Optimization has grown rapidly to become a leader in life sciences marketing. Can you walk us through some key milestones in your journey?

S.Z.: Sure. The first milestone was deciding to go from freelancer to business owner. In the early years, I was juggling multiple things. It wasn’t until around 2016 that I fully committed to building the company.

The second milestone was scaling. We made more right decisions than wrong ones, and we made them fast. A huge competitive advantage in any business is the ability to make high-success-rate decisions quickly. I think I can make a decision in a fraction of the time someone else would, and that allowed us to grow rapidly.

The third milestone was taking on investment to scale even further. That started a few years ago.

Those are the three big phases so far.

Building a team of scientific marketers

Early on, you focused on hiring PhD-level scientists as marketers. What was the vision behind that?

S.Z.: It’s simple: If you want to be good at marketing, you need to understand what you’re marketing and who your audience is. In life sciences, that usually means having a PhD or a strong scientific background.

You could take the best media buyer in the world, but if they don’t understand the science, they’ll fail. That’s why our agency has displaced so many generalist marketing agencies—because they just don’t get the field.

Having PhDs on our team means we can properly understand the problems our clients are solving. It leads to better messaging, better positioning, and ultimately, better results.

Scaling up the agency through a strategic investment

In 2023, the private equity fund Trinity Hunt Partners took a major stake in your business. What led to that decision?

S.Z.: Basically, I saw a huge opportunity. Compared to competitors, our reputation was much stronger. We've done tons of NPS (Net Promoter Score) surveys—not just with happy clients, but even with those who left. And across the board, our scores were industry-leading.

Same with employees. We have almost no turnover, never had a layoff, and our clients rarely leave. That tells me we’ve built something really strong—our people, product, and process are all working well.

But we were turning down more deals than we could handle. We had waitlists. We didn’t want to sacrifice quality for quantity, so we had to be selective.

I also knew there were major growth opportunities in different life sciences verticals—digital health, biotech, pharma, healthcare IT. And we wanted to expand into areas like PR, which we never really touched before. Instead of trying to build everything in-house (which would take years), why not partner with the best agencies in those fields?

So, the investment made sense. It allowed us to scale while maintaining quality.

So, did you actively look for an investment partner, or did this happen naturally?

S.Z.: No, I actively looked for it. I wanted someone who could help me scale.

We brought in an amazing CEO and other experienced leaders—people who have actually scaled companies to hundreds of millions in revenue before. I could have tried to do it myself, but why not bring in experts with a proven track record?

And to attract those kinds of people, you need investment. That’s just the reality.

Acquiring and integrating other agencies to scale up

In the past two years, you’ve acquired six agencies. Can you share a few examples of the types of agencies you acquired and why?

S.Z.: One of our latest acquisitions was Amendola Communications. There are a lot of agencies that claim they "do everything," but in reality, every agency has a core strength. For many, that’s PR and communications, and Amendola is truly world-class at PR—especially in digital health and health IT.

Many of our clients at Supreme Optimization had asked for PR services, but we never offered it. I didn’t want to refer them to an agency I didn’t personally trust. But after doing deep due diligence—talking to their clients, reviewing their work—we saw that Amendola was exceptional. So, we acquired them.

Now, we can confidently refer our clients for PR, while Amendola can refer their clients to us for digital marketing and lead generation. It’s a true win-win.

And that same synergy applies to all the agencies we’ve brought into the Supreme Group.

Lessons learned from six acquisitions in two years

What lessons have you learned from integrating these agencies into your business?

S.Z.: I don’t think we’ve learned new lessons per se, because we have a lot of experienced people who’ve done integrations before.

But the biggest challenge with integrations is making sure you do it right—because if you don’t, employees get unhappy, clients get unhappy, and things start falling apart. You have to be sensitive to those things.

And it seems like you're keeping these agencies somewhat independent. Their brands remain separate, right?

S.Z: Yeah, absolutely. Autonomy is really important.

As long as we're aligned on the bigger vision, we want to avoid adding unnecessary bureaucracy. Otherwise, you end up with a slow, inefficient company that loses its edge.

What types of agencies are you looking to acquire next?

S.Z.: We’re focused on agencies within the life sciences and healthcare space. Size is a big factor—we want businesses that are large enough to be sustainable, with proven processes and strong teams.

But culture is the most important thing. We’ve passed on a lot of acquisitions simply because the culture wasn’t a fit. If the culture isn’t aligned, the integration won’t work.

Scaling up your agency culture

Can you describe the culture at Supreme Optimization?

S.Z.: Yeah, actually, I created a culture handbook with real examples from our team. A lot of companies list generic values, but culture isn’t what you write down—it’s what already exists. So, I documented our actual culture and included real stories of people at Supreme Optimization who embody it.

One of our biggest principles is meritocracy. We want the best people making the decisions. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, what your background is—if you're exceptional at your job, you should be in a leadership role.

And when a company lacks meritocracy, politics take over. Employees wonder, “Why did that person get promoted? They’re not that good”. That destroys motivation. So, we make sure promotions and leadership positions are based purely on skill and performance.

The role of AI in science marketing

You’re now Head of AI and Technology at Supreme. What role does AI play in your marketing strategy?

S.Z.: AI is going to be a massive game-changer for us. We have a big release coming at the end of this month—part of our Supreme Intelligence platform. It’s been years in the making.

But here’s the thing: most companies don’t actually understand AI. AI isn’t some magic tool—you need a clean, structured data pipeline for AI to work effectively. That’s where most companies fail.

For years, we’ve been building that foundation—sanitizing data, organizing it correctly—so when we apply AI, it actually delivers real value.

A lot of agencies are just slapping "AI" on their website, but 99% of them don’t actually have a structured AI strategy.

Right. A lot of them just have a ChatGPT account and call it "AI-powered marketing."

S.Z.: Exactly. We’re taking a fundamentally different approach. And I think once we launch our AI platform in a few weeks, people will see the difference.

The future of Supreme Optimization

Looking ahead—what’s your vision for Supreme Optimization in the next five years?

S.Z.: Honestly, the same vision as the next 50 years: to be the best life sciences marketing agency.

For me, success comes down to two things:

1. Are our employees happy and sticking with us long-term?
2. Are our clients happy and seeing real results?

If we can maintain both, we’re on the right track.

Advice for aspiring marketing agency owners

If you could give one piece of advice to someone starting a life sciences marketing agency today, what would it be?

S.Z.: Learn how to hire. There’s a great book called Who: The A Method for Hiring, by Geoff Smart—it’s all about hiring the right people. If you don’t hire well, you’re already setting yourself up for failure.

Also, be ready for a ton of work. I worked 80-hour weeks for a decade. Took calls at 3 AM, 5 AM—did whatever it took. It’s not easy, but if you want to build something great, that’s the level of commitment required.

Book recommendation for marketing agencies

Is there any other book you recommend for agency owners?

S.Z.: Yeah, another good book is The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, by Blair Enns. It’s great because it tells you how to sell without really selling. And it's very short.