Podcasts about kpis

Surgeon and health tech strategist Sarah Matt discusses her article "Why fee-for-service reform is needed." Sarah analyzes the friction between efficient digital health tools and an outdated payment system that rewards activity over quality. She proposes replacing analog metrics like visit volume with shadow KPIs that track actual health outcomes such as time-to-resolution and preventable hospitalizations. The discussion outlines a practical strategy to utilize existing billing codes for remote patient monitoring while simultaneously gathering data to negotiate shared savings agreements. Listen to learn how clinicians can drive the transition toward a more logical health care economy. Partner with me on the KevinMD platform. With over three million monthly readers and half a million social media followers, I give you direct access to the doctors and patients who matter most. Whether you need a sponsored article, email campaign, video interview, or a spot right here on the podcast, I offer the trusted space your brand deserves to be heard. Let's work together to tell your story. PARTNER WITH KEVINMD → https://kevinmd.com/influencer SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST → https://www.kevinmd.com/podcast RECOMMENDED BY KEVINMD → https://www.kevinmd.com/recommended

Kiera takes listeners through specific actions the most successful dentistry minds have incorporated into their day-to-day to stay elevated. She touches on: Planning out an ideal week Reviewing these numbers weekly Fostering problem-solvers And more! Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript:   The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and I hope that you guys are having an amazing day today. I hope you're loving dentistry. I hope you're loving your opportunities. I hope that you are remembering that we have one life and I hope that you're making it the absolute best life you can. There's a song that I recently heard called Time's a Ticken and it's like, so call your mom, love your babies, talk to your friends and...   I just think about it and another thing I saw were like, if your mom and dad are still able to call you, how blessed are we? And I know some people have strained relationships, but I think as much love that we can give and as much as we can foster great relationships in our lives and realize how much goodness we have, I think that's an amazing space for us. just hopefully you know how much I love and appreciate you and how much I'm rooting for you, whether I know you personally or whether...   you are someone in our Dental A Team family, or if you are in our podcast family, or if you're new to this, just know I'm rooting for you. Even if I don't know you personally, ⁓ you're doing better than you think you are today. Guys, it's going to be fun. I want to talk about CEO habits for next level, like what top practice leaders are doing and just some tips for you. As we're rolling into a 2026, I love looking at habits and not necessarily fads, but habits. And so what do things do? And I believe that habits, not just hustle,   are going to help you with success. ⁓ So many times it's like, well, what made the success successful? And it's like really consistency on doing the best things and the highest priority things consistently. And so giving a couple of three core habits that I think growth-minded leaders, practice owners have versus overwhelmed operators. And so really being able to give you that guidance and at Dental A Team we're obsessed with helping dentists become CEOs of their practices and having amazing teams thrive around them and.   ⁓ Giving you guys all of that today is really what it is and we want you guys to feel clarity, confidence and consistency. And I know sometimes when you're in the whirlwind of the day-to-day business, it can feel very hard to have this. But I will say, if you can build these as a building blocks, the noise can lessen. I'm not gonna promise it will go away, but it can definitely lessen and doing it over time. Just like with front office team members were like, I just don't have time, Kiera. And we're like, great, let's put in a power hour. And they're like, it's never enough time.   You're right. Today is not enough time, but if you do one hour a week blocked with no interruptions and you work on the highest level things, I've watched teams over and over and over again, be like, I actually don't need this hour anymore. And we get our recare calls done and we get our unscheduled treatment calls done and we block that and we do it. And office managers, they block that time and billers block the time to do insurance verification. It does not need to be a lot of time, but it does need to be consistent. So with that, you guys, this is going to be something that's a   a habit, ⁓ daily and weekly habits that you can create that you can really just put into your life now. So number one is, this sounds so silly and I do this often, it's creating and committing to an ideal week. ⁓ And so that's being able to have a rhythm and not reaction. so what I noticed and it's crazy because as my company evolves, my life and my business and my schedule needs to evolve as well.   