Podcasts about b2c

The buyer journey you've been designing for doesn't exist anymore.For 20 years, the model was simple: drive traffic (paid or organic) to your website, and that's where people learn about you and decide to buy. But with ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews now doing the research for your buyers, that assumption is breaking down. In fact, one senior marketer at a global consumer brand recently asked us: "Should we even have a website?"In this video, I show you exactly how the buyer journey has shifted, using real B2B and B2C examples, and walk through how to use Semrush One (today's sponsor) to measure your brand's AI visibility, find your gaps, and start closing them.You'll discover:Why 73% of B2B buyers now use tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity during their research, and what that means for a real mortgage insurance buying journeyHow a simple B2C purchase (sunscreen) went from question to Amazon checkout in five minutes, without the winning brand's website playing any part in the researchWhy only 22% of marketers currently track their AI visibility and traffic, despite this being some of the highest-intent traffic availableHow to read an AI Visibility Overview: mentions, citations, and cited pages, and what it means if your numbers are flat while the market growsHow to use Topics and Sources (and their competitor equivalents) to build a content and digital PR target list based on where you're actually losing visibilityHow Brand Performance surfaces what AI tools are saying about you, including the specific business drivers helping or hurting your sentimentHow we used this exact approach to take Value Capital Funding from 50 to almost 400 leads a monthWhether you're just starting to think about AI search optimisation or already have a strategy and want to sharpen it, this is a practical, tool-led walkthrough you can apply straight away.

 EPISODE DESCRIPTION I sit down with Berken, CMO of CoinTracking, the world's first crypto tax platform founded all the way back in 2012 when Bitcoin was under $100. We dig into how they bootstrapped their way to 2.2 million users, why authentic education beats paid placements every time, and how they're navigating AI in a space where a single wrong number could land you in trouble with the IRS. Berken shares what channels are actually moving the needle, why they turned down the idea of launching their own token, and what their upcoming MCP integration means for connecting your Claude or ChatGPT directly to your tax data. Whether you're a crypto trader trying to avoid overpaying taxes, a founder looking for growth lessons, or someone curious about how a SaaS company stays relevant in a fast-moving space, this episode is packed with practical insights. DISCLAIMERNothing mentioned in this podcast is investment advice and please do your own research. It would mean a lot if you can leave a review of this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share this podcast with a friend. Be a guest on the podcast or contact us - https://www.web3pod.xyz/ CONNECT CoinTracking Website: https://cointracking.info/ CoinTracking Twitter/X:https://x.com/Coin_Tracking Berken LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/berken-mengesWeb3 with Sam Kamani: https://www.web3pod.xyz/ KEY POINTS WITH TIMESTAMPS • [00:01] Sam introduces Berken, CMO of CoinTracking, and frames the episode around crypto taxes, AI, and startup growth• [02:12] Berken shares his journey from personal crypto investor in 2019 to CMO, starting as an affiliate marketing manager• [03:56] CoinTracking overview: 2.2 million users, 400+ exchange integrations, portfolio tracking and one-click tax reports• [06:32] CoinTracking was the world's first crypto tax tool, founded in 2012 by Dario Kachel who built it for himself• [08:00] The bootstrapped, organic growth story: users gave feedback, helped translate, and shaped the product over 13 years• [10:20] Sam and Berken discuss how fragmented the crypto landscape is across DeFi wallets, CEXs, and blockchains• [13:11] Why CoinTracking is a SaaS and not a crypto asset service provider, and how that makes compliance and partnerships simpler• [14:58] How CoinTracking is approaching AI: an MCP integration coming soon to connect Claude or ChatGPT to your tax data• [17:27] Why they are not allowing AI to edit tax data yet , reproducibility and accuracy are non-negotiable for tax filings• [21:43] Berken's biggest CMO challenge: navigating daily shifts in regulation, exchange strategies, and market conditions• [23:07] Business model breakdown: mostly B2C, but growing B2B with CPAs, funds, and a new white-label solution for exchanges• [24:18] North star metrics: user growth and retention, with a focus on making CoinTracking a daily portfolio tool, not just a tax tool• [26:08] The most common mistake people make: filing taxes with missing wallets or transactions, which can result in overpaying• [29:08] What marketing channel works best: long-form YouTube content, authentic KOL partnerships, and connecting KOLs with CPAs• [34:58] CoinTracking has been profitable since day one and is not looking for funding, but actively seeking exchange partnerships• [36:09] Why they decided against launching their own token: sentiment risk, distraction, and wrong-type user acquisition• [39:00] Sam draws a parallel to Xero's accountant-led growth strategy and how CoinTracking could follow a similar path

Amazon is testing MCF with Prime. Walmart and TikTok Shop sales are absolutely booming. 10 new AI features that will help your Amazon, Walmart, or TikTok Shop business. These and more on today's Weekly Buzz episode! We're back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10's VP of Education and Strategy, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, TikTok Shop, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10's newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.   Walmart e-commerce sales surge as CEO touts 'price, speed and convenience' https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/walmart-e-commerce-sales-surge-ceo-touts-price-speed-convenience TikTok Shop is driving more online sales in the US than Target and other major retailers https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-shop-us-spend-is-larger-than-target-costco-data-2026-8 10+ New AI Features For Amazon, Walmart, and TikTok Shop Seller Pulse — A near-real-time dashboard widget for monitoring sales, orders, units sold, ad spend, conversion rate, TACoS, and other metrics across Amazon, Walmart, and TikTok Shop. Ads MCP Write Capabilities — Users can create advertising campaigns, add keyword targets, and manage bids directly through the Helium 10 MCP using Claude, ChatGPT, or another compatible AI assistant. Walmart Ads in MCP — Users can analyze Walmart advertising performance, ask questions about campaign data, and make changes to Walmart campaigns through the MCP. B2B Metrics in Profits — Helium 10 Profits now separates B2B and B2C orders, allowing sellers to compare business-customer sales with regular consumer sales. AWD Inventory Visibility — The Inventory Levels page now displays Amazon Warehousing and Distribution inventory, including inbound AWD units and inventory moving from AWD to FBA. Keyword Tracker MCP Write Capabilities — Users can check whether keywords are already being tracked, add missing keywords, and start tracking products directly through the MCP. Review Insights in MCP — Users can access Amazon review-analysis data, identify positive and negative review themes, and compare an ASIN's reviews against its broader category. TikTok Influencer Search in MCP — Sellers can find TikTok creators based on niche, keywords, sales generated, units sold, follower count, and other performance criteria. TikTok Product Search in MCP — Users can discover top-performing TikTok Shop products based on niche, GMV, sales period, and other filters.  TikTok Top-Performing Video Search — Sellers can identify which TikTok videos generated the most GMV for a specific product.  TikTok Creator Identification — Users can find the creators responsible for the highest-performing videos associated with a TikTok Shop product.  Additional MCP Credit Packs — Users who reach their MCP credit limit can now purchase additional credit packs through the Plans and Billing section of Helium 10. In episode 549 of the AM/PM Podcast and Weekly Buzz, Bradley talks about: 00:00 - Introduction 00:54 - Amazon MCF Prime Coming? 02:54 - Walmart Online Sales Booming 04:24 - TikTok Shop Sales Booming 06:11 - 10 New AI Features For Amazon/Walmart/TikTok Shop

Carlos Corredor, Co-Founder and CEO of Condor Digital Marketing, is driven by a passion for interpreting data and helping marketing leaders Generate and Measure Your Pipeline with greater accuracy. ith a background in sports analytics and journalism, Carlos helps B2B companies identify which marketing activities generate qualified leads, clients, and revenue so they can invest confidently in what works.  In this conversation, Carlos introduces The Condor Pipeline Generation Framework—Understand Current Pipeline Generation, Map the Process, Move Budgets to Their Highest and Best Use, Fix Measurement Gaps, and Rinse and Repeat. He explains why marketers should begin with clients and revenue instead of clicks and impressions, how the Pipeline X-Ray exposes attribution gaps, and why budgets should move toward channels with proven returns. Carlos also discusses using BANT to diagnose conversion problems and why client champions, paid media, and events drive growth in high-ticket B2B markets. — Generate and Measure Your Pipeline with Carlos Corredor  Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint, and today my guest is Carlos Corredor, Co-Founder and CEO of Condor Digital Marketing, a pipeline generation and measurement firm. Carlos, welcome to the show.  Hey, Steve. Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me. Great to be here.  It's exciting to have you and to learn about your secrets of how you generate a measurable pipeline. But before we get into it, I'm curious: What is your personal why, and how are you manifesting it through your company?  Yeah. So I've always been passionate about sports and the data behind sports, and I actually worked in sports data analysis and journalism. But ultimately, I've been passionate about interpreting data to have an advantage, whether that's playing tennis or doing analysis for baseball teams. And then I eventually started working in marketing, doing sports websites, and I saw the opportunity. In marketing in general, especially with digital, to use data to your advantage. So I would say that's really what I'm passionate about in terms of my professional life and why I enjoy what I do so much and why I get up in the morning and I really look forward to the day and even to Monday. Because obviously, it's not all fun. But ultimately, I think it comes from that passion of liking what you're doing, and the time flies when you work and you like what you do and you see that you're good at what you're doing and it's making an impact. So I would say that's why.  And have you always been a data person? Are you analytical and like to look at the numbers behind things?  Yeah, yeah. It started with sports. That's where I realized that I had, let's say, that passion at the beginning and ultimately that skill. With baseball at the beginning, it was reading the back of baseball cards and then fantasy baseball in high school, and then actually working in that. In kind of like sabermetrics and Moneyball-type analysis in college.  Because I saw, just like it happens in marketing, how back in the old days, even professionals, they were using the wrong type of data or a very antiquated way of looking at things. So it's like understanding really what has an impact and what is responsible for outcomes. That's, I think, the part that I've always thought was what's important and what I had a knack for, a talent to do that better than others. So that's why I went deep into that.  Okay. So how do you do that? So this podcast is a podcast of frameworks. So I wonder if you have a framework of how to create pipeline generation based on data, and perhaps you can share a simplified version of that with our listeners, something that can be explained in three to five steps.  Yeah, definitely. And I'll give you first the kind of like the philosophy or the mental model, and then I'll give you those steps because one comes from the other. So in marketing, with all of the data that's available, especially today, a lot of people start at the bottom. At clicks, impressions, and then they try to build a bottoms-up report to then prove what's generating leads and clients and revenue. But that is always inexact, takes forever.  What I propose is doing it the opposite: a top-down approach where you start with clients and revenue, and then start figuring out where those leads in your pipeline or clients and the closed revenue is coming from. And you will know all of that at the beginning. So that's, I think, how it starts, that framework. So the first step of the framework is to understand, which sounds really basic, but you'd be surprised today how many marketing leaders, marketing VPs, CMOs of especially mid-market, definitely smaller mid-market, and even some enterprise companies, don't have that data readily available to understand how much pipeline did we, as a marketing department, generate, let's say, last year. So that's, I think, the first step, is understanding that. It's asking your team for a report that says that. Now your team's going to come back and say they won't know the full picture. Maybe they know 10%, maybe they know 90%. But they're going to show you something. So then is the second step. You're going to start adjusting your investments to what you're seeing there, and at the same time, you're going to start fixing the dark holes or what you can't see.  And then simply step number three is rinse and repeat every, let's say, quarter at the beginning. And obviously, there's nuances of how exactly you should adjust and what exactly you can fix. But ultimately, that would be the three-step approach that you asked about.  That's fascinating. So the understand piece is understanding your pipeline or how you're generating the pipeline? What is it? Understanding what?  Yeah. So actually we have a name for that first step. We call it the Pipeline X-Ray. So let's say you start a new job as a CMO of a new company. Or simply you've been in the job for a while and you're listening to this and you say, “Okay, actually, I've never thought about it that way.  Let's sit tomorrow with my team and ask the question: How many qualified leads and closed clients have we, as marketing, generated so far this year and, let's say, last year?” That is understanding that. Now, I'll tell you, I'd be very surprised if the marketing person or the marketing team or the leader has that data in a way that they can say with 100% certainty what the answer is. In terms of, “We've closed these four clients, and we've had 72 qualified leads.  And out of the 72, 50 have come from our paid search campaigns, 10 have come from events, and then the others have come from organic.” In an ideal world, that's the type of answer that you want. But in the real world, again, very rarely do you have that clear understanding right then and there. So that's when step number two becomes, okay, let's close the gaps to be able to have an understanding.  Okay. So essentially, when you say adjust and fix, then are you talking about adjusting and fixing the process of generating clients, or actually mapping the gaps in the pipeline first?  Yeah, so that's a great question. The adjust, I mean move budget around. Not necessarily increase budget. You have to prove what's working. And obviously, if you don't have the full picture and understanding, you cannot just go to your CEO and say, “I need more budget.” So with the same budget that you have, what can you pause and move around towards the things that step number one told you with certainty are working. So if, let's say, out of the 50 qualified leads that you generated, you saw that half of them came from your paid search campaigns, then you say, “Oh, okay.” And then you don't see anything, let's say, for conferences, and now you're going to 10 conferences a year and you're spending a million dollars on conferences, and you're only spending $200,000 a year on your paid media spend. Then you say, “You know what? I'm going to stop. I'm going to pause. We're not going to go to these two conferences this year, and I'm going to move those $200,000, and we're going to double our spend in Google Ads,” for example. That's what I mean with the adjust piece. It could be the opposite. It could be pause paid search and then be more aggressive on our conference strategy. It could be, let's start a paid social campaign, whether that's LinkedIn or programmatic ads, or let's be more aggressive on our PR because right now our leads have come from interviews that our subject matter experts have done in certain types of podcasts or YouTube channels.  But that's what step number one is. But adjust is move budget around. Put your stocks where the returns are positive and where you can expect a better return almost immediately, or at least in the next upcoming months. And then the fix is particularly around the measurement gaps. The fix is what you can't see, right, on step number one. Step number one is understanding. And a report with all of that. When the person that does the reporting for you came back, or when you did it yourself or whatever, probably a lot of leads are like, “Ah, now it says direct traffic. What is that?” Obviously, they didn't just come and wake up one day and say, “Oh, I'm just going to go to condoragency.com.” No, they heard you somewhere, but you're still not sure. You won the client, you know you won the client, the client's paying you money, but you're not sure. So maybe, okay, what needs to improve in our measurement framework.  Usually, you can start with your CRM, your HubSpot, Salesforce, for instance, or whatever you use. There's some web analytics that might need to happen. You need to connect your advertising platforms. You're probably going to need to start talking to your sales team so they ask the right questions when they have discovery calls with prospects. I mean, there's a few things you can do, but I'm talking specifically about measurement gaps so you can have the full picture.  So when you talk to new prospects or clients, can they answer one most of the time?  They can partially answer one. I would go a step beyond because, I mean, that's not the sexiest answer. I would say it's usually, let's just say, around 50% of their leads and clients, they can know who was responsible. And then there's a couple of parts there. First and foremost, not only for your sake, but for the sake of your alignment with the C-suite and with the CEO and the CFO and even the sales team. You want to know, is marketing responsible for this? Number one. Because then that's very important.  Because that's what's going to justify the existence of the marketing team. Then later, if it came from a paid search campaign or a paid social or a conference, if those all are in the marketing budget, that's secondary. But most importantly, you want to make sure that, number one, you're bringing pipeline as a marketing department, and number two, you know exactly what pipeline you're bringing. Not only you, but then also your CEO and your CFO. So then it's like a luxury, let's say, to see if it comes from, the tough part is that you won't know that it comes from marketing unless you're tracking paid search and you're tracking conferences in the CRM the right way. So obviously, they are related in that way.  Okay. Love it. So understand your pipeline generation, and then adjust the budget to make sure you're supporting the ones that generate the most, and fix those that are not optimized. So maybe optimize them or replace them or come up with a new one. How else do you fix other than your measurement gaps?  Okay, you fixed the measurement gaps. Now you can measure it. You have a full picture. Then you have a slate of options, and how do you know what to choose if you're not doing enough?  Yeah. So I think there’s a couple of things there. One is understanding if you… Because, obviously, you always want to generate more pipeline. So you have to then say, “Okay, is my problem that I'm not generating any interest in the first place at all?” Like, there's nobody visiting my website. Or even downloading some pieces of content, what traditionally is called conversions or marketing-qualified leads. Obviously, that's not the goal.  The goal is that they turn into clients. But you have to know that if people are not visiting your website and you're not seeing marketing-qualified leads coming into your CRM, then you have to do certain things. Whereas if the problem is, “Okay, no, that's not the problem, Carlos,” and this is actually more common, which is a little counterintuitive, but the more and more that we work with mid-market clients, we realize this is the case.They are generating marketing-qualified leads. There is activity in the CRM. There are companies, new companies, that you see are visiting your website, downloading and consuming content. But then, for some reason, they are not becoming clients. So that's where we have to dig in and understand. Maybe they downloaded a white paper that was very educational in nature. And they're not ready to buy. Which is fine, and I'm not saying you have to not show that white paper, but you know that white paper is not going to bring you ready-to-buy customers.  So that's when we have the concept of what sales and marketing people call a BANT-type of lead, which is a lead that has the budget, the authority, the need, and the timing. You want, obviously, a lead that has the four things. Now you start, you measure. Okay, we had 10 leads, and they had, let's say, the budget and the authority. They were the CTO. The lead of the technology department in the company that we know has the budget. But they just downloaded this and didn't convert. They didn't have, let's say, the timing or the need.  Then maybe you rely more on, for example, paid search, which is a channel that, by searching the right keywords, the bottom-of-funnel keywords, for example, we are a pipeline generation firm. If somebody is looking for, “What is Google Ads?” That's educational. Now, if somebody's searching for “experienced agencies in B2B managing Google Ads.” Now, that's somebody that's ready to hire an agency to manage their Google Ads. So that's why, for example, in this case, if the component that's lacking is the need and the timing, paid search could be a way to do it. Or intent data, which is now something that is out there not only via paid search, but you identify certain signals and you can target them on programmatic ads or YouTube or whatever. That's another alternative. So that's something that you could do, for example, if you have a pain in moving leads down the funnel and closing clients, and you also realize that you're talking to the right people, but then they're simply not converting.  And the opposite. You get a lot of people that need your service. But they may be too small, or they may be just a manager and they don't have the authority to approve a high-ticket service. Then you go towards maybe LinkedIn targeting, or you do a campaign that is based more on account-based marketing, or ABM. Where you know you're talking to the right people. So again, that's another adjustment that you can make. So I don't know if I… Sorry if I deviated a little bit from the question, Steve, but hopefully that's still—  No, it makes sense. It makes sense. So first you want to measure, and then you diagnose. If you've got some activity but it's not converting, why is it not converting? Maybe it's not the right approach to build trust. Maybe there's another approach.  And then you look at the different elements: budget, authority, need, timing. That makes sense. So let me turn it back to you. So what drives growth in your business?  So for us, I would say if we do that, let's say, Pipeline X-Ray. And we actually did. We've been in business for almost 10 years now. And if you would do a Pipeline X-Ray, the number one driver of leads and new clients are, let's just call it, Condor champions that switch jobs. And not switch jobs that were working with us, but they were working with one of our clients.  And they worked with us, and they saw the work that we did, and they ended up moving to another agency within the same space, for example, or in B2B services, or even if it's something a little more niche like tech services, which is an area that we also specialize in. And then they say, “I already worked with Condor for either measurement or paid search campaigns or demand generation in general, and I like working with them, so they're going to call us.” And then some people, they switch multiple jobs. So embracing that and obviously using that to fuel and to focus even more on doing a great job and maintaining relationships with people, obviously most importantly while they're a client, but even if they switch, not forgetting about them. That has been the main driver. Obviously, we don't want to only rely on that. And then more recently, we've given more structure to our own sales and marketing department for that. And, for example, we closed a client that came via a paid search campaign. But that's still… We haven't scaled those yet.  We're still making sure. We're still in that measurement phase where, yeah, we're putting budget behind a few things and some of them seem to be working better, but not yet at the point of truly scaling that. We're ultimately also a relatively small firm, which obviously makes decisions differently than if you are, let's say, a mid-market or enterprise. But those, I would say, in order of importance, have been our three main drivers of growth: the champions that switch jobs, number one, and then I would say secondarily, paid media and events.  Yeah. So these are the three things. And what about the events? Why do you put events as a third? I'm just thinking that you're a B2B company and trust-based. Would events not be better than paid media?  I would say they're not mutually exclusive. Actually, they rely a lot on each other. And honestly, for us, I just put number two and three, but I would say they're tied for second, and then the other ones are four and below. And the reason why I think events are important, what we're seeing not only for us but for our clients, the outbound activity is really saturated.  I think cold email or cold outreach in general, because it used to be via email, now it's on LinkedIn as well, it's really, really saturated. It's really hard to be heard or to get a reply with cold outreach in general. Paid media, you can be a little bit more creative because you have visuals. Whether that's video that hopefully you can leverage. So I'm a believer in paid media more than the actual cold outreach via email or LinkedIn. But then the events are also great precisely because of that.  People are saturated and tired of being bombarded with messages from people they don't know. Whereas especially after COVID, people started going back to both the office and simply going out there. It doesn't have to be a big yearly conference. It can be just a dinner where you invite four or five people and talk about certain topics or any in-person activity. Well, I mean, a webinar can even be considered an event. Where you're educating your audience on certain things. And especially if your target audience is more on the manager side or below, or director and below, webinars can be an avenue.  But to answer your question, I think that personal connection is really, really powerful. And people forgot about it with, let's say, the boom of cold outreach and digital and now AI, and especially during COVID. But definitely in the last few years, we've seen not only that people are more willing or prefer to meet people in person, but we see that in the data as well, We see cold outreach campaigns that are bringing less and less results. And then when you connect in person.  Especially high-ticket. I also give this example. If you're selling B2B services, which are usually high-ticket. It's a project of either $50,000. It could be an engagement of $2 million over two years. Obviously, you want to know the company, but you also want to trust the human that is going to deliver on that promise. I always give the example: If you're selling an iPhone cover that costs $25, yeah, maybe you can get away with a pretty image on an Instagram ad. You click and you buy. Boom. Great. You can fully leverage digital for that.  But when you're selling a cloud migration project of a million dollars, you're going to want to talk to somebody, trust that person, dig in a little bit more, have a couple of meetings. So it's more complex. So in particular for those instances, that's why I think the personal connection, that it's even better if it starts at an event, or however you manage to do it, helps a lot.  So for Condor, do you make a distinction between B2B companies and B2C, and where you can help them the most?  Yeah. We have a couple of direct-to-consumer clients, but the majority of the work that we do is either for B2B or, if not B2B, it's lead generation. So e-commerce, for example, is a different world. E-commerce, as I mentioned, depending on what you buy, it's immediate. You track things. You have a platform like Shopify or something similar. It's a whole different world. Whereas that's immediate, and you can see everything, and it's all kind of automated and based on an inventory.  Whereas in either B2B services or lead generation, it's more about, okay, what happens after the initial action, after that initial either visit or conversion. Because a conversion is not a purchase. In e-commerce, in direct-to-consumer, in the example that I gave you, we made it. We sold the cover. That's our business. In here, it's like, okay, they downloaded a white paper. Or they signed up for a webinar, but that's only the first step of a long journey of closing, again, a $1 million service client.  So we specialize in that. In what needs to happen, not only to generate the initial raise of hand, but to make sure that the people that raise their hands are the right people, because otherwise they're not going to end up buying. And ultimately, the entire process of lead generated to client closed. Which is a big universe in itself. So that's where we want to focus.  So you basically help them not just to get the leads but to convert the leads and turn them into a client.  Right. Right.  So Carlos, if you had a magic wand and you could fix just one thing in your business in the next 12 months, what would you use the magic wand for?  I would say accelerate. I would accelerate by five or 10 years the structure and how mature our sales and marketing team is. I would love to wake up tomorrow morning and have a team of five people in the marketing department and five people dedicated to sales, with SDRs and a sales leader, that is already generating, that we're closing 10 clients a month. So I would say that's… But that obviously takes time.  And you want to go one step at a time, otherwise, to prove ROI and to grow without, let's say, wasting unproven budget or wasting money. But I think a lot of owners—I don't know if it's a cheap answer—but I think a lot of owners would probably answer the same thing.  Yeah. So essentially what you need to do is you need to have scalable sales and marketing so that you can just add people and it's going to—it's like a coin-operated system, right?  Yeah. Yeah.  So if the listeners would like to go through that process and they would like to understand, okay, how do we map our leads, where they come from, evaluate it, and then adjust and fix and scale, where can they learn more and how can they connect with you? Yeah.  So if they go to our website, it's condoragency.com. Condor, like the bird. There are some options there on how to work with us or even some information, even if they want to try and do it by themselves, right? Again, what I mentioned earlier, the Pipeline X-Ray. It's a quick project that we do to get to that, where you can start seeing some valuable information to take action on fairly quickly.  We can get that done in a couple of weeks, the exercise of the Pipeline X-Ray, so then you know what to start adjusting and fixing. And obviously, you can contact me directly also on LinkedIn or via our website. I'm glad to obviously have a subsequent conversation and see if and how we can help.  Awesome. So if you are out there and you want to improve your sales and marketing, then you have to start with the Pipeline X-Ray because you are getting leads, you just don't know where they are from and how effective they are, and then how you tweak the process so that you're putting energy behind the more effective ones and readjusting your budget, and then fix the gaps.  So Carlos can help you with that, right? So make sure you reach out to Condor and get the X-Ray. So Carlos, thanks for coming. And if you enjoyed this conversation, then make sure you subscribe and follow us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, because every week I bring a couple of entrepreneurs who are sharing their frameworks with you. So Carlos, thanks for coming, and thanks for listening. Important Links: Carlos's LinkedIn Carlos's website

