Garrett Mehrguth is co-founder and chief executive of Directive, the B2B performance marketing agency he started in 2013 after a serious injury ended his plans to play professional soccer. Born in Laguna Hills, California, and homeschooled by his mother, he built Directive out of an apartment in Azusa, California, and is known for its Customer Generation method, which measures B2B marketing by customers won and revenue, and for his writing on how buyers now find vendors through AI assistants.
Growing Up Homeschooled
His father built custom cabinets for 27 years, and his mother, who had worked at a public relations firm, stayed home and homeschooled him. On the Founders Only podcast he recalled training for soccer twice a day and always running something on the side: refereeing on weekends, running a soccer shop when the owner stepped out, giving private lessons, and buying goods in bulk at Costco to resell from a table at the fields. "It's like, you know, what do I enjoy? What do people think I'm good at? And then, you know, how can I make some money?" he said.
He went to Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, California, on a full soccer scholarship. According to the California Business Journal, he finished his undergraduate degree in three years and an MBA in his fourth while playing for the team. To pay rent he stacked jobs: putting away chairs after chapel, doing the football team's laundry, working in the cafeteria and at the Azusa Chamber of Commerce, and selling social media work on Fiverr.
Founding Directive
In 2013 he applied to Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group, and McKinsey & Company. He told the California Business Journal that one online application did not even list his university, and that he got an instant reply saying there were no internships. "And in my head, I said, 'Forget these guys. I'll build an agency so big that one day they would have to acquire me,'" he said.
His first client was a Mediterranean restaurant that needed help with its Yelp and Facebook pages. When he went to collect his check after a month of work, the owner told him to come back the next day, and by then the restaurant was boarded up. He says he still has the contract, oil stains and all.
A man at a hookah shop then asked whether he could rank a website. "Everybody I was talking to figured I knew the internet. I didn't know anything about the internet," Mehrguth told the Journal. He watched Moz's Whiteboard Friday videos and read search blogs, charged about $200 a month, and had the site at the top of Google within three months.
He then talked his roommate and best friend, Tanner Shaffer, out of law school so they could build the company together. Shaffer's father ran a small plumbing business, and after Directive's work it ranked at the top of Google. "His phone was ringing off the hook," Mehrguth said. On Directive's history page he describes living on $12 a day in those years, with first clients that included "a shawarma shop, a hookah lounge, and a local plumber."
Customer Generation and AI Recommendations
Directive grew from SEO into paid search, content, and conversion work, and now has more than 150 people across offices in Orange County, California; Austin, Texas; New York City; Mexico City; London, England; and Toronto, Canada. Mehrguth calls its method Customer Generation, which swaps marketing-qualified-lead targets for goals tied to customers and revenue. On the Marketing Leadership podcast he argued that leads and MQLs can get chief marketing officers into trouble when they do not line up with revenue further down the funnel.
In a June 2026 LinkedIn post he wrote that new prospects were finding Directive through ChatGPT. "LLM discoverability is the 2016 version of ranking on Google," he wrote. "We went from 'ranking' to being 'recommended.'" Directive rebuilt Customer Generation around DiscoverabilityOS, its program for getting B2B brands mentioned where executives now research vendors: AI assistants, review sites, Reddit threads, and podcasts.
He has long insisted that an agency should win its own search results. "There's all these SEO firms, these PPC firms, but they don't run any of their own PPC ads and they don't do their own SEO," he told the California Business Journal. "So, if they're so good, why aren't they ranking No. 1?"
Family Routines and Date Night
On Founders Only he said he had three children under five. He starts the day with them, teaching squats and deadlifts with no weight on the bar, works from about 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., and keeps a standing date night with his wife every Thursday. In the evenings he takes notes on his phone and works through them the next morning.