When the Canadian marketing agency Longhouse lost almost half of its business during a critical expansion, founder Keenan Beavis rebuilt from the ground up. What started with jiu-jitsu discipline turned into one of Canadaâs fastest-growing agencies. Discover how Longhouse survived scaling too fast, built smarter systems and transparent reporting, and nurtured more than 850 client partnerships.
In jiu-jitsu, the moment you panic is the moment you tap out.
Youâre on your back, the pressure is crushing, and your breathingâs off. But if you stay calmâif you keep your wits about youâyou find the angle, shift your weight, and turn the whole thing around.
Thatâs exactly what Keenan Beavis did when his Canadian agency Longhouse Branding & Marketing lost 40% of its revenue.
The agency had just doubled its team, expanding from five generalists to 10 specialists. On paper, it was proof they were scaling. However, inside the business, things were fraying. Keenan, once the face of every deliverable, was no longer on every call.
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âClients felt like they were getting less of me,â Keenan says. âBut really, they were getting moreâmore structure, more strategy, more support. It just didnât feel like that to them.â
Instead of flailing, Longhouse found the angle and shifted its weight. The agency focused on leadership development, reworked its infrastructure, and started building the kind of systems that turn growing pains into steady growth.
Three months later, they were back on their feet. A few years later? Longhouse Branding & Marketing is the fastest-growing agency in Canada, with more than 850 businesses served and $775M in client-attributed revenue across 92+ industries.
Name
Agency
Agency Stats
Location
Keenan Beavis
Longhouse Branding & Marketing
20+ employees
70+ recurring clients
850+ clients served
Est. 2018
Langley, Canada
How a kid mastered SEO before it was a thing
At 11, Keenan Beavis was uploading YouTube videos of himself goofing aroundâtrampoline flips, Katy Perry parody songs, anything that might hit. As an OG content creator way back in the mid-2000s, Keenan didnât really angle for fame or notoriety like todayâs TikTok or Instagram influencers.Â
âI was just having fun. My videos werenât good. I could only do a front flip,â Keenan, now 30, says with a chuckle.Â
While, at the time, creating a YouTube channel might have seemed crazy for a kid his age, Keenan was always curious. He wanted to know why some videos took off while others didnât.Â
I was obsessed with other YouTubers and why they were getting millions of views. I wanted views like that. I dedicated a lot of time to learning search engine optimization before anyone else really had.
Keenan tested relentlessly, working out thumbnails, titles, and keywords. Before long, he had become the 27th most-viewed YouTuber in Canada simply by dedicating the time to learning the burgeoning art of SEO.
Eventually, creating content got old. But Keenanâs childhood love for Dragon Ball Z never faltered. He attended fan expos, where he got to meet the voice of his favorite characters: Goku, Vegeta, and Piccolo. Itâs also where he noticed that most people were either in full cosplay or just wearing regular clothes. There was no in-between.Â
Recognizing the gap in the market, he launched a minimalist t-shirt line for quieter fansâprinted on demand, optimized for search.
He folded the store without drama. It taught him a lesson in trademark and copyright infringement laws, though, and that would become an essential part of Keenanâs future career in branding.
At Longhouse, we want to make sure that every brand we work with has a unique design that is theirs and that they can use if they choose to proceed with a trademark.
Keenan grew up training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu with his dad, Todd. Itâs still something they do together and a way to stay close long after most kids outgrow that kind of bond.Â
Brazilian jiu-jitsu is fun. Itâs a grappling martial art that focuses on using technique and leverage, rather than just strength, to control your opponent and submit them with joint locks and chokes.
People often refer to it as âphysical chessâ because the goal is to outmaneuver an opponent using strategy and timing rather than brute force.
Keenan trains under Marcus Soares, a 9th-degree red beltâthe highest rank in North America. Marcus had come to Canada from Brazil decades earlier without knowing the language. He was a top student of Carlson Gracie, one of the most influential practitioners of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and he had built one of the most respected academies in the sport.
From left: Todd Beavis, jiu-jitsu Grandmaster Marcus Soares, and Keenan Beavis. (Courtesy: Longhouse Branding & Marketing)
Keenan has always recognized how martial arts helped develop him into a disciplined, curious, and hardworking individual. But he hadnât ever considered crossing worlds and bringing his internet marketing skills to jiu-jitsu.Â
However, when the school needed more students, Keenan used the skills heâd been teaching himselfâdigital advertising, SEO, web design, and social mediaâand helped double the gymâs membership.
He didnât call what he did âagency workâ yet, but that was the defining moment when his career path became clear.Â
More projects came rolling in.
