About 8 East Agency

Built by master marketers who decided to do this the right way.

Two best friends and a longtime colleague, all master marketers with decades of agency experience, decided to build the kind of marketing partner growing businesses actually need: experienced, accountable, nimble, and here for the long haul.

Our story

It started with a phone call that almost went to voicemail.

One night, Kevin called Tyler. Their relationship was mostly text messages, so a phone call was unusual. Tyler had recently stepped away from the logistics company he co-founded and ran for sixteen years, which had been acquired in 2024. Kevin was at a great agency with great people, but had been quietly thinking about what it would take to build something of his own.

They talked for two hours. By the end of the conversation, they both realized they'd been circling the same idea for years, separately, without ever saying it out loud.

What followed was deliberate. A financial model. A business plan. Long conversations with each family, walking through what the business would mean for their time, their kids, and their weekends. Line one of the friendship contract they signed: friendships and family first. No missed graduations, no missed birthdays, and a mandatory family vacation every year.

When 8 East Agency became official, it wasn't the start of something new. It was the culmination of years of thinking about how to do this the right way. Built from a phone call that almost went to voicemail.

Watch our story
The team

Our team. All in.

The people you meet on our first conversation are the people doing the work. We're partners, not vendors. No handoffs to a junior team, no account managers in between.

Kevin Hart

Kevin Hart

Founder & CEO

Kevin has spent the last two decades helping businesses grow through smarter marketing, stronger teams, and strategies tied directly to revenue. Most recently, he served in senior executive leadership at a national, publicly traded agency, guiding client strategy at scale. A relationship-driven leader at his core, Kevin is known for earning trust, building alignment, and keeping the focus on what matters most: doing right by the client and creating work that moves the business forward. Outside of work, Kevin lives in St. Louis with his wife, Lyndi, and their three kids, Ainsley, Ellis, and Hayes. He's a proud Ohio State fan wherever he lives, the reigning 2022 St. Louis Comic-Con Dad Joke Tournament Champion, and despite the name and dad jokes, no — not that Kevin Hart.

Tyler Schoettmer

Tyler Schoettmer

Founder & CSO

Tyler brings twenty-two years of experience building and leading businesses, most recently as co-founder and owner of a logistics company that was acquired in 2024. Tyler's career has been built on client experience, team building, and strategy that holds up under pressure. He brings the operator's eye to every conversation, the kind that's been on the other side of an agency relationship and knows what good actually looks like. He lives in Cincinnati with his wife Carly, their three kids Halle, Jake, and Ryan, and two dogs, Ace and River. Born and raised in Cincinnati and never left, lifelong Reds and Bengals fan ("unfortunately," as he puts it), and the family motto says it all: "Work twice as hard as you play, and play really hard."

Cody McGee

Cody McGee

Director of Client Experience

Cody's experience spans fifteen years in digital marketing across SMB, automotive, real estate, and B2B, most recently serving in regional leadership at a national, publicly traded agency. His career has centered on turning complex strategy into clear direction, developing strong teams, and creating client experiences that build long-term trust. A teacher at heart, Cody knows how to make technical ideas feel approachable, a skill shaped by his years in the classroom before moving into marketing. Cody lives in the St. Louis region with his wife, Natalie, their three kids, Hadley, Grady, and Greta, and their golden retriever, Avett. He's a UMSL alum, lifelong Cardinals fan, Blues diehard, and always up for live music or getting outside.

Common questions

Asked and answered.

A few of the questions we get asked most, about how we work, who we are, and what it looks like to partner with us.

Who will actually be working on my account?

Kevin, Tyler, and Cody. The people you meet on our first call are the people running the work day-to-day. No handoffs to a junior team, no account manager in between. When you email us, you get one of us.

What makes 8 East different from bigger agencies?

We were built specifically to sit between two kinds of agencies: large firms that move slow and burn margin on overhead, and small shops built around one narrow service. We bring the full bottom-of-funnel stack (PPC, SEO, websites, email, paid social) with senior operators doing the work directly. Big-agency experience, no corporate runaround.

How are you thinking about AI and the future of search?

Search is changing faster than it has in twenty years. Between Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, the answer people see is increasingly generated by AI before they ever click a link. We're building content that shows up in both places: strong classic SEO rankings, and structured, source-worthy content that gets cited in AI-generated answers (Answer Engine Optimization). We also use AI where it makes the work better, for things like research, competitive analysis, and content structure. But strategy and voice stay in human hands.

What's your onboarding process like?

Every new engagement starts with a candid conversation about your business, your goals, and what's in place today. From there, we build a complimentary marketing audit and come back with a written breakdown and our recommendations. Once we're aligned on the plan, we set up tracking, build the strategy, and start executing.

How will we know the marketing is working?

Every month you'll get a written report tied to what matters: calls, form fills, leads, and revenue, plus a live dashboard you can check any time. No vanity metrics, no mystery reports. If something isn't working, we'll tell you and change it.

What does pricing look like?

Every engagement is scoped to what the business actually needs. We don't run cookie-cutter packages, and we don't try to sell services you don't need. After the initial audit, we come back with a plan, a scope, and a monthly investment based specifically on that plan.

How long until we see results?

It depends on the channel. Paid search and paid social often start driving inquiries within the first month. SEO is a longer game, with initial ranking improvements in 3 to 6 months and the compounding growth that makes it worth doing typically showing up over 6 to 12 months. Email and website work sit in between. We set expectations against real timelines from day one.

What's the "family-first" thing about?

Family-first isn't a phrase we picked because it sounded good. It's how the business was designed from day one. No missed graduations. No missed birthdays. A mandatory family vacation every year. That posture shapes how we treat clients too. We're built for the long haul, which means we take care of the people behind the work. Ours and yours.

The right channels,
the right strategy,
the right partners.

Book a conversation with the team behind 8 East. We’ll talk through where your business is headed, what’s standing in the way, and how we can help you move forward.

Book a Conversation → See What We Do →