When the business was smaller, I used to be able to run back to back to back to back meetings. There wasn't as much strategy that I needed to think about. There weren't as many hard decisions. There weren't as many like complex decisions that I used to be able to run a week like back to back to back. And then I realized like, I can't run like that anymore. I need to have like on time and off time, on time, off time. And then there's presenting like podcasts. Like you try to put meetings on a podcast day. You guys, am in podcast is creative land and I'm on presenting mode. And I'm like here hanging out with you guys and having a good time.   don't put meetings where I'm trying to like figure out a budget that is such a different mind than a creative mind. And so really being able to block this where we have it and color coding your calendar. What I really do believe is as a CEO of a practice, you're going to have clinician time, right? You're going to have being a dentist. Then you're going to have leader time where you're developing your leaders. And then you're going to have visionary CEO time. And if you can block this in there and you don't have to have it perfect. So do I have   leader time where I'm like developing my leaders and I'm spending time figuring out leadership pieces for them and investing in my leaders and coaching my leaders. Do I have that blocked in there? And then do I have this deep work visionary CEO time where I'm reviewing the financials and I'm answering questions from my office manager and doctors sometimes they even recommend you have another block of am I getting like all the busy work like the labs and the clin checks and the cases and looking at all the scheduling coming up. Do I have time to work on that? And   blocking this and it sounds like, gosh, there's so much and there is, this is why you feel overwhelmed and you feel radical. So having my doctor dentists in time, my leadership development time, my CEO time, and then if you need any other time, great. I also put in my personal time. So am I working out and taking care of my body? And we did this with our mastermind group where I learned a thing called rapid planning method from Tony Robbins and I really enjoyed it. And then I took it of course, ended Kiera spin to it.   But what I really loved is Tony actually had us rename our categories. So instead of saying workout time, it's my honoring my body time. And that was so much more fulfilling for me. And I also have buckets in there that are color coded of date time. Like I call it mine and Jason's forever love story. And what do I put into my calendar that's blocked specifically for that? And what's lovely is when you have colors around it, ⁓ you can actually make it to where you then are working on those specific areas.   and you're able to see them very, very easily. So when we look at this, I think about my colors and my favorite color is pink. So I always have my Kiera section where I'm honoring myself. It's in pink in my calendar. When I'm working on Dental A Team and I used to like call it just Dental A Team. Now it's my passion project and it's blue. Honoring my body is orange. I needed that like vibrant orange, like getting excited about it. And I have that in there.   my leadership visionary time, that's going to be a different color. For me, that's more of this like blue turquoise color. It's more serene, it's calm. So whatever that is for you, just having those color coordinated things and like I popped into my RPM planner. So I have my ⁓ ROASIS ⁓ is our home. And so working on my home, wealth, genius, fun, that's curious thing. And I always make sure I have fun built into my calendar. But I think like you can make it as complex or as simple as you want, but I would really recommend we've got our dentist time.   our leader time, so maybe that's like our give back time or our development time or our like my first team time and then my visionary, my exciting time. What does that look like and really blocking that in your calendar? And so then we audit our week at the end of the week and I remember I was taught like many times like the most productive thing is to go back and look where did I win my week? Where did I like lose the week and what do need to change for this? And   Even me going into a new year, actually have a new EA joining me pretty soon. So that's thrill. If any of you had a personal assistant EA that's been with you for a long time and you're getting a new one, let's ⁓ just say it's a thrill. And I'm really excited for Marissa to join as Shelbi's getting ready to have some life changes. And I'm so, so, so excited for her. ⁓ And going through that and being able to experience it, I realized I needed a different calendar.   What I've been doing is not going to get me to where I need to go. And so we've been working on it and I like built it. You guys, I like to like really mass and like if I'm in podcast mode, I'm in podcast mode. And if I'm in coaching call mode, I'm in coaching call mode. And if I'm in business mode, I'm in business mode. ⁓ but I realized what I was doing is I was business mode. I was coaching call AKA dentists thing that I was in heavy meetings and then I was in podcasting. And I think sometimes when we run that heavy, it's very hard to have like downtime. And so for you looking, you're working as a dentist all four days.   