Podcasts about Agency

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Natalie Southwell. Founder and CEO of The Essence of a Woman, LLC, a female empowerment agency dedicated to helping high‑achieving women rise with confidence, courage, clarity, and faith-driven purpose. The conversation explores: How women can overcome fear, trauma, and misaligned life decisions The role of faith, purpose, and intentionality in decision-making Her frameworks: PAIN and REAL Her personal journey to launching The Essence of a Woman How she guides women across generations—including students, early professionals, mid-career women, and women 50+—toward alignment and leadership.

It's Wednesday, March 18th, A.D. 2026. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 140 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com.  I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Jonathan Clark and Timothy Reed Swedish Christian family guilty of “religious extremism” for going to church The European Court of Human Rights refused to hear an appeal of a Swedish Christian family in a case involving parental rights and religious freedom. Back in 2022, officials in Sweden separated Daniel and Bianca Samson from their two eldest daughters. The state found no evidence of abuse but accused the family of “religious extremism” for simply attending church three times a week. Morales Sancho, Legal Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom International, stated, “The element of religious discrimination is also unmistakable in this case. The state labeled the family as religious extremists solely because of their active practice of their Christian faith.” Psalm 14:4 asks, “Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up My people as they eat bread, and do not call on the LORD?” Swedish population embraces sexual perversion Sadly, people in Sweden are the most likely to view homosexuality as morally acceptable in a recent Pew Research survey. The study surveyed 30,000 people across 25 countries. People in European countries were also among the most likely to be morally accepting of homosexuality, abortion, and divorce.   Christianity's decline in England People in Britain are worried about the decline of Christianity in the nation. A study by Whitestone Insight found that 52% of Brits believe that drifting from their Christian roots is bad for future generations. Fifty-eight percent also said that Christianity plays a beneficial role in public life.  This comes as Christian identification has declined. Only 44% of adults in Britain identified as Christian last year, down from 54% in 2018. Carrie Prejean, who objected to Zionism, was fired by Trump's religious liberty commissionIn the United States, a member of the U.S. President's Religious Liberty Commission, Carrie Prejean Boller, was removed from her position after she registered opposition to Zionism last month.  A recent convert to Catholicism, Boller challenged the tenets of Zionism, claiming they were incompatible with her faith. She also sent a letter to President Donald Trump after her removal, explaining her misgivings. She appeared on the podcast of LifeSiteNews.com editor John-Henry Western. BOLLER: “I know there's three Catholics that are thinking about running for president in 2028 so I don't think now is the time to really dismiss Catholics, fire Catholics, remove Catholics, simply because I'm standing up for my Catholic faith. “So, I'm hopeful that he's going to make the right decision. Otherwise, this religious liberty commission should be completely shut down. If I don't have my religious freedom on a Religious Freedom Commission, it's not a religious freedom commission.” Christian workplaces thrive Employees in Christian-led workplaces report high levels of engagement in their work according to a new report.  The State of the Christian Workplace 2026 report released new data on 40,000 employees in over 400 Christian organizations in the U.S. Sixty-one percent of employees in Christian-led workplaces reported being engaged in their work. These engagement levels are nearly twice that of the U.S. workforce overall.  Jay Bransford, President & CEO of Best Christian Workplaces, noted, “Engaged employees bring energy, enthusiasm, commitment, and passion that directly fuel Kingdom impact.” Colossians 3:23-24 says, “Whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.” U.S. federal workforce shrunk by 10.3% Pew Research reports that the U.S. federal workforce shrank by 10.3 percent in 2025.  Nearly 350,000 people quit, retired, were laid off, or otherwise left the federal government last year. That's an 80 percent increase compared to 2024. Agencies with the most job cuts included the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, and the Education Department. 18-year-old rescues brother from axe-wielding man And finally, an 18-year-old is thanking God after protecting his brother from an ax-wielding man in Florida over the weekend.  Fox News reports Leodan Pino and his 16-year-old brother were closing up a car wash in Ocala. That's when the suspect approached while yelling and threatening.  Pino told the man he had to leave. The man refused and pulled out an ax.  Thankfully, Pino is a military recruit and trained in mixed martial arts. He proceeded to execute a take down and subdued the suspect until police arrived.  Listen to his comments afterward.  PINO: “I'm very thankful that God gave me the opportunity and gave me the strength to be able to control that situation. Very thankful that I was the one closing with my brother and no one else was. Because I'm not too sure if any of my co-workers would have done the same thing as I would have.” Close And that's The Worldview on this Wednesday, March 18th, in the year of our Lord 2026. Follow us on X or subscribe for free by Spotify, Amazon Music, or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com.  Plus, you can get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Most agency owners say they want to sell someday… but they're building something completely unsellable. The mistake? Not only a lack of a clear vision for the future of their agency, but also a lack of understanding of what they'll need to build a sellable agency. If you're an agency owner planning to sell one day, do you understand what buyers are usually looking for? Do you know which type of buyer you're hoping to attract? Today's featured guest understands that most agencies are acquired by private equity and built the private equity partner he felt was missing in the space. He'll talk about what actually drives valuation, what kills deals, and how to build an agency that buyers want to compete for. Ben Gaddis is the former founder of T3, a digital agency he sold to private equity in 2019. After going through multiple acquisitions himself, he now runs an operator-led private equity firm focused exclusively on tech-enabled service and agency businesses. As a former owner who's been on both sides of the table, he knows exactly what buyers are thinking. In this episode, we'll discuss: What are private equity companies looking for in agencies? Recurring revenue vs. retention What would actually increase your agency's valuation? If the goal is talent, should you consider an acquisition? 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. Toggl: Most agencies are losing 15–30% of their profit every year: lack of time tracking, messy manual timesheets, scope creep, untracked revisions, and all those "quick" client requests that never get billed. Toggl has created a fast, interactive way to uncover exactly where your margins are leaking. Start your investigation now at toggl.com/smartagency and use the code SMARTAGENCY10 at checkout for a 10% off annual plans. What Private Equity Actually Looks For (It's Not What You Think) The reality is that most private equity companies are looking to buy a couple of agencies to slam them together and eventually sell them for more. Based on this, agency owners have an idea of what these buyers want and mostly focus on revenue or EBITDA. According to Ben, however, buyers are looking at a few core things first: Client concentration Recurring or predictable revenue Net revenue retention Founder dependency (aka key-person risk) Clear vision and differentiation Let's start with client concentration. A lot of owners panic if one client makes up 20% of revenue. Some PE firms get nervous at 10%. But Ben brings nuance here. If you've landed and retained a $2–3M client for years, that's proof you can serve at a high level. That's powerful. The issue isn't just one big client. It's when your top 3–5 clients make up 50–60% of revenue. That's where it gets risky. If you're in that position, you already feel it. One bad email. One procurement shift. One budget freeze. And your stomach drops. That's not a valuation problem. That's a freedom problem. Recurring Revenue vs. Retention (The Smarter Metric) Everyone argues about contracts. "Should I lock clients into 12 months?" "Should we go month-to-month?" Ben argues that the real metric is net revenue retention. If you're at 90–100%+ retention, buyers don't care as much about contract length. He shared a case where they bought a company with almost zero recurring revenue but 115% net revenue retention. Clients kept buying more. The business was healthy. The packaging just needed to change. This is huge for agencies stuck in custom project hell. Sometimes it's not your service. It's how you position and sell it. Are you framing projects as standalone deliverables or as phases in a longer journey? If you're stuck working in the business and scrambling for the next sale, this is where to look first. Integration > Financial Engineering There are two types of buyers: Financial engineers smashing agencies together to increase multiples Operator-led firms building real integrated offerings Ben sees a lot of "fake integration." Agencies get acquired, but nothing truly connects. No shared systems. No real cross-sell. No operational synergy. Sophisticated buyers see through that immediately. What actually increases valuation? Additive capability. Does one service naturally lead to another? Does it solve a deeper problem for the same buyer? Does it expand wallet share within the same account? If you're thinking about acquisitions, don't buy revenue. Buy strategic fit. Otherwise, you're just running two companies under one logo. Growing Through Acquisition (And When Not To) A lot of 7-figure agency owners hit a wall where they can't hire fast enough and start to feel overwhelmed. The team depends on them. Growth feels capped. So they think: "Maybe I should acquire" and figure they should start small, as it seems easier than going through a big acquisition. Buying a bigger company or doing a merger of equals is certainly complicated in terms of defining who's in charge and which brand should remain. So, it should be a very complementary offer with a clear leader for it to make sense. This would be much clearer when buying a smaller business. However, here's the thing: Small acquisitions are just as hard as big ones. The legal, the integration, the emotional complexity, it's all real. If you've never done one before, the odds of it going smoothly are low. If the goal is talent… why not build offshore first? With AI and real-time translation tools, the global talent pool is radically more accessible than it was even five years ago. A lot of agency owners avoid offshore because it failed before. But the game has changed. If your bottleneck is hiring, you might not need to buy an agency. You might need to rethink your talent strategy. How to Prepare for a Sale (Even If You're Not Selling) This is where most deals fall apart, and Ben believes it's important for owners to try to cover any gaps in knowledge. Try to learn as much as you can about the process and the buyer to better understand their expectations. And if you still have questions, then don't hesitate to ask! Some aspects that owners may not understand and that you should start learning about: Working capital expectations Accrual vs. cash accounting Quality of Earnings (QofE) reviews Data cleanliness Revenue tagging Furthermore, Ben recommends something most owners never do: Run your own QofE before going to market. Know your skeletons. Track secured revenue. At the start of each year, how much revenue is already locked in? If that number consistently grows year over year, that's powerful. Buyers will ask about revenue by capability, revenue by sales rep, revenue by region, and client concentration by top 3/5/10. If your data is messy, you lose leverage. And if you're thinking, "I'll figure that out when I'm ready to sell," you're already behind. Vision Is the Real Multiplier Right now, Ben is seeing a lack of vision + execution alignment. AI is reshaping agency models in real time. Entire categories of services didn't exist a few months ago. The agencies that win won't just be efficient. They'll have a tight, clear, communicated vision. Agencies won't scale just because of a tactic. They'll scale because the vision was clear enough that the team could make decisions without the owner. If your team can't make decisions without you, that's not a people problem. That's a vision problem. And that's also why you're still stuck in fulfillment. 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. 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.

What if starting over is not the end… but the beginning of the life you were always meant to live?In this episode, Shelby sits down with Samantha Joe for a deeply raw, honest, and emotional conversation about healing, motherhood, divorce, abuse recovery, confidence, and what it truly looks like to rebuild your life when everything changes.Samantha opens up about walking away from an abusive relationship, a decision that takes more courage than most people will ever understand. She shares what it was like navigating divorce, carrying the weight of starting over, and stepping into a completely new chapter while raising her children and trying to find herself again in the process.From moving to Utah to rebuilding her identity piece by piece, Samantha takes us through the reality of healing not the polished version we often see online, but the messy, emotional, and deeply personal journey of learning to trust yourself again. She also shares how stepping back into social media helped her rediscover her voice, rebuild her confidence, and create a space where she could finally show up as her full, authentic self.Together, Shelby and Samantha dive into powerful conversations around:self-worth and learning to stop settlingpersonal growth during life's hardest seasonsmotherhood while rebuilding your identityhealing from emotional and physical abuseconfidence, self-talk, and overcoming doubtsocial media and content creation as a form of expression and connectionwhat it really means to stop hiding who you areThis episode goes beyond just “starting over.”It's about reclaiming your voice.It's about choosing yourself.It's about believing that even after everything you've been through… you are still allowed to build a life that feels good, safe, and aligned.This conversation is for the woman who is quietly rebuilding.The one who is learning to trust herself again.The one who feels like she's behind but is actually in the middle of becoming.And the one who needs a reminder that her story isn't over yet.Because even in the hardest seasons, there is still growth.There is still healing.And there is still so much more ahead for you.Connect with the guest: https://www.instagram.com/simplysamanthajoe/Agency: https://www.shelbyclementmarketing.com/Shop my favorites: http://go.shopmy.us/join/itsshelbyclementGet 20% off on NUUDS https://www.nuuds.com/collections/new-womens?snowball=SHELBY12969Follow on Socials:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shelbydclementLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shelby-dimiceli-clement-a9497049TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@itsshelbyclementInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsshelbyclement/If this episode inspired you, share it with a friend and leave a review, it means the world to me :)

Sign up to our FREE workshop on March 31st:  Optimization with AI for Programmatic Traders Site Lists + Geo Insights (DMA) — from Pivot Tables to Prompts In this episode of Programmatic Digest, Hélène Parker sits down with Assetou Kone, programmatic expert and consultant, for a real conversation about resilience in programmatic advertising and agency life. Assetou shares her journey into ad tech, from studying political science and mass communication to discovering programmatic during a digital marketing bootcamp. What started as a curiosity about digital media quickly became a career built on solving complex marketing problems across multiple verticals, including political campaigns, retail, e-commerce, banking, and pharmaceutical brands. The conversation dives into the softer skills that often determine long-term success in programmatic, including active listening, observation, and understanding the internal structure of the organisations you work within. Assetou explains why knowing how a company operates and who influences decisions can dramatically improve how traders execute campaigns and support client goals. Hélène and Assetou also unpack the reality of agency work, including burnout, under-resourced teams, and the pressure traders face when managing dozens of campaigns at once. They discuss why deep work is essential for campaign optimisation, insights, and meaningful reporting, and why many agencies underestimate the time required to generate true strategic value from programmatic data. The episode also explores what resilience actually looks like for traders and buyers, from documenting your work and protecting yourself with clear communication to learning from campaign mistakes and using those lessons to grow stronger in the role. They close the conversation with thoughts on the future of AI in programmatic, highlighting how automation could relieve traders of repetitive tasks while allowing them to focus on insights, strategy, and deeper analysis.  

