Podcasts about agencies

THE EMN DAILY NEWS | Thursday, 1 October 2026The OverviewFlood watches across Texas and Oklahoma; FY27 starts on a CRFlood watches cover southern Oklahoma and much of north and central Texas today as the remnants of Hurricane Polo move across the region, with flash flood warnings overnight around Wichita Falls and a watch running through Friday evening over the Hill Country counties still in Public Assistance recovery from the July floods. Fiscal year 2027 opens on a continuing resolution that runs through December 11, holding agencies at fiscal 2026 levels and permitting up to $26.37 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund. The national preparedness level holds at 2 with 58 incidents and 4,826 personnel, down 574 in a day, with no new large fires. Year-to-date fire counts were adjusted sharply upward to 62,218, moving the season from 124 to 134 percent of the ten-year average. Dome in Yosemite National Park reached 39 percent contained as a second California team mobilizes. For great insight from leading emergency managment professionals, visit EM Network on Substack. KEY TAKEAWAYSOklahoma and north Texas: The Norman forecast office holds a flood watch until 1 p.m. today for 25 Oklahoma counties and five northern Texas counties, with 2 to 4 inches likely and local amounts to 6 inches. Flash flood warnings ran overnight for Wichita Falls, Burkburnett, Iowa Park and Sheppard Air Force Base after 1 to 3 inches fell in short order.Central Texas: The Fort Worth office carries a flood watch through Friday morning across north central Texas, including Dallas, Denton, Collin and McLennan counties, with 2 to 3 inches widespread and localized totals to 5 inches. The Austin and San Antonio office holds a watch until 7 p.m. Friday for Hill Country counties including Kerr, Bandera, Uvalde, Real, Edwards, Gillespie and Kendall, all of which carry open Public Assistance from the July declaration.Fiscal year: Agencies begin fiscal 2027 under the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, signed September 2, which funds the government through December 11 at prior-year levels. The measure permits up to $26.37 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund, with obligations charged against fiscal 2027 appropriations rather than treated as supplemental. Under a continuing resolution, agencies cannot start programs, projects or activities that were not already funded and active, which constrains new grant starts until a full-year bill passes.Get ready, Long Beach! Join emergency management professionals from across the country and around the world for the IAEM 74th Annual Conference & EMEX, November 9-11, 2026, and experience three incredible days of big ideas, new connections, innovation, and the people shaping the future of emergency management. We'll see you in Long Beach!Wildfire posture: Preparedness Level 2 with 58 incidents, 14 uncontained large fires, 1,641,606 acres and 4,826 personnel, a drop of 574, per the Wednesday situation report. Initial attack was light, with 91 fires and no new large incidents; one large fire was contained, and five complex teams were committed. The Northwest, Northern California and Southern Area each released more than 220 people in a single operational period.Reporting adjustment: Year-to-date fires rose from 57,521 to 62,218 in one reporting cycle, almost entirely in the Southern Area, which moved from 28,661 to 33,302. That shifts the season from 124 to 134 percent of the ten-year average for fire counts. The situation report attributes such changes to mapping or reporting adjustments rather than new activity, and a similar acreage swing last week reversed within days.California: Dome in Yosemite National Park grew 151 acres to 5,410 and jumped to 39 percent contained, up from 31, with 932 personnel and California Team 4 mobilizing. Costs stand at $24 million. Plaskett on the Los Padres National Forest is fully contained, and Timber holds at 88 percent with numerous structures still threatened.Northwest: Eight uncontained large fires and 2,186 personnel, down 239. Command on Little Giant transfers from Northwest Team 13 to Northwest Team 12 today, with the fire at 93 percent contained and structures still threatened. Sisi near Stehekin nearly doubled containment to 29 percent, with residences threatened.Recovery calendar: SBA physical damage deadlines for the September 1 public assistance declarations close November 1 in Colorado and South Dakota and November 2 in Missouri and Texas, with economic injury applications open to June 1, 2027. Texas recently added Grimes, Live Oak, McMullen and Schleicher counties for Public Assistance, and its Individual Assistance request covering 30 counties remains pending.Fire weather: Breezy northerly winds in the Sacramento Valley and southern California ease this morning, but relative humidity of 10 to 15 percent persists with above-normal temperatures. In the southern Plains, breezy south winds of 10 to 18 miles per hour and minimum humidity of 25 to 35 percent create locally elevated conditions.SOURCESTexas and Oklahoma floodingNWS Norman: Flood Watch for 25 Oklahoma counties and five northern Texas counties, issued Oct 1 at 1:41 a.m. CDT until 1 p.m. CDThttps://govonestop.com/nws/oklahoma-texas-severe-flood-watch-effective-09302026-2341NWS Norman: Flash Flood Warning for Wichita County, Texas, issued Oct 1 at 2:57 a.m. CDThttps://govonestop.com/nws/texas-severe-flash-flood-warning-effective-10012026-0057NWS Norman: Flash Flood Warning for southeastern Archer and southern Clay counties, issued Oct 1 at 1:45 a.m. CDThttps://www.defconlevel.com/alert/2026-10-01-nws-noaa-weather-flash-flood-warning-issued-october-1-at-1-45am-cdt-until-october-1-at-4-45am-cdt-by-nws-norman-okNWS Fort Worth: Flood Watch through Friday morning for north central Texas, issued Sept 30 at 2:26 p.m. CDThttps://govonestop.com/nws/texas-severe-flood-watch-effective-09302026-1226NWS Austin/San Antonio: Flood Watch until 7 p.m. Oct 2 for Hill Country counties, issued Sept 30 at 9:52 p.m. CDThttps://govonestop.com/nws/texas-severe-flood-watch-effective-09302026-1952Federal fundingWhite House: H.R. 6500, Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027, signed Sept 2, funding agencies through Dec 11https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2026/09/congressional-bill-h-r-6500-signed-into-law/Congressional Research Service summary via Legis1: $26.37 billion permitted for the Disaster Relief Fund under the continuing resolutionhttps://legis1.com/news/fy2027-continuing-resolution-funds-agenciesOffice of the Texas Governor: four additional counties approved for Public Assistance, Individual Assistance request pendinghttps://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-announces-approval-of-federal-disaster-assistance-for-four-additional-counties-following-summer-storms-and-floodingWildfire, nationalNICC Incident Management Situation Report and Predictive Services discussion: Wednesday, Sept 30, 2026, 0730 MDT (live PDF, overwritten daily). Source for all fire figures and the California, Northwest and fire weather items.https://www.nifc.gov/nicc-files/sitreprt.pdfIMSR archivehttps://www.nifc.gov/nicc/incident-information/imsr This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emnetwork.substack.com/subscribe

Shoot Us A Message!Hiring insurance producers who actually write premium comes down to building a repeatable training system rather than searching for a unicorn salesperson.In this episode, we break down why relying on experienced talent often leads to high turnover and bad sales habits inside your agency. Learn how to recruit for coachability, structure daily producer onboarding, and run consistent sales training to ramp new hires to full quota faster. If you need a structured framework to evaluate role fit and streamline hiring producers across your team, check out TeamIQ.Key Takeaways and Timestamps00:00 Why hiring experienced insurance salespeople often fails04:15 The cost of uncoachable talent versus raw potential09:30 Structuring daily onboarding and producer training15:45 Setting clear production benchmarks and activity metrics21:10 Building repeatable sales processes for agency scale26:20 Final takeaways on developing top producers in-houseThe Insurance Dudes ResourcesJoin the Agent Elite: https://www.skool.com/agenteliteBest Seller: https://MillionDollarAgencyBook.comInsurance Dudes Files: https://blog.theidudes.comTeamIQ: https://teamiq.theidudes.comTelefunnel Lead Callers: https://theidudes.comILB: https://insuranceleadbrokers.comInsurance Agency Trader: https://trader.theidudes.comIf this helps, subscribe and hit the bell so you can catch every episode.Follow UsFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/theinsurancedudesLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-insurance-dudes-podcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/insurancedudespodcastSupport the showHey there! Thank you for listening! We'd be SUPER GRATEFUL for a subscribe!And a review over on the Apple Podcasts would be incredible!Check out our newsletter, webinar, and some great Internet Lead tactics at The Insurance Dudes Homepage.We appreciate you!Craig Pretzinger & Jason FeltmanThe Insurance Dudes

AI is no longer something commercial real estate principals can leave on the "one day" list. Commercial agencies are already using it to reduce manual work, improve productivity and produce better outputs. In episode 289 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership, Darren Krakowiak looks at five practical areas where AI is being used by his clients today. The focus is not on replacing judgement or people. It's on removing unnecessary manual work and making existing processes more efficient. In this episode, you'll discover:

In this panel discussion, moderator Aaron Nielson (University of Texas at Austin) speaks with Michael Buschbacher (Boyden Gray PLLC), Matt Gregory (Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP), and Stephanie Maloney (U.S. Chamber Litigation Center) about legal remedies and the state of strategic litigation against agencies. Show notes:   YouTube version Sign up for email updates from the […]

The Nurses Report on America Out Loud with Gail Macrae, BSN, RN – The same script walks through the crises since about 2001. COVID and the product presented as the savior of mankind. Climate change. Transgender medicine. The sudden post-2010 claim that America is systemically racist in every institution. The Russia obsession. Each episode is introduced as a specter stalking...