So could we block maybe Wednesday mornings where you have a catch up time or do we have a CEO day where it's a Friday and you actually have that block for four hours and you work on that. I have a dentist, he works Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays are always off and he works Friday. And I'm like, that is the weirdest schedule. He's like, Keira, I love it. I get all my admin stuff done when people are still there. I have time to think that's when I'm gonna work on my decisions. And then I go in and have a great Friday where I've got nothing on me and I produce my highest amount. And this doctor is a very high producing doctor but he's very regimented in how he does it.   And that's how he's been operating for the last like 30 years. So when you implement this and you commit, so I'm like, okay, let's break it down. guys know I like to make it easy. I like to make it tactical for you. You got to block these areas. What am I done to seeing? When am I leading? And when am I thinking about the greater big like CEOing of the company? And if I'm only going to do one, I'm going to block a two hour block every single week to work on high level of the business. Just like I recommended for our leaders blocking one hour minimum per week of deep work time.   and doing it at your prime optimal time. For me, it's early mornings. I operate so good from like 6 a.m. lately, it's been like 3 a.m. until about 11 and then like I'm out. I don't want to be thinking heavy. I don't like hard things. That's my operating. Just like I run on protein, Jason runs on carbs. Like it's just operating in how we function, but really making sure you do that. Again, this is a habit. It's a discipline. It's reviewing it. And I had a doctor who was really high level. We coached together for about a year and he said, Kiera, coaching with you was one of the most impactful years of my life.   because you taught me to prioritize my calendar, to review my calendar, to work on my family relationships, to work on my leadership, to delegate, to see what things were in my calendar that I could delegate. And this person has grown and added multi-multi-practices and I'm so proud of him. But truly, this is going to be your best thing. So action on this of getting this habit into place is block two hours as your CEO time, no operations, no calls. You are just fully focused on the business and commit to doing that.   for the next four months. Whoa, four months, can you imagine? Just try it. Test it out, tell me, Kiera, I'm trying the experiment. Email me, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. I'm committed to it and I want you to not break that promise to yourself. You hold it strong. I had a doctor who did this. She put a like sign on her door and she said, do not interrupt me at all. Now you have to hold this strong because if someone's like, hey doc, I just have a quick question. Nope, right now is my time and I need you to respect my time. I'll be available at this time.   You call that one or two times and your team will not interrupt you again because they know you are dead serious on this. So review it. Now you're already doing that. I want you to take it one level further and I want you to add in your date time, your workout time, something that you are also adding in that needs to be blocked. And I want you to ramp it up one more. Okay, that's number one habit. Number two habit is reviewing your KPIs and your financials every single week. And you're making decisions based on data, not on feeling. So we all know that what we measure improves, right? All of that is there.   So what it is is KPIs, you gotta be looking at those, whether you're using dental Intel, we recommend Addit. Practice by numbers, I don't care. All of our clients do get Addit. So if you're like, hey, I'm thinking about consulting, but I'm not sure about cost or guess what, we cover that cost for you and it's free for you and we also have other perks for you. So ⁓ definitely cost savings that way. And we help you build a scorecard and a dashboard and we teach your team to look at this. But you as a CEO of your practice, this is how you become a CEO. CEOs make decisions based on numbers and metrics, not on feeling and gut.   but you have to take time to review the data to sift through the data. We have an amazing CRO on our team that's a chief revenue officer. didn't even know that was a position. And I have been begging our marketing team to go through our podcast data to figure out what did the listeners want? have, guys, oh my gosh, we're moving into, think our, we started in 2019. So this year, seven years on the pod, guys. I cannot believe that. Lucky seven over here. But thinking about it, I was like, go look at the data. want to,   not just what Kiera feels and what I think you guys, are 1,100 episodes in by now. Like we should be able to have great data of what you guys want. And you're gonna hear a change this year because we actually went through Paul kudos to him. He went through and he looked at all the data and he said, all right, Kiera, here are the episodes doing well here. The episodes not doing well. Here are the things that listeners want. Here's how we need to revamp it. And I was so proud of him and so grateful because now we're building content based on what the data is telling us. But you know how long that took him? It took him like three months to go through it all, sift through it all. And for you,   You've got data, you've got case acceptance data, you've got new patient call conversion data, you've got our billing, our AR data, you've got diagnosis of doctors, we've got hygiene period data. That is the stuff you need to be looking at to see how are we doing? You've got how long is it to our next appointment? We see how far out are we booking our new patients? We see how far out are we booking our six month appointments? Are we staying at six months? How much money are we losing? A doctor had me come in and I looked and saw it, you're booking your patients eight months out. It was about a million dollars worth of revenue that they were leaving on the table.   