Austin Batalis from the Batalis Agency of Farm Bureau Insurance joins Zack and Sarah from the Southwest Michigan Regional Chamber.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“If we don't fight, then what are we doing?” — Jeff BoydHow do you write fiction about contemporary America when reality itself is stranger than fiction? A country in which “alternative facts” is policy rather than satire. Where “truth” has been nationalized.Jeff Boyd, an acclaimed young American novelist, sees fiction as refuge. For both writer and reader, it gets us inside the heads of people who both inflict and endure pain. And it enables the senseless to make sense. The news cycle can't do that. A novel can.Boyd's second novel, Hard Times, out today, is his latest attempt to make sense of the senseless. No, the title isn't Dickensian — it's from Curtis Mayfield. The song on the 1975 “There's No Place Like America Today” album, with its cover juxtaposing some happy Americans in a car with others waiting miserably in the unemployment line. America might be great — but for whom, exactly? That dichotomy shapes Hard Times, which is set in a school on the South Side of Chicago where an innocent student gets shot and nobody can agree on what happened or why.Is the American Dream over? Boyd isn't quite sure. “As much as it feels impossible,” he says, “some part of me always wants to believe.” His characters fight — backs against the wall, cards stacked against them, but they don't give in. That's what Curtis Mayfield was singing about in 1975 and it's what Jeff Boyd is writing about in 2026. The times are hard. A time, once again, for novelists to seize back reality. Five Takeaways•       How Do You Make Stuff Up When Reality Is Already Unbelievable? Boyd admits he sometimes wonders what the point of being a novelist is when the headlines are stranger than fiction. His answer: fiction is a refuge. It lets you get inside the heads of people who inflict pain or endure it, and try to make sense of what in reality remains senseless. The novelist can provide an answer. The news cycle can't.•       Not Dickens — Curtis Mayfield: The title comes not from the 1854 novel but from the 1975 song on There's No Place Like America Today. The album cover says it all: happy people in the car, desperate people in the unemployment line. America is great — but great for whom? That dichotomy drives the book.•       A Policeman's Son on George Floyd: One of the officers who stood by while George Floyd died was black — a man whose family had been proud of him for getting the job, who went in wanting to do good. Boyd can't write off an entire category of people. His black cop character in Hard Times exists to show the complexity of wanting to do right and getting caught up in wrong.•       Fate vs. Agency on the South Side: Boyd's grad school friend — not religious but deterministic — argued you could draw a line from where someone starts to where they'll end up. Boyd's characters fight against that line. A kid from a broken home on food stamps doesn't have to end where you think. The novel asks whether the line holds or breaks.•       The Fight Goes On: Is the American Dream over? Boyd isn't quite sure. His characters have their backs against the wall and the cards stacked against them, but they don't give in. That's what Curtis Mayfield was singing about in 1975. It's what Boyd is writing about in 2026. The times are hard. The fight goes on. About the GuestJeff Boyd is the author of The Weight (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Hard Times (Flatiron Books, 2026). A former Chicago public school teacher and graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he received the Deena Davidson Friedman Prize for Fiction, he lives in Brooklyn with his family.References:•       Hard Times: A Novel by Jeff Boyd (Flatiron Books, 2026) — the book under discussion, out today. Starred review from Publishers Weekly.•       The Weight by Jeff Boyd (Simon & Schuster, 2023) — Boyd's acclaimed debut novel, set in Portland.•       Curtis Mayfield, “Hard Times” from There's No Place Like America Today (1975) — the song that gives the novel its title.•       Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854) — the Dickensian social realist tradition Boyd consciously works within.•       Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1970) — referenced in the conversation.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: Hard Times from Dickens to today (01:19) - Not Dickens — Curtis Mayfield (02:44) - The Obama era and the fall back into hard times (05:32) - How do you fictionalize a reality stranger than fiction? (08:44) - Autobiography: teaching in a Chicago school (10:18) - Fate, predestination, and fighting the line (12:49) - The novelist as God — do your characters surprise you? (15:02) - A student is shot: the journalist-novelist (15:33) - Social realism in the Dickensian tradition (18:45) - Chicago stereotypes and the beauty between blocks (22:19) - A policeman's son on George Floyd and the black cop who stood by (25:27) - Teaching as the most underappreciated job in America (27:57) - Money, class, and Black Chicago beyond the stereotype (29:43) - Trump, alternative facts, and who controls the truth (32:19) - The American Dream: is it over?

RAW & RSS to Face Ban? | American Agency Makes Haters Happy | वामपंथियों में ख़ुशी की लहर लेकिन....

In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson, Eric Columbus, Roger Parloff, and Kate Klonick to Judge Boasberg's opinion quashing subpoenas to Fed Reserve chair Jerome Powell, Anthropic's suit challenged the Defense Department's designation of it as a supply chain risk, Judge Lambert finding that Kari Lake was unlawfully running the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and more.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here. And check out Lawfare's new homepage on the litigation, new Bluesky account, and new WITOAD merch.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you hired an ad agency to save time and make more money… but you're still doing the creative, still managing the process, and still feeling unclear about what's actually working? This episode is for you. In today's episode, Claire shares five warning signs it might be time to cut ties with your ad agency or consultant — even if they've been with you for a while, even if you like them, even if they've "helped in past launches." Some of these red flags are obvious. One of them is hiding in plain sight inside Ads Manager. And one of them is the reason a lot of businesses end up paying for "support" that actually slows them down. If you want a faster, simpler, more profitable relationship with ads — this is the listen. This Week on the Get Paid Podcast: The un-subtle Ads Manager clue that tells you your agency is running an outdated setup The timeline standard that should never be missed when you're running ads for a live event The "quiet leak" that drains budget (and why it's a bigger deal than most people realize) The ROI question you should be asking (but probably aren't) The one factor that determines whether outsourcing ads is smart… or just expensive Mentioned in this episode: Get Paid Marketing (GPM): clairepels.com/waitlist Now it's time to GET PAID  

First, a candidate with ties to a ten billion dollar data center project is also running for a board seat on Imperial County's water and power agency. Then, we'll tell you how and why trust in elections has decreased. Also, a look at e-bike injuries as the full San Diego City Council will soon make a decision on proposed e-bike regulations. And, Nascar is coming to Naval Air Station North Island. Plus, the Coronado Unified School District might be tightening its cell phone policies.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training How are you protecting yourself from the real risk of owner burnout? Agency owners often burn out because they built a business that depends entirely on them. Today's featured guest is a former agency owner turned AI SaaS founder. He'll unpack what really caused his agency collapse, what he learned from it, and how he rebuilt from a completely different role. Austin Armstrong is the owner of Syllaby, a tool for social media marketing that helps users create their very own realistic digital clone to personalize their marketing efforts, allowing them to forge a deeper connection with their audience. Austin spent over a decade in the agency world, working his way up from intern to running an agency before launching his own. For a while, it worked, until the cracks appeared. His agency was built around organic marketing and heavily centered on his personal brand. High months meant hiring fast. Low months meant wondering if payroll would clear. When a few large clients (that accounted for about 60% of monthly revenue) churned, the instability became unbearable. So Austin made his tech pivot and moved to starting Syllaby, which also came with a role pivot. More recently, he just released his first book Virality and is the co-founder of the upcoming AI marketing World conference. In this episode, we'll discuss: From agency failure to early AI adopter Why the founder bottleneck is emotional The founder evolution model AI exposes weaknesses Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. Making the Decision to Be an Early Adopter When he started Syllaby, Austin could already see the writing on the wall with AI. He was already not happy navigating the agency world, so the question was, "Do I want to place a bet as an early adopter of this technology? Potentially cannibalizing my own agency?" He spoke with several clients and business owners and came to the conclusion that most people hire an agency because they know they need to create content to be relevant, but didn't know how to pick the right topics, and in many cases didn't want to be on camera. They needed help staying consistent and accountable. Some of them don't even have the money to hire an agency, but still have a message and an expertise to share. So Austin started to look for ways to automate those processes using AI. The Founder Bottleneck Is Emotional Before It's Operational The emotional weight of the unraveling of Austin's agency was real. Nightmares about client complaints. Constant vigilance. Inability to disconnect. Eventually, he decided to make a bet on AI and launched Syllaby, an AI-powered content platform designed to automate much of what agencies manually execute, from topic discovery to scripting to publishing. Now, looking back, he sees his agency's failure came from several mistakes. It wasn't bad marketing or lack of demand. It was structural dependency. The agency relied on: His personal brand His client relationships His decision-making His emotional capacity When large clients churned, revenue collapsed because concentration risk hadn't been designed out of the model. When delivery required nuance, he couldn't step away because "he stirred the pot." This is the Operator trap. The Founder Evolution Model Most founders believe they own an agency. In reality, the agency owns them. What is supposed to happen as your agency evolves is that your role in it evolves as follows: Operator → Manager → Architect → CEO → Owner At the Operator level: Sales depends on you. Delivery depends on you. Escalations go to you. Pricing goes through you. And when you focus on one area, another suffers. Systems Create Freedom But They Also Create Identity Shifts As the owner, being needed feels good and letting go feels disorienting. Austin acknowledged this tension. In his agency, clients wanted him. Even with SOPs, some work required nuance. Some of it was ego. Some of it was positioning. Some of it was hiring the wrong people in the wrong seats. Having learned his lesson, things look very different in his SaaS company, where he can rely on strong partners, defined ownership, AI-supported workflows, and clear decision rights. Now he can disappear for two weeks, go skiing with family, speak at events, and the business doesn't break. AI Exposes Weakness All over the industry owners agree that AI isn't replacing strong agencies. It's exposing weak ones. At Syllaby, Austin has integrated AI so much is hard to think where he DOESN'T use it. He automates what many agencies sell manually: SEO-based topic discovery Script generation Video creation Scheduling and publishing For smaller businesses, this lowers the barrier to entry. For agencies, it creates leverage. Which tool are owners using? This varies from time to time. What you should be doing is testing them all out to see which ones work better for you, as well as creating a brief with all the information you'll need in case you decide to migrate to a different tool. Jason calls this his "AI Operating Brief", a master document loaded with: Company positioning Customer data Success stories CRM insights Transcripts Strategic principles Once embedded into AI tools, it eliminates repetitive context-setting and removes founder bottlenecks. Austin does something similar with what he calls his "Austin Codex", years of content, frameworks, and intellectual property housed inside AI models. The result is institutional memory without constant founder involvement. Time Audits Reveal the Hidden Ceiling Austin is a big fan of the full-time audit exercise: For one to two weeks, document: Every task Start and end times Whether it's mandatory or optional Your enjoyment level The dollar value of your time The outcome is uncomfortable. Once you're done, you'll see which $10 tasks eating $1,000/hour time, the emotional drain disguised as "important work", and the distractions masquerading as urgency. He outsourced email management, calendar coordination, travel booking — all consolidated into a daily executive summary delivered where he actually spends time. Not because he can't do it, but because he shouldn't. The bigger lesson: you don't scale an agency… you outgrow your role. 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. 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.