México crea empleo, pero casi todo es informal. Sinaloa cambia de gobernadora en medio de una crisis de seguridad que ya alcanzó al gobierno. La Reserva Federal recibe señales contradictorias sobre inflación y consumo, mientras Ucrania vuelve a explorar una vía diplomática con Rusia. Además, el superpeso empieza a presionar a algunas empresas mexicanas, Alemania muestra señales de recuperación y la inteligencia artificial entra en una nueva etapa: menos demostraciones y más implementación real dentro de las empresas. En tecnología, Waymo prepara su llegada a Múnich, China empieza a definir quién responde cuando conduce un vehículo autónomo y Apple lleva más procesamiento de IA directamente al dispositivo.Sponsor: STRTGY combina software de clase mundial con ingeniería local para convertir inteligencia artificial en valor real para empresas, a escala.Conecta sistemas.Construye contexto.Despliega flujos de trabajo con inteligencia artificial.Contacto:

Mike Heilig is the general manager at Binary Anvil, a web development agency and systems integrator that has been running for 18 years, built mostly on Adobe Commerce, and has since branched into other platforms and a product of its own.He takes on the SaaS promise directly. Moving to SaaS genuinely removes the hosting and patching burden, and then relocates the difficulty rather than deleting it, because business complexity does not go away. His fit test is simple. A very simple business may belong on SaaS. B2B requirements, complex catalogs and complex price lists probably do not. The mistake he sees merchants make is shopping for technology before writing down the business outcome they want.The conversation turns to Flux, Binary Anvil's React and Next.js headless front end that attaches to an Adobe Commerce backend and supports B2C and B2B out of the box. For D&B Supply, a large farm and ranch retailer, rebuilding on Flux while keeping the Adobe Commerce backend moved site speed, conversions, organic traffic and search rankings, and cut roughly 57,000 dollars a year off upgrade cost. Heilig explains why decoupling the front end is what makes upgrades cheap, and credits Adobe for maintaining old APIs instead of deprecating them.On AI mediated commerce he is patient rather than breathless. Structured data, machine readable documentation and clean APIs are the groundwork, the requirement is on the horizon rather than here, and the open question is whether shoppers are ready to hand a credit card to an agent at all.Guest: Mike Heilig, General Manager, Binary Anvil

Meghan Gendelman, CMO, B2B at Canva, joins That's What I Call Marketing to discuss B2B marketing, enterprise growth, building demand and how Canva is taking a hugely successful product-led business further into the enterprise. This conversation gets into what building a B2B growth engine actually requires: understanding customers, combining product-led and sales-led growth, building brand before buyers enter the market, using data properly and working out where AI genuinely adds value.In this episode, we cover:– Why Meghan believes B2B marketing is anything but boring, particularly when you are dealing with complex buying committees, long consideration periods and multiple decision-makers– Why customer insight still matters more than tools, including Meghan's experience of using AI to scale content for GEO and discovering that faster content without anything new or useful simply didn't work– How brand, customer entry points and buying signals help marketers influence customers long before they reach a website or speak to sales– Why Meghan believes every good marketer needs to become comfortable with data, pipeline and the commercial numbers behind the business– How Canva is thinking about AI, LLMs, design, brand governance and integrations with platforms including ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini– What Meghan learned from more than a decade at Salesforce, her time at DocuSign and the process that led her to become Canva's first B2B CMO– How she leads global marketing teams through clear values, trust, vulnerability and knowing the difference between “smoke” and “fire”We also discuss the changing B2B buying journey, why much of the decision can happen before a buyer identifies themselves, the role of brand in demand generation and why B2B and B2C marketing are becoming less distinct than marketers sometimes assume.A useful listen for marketers interested in B2B marketing, enterprise marketing, product-led growth, demand generation, brand building, AI in marketing, customer insight, sales and marketing, marketing leadership and commercial growth.02:12 Meghan's career across Salesforce, DocuSign and Canva03:03 Why everything starts with the customer05:44 The AI and GEO content experiment that failed07:18 Why B2B marketing is not boring10:30 Leading global marketing teams through values and trust11:41 Smoke, fire and knowing when leaders need to get involved12:47 Why Meghan joined Canva14:46 Canva's 30–40 hour B2B marketing interview challenge16:15 Taking Canva from product-led growth into enterprise17:04 Product-led growth versus sales-led growth19:47 How B2B buying decisions are changing22:08 Why every marketer needs to understand data23:13 Meghan's Monday morning pipeline ritual24:21 Learning from other marketing leaders25:00 Remote work, offices and building global teams27:39 Why EMEA is not one market28:40 Keeping Canva simple as the platform expands29:11 Canva as an AI-powered design platform30:27 Canva, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and the LLM ecosystem31:47 Building Canva's B2B and enterprise brandAbout Meghan GendelmanB2B at Canva, leading its B2B marketing strategy as Canva continues to grow its enterprise business. Before Canva, Meghan held senior marketing roles at DocuSign and spent more than 12 years at Salesforce across areas including customer success, product marketing, growth marketing, field marketing, demand generation and regional marketing leadership.This episode was recorded as part of the That's What I Call Marketing Cannes Sessions and produced in partnership with The Digital Voice.The Digital Voice: https://www.thedigitalvoice.co.uk/That's What I Call Marketing is the podcast for marketers who care about brand, B2B, creativity, effectiveness and the future of the profession.Follow the show for more conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, agency leaders, professors, authors, thinkers and practitioners.Find more episodes at:https://www.thatswhaticallmarketing.comThat's What I Call Marketing is where marketers come for real conversations about brand, B2B, creativity, effectiveness and the future of the profession.Hosted by Conor Byrne, the show features conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, agency leaders, authors, thinkers and practitioners about what good marketing looks like in practice.Listen, follow and find more episodes at: https://www.thatswhaticallmarketing.comConnect with Conor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conorbyrneirl/If you enjoy the show, please follow, subscribe and leave a review. It helps more marketers find the conversations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After nearly 30 years in education, Rachel Kugler made a leap most people at her stage of life are told not to make: she walked away from teaching, enrolled in ODEO Academy, and rebuilt a career in digital marketing and copywriting from the ground up.This conversation covers what pushed her out of the classroom, shares the internship-to-hire story behind her current role, and shares what she now tells other women in their 40s and 50s who ask her "now what?"Episode Highlights: Rachel shares why a 30-year teaching career transfers more directly into marketing than it might seem, from explaining complex ideas simply to holding a deadline no matter what else is happening.She gives the honest reality of a post-certification job search, and what got Rachel through it without a personal network to fall back on.Rachel details how a single internship platform placement turned into a full-time role in four weeks, and what her boss says actually made the difference.Her direct message to women in their 40s and 50s wondering if it's too late: it isn't, and life experience is a real advantage, not a liability.Why "ODEO is the beginning, not the end" shows up throughout her story, from a self-initiated AI webinar pitch to rewriting her own earlier work once she knew better.Episode Links:ODEO AcademySend us Fan MailFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor:Website and Blog: thedmmentor.comInstagram: @thedmmentorLinkedin: @thedmmentorYouTube: @thedmmentorInterested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family:Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations.ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business's digital marketing strategy.

What happens when your e-commerce platform treats your most valuable professional clients like everyday consumers?Agility means looking past a platform's out-of-the-box features and building an experience that reflects how your different customer segments actually do business.This episode is brought to you by The Office of Experience, a design-driven, digital-first, vertically integrated and collaborative agency that believes in the power of ideas and the strength of people. Learn more at www.officeofexperience.comToday, we're talking about the complexity of building a single e-commerce experience for two very different audiences. Specifically, we'll explore:- Balancing the distinct needs of B2B and B2C audiences on a single digital storefront.- Knowing when to lean on an e-commerce platform's native capabilities versus when to invest in custom development to close critical experience gaps.- Integrating physical retail and showroom data, like real-time local inventory, into a seamless digital experience.To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome, Jenna Kennedy, Senior Director, Client Strategy & PMO at Office of Experience and William Webster, General Manager, Guy Gunter Home.Jenna Kennedy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennabkennedy/---------- Resources ----------: https://www.officeofexperience.comThis episode is brought to you by The Office of Experience, a design-driven, digital-first, vertically integrated and collaborative agency that believes in the power of ideas and the strength of people.We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873fChaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Learn more at trychaser.com and use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).The most influential minds in software, AI, and engineering leadership will be at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, September 23-25 in San Jose. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/60a7299222a7bcf1Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/93531742a7625a20Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstromDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716baCheck out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.comThe Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Votre prochain client ne sera peut-être plus un humain.Ce sera un agent IA qui compare, décide et achète à la place de votre prospect.Dans cet épisode de Marketing Square, je reçois Karen Jouve, CEO de Doors3, experte IA, Web3 et réalités immersives pour décrypter le Business to Agent (B2A), le nouveau paradigme commercial qui vient après le B2B et le B2C.Le récap complet est dans ma newsletter Bankable! : https://newsletter.carolinemignaux.com/Au programme :• Le B2A : qu'est-ce que le Business to Agent ?• GEO vs SEO : les tags data pour être visible des agents IA• Comment se préparer concrètement (3 profils d'entrepreneurs)• Le command center : automatiser son organisation avec l'IA• Stablecoin : la monnaie des agents IA (Visa y travaille)• L'employé augmenté : passeport digital, blockchain et IA• Risques : injections de prompt, cybersécurité, flou juridique• Revenu universel, futur du travail et changement de modèlePOUR ALLER PLUS LOIN☑ Audit de votre compte par Agence Personnelle : https://carolinemignaux.com/agence☑ Créer votre marque personnelle (le bundle) : https://carolinemignaux.com/bundle☑ Rejoindre la communauté The Square : https://www.carolinemignaux.com/communaute☑ Le récap de l'épisode dans ma newsletter Bankable! : https://newsletter.carolinemignaux.com/

Lancer sa première campagne brand, c'est souvent un grand moment de solitude pour un marketeur.Parce qu'on prend des risques, que le ROI n'est pas immédiat et que les budgets sont bien plus élevés que ceux d'une campagne d'acquisition.Dans cet épisode, j'ai invité Fanny Knusmann, VP Brand & Communications chez Wecasa.Fanny arrive chez Wecasa il y a 8 ans, seule au marketing, dans une start-up orientée performance. Avec peu de moyens, elle doit faire connaître la marque, elle structure la vision brand, s'entoure des bons profils et contribue à faire de Wecasa comme un acteur de référence de son marché.Dans cet épisode, on revient à la base : comment on fait quand on part de zéro ?Par où commencer quand on n'a ni budget ni équipe ?Comment amener une culture brand dans une boîte dopée à la performance ?Quel budget pour avoir un vrai impact ?Et comment gérer la pression de cette “première fois” où tout le monde vous regarde ?Si vous préparez votre première campagne brand, cet épisode va vous aider à poser les fondations, faire les bons arbitrages… et éviter les pièges dans lesquels 100% des marques tombent au début.

On this episode of The Immigration Lawyer's Toolbox® Podcast, host John Khosravi sits down with returning guest Roman Zelichenko, J.D. to unpack what's really happening in the growing wave of immigration law firm M&A: how firms are actually valued, why some attorneys inflate their revenue numbers with filing fees, the difference between a true acquisition and a "merger" that's really more of a hire, why clean books can make or break a deal, and what private equity's track record in dentistry, HVAC, and plumbing suggests about where legal consolidation is headed. Whether you're thinking about selling, buying, merging, or just want to run your firm like it's sellable, this episode is full of practical insight on the business side of immigration law. Sponsor: Get a free website (first 10 sign-ups) and special pricing on marketing for your firm from Constellation at http://immigrationlawyerstoolbox.com/Constellation. Timestamps: 00:00 – Opening 00:33 – Intro 04:24 – How hard is it for practitioners to value and sell their firm? 04:53 – B2B/corporate vs. B2C firms: why recurring revenue is valued higher 05:30 – The filing-fees-in-revenue trick that inflates valuations 06:36 – What sellers actually want: fair price vs. emotional attachment 07:54 – How clean (or messy) books affect due diligence 09:43 – Bookkeepers, GMI Rocket, and staying on top of your numbers 11:29 – Mergers vs. acquisitions: when a "merger" is really a hire 13:12 – Larger firm mergers and fade-out deal structures 13:52 – New fee memos, attorney burnout, and the push toward litigation 16:13 – Consolidation, specialists, and the rise of AI-native law firms 19:00 – Lessons from private equity roll-ups in dentistry, HVAC, and plumbing 20:17 – Community page & Constellation SEO/marketing sponsor break 21:20 – Back to the show: will the free market self-correct? 21:33 – Envoy Global: an example of PE-backed immigration firms done right 24:19 – Scaling without sacrificing service quality 26:15 – The M&A trend among solo and small firm owners who want out 29:01 – Creative deal structures, equity, and the "Built to Sell" mindset 33:13 – Why QuickBooks and clean numbers drive better marketing and growth decisions 36:26 – Outro Spotify | iTunes | YouTube Music | YouTube Follow eimmigration by Cerenade: Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn Start your Business Immigration Practice! (US LAWYERS ONLY - SCREENING REQUIRED): E-2 Course EB-1A Course Get the Toolbox Magazine!  Join our community (Lawyers Only) Get Started in Immigration Law! The Marriage/Family-Based Green Card course is for you Our Website: ImmigrationLawyersToolbox.com Not legal advice. Consult with an Attorney. Attorney Advertisement. #podcaster #Lawyer #ImmigrationLawyer #Interview #Immigration #ImmigrationAttorney #USImmigration #ImmigrationLaw #ImmigrationLawyersToolbox

What do AI adoption, cyber resilience, and the great VM reset have in common? They're all trends which are colliding to reshape the world of enterprise technology. As organisations prepare for a future powered by intelligent systems, infrastructure, security and virtualisation are becoming increasingly connected strategic priorities. This week, Technology Now explores how these changes are reshaping enterprise technology, as Patrick Osborne, SVP Hybrid Cloud and Office of the CTO, joins the show to discuss:The economic and technological impacts of the great VM resetWhy hybrid systems are essential to succeed in the world of AIThe role of sovereignty and governance in AI adoptionWhat the agentic enterprise could mean for infrastructure and operations 