just by not having enough hygiene available. That is gold if you will take the time. So this is another step that we're gonna add in. So you've already got your CEO block. You can add this into it where we commit to reviewing our KPIs and our PNLs every single week and making adjustments to that. Now work in tandem with your office manager. Office managers, should be doing this as well. Every single week, where are we off and what do we need to do next? Every week. And we train our teams to use numbers, not feelings. And this is how we're going to lead.   So team members should be looking at the numbers. They should know their department. Are we on track? Are we off track? We have scorecards every single week. All of our departments are reporting. Where are we on? Where are we off of? Where do we need to pivot? We need lead measures and we need lag measures. We need to make sure we're looking at both of those. And you literally start looking at this. And I just told you like people who do this, I have an office and she was like, Garo, we need to increase. I want to increase it. And I was like, we are profit and production. That's all we're looking at, period. I cut out all the noise.   Profit production, what are the levers that are hitting that? How are we diagnosing? How are we block scheduling? How is our case acceptance? How are our new patients and how are we filling the schedule? Profit production, that's all we're hitting. And guess what? That doctor is the most profitable they have ever been. But it was because we had them laser focus. We focus on these numbers every single week. And this doctor was doing it, but they weren't optimizing and making decisions on where they really needed to go and focus on the most important thing. And I think even though you might look at the KPIs and data, are you focusing on the most important things that are gonna drive and move your practice forward?   So I want you profit and production are the number two that I go after. One and two, you've got to look at those two always. And then you use the other ones to boost those two up. And if you're struggling with that, hi, I'm Kiera. We work at Dental A Team. We're a consulting company committed to making you financially free, blissfully happy in your practice and getting the best life you want. So reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com Okay, so let's have it number two. Habit number three is developing your people to solve problems instead of you always solving them. So.   This is something where it's like, what's leadership versus what's firefighting. And you guys, I'm not perfect at this. I do a lot of firefighting. I do a lot of problem solving for teams. And I'm like, my gosh, I'll just give you the answer. But the goal is we need to fix it. And we need to start asking the question. So I'm like, hey, here's a problem. Instead of being like, here's the answer. Then we train them that we're the person that they come to. Hey, what do you think is a solution? You can roll it out. It's a three solution company. If you've got a problem, you bring me three solutions, one of which does not cost money. We have one-on-ones that focus on development, not just updates.   I need to develop you as a leader. I need to work with you. I need to grow you. Where are we at? This is the things we need. Like, let's work through this. Is this really the best use of our time? Is this really the best KPI for us to be tracking? Is this really how we're gonna lead? You focusing and developing your leaders and coaching them, you don't wait for things to break. So like, let's look at the KPIs. All these, you can tell build upon each other. Let's look at the KPIs. Let's look at what you guys are needing. And then let's coach to that. But truly,   If you will coach your team, there's a practice that I have known for gosh, seven years. The doctors are working in there one day a week and their office manager is running the organization and they have leaders. They have people that are following up on issues. They have the team solving their own problems. They're a solution oriented organization rather than a problem like centric like, Hey, here's your problem. Go fix it. If you need a good book, ⁓ gosh, it's the monkey book. The one minute manager meets the monkey.   It's like a good little fable of don't let people put the monkey, like their monkey on your back and leave it. Another friend described it as a fridge with a magnet and like someone was like, here's this problem, here's this problem. We're like Post-it notes, right? Like they just put it all on you. Tiff and I did a video a long time ago where it's like Post-it notes all over you and you're just drowning in Post-it notes. Well, that's like draining your energy too. And if we can teach our team to solve problems and this is a habit, this is going to be, ⁓ this is going to be something that you work through.   