Episodes

  • How to Create a Mission Based Marketing Strategy with Ryan Chute

    How to Create a Mission Based Marketing Strategy with Ryan Chute
    Jun 17 2025
    Marketing is much more powerful when it’s driven by a purpose and a mission. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Ryan Chute. Ryan leads an award-winning creative agency within the legendary Wizard of Ads® group. As an Emmy-award winning Producer and an Executive Producer, Ryan has a deep-rooted passion for powerful storytelling and pivotal moments in entertainment. He builds creative, data-driven strategies that tap into the psychology of persuasion and the science of decision-making. What Does "Mission" Mean to You? What is a “mission”? Mission starts as something internal to the company, and then becomes external to the public. When we think about that in the military sense, where “mission” derives from, that means the “commander’s intent”. Commander’s intent got popularized in the Napoleonic era where the Germans were fighting the Napoleon armies and they were losing miserably. The Germans realized one profoundly important thing: That they were going to have to sacrifice their autocratic way and come up with new flexibility of the army to take the hill however they might. Not every decision would come straight from the leader. When they did that the tides of the campaign changed. Ryan believes that everyone is a leader. They just need help bringing out the leader inside of them regardless of rank, authority or title. That ideology was the beginning of mission-based marketing and mission-based businesses. The idea here is that you, as the commander, you have this notion of how you want to start and run a business. Ways that you feel are righting rights that are wrong and fixing things in the way that they were injust in the past. You need something bigger than you and that is greater than the sum of just you. The Three Buckets of Your Mission So you come up with the commander’s intent. The commander’s intent lives in three buckets: Helping people win. Being grateful. Being trustworthy. Helping people win comes from being grateful and being trustworthy. This notion of gratitude is a definition of terms; what does gratitude mean to you? Is it through the way that you pay your employees, is it the way that you present policy and return policies for your clients? How do you deliver your deliverables? All of this lives in the humility and abundance of gratitude. Then there’s trustworthiness. What does being trustworthy mean? What does the action of trust and being a trustworthy person actually mean to you? That’s going to show up in what you decide to do when it’s convenient for you and when it’s inconvenient for you. This is the foundation of values and beliefs. Beliefs are like the constellations in the sky, they move around, they’re pretty, and they’re informative. But they’re convenient and they move. In any situation where it’s inconvenient for you, you’re willing to change, to take action for the greater good, and follow your mission. How to Connect to Your Mission When we all agree that the mission is to help people win in a trustworthy and grateful manner, the next step from that mission is to decide the rules of engagement. What is the objective that trying to achieve, what hill are you trying to conquer? In the HR department you’re trying to get the right employees, in sales you’re trying to close every sale that you ethically can, and so on. Ultimately all of those things are missions within your business, within your campaigns. Why does this all matter to the mission driven business? Until you understand what mission is, you can’t have a mission driven business. If we can all agree for a moment that helping people win in a trustworthy and grateful manner is the mission, what does that mean to you in your business? What does helping people win mean? In trustworthiness it’s the beliefs and values, the values are the things that you take consequence for. You accept the consequence, you suffer, you struggle and that’s when your true value shows up.