Sheldon Poon, Founder of Drive Marketing, helps established brands go from Wholesale to D2C through performance-driven advertising grounded in data, technology, and human expertise. He is driven to build a company that reflects his values—one where people enjoy their work, have flexibility and autonomy, and continuously learn from and teach one another. In this conversation, Sheldon introduces The A.I.D.A. Framework—Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. He explains how businesses can eliminate friction across the customer journey, use clean data to improve AI-powered campaigns, and balance automation with human strategy. Sheldon also discusses why genuine relationships are driving B2B growth, how AI is reshaping internships and early-career development, and how Drive Marketing helps successful wholesale brands build direct customer relationships without jeopardizing their valuable retail partnerships — Go from Wholesale to D2C with Sheldon Poon  Good day, listeners. Today, I have Sheldon Poon as our guest. He’s the Founder of Drive Marketing, a Montreal-based paid ad agency specializing in performance-driven marketing with a heavy emphasis on using data to make informed strategic decisions. Founded in 2013, Drive Marketing positions themselves as a technical-first partner that bridges the gap between business goals and technical execution. So they’re not a creative agency. They are a technical agency improving your ads. Sheldon, welcome to the show.  Yeah, thanks for having me, Steve. I’m happy to be here. Yeah. Great to have you here. And my first question is, what is your personal why, and how are you manifesting it in the business? How are you contributing to human flourishing?  That’s a very big question for a small ad agency.  It is.  Yeah. So when I first started the company, I kind of, like a lot of entrepreneurs, right, it came from me kind of looking at my life and where I was in my career and kind of getting frustrated at what I was seeing with my day-to-day job. So I was in a very, very privileged position. I was able to take a bit of a sabbatical from my day job where they held my position, which was great, because if everything went downhill, I could always just jump back to my job.  And I was like, “You know what? Like, I have an opportunity here. I’ve always wanted to start a business.” But because I had been working for somebody else for almost, at that point, I think like a decade and a half, I had a lot of experience, and I saw a lot of things that I was like, “This is what I don’t want.” So when I started my company, my internal mission and vision was to build the company that I would want to work at, to build the company that is kind of true to myself and my values, and something that I would enjoy going into day to day.Share on X And then what does all that mean? So the company that I wanted to work at, as I started working and hiring people, what I found was I wanted to have flexibility in my schedule. We treat everybody on the team as an adult. Everybody’s responsible for their workload. And as long as they meet their deadlines, I don’t care when you’re clocking in, clocking out. I’m a night owl. I like working till like midnight, 1:00 a.m. I don’t like doing mornings, so I’m often coming into the office late.  A lot of my team are doing the same thing. Some of them are early risers, and they like to leave early to have their afternoon free. So as long as everybody’s more or less—everybody’s on top of their tasks and more or less working during the day so that we can have our interactions and meetings, that’s perfectly fine. Another thing I think that's core to what I wanted to build was that I've always been very passionate about learning and teaching. In another life, I was teaching high school.Share on X  And when I started building the company, one of the things that we made very clear when we’re hiring is that everybody on the team learns because they’re passionate about what we’re doing. And everybody on the team teaches. Even if you’re just an intern coming in, we need to know your perspective because you’ll have a different perspective than me, who’s been doing this for like two decades, where I’m kind of blind to maybe some of the newer stuff that’s happening or some of the stuff that’s like on the ground.  And I want to know when I talk to our interns, when I talk to our juniors, like, “Hey, guys, what are you seeing?” Like, you guys are—you guys are like 20 years younger than me in some cases. Like, I want to know what’s going on with the kids. My personal, like, kind of like personal why of this is that it’s not so much about the end goal. I want to make sure that I enjoy my day-to-day, I enjoy what we do, and I’m not going to pull my hair out going into the office. So, like, I think we built something where everybody on the team is excited to work on stuff because they’re doing the work that they would want to be working on.  They’re learning the stuff that they would want to be learning, and then they get to implement it in a way that is impactful for the company, for the client, for what we’re doing. And my challenge as a leader is to figure out, okay, how do we take that exciting stuff and make it so that it generates money for the company so that we can all continue doing this? Yeah, this is very inspirational. I love it. You’re tapping into people’s curiosity, desire. I like the learning organization idea as well. So do you have a framework for this? Because this podcast is all about frameworks.  Yes.  How can someone create something like that? What are the steps to create it?  So it’s not one framework. Like I said, I’m very passionate about a lot of different topics, and one of the things that’s a personal interest of mine is just business. So, like, looking at business case studies, and from that you start seeing what works and what doesn’t. It’s a lot of different frameworks kind of layered on top of each other for various reasons. For the practical ad side, what we do for our clients strategically, there's a framework there that we like to use called AIDA. So attention, interest, desire, action.Share on X  Very standard funnel. The idea is that the reason we like using this is because when you break down the customer journey, this process is just logical. It’s been proven time and time again. If you’re going into Marketing or Business 101, this is one of the first things that you’re going to learn about. Like, what is a funnel? A funnel is, you know, the client’s never heard of you before, and you do something to grab their attention.  Now they’ve heard of you, but that’s not enough. You have to have many touch points, and you have to build interest. So, like, once they’ve heard about you, you got to make sure that it’s a good fit and they’re interested in the pain point or the thing that you’re fixing for them in their lives. And then if you hit them up with that interest message often enough, they’ll start imagining how their life is better with your product or service, and that creates desire. And then once you continue hitting them up at desire, as long as you don’t have any friction between the desire piece and the final call to action, then you’ll get that action at the bottom.  And the thing that people talk about, like, there’s a lot of people that talk about this framework, but I don’t think they’ve studied it properly. Because when you actually look at the history of it, this framework was first introduced in 1898 in a magazine that was talking about ads. This framework arguably predates the term marketing. And when you think about how that framework looks in modern day, it’s changed a lot, right?  When you were running ads in the early 1900s, you could get away with saying whatever the heck you wanted and making whatever wild promises just to get people’s attention. The way that you did it was you maybe had, like, some sort of print or some sort of, like, literally talking to people, getting them to show up to a convention or an expo back in the day, and having those interactions with their audience.  Fast-forward over 100 years, and it looks very different how you grab attention today. Paid ads. People talk about SEO. People talk about viral content. It’s very much changed. What hasn’t changed is the framework. So what that tells us is that human behavior, right? So the framework is based on human psychology: attention, interest, desire. These are all things that are, like, within the human experience. That has not changed. What’s changed is the other end. The technology has changed, so how you implement that.  So the strategy is still the AIDA that we use, right? But our tactics are constantly changing. Now we’re looking at AI. The new thing about ads is that Google just announced that they’ve added an extra option next to PMax, which is the AI option, so that you can actually start showing up in Gemini. So now this has changed our tactics. But our strategy is still based on this human psychology. That's the framework over on kind of the front end.Share on X And then, like I said, we have a bunch of other frameworks. I don’t know how much you want me to get into it, but for hiring, for internal processes, for all sorts of things.  Yeah. No, no, no. I love it. I love the AIDA. It’s been a long time I heard about it, and I love the simplicity of it, and I think it still works. So you mentioned something that really interests me. You said that you grab the attention, interest, building the desire, and as long as there’s no friction in the desire, then you’re going to get—the call to action is going to work. So what do you mean friction, and give me some examples of what it could look like.  So when you’re talking about AIDA and you’re talking about funnels, especially when you’re talking about online, it’s all very, very quick, right? So there’s a couple of terms here. So when you’re at top of funnel, your main thing is—it’s called a funnel because at the top it’s very, very wide in terms of the audience you want to hit up, and you want to try to get out to as many people as possible. So a lot of people, when they’re thinking of marketing, they’re thinking of the top of funnel, whether they realize it or not.  Further down is you’re trying to get a more complex message across. So the practical way to think about it is at the top you’re trying to run ads that’s just very flashy and getting people to stop the scroll. So if they’re on Instagram or something, you literally want them to stop, and you want them to read a quick thing that gets them to click. Once they’ve clicked on it, they’re ending up on a landing page, and that landing page has information that hopefully connects to the audience in a meaningful way, and they’re interested in reading more.  An example of friction would be if you click on an ad that’s purple, and then you end up on a landing page that’s black and white or red. That difference in color, that difference in style creates a friction point that psychologically, it makes the person pause and go, “Wait, did I just end up on the wrong page?” So when you have, like, a very close alignment between each of those levels, it reduces the friction and increases the chances that people will go down.  So the most important friction point that people need to be aware of is, like I just talked about the top of funnel, the opposite end, the bottom of funnel, is where there's the highest intent.Share on X So you can imagine at the top of funnel, because people have never heard of you before, their intention to buy from you is probably very low or very limited because they don’t know you yet. But once you’ve done all that work to get to know them and create a relationship with the brand, you’re at the bottom of funnel, and that point is critical.  You need to make sure that by the time you’ve warmed them up and everything’s ready to go and the target person is very interested in taking that final step, that somebody else doesn’t come and grab them. For example, like, the very real-world example. If you think about some of the biggest marketing companies in the world, so let’s take McDonald’s and Burger King as examples, right? Because everybody knows those brands. If McDonald’s has taken so much effort to be on billboards and be in front of you, and you’ve seen the brand and you know it, and you’re walking down the street and you’re hungry, and then at that moment of intent, as you’re walking around downtown, you’re like, “I could go for a quick burger right now,” and you know that you’re looking for a McDonald’s, but as you’re walking, you come across a Burger King, you’re like, “Yeah, that’s close enough.”  And then you’re going to walk into the Burger King and do the transaction there. Online, what that looks like is when somebody is doing that final search. So let’s say Summit OS is selling T-shirts, and you’ve done a bunch of work and people love the brand and they’re looking for a specific type of T-shirt that you sell, but they can’t remember quite exactly what it is. They’re like, “Oh, I think it was Summit OS something T-shirt.” And then when they type that in, somebody else’s sponsored ad comes up.  Well, now they probably grabbed that traffic that you took all that time to warm up. If you end up on the landing page, when you scroll down to the bottom, okay, I want to buy this T-shirt. I’m happy with everything that I’ve seen, but now you’re asking for an email, you’re asking for, like, a bunch of things. You click on a button, it doesn’t work. Those are extra friction points that prevent a person from taking action. When you’re looking at the entire funnel, you got to make sure that from a technical standpoint, from a user experience standpoint, from a getting-in-front-of-them-in-the-right-moment standpoint, everything hits, especially in this digital economy where everything’s very, very fast.  So anything that goes wrong, anything that creates a question, anything that creates a frustration point or any opportunity for somebody else to come in and grab that traffic at that moment of intent, those are friction points that you want to address and you want to track and you want to find. And you can imagine how there’s a lot of complexity in that. There’s a lot of testing, there’s a lot of work to make sure that that doesn’t happen.  That’s fascinating. Do you have a process for how you do this, how to eliminate frictions?  Yeah. We have a team that does QA and walks through the entire thing and has to do constant testing because what we’ve seen is a lot of other agencies are using AI tools and shortcuts. And lo and behold, a lot of these tools don’t work and they give back false positives, false negatives, and it’s not as good as just taking the time to go through the funnel yourself and make sure everything’s working properly. And it sucks because it’s a lot of work, but that’s how you get the best results, is just by having someone double-check it.  And it’s not to say that we don’t use automation. Like, we use a ton of automation, we use a lot of tools. But the final QA is a lot of the time us and the client going through, like, “Okay, everybody, before we hit go, let’s just all go through this before we spend, like, you know, 10K on this and just make sure that everything’s working properly.”  Yeah. Love it. Love it. So you’re building this ad agency, a technical agency, so you focus on making the flawless experience. What drives growth in your business?  That’s a good question. That’s something that, honestly, we’re struggling with a little bit. So if anybody’s following me on social media, I’ve been doing a short series. I’m probably going to finish it off soon, but it’s called Watch Sheldon Struggle to Grow His Agency. And it’s literally how I’ve been trying to figure out how to crack lead generation for ourselves and our journey through, like, where we were maybe about a year ago to where we are today.  And we’re still trying to answer that question for ourselves in terms of, how do we get more leads and more clients in a very difficult economy, in a very difficult time? And we’re trying to figure that out. And people can look up our case studies. I think we’re quite proud of the work that we’ve been able to do, and having that technical know-how has given us a huge advantage in terms of performance numbers. And that alone, in the past, through my network, was enough to keep us busy because people would just seek me out whenever they had a problem with their technical stack or their ads.  I’d say in the last maybe 18 months or so, like a lot of other agencies, the word-of-mouth stuff has kind of dried up, where people are kind of, like, holding back their spend. We’ve had a bunch of contracts that were put on hold because of the economic situation around the world. Nobody knows what’s going on. Everybody wants to hold back spend. Everybody wants to sit and wait. So even though people are still contacting me, the flow of projects has slowed down because people are more hesitant to pull the trigger and go. It’s also taking longer for us to have these conversations. Because that organic piece kind of slowed down, we’ve been trying to find inorganic pieces.  I’ve been doing more networking. I’ve been trying to figure out building out our own funnel, which we should’ve done years ago. The thing that’s driving growth for us right now is probably the things that are not scalable, right? In the age of AI, when you’re working with a business, you want to be working with a person. Like, nobody wants a partner who’s just a machine. So doing the things that are not scalable means really doing the things that are human, having human interactions, having human conversations, going out for coffee with people, meeting people at conventions and workshops and, you know, like, literally just getting our name out there in a way that is more human and just having real conversations.  And despite all the other testing that we’ve done with the cold emails, with the ads, with this, that, and the other thing, like, that seems to be the thing that’s working the most, is just kind of putting my name out there and saying to people, like, “Hey, if you have a problem, come talk to me. We’re not necessarily going to have a contract together, but hopefully we can have a quick coffee and I can at least get you past a technical hurdle.  I can give you some insight into what you’re struggling with and give you a hand.” And that kind of goodwill has led to more conversations and more contracts and new contracts than anything else that we’ve done. For our clients, because our clients are more direct-to-consumer, so they’re usually bigger brands that are selling a quick product, quick service to the general public. They’re not B2B, they’re B2C. On that front, it’s literally what we just talked about, following the AIDA playbook, making sure the funnel’s good, making sure the ads are firing, making sure the data’s there, and then that’s how we get our crazy numbers, like 12X return on ad spend, you know, 14X return on ad spend.  That’s just following the system and doing the work. So for our clients, we have it under control for their growth. For our own growth, for the B2B side, that’s where I’m realizing that, like, we need to step away from all this AI noise, and people are trying to do these AI BDRs and all these things, and it just doesn’t work because people want to have a real human conversation.  Yeah. No, I totally see the same thing. The easier the automation, the more it just becomes noise.  Exactly. It’s democratized automation, which means that, like, it’s no longer the thing that stands out. You have to do something different.  Yeah. And people are becoming resistant, and they recognize if something is AI-created, and they just tune it out, right?  Yeah, exactly. Exactly.  Yeah. It’s fascinating. How much of your time is actually spent on networking and doing the human things as opposed to running your business?  I’m very fortunate that my team mostly runs the day-to-day at this point, so I’m spending most of my time doing all the other stuff. So, like, trying to do the networking, trying to get our name out there, and then everything else is just admin and paperwork. So in terms of actually running the day-to-day of the company, our head of operations, Brent, does a fantastic job of running the team.  Jack, our head of marketing strategy, does an amazing job of making sure the ads are firing properly. Whenever I get involved in the day-to-day, they get annoyed at me because I’m like, I’m coming in, I don’t know what’s going on, and my hair’s on fire. I’m trying to do X, Y, Z, and then I jump out and I just create chaos. So most of the time they’re telling me, like, “Yeah, listen, go out and talk to people. We don’t want you at the office. We don’t want you doing the work.”  So how fast is your product evolving?  Oh, constantly. I mean, the way that I explain it to people, right? A lot of people right now, especially running ads, right? Because that’s our core product, that’s our core service, is running ads and making sure that we maintain that competitive advantage for our clients. Because of the advent of AI, everything’s constantly changing. Already it was a very technical space because a lot of people seem to think that whether or not your ads do well, they think it’s a creative exercise, and I think it was up until about eight months ago.  But today, I would argue that it’s skewed, and it’s more of a technical exercise. Because these ad platforms are running AI algorithms, the quality of the data that you feed into it now is more important than ever. And like I said, there’s been a lot of changes in the last few months to the point where now it’s no longer about how good your content is. It’s about how good your targeting is, how good the data you’re feeding it is, how good your audience is kind of reacting to it, and then making intelligent tweaks to your content based on the feedback that you’re getting back from the AI.  So these are things that are constantly evolving. Like I said, even though the strategy doesn’t change, the tactics and the technology is a constant change. So the AI thing that I was talking about where Google just released or just opened up the option to do advertising with AI responses, that’s less than, I think, three months old. So that’s the new thing that we’re now testing with our clients to see how is this working, how is this working.  The other thing too is that the way I describe it, a lot of people now—the new thing that we just noticed within the last few months—is that people are saying, like, “Oh, I can just use an AI agent to set up my ads.” But these AI agents are based on large language models, right, the LLMs. And the way that large language models work is that they’re trying to give you a statistically accurate response, which is great for certain things, not so great for other things. So the way I tell people is that if you were to take an LLM, again, which is what most of these agents are based on, you were to graph all the possible responses for accuracy, what you would end up with is a bell curve, right?  And on the bell curve, you have on one end, you have these are all the answers that are definitely wrong. And on the other hand, these are also answers that are, like, they’re novel, but we don’t know how accurate they are. And then in the middle, at the top of the bell curve, right in the middle is the statistical most accurate response that it thinks it can give you. So it’s always going for that statistical middle with these LLMs. So when it’s setting up ads and it’s doing strategy, it’s going for what is most likely the safe result, right?  The least interesting.  It’s the least interesting.  Yeah.  Now, when you’re running ads, right, it’s a race. My background is in software and computer science, so when I’m doing coding and I’m using Claude Code, I want statistical middle. I don’t want it trying new things with my code. I don’t want it to be a bad programmer like a junior, but I don’t want it to be doing stuff that’s so advanced and novel that it’s not tested, it’s going to break. I just want the middle, right?  Engineering middle. But when we’re running ads, it’s a race. And if you’re in the middle of the pack in a race, you’ve lost. So one of our big advantages is that we’re using a lot of AI for automation. We’re using a lot of automation tools to do our day-to-day. But when we’re coming up with a strategy and building out the ads, it’s a human that’s doing that because we want to be at this far end that’s going to be ahead of everybody else. We don’t want to be middle of the pack.  So from that sense, it’s constantly changing to keep on top of these things to figure out what’s new, what’s going on. The ad platforms are changing constantly because, you know, the way that we interact with the internet is changing constantly. So, like, yeah, it’s constant, it’s a constant race.  So, but doesn’t that also bring you back to the creative part?  It does.  How to be creative, maybe not design-wise, but some other way?  It does, but in a way that I think a lot of creative agencies don’t understand. Because a creative agency will focus on the story, and they will focus on, you know, telling a good story, and they are thinking, if I can put it this way, they’re thinking very linearly. So one of the big mistakes that we see, like I talk to a lot of other agency owners, and every once in a while I help consult on the side, just to give them some advice in what they’re doing, what’s working and what’s not.  And one of the things that I see a lot is that a lot of these agencies have not understood how the new PMax campaigns and how the new Advantage+ campaigns work, so they’re working against the AI algorithm. So a lot of these other agencies, they’re more content than they are technical. So what they’re doing is they’re trying to tell a good story from the content, and then what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to find the demographic that they think will match with the content. So they’re content first, right?  So what they’re trying to do is, if they’re putting together a story for a product, they then in their heads think, “Okay. Well, I think I need to go for, you know, women living in suburbs that are between this age and this age and this income range and are interested in XYZ thing, and that’s how I’m going to set up the system, and then they’re going to see my ad, and then there should be a connection there.” That’s not how it works anymore. So in that setup, I can see how it’s super important to understand the story and get all that done.  The modern way that we’re doing things that’s different is that when we’re building out our content, we work with the content agency or we work with the marketing team to say, “What is your interest piece that’s going to get people to stop scrolling? What’s the interest piece that’s going to get people to want to read more? How do we build that desire for them? And then give me those in different assets, different pictures, different videos, different texts, different descriptions, different headers.”  What we then do is we take all of that content, and we put it into an asset library on PMax. So what we do is instead of telling PMax to look for XYZ demographic, we don’t tell it to do any of that. We let it go broad, and it does the opposite. What it does is, and of course, this is after the caveat. We’ve already set up the landing pages. We’re collecting all the data. We’ve tested all that. The data modeling is solid, so the entire funnel, all the micro actions, everything, we know that is being fed cleanly into the system, because that’s important. What the system’s then going to do is it’s going to, like, not just A/B test, but it’s going to take every combination that it can think of with all the different assets, with the videos, the text, the this and that and the other thing, and it’s going to start testing all the different combinations quickly.  And mixed in there is all the interest, attention, desire, everything. The algorithm is then going to figure out, based on all the data points that it has on us, it has, like, 57,000 data points, I think, Meta has on us. When a user has this pattern of data, they seem to resonate with this combination of assets. This pattern resonates with this combination. So bit by bit, what it does is it will start creating audiences for you that resonate with different kind of, like, asset packages. And then lo and behold, what we see is that emergent is the attention content all gets grouped together, and now we have an audience that’s ready for attention.  The interest piece, this is all the content that we had flagged for interest. Here’s our interest audience. And then the AI is basically working to figure out for you, not based on anything other than random data points and patterns, what is the audience for you? And then it’ll be able to then say, “Okay, now that we have a pattern to look for, we have, like, another 100,000 people that match this pattern and we can start advertising to them. And that’s the proper way to do it. But the thing that people are uncomfortable with is that it’s a black box. We don’t know what their demographic is. We don’t know where they live on the internet. We don’t know what their interests are. We don’t know any of that. It’s just random data points and math that has created this audience for us. And if you were to extract those people and put two or three of them next to each other, you’d go, like, “I don’t understand why these people have anything in common.”  But somewhere in the data, the data is signaling that they are going to resonate with your content. So this is what I mean. Like, the content is still important, but I think it’s skewed, like, a little bit. I’d say, like, now it’s, like, 60% data and math and 40% content, whereas before, it was much more heavy on the content side.  Very interesting. And this is how your platforms will find the lookalike audience based on your sample audience?  Exactly. Exactly.  Yeah. That’s fascinating. So other than the lead generation, what’s one thing that you’re actively trying to figure out in your business?  Other than that, we’re just having a lot of fun with all these new AI tools. I’m getting a few members of my team working with Claude. A few of us are working with ChatGPT. We’re trying to see, like, what these platforms can do, what are the things it can automate. I think one of the really cool things is now something that used to take, like, weeks to create code around, it can be done in an afternoon.  So it’s like, as soon as we identify a business problem, something that my team has to do, like, you know, three or four times a week that slows us down, now I can tell my devs, like, “Hey, guys, like, this is a business problem that we have. Can you guys just come up with a quick tool to do?” And we can build it, and we can just have it. So we’re trying to experiment more and more with how we can kind of speed up our development process.  And because we’ve been developing for so long, there’s a few things that are kind of like the—a few of the standard ways to run a development team that are now starting to be questioned because these LLMs are getting better and better at taking over some of these mundane tasks, that we’re starting to revisit what is our QA strategy when we’re actually coding. Like, what’s a more important skill set? One of the things I think that we’re trying to navigate right now is what is our hiring process for interns going forward?  So in the past, when we were looking for juniors and interns, the skills that we were looking for was like, what is your ability to figure out the answer to this question, right? Given a complex question, given a complex task, how are you going to be able to figure out how to solve this? Because of the rise of LLMs, finding the answer is no longer as important as asking the smart question. And the challenge that we’re facing right now is that asking a smart question requires critical thinking. A lot of critical thinking requires experience. The best critical thinkers have decades of experience behind them. How do you get that from an 18-year-old who’s coming from school?  They literally have no experience. That’s why they’re coming to us as interns. So we’re trying to figure out, like, okay, how do we square that? And we’re very proud of the internship work that we do. It’s a way for us to give back to the community. We work with a lot of the colleges and universities in town. Like I said, I myself came from having taught high school, and I’m very passionate about education, so I want to do good by that industry, by those students.  But we’re having a bit of a hard time because we don’t want to necessarily disadvantage them, but we’re also trying to figure out how do you find a good critical thinker among kids with no experience. So that’s probably the thing that we’re trying to figure out right now.  Yeah. That is fascinating. And that is a big issue for young people coming up, how to get those internships. Internships are harder to get, and probably this is the main reason for it, because people use technology to replace the inexperienced people.  The bar has definitely gone much higher. And again, we’ve experienced this as well, where, like, we’ll have a task, and we can ask an intern to do it, and they’ll kind of, you know, grudgingly figure it out and do it. But if it’s a critical task that needs to be done, that same exact task can be handed off to an LLM, and it’ll just get it done. Yeah. It won’t be amazing quality the way that, you know, a senior developer will do it, but it’ll be good enough, and it’ll be probably better than what the intern can do.  So if you’re only looking at the task from a purely productive lens, well, I’ll get a better result from the LLM, so then the intern has no purpose. We’re having to reshape the way we think about this, where if we are truly building an internship program, at that point, it’s not about the productivity, it’s about the learning that the intern gets out of it. So it becomes a teaching thing. So we have to be okay with handing off this task to the intern, knowing that an LLM could probably do a better job.  But they need to learn how to do it first so that they can rise above it. And I think what we’re seeing right now is that companies are not mandated to teach. They don’t care about the learning of the intern. They care about the production of the thing. And in the past, it was cheaper to get the intern to do it because there was no other option. But I think companies are realizing, like, well, we can just have the LLM do it, and it’ll be better and faster. Why do we need the interns? And that’s why these opening early positions are not being handed out anymore. The problem with that is that you don’t get senior-level people without training them up as juniors, and we’re giving all of that learning opportunity to machines.  Yeah.  So what does our future look like with that gap? What does the future look like for these kids coming out of school? Like, these are all obviously much bigger questions than my company can ever answer. This is a bigger societal question, but this is what we’re seeing kind of on the front lines, having a very strong internship program. We’re struggling with this idea, like, where is this next generation coming from?  That’s scary. That’s very scary. So who are the ideal clients that, if they listen to this podcast, you want them to contact you? Yeah. So basically, our biggest successes are with brands that are very strong on the wholesale side and are already in retail stores. So a lot of times what happens is you have a company that does an amazing product. They’re already in Walmart, they’re already in Costco, they’re already at Winners, and they have built up a very successful wholesale B2B business. They then launch a Shopify store, and they want to start getting the brands and start building a relationship directly with their consumers.  And then they’re realizing, like, “Oh, this is a different game, and we’re struggling.” And then at that point, it’s easy for us to come in and help because they have a strong offering already. They have a wholesale side that can drive their growth. And our job is to make sure that we start help building out that direct-to-consumer side by making sure that all of the data is mapped out properly. We like working with companies like that because they already have a very good idea of their marketing, why their product is successful.  They know which products are successful and not, so we can skip a lot of the learning part, and we’re just putting a megaphone on their existing brand and their existing offering in the most efficient way possible to make sure that, you know, right away out of the gate, that their D2C business is going to be just as strong as their wholesale business.  Yeah. Oh, that’s fascinating. So essentially, you pick those companies that have a good product already because it’s tested in wholesale channels and the Costcos and Walmarts and the Amazons of the world, and you help them tap directly the consumers through very targeted advertising.  Exactly, exactly. And then once we have that basic foundation set up, then we start doing interesting things like, how do we get the newsletters out? How do we help them get their marketing team to have more of a direct relationship with their end customer? Because when you go to a Costco or you go to a Walmart and you pick up a product, what happens is that the retailer holds the relationship, right?  It’s a way to help them offset that. And it’s kind of a tightrope that we have to walk because we recognize that the relationship with the wholesaler is still key. So whatever we do, we have to be conscious that we’re not going to upset that balance.  Yeah.  And that everybody’s winning, everybody’s making money, everybody’s growing, nobody’s getting upset with one side or the other. So because we’ve had experience working with national brands, we are positioned to understand what that relationship looks like. We know from our client side what it’s like when they’re talking to the Costco rep, what it’s like when they’re talking to the Walmart rep, what those subtle differences are in culture, and what we need to be aware of because, you know, we want to make sure that nothing that we do on our side jeopardizes that relationship.  Yeah. And then the big companies—what they want is they want to commoditize you, and they want to control the relationship, the brand. They want their white-label brand on top of your product. Yeah.  Which is their right. I mean, they’re the retailers. They’re the big guys.  Yeah. If you don’t build your own brand, then you’re going to slip into the white label because you have no leverage over the big, big stores. But if you have a strong brand, you have leverage, and then the whole relationship works better. So it’s very interesting. Okay.  So if people would like to learn about how they can do that, how they can go from wholesale to D2C, and would like to learn about how you can help them, where should they go and how can they contact you?  Yeah, so there’s a lot of information on our website, so drivemarketing.ca, so the Canadian extension. Yeah. And then I think I’m the only Sheldon Poon that’s really active on LinkedIn. I think there’s one other one that’s maybe in Hong Kong somewhere, but that’s not me. He’s, I think, an older guy. So if people look me up on LinkedIn under Sheldon Poon and just message me, I’m pretty active there and I try to answer everybody.  And what I love is helping people out. Even if people have no intention of hiring us, I’m like, “That’s totally fine.” Send me your questions because I like to be able to help and answer and know what people are struggling with because it helps our work. It just gives me an opportunity to have conversations with people.  Awesome. So if you run a brand that has already cracked the wholesale channels, but you want to build your direct-to-consumer, you know, hit up Sheldon on LinkedIn, Sheldon Poon, and have a chat with him. As you can see, he’s a great person to chat with. And if you enjoyed this show, then stay tuned because every week we have a couple of entrepreneurs who are building great companies who come and share their frameworks with you. So Sheldon, thanks for coming and sharing your wisdom, and thanks for listening.  Yeah. Thank you. This was great. It was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on.  Important Links: Sheldon's LinkedIn Sheldon's  website