In this panel discussion, moderator Aaron Nielson (University of Texas at Austin) speaks with Michael Buschbacher (Boyden Gray PLLC), Matt Gregory (Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP), and Stephanie Maloney (U.S. Chamber Litigation Center) about legal remedies and the state of strategic litigation against agencies.Show notes:  YouTube versionSign up for email updates from the Gray Center here

Joe Sticco says regulators are "picking up the ball and running" to create new guardrails on crypto following the failed Clarity Act vote from the Senate. He discusses ways federal rules will help lift Bitcoin in an attempt to start a new bull cycle. Joe also touches on how the blockchain continues to blur the line between traditional and evolving investment strategies. ======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day. Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/ About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

Agencies everywhere are feeling the pressure right now, and it hits hard when you see clients walking away because they think AI can replace what you do. It's tough watching tools pump out content in seconds while you're trying to prove your work still matters. That kind of shift can make you question your value and wonder how long your agency can keep up.Omar digs into why AI is shaking up the agency world and what's actually causing so many teams to struggle. He breaks down the difference between selling tasks and selling real outcomes, and why that shift changes everything for the agencies that embrace it. You'll hear how this plays out across different types of services and what it means for the future of creative and marketing work as AI keeps evolving.Your agency can stay relevant and become the kind of partner clients hold onto. Click play at the top of the page and hear a smarter way to rise above the AI wave instead of getting swept under it.MBA2839 AI Is Killing Agencies. This Is How To Save Your AgencyRecommended episode to explore:How To Set Your Prices To Make Million Dollars In A YearWatch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHiSUBSCRIBEYouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

To kick off Oaktober, we break down the genetics behind why some oak trees are reliable acorn producers and others aren't, and how you as a landowner can use that variation to guide forest stand improvement decisions that benefit both turkeys and deer.   Resources: Boggess, C. M., Strickland, B., Alexander, H. D., & Lashley, M. A. (2019). Mast Seeding in Oaks: A Strategy to Satiate Predators or Strengthen Apparent Competition?. In American Fisheries Society & The Wildlife Society 2019 Joint Annual Conference. AFS. Lashley, M. A., et al. (2009). Masting characteristics of white oak: implications for management. In In: Proc. Annu. Conf. Southeast. Association Fish and Wildl. Agencies. 63: 21-26. (Vol. 63, pp. 21-26). Lashley, M. A., et al. (2025). Decreased female survival may explain wild turkey decline. bioRxiv, 2025-05. Tree plantings for turkeys | Ep 95   We've launched our second online wild turkey course  ! Enroll in  Wild Turkey Manager: Biology, History & Habitat to learn about the principal biology, mating, behavior, food selection, human dimensions, hunter interactions, and historical context of wild turkeys. This course is accredited by the Society of American Foresters as a Category 2 course worth 7 Continuing Forestry Education credits. Participants can also earn up to 5 CEUs in Category I of The Wildlife Society's Certified Wildlife Biologist Program. Enroll now: https://tinyurl.com/WildTurkeyManagerBio   Be sure to check out our first comprehensive online wild turkey course featuring experts across multiple institutions that specialize in habitat management and population management for wild turkeys. Earn up to 20.5 CFE hours! Enroll Now!    Dr. Marcus Lashley @DrDisturbance, Publications Dr. Will Gulsby @dr_will_gulsby, Publications Turkeys for Tomorrow @turkeysfortomorrow  UF Game Lab @ufgamelab, YouTube   Want to help wild turkey conservation? Please take our quick survey to take part in our research!   Do you have a topic you'd like us to cover? Leave us a review or send us an email at wildturkeyscience@gmail.com!   Watch these podcasts on YouTube   Please help us by taking our (quick) listener survey - Thank you!    Check out the DrDisturbance YouTube channel! DrDisturbance YouTube   Want to help support the podcast? Our friends at Grounded Brand have an option to donate directly to Wild Turkey Science at checkout. Thank you in advance for your support!   Leave a podcast rating for a chance to win free gear!   This podcast is made possible by Turkeys for Tomorrow, a grassroots organization dedicated to the wild turkey. To learn more about TFT, go to turkeysfortomorrow.org.    Music by Artlist.io Produced & edited by Charlotte Nowak

To kick off Oaktober, we break down the genetics behind why some oak trees are reliable acorn producers and others aren't, and how you as a landowner can use that variation to guide forest stand improvement decisions that benefit both turkeys and deer.   Resources: Boggess, C. M., Strickland, B., Alexander, H. D., & Lashley, M. A. (2019). Mast Seeding in Oaks: A Strategy to Satiate Predators or Strengthen Apparent Competition?. In American Fisheries Society & The Wildlife Society 2019 Joint Annual Conference. AFS. Lashley, M. A., et al. (2009). Masting characteristics of white oak: implications for management. In In: Proc. Annu. Conf. Southeast. Association Fish and Wildl. Agencies. 63: 21-26. (Vol. 63, pp. 21-26). Lashley, M. A., et al. (2025). Decreased female survival may explain wild turkey decline. bioRxiv, 2025-05. Tree plantings for turkeys | Ep 95   We've launched our second online wild turkey course  ! Enroll in  Wild Turkey Manager: Biology, History & Habitat to learn about the principal biology, mating, behavior, food selection, human dimensions, hunter interactions, and historical context of wild turkeys. This course is accredited by the Society of American Foresters as a Category 2 course worth 7 Continuing Forestry Education credits. Participants can also earn up to 5 CEUs in Category I of The Wildlife Society's Certified Wildlife Biologist Program. Enroll now: https://tinyurl.com/WildTurkeyManagerBio   Be sure to check out our first comprehensive online wild turkey course featuring experts across multiple institutions that specialize in habitat management and population management for wild turkeys. Earn up to 20.5 CFE hours! Enroll Now!    Dr. Marcus Lashley @DrDisturbance, Publications Dr. Will Gulsby @dr_will_gulsby, Publications Turkeys for Tomorrow @turkeysfortomorrow  UF Game Lab @ufgamelab, YouTube   Want to help wild turkey conservation? Please take our quick survey to take part in our research!   Do you have a topic you'd like us to cover? Leave us a review or send us an email at wildturkeyscience@gmail.com!   Watch these podcasts on YouTube   Please help us by taking our (quick) listener survey - Thank you!    Check out the DrDisturbance YouTube channel! DrDisturbance YouTube   Want to help support the podcast? Our friends at Grounded Brand have an option to donate directly to Wild Turkey Science at checkout. Thank you in advance for your support!   Leave a podcast rating for a chance to win free gear!   This podcast is made possible by Turkeys for Tomorrow, a grassroots organization dedicated to the wild turkey. To learn more about TFT, go to turkeysfortomorrow.org.    Music by Artlist.io Produced & edited by Charlotte Nowak 

According to ABC News, a British government minister cautioned that information provided by a whistleblower or tipster regarding an alleged security plot connected to RAF Fairford may represent only part of what investigators are examining. The comments come as authorities continue investigating a case involving the Royal Air Force base used by U.S. military aircraft. Andrew Bailey, the former Missouri attorney general who joined the FBI in 2025 in the newly created role of co-deputy director, is stepping down after about a year in the position. Bailey, the former Missouri attorney general who became an FBI co-deputy director in 2025, is resigning and returning to Missouri for family reasons. His departure marks another leadership shift at the FBI and leaves the future of the bureau's unusual co-deputy-director structure uncertain. Please Like, Comment and Follow 'Philip Teresi on KMJ' on all platforms: --- Philip Teresi on KMJ is available on the KMJNOW app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever else you listen to podcasts. -- Philip Teresi on KMJ Weekdays 2-6 PM Pacific on News/Talk 580 AM & 105.9 FM KMJ | Website | Facebook | Instagram | X | Podcast | Amazon | - Everything KMJ KMJNOW App | Podcasts | Facebook | X | Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

According to ABC News, a British government minister cautioned that information provided by a whistleblower or tipster regarding an alleged security plot connected to RAF Fairford may represent only part of what investigators are examining. The comments come as authorities continue investigating a case involving the Royal Air Force base used by U.S. military aircraft. Andrew Bailey, the former Missouri attorney general who joined the FBI in 2025 in the newly created role of co-deputy director, is stepping down after about a year in the position. Bailey, the former Missouri attorney general who became an FBI co-deputy director in 2025, is resigning and returning to Missouri for family reasons. His departure marks another leadership shift at the FBI and leaves the future of the bureau's unusual co-deputy-director structure uncertain. Please Like, Comment and Follow 'Philip Teresi on KMJ' on all platforms: --- Philip Teresi on KMJ is available on the KMJNOW app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever else you listen to podcasts. -- Philip Teresi on KMJ Weekdays 2-6 PM Pacific on News/Talk 580 AM & 105.9 FM KMJ | Website | Facebook | Instagram | X | Podcast | Amazon | - Everything KMJ KMJNOW App | Podcasts | Facebook | X | Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thema: Das neue Unterhaltungsgeschäft „Es ist wichtig, wie ein Creator zu arbeiten, nämlich in Iterationen.“ In der neuen Episode von „What's Next, Agencies“ spricht Kim Notz mit Matthias Funk und Peter Rathmayr, Gründer von Channel Two, darüber, warum YouTube im Marketing-Mix zunehmend an Bedeutung gewinnt und weshalb Marken die Plattform nach anderen Regeln bespielen müssen als klassische Werbekanäle. Denn wer auf YouTube nachhaltig wachsen will, muss sich stärker wie ein Creator verhalten: relevante Themen besetzen, authentische Formate entwickeln und eine langfristige Beziehung zur eigenen Audience aufbauen. Matthias und Peter erklären, warum erfolgreiche YouTube-Strategien dabei deutlich datengetriebener sind, als es auf den ersten Blick erscheinen mag. Statt sich vor allem an Views oder Subscriber-Zahlen zu orientieren, rücken Kennzahlen wie Klickrate und durchschnittliche Wiedergabedauer in den Fokus. Entscheidend ist, zu verstehen, welche Themen und Formate eine Zielgruppe wirklich interessieren, erfolgreiche Mechaniken innerhalb eines Themenfelds zu identifizieren und den eigenen Content kontinuierlich weiterzuentwickeln. Auch Branded Entertainment funktioniert aus ihrer Sicht deshalb nicht als kurzfristiger Kampagnenbaustein, sondern braucht Konsistenz und einen langen Atem. Im Gespräch geht es außerdem darum, wie sich Unternehmen von einer werbegetriebenen Organisation stärker zu einer Content-Organisation entwickeln können und welche Rolle Agenturen dabei spielen. Matthias und Peter zeigen, warum dafür nicht nur kreative Ideen, sondern auch neue Prozesse, Kompetenzen und ein anderes Verständnis von Erfolg notwendig sind und weshalb YouTube für Marken langfristig weit mehr sein kann als ein Ablageort für vorhandenen Video-Content.