A friendâs older brother, who worked as a doorman at a restaurant, told him he was launching his own business. âHe started talking about how he was starting a plumbing company,â Keenan recalls, âand I told him, âI'm thinking of doing a marketing company.ââ
That plumbing company, Bromac, is still with Longhouse nine years later.
Keenan saw what marketing could do, not just in terms of traffic, leads, or revenue, but in terms of impact for the people around him.Â
Helping leaders grow by simplifying their to-do list shows me that Longhouse is making an impact for entrepreneurs and their families, while also contributing to the economies of our communities.
By 2022, Longhouse had grown fast. The early wins had turned into steady momentum. Clients were lining up and signing on. New team members joined. Keenan was building something that felt durable.
Then the whole thing buckled.
We lost 40% of our revenue at the same time that our expenses had nearly doubled.
Longhouse had just expanded from a five-person to a 10-person team, shifting from generalists to specialists. Delegating tasks was the right move, but the wrong moment. The infrastructure wasnât there to support the expansion. Client expectations were misaligned with the companyâs growth.
Our partners were so used to only working with me that they felt like they were getting a downgrade in service. They were actually getting an upgrade with the additional team members, but it felt like a downgrade regardless.
The perception gap hit hard. Retainers were canceled. Clients churned. The team was in place, but the floor dropped out from under them.
And yet, this wasnât Longhouseâs collapse. It was the beginning of something better.
Keenan knew what had gone wrong. Heâd stepped back from day-to-day delivery without setting the foundation that would let others step in with confidence. Roles werenât defined. Systems werenât ready. Leadership hadnât scaled fast enough to match the headcount.
We hadn't even set up job descriptions or interview questions, and we had grown our team size by 100%.
Clients werenât getting worse service. They were actually getting better service, with dedicated results managers, specialist support, and more focus and rigor. However, the shift had come too quickly and without the clarity needed to establish trust throughout the transition.
Thatâs when the firefighting started.
Keenan calls it âproactive firefighting.â Every business, he says, is on fire somewhere: accounting, delivery, communication, training. Itâs just a question of whether those fires stay small or burn the whole place down.Â
âThe issue with fire is that it doubles in size every 30 seconds,â he says. âIf it starts to get too big, you need to put it out.â
So, Keenan stepped back inâthis time as a leader and a systems builder.
Keenan Beavis turned each Longhouse team member into a dedicated specialist for their clients. (Credit: Longhouse Branding & Marketing)
He developed training, documented processes, and restructured the team so that every client had a single point of accountabilityâsomeone whose job was to own results.
Then he focused on measurement.
We didn't have reporting tools enabled. We didn't have the infrastructure to support the new team members properly as they came in.
Longhouse overhauled its tech stack. They moved project coordination into Monday.com. They adopted PipeDrive as their CRM because it âhas all the features we need.â They connected data sources and reporting systems through tools like Airtable. And they brought in AgencyAnalytics to close the loop between performance and communication.
Within three months, Longhouse had recovered the revenue it had lost and created the capacity to grow with the clarity clients expected all along.
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After the churn, Longhouse had to rebuild more than revenue. They had to restore confidence. Clients needed to know what was happening, what had happened, and what would happen next, without having to chase down answers or second-guess the results.
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Real-time dashboards guide client conversations, and monthly reports include a link for clients to book a meeting with their dedicated results manager.
Our first goal was for Longhouse to be the best marketing agency in Langley. Then we tried to be the best marketing agency in Vancouver. Now we want to be the best marketing agency in Canada.
Part of our mission for Longhouse to be the best marketing agency in Canada is to provide the clearest, most accessible, and most comprehensive results reporting.
Every Longhouse report has become a touchpoint. Every dashboard has become a single source of truth. And every insight is now delivered with one goal in mind: clarity, one of Longhouseâs core values.
âClarity is kindness,â Keenan says. âWhen you have clarity in your data, it builds trust for Longhouse because it's transparent. It also helps the busy leader easily understand what is happening, what has happened, and what is going to happen.
âAt Longhouse Branding & Marketing, we like to have clear reporting and regular touchpoints with our clients. We don't set you up on an account and then hide away.â
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Consistent communication, transparent reporting, and repeatable processes replaced one-off efforts. It gave the team more capacity to innovate, collaborate, and focus on strategy instead of survival.Â
Itâs also been important for the companyâs culture. Keenan explains that Longhouseâs team lives by four core principles: over-communicate, be a teacher, take initiative, and add âwow.â
You can wow people in a lot of ways. You can wow people by having incredible customer service. You can wow people by going above and beyond to integrate a higher-level reporting metric.Â
Many marketing agencies only include CPM, impressions, and reach. But as an actionable insight, what you really want is your cost per lead (CPL): What does it actually cost in advertising to get a phone call or to get a contact form submitted? At Longhouse, we want to know every data point for our clients.