In this episode of the Grow A Small Business Podcast, host Troy Trewin interviews Phil Risher, founder of Phlash Consulting, shares how he transformed from charging $50 per hour as a consultant into building a $2M digital marketing consulting business serving home service companies. He explains how niching down, productizing services, and focusing on solving real customer problems helped drive consistent 20% annual growth. Phil also discusses the mindset shift from hustler to leader, hiring and building an 18-person remote team, and buying back his time to scale the business. The conversation dives into why content and AI-driven search are becoming critical for modern marketing. Phil also shares practical lessons on leadership, systems, and thinking bigger when building a successful business.   Why would you wait any longer to start living the lifestyle you signed up for? Balance your health, wealth, relationships and business growth. And focus your time and energy and make the most of this year. Let's get into it by clicking here.   Troy delves into our guest's startup journey, their perception of success, industry reconsideration, and the pivotal stress point during business expansion. They discuss the joys of small business growth, vital entrepreneurial habits, and strategies for team building, encompassing wins, blunders, and invaluable advice.   And a snapshot of the final five Grow A Small Business Questions: What do you think is the hardest thing in growing a small business? According to Phil Risher, the hardest thing in growing a small business is balancing growth with building the right team. As more clients come in, business owners must hire and train employees quickly enough to maintain service quality, but hiring too early can create cash-flow pressure while hiring too late can overwhelm the team. This constant challenge of managing new client demand, onboarding capable team members, and keeping finances stable at the same time is one of the most difficult parts of scaling a small business. What's your favorite business book that has helped you the most? According to Phil Risher, the business book that helped him the most is Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. He says the book had a major impact on how he manages finances in his company because it teaches business owners to prioritize profit first instead of treating profit as what is left after expenses. The system helps entrepreneurs control spending, improve cash flow, and build a financially healthy business by allocating money into specific categories like profit, taxes, and operating expenses. He also highly recommends Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell, which focuses on delegating tasks and buying back the founder's time so they can focus on leadership and scaling the business. Are there any great podcasts or online learning resources you'd recommend to help grow a small business? According to Phil Risher, some of the best resources for learning how to grow a small business are podcasts, YouTube, and books, especially content that teaches practical strategies. He specifically recommends learning from Alex Hormozi on YouTube because his videos break down business growth, marketing, and sales in a clear and practical way. Phil also emphasizes not relying on just one learning format—he suggests combining podcasts, books, and videos because different formats help you understand ideas better and apply them faster in your business. What tool or resource would you recommend to grow a small business? According to Phil Risher, two tools he strongly recommends for growing a small business are Asana and Slack. He explains that Asana helps business owners organize tasks, projects, and workflows so everything is tracked in one place instead of scattered across emails or spreadsheets, while Slack creates a centralized communication hub for teams to collaborate efficiently, especially as the company grows beyond a few employees. Together, these tools help improve productivity, transparency, and coordination within a growing team. What advice would you give yourself on day one of starting out in business? According to Phil Risher, the advice he would give himself on day one of starting a business is to think much bigger from the start. He explains that when he first began, he was focused on small goals like making $100,000, but over time he realized the opportunities were far larger than he imagined. His lesson is that entrepreneurs often limit themselves by thinking too small, while the real potential of a business can grow far beyond what they initially believe is possible. Book a 20-minute Growth Chat with Troy Trewin to see if you qualify for our upcoming course. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your small business to new heights! Enjoyed the podcast? Please leave a review on iTunes or your preferred platform. Your feedback helps more small business owners discover our podcast and embark on their business growth journey.     Quotable quotes from our special Grow A Small Business podcast guest: Success comes from taking information breaking it down and executing on it quickly - Phil Risher The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make is thinking too small about what their business can become - Phil Risher Stop chasing money and start solving real problems and the money will follow - Phil Risher      

This is the morning All Local update for saturday, March 14th 2026

On this episode, we discuss NFL free Agency, the Ravens' withdrawal from their trade with the Raiders, Jason Tatum returns, and what does this mean for the East?, March Madness approaches, PGA, JD's Bites, BRR's, and so much more!  

Adam Levitan and Evan Silva return to recap more Free Agency signings, analysing the deeper fantasy, especially Best Ball, impact and real-world fallout for each deal.Links mentioned in the episode:⁠ETR's 2026 NFL Free Agency Tracker⁠⁠Establish The Run Golf⁠⁠Establish The Run College Basketball Ball⁠Timestamps:0:00 - Introduction2:38 - #1 Vikings Sign QB Kyler Murray (1yr, $1.3m)8:49 - #2 Vikings Restructure RB Aaron Jones10:20 - #3 Jaguars Sign RB Chris Rodriguez (2yrs, $12m)14:39 - #4 Commanders Sign RB Rachaad White (1yr, $2m)18:18 - #5 Commanders Sign TE Chig Okonkwo (3yrs, $30m)20:49 - #6 Saints No Comment on RB Alvin Kamara Retirement23:55 - #7 Buccaneers Place Right-of-First Refusal Tender on RB Sean Tucker26:28 - #8 Colts Re-Sign QB Daniel Jones (2yrs, $88m)29:00 - #9 Seahawks Sign RB Emmanuel Wilson (1yr, $2.1m)32:24 - #10 Chargers Sign RB Keaton Mitchell (2yrs, $9.25m)35:54 - #11 Chiefs Sign RB Emari Demercado36:20 - #12 AJ Brown Trade Update, Rams Showing Interest39:18 - #13 Brian Thomas Jr. Update, Jags Have No Interest In Trade42:00 - #14 Ravens Pull Out of Trade For Raiders DE Maxx Crosby, Citing Failed PhysicalWant ETR on your team this season? Our 2026 NFL Best Ball product has you covered with:Real-Time RankingsResearch & Analysis ArticlesDraft Strategy ContentDraft LivestreamsDiscord CommunityQ&As with ETR TeamSubscribe now at ⁠⁠https://establishtherun.com/subscribe/⁠⁠DraftKings: Your Home for Early Bird Best Ball DraftKings Early Bird Best Ball keeps the NFL action going all year long. You draft once, and you're set — no waiver wires, no lineup changes, no weekly grind. DraftKings automatically plays your best lineup every week. DraftKings is your home for Early Bird Best Ball, with $1 million in prizes on the line to make it even better.⁠⁠Sign Up Now⁠⁠! ⁠⁠https://dkng.co/ETRBestBall⁠⁠Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. New York: call 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY. Connecticut: call 888-789-7777 or visit CCPG.org. 18+ in most states. Restrictions apply. Terms: draftkings.com. Sponsored by DraftKings.FREE NEWSLETTER: Tired of attention-seeking hot takes? Get the highest-quality fantasy football analysis in your inbox, FREE: ⁠⁠https://establishtherun.kit.com/email ⁠⁠DFS OPTIMIZER: Sign up for THE SOLVER for access to the software we think fantasy players need to win: ⁠⁠https://thesolver.com/?ref=etr⁠⁠SPORTSBOOK OFFERS: We've partnered with several major sportsbook outlets to help supply you with the best offers in the industry and ensure you're maximizing your bankroll from the start: ⁠⁠https://establishtherun.com/offers/⁠⁠FOLLOW US: Check out our social media channels for FREE fantasy football & DFS videos, analysis, and more: ⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/establishtherun⁠⁠

Welcome to another insightful solo episode of Build a Better Agency! This week, host Drew McLellan draws on his 25+ years of agency experience to tackle a game-changing reality for agency owners: the ways buyers find, vet, and select agencies have shifted—and your approach needs to shift too. Based on the latest industry research and buyer behavior data, this episode serves as both a wake-up call and a practical roadmap, ensuring your agency is "future-proofed" for today's—and tomorrow's—client expectations.  Diving deep into what really happens before an RFP hits your inbox, Drew McLellan reveals that the majority of buying decisions are made before agencies ever take the stage for a pitch. He shares eye-opening statistics—like Forrester's finding that 92% of B2B buyers have a preferred vendor before the pitch even starts—and illustrates why visibility, authority, and trust are now your most important assets. Listeners will discover why authority-building and relationship nurturing trump old-school charm, and why consistent, outcome-focused content is now essential for remaining discoverable in both human and algorithm-driven searches.  Beyond theory, Drew McLellan provides a series of targeted, actionable "homework assignments" you can start right away, from the "5-minute stranger test" to case study revamps and trust broker mapping. You'll learn how to make your agency's value instantly obvious and compelling across every digital touchpoint—website, LinkedIn, third-party mentions—while cultivating the patterns of social proof and authority that today's buyers demand. Drew also explains how algorithms and AI tools are shaping client shortlists, and why crafting machine-readable, buyer-friendly positioning is now non-negotiable.  If you're ready to break old sales habits, update your growth strategies, and implement repeatable steps to increase your agency's desirability, this episode is a can't-miss. Whether or not you attend the Build a Better Agency Summit, Drew McLellan's guidance will challenge you to rethink your approach and take meaningful action toward winning the clients of the future. A big thank you to our podcast's presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They're an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here. What You Will Learn in This Episode: How today's agency buyers make decisions long before the pitch The growing impact of authority, visibility, and trust in landing new clients Future-proofing your agency for AI-driven and algorithm-shaped discovery The four pillars every agency must communicate: clarity, evidence, social proof, and humanity Why building consistent, outcome-focused case studies is non-negotiable The importance of nurturing trust brokers and relationships across your industry Actionable homework to ensure your agency is findable and desirable to the future buyer

Many agency leaders run their businesses on gut instinct. While intuition is important for speed, relying on it for your year-end forecast or retention metrics is a dangerous game. If your Agency Management System (AMS) is just spitting out numbers without context, you are effectively flying blind.My guest, Todd Dailey, creator of Premium Logic, joins me to discuss how his transition from the data-rich corporate world of Liberty Mutual to the independent agency side exposed a massive gap in analytics. We break down why traditional AMS platforms fall short, the critical difference between lagging metrics (like retention) and leading metrics (like client sentiment), and how to use data to collaborate with your producers rather than punish them. If you are ready to stop guessing and start making confident, calculated decisions to scale your agency, this episode is your blueprint.▶▶ Sign Up For Your Free Discovery Callcompletegameu.com/agaCONNECT WITH ANDY NEARY

Be inspired with OTP as they visit with Kay Chaires, former client turned coordinator on staff with Trendsitions Provider Agency out of Pendleton, Oregon. When OTP visited the agency to talk about how transition age students may be able to access services, it came up in conversation that Trendsitions had a former client, who had grown up in school in Eastern Oregon and was now on staff with them. We had to do a bonus episode with her and hear her story!  Follow her journey through school, college, navigating agencies and ultimately on to her career. This is inspirational and powerful, a first-person success story from transition student to adult with a growing career and future.

You're fully booked and the money is coming in, but you're more overwhelmed than ever. You haven't built a business... you've built a high-pressure job. In this episode, Sarah Noked (founder of OBM School) and I dig into what it actually means to scale yourself OUT of the day-to-day so your business doesn't collapse the moment you step away. We talk about why web designers are often the biggest bottleneck in their own growth, and exactly what to do about it.

Detroit Lions sign free agent DB Christian Izien, NFL Media Scout Scott Bischoff joins to talk about the Detroit Lions options at offensive tackle in the 2026 NFL Draft.

This episode is a recording from the Start Network's Assembly, which took place in October 2025. Lars Peter Nissen was invited to moderate a panel exploring what leadership looks like when success is contingent on the agency of others — when you cannot exercise direct control but must inspire, build rapport, and create the conditions for a group of individuals to deliver results.Rather than drawing on leaders from within the humanitarian sector, the panel brings together professionals from two very different fields — football management and musical theatre — to explore what their craft can teach humanitarians about leading through networks, trust, and collective action.Note: This episode was recorded live at the Start Network Assembly. The sound quality reflects the live setting.GuestsNatalie Brown: Board Director at Banbury United Football Club and the first Black female board member in UK football. Natalie has a background in media, marketing, and community development, and has worked with Arsenal, The Prince's Trust, and Mind. She founded the #PlayBrave initiative to help women build confidence on and off the pitch.Huw Evans: Associate Musical Director on Oliver at the Gielgud Theatre in London's West End. Huw is an accomplished conductor and multi-instrumentalist who has worked on shows including Much Ado About Nothing, Sunset Boulevard, Oklahoma, and Come From Away. He trained at King's College London.Moderated by Lars Peter Nissen, Director of ACAPS and host of Trumanitarian. Introduced by Lucy Puentes of the Start Network.Key ThemesBuilding from the ground up: Natalie shares how she rebuilt Banbury United's women's team after inheriting a fractured setup where the manager had left just before the season. After a disheartening first attempt, she “flipped the script” — launching open training sessions for women over 40, which rapidly grew into a multigenerational squad with players aged 16 to 66. Her approach centred on changing the narrative, leading with spirit, and building a movement rather than just a team.The duet between leading and following: Huw describes conducting as a constant negotiation between setting the tempo and following the performer. With 12 musicians split across three separate spaces, a 30-person cast, and four child actors rotating in the lead role, he conducts via camera monitors — relying on connection, adaptability, and trust rather than direct control. Leadership in live performance, he says, is about creating the conditions for harmony rather than forcing it.Trust, small gestures, and knowing people's namesBoth panellists emphasise that trust is built through small, consistent actions. Huw takes pride in greeting every deputy musician before the show. Natalie describes how players joined her team simply because they liked who she was and what she stood for. Both draw a direct parallel to humanitarian coordination — where leading a cluster meeting of 50 strangers via camera is not so different from conducting an orchestra through a monitor.Releasing control: A recurring theme throughout the conversation is the difficulty — and necessity — of letting go. Huw describes the terrifying moment of relinquishing control in a live performance with 2,000 people watching. Natalie reflects on having built the women's team so personally that she now needs to step back and let others carry the vision. Both see this as essential to sustainable leadership in networked settings.The power of diversity and emergence: Lars Peter draws the conversation toward metaphor, arguing that biology — not physics — offers the better model for thinking about networks. The emergent quality of a network, like a heart pumping blood from cells and valves, produces outcomes that are qualitatively different from the sum of the parts. Just as a football team needs more than 11 goalkeepers, or an orchestra more than 12 horn players, humanitarian networks need genuine diversity of skills and perspectives.Resilience and learning from mistakes: Huw shares a candid story of pressing the wrong button during a click track, causing pre-recorded and live children to sing out of sync. His advice: pick yourself up, stay calm, and keep going with integrity. Natalie talks about the power of small daily steps — just 15 minutes of focused effort each day — as a way to sustain momentum when things feel overwhelming.CreditsHost: Lars Peter NissenRecorded at: Start Network Assembly, October 2025Session title: Choreographing Chaos: Leadership in a World of NetworksPanel introduced by: Lucy Puentes, Start NetworkGet in touch: info@truemanitarian.orgSupport the podcast: Visit truemanitarian.org and click “Support the Pod”