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Would you like to learn how to accelerate your agency growth? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Phil Davis is the founder and CEO of Tungsten Branding , one of the world's top-ranked naming and branding agencies, and the man behind hundreds of company names including PODS, RallyHouse, and TeamLogicIT. Before Tungsten, Phil ran a full-service ad agency in Tampa Bay for 17 years before hitting an inflection point: he was succeeding by every external metric and miserable at the core of it. In this episode, Phil and Jason dig into the one question that cuts through all the noise of running an agency, why chasing revenue metrics is a trap, and what it actually means to build a business in alignment with what you want. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | [iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Key Takeaways: Ask "So I can what?" before you chase any goal. This is Phil's acid test: trace every goal back to what it actually gives you. Want a $20M agency? So I can what? Generational wealth? So I can what? Nearly every answer eventually bottoms out at peace of mind or freedom. If you know that upfront, you can stop building toward the wrong things. Chasing the wrong metric will hollow out your agency. Phil built a media-heavy agency that hit his revenue targets and left him wondering what the weather was like because he never stepped outside. The blur years, he calls them. The fix is not working harder; it is questioning which metric you are actually optimizing for, and whether it points toward a life you want. Marketing is a track team — sprinters and shot putters don't swap events. Trying to serve every client in every channel is the curse of early traction. Agencies that win pick their event. Phil pivoted from full-service to naming exclusively, and it became the thing that named PODS and landed Forbes Agency Council recognition. Right-sizing your team and mission is a relief, not a loss. When people get genuinely clear on what they want, the misaligned things fall away on their own. Phil shares the story of a Vistage member whose top salesperson quit after this exercise — and morale went up, not down. What looked like a disaster was the agency right-sizing around what it actually stood for.   Phil also shares why he named his agency Tungsten — the filament in the lightbulb — and how the concept of alignment, everything pointing the same direction to create flow, became the operating philosophy behind everything he does for clients.   Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our [Agency Blueprint](https://flatworm-caterpillar-3mha.squarespace.com/blueprint). Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Get our free course to help women web designers stop undercharging and overdelivering and create a consistent, full-time income. Web Design Templates, Courses or Clients? Why You Don't Have To Choose with Olga Dorovskykh from Applet Studio Olga Kolgusheva, known professionally as Olga Dorovskykh, is the founder of Applet Studio, a Squarespace template shop and design studio she runs with her husband Roman. In this episode, Olga breaks down how she juggles templates, courses, and custom client work all at once, the real numbers behind growing a profitable template shop, and what she's seeing right now as AI reshapes SEO, affiliate marketing, and how web designers get found online. In This Episode: Why Olga refuses to pick just one business model, and how templates, courses, and client work support each other The real numbers behind growing a template shop, including her 100 blog post breaking point How her templates became a direct source of custom client leads What happened when AI started eating her blog traffic and affiliate income in 2025 Why commercial landing pages are outperforming blog posts for AI visibility How EAT signals across other platforms are changing web designer visibility Why service-based web design isn't going anywhere, even as AI gets better Resources Mentioned: Applet Studio Free Digital Strategy Workshop Web Designer Academy Package Matrix™ Method Related Episodes: Episode 191: How To Choose the Right Web Design Business Model Episode 114: How to Sell Squarespace Templates with Kate Scott Episode 184: Answer Engine Optimization: Your Next Revenue Stream As a Web Designer Olga Kolgusheva (Olga Dorovskykh) is a former journalist turned Squarespace designer and the founder of Applet Studio. Website: applet.studio. Instagram: @applet.studio. Shannon Mattern is a Pricing Strategist, creator of the Package Matrix™ Method, and the founder of the Web Designer Academy where she helps experienced women web designers book higher-paying web design projects, charge more with confidence, run projects without overworking and burnout and break through to their next level of income and freedom. For Web Designers: webdesigneracademy.com For Service Providers, Consultants & Agencies: shannonmattern.com Instagram: @profitablewebdesigner | @shannonlmattern

By the time your ideal client asks for a proposal, how much of their decision has already been made?Probably more than most agency owners realize.CMOs are paying attention long before they formally enter the market for an agency. They're looking for signs that a potential partner understands their business, can move quickly, and won't add more risk to an already high-pressure role.So, what makes a small agency feel like the right choice?Christian Banach, founder of Next Big Win, and I dug into that question. He has spent more than 20 years helping agencies win new business, and his CMO Journey interview series keeps him in regular conversation with senior marketing leaders.In this episode, we get into:Why CMOs treat hiring an agency as a risk decisionWhat a specialist signals before the first callWhat CMOs are still outsourcing, and what's moving in-houseWhere to look for early signs a company may need supportWhat to send a CMO once you've spotted a signalHow thought leadership keeps you visible while timing sorts itself outKnowing which CMOs to reach out to, and what to say when you do. This episode covers both.Show Notes:-The Next Big Win: thenextbigwin.comGet the full show notes and more information here: https://audreyjoykwan.com/podcast/ep162Podcast Edits by Lindsay Curtis

Turning an hour-long insurance quote into a 20 minute process is exactly the kind of problem Gaya was built to solve. Jason Cass sits down with Carl Ziadé, Co-Founder of Gaya, to unpack how the platform is reshaping the way agents fill carrier portals, handle transportation submissions, and prepare for what's next in agentic quoting. Key Topics: Gaya autofills carrier portals as a browser extension complement to raters Gaya's growing carrier network now reaching 600 carriers and counting Transportation and trucking submissions remain a major focus area for Gaya The difference between RC1 and RC3 rate call pricing, broken down Agencies are shifting away from traditional raters toward using Gaya directly Gaya's integrations with HawkSoft, Momentum, Applied Epic, and AMS360 Building Gayiti, a fellowship program developing future engineering talent in Haiti Gaya stays focused on product and support over sales and marketing What's next for Gaya: a proposal tool, submission OS, and agentic book rolls Gaya remains profitable and independent without taking on VC funding Reach out to: Carl Ziadé Jason Cass Visit Website: Gaya Agency Intelligence Produced by PodSquad.fm

Pull up a chair and listen in to the newest episode of the Board Game BBQ Podcast!  In episode 370 Dana delves into the video game world much to the delight of Conor as she battles it out in Bullet Heart while Conor is giving Andy Worhol with Pop Art and creating tiny homes in Minikin Village.  To no one's surprise, Conor gets bodied in his sizzle of SETI: Space Agencies while Dana fawns over the card play and art of A Wild Venture (just look at that frog meeple!!) The two also discuss "Which Board Games would you like to see mashed together and why" and we hope that you join in the chat too for this week's Question of the Pod.  Don't forget about the BBQ at PAX, check the Patreon in the upcoming week for an announcement! All that and more on this weeks episode for the Board Game BBQ!

Episode 237: Need more Leads and Traffic in your business? This will help: https://join.digitaltrailblazer.com/visibility-labMost SEO advice still treats backlinks like the finish line - but with AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity now reshaping how customers find businesses, chasing links the old way is leaving course creators, coaches, and agency owners invisible where it counts.In this episode, Aashish Khakhar teaches us how to earn the kind of visibility that both Google and AI tools actually reward. He breaks down why "unlinked mentions" can matter as much as backlinks, how a lesser-known piece of website code connects your brand's authority across the web, and the outreach strategy that's replaced pay-for-link tactics as the real differentiator — plus how to turn a single idea into ongoing coverage instead of a one-and-done win.About Aashish Khakhar: Aashish brings over a decade of experience in SEO, digital strategy, and e-commerce growth, helping brands drive organic traffic, increase revenue, and optimize digital performance. His work has delivered results such as a 1,500% increase in website traffic, a 33% lift in conversions, and 30% sales growth across e-commerce platforms including Amazon, Noon, Carrefour, and WooCommerce. He has also automated SEO workflows using Python, cutting manual work by 50%.A recognized leader in digital PR, Aashish has secured 35+ media placements on outlets like Yahoo, MSN, and NASDAQ, along with coverage on Health.com, Healthline.com, and Shape.com — all without paid sponsorships. His core expertise spans technical SEO, link building, conversion rate optimization, and sales funnel development, using tools like Google Analytics, SEMrush, and Ahrefs to stay ahead of the latest trends in AI, automation, and searchConnect with Aashish:https://www.healthsparkpr.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/healthsparkpr/about/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/aashishkhakhar/Want to SCALE your online business bigger and faster without the endless hustle of networking, referrals, and pumping out content that nobody sees?Grab our Ultimate Ad Script for Coaches, Agencies, and Course Creators.Learn the exact 5-step script we teach our clients that allows them to generate targeted, high-quality leads at ultra-low cost, so you can land paying customers and clients without breaking the bank on ad spend.Grab the Ultimate Ad Script right HERE - https://join.digitaltrailblazer.com/ultimate-ad-script✅ Connect With Us:Website - https://DigitalTrailblazer.comFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/digitaltrailblazerTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@digitaltrailblazerX (Twitter): https://x.com/DgtlTrailblazerInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/DigitalTrailblazer

Agencies will now be able to more easily offer bonuses of up to $25,000 to federal employees for exceptional work. The Office of Personnel Management is delegating authority to agency leaders to approve larger bonuses for feds. Previously, bonuses of that size required OPM approval. But OPM says it's removing the hurdle as a way to help agencies distinguish high levels of performance. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

(September 21, 2026) Killing endangered wildlife is legal if they aren’t the target. Newsom orders California agencies to draft new AI safety rules. Atlantic hurricane season peak: No storms and a record hurricane delay. Amid urban coyote boom in LA County, cities encourage co-existence. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Agreement between competitors for consistency in the industry. Sponsored by The Podglomerate. From first recording to final export. The Podglomerate's free Ultimate Guide to Podcast Production walks you through every step, with real examples and platform recommendations. https://podnews.net/cc/3714 Visit https://podnews.net/update/engaged-views-only for the story links in full, and to get our daily newsletter.

Who is The HummingbirdLion? Jessie Elliott is an adoptee, adoptive and biological mother of four young adults, and the founder of The HummingbirdLion Adoption Hub. She is a doctoral researcher in Developmental Psychology whose work focuses on trauma, attachment, and adoption across the lifespan. Jessie blends lived experience, rigorous research, and public education to help agencies move beyond feel‑good adoption narratives toward adoptee‑centered, trauma‑competent practice. Through her unique intersection—adoptee, transracial adoptive parent, biological parent, and researcher—Jessie names needs many organizations overlook and backs them with data and lived experience. Why Adoption Reform Now Adoptees experience elevated rates of mental health challenges and suicidality compared to non‑adopted peers. Systems still minimize pre‑placement trauma, sexual trauma, racial harm in transracial adoption, and the impact of secrecy and DNA discoveries. Agencies are being asked to move from placement‑focused metrics to lifespan‑focused, adoptee‑centered outcomes. The post Womens Magazine – Host of The Space Between Us, discusses and unpacks Adoption Reform with Jessie Elliot appeared first on KPFA.