    Show more Show less
    24 mins
  • How to Become a Great Podcast Host with Mark Iorio

    How to Become a Great Podcast Host with Mark Iorio
    Jun 11 2025
    Becoming a great podcast host is a blend of art and science. I discuss how to become a great one with my guest, Mark Iorio. Mark is the host of Language of Leadership, a seasoned business culture expert, and a passionate advocate for helping organizations align purpose, people, and performance to build thriving, values-driven cultures. Eight years ago Mark was in the studio shooting an episode of his TV show, “CEO Chat”, and his business partner was one of the co-hosts. As Mark was walking off the set a woman asked him to guest on her podcast and Mark agreed. When Mark arrived to record the show, the CEO of the studio, Keith, came into the lobby asked him who he was there to see. When Mark mentioned the woman that invited him Keith told him she was gone but he would interview Mark. As the interview progressed, they were discussing marketing. Keith told Mark that he believed Mark would make a good podcast host. Mark blew it off as just another compliment to be nice, but Keith persisted. Mark agreed to be a host and decided to brainstorm topics and names for the potential show. He eventually came up with “Rainmakers’ Roundup” and ran the show for seven and a half years. What it Takes to Get Started in Podcasting Just do it, just step into it. First, you must be genuinely curious. You must focus on the person that you’re interviewing. Mark had 75 episodes of Rainmakers’ Roundup in the studio and he noticed there were dozens of hosts from other podcasts that read from a script. There was no flow to it, there was no real cadence. Just a list of questions. Mark was more improvised. He told me that if you can be curious about your guests’ lives, and be curious about the subject matter, your show will flow very nicely like a conversation over a cup of coffee. Creating a Successful Structure for a Podcast Conversation In your head, create and go through a process. Maybe its discussing how your guest got started in their business or career. Maybe it’s learning about why they love what they do. Have a specific cadence and let them answer the question. Make the show about them. If you go in thinking your show is about you because you’re this great podcaster, then you probably shouldn’t do it. If you’re there to shine a light on them and their career path, their service, what they’ve done for society and so on, then you’re taking the right approach. You’re in the right ballpark. How to Find Your First Guests You must have a mission for your podcast. When you understand that mission, look for people that match that mission. As an example, Mark is starting over with his new podcast “The Language of Leadership”. Language of Leadership is all about people in leadership positions that not only use meaningful language, but their behavior is such that people want to follow them. They want to follow their behavioral patterns. Because of his purpose Mark knows he needs to find branding people, HR people that care about their staff, heart-centered leaders and so on. What does this mean for you? Don’t try to squeeze someone into your podcast just because they’re a warm body. Know your mission and then figure out the types of people that fit your mission. That helps the conversation flow effortlessly and that makes it easier for you to ask the right questions because you know your mission so well. We also dive into topics including: More ways to find and connect to the mission for your podcast. How to develop your marketing message once you decide on the mission for your podcast. How to create the right mindset to “keep on keepin’ on” in the early stages of your podcast. Why keeping a cadence is important for your marketing. The pros and cons of live podcasting vs. prerecorded episodes. Advice for keeping on track with your podcast once you’re established. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to be a great podcast host. …and more golden nuggets of advice!
    Show more Show less
    22 mins
  • How to Creatively and Strategically Scale Your Business with Lysle Wickersham

    How to Creatively and Strategically Scale Your Business with Lysle Wickersham
    Jun 3 2025
    Creativity and strategy can seem like two sides of the same coin when it comes to business scaling, but they run well together when combined. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Lysle Wickersham. Lysle’s unique crossover skill set and insights not only transform startups and SMEs into scalable, successful ventures but also redefine the very essence of creative capitalism, masterfully blending positioning strategy with storytelling and building intangible equity to drive growth and build enterprise value. Lysle is an combination of two career paths that led him to his current business. He grew up as a creative director in integrated communications and brand development and advertising and eventually built a large agency that he ended up selling. After that Lysle ran a couple of tech companies connected to venture capital groups. He founded an investment bank and did a strange crossover for a creative person into mergers and acquisitions working with private equity and venture, a more strategic endeavor. What felt natural to him was the integration between the pragmatic side developing sound business strategies and the creative side of expressing the attributes of a company that builds the emotional connections. The truth is if you do both of those things well, that’s where the money is. Where to Start When it Comes to Blending Creativity and Strategy Creativity and strategy don’t run at the same time; it’s a linear process. To be creative you first need to be strategic. Every business must start with core positioning. Who is the target market that you’re trying to reach? All of this at first is connected to the founder by the company’s goals and visions and what they want to be and build. You take that and decide who would buy that and who’s going to scale with you so you can grow. You need to ask: What is the context that you are in the market in other words what space are you playing in, what’s your primary point of differentiation and what’s the proof that you can deliver on that point of differentiation? You must be able to deliver on that brand promise. If you do that stuff well and you have that core foundation that naturally leads to the attributes of your brand that align with your positioning and audience. That means answering questions such as: What do you look like? What do you sound like? What are the brand values from that you can discern your primary messaging? All of that then moves into things such as brand identity and communication strategies. The marriage between the two comes when you know who you are as a business and how you tell your story in a way that emotionally resonates with your potential clients. That’s the natural connection between the strategic foundation and the creative expression of that foundation. How to Know When You’re Ready to Scale It’s kind of an abstract way to look at the word, everybody wants to scale or grow. Every business’ goal is to get bigger and make more revenue. That’s a natural progression. There is no specific trigger for that. When you’re figuring out positioning for your business you want to make sure that the audience you want to build has room to grow. Then there’s market potential. That’s where there’s white space competitively where you can be different and be desired. All those things must go into consideration when you’re figuring out how to position a business to raise capital. You’re looking at the size of those marketplaces, how big they are, and what your potential to attract a piece of that market is. All those things must be calculated, especially if you’re talking to investors and you want to present a financial story to them about how your company can grow. How to Differentiate Yourself in the Marketplace That is the connection between strategy and creativity. When you create your positioning one of the core functions of that positioning is to articulate your core point of differentiation.