So just letting you know, like, this is where it's at. This is how we do it. These are three habits for you. So how do we take action on this one of developing it is you're going to have monthly coaching one-on-one with each of your leaders and figuring out their gaps of where they need to grow and giving honest feedback to them. ⁓ There's some great things of, you guys know we run on EOS and we absolutely love EOS and there's quarterly conversations that you can have. it's like, how are they on core values? How are they on their position? How are they rating themselves?   ⁓ We are having the conversations and we're being direct with them and we're giving mutual reflection on things and how are we doing on our quarterly pieces and how's our team doing and what are the moving forward actions that we're doing and having these as consistent monthly and quarterly check-ins with our team, but growing them into leaders is going to be critical and pivotal for your team. So these are three, you guys, three quick habits that you can implement now.   If you need to read the book Atomic Habits, how do I stack things? How do I make this easy? Like, okay, I need to block CEO time. So CEO time sounds like C, I'm gonna C on Thursdays or C on Fridays. Like, I don't know, C, maybe at C2, I'm trying to think of like an alliteration for you. I need my CEO time, my power time. There's no P in the alphabet, in the Monday, Tuesday, So maybe it's like top time on Tuesday or Thursday. I'm gonna do my top time Tuesday or Thursday or like Focus Friday.   There you go, there's some alliterations for you, but I'm gonna block this and I'm gonna block my calendar. Then I'm also gonna commit to KPIs or numbers. So winning Wednesdays, that's when I'm always gonna look at my numbers. Or magic Mondays, I'm gonna look at my numbers. Or money Mondays, there you go. Money Mondays, I'm gonna look at my KPIs and I'm gonna make decisions and me and my OM are gonna meet on that. And then I'm going to have leaders that are solution oriented. So we roll that as a culture thing and I'm gonna set it to where once a month I meet with all of my leaders now.   Maybe we work on weekly in the future, ⁓ but I'm gonna make sure that I'm meeting with them once a month and that's where I'm putting my most important time. And I could add that as CEO time, that's fine, because you are working on leadership at that part, but you're gonna commit to one, two or three of these habits and you're gonna hold strong for at least four months and let me know how your life looks. Now, if you're like me, I have to have a gym trainer, otherwise I don't work out. I got all the workouts, I got all the things, I hear it, I see it, I see it on Instagram, I see how to make the good food.   But unless I have it booked, scheduled, and someone's holding me accountable to it, I don't do it. So if you're that person, hi, I'm Kiera. We have the Dental A Team and this is what I'm obsessed with. Second to sending you a carrier pigeon, we make sure that you stay accountable to this. Let's help you do that. Reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com because you deserve to be the CEO and sometimes just being redirected and getting a new habit and a new operating system is going to get you to where you want to be. So reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com and commit to this. I want you guys to act like the CEO of your practice.   and start with these three habits this week. Reach out, we're here to help. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.  

The 80/20 Principle of Running a Cash-Based PT Clinic In this episode of the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, Dr. Danny Matta breaks down the 80/20 principle for cash-based clinic owners and simplifies what you should track if you want to grow past yourself. Instead of obsessing over dozens of metrics, Danny argues there are three "dollar productive" KPIs that drive almost all clinic growth. He also explains why provider schedules either snowball fast or stall for a year and how to shorten that ramp from 12+ months to around six months with the right focus. In This Episode, You'll Learn: How Claire can save staff clinicians hours each week and translate that time into meaningful revenue What the 80/20 principle means inside a cash-based clinic The concept of "dollar productive activities" and why it matters The three KPIs Danny thinks drive the majority of clinic growth Why the owner should usually handle discovery calls during growth phases Benchmarks for conversion rates at different stages of scale Why recurring services are the "sneaky" variable that stabilizes schedules How to get a new provider productive faster so clinic growth compounds Claire: Turn Saved Time Into Revenue Without Burning Out Your Team Danny opens with a simple math breakdown clinic owners can understand quickly. Time is valuable, for you and for your staff clinicians. PT Biz has found that Claire, their AI scribe, saves staff clinicians about six hours per week on average. Even if you only reclaim half of that time and convert it into patient care, that is roughly three additional one-hour visits per week per clinician. Example Danny gives: 3 extra visits per week $200 average visit rate $600 more per week per clinician Roughly $30,000 per year in additional revenue per clinician The point is not to overload your team. The point is to use technology to remove the documentation burden so you can increase capacity without increasing burnout. Try