Thirty antitrust agencies report on their computational work, in what remains the only account written by the agencies themselves. This edition asked them one question. What have these tools allowed you to achieve that you could not have achieved otherwise?Three developments stand out against earlier editions. With no legal regime in place, agencies have begun writing their own rules on what may go into a model. They are putting figures on their work, reporting precision, recall and false-positive rates, which earlier editions almost never did. And what holds deployment back is access to data and the agreements needed to obtain it.Recorded at the Autorité de la concurrence, Paris, 17 September 2026. Open access, 121 pages. shorturl.at/wmEaWSpeakers:➝ Thibault Schrepel, Associate Professor of Law at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty Affiliate at Stanford CodeX, Director of Stanford Computational Antitrust➝ Alba Ribera Martínez, Assistant Professor in Law and Technology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Editor-in-Chief of Stanford Computational Antitrust➝ Elodie Vandenhende, Deputy Head of the Digital Economy Unit, Autorité de la concurrence➝ Yann Guthmann, Head of the Digital Economy Unit, Autorité de la concurrence➝ Teodora Groza, Postdoctoral Researcher, Chair for Law and Artificial Intelligence, University of Tübingen#antitrust #competitionlaw #artificialintelligence

Thanks Pressable for supporting the show! Get your special hosting deal at https://pressable.com/wpminuteBecome a WP Minute Supporter & Slack member at https://thewpminute.com/supportIt's fair to wonder how AI is impacting WordPress. Are people switching to AI-based solutions in massive numbers? This week's episode of The WP Minute+ podcast examines the role AI is (and isn't) playing in WordPress market share shifts.Matt chats with Within WordPress' Remkus de Vries about the pressure WordPress feels from AI, shiny new tools, and bottom-of-market site builders, and why the real story is more complicated than “WordPress is falling behind.” Remkus argues that the ecosystem is changing fast. Still, the shift is less about WordPress failing and more about agencies and builders needing stronger positioning, better specialization, and a clearer understanding of the platform.They also look at why accurate market data is so hard to pin down in an open web ecosystem, how open-source platforms complicate measurement, and why the future of WordPress may depend less on hype and more on fundamentals, education, and principled implementation.Takeaways:AI is changing expectations, especially for simpler site-building workflows and entry-level users.WordPress is still strong because it is more than a CMS; it is a flexible platform for complex, extensible projects.Agencies and freelancers need clearer positioning now that “we build websites” is no longer enough.Open-web platforms are harder to measure than closed ecosystems, so many market-share claims should be taken cautiously.The future of WordPress depends heavily on fundamentals like performance, security, and real-world implementation knowledge.The Guild is designed to help builders and agencies keep up with WordPress changes through practical, structured education.Principle-first teaching matters because tools change, but underlying concepts stay useful longer.Cloudflare and edge caching were highlighted as practical performance improvements worth understanding.Important Links:Within WordPressThe Guild Wait ListConnect with Remkus: LinkedIn | Mastodon | Twitter/XThe WP Minute+ Podcast: thewpminute.com/subscribe  ★ Support this podcast ★

Host and Producer Zita Christian and Guest Rabbi Matt Field, owner of Right at Home, a home care and assistance agency, discussed how agencies such as his can improve dementia care by treating staffing as a human-centered coordination problem rather than simply filling shifts. Care Standards To help agency caregivers be most effective in their assignments, Matt emphasized the importance of creating individualized, continually updated care plans, thoughtful caregiver-client matching, warm introductions, shadowing, supervision, and ongoing training. Supporting caregivers through fair treatment, mentorship, scholarships, and crisis assistance can improve both the agency's retention of quality caregivers and the quality of care the caregivers provide to their clients.  In times of crisis, such as the COVID epidemic, agency aides can supplement the staff at memory care communities during staffing shortages or when extra one-to-one support is needed during transitions. Access And Change Families may explore long-term-care insurance, Medicare's GUIDE model, veterans' benefits, Medicaid, and local respite programs. Unfortunately, costs remain a major unresolved barrier. Zita and Matt discussed creative policy changes that might create broader, sustainable funding for dementia care, such as a dedicated savings or insurance pool. Matt sees potential for AI-assisted scheduling to reduce administrative workload while preserving human attention for clients and caregivers. Matt's agency, Right at Home, provides dementia training for first-responders as an important community safety measure.   Matt successfully blends the compassion of a rabbi with the responsibility and industry knowledge needed to run a caregiving business. To learn more and to contact Rabbi Matt Field, go to his website: Chicagoland.care  

Why is launching a consumer product easier than ever while turning it into a profitable global brand remains so difficult? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Omer Kaplan, co-founder and CEO of ZyG, about the operational gap between creating a product and building a durable ecommerce business around it. Omer previously helped build ironSource into an $11 billion public company before its acquisition by Unity. He explains how recognizing the move from desktop to mobile helped shape that company's growth and why the ability to adapt quickly matters even more when AI capabilities are changing every week. ZyG is building what it describes as an operating system for ecommerce scale. It combines AI agents with experienced human specialists to manage the work surrounding a consumer product, including the online store, creative production, advertising, retention, customer support, analytics, and other commercial operations. The brand retains its product, identity, and intellectual property, while ZyG operates the connected scale engine and is assessed by the resulting performance. Omer argues that existing routes solve only part of the problem. A marketplace can provide distribution, but a young brand may disappear among thousands of competitors. A commerce platform can make it easy to open a store, but the store alone does not create demand, coordinate marketing, or build customer loyalty. Agencies and software products can fill individual gaps, yet their data, incentives, and messages often remain separated. We discuss ZyG's approach to what Omer calls scale market fit. Its team creates the store, campaigns, and brand assets with agentic systems, then tests them with real paid traffic and real customer behavior. Omer says each test includes about $10,000 in media spending and that ZyG has completed over 100 tests. Cost of acquisition, predicted customer value, category benchmarks, and expected performance at higher volumes are combined into a score intended to show whether a brand can grow in the US market. He says the full process can be completed in about a week, compared with a far longer manual exercise before current AI capabilities. The conversation also examines the move from software as a product toward outcomes as a service. ZyG's consumption-based model takes a percentage of the revenue it manages. Omer is careful to distinguish accountability from assuming every commercial risk. His point is that one party should own the end-to-end result, removing the familiar cycle in which creative, advertising, and retention providers blame one another when growth stalls. Omer also shares why he returned to startup life after ironSource. Music, travel, and family offered appealing alternatives, but he saw the current technology cycle as a rare period for creating enduring companies. His advice to founders is to pursue large, complicated problems that general-purpose AI cannot easily reduce to a single feature. ZyG recently announced a $60 million Series A led by Accel, following a $58 million seed round two months earlier. Can its combination of AI agents, human expertise, real-world testing, and commercial accountability provide the missing infrastructure for the next generation of consumer brands? Listen to the conversation and share your thoughts with me.

I asked for positive news this week. What I got was surveillance, a global humiliation, and a man duct taped to his seat at thirty thousand feet. We open with reporting that Homeland Security has been analyzing the financial data of American citizens, and that some units have used it to steer local police toward pretextual traffic stops. Banks have run keyword filters on transactions. Agencies have swept up bulk records from money transfer services. Credit reports, utility bills and location data get purchased outright from private brokers, which sidesteps the Fourth Amendment entirely. There is a term for where that ends up. Turnkey totalitarianism is a system where every pillar of mass surveillance is built and operational, waiting on one person to connect it. I could not steel man the argument that we are not already there. From there we get into age and capacity in elected office, Apple's attempt to certify that a photograph is real, and why current AI produces novel output but not novel thought. Then it lightens up. A competitive fitness scandal goes worldwide. An actor announces what he would do to people in a fight. A first class passenger gets restrained with zip ties and duct tape between Dallas and Newark. We close with 163 missing children recovered in Florida in four days.  Today's Sponsors:  Willies Remedies:  Order now at https://www.drinkwillies.com and use code CLEAREDHOT for 20% off your first order plus free shipping on orders over $95. Or use the store locator to find Willie's on shelves near you, like your local Total Wine, Specs, ABC or local liquor store AG1:  Go to https://www.drinkag1.com/clearedhot to get a FREE AG1 Flavor Sampler and AGZ Sampler to try all the flavors, plus FREE Vitamin D3+K2 and AG1 Welcome Kit with your first AG1 subscription order!