    Show more Show less
    22 mins
  • How to Build a Meaningful Personal Brand on Social Media with Vladimer Botsvadze

    How to Build a Meaningful Personal Brand on Social Media with Vladimer Botsvadze
    May 20 2025
    If you want to build a meaningful personal brand online you need authenticity, gratitude, and a few other strategies. I discuss them in this episode with my guest, Vladimer Botsvadze. Vladimer came to the United States on a work visa in 2006. He eventually moved to New York City, the best melting pot in the world. In NYC Vladimir realized how important it is to build a personal brand. He started rubbing shoulders with successful people and left no stone unturned. Vladimer became a lifelong learner, reading 400+ pages a day and working 16 hours a day. He built Twitter/X followers from zero to 57,000 in a year because he’s an authentic storyteller that loves to provide value. The Starting Point of Creating a Meaningful Online Brand Start small, build gradually for the long term, and give more than you take. You have an iPhone at your fingertips; you can easily record videos and upload them to YouTube to share your knowledge and your journey with your audience. Steve Jobs said the most powerful person in the world is a storyteller. He also said people that know what they are talking about don’t need PowerPoint. Be on different social media channels, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Remember, great oaks grow from small acorns. Long term thinkers give more than they take by sharing content that is in their followers’ best interests. Many people that connect with you on LinkedIn send sales pitches. People don’t pay attention to those pitches. They pay attention to value. How to Provide More Value to Your Social Media Audience Give away your best advice for free. Vladimir has never charged his followers for “picking his brain”. He leads by example, not by titles. That is one of the things that sets him apart from the rest of the herd. A majority of executives lead by their titles. Gary V. leads by example, Tim Ferris leads by example because they are self-made success stories. Both are examples of why you should never give up. There is always light at the end of the tunnel if you are positive and see the glass half full. Inspiration Along the Way It doesn’t matter where you were born, your background or your education. If you take massive, strategic action you will succeed. Vladimer was born in Georgia and dreaming about experiencing the Western world. In the nineties he was burning the midnight oil and pursuing his dream. Now he’s a global citizen. He loves instilling confidence in other people. If he can do it, anybody can do it. Establishing and Building Your Reputation You start to build a robust personal brand by showing gratitude. When people leave you comments or like your social media posts you should respond to them and thank them. Vladimir did and still does consistently express gratitude to his followers. He brought and brings his followers together which built and further builds his personal brand which translates to his personal success including hundreds of endorsements on LinkedIn. He treats his followers as his friends. You need to consistently create great content. That means creating content with authenticity, compassion, and devotion. Vladimir shares his authentic story with the world. That helps him build emotional connections with his followers. A Cohesive Strategy for Building Your Personal Brand You need to have a presence across a variety of social media channels. You need to create content consistently. You need to interact with your audience because a majority of people don’t consistently interact with their audiences and hence, they don’t grow their audiences. Then they complain that they have never built their personal brands because they almost never interacted. They get on their high horse while Vladimir does the opposite; he shows up and is down to earth. You need to be curious on a daily basis. You need to collaborate with influencers. When he began his social media journey in 2014 he had the foresight to interact with big brands.