Links:Andrew's Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Slackletter: https://slackletter.com/Sean's Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Margins: http://margins.so/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:00.85AndrewDude, your notifications are non-fucking-stop.00:04.50SeanYeah, they are. I know. It's terrible.00:08.08AndrewBefore you muted it, it was just like, what's... Your Slack noise is like a click clack. It's like a... Okay.00:13.94SeanYeah, the knock, the Slack knock.00:15.92Andrewdid it did00:16.09SeanYeah.00:16.75Andrewokay I don't ever have noises turned on for anything. It drives me crazy.00:22.67SeanYeah, I mean, don't know. You used to it, I guess. What are you going to and You know what notifications does drive crazy?00:27.94AndrewSicko.00:32.16SeanMessages. Yeah,00:34.98AndrewMessages, like iMessage or like Facebook Messenger or...00:36.68Seanyeah, yeah. No, sorry.00:40.30AndrewiMessage.00:40.84SeaniMessage. Yeah, iMessage.00:41.87AndrewYeah, yeah.00:42.99SeanNoises drive me insane. Slag is okay.00:46.20AndrewIt's kind of like a little like bubble burst, right? It's like a bubbly thing, sounding thing.00:52.18SeanOh, mine is a ding.00:54.12AndrewNo, maybe maybe the bubble is something else.00:54.20SeanMine is like a shark.00:56.16AndrewI don't know.00:56.88SeanThe bubble is like when you send a message.00:56.97Andrewsome Somebody. Oh, maybe. Yeah.01:00.56SeanYeah. Yeah.01:01.36AndrewYeah. Dude, did you get any sleep last night? We were chatting at like 1.30 a.m.01:09.48AndrewSecret pod.01:13.37SeanYeah. I still have like three hours. It's not that bad.01:17.44AndrewMan, that's so much sleep. what You must be wide awake fucking alert.01:21.96Seanyeah Well, I was going to ask you if you had any sleep last night, but you know.01:33.12AndrewI actually didn't fall asleep until like 3, 4 a.m., something like that.01:33.70SeanYeah,01:38.72AndrewI have a new favorite Dropout show. can't you You know Dropout, right? We've talked about Dropout.tv, best streaming service the internet.01:44.46Seanyeah, yeah. Yeah, college humor.01:49.32Andrewon the internet01:52.82SeanOh,01:52.96Andrewuh they have a it's not a new show i've but i i was finally catching up uh what is it called the parlor room where it's like a they played board comedians played board games and you watch so it's like right up my fucking alley i'm cursing a lot today sorry02:05.75Seancool.02:07.93SeanNice. It's okay. It's because don't have any sleep. I get it.02:13.93SeanUnlike me, who slept a lot.02:18.89Andrewuh have you ever heard of blood on the clock tower02:21.94SeanNo, no, no,02:22.83AndrewIt's like a deception game, kind of like mafia kind of vibes, but more complicated and there's, it looks really fun. The thing that makes it, I think, complicated is like the players, the roles that players get can change every time.02:37.96AndrewAnd you, there are multiple players who can have roles where they think they're one thing, but they're actually something else. They're getting, false information.02:44.69Seanno.02:46.28AndrewSo you can be the marionette, which is like you're controlled by like the big bad. You can be a drunk. You can also like get poisoned or something. And then there's like so there's all this stuff where you're like trying to piece things together, but you have to also consider the fact that you might have incorrect information.03:08.46Andrewlike the stuff you think you know about yourself might be wrong. It's chaotic as hell.03:12.93Seanthat's pretty cool that's pretty yeah that's pretty cool interesting okay that's it every time i hear deception game and i hear like mafia i kind of roll my eyes and internally just because i can't like there's there's just so many you know there's just so many of this like but but i think i think that's a nice that's like a03:14.95AndrewSuper fun. Yeah.03:25.54AndrewSure.03:29.61AndrewI know.03:35.68Seanan Actually, interesting spin on it.03:35.71Andrewyeah Some of them are a lot better than others.03:37.95SeanYeah.03:37.98Andrewlike kuup is pretty fun. Secret Hitler is pretty fun. Generally I don't love deception games though because I like i hate lying, I'm a terrible liar.03:47.70AndrewBut my strategy is usually just to be as chao like as chaotic and suspicious as hell even when I'm not the the like person so that that way if I do get the like big bad, everyone's just like Andrew's just being Andrew, he's just an idiot.03:55.67SeanI see.04:02.77Andrewlike Ignore him.04:03.10SeanNice. Nice.04:05.49Andrewi have to like access access because i know i'm going to access when i'm uh actually in trouble04:13.25Seanit's like It's like the opposite of like just always pretending you're bad at lying. So everyone thinks always telling the truth.04:22.08Andrewit's kind of the same thing it's kind of the same thing right yeah04:22.31SeanAnyway. you have you yeah okay anyway do you have do have a favorite game?04:29.48AndrewUh, yes, but it's like kind of niche. I think my favorite board game is Everdell.04:33.68SeanOK.04:36.62SeanI've heard of that.04:36.95Andrewit it's It's an engine builder where you're living in like kind of like a Redwall-esque world where you've got you're playing as little forest creatures and you're building your little forest like forest kingdom machine thing.04:51.88AndrewAnd and and it's fun because it's like you can't be that cutthroat with the other players. You're kind of playing your own game and there's a little bit of like sabotage and stuff.04:58.23SeanMm.05:01.71Andrewbut For someone who's very competitive, and it you know my friends tend to get pissed off at me when we play like really cutthroat games, like Settlers or you know something.05:11.80SeanGotcha.05:13.03AndrewAnd so it's nice because it keeps keeps everybody happier. Also a big fan of, oh, what's the haunted house on the hill? Betrayal at the house on the hill.05:25.57AndrewSo much fun. Campy, kitschy, good vibes.05:31.24SeanNice. The PvE one doesn't sound fun at all. Just saying. As as also as Everdell.05:37.77AndrewThe which one?05:40.20Seanlike you You just completely sold me again...

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Natalie Southwell. Founder and CEO of The Essence of a Woman, LLC, a female empowerment agency dedicated to helping high‑achieving women rise with confidence, courage, clarity, and faith-driven purpose. The conversation explores: How women can overcome fear, trauma, and misaligned life decisions The role of faith, purpose, and intentionality in decision-making Her frameworks: PAIN and REAL Her personal journey to launching The Essence of a Woman How she guides women across generations—including students, early professionals, mid-career women, and women 50+—toward alignment and leadership.

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Natalie Southwell. Founder and CEO of The Essence of a Woman, LLC, a female empowerment agency dedicated to helping high‑achieving women rise with confidence, courage, clarity, and faith-driven purpose. The conversation explores: How women can overcome fear, trauma, and misaligned life decisions The role of faith, purpose, and intentionality in decision-making Her frameworks: PAIN and REAL Her personal journey to launching The Essence of a Woman How she guides women across generations—including students, early professionals, mid-career women, and women 50+—toward alignment and leadership.

What if the version of “success” you've been chasing is actually keeping you stuck in survival mode?In this episode, I sit down with author and coach Jon Rosemberg to talk about what it really means to move from high-functioning survival into genuine thriving. Jon shares his deeply personal story of growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, living in chronic vigilance, and eventually discovering that achievement and productivity were not the same thing as peace, agency, or well-being.This conversation hit me on a very personal level. So much of what Jon shares mirrors my own journey of questioning performance-based definitions of success, asking whether external accomplishments actually create the feeling I'm looking for, and realizing that thriving often has much more to do with connection, meaning, and agency than with metrics.We talk about the body's role in helping us recognize survival mode, how to challenge the beliefs that keep us trapped in proving and performing, and Jon's practical AIR framework: Awareness, Inquiry, and Reframing.If you've ever felt like you're doing all the “right” things but still feel off, disconnected, or chronically on edge, this conversation is for you.Here's what you'll learn:Thriving is not the same as successSurvival mode can look high-functioningSomatic awareness mattersAgency can be practicedConnection is essential to thrivingLINKSFollow Jon on InstagramVisit Jon's website to learn more about his bookMeaningful Work with Tamara Myles and Wes AdamsDefining and Feeling Success --------------The Grow the Good Podcast is produced by Palm Tree Pod Co.

In this episode, Lamar Garrett from Redbird Security delves into the critical importance of agency-specific cybersecurity tailored for insurance businesses. He discusses how proactive hardware and software maintenance can significantly reduce downtime, while the integration of AI streamlines operations and enhances security protocols. Lamar highlights the differences between general IT providers and insurance-specific MSPs, emphasizing the need for compliance with state and federal data regulations. He also shares best practices for integrating new technology, managing shiny objects, and preventing breaches through layered security and cyber awareness training. Additionally, Lamar addresses the impact of legacy hardware on security vulnerabilities and the importance of building strong relationships and trust within the insurance industry, along with strategies to improve communication about cybersecurity to agency owners.Lamar emphasizes that tailored cybersecurity, proactive hardware management, and clear communication are crucial for insurance agencies to protect their data and scale efficiently. His insights highlight that investing in industry-specific IT solutions is not just smart but necessary in today's digital landscape.Timestamps:00:00 - Introduction to Lamar Garrett and Redbird Security06:25 - The importance of insurance-specific IT solutions08:41 - How cybersecurity breaches impact large organizations and why agencies are at risk12:48 - Common misconceptions about insurance cybersecurity needs16:41 - Optimizing agency tech stacks for efficiency and compliance24:23 - Response times and minimizing downtime for agency management systems28:40 - How AI is transforming insurance IT security and operations32:38 - The hidden costs of aging hardware and legacy systems37:40 - Final thoughts on securing agency data and building industry trustResources & Links:Redbird SecurityRedbird Security on LinkedInApplied Epic MSP PartnershipMicrosoft CopilotEZLinks SoftwareCybersecurity Awareness CartoonsBook: "The Art of Cybersecurity" by David S. TanenbaumConnect with Lamar Garrett:LinkedIn - Lamar GarrettRedbird SecuritySponsors:MavCanopy ConnectGOLI

Former Buffalo Bills Pro Bowl center Eric Wood sits down with Joe Marino to break down the Buffalo Bills' latest NFL free agency moves and what they mean for the team heading into the 2025 season.The two dive into the Bills trading for DJ Moore, the impact he could have alongside Josh Allen, and why the move could reshape the offense. They also discuss Buffalo bringing back Connor McGovern, signing pass rusher Bradley Chubb, and adding corner Dee Alford.Plus, the guys debate the biggest stories around National Football League free agency, potential targets the Bills should still pursue, and how these moves could impact Buffalo's Super Bowl window.The Centered on Buffalo Podcast is sponsored by:Dan-O's Seasoning Follow Dan-O's Seasoning on Social @danosseasoning  https://danosseasoning.com/product/eric-woods-bundle/  15% off code: ewoodNugsax Reusable Icenugsax.com10% Off CODE: buffalo

This week's show is comprised of two interviews that touch on the NFL Draft, some Eagles, Phillies, and Flyers talk, and the start of the Philadelphia Union's season.Joe DeLeone, from AtoZSports.com and the Ruffino & Joe Show podcast, joined us for a great discussion about NFL Draft talent and various storylines we'll be following, honing in on players leading up to the draft in April. (Approx. 2:30)From there, friend of the pod Josh Shuster jumped on to get into some storylines surrounding the Eagles during free agency, the Phillies extending Jesus Luzardo, and how terrible the Flyers look as of late. (Approx. 26:40)From there, Josh, from PhiladelphiaSoccerNow.com, and Jeff had an interesting discussion about the start of the Philadelphia Union's 2026 season. The team has not performed well out of the gate, especially after losing key talent in the offseason. Jeff and Josh discussed a number of storylines and what expectations for this team will be this year. (Approx. 43:15)SUBSCRIBE on YouTube: youtube.com/@thephiladelphiasportstableHead over to our website for all of our podcasts and more: philadelphiasportstable.comFollow us on Threads: @philadelphiasportstableFollow us on Twitter/X: @PhiladelphiaPSTFollow us on Instagram: @philadelphiasportstable.Follow us on Facebook: facebook.com/PhiladelphiaSportsTable