Public health agencies rely on strong relationships with community organizations and partners, but fragmented outreach can leave those partners overwhelmed by repeated surveys, meetings, and requests from different parts of the same agency. Anna Bradley, senior analyst for Public Health Infrastructure and Performance Improvement at ASTHO, discusses how customer relationship management (CRM) approaches can help agencies coordinate engagement, reduce burden, and strengthen partnerships. Bradley explains how agencies can use CRM software, spreadsheets, or existing tools like Microsoft SharePoint to better track relationships and coordinate communication. She also shares why effective relationship management is about more than technology: it's about being intentional, respecting partners' time, creating more sustainable relationships, and starting small to solve one coordination problem at a time.Leveraging Customer Relationship Management to Advance Public Health | ASTHOHarder for Us, Easier for Them: Key Strategies to Improve Administrative Burden | ASTHORethinking vaccine communication: New insights for respiratory virus season

Dan Salganik, Founder and CEO of VisualFizz, helps established B2B companies plug all the holes in your marketing through integrated, outcome-focused strategies. Driven by a desire for freedom, travel, and creative expression, Dan built a fully remote agency that allows him to explore the world while helping clients create distinctive campaigns, strengthen their marketing capabilities, and generate long-term customer value. In this conversation, Dan introduces The Growth System 4 Tracks Framework—Brand & Digital Foundations, Staff Augmentation, Transformation, Transition & Expansion, and RevOps Growth Inflection. He explains how companies can select and combine these tracks to strengthen their foundations, expand internal capabilities, support acquisitions and geographic growth, and align marketing with sales. Dan also discusses growing through quality rather than speed, building larger client relationships through trust, and shifting VisualFizz from commoditized services toward solutions focused on business outcomes. He shares how identifying small gaps across the customer journey can improve efficiency, strengthen retention, and create sustainable revenue growth. — Plug All the Holes in Your Marketing with Dan Salganik  Good day, listeners. Steve Preda here with The Management Blueprint, and my guest today is Dan Salganik, the Founder and CEO of VisualFizz, a company that empowers industry-leading brands to maximize their potential with effective marketing strategies and custom-tailored campaigns. Dan, welcome to the show.  Yeah, thanks for having me, Steve. I really appreciate it.  It’s great to have you, and I’d like to learn about your personal ‘Why’ and how you’re manifesting it in VisualFizz.  Wow, that’s a big question to start with. I’ll start with my kind of goal for a little bit of freedom, which is funny because the more you grow, the less freedom you have. But for many years, I started VisualFizz because of a need to travel and to have freedom to do what I want. I’m a very expressive person, and after working at a number of agencies and finding things they do wrong, and also being a big traveler, I actually decided to launch VisualFizz almost 10 years ago, which is crazy to me.  And ultimately, we’ve seen this company grow quite a bit in that time. But I built it out to have the ability to travel, to do the things I want, to build a team, to build also campaigns that are fun and they’re unique and build customer value. So you started with a great question, and there’s so many reasons why—my kind of personal philosophies and why I manage and run and grow VisualFizz—but I think travel, freedom, and the ability to see creative campaigns at scale are just a few of them.  So I saw on your website that one of your goals is to travel at least 100 days a year. So is this business travel? Is this personal? Is this a combination?  I’d say almost no business travel counts, right? Because then you’re just doing business. I love business, but that’s totally separate. It’s personal travel. Basically, every single year, yeah, for almost 10 years, I have spent about a little less than a third of the year traveling, and some years a lot more. And so, being a remote company—and pre-COVID we were remote—we’ve built this style and methodology and processes, everything around being a fully remote company or an organization. And so, yeah, I do 30-day trips. I do two-week trips. I do two-, three-month trips.  But for me, it's always very important that work doesn't slow down. But you're going to regret working your whole life.Share on X I like the phrase, “You don’t die with your money.” It doesn’t come with you, but what you do have is experiences that you can remember and memories and everything—photos and things like that. And you’re not going to want to cherish your photo when you’re at a nursing home of you working in front of a computer. It’s going to be you with friends and family, enjoying the world and eating well and drinking well and seeing sights and exploring history and things like that.  Yeah. My dad, he was a doctor. He worked very hard all his life, and he always told us when we were kids that he was going to retire at 60 and travel around the world with my mom. And then when he was 60 years old, he had this opportunity to run this hospital, and one thing led to another, and he turned 70, and then he no longer wanted to travel.  And he literally said, “Oh, I wish we traveled more while we were young because now I don’t want to travel.” So that kind of resonates with me, what you say. It’s great that you have this awareness and you make it happen. So when you travel, do you run your business remotely?  100%. My business runs with my laptop, and if I’m lucky, I have a second monitor with me. Actually, nowadays I travel with a second monitor even on a flight, if I have to take a flight.But I have a second monitor with me. I have my laptop. My business comes with me. That’s number one.  So I might switch my hours a little bit. I might change things around, but I’ve got a great team. I delegate. It’s interesting because in the early days, it was hard to travel because we didn’t have a lot of clients, so we didn’t have a lot of money. Still don’t have a lot of money, but we didn’t have nearly as much when I started the company. Nowadays, we’re a growing business, and it’s great. So finally—it’s the whole dilemma. It’s like we’re finally growing. We’ve got a real business. I can pay myself a real wage.  But you can’t leave the business for too long because then you have other issues. But it’s a good balance between the two, and I always do bring my laptop no matter where I go. You never know what happens. But if I’m truly taking time off, which is very, very hard, I give my wife my cellphone. I either don’t take my laptop or I put my laptop away in the safe, and I don’t touch technology. Because honestly, it’s very easy to get distracted.  It is super easy to get distracted. So let’s talk about frameworks because this is what the podcast is about. So tell me a framework that you have developed or you picked up somewhere that allows you to do something better than other people, whether it’s more effective, whether it’s bigger impact, whether it’s more organized, whether it’s generating an insight that can be explained in three to five steps.  I love that. Actually, this is really great timing because we just built a brand-new framework, and I just soft-launched it to the world. We had a big event last week, and it’s called the Growth System. And it’s for our soft launch called VF3, VisualFizz 3.0. We’ve scaled up. This is kind of our software reboot. There's four tracks. It's a track system, so it's similar to a framework, and they're driven by the following.Share on X Let me actually backtrack a little bit.  It’s developed for mid-market and enterprise B2B companies, especially companies that have been around for a long time, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, but have something that’s broken or maybe needs improvement, et cetera. And so they come to us, and instead of saying, “Oh, I think you need SEO. I think you need paid search,” it’s solutions-focused, not services. The services come after. And there’s four tracks that are built off of. Each track can take three months, six months, 12 months, two years, et cetera. It just depends on the business.  The first one being the brand and the digital foundation. Many of my clients come from boring industries, my favorite. They need to rebuild. They came in understanding there’s private equity money, there’s new competition coming up, this, that, and the other. It’s a new brand, rebrand, or brand infrastructure, and then web infrastructure, all focused on sales. So everything here is focused on RevOps, sales, et cetera.  The second one, track, is staff augmentation, capability accelerator. It’s helping brands that are really great at something and really not great at another thing, or have a very expensive team internally where they feel that they can outsource to an agency for a large discounted price, for lack of a better word to put it. An example is we took over the tech arm of one of our clients, saved them about 50% in their budget, doubled their capacity, have a full team, 100% uptime, things like that.  The third, the one that I'm probably most excited about, is transformation, transition, and expansion which is all about mergers and acquisitions, national expansion, franchising, scaling locations, things of that natureShare on X and how to ensure that those are done accordingly, kind of symbiotically, consolidated properly. And the way I put it is, you’re spending $50 million or whatever you’re spending to buy a company, spend half a percent or a percent of that purchase value on the marketing, on the consolidation of brands, on sales materials, HR communication, kind of that side as it pertains to marketing.  And the final one is RevOps, growth inflection. We come in, we look through the CRM, we work with the sales teams, we audit the sales teams, we do interviews with the sales teams, and we make sure that marketing and sales are not oil and water. We combine them, we develop everything, we focus on lifetime customer value, post-sales transactions, and really driven towards long-term growth and revenue, basically generation. So a little bit longer than the few sentences you asked me for, so I apologize. But this is the future framework that VisualFizz will be built upon and scale upon for the future.Share on X Like, we’re just launching this as we speak. My website’s in progress right now.  Yeah. I love it. So the big picture is that you fix the foundations, then you give them people who can actually execute, then you transition. Does the transition mean that from staff augmentation, you transition to their own team? Or what does—  No, not necessarily. They don’t have to go one after the other, and that’s something I’m trying to work around communication-wise. You might start with brand infrastructure and go straight into demand gen, RevOps. Because we need to scale now. Or you might say, “Hey, VisualFizz, why don’t you just take over our SEO department fully?” Or it’s a little bit of both.  I’ve talked to a lot of mid-market and larger, a couple quite large billion-dollar-plus companies that said, “You know what? I don’t need a new website, but I really need to understand how we focus on communication with our sales teams,” or, “We do need visual improvements for our brand. We don’t need the new website.” So you can pick and choose a little bit. My goal is to not have to do that, but there’s not a linear step that you have to take between one, two, three, and four. It’s really, “Hey, we need to scale. I do $500 million today.  I want to buy three locations across the United States. This is what I’m looking at. My goal in five years is $750 million. How do I get there, VisualFizz?” And we lay out year one, two, three, four, and five, what we do, and how we plan to scale alongside the company.  Love it. So you basically productized your offering to these four major situations, and they can be implemented piecemeal. You can start anywhere, and you can keep stacking them. That’s super interesting. So let me switch gears here and ask you, what drives growth in your business, in VisualFizz?  For a lot of time, it was the very generic hustle and bustle of just trying to do good. Be a—how do I put it? Being there. Being the fastest to answer the phone, being the fastest to email back, getting the best proposals, because that’s what you do as a small agency. But as you grow, you don’t win on speed, you win on quality. It’s different. As a startup or as a startup who’s interested in an agency, you go fast, fast, fast. But I actually tell clients, “I’m not interested in speed.” That’s why these tracks that I told you, they take a year, two years, three years.  So now the growth is really driven around my clients’ peace of mind and my prospective clients’ peace of mind, knowing that they’re working with a decade-old agency, with team members who’ve predominantly been on our team for five years or more. Almost everybody is senior on my team. What drives growth is not so much quantity, never really has been, but it’s quality. And so my intent is not to win more customers. It’s to win bigger and better customers that are going to allow us for longevity, growth, and longer sales cycles internally. That’s really what drives growth today, is less stress and better clients.  So what does it take to land those larger, better clients?  A lot of work. I think there’s a couple. One is trust. Some clients will start small, and that’s where this whole model came from. I had a lot of clients come to me and say, “Hey, Dan, I need a new website.” And I’m like, “Okay, great, but your brand doesn’t look good.” I respect the brand, and I’m not somebody to say, “Oh, you need to do a $100,000 rebrand,” because some companies really don’t need that. But I say, “Let’s look from the inside out.” And before you go, “Hey, I need a new website,” or, “Oh, I need demand gen. I need paid search ASAP,” I go, “Wait a second. Hold up.  I’m not going to spend $50,000, $100,000 on sending traffic to your website when your brand and website can’t accommodate that.” And so we start small with execution around a brand implementation. That moves into web development. That can take some time. We’re not an AI cloud web builder. Like, it’s just not going to happen. We build proper sites for proper companies. And then moving forward after that, it becomes a marketing campaign. That lasts for years.  So for me, it's really driven around that methodology to work with clients and keep growing them and scaling them.Share on X And as such, we grow because we offer more services, but it’s in lieu of hiring full-time people on their end. And so I have an example with a client where they have no marketing department, not even a director, and they’ve actually had VisualFizz become the entire marketing department, agency of record. But beyond that, just—we are the marketing department. And we probably come at a third of the cost or half the cost of what a true marketing department would cost. So it’s a win-win for both parts.  