In this week's episode of Building Brand Advocacy, Lindsey Gamble, creator economy strategist at IZEA,  unpacks the latest creator economy shifts, from B2B vs B2C creator strategy to behavioural psychology, and the value of content creators in the modern industry.We also delve into which brands are winning at advocacy right now, how to turn consumers into advocates, and the impact of showing up in AI-powered search.In this episode, we cover:The creator economy landscape; key trends, creator value, and why popularity is surgingB2B vs B2C creator strategyHow brands connect with consumers vs creatorsThe state of brand advocacy, who's doing it right, and how to earn itShowing up in AI-powered searchChapters00:00 Welcome to Cannes Lions02:38 Top Creator Trends05:30 B2B vs B2C Creators Explained11:21 Creator Tiers and Trust14:14 Everyone Is a Creator17:12 The Current State of Advocacy22:18 Earning Brand Love26:20 How AI Search Will Impact

מה באמת קורה כשסטארטאפ נלהב פוגש את הבירוקרטיה והמורכבות של מערכת הבריאות? בפרק סיכום העונה השנייה של 'עושים חדשנות בבריאות', סיון ורדי מארחת את אורי גורן, מנהל מרכז החדשנות במרכז הרפואי מאיר מקבוצת כללית, לשיחה פתוחה על מה שבאמת עובד ובעיקר על מה שמכשיל מיזמים מבטיחים עוד לפני שהם יוצאים לדרך.אורי חושף את הדגלים האדומים שגורמים לסטארטאפים ליפול כבר בפגישה הראשונה, ומסביר למה הפיתוח הקלאסי של "עוד מסך לרופא" הוא טעות קריטית שמפספסת לחלוטין את העומס הקליני בשטח. בהמשך השניים דנים באתגרים המורכבים של פתרונות B2C המבוססים על אימוץ מטופלים, ובשאלה החשובה: איך AI יכול לשנות את המשחק ולעזור לנו להפוך ל"חולים טובים יותר" שמנהלים את הבריאות של עצמם בצורה חכמה. פרק חובה לכל יזם ויזמת בתחום ה-HealthTech שמחפשים תובנות פרקטיות וטיפים מעשיים שיחסכו לכם זמן יקר, כסף וטעויות קריטיות בדרך להצלחה בסקייל.

Christian Lynch went from running a childhood lemonade stand to dropping out of college, but he never lost his entrepreneurial drive. Today, he is the founder of Phase Two Coffee, a private catering mobile coffee cart generating $25,000 to $27,000 a month/cart—all without the massive overhead, debt, or risk of a traditional brick-and-mortar cafe.In this episode of the UpFlip Podcast, Christian breaks down his exact blueprint for launching and scaling a highly profitable mobile coffee cart business. He shares how working for free at a local shop saved him half a million dollars in mistakes, why B2B corporate events make up roughly 94% of his revenue, and how to craft irresistible offers that keep event planners coming back.Whether you love coffee or are just looking for a lucrative, low-overhead business model, this episode is packed with actionable advice on sales, marketing, and avoiding expensive rookie mistakes.What You'll Learn in This Episode:The Power of Free Labor: Why working for free at a coffee shop for two months saved him an estimated $500,000 in expensive business mistakes.The B2B Goldmine: Why corporate events make up 93-94% of his total revenue, and why B2B clients have vastly better budgets than B2C.Targeting the Gatekeepers: Why you should actively market your services to wedding and event planners instead of trying to sell directly to brides and grooms.Crafting Irresistible Offers: How applying principles from Alex Hormozi's $100M Offers helped him perfectly price and position his coffee cart experience.Start-Up Costs: A realistic breakdown of the $2,000 to $15,000 capital needed to build out your own cart, espresso machine, and grinder setup.Stop dreaming about a brick-and-mortar cafe and learn how to take your business on the road!Tags: Business ideas, Entrepreneurship, Business growth, Startup, Side HustleResources:Tired of guessing what business you should start? Before you waste months chasing an idea that doesn't fit you, take the UpFlip Assessment. It's a free tool that asks about your skills, budget, experience, goals, location, and what kind of work you actually enjoy — then matches you with business ideas that make the most sense for YOU. Click the link in the show notes to see your best-fit business ideas in seconds — for free. UpFlip Assessment Tool:  https://accelerator.upflip.com/assessment Follow Our Second Channel Here: https://next.upflip.com/spotify Connect with Christian: https://www.instagram.com/christian.j.lynch/

You can't wave a magic wand and get more leads in today's market. What you CAN do is make sure not a single one gets left behind, and Jen and Melissa lay out a high-impact way to do that with video! Learn the seven moments where it works best, and the tips that keep it from backfiring or getting stale.HousekeepingOnline Sales and Marketing Summit - Oct 1-2 - Austin, TX - Roughly 95% sold out. FOMO no mo. Get your ticket.Online Sales Academy - Oct 28-30 - Live Virtual Event - Join the interest list under Events on the DYC site and you'll be first in line.TITO ShoutoutErin and Aeryn at Tim O'Brien Homes!. Melissa found a 100% personal video email one of them sent to a two-year-old lead, recapping his exact situation and timeline now that a new phase released.Key TakeawaysWhy OSCs Avoid It: "I don't like how I look or sound." "Nobody watches these anyway." Melissa gets honest about her own resistance and what finally got her past it.Video Is Still an Opportunity: When we shopped the top builders last year, more of them were sending video. Out of all of it, only ONE was actually personal. Ten years in to us recommended everyone do this - it is still wide open.Authentic Over Perfect: One take. Don't watch it, wince, and re-record. You'll find a hundred things to fix and only send one video all day!Skills CheckGo send three videos this week. One to a prospect, using the notes in your CRM so it's genuinely personal to them. One to a realtor partner, remembering that a B2B message sounds different than a B2C one! Finally, (and something that is most forgotten) send one internally to a salesperson who did a great job on a handoff or is staying on top of their CRM. You are in a front-facing role. Get out from behind the screen!

Here's an uncomfortable truth: most people will tell a total stranger about their weird rash before they'll tell their best friend how much debt they're carrying. That contradiction sits at the center of this episode. The guest is Carrie Joy Grimes, founder and CEO of WorkMoney — a nonprofit she describes as "the AARP for everyday people's money." She built it in 2020 after years as a union organizer, watching thousands of people wrestle with the same financial confusion she'd faced growing up in a household where money was never discussed. The conversation opens with a poker metaphor that ends up doing a lot of work: you play the hand you're dealt, but you can also change the rules of the game. That's WorkMoney's whole thesis — help individuals make the best move with what they have, while using collective bargaining power to get everyone better cards. From there, the discussion turns commercial. A nonprofit still has to think like a business, and Grimes walks through WorkMoney's five distinct revenue models — sales of her book "The Joy of Money", ethical sponsorships, a bill-negotiation product called Money Finder, and a for-profit enterprise arm designed to fund financial products that don't quietly profit off member debt. The host presses on the hardest part: how do you measure success when your mission is "financial security" and revenue isn't the real scoreboard? Grimes lays out three separate metrics her team tracks, including one that's surprisingly emotional. There's also a sharp aside on index investing — including a detail about Warren Buffett's will that reframes the whole "beat the market" industry — and a candid discussion of why WorkMoney deliberately avoids a pure B2C growth strategy. If you've ever wondered how a mission-driven business justifies its business model without losing its mission, this one's worth the full listen. Three Key Takeaways • A nonprofit still needs a real business model. Grimes runs five distinct revenue lines at WorkMoney — including book sales, ethical sponsorships, and a fee-based bill-negotiation service — because donations alone can't fund a movement at scale. • B2B2C beats B2C for mission-driven growth. Rather than acquiring millions of individual customers one at a time, WorkMoney partners with organizations that have already aggregated the audience it wants to serve — dramatically lowering acquisition cost and risk. • Success metrics get complicated when revenue isn't the goal. WorkMoney measures impact through self-reported financial confidence, actual debt/wealth changes, and retirement trajectory — because, as Grimes puts it, if members don't feel more secure, the work isn't landing. If today's conversation had you thinking about what it actually takes to turn a big idea into a sustainable business, you'll want to check out The Thought Leadership Handbook, co-authored by Peter Winick, Bill Sherman, and Naren Aryal. It's the playbook for shaping, packaging, and scaling expertise in a crowded market — exactly the kind of business-model thinking Carrie Joy Grimes brought to this episode. Learn more at thoughtleadershiphandbook.com, and order your copy today on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, or Amplify.

Vanitha is a marketing professor at the University of Pittsburgh, Director of their Center for Branding, and author of Hyper Digital Marketing: Six Pillars of Strategic Brand Marketing in an AI-Powered World. Her client roster includes Hershey, Kraft Heinz, and P&G — brands that don't tolerate bad advice.In this episode, she explains why the old "command and control" era of brand management is over, what generative engine optimization (GEO) means for your go-to-market strategy right now, and why the most strategic thing you can do for your brand today might be making your purpose machine-readable. If you're still building a brand for humans only, you're already behind.Key Takeaways4:41 — The death of command and control branding. Brand meaning is no longer dictated from the top down. It's co-created by influencers, social users, experts — and now AI agents. Governance has to evolve.6:10 — GEO & AEO replace SEO. Generative Engine Optimization and Answer Engine Optimization are the new disciplines. Brand managers must now optimize for AI agents, not just human search.6:52 — Agent-to-agent commerce is coming. A customer's AI agent will negotiate with a seller's AI agent. The "double agent problem" is not hypothetical — it's the near future of B2C and B2B commerce.8:46 — Phygital is a strategic imperative. Physical and digital experiences are merging. AI-powered dynamic shelves, Gucci's tech-integrated showrooms, and real-time personalization are the new baseline customer expectation.10:07 — AI as a brand governance layer. AI can monitor every touchpoint and enforce brand compliance at scale — something no human team can do. It can also catch PR crises before they escalate.13:55 — Brand intelligence: three AI capabilities every founder needs. Predictive analytics (lead generation), generative AI (content at scale), and ethical AI (aligning purpose with every touchpoint) — each with a different role in the customer journey.16:05 — The uncanny valley of personalization. Empathetic AI can read emotional state and adjust messaging — but cross the line and customers feel surveilled. Personalization has to be "just right" or it backfires.19:20 — Startups have a structural advantage over legacy brands. Legacy companies are paralyzed by hierarchies and permission layers. Founders building from scratch can design AI-native workflows from day one.21:37 — Future-proof move: invest in data quality now. A unified, 360-degree view of customer data is the foundation for every AI capability. Without it, your AI tools have nothing to work with.22:47 — Purpose + Platform: the two most critical pillars. Purpose must become machine-readable. Platform thinking turns a product into an ecosystem. These two shifts separate brands that AI agents surface from those they ignore.26:44 — Brand as API. Codify your values into machine-readable rules. Program your AI agents to optimize for what you actually stand for — or they'll optimize for something else entirely.29:54 — Start from the experience, not the tools. The biggest mistake founders make: buying AI tools and hoping they add up to something. Work backwards from the customer's pain point, then slot in the right AI capability.37:39 — Highest-leverage AI moves in the next 60–90 days. Lead generation, predictive analytics for lifetime value modeling, and personalized content at scale — these are the three areas most founders are underleveraging right now.Tweetable Quotes"Brand meaning is no longer dictated from the top down. It's assembled by algorithms, co-created by communities, and negotiated between machines before a human is ever involved." — Dr. Vanitha Swaminathan"Your next customer's AI is already looking. The question is whether it can find you." — Jeff Mains"Taking your brand purpose and converting it into machine-readable code — that's what it means to be visible in an AI-powered world." — Dr. Vanitha Swaminathan"Peloton could have just sold treadmills. Every brand needs to ask: are we a product, or are we a platform?" — Dr. Vanitha Swaminathan"The small entrepreneur has a huge advantage. They're building systems from scratch — legacy organizations are caught with hierarchies that AI can't penetrate." — Dr. Vanitha Swaminathan"Purpose isn't a brand value anymore. It's infrastructure." — Jeff Mains"Start from the experience, work back to the tools — not the other way around." — Dr. Vanitha Swaminathan"You have to put checks and balances in place just like companies built privacy policies after the first cybersecurity wave. That's where brand management is headed." — Dr. Vanitha SwaminathanSaaS Leadership Lessons1. Your brand needs to be legible to machines, not just humans. AI agents are the new gatekeepers between your product and your buyers. If your differentiation, purpose, and proof points aren't structured in a way machines can parse, you won't make the shortlist — even if you're the best solution. Audit your website and content through the lens of an AI agent, not just a human reader.2. Stop buying tools. Start redesigning processes. Most companies pour money into AI tools that live in isolation and never add up to a better customer experience. The highest-ROI move is mapping your customer journey, identifying the friction points, and then selecting AI capabilities to solve specific problems. Tools follow process — not the other way around.3. Your data is your competitive moat. AI is only as good as what you feed it. Founders who invest early in unified, high-quality customer data — breaking down internal silos and creating a 360-degree view — will compound that advantage over time. Your competitors buying tools without clean data are spinning their wheels.4. Codify your values or your AI will invent them. If you don't tell your AI agents what to optimize for, they'll optimize for something — and it might not align with your brand. Translate your purpose, values, and brand standards into machine-readable rules. Think of your brand as an API: clear inputs, predictable outputs, consistent behavior at every touchpoint.5. The human-AI mix is your new product design challenge. The question isn't whether to use AI in customer-facing functions — it's where the handoff happens. Too much AI and you feel sterile. Too little and you can't scale. The founders who win will design deliberate human-in-the-loop moments that create trust and preserve the brand experience where it matters most.6. Think platform, not product. Every SaaS company is already closer to a platform than a product — you have data, users, and network effects working for you. Lean into it. Build the ecosystem around your core offering. Nike isn't a shoe company; Peloton isn't a treadmill company. Ask what yours is really for, and build accordingly.Guest Resourcesvanitha@katz.pitt.eduhttps://business.pitt.edu/professors/vanitha-swaminathan/https://www.facebook.com/PittBusinessSchool/photos/vanitha-swaminathan-thomas-marshall-professor-of-marketing-and-director-of-the-c/10158297436008280/https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanitha-swaminathan-5924896https://www.instagram.com/vanitha_swaminathanEpisode SponsorThe Futureproof Series - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfkXKUPZ5xuOqMPR7_gzGybncTtavyR1NThe Captain's KeysSmall Fish, Big Pond – https://smallfishbigpond.com/ Use the promo code ‘SaaSFuel'Champion Leadership Group – https://championleadership.com/https://jeffmains.com/books/SaaS Fuel ResourcesWebsite - https://championleadership.com/Jeff Mains on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffkmains/Twitter - https://twitter.com/jeffkmainsFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/thesaasguy/Instagram - https://instagram.com/jeffkmains

About the episodeWe're communicating more than ever, and AI has made producing polished language almost effortless. So why does it feel harder than ever to actually move people? Kelly Urban, CMO at Maui Jim and formerly VP of Global Media Relations, Influencer Marketing, and Social Media at GoPro, joins Rachel Truair to explore what's actually changed in how we communicate, and why confidence, not polish, might be the real foundation of persuasion. Kelly makes the case for going to AI last instead of first, explains why trust is harder to earn than attention even though attention gets all the anxiety, and names the one piece of leadership advice she'd erase completely. The question underneath it all: if AI can write almost anything, what's the one thing only you can say with heart?Quotes“Attention can be captured very quickly, but it can go away so fast.”“I think the inflection point is are you going to AI first or are you going to AI last?”“If you can find that magic spot of being very personally connected to your team, you will be able to lead in a way that others can't.”From the conversationWhy getting distribution used to be the hard part, and getting attention is nowWhether steadiness or reinvention actually builds a stronger brandGoing to AI first vs. going to AI last, and why it might decide whether you keep the ability to think for yourselfWhat most leadership advice gets wrong about staying professionally distant from your teamWhich is harder to earn right now, trust or attention, and why that's the wrong question to answer too quicklyAbout the guestKelly Urban joined Kering Eyewear in September 2025 as the CMO of Maui Jim after serving 11+ years as a VP of Marketing at GoPro.  Urban is responsible for driving global brand strategy and expanding awareness for Maui Jim's sun and optical collections across B2B and B2C audiences internationally. Urban is based out of Kering's Manhattan office.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellybaker1/

Holden Bale runs strategy at Merkle, the dentsu-owned consulting firm with roughly 16,000 people worldwide and about 4,000 of them sitting in data science. He came on to walk through what Merkle's consumer research actually shows about AI and shopping. The numbers do not line up with the conference talk track.Twenty-two percent of consumers across North America, Central America and most of EMEA now name an AI app as a first stop for product search and evaluation. Google still sits around 78 percent, Amazon around 49. More than half of men and over a third of women say they already use AI tools to shop. That is self-reported, and Holden is the first to discount it.The gap brands keep missing is what happens after discovery. Fifty-three percent say they leave the AI app and buy on a website. Eleven percent claim they bought inside the app. Holden says that second number is fiction, and explains why the GMV math cannot carry it. He has a slide he brings to conferences in red type: agentic commerce does not exist.Then he gives the forecast anyway. A quarter of an eight trillion dollar B2C market flowing through discrete AI apps by the end of the decade, most of that share taken out of marketplaces. Somewhere between 10 and 25 percent of commerce running autonomously. The condition for all of it is Amazon and the LLM firms working out a commercial arrangement instead of a lawsuit.One more number worth sitting with. Merkle surveyed 100-plus companies above a billion dollars in revenue. Eighty-eight percent had deployed something powered by a large language model. Six percent could prove it moved EBITDA.Holden's advice to brand executives has almost nothing to do with AI and everything to do with the product data most companies still cannot pull out of nineteen different systems.This episode is brought to you by Avalara. Tax, tariffs and duties get complicated the moment you add a channel or cross a border. See what Avalara has built for growing brands at avalara.watsonweekly.comNewsletter: watsonweekly.comChapters 00:00 What Merkle actually does, and why strategy and execution stopped being separate jobs 03:15 The Shoptalk data: AI is eating search, not shopping 06:11 Is AI traffic invisible, or are brands just not tracking it 08:25 The social commerce comparison, and why perceived attribution matters 11:36 Avalara 13:07 The 2030 forecast: 25 percent inside AI apps, 10 to 25 percent autonomous 16:47 Who has time to train a personal AI 17:49 Order history is the one thing the LLMs do not have 21:34 What a brand executive should start now 24:34 Test and learn, minus the learn

The day Aashna Makin's employer offered her a promotion, she quit, a decision that has looked more strategic with every year since. She's gone on to manage over $75 million in paid media across 150+ niches, building a full-time practice from the ground up and recently sharing a panel stage with Danny at SMX Advanced in Boston. In this episode, Aashna breaks down what separates paid ads that actually grow a business from ones that just burn budget, why lead gen is a fundamentally harder problem than e-commerce, and the one habit she wishes every junior media buyer would build from day one.Episode Highlights: Aashna and Danny discuss why paid ads that drive real growth require a predictable, documented system, not just a well-structured campaign, and what happens to accounts built on checklists instead of strategy.She gives the B2B team-building example: how a campaign performing perfectly on every platform metric was creating a lead-quality problem that had nothing to do with the ads and everything to do with calendar availability.The reveal why lead gen is fundamentally harder than e-commerce in paid media, from messaging precision to seasonality to the scarcity of quality resources for practitioners working in the space.Aashna makes the case for pinning headlines, explaining why she hasn't been convinced by Google's arguments against it, particularly for businesses where a single wrong audience segment can poison the entire pipeline.The conversation details the ownership mindset: treating every dollar of ad spend as if it's leaving your own bank account, and why she considers it the single most important habit a new media buyer can build.Episode Links:Aashna Makin on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/aashnamakinWebsite: reachaashna.comSell Like Crazy by Sabri Suby: Available on AmazonSMX Advanced 2026 Panel, "Agentic PPC: What's Real, What's Hype, What's Next": searchengineland.comSend us Fan MailFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor:Website and Blog: thedmmentor.comInstagram: @thedmmentorLinkedin: @thedmmentorYouTube: @thedmmentorInterested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family:Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations.ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business's digital marketing strategy.

In this episode Thomas and I clarify the differences between marketing and branding and talk about ways that AEC firms can use their brand and a brand strategy to differentiate themselves. We draw on best practices from B2C and B2B to brainstorm what a blue ocean strategy could look like for an AEC firm and what success looks like for a strong AEC brand. About Tom: Tom is a professor of practice, teaching Sustainability Marketing and Branding. He also advises global cities, institutions, and corporations on the development of strong brand strategies. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-murphy-929b5730/

Show Highlights: Explore what's new at DTN and their Ag Hub platform. [03:07] DTN's vision to be a data escrow solving data-sharing distrust in ag. [05:38] Problematic fragmentation and B2C treatment of farmers. [09:55] How Ag Hub IDs use cases to drive higher wallet share. [13:54] Why in-house ag-data solutions and AI can't really work. [18:03] DTN's ability to combine data with customer CRMs/ERPs. [22:19] Current and future benefits for growers through Ag Hub. [26:36] Ag Hub's decision-grade intelligence beyond digitizing workflows. [31:21] Will more data transparency worsen commoditization? [41:08] A case for traceability-driven future proofing for "data-enhanced" bushels. [43:14] Explore DTN by visiting https://www.dtn.com/agriculture. Connect with Grey Montgomery on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/greymontgomery/. Find Katherine Sartiano on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherinesartiano/. If you are interested in connecting with Joe, go to LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemosher/, or schedule a call at www.moshercg.com.