What does it actually take to be the first, or only, designer or researcher on a team? Spoiler: it's not just about doing great work. This week, we get into the unglamorous, under-discussed side of the solo role: building systems, managing up, and earning trust before you've even shipped anything.What happens when you're really good at the craft, but nobody around you understands what you do, why it matters, or how to support you?Julian Della Mattia has spent his career doing one of the hardest things in UX: showing up first. As a researcher who has repeatedly been the founding or solo practitioner inside organizations, Julian has learned, mostly the hard way, that being great at research is only a fraction of the actual job. He's also the host of Finders to Builders, a podcast built specifically for researchers navigating this exact challenge.In this conversation, we dig into what Julian calls the “finder to builder” mindset shift: moving from someone who just surfaces insights to someone who builds the infrastructure, earns the trust, and creates the conditions for research (and design) to actually matter inside an organization. We talk about how to manage up when your manager doesn't fully understand your work, how to know when your efforts are starting to gain traction, and what the invisible job description of a solo or founding designer really looks like.If you've ever landed a solo design or research role and felt the gap between what you prepared for and what the job actually demanded, this one's for you. Julian brings a grounded, practical perspective that goes well beyond frameworks, because, as he puts it, in this context, frameworks rarely fly out of the box. Hit play.Helpful Links:• Connect with Julian on LinkedIn• Follow Julian's Substack• Finders to Builders PodcastTopics:• 02:25 – Meet Julian Della Mattia• 03:48 – From PM to first researcher• 06:06 – Agency advice for juniors• 10:54 – Accidental in-house research role• 14:28 – Finder to builder mindset• 18:51 – Time triage and playmaker mode• 24:53 – Invisible work and org dynamics• 27:49 – Managing up and selling research• 32:23 – Signals and metrics that it's working• 36:48 – Measuring research impact• 38:35 – Skip the framework trap• 39:02 – Managing up tactics• 40:16 – Aligning with business goals• 43:37 – Just ask your boss• 44:43 – When to start hiring• 46:32 – Recap and teamwork• 48:37 – Parting advice for firsts• 60:39 – Where to find Julian—Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today's episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today's episode, why don't you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton.If you haven't already, sign up for our email list. We won't spam you. Pinky swear.• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support the show on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Check out show transcripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Check out our website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe on Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe on Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe on Stitcher

S4 Capital has announced a revolutionary new pricing model that will transform how agencies charge for their services: instead of billable hours, they’re moving to… subscriptions. Fixed monthly fees. Annual contracts that auto-renew. All costs absorbed into the price rather than passed through as variables. You know, retainers. The pricing model most independent agencies have used for decades. In this episode (somewhat abbreviated due to Gini’s technical difficulties), Chip and Gini dissect the holding company’s “brilliant innovation” with the appropriate level of sarcasm, then pivot to the more interesting question buried in the announcement: how should agencies price around AI? The conversation moves from eye-rolling at repackaged retainer models to wrestling with legitimate uncertainty about how AI costs will evolve and what that means for agency pricing strategies. Chip points out that we only know what AI costs today, and it’s likely those costs will rise as platforms realize they’re replacing expensive labor and can charge accordingly. This creates a pricing puzzle—do you transparently pass through AI costs, absorb them into your general cost of doing business, or find some middle ground? Gini shares how she’s handling questions from college students about whether jobs will exist when they graduate, explaining that the work itself is shifting from doing to orchestrating, from creating to editing and refining AI outputs. The discussion highlights the difference between cosmetic changes (calling retainers “subscriptions”) and substantive challenges (figuring out sustainable pricing as AI capabilities and costs both increase). They land on the principle that AI costs should be factored into your total cost of doing business rather than line-itemized separately, giving you flexibility to adapt as the landscape shifts without locking yourself into specific cost structures that may not hold. The subtext throughout is that holding companies remain out of touch with how most agencies actually operate, still discovering “innovations” that the rest of the industry implemented years ago. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “We only know what AI costs us today. As AI becomes more and more of a labor replacement, the vendors understand that the value that they’re creating for you is going up. Just as you want to charge your clients more because you’re providing more value, they want to charge you more because they’re providing you more value.” Gini Dietrich: “The job that I had when I graduated from college is not the job that you’ll have when you graduate from college. Those things are going to be done by AI. What you are going to be doing is sort of orchestrating your orchestra of AI bots.” Chip Griffin: “AI has come a long way in the last year. It doesn’t mean that everything that it does should be immediately blasted out to the universe. Sometimes the tone isn’t quite right, or maybe it misses the point slightly because you didn’t give it enough information to begin with.” Gini Dietrich: “Just like you would absorb an employee’s salary into your hourly rates or retainers or however you’re doing your pricing, that same thing. The AI needs to be absorbed into that.” Resources ‘The billable hour does not allow for any meaningful innovation': S4 Capital builds subscription model for the AI age (Digiday article) Related Structuring retainers for long-term profitability Understanding pricing models for your agency's services 9 ways to price your agency's services Choosing the right pricing model for your agency's services View Transcript The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy. Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And Gini, I think I wanna subscribe to your wisdom. I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna, you know, pay you retainer or anything like that. I wanna subscribe. Gini Dietrich: Oh okay, sure. $1 million a week. Chip Griffin: $1 million a week? I don’t know. Yes. I mean, even, even for you, that might be, that might be a little bit much. Gini Dietrich: It’ll be worth it. I promise. I promise. I’ll give you some benchmarks. It’ll be, it’ll be worth it. Chip Griffin: Oh, some benchmarks. Oh, well, I mean, as long as there are some benchmarks. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: That’s really, you gimme some pretty charts to show that. Absolutely. That you’re achieving those benchmarks, I assume. Gini Dietrich: Yes, absolutely. I’ll, yes, 100%. Chip Griffin: Yeah. Okay. Well, that, that should solve it. That’s, that’s good for me. If it’s good for you and so, you know. Let’s do it. Gini Dietrich: Amazing. Yay. That was easy. Chip Griffin: Yay. Gini Dietrich: No, I don’t have to work anymore. Chip Griffin: We’re gonna talk about pricing today. We’re gonna talk about how you charge for your services and it seems like we’ve talked about this a lot, but, but now we have a brilliant new idea being foisted upon us from holding company land. Gini Dietrich: Brilliant is sarcastic, by the way. Chip Griffin: Where all of the ideas come from. I mean. Holding company mind. I think every, every good idea and innovation in the agency world has come from a holding company, hasn’t it? Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I think, I think you’re right. Yep. Yes. Chip Griffin: And it’s always, it’s always very original thinking that we can expect from the holding companies. Gini Dietrich: Uhhuh. Yes. Chip Griffin: So that’s what we have to discuss today. We have the proclamation from none other, none other than S4 Capital. S4 Capital, for those of you who don’t know, is I think, didn’t they originally describe themselves as like the non holding company holding company or something like that? Gini Dietrich: They did, yes. Chip Griffin: They tried to pretend Gini Dietrich: they did Chip Griffin: That they’re not really a holding company. Gini Dietrich: Mm-hmm. Chip Griffin: They’re still a holding company folks. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: And so what we are being told is that we should move away from the billable hour to a subscription model. Ugh. Now this wild innovation is something that has never been considered before, so I’m glad they’ve brought this to the table. Certainly we’ve never heard of retainers in the agency world. Gini Dietrich: No. Never. Mm-hmm. Nope. Chip Griffin: So this must be different than a retainer, correct? Gini Dietrich: Um, nope. Chip Griffin: No. Gini Dietrich: I mean, when I dug into it, it’s, it’s essentially a retainer. Essentially. Chip Griffin: So the brand new. Innovative idea from holding company land? Mm-hmm. Is that, that we should have retainers and not billable hours? Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I think the difference that they’re trying to expound, expel, expound upon, expand upon is that, it’s renewable every year, so you don’t have contracts. It’s the same amount every month. Retainer. Mm-hmm. And there was one other piece. Hang on. I, I wrote it down. One year terms, it renews every month. It’s, it’s not a fixed checklist. So eventually you get more output over time, especially if you’re allowed to use AI. And it allows you to absorb costs. So instead of you doing a pass through on expenses, it just absorbs it into that and you, you still pass it through, but it absorbs it instead of doing it one off because procurement doesn’t like variable pass through costs. Chip Griffin: Mm-hmm. Gini Dietrich: So those were the big things in the subscription model versus the hourly bill hourly model. Chip Griffin: Gosh, I, I mean, I, I really hate to break it to them, but that’s how I’ve run every one of my agency businesses for a quarter of a century. Gini Dietrich: For years. Yeah. Chip Griffin: I mean, I consider myself a relatively innovative guy, but I, I don’t, I don’t claim to have invented that, so I’m, I’m not gonna sue them for doing this. Gini Dietrich: Right. Chip Griffin: Because I came up with it first. I certainly didn’t, but I think, I think if they did a little bit of research, they would find this is actually a pretty common way Yes. To do business if you are not a holding company. Gini Dietrich: Correct. Yes. Chip Griffin: I think this is one of those circumstances where the holding companies have got their blinders on Uhhuh. They’ve, they, they drink their own Kool-Aid. They focus only on the way that they do things. And yes, holding companies do a lot of dumb stuff, particularly on the advertising side. They, they like to use billable hours. They like to do pass through expenses with dramatic markups. They like to take kickbacks from publishers and websites in order to place advertising there. Mm-hmm. They do all sorts of stuff. Mm-hmm. That I think is a really bad idea. Gini Dietrich: Mm-hmm. Chip Griffin: So I guess maybe we should be encouraged by the fact that they’re going to act in a way that’s a little bit more normal. I don’t think it’s gonna help them. I think all of the struggling that we’ve seen holding companies go through in recent years is only gonna continue because the holding company model is a bad model. Yeah. It is a broken model. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Chip Griffin: And you, you can only put so much makeup on it and try to make it look good. It’s just not gonna happen. Gini Dietrich: It’s, I mean, I read it and my first instinct was, I think I even said to you, oh, so it’s a retainer. And then I, I dug deeper and I read the comments and I read the article and like I dug deeper and I was like, yeah, this is not, it’s not anything that, to your point, that those of us who have run, been running agencies for years, granted not gigantic ones, but those of us who have been doing it, that’s, that’s how I do it. I have annual contracts that renew, unless you send me a letter saying we’re done. We have a monthly retainer, we have a, you know, we, there is work that compounds over time because we get smarter about your business and yeah, we’re using AI for certain things and there is some heavy lifting up front to get things started. So yeah, it compounds over time. Like all of those things are, are true. It’s called a retainer. Chip Griffin: Yeah, and look, I, I mean, I would have more respect if they said, you know, look, in order to, to meet. Where the clients are at in today’s environment, we’re simply going to rename retainers as subscriptions. I, I could respect that. And, there is a case to be made that for a swath of clients, at least, they are more receptive to the word subscription than the word retainer, especially if they’re in tech. So if that’s what this was, that would be fine. But to pretend that it is a brand new way of doing things Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Chip Griffin: Is just laughable. Yeah. Now I do think in reading the Digiday piece that there, there is an interesting tangent that is not fully encapsulated in this thinking, but it, it opens a door that I think is worth discussing and is worth thinking about for agency owners. Agency leaders at, at every level we’re talking, holding companies or a, you know, a solo shop, and that is how you price around AI. Mm-hmm. And I think that there is currently a strong mindset that if you can do it with AI, this is from the client side, that if you can do it with AI, it ought to be cheaper. There’s a strong feeling from the agency side that if we do it with AI, we should still charge the exact same amount because it’s the value that we’re creating. As usual, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Gini Dietrich: Sure. Mm-hmm. Chip Griffin: I think one of the real challenges, and it’s highlighted in the Digiday piece, is that we only know what AI costs us today. Gini Dietrich: Correct. Chip Griffin: So we need to be really careful as we’re thinking about pricing. We need to keep a close eye on it because as I’ve said before on, on this show and elsewhere, I think it is likely that the cost of AI will go up over time. Gini Dietrich: Mm-hmm. Chip Griffin: That, that we’re, right now, we are in this adoption phase where typically things are underpriced to get people hooked essentially on it. Mm-hmm. So we’ve all seen what we can do with AI, but as AI becomes more and more of a labor replacement, the vendors understand that the value that they’re creating for you is going up. Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: And so just as you want to charge your clients more, because you’re providing more value, they want to charge you more because they’re providing you more value. Gini Dietrich: Yep, yep. Chip Griffin: On top of that, the cost of actually doing all of this continues to go up. And yes, they’re becoming more efficient in some of the models and that sort of thing so that they can balance the quality and the cost. But, but nevertheless, it’s likely that over time the cost is gonna continue to rise. So if they’re gonna have a smaller margin, they’re gonna make up for it by fixing that margin, by charging you more. Yep. So regardless of how you get there, you are going to be charge, be paying more for AI in five years than you are today. Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Chip Griffin: So, so you do need to be thinking about how you are structuring AI and in particular the Digiday piece put out there, the, the thought of are you transparent about what the AI costs are or do you just consider that part of your cost of doing business? And I, I think this is, there is a lot of room for meaty conversations in the, the coming months and years trying to figure out how to tackle this most appropriately. Gini Dietrich: It’s funny you say that because I’ve been doing a lot of speaking virtually to juniors and seniors in colleges, in college classes. And one of the question that continues to come up is, and I think it’s really interesting that they’re talking about this at school, which is smart, but it continues to come up, is, is there a job for me when I graduate from college? And my answer has been the job that I had when I graduated from college is not the job that you’ll have when you graduate from college. Like, you’re not gonna stand at the copier and make clipbooks, you’re not going to open Bacon’s books and make media lists. You’re probably not gonna make media lists at all. You’re not gonna make clipbooks at all. You’re not going to, you probably, you may not even be pitching media. Like those things are, are going to be done by AI. What you are going to be doing is sort of orchestrating your, or conducting your orchestra of AI bots, so you have to understand how to prompt accurately, how to give it the right kinds of input so that you get the right output. How to edit its work, you know, those are the kinds of things that you have to understand. And so when you think about, to your point, what this is going to cost, it may not cost the same as a full-time employee. It may not cost the same as five full-time employees, but it’s going to cost you something, and that has to be… Just like you would absorb an employee’s salary into your, your however hourly rates or retainers or however you’re doing your pricing, that same thing. The AI needs to be absorbed into that. Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I think, I think ultimately, I mean, first of all, I would agree with you on the, the first jobs thing. If I think back to my first job, in an agency as a junior account executive, I can’t think of more than 5% of my job that I did back then that, that today Yeah. Can still be done. And, and some of it’s because of AI’s not just, you know, technology has Sure. Has improved. I mean, nobody’s standing there at the photocopier. That’s nothing to do with AI. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Chip Griffin: But, you know, good luck finding a photocopier most of the time, even if you need one. And so, you know, those are the, the kinds of things technology has, has completely replaced a lot of what we did. And AI is just accelerating that even further. So certainly those kinds of jobs are not there. And, and I think that it’s fair to say that, that a college graduate going to work for the first time in an agency is, is really going in from a functional level at a, at about a level above where, where you and I started back in the day. And so fundamentally that means the skill sets are different, right? Because when you, when you’re that level up, you are doing more editing than creating, you are doing more guiding than doing. It doesn’t mean that you’ve gone, you know, completely all the way to being just a manager. You know, not people aren’t just gonna jump right in and just be managers. Let’s be realistic here. You do. But the, the kinds of things that you’re doing require a different skillset than what we needed going in. Because we weren’t doing a lot of editing of other people’s work. We weren’t doing a lot of guiding and checking and, and all of that kind of stuff. We had someone else who was doing that to our work. Now, now you have to know how to do that effectively and to your point. And it’s, it’s not just about the prompting. It’s understanding what you’re getting back and then how to re-prompt, how to tweak, how to get the most out of it, how to make sure that it actually makes sense, whatever’s come back. Because I mean, AI has come a long way in the last year. It doesn’t mean that everything that it does should be immediately blasted out to the universe. And that’s not just because of factual stuff. It may be just sometimes the tone isn’t quite right, or, or maybe it misses the point slightly because you didn’t give it enough information to begin with, and so you need to be able to look at it and have that level of judgment to understand when you need to apply human editing or when you need to ask the, the AI to take another stab at it or to do whatever you need to do to get the quality that the client is expecting. And I think, but it, it needs to be priced into your, your total cost of doing business, single invoice, not separate line items for all of this. Because I think to you, as soon as you start getting into, to separate line items for it, you put yourself in a difficult position to adapt as needed. And the reality is that none of us really knows what the, the innards of an agency in 24 or 36 months is gonna look like. We all have pretty good guesses, right? I mean, but, but the reality is we just don’t know for sure. And so we can’t put ourselves in a box by specifying here’s what it costs or say, Hey, we’re just gonna pass through these costs for the markup or those kinds of things. It needs to be factored into your cost of doing business. And on that note, I think we’ve provided some good food for thought and hopefully you’ll be able to think about pricing in perhaps a way that is a little more. I don’t know, rational, thoughtful, and more usable than what the holding companies are currently thinking or maybe have ever thought. But any case, I’m Chip Griffin for myself and Gini Dietrich. This has been another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, and it depends.