With the right tech in place and the right story behind the numbers, Longhouse delivered peace of mind, cementing their position as a go-to agency for busy business leaders whose âto-doâ lists are often filled to the brim.
Keenan Beavis and the Longhouse team. (Credit: Longhouse Branding & Marketing)
The agency kept growing. So did the name and its meaning.
Longhouse, a style of residential dwelling built by various cultures around the world, notably Indigenous peoples, was more than a nod to strength and shelter. It became a way for Keenan to celebrate a powerful symbol of community and collaboration.
Reclaiming a culture where he didnât feel he belonged
âI wasnât raised in my culture at all,â Keenan said. âMy grandfather was heavily abused due to his indigeneity and was essentially taught that being Indigenous was bad.â
It wasnât until his twenties that Keenan started asking questions. A mentor, Glen Ohs, took an interest in his life, invited him to coffee, and then to cultural gatherings.
He felt nervous. He felt behind. He felt like he should have already known the language, the people, the stories. That sense of being late to your own identity was hard to vocalize until he stood on stage in Halifax to accept the National Young Indigenous Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2025.
Here I was on stage accepting a prestigious Indigenous award, yet I look white, and I wasnât raised in my culture.
During the speech, Keenan went into detail on his familyâs history, outlined his anxiety around approaching his Indigenous culture for the first time, and the impact that generational shame has had, and is still having on families.
His nervousness was misplaced. After the speech, people lined up to thank him. Some cried. One man told Keenan that heâd also grown up disconnected from his roots. He had the same fear of being an outsider despite being visibly Indigenous. The man had been adopted and also hadnât known his culture until late in life.
Keenan (second from left) at the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business (CCIB) East Coast Business Forum in April 2025, where he was named the National Young Indigenous Entrepreneur of the Year. (Courtesy: Longhouse Branding & Marketing)
Keenan doesnât pretend to be a cultural authority. However, he does know what it feels like to want your identity back and to wonder if youâll be welcome when you finally reach for it.
If I can be part of the conversation in normalizing the anxiety that people feel when approaching their culture for the first time, Iâm happy to play a role in that.
Today, Keenanâs resume includes a â30 Under 30â nod from BC Business (which he received at the age of 28) and regular speaking engagements with community organizations and business associations.Â
Longhouse has been named one of the top 100 fastest-growing companies on B2B services marketplace Clutch (#1 in Canada, #16 globally) and was the recipient of an international logo design award from DesignRush earlier this year.
For Keenan, thereâs a lot more on the horizon.
The big goal: from Langley to everywhere
Through Longhouse, Keenan Beavis has set his sights on helping the people around him, building a better community, and empowering entrepreneurs to grow their businesses and support their families.Â
Longhouseâs refined processes and partnership model have given them the momentum to open new doors, especially with U.S. companies seeking a dependable, high-performing agency.
âMy wife is from Texas,â Keenan says. âI want Americans to know that Canadian businesses like Longhouse are a great choice for business services. The exchange rate is in your favor, and Canadians are an educated, hard-working workforce that brings empathy to every project.â
That mindset shapes how Longhouse runs: Clients are treated like partners, campaigns are tied to business outcomes, and reporting is a conversation.
Keenan is also thinking a few steps ahead.
Heâs spent the past few years quietly building a system to help AI platforms better understand and surface his clientsâ content. That process, which he calls "AnswerMapping"(the title of his forthcoming book), has evolved into its own strategic frameworkâan evolution to SEO that helps organizations become the answer on AI platforms like ChatGPT.
Thereâs a lot of content that we write that never gets posted. It's just for the AI to learn.
Today, he estimates that 15% of Longhouseâs inbound leads come from AI engines.
Just like when, as a kid, he was publishing and optimizing his YouTube videos, Keenan doesnât know for sure whatâs next. However, he knows that he loves building up leaders and wants to encourage the next generation of entrepreneurs.
âOne of my goals is to be a dragon on Dragonâs Den and maybe a shark on Shark Tank,â Keenan says.
Because the crucial questions heâs tracking for Longhouse clients, such as âWhatâs your customer acquisition cost? Whatâs your ROAS? Whatâs your CPL?â arenât going away.Â
With AgencyAnalytics, Keenan and the Longhouse team are making sure more people know how to answer them.
Written by
Francois Marchand
Francois Marchand brings more than 20 years of experience in marketing, journalism, content production, and artificial intelligence (AI). His goal is to equip agency leaders with innovative strategies and actionable advice to succeed in digital marketing, SaaS, and ecommerce.