DescriptionYour sales team is busy. The pipeline is full. But the revenue isn't showing up. The problem usually isn't effort or lead volume. It's the quality of the conversations happening when opportunity actually intersects with a prospect.Frank Gustafson has spent forty years in sales, working with everyone from solopreneurs to a $50 billion company. In this episode, he breaks down what he sees when he walks into an entrepreneurial business where the founder is still leading sales and the numbers aren't working. The issues are almost always the same: speed to lead is too slow, the sales cycle is dragging, and reps are discounting to close because they're pitching instead of asking.Frank walks Justin through a live roleplay of what a quality first conversation actually sounds like. It's not a script. It's a framework for lowering the prospect's guard in the first ten seconds and uncovering whether a real problem exists. They also dig into what has changed in sales since COVID, why the bar for human connection has dropped so low that it's now a competitive advantage, and how to use AI to make sales teams more efficient without losing the human interaction that actually closes deals.Frank Gustafson is a sales coach and consultant who works with entrepreneurial B2B and B2C companies, often where the founder is still leading the sales team. He offers free, ungated sales tools at frankgustafson.com.What you'll learnWhy your speed to lead matters and how one company went from 87 minutes to 16 minutes in under a monthThe exact opening line Frank uses on cold calls to lower a prospect's guard and get permission to continueWhy pitching your product in a trade show booth kills deals and what to do insteadHow to use AI for call scoring and CRM logging without letting it dehumanize your sales processWhy the post-COVID drop in civility has created a massive opening for sellers who actually careSubscribeNew episodes feature real DFW business owners who have been through the fire and came out the other side. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one.Consult CTAPhoenix IT Advisors serves Dallas-Fort Worth businesses. If you need IT support, cybersecurity, or technology strategy, visit PhoenixITAdvisors.com and schedule a consult.LinksFull episode: https://dfwrockstars.com/episode/8Phoenix IT Advisors: https://PhoenixITAdvisors.comFrank Gustafson: https://frankgustafson.com

Chris, Hogi, and Adam address a bizarre, viral forum post targeting Chris Collins Performance on a competitor's platform. The team breaks down the obvious inconsistencies in the post—from fake claims about techs quitting to misinformed takes on labor grids and parts pricing—and explains why real service advisors who understand business profitability actually thrive under proper operational systems. The guys also answer a direct hotline question comparing automotive parts departments to heavy-duty truck parts operations. They break down the fundamental differences between B2C car dealerships and B2B truck dealerships, how wholesale operations drive millions in outside revenue, and the exact process needed to stop special order parts bleeding before cleaning up obsolescence. Plus: Adam checks in live from his hot Florida vacation with 15 family members, detailing their annual family drink competition, fish boils, golfing in 106-degree heat, and the team's weekly workouts at Planet Fitness. (Note: SDR Live Academy returns next week on Zoom, where Hogi leads an interactive workshop on building and mapping high-performance service drive systems!) KEY TAKEAWAYS - Debunking Online Forum Drama: An unfiltered breakdown of a fake forum post, addressing why right-sizing labor rates and pricing matrices is essential for shop survival. - The "Mom Test" for Maintenance: Why advisor integrity means never selling a client something you wouldn't sell to your own mother. - B2C vs. B2B Parts Operations: How auto parts departments rely on internal service drive volume, while heavy-duty truck parts departments generate millions in outside fleet and municipality sales. - Stopping the Obsolescence Bleed: Why cleaning up old inventory fails if you haven't fixed your prepaid special order parts processes and technician returns first. - The Planet Fitness Business Model: A funny look at how low-cost gym memberships rely on members never showing up—and what happens when everyone actually does. - SDR Academy Systems Preview: A look at Hogi's upcoming workshop on outlining and executing a seamless operational blueprint. GOT A QUESTION OF YOUR OWN? Call 833-3-ASK-SDR — we answer on the show! Get special deals on our books and training at offers.chriscollinsinc.com #ServiceDriveRevolution #FixedOps #AutomotiveLeadership #ServiceManager #ServiceAdvisor #DealershipLife #CarBusiness #ChrisBulldogCollins #AutoIndustry #DealershipTraining #ServiceDirector #FixedOperations #BusinessStrategy #SDRAcademy #HeavyDutyTrucks #PartsDepartment #Obsolescence SDR Live Academy Online Training For Huge Results: https://chriscollinsinc.com/op/sdr-live-weekly/ Book your Profit Gap Analysis Now: https://calendly.com/byron-webster/30min Best-selling books on making Fixed Ops a money printer: https://chriscollinsinc.com/shop/ Got a question? Call us at 1-833-3-ASK-SDR  Want to work with the best? https://chriscollinsinc.com/careers/ Grab Chris' New Leadership Book I AM LEADER: https://iamleader.com  

Paul sits down with Dr. Jim Taylor — performance psychologist, former U.S. Ski Team competitor, and founder of Prime Mind for a conversation that traces a career built on a single insight. The mind is the final frontier, and almost none of us know how to work it. Jim's origin story is disarmingly honest. He was a good ski racer with a bad head, the kind coaches used to call a head case. One summer psychology course in high school changed the trajectory of his athletic career, and eventually his entire life. He walks Paul through what actually changed that season (not the strength, not the technique, the internal architecture) and why he decided somewhere around age nineteen that psychology hadn't been a choice so much as a calling. The heart of the conversation is the mental work Jim now teaches. Confidence isn't a skill, it's a muscle. Visualization isn't a nice-to-have — the primitive mind can't tell the difference between an imagined rep and a real one, and Jim used that mechanism to rewire his own belief system on the way to an international-level career. Resilience is fundamentally a perception problem. And the "good road / bad road" fork, he says, is often not a conscious choice at all — which is why most people stay on the bad road even when they know exactly where it ends. The episode's emotional center is the weight vest metaphor. Jim describes what happens when an athlete steps into competition carrying twenty pounds of expectation, identity, and self-worth on their shoulders. He walks through Alyssa Liu's Olympic story as an example of what the release actually looks like, opens up about his recent decision to walk away from a startup he'd invested two years into, and unveils the app-based extension of his practice Prime Mind that he built in the two-and-a-half months since he left. It closes on a legacy answer that quietly matches Paul's own help people see themselves before they know how to see themselves.   Timestamps 00:00 — Welcome and introduction 00:30 — The head case origin story 02:00 — The summer course that changed everything 03:30 — The breakthrough season on the U.S. Ski Team 05:00 — Middlebury, Psych 101, and the calling 06:30 — Purpose and passion as a fill-in-the-blank question 08:00 — Why startup building feels riskier than skiing 09:30 — Network, credibility, and the ski racing runway 11:00 — Performance psychology beyond sport 12:30 — Confidence, self-talk, and mental imagery 14:00 — The primitive mind and positive reps 15:30 — Rewiring belief through visualization 17:00 — Resilience as a mental muscle 18:30 — The good road and the bad road 20:00 — Post-medal letdown and identity loss 21:30 — Athlete to performer identity shift 23:00 — Alyssa Liu and the weight vest release 25:00 — Toxic sports cultures 26:00 — Walking away from a two-year startup 28:00 — Building Prime Mind solo in ten weeks 30:00 — The B2C and B2B model 31:30 — Favorite client stories and the mind as final frontier 33:00 — Legacy as long game 34:00 — Where to find Dr. Jim and Prime Mind Episode Resources Discover how Dr. Jim Taylor helps athletes, executives, performers, and high-achievers of every kind take the weight vest off and access the mental muscles that make peak performance sustainable — through one-on-one work, keynote and workshop content, and his new app Prime Mind: www.drjimtaylor.com Legacy Podcast: For more information about the Legacy Podcast and its co-hosts, visit https://businesslegacypodcast.com Leave a Review: If you enjoyed the episode, leave a review and rating on your preferred podcast platform. For more information: Visit https://businesslegacypodcast.com to access the show notes and additional resources on the episode.  

Mergers and acquisitions look great on a spreadsheet, but they are often disastrous for the people involved. The moment a deal is announced, the corporate culture you've built can vanish, replaced by tribalism, fear, and a fierce battle over "turf." In this insightful episode from the archive, Andy Lopata sits down with Jennifer Fondrevay, known as the "M&A Whisperer." Having navigated three multi-billion dollar mergers as a C-suite executive (and advised countless others), Jennifer shares the raw truth about what really happens to teams during a corporate takeover. From the five stages of grief in the workplace to the dangerous "us vs. them" mentality, this episode explores the intense psychological toll of M&A. Discover why the "pre-mortem" is your most vital communication tool, why frontline leaders must own the narrative, and how shifting the focus back to the customer is the ultimate way of ending corporate turf wars. If your company is facing a merger, acquisition, or any major reorganisation, this is your survival guide. What you will learn in this episode The Corporate Stages of Grief: Why the immediate reaction to a merger isn't excitement, but denial, anger, and bargaining—and how leaders often fail to recognise these normal human emotions. The "Turf War" Antidote: How a junior product manager ended a massive fight between B2B and B2C teams by shifting the entire focus away from "who does it best." The Pre-Mortem Strategy: What is a pre-mortem, and why is it the most effective way to prepare for the inevitable negativity of a merger announcement. The Frontline Failure: Why a merger communication strategy is doomed to fail if it relies solely on the CEO and the HR department. The "Tribalism" Problem: Why the loyalty you want your employees to feel for your brand is the very thing that makes merging with a competitor so painful. Actionable Insights Shift the Focus to the "North Star": When merging teams fight over whose process, software, or approach is "right," intervene immediately. Stop the turf war by asking: "What is best for the customer?" Forcing both sides to work backward from the customer's needs eliminates ego and allows the best solution to emerge naturally. Run an M&A "Pre-Mortem": Before announcing a major change to your company, gather your leadership team and brainstorm every piece of negative baggage and fear the employees will have. This allows you to prepare transparent, genuine answers, rather than defaulting to "I'll get back to you offline." Empower the Frontline Leaders: The people executing the merger were likely not in the room when the deal was made. If you want buy-in, you must bring these frontline managers into the narrative immediately. Give them the information and the platform to communicate the vision, because employees will trust their direct manager more than they trust a CEO who just got a massive payout. SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE Connect with Andy Lopata: Website | Instagram | LinkedIn | X/Twitter | YouTube Connect with Jennifer Fondrevay: Website |LinkedIn | The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring Episode 181 Featuring Jennifer Fondrevay

On the podcast: why founders belong in the marketing trenches more often, what makes ‘ugly' ads perform so well, and why stable ad performance is actually a red flag.Top Takeaways:

This week's guest, Sophie Brannon, details her first big move to London at 18 to chase a career in music journalism, landing concert tickets and festival passes as pay for her reviews at Kerrang Magazine. When the economics stopped working, she moved into a copywriter role at a digital agency and never left the industry, eventually becoming co-founder and director of StudioHawk US, one of the world's most respected specialist SEO agencies. In this episode, Sophie traces that winding path from rock journalism to SEO leadership, breaks down the real signal inside the AI search noise, and makes the case for why genuine relationships remain the foundation of everything that works in this industry.Episode Highlights: Sophie shares why the fundamentals of SEO, technical health, authoritative content, and brand signals are exactly what drive performance in AI search, and why the numbers never supported the "SEO is dead" narrative.Sophie details her initial refusal to move into an SEO role at 20 years old, explaining how her managers, who insisted she could do it anyway, set the entire trajectory of her career.She makes the case for treating AI search as an additional channel rather than a replacement, and explains why the real fix is to pull SEO into a holistic brand strategy it should have been part of all along.This conversation shares why StudioHawk turned away significant revenue by being honest about client fit, and why that honesty has become one of their strongest marketing assets.This episode illustrates what adaptability looks like in practice for an SEO agency leader as the search landscape changes in real time.Episode Links:Sophie Brannon on LinkedIn: Sophie BrannonSophie on Instagram: @sophiebrannonseoStudioHawk US: studiohawk.comProduct Led SEO by Eli Schwartz: Available on AmazonSend us Fan MailFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor:Website and Blog: thedmmentor.comInstagram: @thedmmentorLinkedin: @thedmmentorYouTube: @thedmmentorInterested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family:Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations.ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business's digital marketing strategy.

B2B marketing isn't playing a different game. It's playing the same game on hard mode.In this episode, we're joined by Ty Heath, Global Director of Thought Leadership Go-to-Market at LinkedIn and co-founder of the B2B Institute.Fresh off serving as Jury President for the Creative B2B Lions at Cannes, Ty shares what separated the best work from the rest—and why B2B creativity is entering a new era.We discuss:What won at Cannes B2B LionsWhy B2B creativity has maturedThe role of emotion in B2BBuying committees and "viability"Why ecosystems beat campaignsThe origin story of the B2B InstituteLong-term thinking inside LinkedInWhy B2B marketers are playing the game on "hard mode"Whether you work in B2B, B2C, media, or brand strategy, this conversation offers practical lessons on creativity, leadership and marketing effectiveness.Chapters:00:00 - Welcome Back, Tyronna Heath00:38 - Tyronna's New Role at LinkedIn01:11 - Winning an Effie for “Only on LinkedIn”02:58 - Becoming Jury President for the Creative B2B Lions05:24 - Reviewing 355 Cannes Entries07:20 - Has B2B Creativity Finally Matured?09:14 - What Effective B2B Creativity Looks Like12:00 - Why the Best Ideas Can Be Explained in One Sentence13:24 - What Is Still Missing from B2B Creative?16:01 - Why Ecosystems Can Be More Powerful Than Campaigns18:09 - The Role of Emotion in B2B Decision-Making18:23 - Cannes as a B2B Brand Experience21:37 - The Origin Story of the B2B Institute25:25 - How the B2B Institute Built Its Influence28:05 - Thought Leadership and Betting on What Won't Change31:09 - Human Behaviour as the Enduring Marketing Truth32:43 - Where B2B Creativity Goes Next34:15 - Why B2B Marketing Is “Hard Mode”37:07 - LinkedIn's Long-Term B2B Playbook38:01 - Building Authority, Credibility and Confidence39:10 - The B2B Institute as a Marketing Cheat Code40:05 - Where to Follow Tyronna and the B2B Institute

Want to get better sales leads? It starts with tracking what works. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will discuss the topic of where are your best leads coming from? Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you. And I’m just going to answer the question. I don’t know. (laughing) I’m just… David: Short podcast. Thanks for listening. Jay: Yeah, I’m just going to say it straight up. I mean, I do have some systems. We do try and use Google Analytics and things like that, and that helps a little bit. But I’ve never done a deep dive yet on this is the source, this is the well or the font of where my best leads have come from. So I’m looking forward to this discussion. David: This is really a good one to look at and to dive into a bit, because I’ve always maintained that if you don’t know where your best leads are coming from, then you don’t know where to go to get more of them, and when you are able to identify it, everything else gets a whole lot easier because now you can go fishing in the same ponds, rather than just trying to put stuff out to anyone and everyone, which is very expensive to do. You can really tune in and focus in on what people are doing, where they’re coming from, how they’re hearing about you so that you can go find more of them. In addition to… well, a number of the businesses that I’ve been involved in over the years, one of them was a retail mail order catalog business that I owned. And in a business like that, it’s absolutely critical to know where your best leads are coming from. Jay: Mm-hmm. David: We would run magazine ads and we would get people out of different magazines. We had ads running on television that were designed to get leads for our catalog business. And every single one of the ads we ran had some sort of mechanism to let us know where they were coming from. If it was calling an 800 number, we had one primary 800 number, but we would give them an extension to ask for. So we’d say, call this 800 number extension 214. Right? And 214 meant that it was coming from this particular TV station or whatever. If they were seeing something online, there would be specific links that they would click through that would tell us where it was coming from. If it was a magazine ad, it was a similar kind of thing on the back of the magazine, it would say, call this number, dial this extension, or go to this web address, and there would be a slash with a suffix on the url.. Jay: Mm-hmm. David: And that would tell us where it came from. And when people would call in, one of the first things that our people were required to ask them is, “where did you hear about us?” And there was a box there that they would fill out. Where did you hear about us? Oh, I saw your ad on such and such a magazine, or, I saw your ad on such and such a TV station. And so we would have the data that the computer said based on what they came in and said, and then we would also have the data corresponding with whatever the person said. So I was pretty pathological about it, and to this day I’m still very pathological about determining where leads come from. Even now when, you know, at the end of this podcast, when you say, how do people find out more? And I give out a link that link tracks back to the podcast, it lets me know that the people who register on that link, Came from the podcast. And if they’re coming from some other ad, then it’s going to have a different code and that sort of thing. So it’s not that hard to do when you discipline yourself to do it. And most people don’t do that until and unless they realize how much it is actually worth to you when you do that right. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And in today’s world, honestly, there is no excuse. It is so easy. There is so much data out there. If you want to target a specific group, you can target that group. And that’s kind of the process, right? You’re going to send out a link for this podcast, you’ll know who you get back. You’ll know age groups and those types of things. And then you’ll be like, well, let’s adjust it this way, or let’s adjust it that way. I mean, never in our history has there been such an easy way to say, I want this age group who’s interested in this type of thing. Then you can target that group. And then based upon that new batch of information you can target in even more. I know we all kind of complain that we’re being tracked everywhere we go, but at the same time, we’re all asking for it. We’re subscribing to newsletters, we’re hitting the like button. We’re feeding all of that information. So it becomes this circle, right? And I think it’s incredible personally. And if I am going to get sent an ad, I want it to apply to me. When I get something that I’m like, there’s no way that this is something that I would ever consider. I almost get angry. Like, come on, get your algorithms together here. David: Yeah. And what you’re talking about is probably a level or two above what I’m even talking about. Jay: Mm-hmm. David: I’m talking about simple things that most small or medium sized businesses can integrate into their own business, just so they have an idea of where the people who are paying them money are largely coming from. And I don’t mean every site they’ve visited over the past 20 years. Jay: Sure, sure. David: I mean, where did they hear from us most recently? Did they hear about us from the podcast? Did they hear about us from an email broadcast that went out through an email broadcast platform? If so, which one? If there is some sort of ad, which ad did they click on? There are some ads that we run on some websites where there’s an ad at the top of the page, there’s an ad on the side of the page. The ads say different things. We track those separately so we know which message and which ad. Does the top position get more of a response? Does the side position get more of a response? Because that tells us where to focus our attention on getting more people. And a lot of it, in the early stages especially, is just about seeing where the people are basically coming from. But then when you see who’s actually buying, that narrows it down even more. Jay: Yes. David: Because you may be getting more leads from one source than another, but you find out that the leads from that source aren’t converting. Jay: Yes. David: At which point you can stop advertising there and put your money behind the ads that work. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And when I mentioned how easy it is today, I even mean for small businesses. I mean, we started a small business and I don’t know anything about pay per click or, you know, anything like that. But I looked on Fiverr, you know, the website, Fiverr and Upwork, and I found somebody who said, I’ll do this for you for a month for 30 bucks and I’m like, it’s 30 bucks. I’ll try it out. We did the $30 and the results were dramatic. So we’re like, wait a minute, if we do 30, let’s do 60. Now we’ve got this guy we spend about maybe 250 a month with him, and we get constant leads that convert from him. I don’t know how he’s doing it and I don’t need to know how he’s doing it. Right? Now I can spend my time focusing on those leads. The other thing he’ll do is come back and say, okay, you’ve got a lot of people who are landing on your checkout page, but they’re not converting. So we’re like, “oh, wait a minute, what’s going on?” Is it the language we’re using? Is it the pictures we’re using? Are we not conveying the message? These things can be done for relatively cheap nowadays, and so even if you’re at the smallest point, I would definitely try some of those things. David: Yeah, it’s simple enough to be able to at least get an idea of where most people are coming from to be able to go back and get more. And obviously, we’re talking quite a bit about online, but there are a lot of offline sources. If you do networking, you go to networking functions, you may find that one networking function does much better than another. You may find that you go to one particular networking function and you don’t get any leads from it. You go back again and again and again, and you’re not getting leads. Everybody’s just schmoozing. That happens a lot in business. Jay: Yeah. David: Particularly in B2B. Well, B2C as well. So in those situations you can make determinations if you’re keeping track of it. But very many small businesses in particular will just go out, go to some sort of networking function or go to something that’s supposed to generate business, and they use that as an excuse like, “I’m doing something.” But if you go out to something like that and you’re not going out there with the idea of coming back with leads that you can follow up on, it’s really just a waste of time. So there’s a focus aspect to this. There’s an online versus offline aspect to this. But ultimately what it boils down to is the subject of this podcast. Where are your best leads coming from? Jay: Yeah. David: Where can I go to find more? Jay: Yeah, and I see this a lot and I’ve been a victim of it. Movement for the sake of movement. You know? I’m doing something, I’m going to these networking events. Going to these shows. Placing these ads. So when is it going to start working? Movement for the sake of movement is of no value. Right? There has to be some intent. It has to be trackable. It has to be adjustable. And I think it’s so easy to fall into that trap of “I’m doing something!” And so, where’s the result? David: Yeah, it reminds me of that Zig Ziglar quote, “Don’t look for your ship to come in if you haven’t sent one out.” Jay: Yeah. David: And very often we’re trying to do things that are generating results. We talked about goal setting in a previous podcast, and a lot of times we’re so focused on the goal, “I need to generate X dollars per month or X dollars per year.” And what am I going to do to do that? And we just run around in a lot of different directions trying to generate that amount of money. Well, what we need to be doing is saying, “okay, what is going to get me to that?” In other words, how many leads do I need to generate in a month in order to get to my number? If I know how many leads I need to generate in a month, because a certain percentage of them will convert and a certain percentage won’t convert. If I know how many people I need to initiate contact with on any given month, then we can track those metrics and say, “okay, well today is the 20th of the month” or whatever the date is. How many people have I initiated contact with so far this month? And if it’s less than the number that you know, you need to reach to hit your numbers, then okay, I need to initiate contact with this many more people. Because when you focus on those lead metrics, the things that you can actually control as opposed to the lag metrics, like how much actually came in for the month. You can focus on the lead measures and then the lag measures will follow. Jay: Yeah. And again, the focus of this podcast, the high value leads. So if you’re just not fishing in any pond, but you’re fishing in that pond where you know you’ve gotten some good leads before, maybe you won’t get as many leads, but who cares, right? Because you’ve got quality customers who are going to come back to you. And we’d all rather have that than, you know, a hundred little minnows on our line, right? David: Yeah, and it absolutely ties into the topic of what we’re talking about. Because when you find those really popular or those really productive fishing holes, then you say, okay, well if I go here, primarily, I can get fewer leads and know I’m still going to hit my numbers, so why would I want to waste time bringing in more leads over here if it’s not going to produce at the same level? Jay: Yeah, maybe ’cause some people like movement. It feels like you’re busy, so that’s a good thing. It’s not always a good thing, right? David: No. It’s an easy trap to fall into. Jay: Yeah. Well, how do people find out more? David? David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to have a conversation with you. If you’re looking to attract more high quality leads in your business. If you’d like to start focusing on the high value, high dollar leads that can do better things for your business, it’s probably worth a call. TopSecrets.com/call. Jay: All right, as always, great conversation. Can’t wait till we talk again. David: Thanks a lot, Jay. Are You Ready to Determine Where Your Best Leads are Coming From? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help. Need Clients Now? If you're already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here. Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here. Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you're serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here.