Can Your AI Guidance Actually Guide — Or Does It Just Add Cognitive Load?Thirty-five states have issued AI guidance for schools. But how many of those documents reduce workload instead of compounding it? How many build judgment muscles instead of issuing checkbox mandates? And how many actually get used in real classrooms?Julia Fallon, Executive Director of SETDA, has spent 25 years working with state education technology leaders to design systems that prioritize coherence over compliance. In this conversation, she reveals why effective guidance must anchor values in context, design for agency, and trust educators by default, or it will live on a shelf, ignored.What You'll Learn:Why AI is infrastructure, not a program, and what that means for funding and strategyThe three divides from the 2024 National Ed Tech Plan: access, design, and useHow No Child Left Behind's compliance trap offers lessons for AI adoption todayWhy reducing cognitive load is the design principle most guidance ignoresWhat DJing on Twitch teaches about learning publicly and modeling transparencyThe three-word challenge: Coherence. Agency. Trust.Julia also shares her leadership signature song — "The Music Sounds Better with You" by Stardust — and why collective rhythm, not solo performance, defines systems-level change.

Marketing feels chaotic because most businesses are chasing tactics without a system to support them. In this episode, John Jantsch and Sara Nay explain why a marketing operating system brings clarity, accountability, and predictable growth. They walk through how strategy comes first, how campaigns turn strategy into action, and why systems create long-term business value. If marketing feels scattered or hard to measure, this conversation shows how to turn chaos into a repeatable system that actually works. *This is a rerun of a previous DTM episode. Today we discussed: 00:00 Why Marketing Feels Chaotic in 2025 02:21 What a Marketing OS Is and Why It Matters 04:53 Strategy-First Marketing for Small Business 08:14 Turning Strategy Into Marketing Campaigns 09:25 SOPs and Workstream Engine for Marketing 12:54 How AI Fits Into Modern Marketing Systems 15:24 Scorecards, Metrics and Marketing Dashboards 17:57 Monthly Momentum Meetings for Marketing Teams 20:27 Quarterly Optimization for Better Results 22:33 Agency vs Fractional CMO Service Models 24:32 Book a Call 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!

President Donald Trump tells reporters outside the White House the U.S. has hit Iran "harder than virtually any country in history has been hit" but "we're not finished yet"; International Energy Agency says its 32 member countries have agreed to release a record 400 million barrels of oil to try to lower prices that have spiked with the disruptions caused by the war with Iran; United Nations Security Council adopts a resolution condemning Iranian attacks against neighboring Gulf nations. The resolution does not mention the attacks by the United States or Israel. Russia and China abstain from the vote; Department of Homeland Security remains closed after more failed funding attempts on the Senate floor. Democrats offer to reopen all agencies but Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs & Border Protections while negotiations over federal immigration procedure reform continues, and Republicans object. Republicans offered to reopen the entire department, and Democrats object; House Oversight Committee questions the accountant for the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Richard Kahn; Japan pauses to remember the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit the country 15 years ago today, killing thousands and causing a nuclear power plant meltdown. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back, loves!The male gaze didn't begin with film, it was already centuries old by the time cameras appeared. In this episode, I trace how powerful patrons, religious institutions and elite collectors shaped beauty standards through the paintings they commissioned. From reclining Venuses to carefully staged portraits, these images didn't just depict women, they trained viewers how to look at them. But when women finally entered the art world and began painting themselves and each other, the visual language started to shift.By the end of the episode, you may never look at a painting, a movie scene, or even your own camera roll quite the same way again.Are. You. Ready?****************Sources & Further Reading:The Civil Contract of Photography, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay. 2008. Zone Books.Negotiating the Female Body in Art, Elisabeth Bronfen. 1998. University of Chicago Press.Women, Art, and Society, Whitney Chadwick. 1990. Thames & Hudson.Why Love Hurts, Eva Illouz. 2012. Polity Press.The Painting of Modern Life, T. J. Clark. 1985. Princeton University Press.The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, bell hooks. 2004. Atria Books.Ways of Seeing, John Berger. 1972. Penguin Books.Museum Frictions, Ivan Karp & Corinne A. Kratz (eds.). 2006. Duke University Press.Women, Art, and Power, Linda Nochlin. 1988. Harper & Row.Old Mistresses: Women, Art, and Ideology, Rozsika Parker & Griselda Pollock. 1981. Routledge & Kegan Paul.Vision and Difference, Griselda Pollock. 1988. Routledge.The Burden of Representation, John Tagg. 1988. University of Minnesota Press.Visual and Other Pleasures, Laura Mulvey. 1989. Palgrave Macmillan.Gender and Art, Gill Perry. 1999. Yale University Press.Cold Intimacies, Eva Illouz. 2007. Polity Press.Art and Agency, Alfred Gell. 1998. Oxford University Press.The Linda Nochlin Reader, Linda Nochlin (ed. by Maura Reilly). 2015. Thames & Hudson.The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art, Guerrilla Girls. 1998. Penguin Books.****************Peer-Reviewed Articles & Theoretical EssaysNochlin, Linda. “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” 1971. ARTnews.Pollock, Griselda. “Feminist Interventions in the Histories of Art.” 1988. Various academic journals.Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” 1975. Screen.****************Paintings Mentioned:Venus of Urbino — TitianLa Fornarina — RaphaelPortrait of Eleonora di Toledo with Her Son — Agnolo BronzinoThe Arnolfini Portrait — Jan van EyckGinevra de' Benci — Leonardo da VinciPortrait of Agnolo and Maddalena Doni — RaphaelThe Birth of Venus — Sandro BotticelliDanaë — TitianDanaë — Jean-François de TroySusanna and the Elders — TintorettoGrande Odalisque — IngresLa Maja Desnuda — Francisco GoyaGirl with a Pearl Earring — VermeerThe Three Graces — RubensDiana Leaving the Bath (representing Boucher's mythological nudes)Self‑Portrait as the Allegory of Painting — Artemisia GentileschiSelf‑Portrait with Her Daughter Julie — Élisabeth Vigée Le BrunSelf‑Portrait — Judith LeysterThe Child's Bath — Mary CassattWoman at Her Toilette — Berthe MorisotThe Chess Game — Sofonisba Anguissola****************Leave Us a 5* Rating, it helps the show!Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beauty-unlocked-the-podcast/id1522636282Spotify Podcast:https://open.spotify.com/show/37MLxC8eRob1D0ZcgcCorA****************Follow Us on TikTok & Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!YouTube:@beautyunlockedspodcasthourTikTok:tiktok.com/@beautyunlockedthepod****************Intro/Outro Music:“Fame Inc” by Savvier — https://icons8.com/music

Agreements between local police departments and ICE have ballooned during Trump's second term. More than 60 so-called “287(g)” contracts have been signed in Missouri. The spread of these agreements worries Austin Kocher, a Syracuse University researcher who focuses on the federal immigration system. In an interview with STLPR visuals editor Brian Munoz, Kocher shares insights from his research into the contracts and why he is concerned about local law enforcement being used to further the Trump administration's immigration policies.

Send a textNote: This conversation with Dr. Patricia Gerbarg was recorded in August 2025.In this episode, we explore how breathing patterns reshape the emotional brain, restore a sense of safety, and allow meaning to return to daily life with Dr. Patricia Gerbarg, co-creator of the Breath-Body-Mind program.From her personal development as a healer to co-creating a global healing community active in trauma hotspots like Ukraine and Rwanda, we explore the science, stories, and practical tools that help people regulate their nervous systems and reconnect with meaning.In this episode• Meaning as state-dependent and grounded in safety • What Breath Body Mind is and why safety comes first • How vagus nerve signaling links breathing to emotion • Why talk therapy alone often cannot reach stored trauma • The sequence: focus → movement → muscle softening → coherent breathing • Evidence from 9/11 survivors, veterans, schools, and IBD patients • Programs in Ukraine supporting clinicians, children, and communities • Rwanda's community model blending breath, ritual, and narrative • Restoring connection, agency, and love through breath practices • How to start with short, safe practices and build consistencyTimestamps0:14 – Opening Teaser: Breath and Meaning 1:42 – Host's Mission and Series Kickoff 2:39 – Introducing Dr. Patricia Gerbarg 3:48 – Why Breath Body Mind Exists 7:31 – Global Growth and Going Online 12:18 – Scope, Impact, and Ukraine Programs 16:24 – From Psychoanalysis to Mass Healing 20:31 – A Child's Panic to Schoolwide Resilience 24:20 – Gerbarg's Public Speaking Breakthrough 28:18 – Early Life and Path to Psychiatry 36:58 – Discovering Breath After Illness 41:04 – How Breathing Shapes Emotion 47:14 – Publishing the Vagal Theory 52:59 – Using Breath Clinically for Trauma 59:22 – Building a Safe, Effective Sequence 1:03:24 – Focus, Agency, and the Ha Breath 1:06:07 – Coherent Breathing as the Foundation 1:11:47 – Evidence From 9/11 to Schools 1:16:47 – Inflammatory Bowel Disease Trial 1:22:00 – Why Breakthroughs Lack Headlines 1:27:04 – Real-World Results in Irish Schools 1:30:48 – Rwanda's Community Healing Model 1:37:18 – Perpetrators, Forgiveness, Reintegration 1:42:49 – Meaning as Connectedness 1:47:44 – Rapid-Fire: Love, Art, and AdviceSubscribe to the Developing Meaning Substack newsletter:https://developingmeaning.substack.com/subscribeDeveloping Meaning is NOT MEDICAL ADVICE and is NOT AFFILIATED WITH ANY INSTITUTIONS.Theme music by The Thrashing Skumz. Developing Meaning is produced by Consilient Mind LLC.