So are you going to land large clients, or are you landing small clients that you grow into large clients? So how do you actually execute the strategy?  It’s both. Over the years, we’ve really pushed to be B2B-focused, and in doing so, our client size revenue—not for us revenue, but their revenue—has been larger. So maybe back in the day we would land $10, $20 million companies. Now it might be $500 million companies. But the engagement was the same. Same size. And so now it might be the same difference where we land a $300 million company, but we can start small, but there’s more room to scale up over time, kind of what I told you earlier, as we build trust. So it might just be a small engagement.  Like I said, “Hey, let’s just do a brand exercise.” And then it moves into, “Oh wow, you guys actually provided value. The ROI was there. Let’s move into something else.” I’d say our close rate is lower, unfortunately, but our average statement of work or proposal is higher. And so again, it’s quality over quantity. I may lose nine out of 10 because I’m competing against larger companies that do technically have more to offer. But there’s those clients that say, “You know what? I really like the small boutique agency.  I don’t want to go with the 100-person shop. I want to go with the 20-, 25-person shop. I’m going to be a big fish in a small pond versus a mid- to small fish in a big pond. I’m going to go with them.” And so those are the customers that I do win right now, the ones that understand they're going to be my big fish. They're really going to be well taken care of.Share on X And then again, the trust and everything else comes with it later.  Yeah. So what’s one thing that you’re trying to figure out in your business right now?  My pivot. That’s a really tough one. My business has changed a lot in the past year. From a leadership perspective, I’ve become the sole owner of the company, which I wasn’t before. It was a good decision for everyone. I think everyone left happy. And beyond that, it’s really now, how do I build VisualFizz up? One of my biggest challenges that I face, and I think a lot of agencies face, especially when they don’t internalize their problems, is we’ve become very commoditized.  All of our offerings that we have get compared to AI, as well as there’s a lot of offshore agencies that their biggest barrier to entry was their language. And now with AI, that’s no longer a problem because we can all do our work fluently. Smart people, but being a U.S. agency, that was our advantage. We charge what we charge because we’re U.S., and the barrier to entry was high. But now there’s all these other folks, as well as AI, as well as software, as well as everything else.  And so I realized that we can’t rest on the laurels of being a 10-year-old agency. That doesn’t matter to people. What matters is results. And so my biggest challenge right now is, how do I pivot my company from being this commoditized service? Even if they’re good, even if you’re the best, it doesn’t matter because it’s a commodity. You could have the best concrete in the city, but if you get an RFQ and the other guys are five cents cheaper, they’re going to go with them a lot of times. Not always, but a lot of times.  And so my intention is what I said earlier: focus on the solutions and focus on the outcomes within our system that I’m building, because I think customers are going to care more to hear, “Hey, I’m not Dan who offers SEO services for you forever. I’m Dan and VisualFizz who take your company from $75 million to $100 million in the next year.” Like, that’s what I think drives their interest. But my challenge is, how do I prove that model out? Because it’s not a standard model that people know yet. It’s not been drilled down like the agency model has been for so many years. It’s new.  And do you feel like you can control the client’s business? You’re so good that you can control their growth, you can make them grow?  No. I would be overzealous and confident to say that I can do that. But the thing I can do is I could help work alongside them to do our best to get there, right? And I’ll give you a couple examples because, I mean, it’s all in the case studies. I took one company with my team from $150 million to $350 million with them, with them, to then have a merger of equals, and now they’re probably worth half a billion, $600 million, something like that.  And then another company, at a certain time during the—I’m going to kind of keep it vague—from $700 million to $800 million to $900 million. But that wasn’t VisualFizz. That was the economy. But it’s about finding opportunities and holes within your client ecosystem that help. So, for example, I saw a hole in what they were currently doing. Their brand was totally off, so we worked on that first. But after that, you could have a pretty website, it might return, but what happened after that is I found a hole saying, “There is so much demand for this product right now.  There’s a big gorilla in the room, a massive, massive company, and there’s you guys, maybe third, fourth, fifth, whatever. But no one’s running paid ads, for example, because it’s a commodity. And why would you run paid ads for commodities?” We did that, and the return on ad spend and return on investment on that has been exponential. Just to get us on the top of that list, it’s an obvious statement, but that coupled with a good-quality website, all the sales materials, trackability, CRM improvements, da da da da da, the list goes on.  I can’t control if the economy goes poorly, if another war breaks out. I’m a nobody. But what I can do with my team is identify little holes that eventually do integrate sales teams better, save time, save money.Share on X Well, that too. Saving time of the sales teams means they could contact more people. And then when they win a sale, that’s it, right? Sales team got their commission. What I like to think about is, okay, well, what happens after we close that deal? Most agencies stop at conversion. My intent is, I have a document I’ve made.  It’s 25 points. We stop at point 20. Sales team takes over from 20 to 24, and we start again at 25 with that same client we already won. So we could take them from whatever they were, $500,000 to $2 million for our customer. So, okay, that was a very long tangent, but gives you an idea of what I think I can control. But no, I can’t control company revenue. I don’t have that much power.  Yeah. No, the only reason I ask this is because if you’re selling an outcome-based approach, then they will ask you, “Okay, show me the outcome that you’re going to deliver for us.” And it is really hard to deliver that and to control that, or it’s impossible even. However, I really like this concept of plugging all the little holes in the bucket, right?  There’s a lot. Yeah. If you plug that, then they’re not going to lose their customers, and they’re going to grow naturally without even having to add on the top. So if you had a magic wand then and you could fix one thing in your business in the next 12 months, what would that be? Agencies are such hard businesses, as you probably know, right? I would probably ideally like to fix the sales pipeline, which is obvious. Anybody would. But I’m only one person. It’s a small team, and I do manage. I’m a pretty active founder and owner and a CEO. And candidly, I’m not an outbound salesperson. I’m good at understanding people’s needs and the marketing world, but I’m not out there speaking at events every day. I’m not out there kissing babies and waving around and winning clients.  There are people who are really good at that, loud people who have a great social presence, like the Gary Vees of the world and the Neil Patels. They’re great at this thing. I’m okay. But what I am good at, and what my team is good at, is being knowledgeable about our clients’ needs and how to, again, figure out those challenges, plug the holes, and be useful. We’re not like a vanity agency. We don’t sell pretty little things. So sometimes it’s hard to say that we’re the agency for them when they don’t have the pretty little thing. So for me, what I would wave my wand around and say is, if I could have a really strong sales team member who works beside me, and again, I could hire somebody.  I know this. But I haven’t seen the best success with outside salespeople helping, like SDRs, et cetera, because no one sells the agency work like the agency owner until you get to a certain size, until you get to 100 people or whatever, and you deal with different challenges. So having somebody who understands the business and can find the leads when we need them, because I know that once we get them in the door, it’s pretty—it’s not crazy complicated to win that work.  But getting them at the right time to understand what we’re offering and, let’s say, speed up the sales process, which right now is very slow for most agencies. I’ve talked to a lot of owners. It’s a very slow sales cycle. That would be what I’d do, at least for now.  So who’s an ideal client? I mean, you mentioned that there are some small ones that you grow. You mentioned that you used to maybe shoot for $10 million to $50 million. Now it’s $300 million to $500 million. So what’s an ideal client that would find VisualFizz to be in their sweet spot?  The thing with revenue in my industry is it doesn’t matter. If you work with e-commerce or CPGs, it could be a $30 million company with a larger budget than my billion-dollar client. That’s just the nature of it. So the revenue doesn’t matter as much. But I do think half a billion to a billion dollars is a sweet spot. A known company, but one that needs a lot of background work. And so for me, a lot of my clients are in manufacturing, industrial, construction, and logistics, among other similar complementary spaces.  Most of them are 20 to 100 years old, and most of them do not have a fully fleshed-out marketing team. And so I do have a client right now that is my ideal client, and I would love to have 10 of them. They’re a client that doesn’t have a marketing department. They’ve kind of let us become the marketing department. They’re open to our ideas, and they’ve allowed us to really take on the role of the marketing team. And so they have many locations across the country.  They’re in the industrial space. They’re growing. They’re open to our ideas, and they want us to be kind of the people that do the work for them. Everything else comes as it does, right? But the attitude that comes with a good client, that’s my ideal customer profile. But for more of a vanilla answer, I would say half a billion to a billion dollars, looking for growth, boring industries, commodities, service businesses, B2B space, many locations, wants to grow, healthy budget.  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is a big difference maker. If you can find someone that trusts you, I always found that it’s so much easier to deliver value to a customer that trusts you than one that second-guesses you, right? So it becomes a win-win if they can trust you.  Yes. And I’ll be honest, the quality of my team’s work, even if it’s not directly shown, because we are a business and we do the work for our clients no matter what. But I’ll tell you just upfront that when my clients respect my team members—because I’ve had people that aren’t very respectful. I’ve had clients who are not nice. A lot of them are great, some of them aren’t. They’re not respectful to my team, and though my team has to do the work no matter what, if the client’s really bad, I talk to them and I tell them, “This is not allowed.”  It’s my team over my client every day. But if they’re just not polite or they second-guess all the time, the team isn’t going to care as much about the project and do as good of work and really go out of their way. They’ll do the work. They’ll check the boxes. They’ll do what they have to do, but they’re not going to think at 10:00 P.M., middle of the night, “Oh my God, what about this idea for this client?” And I’ll tell you, the clients that my teams love, not because they’re nice and they’re pleasant, it’s because they respect one another. They will always go out of their way and come up with new, better ideas because it’s happening top of mind all the time.  And the other ones, they’re trying—and it’s anybody—they’re flushing it out of their system until the next time they’re needed. I don’t want to make it sound like we don’t care about our clients, but at the end of the day, it’s the same thing. You have bad relationships and you have good relationships. You’re going to call your friend who’s nice and wants to hang out with you versus the guy that pushed you on the street. Just makes sense.  Plus, you’re in a creative business, and sometimes you have to take a risk in order to create something really nice. And if they don’t trust you, then you’re not going to take a risk for them. Absolutely.  Exactly.  So that’s fascinating. So if I’m the CEO or CMO of this half-a-billion-dollar industrial company with 20 sites, and we don’t have a marketing team and we really have to get going, where can I find out about you and how can I connect with you?  Well, shoot me an email. I’ll give the easy one. It’s hello@visualfizz.com. Shoot me a LinkedIn request. I mean, any way to get to me is great. I will always take a call, a strategy call. I’m not a pushy sales guy who says you have to sign up right away. If somebody has ideas and just wants to run them by me and say, “Dan, listen, I may need you, I may not, but you’ve got 30 minutes, you’ve got an hour,” I, as much as I can make the time, try to make the time for anyone.  In fact, I was talking to the sales and marketing person at a company for two years. She never ended up even working with us because of budget constraints. I still have an excellent relationship with her. She’s very nice. We would talk probably once a month. So I’m big on just when the timing is right, it will work out. So I’m happy to help.  All right. So if you are one of these companies—industrial, maybe old economy, multi-sites, maybe in the Midwest, who knows where these companies are—a couple hundred million dollars to a billion dollars, and you want a really great marketing team and maybe someone who will fix your digital foundations and build your website, or give you staff, or help you transform, transition, and expand, and build your RevOps and marketing and integrate everything, then reach out to Dan, Dan Salganik, the founder of VisualFizz, and he will take care of you.  And if you enjoyed listening to this show, make sure you follow us on YouTube, give us a review, because every two weeks—sorry, every week—I bring you a couple of exciting entrepreneurs who are building great businesses and share their unique framework with you. So Dan, thank you for coming. Thanks for listening.  Yes. Thanks for having me. I so appreciate it. Important Links: Dan's LinkedIn Dan's website Dan's email: hello@visualfizz.com