    Show more Show less
    23 mins
  • How to Scale Your Business with a Market Dominating Position with Ed Middlebrooks

    How to Scale Your Business with a Market Dominating Position with Ed Middlebrooks
    Apr 23 2025
    When you create a Market Dominating Position (MDP) you’re on track to successfully scale your business. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Ed Middlebrooks. Ed is not your typical business coach—he’s a strategic weapon for entrepreneurs who are done playing small. Ed Middlebrooks is the founder of Elite Profit Coach, where he works with driven business owners to uncover hidden profit, outmaneuver competitors, and install dominance into their markets. Ed was the kid in the server closet for 25 years working a job in IT services. That job got him involved with business planning. He realized that technology affects the growth of a business. He found himself interfacing with high-level executives about more than just small technology issues. Ed began asking “How does the infrastructure of the business really allow us to foster growth and increase communications which ultimately increases sales and marketing results? “ Entering the Entrepreneurship World After 25 Ed left the corporate IT world because he learned about real estate investing and how to automate a business using what he calls “The Five Steps of Every Business”; which is: To get customers, you must first generate leads. Prescreen those leads. Construct and present offers. Close quickly. Follow up with everybody. Those five steps exist in so many places within a business. In his real estate investing career, his firm bought 24 houses with none of their own money, no banks and no credit. He had 17 Air BnBs. He built a multimillion-dollar business providing rentals. He took the strategies that he learned from working with C-Suite executives, negotiating and networking. Ed discovered that the secrets of growing and scaling a business appear to be fairly unique to each business, but they all come down to a singular strategy or pattern. When you put the building blocks in the right order, things happen, your strategies work, and your business grows. The Starting Point of Marketing Strategy and Business Growth First, you must take an analysis of your business. When it comes to growing and scaling a business, most entrepreneurs look at how to generate more revenue. They’re always thinking about the income. They want to foster more business. Whereas that’s true to a point, what Ed finds is that a lot of businesses are just chasing good money after bad. For example, they spend money on ads without really understanding the fundamentals of their business and how the ads boost (or don’t boost) the bottom line. Ed has a mantra that he’s learned along the way. That is “Revenue feeds the ego, but profit feeds your family.” When he talks about growing and scaling a business, he’ll show a business how to become more profitable without spending any extra money on marketing. This is assuming that there’s already a steady flow of business coming into that company. What they can do is make some changes. They can reduce the cost of goods sold, they can look at making more compelling offers, and so on. Creating Your Market Dominating Position (MDP) One thing stands out above everything else. That is understanding your company’s Market Dominating Position (MDP); sometimes referred to as the Unique Selling Position. What is the MDP of your company? If you don’t have that all you’re doing is throwing money into marketing, hoping that people connect with your messaging. You’re doing what everyone else does. When you do that, you can end up stuck in a red ocean (filled with “sharks”) and you’re not in a blue ocean. Ed’s not talking about creating a product that nobody else has. He’s talking about what the capacity of your business is to provide and deliver unique and superior value amongst your competition. Here’s another question that you must ask regardless of what your industry is. The question comes down to “What are the benefits you offer to your target market that set you apart from all of your competitors?” Once you figure that out,
    Show more Show less
    28 mins
  • How to Build Meaningful Relationships in an AI Driven World with Casey Cheshire

    How to Build Meaningful Relationships in an AI Driven World with Casey Cheshire
    Apr 9 2025
    In our more and more AI driven world meaningful relationships are harder to come by and maintain over time. We’re getting more and more disconnected from our social and professional circles. We’re using AI tools because we think they will make everything better. We think they will make doing business easier, which is true in some cases. They look fancy, they have cool reporting, so we think we’ll get more leads and then maybe we’ll get more clients. Unfortunately, often they’re putting layers of separation between us and our prospects and clients. When that happens, we don’t really understand what’s going on with our business outreach. We start to make up scenarios because we don’t have all the personal information to go alongside the data. We can end up not knowing much personal information about many of our prospects, instead we could primarily know what AI tells us about them. I discuss how to create meaningful relationships in this AI driven world with my guest, Casey Cheshire. Casey is a seasoned marketer with over two decades of experience and the author of “Marketing Automation Unleashed,” a guide to leveraging marketing technology for business growth. As the founder and CEO of Ringmaster Conversational Marketing, a B2B podcasting agency, he helps businesses build authentic connections with their audiences. The Unfortunate Trend of Weakening Ties Prospect and client relationships are weakening. We no longer remember many of their names off the top of our heads, we certainly don’t know what’s keeping them up at night, so we just make up what we think is keeping them up at night. Then our products and our services start to morph in that direction. No wonder that email campaign you just sent out only got crickets back. Or maybe you had a webinar, and nobody showed up or just a few people did. AI is one of the big reasons. You