Bassie Taubes, Founder of Wellness Motivations LLC and Director of Community Outreach for Ematai, explores the uncertainty that can arise at any stage of dating, emphasizing well-being and personal growth as the keys to becoming our best selves — even when life feels out of our control. Hosted by Anna Krausz.

Points of Interest 00:00 – 03:21 – From UGURUS to E2M: Brent Weaver shares how he went from coaching thousands of agencies at UGURUS to becoming CEO of E2M Solutions after the DigitalOcean chapter ended. 03:35 – 04:51 – What makes E2M different: Marcel frames E2M as a standout white-label partner, and Brent explains why serving only agencies creates sharper focus on partner success. 04:51 – 08:16 – Process flexibility as a moat: Brent contrasts “one standardized process” versus adapting to each agency partner's SOPs and tools and why fitting into the partner's workflow improves outcomes. 08:27 – 10:08 – Why anti-fragility matters right now: Marcel connects E2M's adaptability to the broader need for agencies to stay resilient through another major disruption cycle. 10:08 – 12:01 – Defining anti-fragility in business terms: Brent explains anti-fragility as building a business that can withstand shocks by avoiding fragility drivers like thin margins and operational vulnerabilities. 12:01 – 15:53 – Practical fragility reducers: Brent outlines concrete levers, higher margins as a buffer, less debt, fewer single points of failure, and building teams and systems that scale. 13:29 – 15:53 – Perennial value drivers: Brent argues agencies should anchor decisions to what clients always want, faster delivery, lower cost, and higher quality and certainty, regardless of the economy. 15:53 – 18:01 – Investing under uncertainty: Marcel reframes strategy as betting on what will not change and asks how agencies can choose investments that will keep paying dividends. 18:01 – 22:44 – AI audits, not shiny tools: Brent describes E2M's AI assessment approach as constraint-hunting, then using automation and process optimization to reduce friction and accelerate results. 23:08 – 25:02 – High-impact AI use cases: Brent lists repeatable agency wins, lead research and sales prep, proposal and scope automation, and workflow-friendly tooling like Slack-based automations. 25:02 – 26:45 – Client reporting as a force multiplier: Brent highlights AI-driven reporting and analysis, using chat interfaces connected to analytics data to produce consistent client insights faster. 39:51 – 41:13 – Where to learn more: Brent shares where to find E2M Solutions and the Vistara AI event, including the May 11–13 Austin dates and the waitlist link. Show Notes List Agentic workflows - AI workflows E2M actively run for 50+ agencies - ready to plug into your delivery, sales, and operations E2Msolutions.com Vistara AI Event @ Austin, Texas on May 11-13, 2026 Brent's LinkedIn Love the Podcast Leave us a review here. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Improving child well-being requires more than addressing immediate needs. It requires changing the systems that shape children's lives.In this episode of Agency for Change, Juliet Summers, Executive Director of Voices for Children in Nebraska, shares how her organization uses research, policy advocacy, and community engagement to create equitable opportunities for kids across the state.Juliet explains why policy and systems change matter, how data and lived experience guide their work, and what current issues—from food insecurity to behavioral health access—mean for Nebraska families.Connect with Juliet and Voices for Children in Nebraska at: ·       Website – https://voicesforchildren.com/·       LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/voices-for-children-in-nebraska/·       Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/voicesforchildreninnebraska·       Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/voicesne/·       Raising Justice Podcast – https://voicesforchildren.com/advocacy-hub/?terms=%5B%7B"category"%3A"14"%7D%5D

This week's episode is what the kids like to call a “deep cut”. It's 3 hours with the one and only Mimi Abudu (yes, the same Abudu you know). We dive into the conversation of being whimsical just for the plot, gems on building real confidence and trust in yourself/your gut. She also talks about knowing when it's time to pivot, what to avoid when making big life changes, and how to be a successful rebel as you create the life you truly want. We also get into some deeply unserious and quite serious dilemmas about a financially cursed husband and an infidelity-cursed husband — there's a pattern, it seems. We hope you enjoy!Don't forget to use #ISWIS or #ISWISPodcast to share your thoughts while listening to the podcast! We love reading your posts on X! Rate the show 5 stars on whatever app you listen to, leave a review, share with everyone you know, and if you also watch on YouTube, please subscribe, like, and leave a comment!Make sure to follow us onTwitter: @ISWISPodcastInstagram: @isaidwhatisaidpodYouTube: @isaidwhatisaidpodHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stop guessing. Get the blueprint to scale: https://www.tiereleven.com/audit Are your ads working, or are the dashboards just telling you what you want to hear? Too many marketers celebrate high ROAS inside Meta or Google while revenue in Shopify tells a very different story. If your agency is “reporting well” but the business isn't growing, something is broken.In this episode, we break down why in-app metrics are often misleading, how platforms double-count conversions, and why your CRM or store data must always be the source of truth. We also share the questions every VP of Marketing should ask their agency to force better thinking, stronger accountability, and a real growth strategy.You'll learn how to challenge reporting, uncover hidden attribution issues, and turn agency meetings into strategic conversations instead of dashboard reviews. If you manage paid media or manage the people managing it, this one will help you evaluate performance.In This Episode:- Vanity metrics vs real revenue- Why attribution models conflict- View-through vs click attribution- Addressing tracking setup mistakes- Three questions to ask your agency- Which answers should raise red flags?- Questions for monthly and quarterly reviews- Challenging agencies to think of your money as theirs- Agencies should perform, not report wellMentioned in the Episode:Stop guessing. Get the blueprint to scale: https://www.tiereleven.com/audit Is Your Agency Performing Or Just Reporting Well?: https://youtu.be/F6iGYu7Dv4sListen to This Episode on Your Favorite Podcast Channel:Follow and listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/perpetual-traffic/id1022441491 Follow and listen on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/59lhtIWHw1XXsRmT5HBAuK Subscribe and watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@perpetual_traffic?sub_confirmation=1We Appreciate Your Support!Visit our website: https://perpetualtraffic.com/ Follow us on X: https://x.com/perpetualtraf Connect with Ralph Burns: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/ Hire Tier11 - https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now Connect with Lauren Petrullo:Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/laurenepetrullo/LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenpetrullo Consult Mongoose Media - https://mongoosemedia.us/ Mentioned in this episode:https://www.tiereleven.com/audithttps://www.tiereleven.com/auditWe're opening up sponsorship spots for Q1 and Q2! Apply now by visiting www.perpetualtraffic.com https://www.tiereleven.com/audit

Summary In this episode, Andy welcomes Jen Fisher, author of Hope Is the Strategy: The Underrated Skill That Transforms Work, Leadership, and Wellbeing. In project management circles, we often hear the phrase "hope is not a strategy." Jen challenges that assumption, arguing that real hope is not wishful thinking at all. Instead, it's a practical cognitive process that can help leaders navigate uncertainty, pressure, and change. In the discussion, Jen explains how hope requires three elements: clear goals, multiple pathways to reach them, and the agency to believe we can influence outcomes. You'll also hear her personal story of realizing she was languishing under constant performance pressure, and how a candid conversation with her boss sparked the beginning of a healthier and more hopeful way of working. Along the way, Jen shares practical tools such as possibility journaling, energy ledgers, and hope spotting. She also explains why vulnerability can be a leadership superpower and how simple language shifts can turn hope killers into hope builders. If you're leading teams and projects under constant pressure and looking for practical ways to sustain both performance and wellbeing, this episode is for you! Sound Bites "How would I describe myself? I'm a hope dealer." "Hope is not flimsy. It's not whimsical." "Real hope actually requires action." "What drives hopelessness is feeling like there's nothing you can do." "Hope is the belief that tomorrow can be better than today." "67% of managers said that they've never been trained in how to manage other people. We put humans in charge of other humans, but we give them very little skill and training in how to lead." "You can perform when you're languishing, but the question is really why should we or why would we want to." "For the first time in my professional life, I actually felt seen and heard and valued." "Toxic positivity only makes people feel worse." "Possibility journaling is really thinking about what might be possible here." "Vulnerability is proof that you're human." "When people are feeling uncertain, they want to connect to somebody that feels human." Chapters 00:00 Introduction 01:45 Start of Interview 02:00 What Hope Is Not: Clearing Up the Misconceptions 03:45 What Real Hope Actually Requires 05:42 Agency and the Feeling of Hopelessness 06:24 Burnout vs. Hopelessness: Is There a Difference? 07:55 Wellbeing Intelligence: The Leadership Skill We're Missing 11:44 Languishing: That Gray Space Between Fine and Flourishing 14:15 The Hidden Cost of Time Pressure on Creativity 17:00 Breaking Through the High-Functioning Facade 20:15 Setting Boundaries as a Recovering People Pleaser 24:03 Practical Tools: Possibility Journal, Energy Ledger, and Hope Spotting 29:15 Vulnerability as a Leadership Superpower 33:46 Hope Killers and Hope Builders: The Language of Hope 38:00 The Hope Audit and the Hope Strategist Toolkit 39:33 Applying Hope at Home and as a Caregiver 41:30 Where to Learn More About Jen 41:26 End of Interview 41:54 Andy Comments After the Interview 45:18 Outtakes Learn More You can learn more about Jen and her work at Jen-Fisher.com. For more learning on this topic, check out: Episode 462 with Margie Warrell. Part of Jen's message in the book is the importance of agency—of believing that you're not a victim and that you have options. Margie is a fierce advocate for how to take action when you're feeling hopeless. I highly recommend her work. Episode 448 with Marie-Hélène Pelletier. It's an engaging discussion about burnout and resilience, and a fantastic follow-up to this discussion with Jen. Episode 396 with Thomas Curran. It's an episode on perfectionism, and I think you'll find it an excellent follow-up to this discussion as well. Chat with PMeLa You can chat directly with PMeLa, the podcast's AI persona, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her. Pass the PMP Exam If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start. Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year! Join Us for LEAD52 I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks! Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast! Talent Triangle: Power Skills Topics: Leadership, Wellbeing, Burnout, Hope, Resilience, Vulnerability, Boundaries, Team Culture, Employee Engagement, Languishing, Psychological Safety, Workplace Performance The following music was used for this episode: Music: Imagefilm 034 by Sascha Ende License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