New fraud tactics are exposing weaknesses in the way government verifies identity. As artificial intelligence makes fake identities more convincing and easier to create, agencies are being forced to rethink systems that were designed for a different kind of threat. Jordan Burris, vice president and head of public sector strategy at Socure, says it's time to start treating identity as critical infrastructure.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Read the full article: https://petronellatech.com/blog/compliance/the-digital-front-door-to-government-has-moved-most-agencies-don-t-know-it-yet/A conversation about "The digital front door to government has moved. Most agencies don't know it yet" from the Petronella Technology Group, Inc. blog.Questions about AI, cybersecurity, or compliance for your business? Call Petronella Technology Group, Inc. at 919-348-4912.

Nancy Germond explains how strong training, clear procedures and thorough documentation can help insurance agents avoid common errors and omissions claims. She also explores coverage knowledge, evolving standards … Read More » The post How Insurance Agencies Can Prevent E&O Claims | IJA Aftershow with Nancy Germond appeared first on Insurance Journal TV.

Marketing agency profitability doesn't always translate into healthy cash flow, especially when financial reporting only looks backward. Jody Grunden explains how agencies can use cash-flow forecasting, utilization, bill rates, team capacity, and other financial KPIs to make better decisions before problems appear. He also covers how much cash an agency should keep on hand, what a fractional CFO adds beyond bookkeeping, and how pricing models can support long-term profitability as the business grows. 00:00 Introduction 01:06 How Virtual CFO Services Became Scalable 04:18 The Profit and Cash Targets Agencies Need 06:48 What a CFO Does That a Bookkeeper Doesn't 09:44 The KPIs Agencies Should Track Every Week 12:31 Why Subscription Pricing Beats Hourly Billing 19:04 How to Scale Pricing as Your Agency Grows Rate, Review, & Follow If you liked this episode, please rate and review the show. Let us know what you loved most about the episode. Struggling with strategy? Unlock your free AI-powered prompts now and start building a winning strategy today!

Agencies' spending on paid administrative leave surged sixfold last year. Those costs were largely due to the Trump administration's deferred resignation program. But data limitations make it impossible to tell exactly how much was spent, or how much was potentially saved, by the DRP.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Episode 236: Need more Leads and Traffic in your business? This will help: https://join.digitaltrailblazer.com/visibility-labYou've finally cracked lead generation - the opt-ins are rolling in - but sales are stuck at zero. If you're generating leads without converting them, chances are you're stopping the "selling" the moment someone joins your list, and once you stop, it's brutally hard to start again.In this episode, Bradley Rausch teaches us how to turn cold leads into buyers (and buyers into repeat buyers) by staying in constant "selling mode" throughout the entire client journey. He breaks down the emotional stages every new lead and client moves through, why the first 24-72 hours determine whether someone ever buys again, and the surprisingly simple move most coaches skip that builds massive loyalty fast. He also shares exactly when in a client's journey to introduce an upsell—and why timing it wrong is costing you serious revenue.About Bradley Rausch: Bradley is an advisor and “backend profit” partner for founder-led coaching and service-based businesses. He's helped dozens of founders turn chaotic growth into durable, higher-margin revenue without sacrificing their values.Grab Bradley's FREE course HERE: https://go.bradleyrausch.com/freecourse/Connect with Bradley: https://www.bradleyrausch.com www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-rausch/ www.instagram.com/@bradleyyrausch/Want to SCALE your online business bigger and faster without the endless hustle of networking, referrals, and pumping out content that nobody sees?Grab our Ultimate Ad Script for Coaches, Agencies, and Course Creators.Learn the exact 5-step script we teach our clients that allows them to generate targeted, high-quality leads at ultra-low cost, so you can land paying customers and clients without breaking the bank on ad spend.Grab the Ultimate Ad Script right HERE - https://join.digitaltrailblazer.com/ultimate-ad-script✅ Connect With Us:Website - https://DigitalTrailblazer.comFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/digitaltrailblazerTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@digitaltrailblazerX (Twitter): https://x.com/DgtlTrailblazerInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/DigitalTrailblazer

 A campaign in the South Bay works to address rider harassment on public transportation.

A public inquiry into the handling of the Tom Phillips case says the harm he caused in isolating the children as well as concerns from the maternal whānau were "minimised or overlooked by agencies for significant periods". Concerns raised by the children's adult sisters were effectively ignored despite their repeated attempts to alert Oranga Tamariki. Chief Executive Amanda Malu spoke to Lisa Owen. 

OpenAI has made a new OneGov deal with the General Services Administration to supply artificial intelligence to all government employees, kicking in after the current $1 per-agency deal ends at the end of the month, the agency announced Thursday. ChatGPT models will be available to the federal government through discounted, consumption-based pricing, the release said, and will last until Dec. 31, 2028. GSA Administrator Ed Forst said the deal supports the government's AI initiative in that it “enhances federal performance, reduces administrative burden, and ensures that agencies can devote more time to delivering results that directly benefit the American people.” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company is “honored to continue collaborating with GSA.” “Giving public servants secure access to the best AI tools can help government be more efficient, strengthen cybersecurity, and improve the services people rely on,” he said in the statement. Federal agencies will have access to half-off token-based usage across ChatGPT models, including those in FedRAMP-authorized environments, the release said. There will also be no platform-access fee and no spend commitment, so agencies only pay for what they use, it said. Access will be available through federal, state, local and tribal governments through OpenAI directly, through resellers, and supported cloud marketplaces, the announcement said. Agencies can no longer include the Trump administration's “loyalty question” in job listings after a federal court granted a stay motion to block its use in civil service applications. In an order issued Friday, the District Court for the District of Massachusetts sided with the plaintiffs in American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO v. Kupor, ruling that workers applying to agency positions faced irreparable harm in having to answer the question. Within seven days, the Office of Personnel Management is required to provide notice of the stay to all heads or acting heads of departments and agencies that used the question in the hiring process. An OPM spokesperson said the agency does not comment on ongoing litigation. The case, filed in November 2025, challenged a key piece of the OPM's so-called Merit Hiring Plan, which was issued in May of that year. The plan detailed steps aimed at reforming the federal hiring process, including the creation of an essay question in agency job listings that asked applicants how they would “help advance the President's Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role.” Candidates were also asked to identify “one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are” significant to them. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Working harder is not always what moves an insurance agency forward. Mike Stromsoe explores why agency owners can stay incredibly busy while making very little strategic progress, and why disciplined focus is one of the most important leadership skills for sustainable growth. He breaks down how too many priorities drain organizational capacity, how urgent work can crowd out the work that actually builds the future agency, and why leaders need to measure results instead of activity. From quarterly goals and time blocking to identifying constraints and building 30, 60, and 90-day execution plans, Mike shares a practical framework for turning strategy into measurable action. Key Topics: Why too many priorities can leave an agency with no real priorities  How every new initiative consumes organizational capacity  Why leaders need to protect important strategic work from daily urgency  How to identify the primary constraint before adding another initiative  The difference between measuring activity and measuring meaningful outcomes  Why leadership scoreboards help teams stay focused on results  How to turn a long-term vision into a 30, 60, and 90-day execution plan  Why every priority needs an owner, deadline, measurement, and accountability cadence    Connect with Mike:LinkedIn TwitterBeing busy can create the feeling of progress, but results come from staying focused on the work that matters most. Agencies that scale effectively create clarity around their vital priorities, protect leadership capacity, measure meaningful outcomes, and consistently execute against a defined plan. The goal is not to add more hours or more ideas. It is to decide what matters most and stay with it long enough to produce the result.