wanted an in-person or virtual room full of people; why were those marketing messages falling flat? Because you’re disconnected, you didn’t know what your prospects wanted because you put apps in the way. The crazy thing is that AI isn’t making those scenarios easier. AI isn’t getting us more connected; it’s adding more noise to our world. Let me get this straight, it’s always been noisy but now it’s getting noisier. AI is behind tons of content, tons of marketing strategies, and at times it’s having fake conversations with people. Overall, it’s just going to be a noisier world for everyone. We’re not going to be able to do more of the same or do better than the status quo unless something changes. The old ways of doing business just aren’t working anymore. We must pivot hard to avoid getting wrapped up in all that disconnected noise. Getting Started on the Journey of Cutting Through the Noise How can you reconnect with your existing network or connect with new prospects or potential referral sources? It’s a revolutionary thought: By making calls. Having one-on-one calls whether you’re the founder or the marketer and so on. In the case of sales roles, they’ll reach out, but that’s a different kind of outreach. We need to be reaching out to learn, to ask personal questions, not just to make a sale. It means you’re asking things like what are your goals this year? What are you trying to achieve? What are your responsibilities? What are the things that are really bothering you? Get to know their real wants and needs. We’re not really inquiring. Sometimes if we do get on the phone with people, we’re just pitching them. We’re soft pitching and we’re not really listening to them. We’re just looking for an opportunity to talk about our product or service. We’ve got to take a step back and have a conversation where we’re trying to learn about the other person. Things change all the time. It makes it harder for you because you think you know everything. For example, when you think you understand the customer because you are marketers selling to marketers or manufactu...
    Show more Show less
    23 mins
  • How to Get Through Emotionally Tough Times with Dr. Dorothy

    How to Get Through Emotionally Tough Times with Dr. Dorothy
    Mar 26 2025
    Everyone faces emotional downturns, especially entrepreneurs. We can get caught up in a negative story. We can get caught up in an emotion that keeps us from achieving our goals. It is possible to get to that healthy place where you can feel happiness, joy, and the full spectrum of positive emotions. Sometimes you’re going to feel anger, sometimes you’re going to feel sadness or defeat. You can come back to the joy of living and take your personal and business lives to the next level with the right strategies. I discuss some of those strategies in this episode with my guest, Dr. Dorothy A. Martin-Neville. Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD, is a speaker, author, consultant and master coach. She has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Network as well as the New York Times, the Huffington Post, NBC, and ABC. As a psychotherapist, Dr. Dorothy (or “Dr. D”) was in practice for 25+ years. As the founder of four companies, Dr. Dorothy has knowledge of the challenges facing leaders in business and in life. As a Business & Life Coach, her focus is on Mindfulness, Emotional Intelligence, and NLP. The Stories We Tell Ourselves When Dr. D works with folks, she asks questions such as what’s that bad place about? How did you get there? What’s the story you’re telling yourself in that moment? When you’re in a bad place you’re always telling yourself a story. You need to get to the root cause of that story. The story could be you’re focusing on one incident in your life and that’s the filter through which you see everything. So, if you were abused as a child you’re going to see abuse everywhere in your life. If somebody doesn’t return a phone call, they’re abusive. If somebody doesn’t recognize you at a networking event, they’re being abusive and so on. We create filters through which we see the world. If you’re in a funk Dr. D’s first thought is to examine what’s going on in your life, what is it you’re caught up in? If you can look at what you’re caught up in and begin to put that in the big picture you can get context for the situation. You’ll see there’s some legitimacy to what you’re saying but there’s a whole other big picture around it. You can choose to focus on that problem piece or see it in the perspective of the bigger picture. That will help you begin to shift your focus. Shifting Your Focus to Shift Your Story Dr. D trains folks to do a reality check. Let’s say you’re going through a divorce. All the sudden you’re caught up in betrayal, abandonment and other similar feelings. Ok, that’s what you’re experiencing, and legitimately so. How can you get beyond that? You have the option of spending the rest of your life in that space. Or you can recognize that’s a horrible thing that’s happening, it’s not what you’ve planned for your life but it’s there. How can you get through it and come out on the other side? Where do you want to land when you reach the other side? It’s not denial of what’s real for you in that moment. But that’s the situation that you’re in; that’s the period of life you’re going through. The funk happens when you’re caught up in a period of life and you see that as your whole life. How can you go through that and learn from it? What do you need to learn about yourself and life in general? Answering those questions will, again, shift your focus to the bigger, more positive picture. Challenges in Your Personal and Business Lives When you’re an entrepreneur it’s impossible not to have problems affect both your personal and business lives. Your personal life affects your business life, and your business life affects your personal life. You need to separate the life you’re living from the reality of who you are. If you’re consumed emotionally with what’s going on in your personal life that’s time you’re taking away from your business life. Emotionally it has you in a bad head space personally instead of focusing on your business. At that point your business is paying the price.