Claire free for 7 days: https://meetclaire.ai The 80/20 Principle in a Cash Practice The 80/20 principle is the idea that 20% of your actions lead to 80% of your results. Danny applies this directly to clinic growth. When your clinic is small, it is easy to get busy doing "everything" and tracking a long list of numbers. The problem is most of those activities do not move the business. Instead, Danny recommends narrowing your focus to the most "dollar productive" activities. In other words, the actions and metrics that actually drive revenue and schedule utilization. The Goal: Get a Provider Productive Fast Danny frames the big objective clearly. You want to get your own schedule full enough to hire someone. Then you want any provider you hire to get productive as fast as possible. In PT Biz's world, once a provider reaches roughly 80 to 90 visits per month, it tends to snowball into 100+ pretty quickly. But getting to that point can take some clinics over a year. If you can shorten that ramp to six months, your growth compounds. In a year, you might be able to hire two people instead of one, because each provider becomes profitable faster. The Three Dollar-Productive KPIs Danny says there are three key metrics that drive the majority of growth in a cash-based clinic. Each one represents a drop-off point that can either accelerate growth or quietly crush it. 1) New Patient Volume and Discovery Call Conversion Many owners only track "how many evals we have." Danny says you need to go one step back and track conversion from lead to evaluation. There is often a major drop-off between someone becoming a lead and actually booking an evaluation. This is usually happening on discovery calls. Benchmarks Danny shares: During growth, aim for 8 to 10 new patients per provider per month Once stable, new patient volume can drop closer to 5 per month Discovery call to eval conversion should be 70%+ He also makes a strong recommendation: during growth phases, the owner should handle discovery calls. Why? In many clinics, admins convert around 45% to 50%. Owners often convert 80% to 90% because they carry authority and can handle objections better. Danny gives an example: 20 discovery calls at 50% conversion = 10 evals 20 discovery calls at 80% conversion = 16 evals That gap can be the difference between a provider staying empty and a provider getting busy quickly. He also points out that owners sometimes resist this because it feels like a step backward, but the time requirement is smaller than most people assume. If you have 20 calls at 20 minutes each, that is under 10 hours per month and it can dramatically impact growth. 2) Evaluation to Plan of Care Conversion The second KPI is how many evaluations convert into a plan of care. When people do not commit to a plan of care, Danny says many still come back a few times, often around three visits, until symptoms improve and then they disappear. That creates unpredictable revenue and inconsistent schedules. Plan-of-care conversion makes volume and revenue more predictable. Benchmarks Danny shares: Owner: 70% conversion from eval to plan of care Staff providers: 60% conversion is a strong benchmark at scale He emphasizes that this requires quality control and training. Staff clinicians need to be comfortable with diagnosis, prognosis, and presenting a clear plan. Otherwise close rates drift and schedules stall. 3) Recurring Services After Plan of Care Danny calls this the sneaky variable that people forget, but it can make the biggest difference in schedule stability. Hiring a clinician is usually a net negative for the business at first. You are paying salary, taxes, and benefits while they are still ramping up. What stabilizes and compounds a provider schedule is recurring volume. The goal is that roughly 40% of plan-of-care patients transition into some type of recurring service after discharge. Why this matters: Recurring visits fill a predictable chunk of the schedule New patient volume no longer has to carry the whole load Providers get to work with people they enjoy long term It is mentally easier than constant evaluations Danny also explains why this is often hard for staff clinicians. They may feel uncomfortable "selling" ongoing support because they never did it in insurance clinics They may not know what to do clinically once a plan of care ends So this requires two things: education on the clinical delivery of recurring services and training on how to present it confidently. Put It Together: How to Grow Faster Without Tracking Everything Danny's bigger point is that clinic owners often get lost in too many tasks and too many numbers. If you simplify down to these three KPIs and train your team around them, your odds of building provider schedules faster go up dramatically: Discovery call conversion (lead to eval) Eval to plan-of-care conversion Plan-of-care to recurring conversion When those are strong, growth compounds. You hire faster, providers get productive faster, and you get to choose what you want the clinic to become instead of being stuck trying to "just get busy." Resources Mentioned Try Claire free for 7 days: https://meetclaire.ai Talk with a PT Biz advisor: https://vip.physicaltherapybiz.com/discovery-call Join the free Part Time to Full Time 5-Day Challenge: https://physicaltherapybiz.com/challenge