Get our free course to help women web designers stop undercharging and overdelivering and create a consistent, full-time income at https://webdesigneracademy.com/freecourse Systems architect Diana Wei Fang, founder of The Finer Points, joins Shannon to explain why buying another tool never fixes a business problem, how to standardize your systems without losing what makes you different, and why she believes small businesses built to last are the key to real systemic change. In This Episode: Why so many creatives struggle with invoicing and follow-up, and why it has nothing to do with talent The real reason tool-hopping between platforms like Honeybook, Dubsado, and Notion never solves the underlying problem How to standardize your systems without losing what makes your business yours Why the average small business lifespan dropped from 91 years in 1919 to just 14 years today What AI can (and can't) do for your business systems How Diana built The Finer Points from scratch for under $500 Resources Mentioned: The Finer Points: https://thefinerpoints.co HoneyBook: https://www.honeybook.com Web Designer Academy: https://webdesigneracademy.com/web-designer-academy-program-reg/ Related Episodes: Episode 185: How To Scale a Web Design Business with Sarah Noked of OBM School: https://webdesigneracademy.com/how-to-scale-a-web-design-business-with-sarah-noked-of-obm-school/  Episode 177: Why Doing It All Yourself Is Slowing Down Your Web Design Business with Bailey Collins: https://webdesigneracademy.com/why-doing-it-all-yourself-is-slowing-down-your-web-design-business/  Episode 98: Finding Your Biz Besties with Katie Lynn + Laura Grace of Mushaboom Studio: https://webdesigneracademy.com/finding-your-biz-besties-with-katie-lynn-laura-grace-of-mushaboom-studio/ Diana Wei Fang is the founder of The Finer Points, a systems and process architecture studio helping purpose-driven entrepreneurs build businesses that last. Website: https://thefinerpoints.co | Instagram: https://instagram.com/thefinerpoints | LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/thefinerpoints Shannon Mattern is a Pricing Strategist, creator of The Package Matrix™ Method and the founder of the Web Designer Academy where she helps experienced women web designers book higher-paying web design projects, charge more with confidence, run projects without overworking and burnout and break through to their next level of income and freedom. For Web Designers: https://webdesigneracademy.com For Service Providers, Consultants & Agencies: https://shannonmattern.com Instagram: @profitablewebdesigner | @shannonlmattern

As The Trade Desk confronts negative growth guidance, executive turnover, and a 15% workforce reduction, media analysts Brian Wieser and Luke Stillman dissect the structural missteps behind the company's valuation drop.They reveal how an insistence on open-web transparency manifestos lost ground to buyer demands for price, convenience, and direct supply path performance.Key Highlights

Earlier this year, Optidge walked out of the 40th Annual AMA Houston Crystal Awards with five wins, breaking their previous record of three and marking seven consecutive years as a winner. But this episode isn't a highlight reel. Danny built it around a harder question: what does an award entry actually prove, and why should agencies bother writing them in the first place?In this episode, Danny breaks down his latest wins the same way he does with every client: real problems and the strategies that actually solved them.An Optidge "Office Hours" EpisodeOur Office Hours episodes are your go-to for details, case studies, how-to's, and advice on specific marketing topics. Join our fellow Optidge team members, and sometimes even 1:1 teachings from Danny himself, in these shorter, marketing-focused episodes every few weeks. Get ready to get marketing!Episode HighlightsOptidge took home five wins in one night, its biggest Crystal Awards haul ever, breaking a prior record of three and marking seven consecutive years as a winner.Two back-to-back Paid Search wins were built on the same underlying fix of closing the loop between ad spend and actual signed business, not clicks or leads.Two creative-led wins both succeeded by refusing their category's standard playbook: owner-led authenticity in one case, a no-hard-sell editorial approach in the other.CompleteRx's campaign generated zero leads before a format change turned it into Optidge's third Plan B trophy, proof of the discipline to diagnose before deleting.Awards are a lagging indicator. The real asset is the standard of work in place long before anyone thinks to write an entry.Episode Links:Optidge Case Study LibraryOasis TileBrian Gavin DiamondsSimplyHomeHeartlinks ABABlue OxCompleteRxSend us Fan MailFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor:Website and Blog: thedmmentor.comInstagram: @thedmmentorLinkedin: @thedmmentorYouTube: @thedmmentorInterested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family:Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations.ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business's digital marketing strategy.

Training matters. But what happens after the training ends? In this special mini-episode of The Criminologist Podcast, Joseph Arvidson reflects on a question that correctional organizations—and perhaps the broader helping professions—need to ask more often: How do we know whether training actually resulted in learning, application, and improved proficiency? Agencies invest significant time and resources in conferences, certifications, curricula, and staff development. We document attendance. We issue certificates. We check the box. But then what? Your host introduces what he jokingly calls the "Train and Pray" model—the tendency to provide training and then simply hope that people remember it, understand it, and transfer it into practice. Using examples from Risk-Need-Responsivity and a memorable golf analogy, this episode explores a different way of thinking about professional development: Train → Practice → Measure → Reinforce. The goal is not to diminish the importance of good training. It is to recognize that training is only one part of a larger learning and implementation system—one that should include practice, feedback, reinforcement, and opportunities to demonstrate proficiency. Joseph doesn't claim to have the entire solution figured out....not just yet!  But he believes this is a question the field should be asking. What happens after training in your organization—and how do you know whether people can actually apply what they learned?

Training matters. But what happens after the training ends? In this special mini-episode of The Criminologist Podcast, Joseph Arvidson reflects on a question that correctional organizations—and perhaps the broader helping professions—need to ask more often: How do we know whether training actually resulted in learning, application, and improved proficiency? Agencies invest significant time and resources in conferences, certifications, curricula, and staff development. We document attendance. We issue certificates. We check the box. But then what? Your host introduces what he jokingly calls the "Train and Pray" model—the tendency to provide training and then simply hope that people remember it, understand it, and transfer it into practice. Using examples from Risk-Need-Responsivity and a memorable golf analogy, this episode explores a different way of thinking about professional development: Train → Practice → Measure → Reinforce. The goal is not to diminish the importance of good training. It is to recognize that training is only one part of a larger learning and implementation system—one that should include practice, feedback, reinforcement, and opportunities to demonstrate proficiency. Joseph doesn't claim to have the entire solution figured out....not just yet!  But he believes this is a question the field should be asking. What happens after training in your organization—and how do you know whether people can actually apply what they learned?

Get our free course to help women web designers stop undercharging and overdelivering and create a consistent, full-time income at https://webdesigneracademy.com/freecourse Episode 211: Why Your Web Design Business Systems Keep Failing with Diana Wei Fang Systems architect Diana Wei Fang, founder of The Finer Points, joins Shannon to explain why buying another tool never fixes a business problem, how to standardize your systems without losing what makes you different, and why she believes small businesses built to last are the key to real systemic change. In This Episode: Why so many creatives struggle with invoicing and follow-up, and why it has nothing to do with talent The real reason tool-hopping between platforms like Honeybook, Dubsado, and Notion never solves the underlying problem How to standardize your systems without losing what makes your business yours Why the average small business lifespan dropped from 91 years in 1919 to just 14 years today What AI can (and can't) do for your business systems How Diana built The Finer Points from scratch for under $500 Resources Mentioned: The Finer Points: https://thefinerpoints.co HoneyBook: https://www.honeybook.com Web Designer Academy: https://webdesigneracademy.com/web-designer-academy-program-reg/ Related Episodes: Episode 185: How To Scale a Web Design Business with Sarah Noked of OBM School: https://webdesigneracademy.com/how-to-scale-a-web-design-business-with-sarah-noked-of-obm-school/  Episode 177: Why Doing It All Yourself Is Slowing Down Your Web Design Business with Bailey Collins: https://webdesigneracademy.com/why-doing-it-all-yourself-is-slowing-down-your-web-design-business/  Episode 98: Finding Your Biz Besties with Katie Lynn + Laura Grace of Mushaboom Studio: https://webdesigneracademy.com/finding-your-biz-besties-with-katie-lynn-laura-grace-of-mushaboom-studio/ Diana Wei Fang is the founder of The Finer Points, a systems and process architecture studio helping purpose-driven entrepreneurs build businesses that last. Website: https://thefinerpoints.co | Instagram: https://instagram.com/thefinerpoints | LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/thefinerpoints Shannon Mattern is a Pricing Strategist, creator of The Package Matrix™ Method and the founder of the Web Designer Academy where she helps experienced women web designers book higher-paying web design projects, charge more with confidence, run projects without overworking and burnout and break through to their next level of income and freedom. For Web Designers: https://webdesigneracademy.com For Service Providers, Consultants & Agencies: https://shannonmattern.com Instagram: @profitablewebdesigner | @shannonlmattern

Your brand is being described right now on platforms you don't control — and AI is assembling those fragments into a story you'd never tell about yourself. Matt Beezley, Senior Strategist at Red Fan Communications and creator of the Brand Authority Index, calls it narrative entropy. And in this episode of the Business of Story, he explains exactly why it's the defining brand challenge of the AI search era. Matt has spent more than a decade helping B2B companies across fintech, insurtech, sustainable technology, education, and supply chain find the story that holds through IPOs, acquisitions, and high-stakes go-to-market moments. He built Red Fan's brand positioning methodology from scratch — and then built the Brand Authority Index, a diagnostic tool that quantifies the signals large language models actually use to evaluate, cite, and recommend brands to potential buyers. What those signals reveal should concern every brand marketer: over 80% of AI citations come from earned media, not your website. Query-based rankings barely correlate with what AI actually says about you. And if your brand is described differently on your website, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, and Google Knowledge Base, AI will either ignore you entirely or invent a Frankenstein version of your brand and serve it to buyers at the exact moment they're making a decision. In this conversation, Park Howell and Matt unpack the concept of entity coherence — messaging consistency across every platform where your brand exists — and why it's the single highest-leverage fix available to brand communicators right now. They explore why gated content is killing your AI citation rate, how the prism model helps one core story speak to 25 different B2B buying stakeholders without fragmenting, and why the brands winning in generative engine optimization are doing the same things great marketers have always done — just doing them with discipline and consistency. You will learn why AI detects and discounts AI-generated content, how a three-question monthly sales feedback loop starts closing the narrative entropy gap immediately, and why training AI on your own proprietary data produces results that are, in Matt's words, "light years better" than anything pumped out from a generic prompt. If your brand is invisible in AI search — or worse, misrepresented — this episode is your diagnostic and your roadmap. Connect with Matt Beezley and Red Fan Communications at redfancommunications.com and explore their Brand Authority Index diagnostic. Find Park Howell and the StoryCycle Genie™ at businessofstory.com, and subscribe to Park's Brand StoryOps™ for Agencies newsletter on LinkedIn.

The Nurses Report on America Out Loud with Gail Macrae, BSN, RN – That system is four agencies working in concert. NIH funds the papers that supply the narrative. CDC turns the narrative into recommendations. CMS attaches the money. FDA supplies the EUA that makes the whole chain legally possible. It is a network. Subpoena power exists to pull the records those agencies already...