In this episode, Betsson AB CEO Pontus Lindwall discusses the company's recent financial results, regional strategies, and insights from the World Cup, providing valuable perspectives on the iGaming industry.Key TopicsBetsson's Q2 and H1 financial resultsRegional focus on Latam and EuropeRegulatory challenges in Western EuropeImpact of the World Cup on revenueStrategies for customer retention post-World CupDecline in Nordics and CEE regionsB2B and B2C revenue dynamicsFuture outlook for BetssonHost: Charlie HornerGuest: Pontus LindwallProducer: Anaya McDonaldEditor: Anaya McDonaldLearn how Optimove's Positionless Marketing is changing how iGaming teams operate. Discover how operators are using Optimove's Positionless Marketing Platform to launch personalised CRM campaigns, dynamically change casino lobbies and bet slips, and create engaging gamified experiences. Learn more at optimove.com.Finally, remember to check out Optimove at https://hubs.la/Q02gLC5L0 or go to Optimove.com/sbc to get your first month free when buying the industry's leading customer-loyalty service. 

What if the marketing playbook you've relied on for the past decade is quickly failing to get results? When customers rapidly shift their behaviors, agility requires being willing to rethink how you build and earn customer relationships from the ground up.Today, we're going to talk about the shift away from rented audiences and unreliable signals toward building durable, first-party data assets. Specifically, we'll cover:- Why the classic B2B and B2C buyer intent signals are becoming less reliable and what to look for instead.- How to navigate a new era of marketing measurement when privacy regulations and platform changes obscure the full picture.- The practical steps required to build a first-party data strategy that creates durable customer relationships, not just a larger database.To help me discuss this, I'd like to welcome, Alexi Hatch, CMO at Acoustic. About Alexi HatchAlexi Hatch is Chief Marketing Officer at Acoustic, where she leads global marketing, brand, communications, product marketing, demand generation, and go-to-market strategy. Over the past decade, Alexi has helped enterprise SaaS companies grow by building brands people remember, modernizing marketing organizations, and turning customer insight into business impact. Her work sits at the intersection of AI, customer engagement, and modern marketing leadership.She believes the next competitive advantage in marketing won't come from knowing more about customers but from responding to them better.Alexi Hatch on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexihatch/---------- Resources ---------- : acoustic.comThe Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873fChaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Learn more at trychaser.com and use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).The most influential minds in software, AI, and engineering leadership will be at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, September 23-25 in San Jose. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/60a7299222a7bcf1Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/93531742a7625a20Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstromDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716baCheck out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.comThe Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most B2B marketers think branding is a logo and a tagline. Erik Koenig thinks it’s a line on the floor left by a robot. And that instinct is exactly what separates a trusted brand from another systems integrator in a sea of sameness. In this episode of He Said, She Said: Razor Branding™, Jaci and Michael sit down with Erik Koenig, Vice President of Business Development at Hy-Tek Intralogistics — a warehouse automation and systems integration firm helping companies connect products to customers faster through robotics, conveyors, software, and engineering-driven design. Erik came up in B2C agencies working with Colgate-Palmolive, Butterball, and Walmart before making the jump to the client side, and he has spent the last decade proving that the fundamentals of brand strategy translate everywhere. They get into how Erik builds a lean internal team that operates like an agency, how a 50×50 multi-story trade show booth lives or dies by its content schedule, why AI is both the biggest threat and the best intelligence tool in his toolkit, and how he’s fighting to keep the human voice at the center of everything before answer engines rewrite the rules. If you’re a B2B marketer trying to build a real brand inside a complex, engineering-driven company without losing what makes you different — this one’s for you.

הפרק הוקלט במסגרת אירוע לייב של מהדורת מוסף. לקבלת עדכונים על האירוע הבא הצטרפו לקבוצה הסגורה שלנו.משה שלו, מייסד-שותף ב-Decart, מגיע לשיחה מרתקת על בניית אחת מחברות ה-AI השאפתניות בישראל, שמפתחת מודלי וידאו בזמן אמת ומתחרה בחברות כמו OpenAI וגוגל.בשיחה ​​בהנחיית ​עמית קרפ ​ (Bessemer​), ברק שוסטר (Battery)​,​ ינאי אורון (Vertex) וגיא קצוביץ' (Fusion)​ - משה מסביר מדוע העתיד של הבינה המלאכותית נמצא דווקא במודלי וידאו וב-Physical AI, חושף את המודל העסקי שמאפשר לחברה לייצר הכנסות מאופטימיזציה של תשתיות AI, ומשתף בהחלטה האסטרטגית לוותר על מוצרי B2C ולהתמקד בבניית תשתיות עמוקות לעולם הבינה המלאכותית.משה מדבר על חשיבות השארת הטאלנט הישראלי בחזית החדשנות, התחרות מול ענקיות הטכנולוגיה, והחזון לעתיד שבו רובוטים יהפכו לחלק בלתי נפרד מחיי היומיום שלנו(00:00:00) הצגת חברת Decart ופיתוח מודלי וידאו בזמן אמת(00:02:16) העתיד של מודלי הווידאו: מעולמות הבידור לרובוטיקה (Physical AI)(00:04:03) בניית חברת מודלים מובילה מישראל והתחרות על טאלנטים(00:07:11) המודל העסקי: איך עושים כסף מאופטימיזציה של צ'יפים ותשתיות?(00:09:11) למה Decart החליטה להקפיא את פיתוחי ה-B2C לטובת מודלים ותשתיות(00:12:19) החזון לעתיד: גיימינג מול הכנסת רובוטים הביתה(00:18:04) חשיבות הפיתוח של מודלי AI מתקדמים בישראל אל מול תעשיית הסייבר

In this episode of The Ross Simmonds Show, Ross sits down with Talia Wolf, founder of GetUplift and author of Emotional Targeting, to unpack why customer emotion is now central to CRO, SEO, content marketing, and brand trust. They explore how marketers can move beyond surface-level analytics, use AI responsibly, uncover real customer motivations, and build messaging that converts by resonating with the right audience everywhere they show up online. Key Takeaways and Insights: 1. Why CRO Starts with the “Why,” Not Just the “Where” - Talia explains why tools like GA4 and Mixpanel can show where conversion problems happen, but not why people fail to convert. - The key to better leads and sales is understanding what information is missing, what feels risky, and what stops customers from taking action. - Strong conversion strategy starts with customer research, not random funnel tweaks or generic best practices. 2. Using AI Without Losing the Customer - AI can support gap analysis, data synthesis, and ideation, but it should not replace direct customer research. - Talia recommends gathering real inputs from surveys, interviews, Reddit threads, Facebook groups, sales calls, and chat transcripts before using AI. - Once you have authentic customer language, AI can become a strategic thinking partner rather than a shortcut to generic copy. 3. Emotional Targeting in B2B Marketing - Talia argues that B2B buying is often more emotional than B2C because professional decisions carry career, reputation, and budget risks. - Two major emotional clusters drive B2B decisions: social image and self-image. - Marketers should connect features to emotional value, such as helping buyers feel confident, trusted, respected, or prepared to impress leadership. 4. Trust, SEO, and CRO Are Converging - Ross and Talia discuss why SEO and CRO can no longer operate in silos. - Modern buyers research brands across Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, communities, AI tools, and search results before converting. - The new opportunity is to optimize everywhere by creating consistent, emotionally resonant messaging across owned and non-owned channels. 5. Better Messaging Comes from Better Listening - Talia shares how her team identifies misunderstandings, objections, and friction points through customer conversations and community research. - Real-world examples show how addressing skepticism directly can outperform polished but vague marketing claims. -  The best marketers resist the pressure to produce more and instead invest in customer insight, sharper positioning, and continuous testing. Resources & Tools:

In this solo episode, Danny Gavin reveals how he automated his Google Ads Search Query Report process using Claude Cowork and Windsor.ai, eliminating the 3-4 hours per account it previously took to complete manually. The system pulls live metrics, merges them by keyword and ad group, and outputs a structured Excel file with an ad group summary, KPI-focused observations, and pre-populated negative keywords. It's a must-listen for those looking to systematize time-consuming account analyses and free up time to tackle other tasks. Episode Highlights:Search query reports are one of the highest-leverage tasks in Google Ads management, and doing this job manually can eat up three to four hours of work per account per cycle.Danny shares how he connected Claude Cowork to live Google Ads data through Windsor.ai and turned Optidge's entire SQR methodology into a repeatable automation.He shares what the six-tab Excel output actually contains, including auto-generated observations, pre-populated negatives, and an ad group summary that flags structural problems before anyone looks at individual search terms.The 80/20 split: See what Claude handles automatically versus where human judgment still makes the final call.This episode gives four practical lessons for building AI automations in an agency context, from documenting your process first to understanding why the ROI compounds over time.Episode Links: Digital Marketing Mentor PodcastDanny Gavin on LinkedInOptidgeClaude Cowork Windsor.ai Send us Fan MailFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor:Website and Blog: thedmmentor.comInstagram: @thedmmentorLinkedin: @thedmmentorYouTube: @thedmmentorInterested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family:Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations.ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business's digital marketing strategy.

Brent Peterson interviews Jason Nyhus, General Manager at Shopware, about the latest trends in B2B commerce, platform flexibility, and the future of digital experiences. They explore the challenges and opportunities in regulated industries, the importance of adaptable platforms, and innovative features like live shopping. Key  topicsB2B market growth and trendsPlatform flexibility and customizationRegulated industry challenges and complianceImpact of private equity on technology choicesFuture of digital customer experiencesRole of AI and agentic systems in commerceIntegration and extension of e-commerce platformsRisks of platform lock-in and cobbling appsThe evolution of B2C and B2B convergenceChapters00:00 Introduction to B2B E-Commerce Dynamics01:47 Insights from the B2B Report05:27 Navigating Private Equity Expectations07:19 Understanding Regulated Industries12:02 The Complexity of B2B Commerce16:23 The Future of B2B Experiences20:50 Shopware Innovations and Future Directions ResourcesGet the Shopware B2B Report here: https://contentcucumber.com/b2b-reportShopware Official Website - https://www.shopware.comContent Cucumber - B2B Report - https://contentcucumber.comShopware Intelligence - https://www.shopware.com/en/shopware-intelligence/Shopware Payments - https://www.shopware.com/en/shopware-payments/Vibe Coding - https://vibecoding.comGuest linksLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonnyhusTwitter - https://twitter.com/jasonnyhus

SEASON: 6 EPISODE: 34Episode Overview:Welcome back to Becoming Preferred, the podcast for entrepreneurs and business leaders who want to grow their business, level up their game and become preferred in the markets they serve.Let's be honest: in today's market, growing your revenue is only half the battle. The real danger? Growing so fast that you break your own business. When your logistics fracture, your software stacks multiply, and your profit margins start bleeding cash, marketing success can quickly turn into an operational nightmare.Our guest today is the man who steps in when guesswork fails. Michael Kleinmann is a seasoned D2C operator, founder, and fractional C-suite executive who has built and scaled multiple businesses to the mid-eight-figure mark. He is a master at turning back-end infrastructure, fulfillment, and supply chains away from boring cost centers and into lethal competitive advantages.Whether you are running an e-commerce giant, scaling a subscription model, or just trying to protect your margins in a shifting economy, today's conversation is a blueprint for logic-driven execution. Please join me for my conversation with Michael Kleinmann.Guest Bio: Michael Kleinmann is a seasoned direct-to-consumer (D2C) operator, founder, and executive advisor with more than two decades of experience building, scaling, and modernizing seven- and eight-figure e-commerce and subscription brands. A true pioneer in the digital retail space, Michael launched Freshpair from his New York City apartment in 2001, transforming it into a category leader with over 30,000 SKUs and even founding "National Underwear Day" before its successful acquisition. In 2012, he repeated his success by launching Underwear Expert, growing it from a massive content marketing platform into a high-performing subscription powerhouse driven by proprietary curation technology.Today, Michael steps into organizations as a fractional C-suite executive, transforming logistics, fulfillment, and operational infrastructure into true strategic assets. He brings deep, end-to-end expertise across product, tech stacks, marketing, and supply chain management, replacing guesswork with practical, logic-driven execution. Throughout his career, he has built a reputation for engineering creative solutions to complex operational bottlenecks—delivering massive freight cost savings, optimizing 3PL partnerships, and turning around struggling business processes.Michael is far from your typical, surface-level consultant. Having worn every imaginable hat over 25 years of hands-on business building, he knows exactly how to align infrastructure with rapid revenue growth while ruthlessly protecting profit margins. He joins us to share his proven systems for navigating the realities of scaling and removing the friction from modern e-commerce operations.Resource Links:Website: https://www.mkinc.com/Product Link: https://www.mkinc.com/servicesInsight Gold Timestamps:02:40 I gravitated towards technology and business04:41 We had just about every hurdle you can think of06:12 I created National Underwear Day08:20 How do you get from zero to 100 with next to nothing or maybe fumes?10:38 I want to hear the problem from their perspective; that doesn't mean that that's what the problem is15:11 There's a lot of analytics that you can get about different things to try to see if B2C makes sense17:03 I was reading this morning that there's 73,000 3PLs in the United States20:35 By moving to a 3PL, you can get your costs lower than if you did it yourself21:48 Amazon is a shipping carrier that you can use separate from selling on Amazon24:42 If you want to pick something easy to do, don't have a direct-to-consumer brand28:40 I think asking for help is difficult33:20 I just went through the whole entire business and tried to simplify everything38:53 I think there's a lot more opportunity, but it's different40:00 mkinc.comConnect Socially:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelkleinmann/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@poweredbymkInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/poweredbymkEmail: mk@mkinc.comSponsors: Rainmaker LeadGen Platform Demo: https://calendar.summit-learning.com/widget/booking/JKItVP7WErmCBjU2cCIxRainmaker Digital Solutions: https://www.rainmakerdigitalsolutions.com/

Today's episode of the Punk CX podcast features a chat I had with Katja Forbes, Author, Advisor & Keynote Speaker, about her new book: Machine Customers: The Evolution has Begun: How AI that buys is changing everything. We talk about what exactly a machine customer is, what proportion of both B2B and B2C transactions are likely to be driven by machine customers in five years time, if we are seeing Doc Searls' Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) brought to life with this, what sort of agents will there be, who will provide them and what happens to “shopping”…..so many questions! This interview follows on from my recent interview – Responsible AI isn't an optional layer, it must be foundational – Interviews from Pegaworld 2026 Pt2 – and is number 593 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