Stop flying blind in your coaching business. It's 2026, and it's time to ditch the hope-and-pray approach and start using actual data to drive your growth. In this episode, I'm breaking down the 5 essential metrics every coach should be tracking right now. Plus, I'm sharing the advanced KPIs that will help you identify whether you have a leads problem or a conversion problem. In This Episode: The 5 non-negotiable metrics for coaching business success How to set up a simple weekly tracking system (no complicated software required) Why tracking creates identity shifts that lead to six-figure results Advanced metrics for coaches ready to scale The exact weekly tracking habit that's creating momentum for BDC students Ready to become a data-driven coach? Book a call with me here: https://amanda-walker.com/letschat Resources: "How To Get Clients" Limited Series: https://amanda-walker.com/limitedseries 10 Powerful Questions: https://amanda-walker.com/questions Follow Amanda on Instagram: @awalkmyway https://www.instagram.com/awalkmyway

Today, I'm joined by Carter Barnhart, CEO and co-founder of Charlie Health.   Charlie Health provides virtual intensive outpatient treatment for serious mental health and substance use disorders — serving children, teens, and adults across 40 states.   In this episode, we discuss making life-saving behavioral healthcare accessible at scale.   We also cover:   Securing over 850 insurance contracts Proving the ROI of virtual intensive treatment Leveraging group-based connection for healing Subscribe to the podcast → insider.fitt.co/podcast  Subscribe to our newsletter → insider.fitt.co/subscribe  Follow us on LinkedIn → linkedin.com/company/fittinsider    Charlie Health Website: www.charliehealth.com  Charlie Health is Hiring across all roles - reach out to join the team   -   The Fitt Insider Podcast is brought to you by EGYM. Visit EGYM.com to learn more about its smart fitness ecosystem for fitness and health facilities.   Fitt Talent: https://talent.fitt.co/  Consulting: https://consulting.fitt.co/  Investments: https://capital.fitt.co/    Chapters: (00:00) Introduction (01:15) Charlie Health's mission (03:10) Proving virtual intensive treatment works (05:06) COVID as the catalyst (06:33) Building a world without suicide (07:10) The care model (08:25) Community-based referral network (09:00) Personalized matching and group-based treatment (10:15) Connection as the foundation (11:15) Long-term outcomes tracking (12:26) Insurance accessibility (13:20) Quality care at scale (14:32) Transparency (16:00) Building trust with clinicians (17:05) Core values (19:00) Bridging the gap in behavioral healthcare (20:30) Trust as the foundation of data collection (21:20) Success stories to combat stigma (22:35) Destigmatizing high-acuity mental health (24:15) Moving the needle through shared stories (26:00) AI augmenting clinician work (27:50) Charles the AI scribe (29:00) AI vs. human connection (30:15) Expansion (31:30) KPIs (32:27) Profitability and scholarships (33:10) Learn more and join the team (33:40) Conclusion  

What actually changes when you stop running your clinic on hustle and start running it like a CEO? And what happens when you realize—only a year into ownership—that the practice you bought came with ten-year problems?In this episode, Dr. Lauryn sits down with Dr. Carrie Silveira, a chiropractor who went from CA to associate to clinic owner in record time and found herself overwhelmed, underpaid, and dangerously close to burnout. Carrie shares her unfiltered experience inside Uncharted CEO, what finally forced her to pause and look at the numbers, and how building real systems transformed not just her practice, but her leadership and sanity. They discuss profit leaks, team accountability, using AI to regain time, and why working harder is rarely the answer.Key TakeawaysBuying a practice does not guarantee profitability. Inheriting systems, staff, and overhead without clear margins can create instant burnout if not addressed early.Clarity creates momentum. Deep financial visibility and defined KPIs allow clinic owners to make confident decisions instead of reacting emotionally.Teams perform better with measurable goals. Clear expectations and simple metrics can completely change staff engagement and ownership.Time freedom starts with systems. Leveraging AI and structured processes reduces decision fatigue and allows owners to focus on leadership instead of survival.About the GuestDr. Carrie Silveira is a chiropractor on California's Central Coast who has spent over 15 years in the same practice—first as a chiropractic assistant, then as an associate, and ultimately as the owner after purchasing the clinic two years ago. A graduate of Life Chiropractic College West with honors, Dr. Silveira specializes in gentle techniques for older and more fragile bodies, helping patients who have been told they “just have to live with it.” With six additional years of education in functional medicine, she brings a deeper investigative lens to uncovering root causes of dysfunction. Outside the clinic, she enjoys making natural skincare products, dreaming of travel, and spending time with family and friends.Follow Dr. Carrie: InstagramResources:Join the FREE Rich Doc Rising mastermind, register here!Join the waitlist for The Uncharted CEO: An 8-week immersive experience for clinic owners designed to increase revenue, maximize profits, and build cash flow systems that create freedom NOW, not at 65.Follow Dr. Lauryn: Instagram | X | LinkedIn |...