    Show more Show less
    25 mins
  • How Speakers Bureaus Work with Speakers and How to Get Booked with Brian Palmer

    How Speakers Bureaus Work with Speakers and How to Get Booked with Brian Palmer
    Mar 18 2025
    If you can align yourself with a speakers bureau your public speaking business can grow exponentially. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Brian Palmer. Brian is the Senior Vice President of Premiere Speakers Bureau and a respected leader in the speaking industry. With decades of experience, Brian has built a reputation for helping business professionals select the perfect speakers for their events. He does this by delivering engaging, relevant, and high-impact presentations that align with organizational objectives. Brian’s Journey into The Professional Speaking World In 1972 when Brian was a freshman in high school his dad started National Speakers Bureau. His dad was a band leader who got tired of traveling all over the country. He decided to do something on the fringes of the entertainment business. The speaking industry seemed like a fit. Brian started with envelope licking and note card sorting. During college Brian worked there during the summers. In 1980 he finished college, and he started working at National Speakers Bureau full time and he’s been around ever since. For reference for the rest of this post: National Speakers Bureau was eventually purchased by Premiere Speakers Bureau (PSB) and Brian stayed on board as a Vice President. The Process of Booking Professional Speakers There’s a variety of ways to book great speakers. PSB has established themselves as a great place to turn to when you need a good speaker. People reach out to them, describe a situation where they need a speaker, give them their criteria and their budget parameters. They make recommendations and provide potential clients with the means with which to plan for an outstanding event. That includes biography, presentation descriptions, video samples and more. Proposals started out long ago with audio cassette tapes. Now it’s obviously video and it’s a lot easier now through online video. Many buyers are also very interested in testimonials from past speaking engagements. Sometimes people have other questions and PSB tries move the process along and help people make a decision that they’re happy about. Then, once it’s booked, PSB handles all the arrangements in a way that builds the buyer’s confidence. The speaker shows up prepared, ready to go, ready to make a contribution to that organization’s objectives. They speak, they get a lot of applause, the client’s really happy because their boss says “That was a great choice”. The Process of Vetting and then Working with Professional Speakers To a certain degree, Brian knows an outstanding speaker when he sees one. He studied speech in college and some of what he learned makes a good speech back then still applies today. Sometimes he prefers to watch full speeches. He watches a speech, watches the stories they tell, how relevant they are to the audience, how personalized the presentation is, and so on. One thing Brian does is study how much time elapses between a laugh or some kind of emotive response. All those things factor together to delineate a good speaker from an excellent speaker. There are so many people that want to speak, and Brian chooses to recommend people who are excellent. PSB books over 2,000 engagements a year and their clients rate the speaker, and they rate the speaker as well. They consider things such as how cooperative the speaker is, how good they are at personalizing the presentation, how they work with PSB overall. All those things combine to drive the recommendations that they make. Speakers Bureaus: Do They Approach You or do You Approach Them? When PSB learns about a speaker that they’re not involved with, and they hear the speaker does a great job or PSB loses business to somebody repeatedly that gets their attention. Speakers often refer other speakers that they’ve seen or that they’re friends with. On average PSB hears from 30 people a day interested in PSB booking speeches for them.
    Show more Show less
    24 mins