A bank just issued the world's first loan to an AI agent. The agent applied, signed, and set its own repayment schedule. That's where marketing now lives — and most teams are still optimizing for the wrong layer. In this episode, Katja Forbes (founder of The CX Evolutionist and author of the field guide on machine customers) explains why AEO is a trap, why "the more discoverable you are, the more interchangeable you are," and what the actual moat looks like in agentic commerce. Fresh off a trip to Alibaba, BYD, and Unitree Robotics in China, Katja walks through the five types of machine customers already in market, why Patagonia's Footprint Chronicles is the B2C playbook, why Walmart's AI procurement is the B2B playbook, and the one mindset shift every marketing leader needs to make this quarter.   What you'll learn • Why "AI agent" is too small a frame — and the 5 types of machine customers already buying today • Why AEO and machine-readability are table stakes, not strategy • The values-as-data play: how Patagonia and Walmart are already winning the agentic moat • Why you can't greenwash an AI agent (and what to do if your supply chain receipts aren't flattering) • The abundance-vs-efficiency mindset shift — and why stripping headcount for AI gains is corporate anorexia This episode is brought to you by Attentive. Attentive helps brands personalize messages across SMS, email, RCS, and push - so every interaction feels relevant, not random. Not more marketing. Better marketing.  That's marketing made personal. That's Attentive.  To learn more visit attentive.com.   ConnectKatja Forbes on LinkedIn The CX Evolutionist on Substack Marketing Trends   Chapters • 0:00 The customer isn't human anymore • 1:34 Inside Alibaba, BYD, and Unitree — what China is shipping today • 4:09 How robots get their brains (and start transacting) • 7:05 The 5 types of machine customers every marketer should know • 10:37 Alibaba's 120-million-order onboarding campaign • 13:33 Your car is reading your emotions — and about to buy on your behalf • 16:31 What the US can actually learn from China's stack • 23:12 "Marketing to robots is not a thing" — the AEO trap • 27:36 A bank just gave the world's first loan to an AI agent • 29:32 Why BJ Fogg's behavior model breaks for machine customers • 37:17 The decision-paralysis problem and the rise of values-as-data • 40:14 Patagonia's Footprint Chronicles: the brand moat playbook • 45:39 Walmart's Pactum: B2B values-as-data is already live • 54:51 Marketers need to start acting like scientists • 56:53 Abundance, not efficiency — the corporate anorexia trap ----Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What if VR looked beyond traditional employment pathways? In this episode of Manager Minute, Carol Pankow sits down with Kristy Schenderlein, Vice President of Operations at the Blind Institute of Technology (BIT), to discuss how an RSA Disability Innovation Fund (DIF) demonstration grant is redefining career opportunities for people with disabilities. Learn how BIT combines accessible technical training, industry-recognized certifications, registered apprenticeships, and employer partnerships to prepare participants for careers in Salesforce, digital accessibility, AI, and project management. With participants earning family-sustaining wages and advancing into six-figure careers, this conversation challenges VR professionals to think differently about workforce development and the future of competitive integrated employment. Listen Here   Full Transcript: {Music} Kristy: Organizations are unfortunately trying to fit our community into a little box. What they think we can do, not what we know that we're capable of. You guys are really forging ahead with something that's never been done before. And so how do we get the VR groups, the VR counselors and teams to break out of what their traditional mold has been? Our participants earn an average of 75,000, and within three years of employment, the majority have been promoted and are making over six figures. Intro voice: Manager minute, brought to you by the Vocational Rehabilitation Technical Assistance Center. Conversations powered by VR. One manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host, Carol Pankow. Carol: Welcome to the Manager Minute. Joining me in the studio today is Kristy Schenderlein, VP of operations at the Blind Institute of Technology. So Kristy, how are things going for you? Kristy: Very good. Ready for summer to start. Carol: Yes. It's starting here in a big way, let me tell you. We've got heat wave going on in Minnesota. So today we're going to talk about a Disability Innovation Fund project focused on expanding access to careers and technology for individuals with disabilities. And this is a space getting a lot of attention right now. But what does it actually look like to build something that works in practice? So let's dig in. So Kristy, let's start with your journey. How did you get connected to this work and to BIT? Kristy: Yeah, absolutely. So I myself am a member of the Blind and visually impaired community. I have Stargardt's disease, which is a juvenile form of macular degeneration. So I navigated through the education space as a visually impaired student, got my degree from University of Wyoming and Communications a long time ago. We don't want to talk about how long ago that was, but then I moved into a career as a litigation paralegal for about 15 years. And my husband and I opened our own hardware store, where, in addition to being a small business owner and doing whatever was needed of me that day, I also oversaw all of the operations there as well. And when we closed our store, I kind of was at a crossroads. I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do, except for the fact that I really wanted to look into the potential of working with employment in my community. Through my years, I had met with apprehension. Can I do the job? Shock? You know, some people would see, you know, especially when we were at the hardware store and I began using a cane in the middle of us owning the store. So, you know, people would walk in and I'd be standing there with my cane. And if I asked them, you know what I can help them with? Or if they'd see me, you know, talking to employees found out I was one of the owners. You know, I was just met with disbelief that I could actually be doing this job. You know, sometimes it was just blatant. No, you can't met with a I don't see how this can be done. So I'm not going to open my mind to even consider this. So I know that navigating those waters of employment for not only people within the blind and visually impaired community, but pan disability community as well, is difficult. And I know that it is not the lack of ability, it's the lack of opportunity. And so what could I do to help my community? And an acquaintance introduced me to Mike Hess, our executive director. Mike and I met. He told me about BIT, BIT's mission, his vision, and I jumped on board seven years ago. When I jumped on the ride, there was five of us, now there's almost over 50 of us, the majority of which identify with some form of disability, including in leadership. So we're really proud of that. It's been a wild ride for sure. Carol: I think it's really cool. I was looking a lot. I was looking you up. Of course, you know, I got to check out your story on LinkedIn and all the things as well. And then just perusing the BIT website and such. And I just think you have a really amazing cast of folks that are working there. Kristy: We do. Carol: And I really like what you're doing. Kristy: Thank you. Carol: And I could not believe, actually, since I found out about you, I had contacted like my folks back at State services for the Blind in Minnesota. I'm like, do you guys know about them? Like, because I sure didn't know about you when I was there. And I just think getting the word out more is super important. So I know you and I had spoken earlier and we were talking about your DEF grant application and that you guys actually had a model that you had built. And so you were basing this application on that. Can you talk a little bit about the different process and what problem you were trying to solve with your application for the project? Kristy: Yeah, absolutely. We know the numbers and how ugly they are that, you know, 70% of people with disabilities are either un or underemployed for the BVI community. It's even higher. It's at 80. I think those numbers have changed a little bit, but unfortunately that needle hasn't moved much in years. There's a lot of organizations out there that are saying that they're focusing on employment. But unfortunately, I mean, the numbers don't lie. You know, we're still where we're at. And what we found is no one is focusing on workforce development for higher level professional careers. And no one's really focusing, again on the professional or corporate America. Organizations are unfortunately, trying to fit our community into a little box, what they think we can do, not what we know that we're capable of. And so we really, truly believe that the answer to this, and I'm going to call it, you know, an epidemic, if you will, the unemployment of people with disabilities really has to do with workforce development and making sure that those people who, again, have the ability to do the job also have the opportunity. So we actually began offering Salesforce administration courses, gosh, back o late 2000 teens, we successfully put through eight blind or visually impaired professionals through a Salesforce Administration Certification prep course, and we choose Salesforce specifically because of the accessibility of their platform. And not that it is a B2C accessibility, but it's a B2B. So people within my community and those of us in the Blind and visually impaired community who are the hardest to serve because of the fact that we have to use assistive technology in order to do our jobs. It's allowing that community to get these certifications, get good, long lasting, sustainable careers. You know that they can actually be, you know, climbing up that corporate ladder, not being stuck down at the bottom. So we began our courses in 2020. We actually became the only training provider approved by Salesforce for people with disabilities globally. And that really came about because of our focus on two things. Number one, our courses being virtual, we are meeting. This was even before the pandemic, even before, you know, virtual courses were the thing. We were doing it virtually. We were meeting our community where they were at. We were also focused on employment. Our end goal at BIT is always employment. That's always where we keep our eye on employment. So, you know, we'd already started these courses. We began a Salesforce system integration service within BIT. We also began an accessibility consulting service and began using our students as at that time, interns, we met up with an intermediary, an apprenticeship intermediary called Safal Partners, who looked at our program and said, gosh, you guys already have an apprenticeship program. Kristy: What would be considered a wrap or a registered apprenticeship program through the Department of Labor? So they helped us get registered with the Department of Labor, and we became and still are the only organization, the only registered apprenticeships to include the Pan disability community to include the BVI community. And we're proud of that. And we're also saddened by that because we are the only ones that are doing it this way. The problem was we were only able to do it more of in a project based format, you know? So whenever we had projects, the apprentices worked well. Our apprenticeship program is a competency based program. There have been which now have been lifted, but requirements of 2000 hours really difficult to get those 2000 hours in a reasonable amount of time when it's just ebbs and flows of projects. So we really need to find a way to move into a more structured apprenticeship program. We added a, you know, the digital accessibility space a couple of years after we did the Salesforce admin apprenticeship and fortunately found the DIF grant to help us expand on what we already had running. Carol: So what did this when you get the DIF grant, what it allow you to do differently, moving from that more kind of pilot project kind of format into this structured model? Kristy: Mhm. Well, it allowed us to do essentially that. Number one is add structure. So as I mentioned, for our apprenticeship program, first we were able to add an apprenticeship program manager, which is huge for somebody to actually be able to focus all of their time on overseeing the program. We were able to move it into a more structured program. So we're not only looking now at project based. Our apprentices, you know, are working on regular schedules. Most are completing their apprenticeships between 1 and 2 years. They're able to not only work on those projects and gain competencies through projects, but also work on hypothetical situations we created for those competencies they need to accomplish without the projects we're working on professional development. So it was able to really add, again that structure to make it just a more robust program. In addition to that, we were able to expand on the academy courses that we were able to offer. So what we're learning with the Salesforce ecosystem is essentially the sweet spot is five certifications. It's not enough just to have that foundational cert. So with the DIF grant, we were able to say, okay, we want to get our team to that five certs. Any student that goes through our course, they have the option of getting to those five certifications. You earn two. Just in our foundational course alone. And then we added three higher level courses. In addition to that, we're also able to add a third track. So we have our Salesforce Administration track. We have our digital accessibility track, and now we're going to be able to add an Agile Scrum Master certification or project management track. So it pairs really nicely with the other two tracks in that, you know, all of these projects, they need scrum masters or project managers to run these projects. So now we're able to kind of create that full loop where we're able to have our admins working on their projects. Same with digital accessibility. And then we're able to add, again, these scrum masters and project managers to work on those same projects to build up and gain their experience. So able to expand the Academy. We were also able to add an academy director and an administrative assistant, you know. So again, providing more structure and guidance there. And then additionally, one of the things that we focused on, one of our goals with the grant was to be placed on 30 state eligible training provider lists. And what this allows us to do is really get a lot of that exposure that you were talking about before. Any person who wanted to participate in the program can go to these ETPLs, is what they're called. See if we're on in their state, get the information. You know, if they are workforce boards, VR counselors. Again, just the average Joe that wants to look into some opportunities for training also gives employers the opportunities to come in and see what we're doing, learn about us, you know, get that more exposure. And I think actually now we're on 35 ETPLs. Again, our friends at Safal Partners helped us within the first year achieve that KPI for our DIF grant. Carol: That is amazing. That is really great. I was gonna ask how many you were on and 35 sounds... Kristy: Mhm. And growing and growing. You know, we're we're we're not stopping. Right. We want to be on all of them. Carol: I'm like, you're going to conquer the world. So walk us  through how it works today. You know, you're talking about the academy. You've got the certification, the apprenticeships, kind of how does the whole flow? Somebody comes in, they're like, I want to do the thing. What happens? Kristy: Absolutely. We have a couple of different options to start. So what we decided to do was add two self-guided courses for our two current tracks, Digital Accessibility and Salesforce Admin. So they're intro courses, they're self-guided. And essentially it's just that giving you an introduction to what Salesforce is. A lot of people have no idea what Salesforce is, even though they're one of the largest tech companies in the world. They're in every industry, all the different fields, you know, they're this humongous organization, but a lot of people just don't know what it is. So it gives people the opportunity to get in there, see what Salesforce is. Is this an interest to me? Same with digital accessibility also gives them an understanding of if you're using assistive technology, what is your level of proficiency need to be? Can you be a beginner? And I'll tell you right now, the answer is no. You can't be a beginner if you're using. You know what? I use a screen reader. You know, you have to be a little more proficient than that. So you get through those courses and you decide, yeah, I really liked this. I completed the course. You sit for a technical assessment, you have to do a hands on assessment and then a technical interview. Kristy: And the reasoning for that is to really, number one, ensure that that person who is taking the course is committed, understands the content was doing it themselves, you know, making sure nobody was, you know, helping them out before they can move into the instructor led courses. So once they pass that you can move into the instructor led either, again, digital accessibility or Salesforce, when we add our agile scrum probably won't have an intro to start, but that'll be getting added the later part of this year. And that'll again be instructor led courses, but pretty much the same format. So once you get into the instructor led courses, digital accessibility I believe is 14 weeks. I think admin is now 17 weeks. Again, with admin, you earn two certifications, multiple hours a week in class and then also in lab. In addition to that, there is a lot of homework. There's a lot of work outside these courses. I never sugarcoat these courses. They are not easy. We're talking high level tech careers. So these are high level courses. There's a lot of work, there's a lot of commitment, but there's a lot of support. All of our classes are taught by a person with a disability. Our TAs are people with disabilities. We have focus on those people that need to use screen readers. You know, we have screen reader instructors. So we're really, you know, meeting every person with a disability, regardless of what that is, understanding what accommodations they may need, working with them on that so that they can feel comfortable and actually concentrate on the content and the subject matter and not, am I going to be able to do this course or not? So they get through the instructor led courses leads to sitting for the certification exams. And, and I want to point out to all of the courses that we offer in our academy all lead to industry recognized certifications. These aren't certifications. We make up and say, well, we'll see if it works for you. These are the same certifications that anyone would be sitting for if they were taking any of these Salesforce courses or the digital accessibility, the Agile Scrum Master, you're going to be sitting for the actual Scrum Master certification. So they sit for the exams, you know, hopefully pass it. We've got really good certification pass rates, so hopefully they'll pass it again. They're difficult, they're not easy, but we provide you with what you need in the courses to pass those certs. Carol: What does your pass rate look like. Kristy: So oh boy you just threw that threw that at me. What's the data I believe I think it varies based on the course. But for example, I know our past cohort for digital accessibility, ten out of 12 have sat for the course. And I think all of them have passed. So 100% there. I think most of our cert rates run as a collective whole, 75 to 95%. Carol: Okay. Kristy: Yeah, really good cert rates. And again, it's really because of the fact that these are intense courses, but we work with you. Carol: When you're wrapping service around all these people. Kristy: Exactly. Carol: Talk about the technical kind of support that the students can get. Kristy: You're exactly right. Yeah. You know, and again, a lot of group sessions, you have a lot of support. Carol: Yeah. Kristy: So yeah. So once you get past those certifications, you then become eligible to interview for an apprenticeship. Not everyone qualifies for an apprenticeship. It really depends how well you do in the class. You know, obviously you need to have your certification to get into their apprenticeship. So if you don't get your cert, there's an issue. What was your professionalism like? You know, our instructors provide our apprenticeship manager with notes and sometimes it's, hey, they just need a little more professional development. They need a little work on this. They need to work on that, which is stuff we can provide. One of the things that came with the different is we added in a professional employment coach. So she works with people, you know, maybe you have ADHD and you're looking for tools to help you get organized and to stay focused. And so we bring her in and have sessions together. Sometimes just professional development. There's a lot of people in our community that need a little bit of that. Unfortunately for some of us, when we get on these Zoom calls, we can't see the social cues. We can't tell if somebody is, you know, getting ready to speak or wrapping up what they're speaking, you know, so how do you handle all that? So we do all of that, you know, we provide all of that. But once the instructors say, yep, I think that they should interview for an apprenticeship program, they have to go through an interview with our apprenticeship program manager and another member of BIT. And then if we have openings, which we do, and we will continue to have them through the different, then they become a part of our apprenticeship. And again, those are all apprenticeships or they're competency based used to be 2000 hours. The Department of Labor has lifted that restriction. But we still feel that that 2000 hours is a good number for our participants to really get a good, strong understanding of what they will be doing in this role in mastering these competencies, Professional development. It gives you that 1 to 2 years experience that, you know, whenever you're looking for an entry level job, what do you see? You need 1 to 2 years' experience. Well, how do you get that if you're entry level? And so we're providing that opportunity to do so. Our apprenticeship program has additional trainings that are offered. You're working right alongside with our sales force professionals, our accessibility professionals who all have experience in the field. And again, I will point out to these are teams that are all disabilities working together. So completely deaf admins working with completely blind admins, just killing it, doing an excellent job. So really a lot of exposure in that apprenticeship program. One of the things the DIF grant also allowed us to do is incorporate employer partners. So if you have an apprenticeship with an employer partner still meeting with our apprenticeship program manager. You're still getting all of the support from BIT we're meeting with the project leads at those employers to make sure that we're supporting them in anything they need. So really, like I said, a well-rounded program. Once you complete those competencies, we do self-evaluations. I mean, we're, you know, where you stand in our apprenticeship and what you need to work on. And, you know, we're selling, obviously, the further you get into the apprenticeship program, the more projects you're handed, the more responsibility. So really just gaining your confidence in the field, and then you're ready to go into the world and work in an organization or a corporation out there. Carol: Are you seeing any impact with AI? You know, people talk about AI usage now, and, you know, the increase of that and how it's changing the landscape of corporate America. Are you seeing any impact from that? Kristy: So you've heard of that little thing called AI? Carol: Yeah. Kristy: The answer is an overwhelming yes. So one of the things that we've done in our courses is try to, we try to make them future proof. You know, we don't want to send our students or our apprentices out into the world behind the eight ball, you know, oh gosh, this is a saturated market. I don't have any of the skills. So one of those higher level Salesforce certifications I told you about is agent for specialist, which is Salesforce AI. And Salesforce has gone all in on agent force and their AI. So our apprentices have the opportunity to become certified in agent force. And then, you know, different projects we're working on. We're now talking to a lot of clients that are looking into how can I incorporate AI into my Salesforce environment? So, you know, giving them people then that opportunity to get those skills so that they can make an immediate impact. Additionally, in the Scrum Master or the project management track scrum Master has just added the AI Scrum Master certification course. So we will be actually including that in our course. So again, you'll come out of that track with if you're looking at Scrum Master, you're looking at two shirts, one of which is AI. We're also adding a higher level AI course, that's AI governance. Most of these companies are looking at this going, okay, we have AI, but when should we be using it? How should we be using it? What is ethical? What is not? What is going overboard with AI, you know? So we're actually going to provide a course. So again, our participants can come out able to make immediate impact on organizations. And the way to do that right now is AI. So we absolutely are incorporating AI. People with disabilities to, you know, again, we say at BIT Technology is the greatest equalizer. It truly is. And people with disabilities are actually leading the charge in AI. In fact, that agent for specialist course I mentioned, out of all of the workforce development orgs within Salesforce, we were the first one to offer that course. So disability community leading the way in AI. So it's exciting. Carol: I love it. Well, you're ahead of the curve, which is super good. And people come in with that. They'll definitely. I mean, you're creating a good niche there with your apprentices being able to do that. Kristy: That's our goal. Carol: That's awesome. So what are you seeing as a career pathways like what's proving to be the most impactful right now? Kristy: So you know, again, Salesforce is just huge. So of course that is, you know, continuing on and that is definitely making a big impact. Digital accessibility is a very hot topic right now. Gosh, a couple years ago, I can't remember what year it was actually implemented. But the Department of Justice has now mandated that title two of the Americans with Disabilities Act incorporate digital accessibility. And they actually laid out deadlines. They just pushed the first deadline. It was supposed to be April of 2026, that all municipalities with over 50,000 individuals had to be digitally accessible. Everything within your state needs to be accessible for people within our community to access. 2027 was supposed to be for those municipalities, less than 50,000. I imagine that'll get pushed back as well. But the bottom line is if your organization, your front facing organization is not accessible, you're going to encounter some issues. And so all of a sudden then all of these corporations and organizations and government and they're going, okay, what is this? What is digital accessibility and how do we get there? So we're really starting to see a lot of impact, a lot of clients coming to us asking, okay, what is digital accessibility? How can you help me? One of the members of Office of Accessibility for Salesforce is actually said that there's two experts in Salesforce accessibility, and one is Salesforce and one is bit. We work very closely with them on accessibility and their accessibility. I think really that impact digital accessibility. We're going to see it more and more and more. Unfortunately, a lot of lawsuits are being filed. And when I say unfortunately, it's that's what's being the precursor for companies to become digitally accessible. You know, I wish they would just because it's better for everyone. An accessible product is just a better product. It's more well thought out, it's more intentional. It's just better presented. I wish that it wasn't that they're being forced to because of litigation. I wish that it was just because that is again, the right thing to do. Plus, this disability community is large across the world. I think it's 1 in 5 now, and more and more people are aging. More and more people are being diagnosed with disabilities. Where before in tech, people were just considered eccentric. When I think a lot of them were actually, you know, on the autism spectrum or neurodiverse, so that, you know, a lot of invisible disabilities, mental health disabilities are now become not so taboo to hide and to talk about. So it's something that, you know, the world's just going to see more and more of, and the demand for making things more accessible to reach your customers, to reach that community is going to become more and more. So I really think that digital accessibility track is getting a lot of focus. Carol: That is very cool. I know employer engagement also is a big piece of all this, and how are you partnering with companies and what are they seeing as value from what you offer? Kristy: So apprenticeships is huge right now. Apprenticeships really provide employers the opportunity to get kind of a jump on the talent pipeline, both this current administration and the former administration, very pro apprenticeship. You know, they have apprenticeship mandates out. I believe it's a million apprentices is what they want to attain. And then there's proven statistics. I'll give you some data here, Carol, for companies that have an apprenticeship program, typically for every dollar that's invested in that apprentice, the company is seeing an ROI of $1.44. So immediately getting impact with having an apprentice, 94% of the apprentices stay where they're at when they become an apprentice within a company. So turnover is really expensive for companies, incredibly expensive. And so not only if you have an apprenticeship, you're looking at a 94% retention rate. But then to add to that, the people with disabilities community, our turnover rate is incredibly low because it has been difficult to find employment. If the person with a disability finds a place where they can be successful and thrive, they're not going anywhere. So you kind of get a double whammy on that. Apprentices typically come out earning 84,000 a year, and they're saying 49% of HR managers are saying that skill based is really kind of the new and compelling look at talent management. One of the things that, again, as I mentioned before, the DIF grant allowed us to do is start reaching out to employer partners, having them bring on apprenticeships, not necessarily being trained within BIT, but actually going into their organizations, working with their Salesforce teams, working with their digital accessibility teams and again, creating this talent pipeline I mentioned earlier, it's not the lack of ability, it's the lack of opportunity. Again, these apprenticeship programs are really providing people within our community the opportunity to go in there and prove themselves, to show these companies. You know, unfortunately for the people with disabilities community, that really is we call it that legal, nebulous bell that we have to ring is the reasonable accommodations. Most people don't understand them. If you get an apprenticeship in there, you're working alongside that apprentice to really determine, okay, how is this person going to be most successful and really getting over that fear of what the reasonable accommodation is. So our impact with employers has been fabulous. It's been phenomenal. A lot of interest, again, in bringing on these apprentices to work on their teams, give them again that opportunity to kind of dip their toe into that pool. I want to mention, too, that we really believe that the disabilities community is the greatest untapped talent in the planet. You have this whole group of resources that are so talented and nobody's touching and working with organizations like BIT. Working with these apprentices really gives you that opportunity to dip into that talent and have this just amazing pipeline, amazing resources to work with instead of going the typical talent route. And we have a tech talent shortage, we really do. So, you know, working with, again, like an apprenticeship program, working with our team really gives people the opportunity to get that jump on that talent. Carol: Well, and they get to work in that company. You know, you're in that company and the company culture. You're all part of it you've done these 2000 hours. You know, you've been there a year or more. Kristy: Exactly. Carol: And so they really get a good flavor of what you bring to the table. It's such a great way. I mean, you see that more and more kids are starting to realize like maybe the four year degree route isn't the way. Kristy: Mhm. Carol: We need to look at these other options for getting into employment and getting in more quickly, because everybody learns differently, and these jobs, I mean, when you're talking, people are coming on average $84,000. This is no joke. Kristy: No it's not. Again, it's a good way to get into, again, your feel to get your foot in the door. Give those companies the opportunity to really get that new and emerging talent, but not expecting them to just hop right in the job because, he said, we all learn differently. There's a lot of nuances to learn about different companies. You know, you're an admin at one company and you go to another. And again, you know, you've got that hill to climb of, you know, what are the nuances of that particular company. But here you built your own army, if you will. You built your own pool. Carol: Yeah. Kristy: One of our apprentices actually in a webinar we did recently, she had said, you know, one of the benefits to employers is you essentially get to mold these apprentices into what type of employees that you're looking for. And it's true, you're almost taking a blank slate and working with it for two years and building your team the way you want. And then like you said, you know, you're done with that 2000 hours. Why would you go anywhere else? You've already invested this time. Again, we've given you the statistics on the ROI in that dollar investment. You're already earning money off the apprentices, so why wouldn't you stick with them? Carol: 100%. Now, I know you had some success with the workforce boards and a few blind service agencies, but you've had less traction with VR. What's been the challenge there and what do you want, like the VR agencies to understand? Because I know we sure miss the whole boat and didn't even realize a thing about BIT and I've been telling everybody ever since I talked to you first, like, hey, you need to go look at this website and you need to talk to these people because I've just been like, wow, why is VR missing the boat on that? Kristy: Well, I think you're kind of hitting the nail on the head there, Carol, in that we are not your normal traditional organization out there. We know we are actually the only organization doing what we're doing. And we know that because not only have we looked, but Salesforce has looked. Our other partner, Ronstadt, has looked, you know, they've looked around for other organizations like us doing what we're doing, the manner in which we're doing it, and there aren't any out there. So I've been thinking about this since you and I spoke last time about, you know, really what is our problem with VR? What is the issue? And I really think it comes down to that fact that we are breaking the mold. Our friends at Safal Partner, you know, talk with us all the time about you guys are really forging ahead with something that's never been done before. And so how do we get the VR groups, the VR counselors and teams to break out of what their traditional mold has been and kind of think out of the box and look at our organization go, oh, wait, because unfortunately, the traditional is not working. I mean, the numbers say it, you know, those numbers haven't moved. And I think the VR counselors, they have to do certain things certain ways. And they have reports that they have to do and they need to meet different criteria. And, you know, our programs aren't short. You know, it's not like somebody can get in and out in a month and then they're employed. You know, we're really investing the time in training people to really be productive employees in a completely different way than ever been done before. So I think if we can get the VR groups to open up their minds to a different way of doing things and to recognize the fact that these traditional ways we've been doing things just really aren't moving the needle. And I think a lot of the, you know, VR counselors, again, they're they have cases they have to close, they have rates that they have to hit. They again, they have all this documentation they have to do. And so I think a lot of times they try to put a square peg in a round hole, and it just doesn't work for people with disabilities community. You have to understand where they're at, you know, Social Security disability, a lot of people are on it. It is not easy to get on. Our goal is to get everyone off of it, not to provide them with a supplement to their SSDI. We want everyone to become tax producers, not tax consumers. So when you get people who are capable, who are software engineers, who have these, you know, the great focuses on tech, this critical thinking mindset that can do so much more than just getting a job. Being able to think outside the box, look at other opportunities that might be out there and go for it. You know, we've been successful, we're showing that this is the way you do this with this group. So that's really the only answer I can come up with, Carol, is why we're not making more traction is just that traditional mindset of this is how we do things. And unfortunately, that traditional mindset is just not helping our community well. Carol: And hopefully we're able to get the word out now through the podcast and advertising that because it is like a no brainer to me. I mean, you're looking at your wants to get people into quality employment outcomes. And I used to always be about like family sustaining wages. And so you're talking about this investment and the people, even though it takes a longer amount of time. But if you've got folks coming out, you know, you've got a big track record, you've worked 2000 hours, you've done this apprenticeship, you've done all this coursework ahead. You have these certifications. You now are geared up for really good employment and long term employment. We're not talking, you know, you're in and out of the fast food place. You want to stay here. You're now engrained in a company. Like what a way to set folks up for success and not needing to come back to you, or to Social Security or any of those other supports. You've really got people launched in such a great way. Kristy: Right? And on that note, so our participants earn an average of, I think, 75,000. And within three years of employment, the majority have been promoted and are making over six figures. So as you said, their family sustaining wages with opportunities of growth. And that's really what our community needs in opportunities, is that the community does not want to be on Social Security disability. They don't they want to be able to put food on their table. You know, with employment comes a lot of dignity. It comes a lot of feeling of worth and being a productive member of society. The community wants that and they know they can do that. We're just lacking the opportunity. Again, lacking that open mindset. I know there's a lot of VR counselors that say, hey, I'm going to put you through college and I'm going to get you this bachelor's degree. And our unemployment rate is still the same, right? We need more than that. You know, you need more of an investment, not just the traditional. I am old enough to remember the days that my parents just said, oh, just get a degree, right. Doesn't matter what it's in. Just go get a degree, you'll get a job. That's not today. You know, today's the day of specialization. As we talked earlier, today is the day of certifications. You know, people want certs. They want experience. They want skills, they want proof. And they're looking at effective employees to, you know, how effective are you an employee? Are you going to be great? You've got this bachelor's degree, but can you be effective in this role? Hiring managers say they can train for those hard skills. You know, they can train somebody to, you know, code in a certain Manner or become an HR professional. You can train a lot of that, but you can't train the effectiveness. You can't train the critical thinking as much as you can when you're in the role. Our program helps to do that though. You know, it really helps people to develop those skills, to become those critical thinkers, those problem solvers that these hiring managers are looking for. Carol: It really is the full package. What you offer. I just I'm still stunned thinking about like that. We've all missed the boat for 20 years or plus you've been around. So it's not too late though for people to get on board. So looking ahead, what does success look like for your project and what should other people be paying attention to? Kristy: Mhm. Of course, the whole goal for this project is competitive integrated employment. And of course, again, that goes right along with our mission from the very beginning. It's employment. You know, that CIE number is again that family sustaining wages that you can have good strong careers in. So when we're looking at our future, the grant has provided us the opportunity to really build our programs again, provide a lot more structure. So of course, sustainability. Our goal is really to grow our own sales force system integration services, our own digital accessibility services. So that number one, we can be a huge employer of people with disabilities and really build these big sales force teams. The other thing is really finding the employers who are interested in investing in this community. You know, who again, are thinking outside that box of, you know what? I have a talent shortage and I need to find a pool that is really going to benefit my company, provide an ROI, you know, be here. So I'm not hiring somebody every six months. So really, again, you know, getting the word out, we want people, of course, to know about our program to look at our program. You know, we're focused on tech. Tech is not the only industry that could benefit with this type of program, not in any way, shape or form. So we really like people to look at our program and say, okay, you know, our focus is X, you know, maybe it's marketing, maybe it's finance, accounting, whatever it is. And really look at our program and say, I think this is the model that we need to follow. You know, it is a very collaborative organization. We are not going to get where we need to be in silos. We need the whole village to work together to provide these opportunities. Again, really trying to show that we really feel this is the path forward for many careers, for many high producing, effective, high compensation careers. We'd really like people to, again, look at our program, look what we're doing in the different, obviously different is a demonstrative grants. That's the whole thing we're doing here is demonstrating that we really feel that our model is the way to go. Really take a look at apprenticeships and apprenticeships for people with disabilities. I really feel apprenticeship just are tailor made to people with disabilities for them to really, again, get really comfortable to build their skills and show that, yeah, I've got the ability. Just give me that opportunity. I've got the ability. Carol: I can totally see why RSA selected you as a grant. Kristy: Oh thank you. We're pretty passionate here at BIT. Carol: You are and it's amazing. So folks wanted more information about BIT, what's the best way to find you or contact? Kristy: Absolutely. So of course the best way is our website. It's just easy. BlindInstituteOftechnology.org. You can also get it by blindIT.org. You'll find all the information there. Otherwise you know, reaching out. If you are interested in our Academy, Academy@blindIT.org, we have candidates@BlindIT.org or sales@blindIT.org. Any of those, if you can't remember any of them and you can only remember, oh, she said Sales@BlindIT.org, but I'm really not in sales still go to that email address. We're looking at over 50 of us. Our internal team, you know, is about 25 to 30. We're very tight knit, so it's going to get to us. So any of those email addresses work and you can find them all on our website. So again, BlindInstituteOfTechnology.org or BlindIT.org will get you there as well. Carol: So no wrong door in. Kristy: Nope, nope. We will get you to where you need to be. Just let us know what you're looking for, what you're interested in, and we will find the person for you. Carol: Well, that is awesome and I know I am going to sing your praises going forward. Like continue to like tell people about what is happening there. It's pretty amazing. I really appreciate your time. I wish you much success. Thanks for joining me. Kristy: Thank you so much, Carol. I appreciate the opportunity. {Music} Outro Voice: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time. One minute at a time. Brought to you by the VRTAC. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.