We Like Shooting - Ep 653 This episode of We Like Shooting is brought to you by: C&G Holsters (Code: WLSISLIFE) Midwest Industries (Code: WLSISLIFE) Night Fision (Code: WLSISLIFE) Die Free Co. (Code: WLSISLIFE) Bowers Group (Code: WLS) Flatline Fiber Co (Code: WLS15) Second Call Defense Swampfox Optics Guests: Brian Conley, CEO/Founder Hunters HD Gold www.huntershdgold.com Text Dear WLS or Reviews +1 743 500 2171  Public https://welikeshooting.com/titles/ GEAR CHAT Note Derya Arms BULLET POINTS Walker's SHOTSYNC Wearable Shot Timer The Walker's SHOTSYNC is a wearable shot timer designed for shooters, utilizing an integrated microphone and advanced accelerometer sensors to track shot counts and split times during training sessions. It pairs via Bluetooth 5.2 with the Walker's Link app for iOS and Android, allowing custom par times, start delays, shot sensitivity adjustments, and automatic performance tracking. Compatible with various firearms from pellet guns to full-power competition calibers, it provides instant feedback and builds a personalized performance history.02 Burris XTR PS Riflescope The Burris XTR PS Riflescope is a precision optic featuring a digital Programmable Elevation Knob (PEK) with 1/30 MIL adjustments, Bluetooth integration with the BurrisConnect app for ballistic profiles, and a digital HUD displaying dial-to-distance, wind holds, density altitude, angle compensation, and a digital level. It uses a 5.5-30x56mm configuration with a first focal plane SCR 2 illuminated reticle, ED glass, and remains fully functional as a traditional scope without battery power. Constructed from 6061-T6 aluminum with a 34mm tube and IPX7 waterproof rating. Blue Force Gear BNVD Slipcover The Blue Force Gear BNVD Slipcover is a signature management accessory designed to cover reflective lenses on Binocular Night Vision Devices (BNVDs), reducing detectability from glints during tactical operations. It slides over NODs for daytime use, adds virtually no weight, and doubles as a face-shade while integrating with the BNVD Pouch. This addresses the heightened importance of signature management against advanced adversary optics. Hunters HD Gold Shooting Glasses Hunters HD Gold shooting glasses, produced by Optical Prescription Lab, feature in-house Trivex lenses that are lighter and stronger than plastic or polycarbonate, offering 43% greater light transmission for enhanced visibility in low-light conditions. Available in prescription and non-prescription variants with lens options like Original Gold, Hunters HD Ruby, and AktiveBlu, they support custom fitting for nearly any frame brand. The company emphasizes competition shooting support with on-site services at matches and a 30-day trial period before payment. Note Endorse Herrerra GUN FIGHTS No one stepped into the arena this week. WLS IS LIFESTYLE Note Jeremy syrup THE ALLEY GOING BALLISTIC Grand Rapids, Michigan Mayor David LaGrand's Anti-Gun Comments and NRA Response (Savage) Grand Rapids Mayor David LaGrand made controversial statements shaming lawful gun owners during a community meeting on policing, prompting backlash from the NRA. He equated gun ownership to smoking and called for community shaming around possession. The mayor later clarified that Second Amendment and state law limit municipal policy options, with no changes intended. National Constitutional Carry Act (Senator Mike Lee) (Savage) Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced the National Constitutional Carry Act on March 5, 2026, to eliminate concealed carry permit requirements nationwide for eligible U.S. citizens legally allowed to own firearms. The bill prohibits states and localities from imposing fees or conditions on public carry and protects interstate travelers from criminalization for carrying. It builds on Supreme Court precedents like Bruen (2022) to establish a federal floor superseding restrictive state laws. Minneapolis Firearm Ownership Increase Following 2020 Events (Shooting News Weekly) (Savage) The article attributes a shift in attitudes toward firearms in Minneapolis to the 2020 protests, riots, looting, and ‘defund the police' movement, leading to reduced police staffing. This has resulted in higher gun sales and wider firearm ownership, including among liberals and white left-leaning homeowners who previously supported police budget cuts. Minneapolis is described as overwhelmingly Democrat, with policies likened to those turning it into ‘the next Chicago.' Wyoming HB096, HB0098, SF0101: GOA-Backed Gun Rights Bills Face Potential Veto by Governor Gordon (Savage) Three Gun Owners of America (GOA)-supported bills—HB096 (lowers concealed carry permit age to 18), HB0098 (criminalizes state/local enforcement of Red Flag Gun Confiscation Orders), and SF0101 (adds civil remedies to 2022 Second Amendment Protection laws)—passed the Wyoming Legislature and await Governor Mark Gordon's decision by March 10, 2026. These measures aim to bolster Second Amendment protections by deterring compliance with federal gun controls. GOA urges immediate calls to prevent vetoes. Colorado House Bill 26-1144: Bans 3D-Printed Guns and Parts (Savage) House Bill 26-1144 criminalizes the manufacturing or production of firearms, unfinished frames or receivers, large-capacity magazines, or rapid-fire devices via 3D printing in Colorado. It also prohibits selling or distributing digital instructions (computer files) for 3D printing such items, expanding on existing laws for unserialized firearms. The bill passed the Democrat-controlled Colorado House and awaits Senate review. Imported Story (Savage) https://www.guns.com/news/2026/03/06/whelp-looks-like-brandon-herrera-is-going-to-congress REVIEWS Review: Clip That 5 stars. Best gun podcast around.. clip that… I'd give up Shawn's left nut before I miss an episode. Listening to this is the only way I can get through the work day… Clip that Review: All Dicks, No Chicks 5 Squares. Such a progressive group of guys in the gun industry. Its shocking to hear how Homo Positive and Bi Curious the cast is. Normally Gun podcasts aren't inclusive or understanding of other sexual preferences. But the cast of WLS is always talking about mouth feel of barrels, Sweet Sweet Bootyholes and putting things in the prison purse. So modern. If you are curious (bi-curious) about this show, give it a listen. All of your load shooting needs will be met and heard via 5 somewhat knowledgeable ear pussies. #wls #jeremyhadtoreadthis Review: Ben 5 stars. The show has definitely gained some braincells since A A Ron left. Keep training or whatever, please. I've got enough things day to day that frustrate me so getting a break from it during the show is a welcome change Before we let you go – JOIN GUN OWNERS OF AMERICA We'd love if you supported the show, join Agency 171 at agency171.com. Lot's of prizes, rewards and kick ass swag. No matter how tough your battle is today, we want you here fight with us tomorrow. Don't struggle in silence, you can contact the suicide prevention line by dialing 988 from your phone. Remember – Always prefer Dangerous Freedom over peaceful slavery. We'll see you next time! Nick – @busbuiltsystems | Bus Built Systems Jeremy – @ret_actual | Rivers Edge Tactical Aaron – @machinegun_moses Savage – @savage1r Shawn – @dangerousfreedomyt | @camorado.cam | Camorado

Double Tap - Ep 452 This episode of Double Tap is brought to you by: Gideon Optics (Code: WLSISLIFE) Primary Arms Blue Alpha Rost Martin (Code: WLSISLIFE) Otis Technology (Code: WELIKESHOOTING15) Mitchell Defense (Code: WLS10) Text Dear WLS or Reviews +1 743 500 2171  Public https://welikeshooting.com/titles/ DEAR WLS Question from Mistertheguyaskingaquestion Question from Mistertheguyaskingaquestion. I recently ordered my first suppressor since I live in a comme state now and they're trying to put a $500 tax on suppressors. I got a resilient suppressors, simple man 30 cal can. 2 questions. One, Is this a decent suppressor for the $500 I paid. Two, how many rounds do you think it will last. I will mostly be using it on bolt actions with occasional use on an ar. Great show! Some notes Question from Scott G Scott G here I own a few different scopes in varying quality and price points I'd say my lowest ” grade” being a vortex cross fire and my highest being a nightforce atacr , with the middle point being a meopta optica 6 and low end middle ( but still very nice) being a swamp fox Warhawk . My question on a that scale Nightforce to cross fire where would you guys rank the new Gideon 5-25 in quality , clarity and chromatic aberration. ? Keep on kicking ass . PS I sent this in around shot show time frame so I will be ready…… march ish what do you guys think is the sjngubeat thing to come out of shot? My .02 is the integral sub 2k ! Question from Mark S Shawn – thought yall might wanna talk about this one in the show. I a show or 2 behind so you may have already talked about it though. https://odysee.com/@Nopel:6/M1337_VersionB1:5 Question from KY Horseman from Kentucky Aaron sucks Put a Mediator II on my Echelon. What do y'all think? Thanks KY Horseman Question from Scott G from Washington Scott G here simple question… rideout dragon what are the team's thoughts? Question from Ted H. from Virginia Ted H. What is a good scope for hunting in the woods/mountains (think appalachia). i currently hunt in NC and WV and im looking to get a higher end scope. The farthest ive shot and can see is about 200 yards but my scope get blurry at that distance. Im currently using a Vortex diamondback 3-9 but would like to go higher to ensure better shot placement. I plan budget and spend around $2000 not including the mount, caps, etc… Thank you and have a good day GUN INDUSTRY NEWS Imported Story https://pew.report/c/PXu40U Strike Industries Modular Chassis for Ruger 10/22 Receivers Strike Industries has released a modular chassis machined from 6061 aluminum, designed specifically for Ruger 10/22 receivers. It features a short one-piece handguard with bottom ARCA rail, M-LOK slots, QD sling swivel sockets, thumb rests, AR-15 pistol grip compatibility, flared magazine well, and support for AR-15 buffer tubes and Picatinny rail stocks. A 0-MOA Picatinny rail is included for optics mounting. Smith & Wesson Performance Center Equalizer Carry Comp Smith & Wesson has added the Performance Center Equalizer Carry Comp to its Carry Comp Series, a 9mm micro-compact pistol featuring EZ technology, PowerPort recoil reduction, and optics-ready slide. It includes a single-action Performance Center trigger, Picatinny rail, enhanced serrations, and Ameriglo Trooper sights. Announced on March 5, 2026, it targets defensive use across diverse shooters. EAA Corp CMX & CMXX Double-Stack 9mm Pistols Now Shipping EAA Corp's Witness2311 family CMX and CMXX are double-stack 1911-style pistols with 4.25-inch barrels and 8-inch overall length, featuring aggressive grip texturing, no grip safety (replaced by Auto Firing Pin Block), tuned 4.5 lb trigger, and RMSc optic-ready slide. The CMX has a bull barrel in 9mm (SKU 395060), while the CMXX adds an integral compensator in 9mm (SKU 395065, shipping now), with 10mm (SKU 395026) and .45 ACP (SKU 395068) versions pre-orderable for later spring. They are compatible with many standard 1911 parts and magazines. US Army GTA 07-10-005 Sniper Reference Book The United States Army Sniper Reference Book, designated GTA 07-10-005, is now available for public download. The PDF is hosted on the Army's training catalog site. No pricing or detailed contents are specified in the announcement. Thompson/Center Encore ProHunter Pistols Thompson/Center has reintroduced the Encore ProHunter pistol series, built on the same break-action platform as their Encore rifles. The pistols feature interchangeable barrels, with 12-inch and 15-inch options available, and a stainless steel/rubber grip and forend on a CNC-machined frame. This reboot allows buyers to purchase the frame separately and add barrels without gunsmithing. Sig Sauer P365 DH3 Series Sig Sauer has released the P365 DH3 series, including models P365-XF DH3, P365-DH3 AXG, and P365 DH3 Romeo-X SIG-LOC, designed for competition with the MACRO grip module. Developed with world champion shooter Daniel Horner, these striker-fired 9mm pistols feature enhanced recoil management via a slide-integrated expansion chamber and 3.7-inch barrel. Key highlights include custom serrations, XRAY3 sights, high-capacity magazines up to 21+1, and optic-ready configurations. Smith & Wesson Equalizer Carry Comp Smith & Wesson has introduced the Equalizer Carry Comp, the latest carry-comp version in its handgun series, featuring Performance Center upgrades on a micro-compact 9mm frame. It incorporates EZ technology for easier slide operation, a PowerPort for recoil reduction, and optics-ready slide. The model offers flexible magazine capacities of 10, 13, or 15 rounds. Vertx Everyday Fanny Pack+ The Vertx Everyday Fanny Pack+ is a compact 4-liter waist pack designed for everyday carry with integrated concealed carry functionality. It features a water-resistant 100-percent nylon outer shell, a dedicated loop-lined CCW compartment measuring approximately 9.75 by 6.25 by 2 inches that accommodates full-size handguns, and organizational pockets including a main compartment with loop panel, front zippered pocket with mesh sleeves and key lanyard, and a back smartphone pocket. Unique elements include the Modular Holster Retention system, swappable Rapid Access Pull tab for ambidextrous use, and options for waist or cross-body wear. Before we let you go – JOIN GUN OWNERS OF AMERICA We'd love if you supported the show, join Agency 171 at agency171.com. Lot's of prizes, rewards and kick ass swag. No matter how tough your battle is today, we want you here fight with us tomorrow. Don't struggle in silence, you can contact the suicide prevention line by dialing 988 from your phone. Remember – Always prefer Dangerous Freedom over peaceful slavery. We'll see you next time! Nick – @busbuiltsystems | Bus Built Systems Jeremy – @ret_actual | Rivers Edge Tactical Aaron – @machinegun_moses Savage – @savage1r Shawn – @dangerousfreedomyt | @camorado.cam | Camorado

The constant flood of political news can leave many people feeling anxious, powerless, and emotionally drained. In this episode of Healthy Mind, Healthy Life, hosted by Avik, we explore how political overwhelm impacts mental health—and what we can actually do about it. Joining the conversation is Christopher Rivers, a former Army officer, combat veteran, diplomat, and author. Drawing from experiences in the military, diplomacy, corporate strategy, and a political campaign where he knocked on over 9,000 doors, Chris shares practical insights on reconnecting with community, managing media consumption, and engaging in civic life without losing your mental balance. If you feel overwhelmed by politics but still want to stay informed and grounded, this conversation offers a thoughtful path forward. About the Guest: Christopher Rivers is a former Army officer and combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. A West Point graduate and Georgetown alumnus, he later worked in diplomacy and corporate strategy. He is the author of You Shouldn't Have to Kill to Get Ahead, a book exploring leadership, opportunity, and systemic change. Episode Chapters: 00:07:11 – Why political overwhelm is affecting mental health 00:10:22 – The disconnect between expectations and reality in modern economies 00:15:17 – The misconception of politics as entertainment 00:19:04 – Structural systems that shape opportunity and inequality 00:27:44 – Managing news consumption without emotional burnout 00:30:11 – Three practical ways to stay hopeful and engaged Key Takeaways: Political anxiety often comes from a gap between expectations and lived reality. Treating politics like entertainment can distort how we understand real issues. Limiting news consumption to specific times can protect mental clarity. Real change begins with local community connection and participation. Feeling overwhelmed is natural—but focusing on what you can control restores agency. How to Connect With the Guest: Website: https://www.chrisrivers.com/. Instagram   Want to be a guest on Healthy Mind, Healthy Life? DM on PM - Send me a message on PodMatch DM Me Here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/avik Disclaimer: This video is for educational and informational purposes only. The views expressed are the personal opinions of the guest and do not reflect the views of the host or Healthy Mind By Avik™️. We do not intend to harm, defame, or discredit any person, organization, brand, product, country, or profession mentioned. All third-party media used remain the property of their respective owners and are used under fair use for informational purposes. By watching, you acknowledge and accept this disclaimer. Healthy Mind By Avik™️ is a global platform redefining mental health as a necessity, not a luxury. Born during the pandemic, it's become a sanctuary for healing, growth, and mindful living. Hosted by Avik Chakraborty, storyteller, survivor, and wellness advocate. With over 6000+ episodes and 200K+ global listeners, we unite voices, break stigma, and build a world where every story matters.