Who's behind the trigger

I finally built the agency I wanted to hire.

I'm Shaun Raines — founder of Hired Guns Agency. I've spent nearly three decades on just about every side of the automotive industry. I learned what works, what doesn't, and how much bad advice gets dressed up as strategy. I kept looking for the agency I'd want to hire for my own brand. When I couldn't find it, I built it. A hired gun who tells you the truth, then helps you fix it.

Building, breaking, and fixing this stuff since 1999.

I started at Reynolds & Reynolds, working on early automotive internet projects like Microsoft CarPoint and AutoMark — back when "digital marketing" was mostly theory and duct tape. From there I did what a lot of operators do: I built things. Some worked. Some failed because they were early, not wrong.

ReachLocal. DrivingSales. DealerOn. Different seats, same education — learning what actually moves metal versus what just moves invoices, and watching great companies stay invisible while louder, lesser ones ate their lunch. That gap taught me the lesson the whole agency is built on: in this business, trust isn't a nice-to-have. It's the entire game.

Early in my career, a grizzled GM let me drown him in features for a while — bells, whistles, the works — then leaned back and gave me ten seconds of advice I'm still living by:

"I don't care what it does. I care what it does for me."— a GM who was kinder than everyone who'd let me ramble for years

He was right. I'd fallen in love with the product. He needed me to fall in love with his problem. Now, before any pitch, any post, any piece of content, I ask his question: what does this do for them? It's the difference between noise and signal — and it's baked into everything we make.

As for how I work: hand grenades and hugs. I'll tell you the hard truth about where your credibility gap really is — that's the grenade. Then I roll up my sleeves and get in the foxhole with you to fix it — that's the hug. You don't get one without the other. Agreement isn't the job; getting you known, trusted, and chosen is the job. Hear me now, believe me later — I'm your Huckleberry.

No one rides alone.

Here's the truth behind the name: I can't do this by myself, and I wouldn't want to. Every episode, every clip, every post that ships under a client's name gets there because of the crew behind me — they run the rooms, the edits, the calendars, and the quality bar. Without them, Hired Guns can't do what Hired Guns does. These are the hired guns.

Crystel Raines

Chief Operating Officer

Sammy Raines

Director of Production

Abi Studer

Client Success & Operations Coordinator

Cici Glasscock

Content Coordinator

I finally built the agency I wanted to hire.

Building, breaking, and fixing this stuff since 1999.

No one rides alone.

Let's get in the foxhole.