https://youtu.be/NPL9Rg2tw0M Itay Ben Horin, CEO of Ben Horin & Alexandrovitz, one of Israel's leading strategic media consultancies, is on a mission to help people and organizations achieve their goals through strategic communication. As the author of Crisis Management, Itay draws on decades of experience helping businesses, public figures, and institutions navigate high-stakes situations where leadership and communication determine the outcome. In this conversation, Itay introduces The Crisis Management Framework: Stay Prepared, Pull Your Team Together, Work Fast and Slow, Pick Your Entry Point, Decide Strategy, and Select Who Speaks, Where, and When. He explains why preparation is the greatest advantage in any crisis, why leaders must balance urgency with thoughtful decision-making, and how identifying the right audience and communication strategy can turn a defining moment into an opportunity. He also shares how AI is reshaping strategic communications, the growing threat of deepfakes, and why books and long-form conversations remain indispensable in an age of AI-generated content. — 5 Steps to Address a Crisis with Itay Ben Horin  Good day. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint podcast, and my guest today is Itay Ben Horin, the CEO of Ben Horin & Alexandrovitz, a leading strategic media consultancy in Israel, and also the author of Crisis Management, which just came out in the U.S. Itay, welcome to the show.  Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.  Yeah, it’s exciting to talk to you. I mean, you’re in Israel. You’re growing your business there, and I look forward to your differentiated perspective on things on this show. But before we launch in, my favorite question: What is your personal “Why,” and how are you manifesting it through Ben Horin & Alexandrovitz? Okay. So our vision in the company is to help people fulfill their goals through the media. We're trying to empower people and organizations to achieve their objectives.Share on X And we do it through the media, through communication, and through social networks. This is our expertise: communication, strategic consulting, public relations, and spokesperson services. My specialty is crisis management, but our company provides all kinds of media consulting. And our “Why” is to help people fulfill their dreams. Our way of helping them is through the media. But there are other goals as well.  Yeah. That is interesting. So how does media help people fulfill their dreams? When a person or an organization is talking to one person or two people in a store, or in any other aspect of communication, it has limited power. But when they communicate through the media to thousands or even millions of people—through television, radio, podcasts, or whatever channel exists in modern life—they have the ability to influence more people. So the media helps them. In a good way, and also in crisis management. When something goes wrong, you can use the media to move from a bad situation to a better place.  When I talk to people, I tell them that even in biblical times, people had communication and written communication. And it’s the same stories: Love. Hate. Power. Politics. Everything is the same. The only thing that has changed is the technology we use to communicate with people. Once, people shouted from rooftops and used other traditional methods. Today, they can talk from their homes to millions of people. Yeah. And then social media is a big amplifier of messaging. It’s changing politics as well. So, for sure. Now, you’re running a large strategic communications firm, but you wrote this book about crisis management. So what’s different about communication during a crisis compared to business as usual, when you just want to get your message out? I’m a basketball fan, and today is like the NBA playoffs. So I’m saying—  The Spurs won.  Yeah, the Spurs won. And it’s very interesting to watch a seven-game series. So what I’m saying is that regular communication is like the regular season. You win. You lose. It’s important, but it’s not that important. A crisis is like the playoffs. You can win or lose. If you manage the crisis well, you can be a winner.Share on X You can win the season even if it began with a crisis. But if you lose, you’re out. So a crisis is a moment that can change your destiny—for better or for worse—depending on how you manage it. And I think that’s the difference between crisis management and regular communication. As I said, regular communication is like a very long regular season.  Yeah, I love that analogy. So it’s the yin and yang, right? It’s the crisis and the opportunity. How do you turn a crisis into an opportunity? There’s a saying: “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” right? Something like that.  Yes. I’m not advising people to get into a crisis. That’s not my advice. But if you have a crisis—and in my book, Crisis Management, I write about many case studies, both good and bad examples of crisis management—in some cases, the way people like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama managed their crises helped make them winners because they handled them well. I also write about companies like McDonald’s and Starbucks, as well as crisis management cases in Israel.  If you manage a crisis badly, you can lose your position or even your business. So I’m not advising anyone to seek out a crisis. But when I walk into a room where there is a crisis—and I do that a lot, it’s my day job—I meet a CEO or a manager who is dealing with a crisis, and I tell them: “Please try to look at this moment from another perspective.” “Because these are the moments that define your leadership.” “And if we do well, and if we do our best, you may be remembered as the leader who successfully navigated this challenge.” It’s hard to see that in the moment. But afterward, people often come back to me and say: “I remember what you told me during those moments.”  Yeah. That’s when character really shows up, right? In moments of crisis. It’s when everything gets amplified. Yes. So this podcast is called Management Blueprint. We talk about frameworks all the time. So give me a good crisis management framework. Three to five elements. I’m sure you cover them in your book. If someone is in a crisis, what do they need to think about? What steps should they take? Do you have a framework like that?  Yeah. So the book is like 20 chapters. Sixteen of them are crisis-management cases from around the world and Israel, including some that I managed. And there are also four chapters about this framework and how to manage a crisis. So the first thing that I will tell you is that the best way to manage a crisis is to be prepared for a crisis. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it's really important. Every minute that you prepare—I call it a golden minute.Share on X Every minute that you prepare for a crisis will count as 10 minutes during the crisis when it begins.  Because if you are prepared, if you know who is talking, who is on your team, what the messages are, who your crisis-management advisor is, who your lawyer is, who your accountant is, and who will be in the room, as a manager that’s very important. So that’s the preparation. And even if you don’t prepare, the first thing is to get your team together. I don’t believe that crisis management can be managed from far away. You must be in the same room with all the people and talk together with your team. The second thing is that in a crisis, you need to work very fast and very slowly.  Very fast because you need to think fast and react fast because it’s a crisis. You have a lot of phone calls, a lot of WhatsApp messages, and a lot of activity on social networks. A lot of people are talking to you. But you also need to be very sharp, and you need time to think. The most important thing you need to think about is: What is your entry point for the win? Who is your target audience? Is your target audience the general public? The business ecosystem? A regulator? A minister? In most crises, you have a few target audiences.  But you must understand which target audience can take you to a win. If you’re a political leader, it’s the public. If you’re a business, it can be the market or the stock exchange. If you’re a producer or a manufacturer and you have a crisis, it can be the regulator. So you must think about who your target audience is and then decide on the strategy. Because there are crises that you cannot win. Going back to basketball, maybe you cannot win the series. But it’s better to lose four games to two than four to zero. And that’s okay because you’re building for the next stage. So you have the team. You have the target audience.  You have the strategy. Then you need to decide who is talking to the public and how they are talking. Through Facebook or other social networks? Are you talking to the press? Are you having one-on-one meetings? When are you going to talk? Where are you going to talk? And who is going to talk? The manager? The professional manager? Your legal staff? Your communications staff? These are all the things you need to decide when the crisis begins. And from there, every crisis is different. But that’s where you move forward. Yeah. That’s fascinating. So basically, get your team together. That’s step one. Obviously, you have to be prepared so that you have a team. You have to react fast, but also make room for deep thought. Who’s your target audience? How do you enter this crisis, or where do you need to show up? Decide the strategy. And then who’s going to speak, where, and when. So that’s fascinating.  When and where. What is the technology? Are you doing a press conference? Are you doing a press release? Do you go to your LinkedIn page, your Facebook page, or your Instagram page? Every crisis has its own recipe. I’m saying that there are people in my profession who use the same strategy all the time. To talk or not to talk. To be aggressive or not to be aggressive. I think every crisis has its own recipe. There are times when you need to talk. There are times when you need to remain silent. There are times when you need to attack your rivals or your opponents. And there are times when you need to apologize for things that you have done. So every crisis has its own recipe.  Yeah, that makes sense. I love it. So I’d like to switch gears a little bit and learn more about your business. What drives growth in your business, in your strategic communications consulting business?  So I think there are two main engines. The first engine is more clients. We have clients in all aspects of life.Share on X We have Samsung and Qualcomm from the technology sector. We have a large bank and a large investment house. We work with cities and municipalities. We work with academia. So that’s one engine. And the second engine is adding more services. We started with communications. Then we added social media management. Then we added video. Now we work with influencers and content creators as well. So one way to grow is through more clients. The second way is by expanding the scope of our profession. It’s all around communication, but communication is evolving. Yeah. So when you say more aspects, do you mean more channels?  Yes. More channels, more services.  How do you see these channels evolving? What’s the big trend? In the past, people shouted from rooftops. Then there were town hall meetings. Then there were newspapers. Then came the internet and social media. And now people are posting and tweeting. So how has this evolved? What’s the bigger picture? What is communication evolving toward?  So it’s a good question. I think that the first main understanding is that it’s all together. It’s all synchronized. You talk on television, in the newspaper, and on the radio. Nothing has diminished. Everything is together. But you have more channels, as you said. The most evolving channels are influencers and creators. Now, a lot of my clients are not talking to journalists.  They are talking to creators or to social media influencers. And they are the most important when you have a B2C business talking to the customer and the consumer. For businesses that are more B2B, I think the economic press and television are still very important. So it depends on the client-side organization. Who is the organization, and what is the best channel to talk through?  Yeah. That’s interesting. What is something that you’re actively trying to figure out in your business right now? I think, like everyone, we’re thinking now about how AI will affect our job and our profession. The first steps of AI are already here. Everybody is using ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. We also use ChatGPT and Claude in every program that we have. But I’m sure that there will be more changes. We can see it through the video aspects and the graphic aspects. It didn’t change communication, but it will change it like every profession. So we are trying to think about what is the best way to use it. And also how we can be faster than our colleagues in the profession in using it correctly.  And what are some of the challenges with AI? What makes it tricky to implement an AI strategy, if anything?  First of all, I think the biggest challenge is that I have 25 years of experience, and my partner also has 25 years of experience. So together, we have 50 years of experience in communications consulting. And we had a big gap between us and all the other competitors. But now, with AI, you can be very young in the profession and still get access to all the knowledge, all the books about the field, and all the crisis case studies. So I think the first challenge is understanding that AI is shortening the gap between those who have experience and those who don’t. I think that’s true in every profession.  Yes.  So I think that’s challenge number one. Challenge number two is that there is a lot of fake news. I’m working with a very prominent businessman in Israel, and now there is a fake AI version of him using his image and talking to the public. It looks like the real person is speaking. And that’s a problem that you need to solve. We are talking to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, asking them not to show the ad because it’s fake. But it’s hard. And it’s something new. It wasn’t there in the past.  That’s scary. That’s very scary when this happens. Yes. Everything is getting more complex. I also see it as an opportunity because we have a lot of experience, so we know how to manage these situations. But these are new situations.  Yeah. I wonder how the world is going to deal with that. One thing we noticed when we created an AI video was that it got a lot fewer likes. Even though it was early on, when there were very few AI videos, and we thought it was a very clever thing, people didn’t really resonate with it. Do you find that this is the case? Or are AI videos now so well done that people don’t realize they’re fake?  I think it’s a challenge for the regulators. And I see that they are already doing some work in this area. For example, an AI video will have something written on it saying, “This is an AI video.” You must do that. So I think that if regulators strengthen these requirements across all the platforms—Google, Facebook, ChatGPT, and everything else—then we’ll reach a point where people can watch any video they want, but they will know whether it’s an AI-generated video or a real one. Yeah. That makes sense. So where do you see the growth opportunities for communications businesses like yours going forward?  I think, as I said, AI will take us to a place where we can work with more clients in a faster way. I'm one of the founders of a startup called Focus AI that is creating synthetic groups and communities.Share on X We can talk to synthetic figures and better understand the best way to approach messaging and make decisions after interacting with these communities. So this is one path for growth in the profession and also in our business. And it’s something that we are already doing.  So that’s one way to move faster. Another thing I’m doing is investing in business books. Because I think people will look for things that are very fast, like AI. But they will also look for things with a lot of depth, like books. And I can see right behind you all the books that you are reading. I believe there are many people who still want a way to go deeply into topics. Because of that, I also wrote my book. And now I’m investing in a business that will bring more and more business books into Israel. That is very interesting. There’s a theory that media consumption is becoming polarized. Very short-form media is becoming more popular, and very long-form media is also becoming more popular. And perhaps books are the long-form media that you’re talking about.  And I think podcasts as well. Podcasts are becoming very successful around the world, and also in Israel. Because people want the opportunity to have a one-hour conversation and really understand things. Not just clips from radio interviews or short interviews. So, as you said, more fast and more slow. More sharp and more depth.  Yeah. That ties in with your framework. In a crisis, you have to be fast, and you have to be slow at the same time. Who do you recommend should buy your book? Who can benefit from Crisis Management?  So I think there are three main target audiences. The first is managers, CEOs, and people who make decisions. They will face crises in their professional lives. I think everyone has a crisis in their life and in their professional life. It’s like back pain. Everybody has it, has had it, or will have it. Nobody lives their life without back pain, and nobody lives their life without a crisis. So the first audience is managers. The second audience is people in my profession: Communications consultants and lawyers who deal with crises. They can benefit from these case studies. And the third target audience is students of communications, business, and law. People who want to gain more knowledge about this subject and this field.  Is this just about communicating during a crisis, or is it also about solving the crisis? Or are those the same thing?  No. It’s about all aspects of a crisis. Every crisis has a communication aspect. But Crisis Management, the book, and crisis management itself are not just about communication. As I said, when I come into an organization that is in crisis, I’m managing the communications side of the crisis. But there is also a lawyer. There is a lobbyist. There is an accountant. And there are the internal managers of the organization. Everybody has their own target audience. So the book is about the entire crisis. My way is through the media.  Yeah. Love it. That’s great. Okay. So if you’re listening to this and you’re running a business, or you’re in a professional-services business, or you’re a politician, or anyone working in a high-stakes environment, I highly recommend Itay Ben Horin’s book, Crisis Management. It just came out. Is it available on Amazon?  Yeah. Amazon, Barnes & Noble. It’s everywhere.  Yeah. So it’s on Amazon and in the major bookstores everywhere. If you want to learn more, check it out. Where can people reach you if they want to talk to you or someone at your firm? What would be the best entry point? Yeah. My email is open. My LinkedIn is open. I’m very available. My profession is to be available 24/7.  So check Itay Ben Horin out on LinkedIn. He’s easy to find there. Yes. And he’s the CEO of Ben Horin & Alexandrovitz, a leading strategic media consultancy in Israel. Do you work outside of Israel as well, or do you focus primarily on the Middle East? Yes. We work outside of Israel. We work with Israeli brands that have communications or business activities around the world. We also work with American and European brands that operate in Israel. So our main focus is Israel, but we work with many clients around the world. We have about 50 international clients.  That’s fantastic. So check Itay out. Read his book. And if you enjoyed this conversation, stay tuned because every week we have another entrepreneur with a unique framework coming on the show. Itay, thanks for coming. And thank you for listening.  Thank you very much. Important Links: Itay's LinkedIn Crisis Management Book Itay’s Website

What if your next customer isn't a person, but an AI agent acting on their behalf? And what if that agent is evaluating your brand on a purely logical, data-driven basis, completely devoid of the emotional hooks your marketing has always relied on?Agility requires not just adapting to changing customer behaviors, but also redefining who—or what—our customer even is. It demands that we build operational and strategic frameworks that can cater to both human emotional drivers and the cold, hard logic of machines.Today, we are at Forrester CX in New York City, and we're going to talk about a fundamental shift in the customer journey: the rise of the AI agent as an influential, and in some cases, decision-making persona. This isn't just about using AI in our marketing; it's about marketing to AI. We'll explore what it means when our brand's message needs to be optimized not just for human perception, but for machine interpretation and evaluation.To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Chuck Gahun, Principal Analyst at Forrester. About Chuck Gahun Chuck is a leader in Forrester's Digital Business & Strategy practice serving business and digital executives. His research coverage includes content management systems (CMSes), product information management (PIM) systems, and commerce services and strategy for B2B and B2C companies. Chuck helps executives design strategies that deliver customer and business value by partnering with technology vendors and services providers. Chuck has 20 years of experience in content and commerce. He specializes in digital strategy, experience design, and technology initiatives in CMSes, e-commerce systems, digital asset management (DAM) systems, PIM systems, digital experience platforms (DXPs), and several others. He has led strategy and implementations for brands like Goldman Sachs, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Hilti, Marriott, AARP, and the Centers for Disease Control. Prior to joining Forrester, Chuck was a managing director and partner at Shift7 Digital (a Merkle company) and held senior management positions at ZS Medullan and Publicis Sapient. Chuck holds a BA in government and international politics and an MS in technology management from George Mason University. Chuck Gahun on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckgahun/ ---------- Resources ---------- Forrester: https://www.forrester.com We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873fThe most influential minds in software, AI, and engineering leadership will be at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, September 23-25 in San Jose. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/60a7299222a7bcf1 Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3 Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstromDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Nerd Alert, a series of special episodes bridging the gap between marketing academia and practitioners. We're breaking down highly involved, complex research into plain language and takeaways any marketer can use. In this episode, Elena and Rob explore whether humor belongs in B2B advertising. They dig into new research that challenges the assumption that business buyers only respond to rational, no-nonsense messaging. Topics covered:[02:44] "To Humor or Not Humor: Buyers Evaluating the Effective Use of Humor in B2B Advertisements"[03:06] How often is humor used in B2B vs. B2C ads?[04:55] What four experiments with 305 B2B buyers revealed[05:45] Three conditions that determine when humor helps or hurts[06:47] Why humor is a door opener, not a deal closerTo learn more, visit marketingarchitects.com/podcast Resources: Swani, K., Gulas, C. S., & Dinsmore, J. (2025). To humor or not humor buyers? Evaluating the effective use of humor in B2B advertisements. Journal of Business Research, 200, 115632. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115632 Get more research-backed marketing strategies by subscribing to The Marketing Architects on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Growing your own machinists and orchestrating robots across four continents, is this what the future of manufacturing looks like? This live episode from Hapa's Brewing in the Bay Area features two panels of people who have built careers at the intersection of mechatronics, automation, and industrial innovation. First up, Vinod, Kevin, and Adam get into what it takes to build a skilled workforce from the ground up, talking about apprenticeships, college partnerships, and growing your own talent in-house. Then we get into the bigger picture with our founder panel Kim, Glenn, Nick, and Florian on what Silicon Valley gets wrong about manufacturing, and what manufacturers are missing by not paying closer attention to what's being built there. In this episode, find out: How Vinod bootstrapped an automation company in the Bay Area while raising a family and why his wife had something to do with it What Kevin learned from a 3-year German apprenticeship that he thinks more US manufacturers should be paying attention to How Adam solved his machinist shortage by bringing the training programme in-house and partnering with a local college How Kim thinks about leading companies through inflection points when there are no guardrails or safety nets Why Glenn believes manufacturers who aren't paying attention to what's being built around them won't even know when it's too late How Nick's B2C background completely changed the way he thinks about building software for frontline manufacturing workers Why Florian ignored his investors and opened a public-facing robotics storefront on the main street of Mountain View Enjoying the show? Please leave us a review here. Even one sentence helps. It's feedback from Manufacturing All-Stars like you that keeps us going! Tweetable Quotes: “You don't have that mechanical job anymore that's done by one person. You need support, whether it's software support or you need a robot at your side.” – Kevin Toomer, Product Manager at Sumitomo Drive Technologies “In automation, you don't need a master's or a PhD to be successful. Just getting creative and having that experience in mechanical engineering really helped me in my career.” – Vinod Anandarajah, Co-Founder and CEO at Kanavu Automation ”In Silicon Valley, we tend to love disruption because to us it represents something new and something better. But when you get on a manufacturing floor, they tend to want predictability.” - Kim Losey, Founder and CEO at NextLine Group Links & mentions: Kanavu Automation, bringing value to manufacturing clients via a strategic focus on machine automation and robotics MaintainX, empowering maintenance professionals to reduce unplanned equipment downtime and boost production capacity NextLine Group, architecting what is next in robotics engineering Sumitomo Drive Technologies, providing engineered solutions to industrial power transmission customers Beluga Navigation Systems, building deep tech navigation solutions for vehicle and vessel navigation InOrbit.AI, leading AI-powered robot orchestration platform, driving software-defined operations at scale Hapa's Brewing Company, craft brewery and taproom located in San Jose, CA Make sure to visit http://manufacturinghappyhour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.