EPISODE SUMMARYThis episode was recorded during the roofing boom—when being busy hid bad numbers. Today, work is slower and margins are tighter. Dave explains why job costing is now the difference between surviving and disappearing, and why “gut feel” leaves contractors broke even even when they're busy.EPISODE DESCRIPTIONThis interview was recorded a few years ago when the roofing market was on fire. Phones were ringing, jobs were everywhere, and being busy hid a lot of sins.Today it's different.Jobs are harder to get. Margins are thinner. And the contractors who don't truly understand their numbers—what jobs actually make money, what crews are profitable, what their real labor cost is—those companies won't survive this market.I hear it every week:“Dave, we're working like crazy… but there's never any money in the bank.”That's not bad luck. That's no job costing.Successful contractors job cost every job. Unsuccessful ones run on gut feel—and in this market, gut feel will put you out of business.In this conversation, Dave Sullivan sits down with construction finance expert Leslie Shiner to break down the simple job costing system profitable roofers use to protect margins and make real decisions.You'll LearnWhy “gut feel” lies—and cash proves itThe real reason busy roofers still have no moneyHow to calculate true labor cost (labor burden)Paid hours vs billable hours = labor utilizationWhy labor overruns destroy profit faster than materialsHow estimate vs actual fixes bad pricingHow to see which crews and job types make moneyTwo KPIs every roofer must trackTIMESTAMPS00:00 – Why this matters now02:20 – Gut feel vs real profit06:20 – What job costing actually means10:15 – True labor cost & labor burden17:30 – Labor utilization explained24:15 – Estimate vs actual the right way30:25 – Fixing downtime & productivity36:40 – Sales to production handoff40:35 – KPIs that matter44:15 – Improving your systemRESOURCESShiner Group: https://www.shinergroup.comFree Labor Burden Calculator (on Leslie's site)LINKSWork with Dave / Mentoring: https://theroofercoach.com/mentoring/Free resources: https://theroofercoach.com/resources/Connect with Dave!Text Dave: (510) 612-1450Free Strategy CallWant to grow a more profitable roofing business?Book a free strategy call with Dave here → davesullivan.as.me/free-strategy-callFree ResourceDownload your FREE 1-Page Business Plan for Roofing Contractors → theroofercoach.com/planWatch on...

If you work in media, marketing, or advertising, you know this tension: Screens dominate. Measurement has lagged. And it's harder to answer questions like “Where does attention really happen?” and “What actually moves people…and how do I prove it?” This episode offers some answers, from three executives I spoke with at CES 2026. Though we talk about the newest cool tools (it IS the largest consumer tech show), these conversations explore how media works when it follows consumers from the couch to the car, in stores, in culture, and across audio—and how measurement is finally catching up to meaning. Learn what's working now and what's coming next, according to: Jim Riley, President of Stingray U.S., explains how audio, ambient TV, karaoke, and in-car experiences are converging—and how their effort to connect these environments creates value for brands, platforms, and consumers alike.  From FAST channels to automotive dashboards, Jim shares how following people across screens (and beyond them) is reshaping media strategy. (And don't miss an archival image of Jim making music “back in the day” himself!) Kimberly Hairston-Hicks, CMO of Sanofi's Gold Bond, brings a powerful brand perspective rooted in authenticity and cultural relevance. She talks candidly (and I sing) about letting go of control, redefining success beyond impressions, and building partnerships based on shared values—showing how human connection and business results don't have to be at odds. Hint: They paired perfectly with celebrity Chelsea Handler over shared values and love of the product! Chelsea Handler Skiing with Gold Bond! (And learn why Kimberly wears a “cape,” and owes a debt of gratitude to women who help women!) Jennifer Louie Oon, SVP of Sales at DAX US, closes the loop with a look at audio advertising today—and why its moment is now…especially when brands can reach markets or audiences other platforms  or apps often miss. She explains how DAX is solving for that, along with measurement tools that can finally demonstrate audio's impact in real time and the power of advertisers still having presence in screen-free moments. (And find out why old school Legos really grabbed her during the world's largest tech show!)  Get some practical thought starters on audio advertising, brand authenticity, media measurement, and human-centered marketing—without the jargon or hype…and with a little bit of singing and laughs! Key Moments & Time Codes 00:00–01:22 — Why this episode connects audio, TV, brand marketing, and ad tech 03:29–04:43 — Why karaoke is becoming a serious media business Jim Riley explains how Stingray turned a universal behavior—singing in the car—into a gamified, social, and monetizable experience across TVs and automotive dashboards. 05:40–06:20 — From couch to car to checkout Jim outlines Stingray's vision for linking TV, in-car audio, and retail media—following consumers across environments and tying media exposure to real-world action. 08:02–08:37 — When advertising doesn't belong everywhere A candid discussion on why karaoke stays ad-free, how premium experiences are monetized differently, and what “everybody wins” actually looks like in practice. 12:44–13:20 — “Let it go” as a marketing strategy Kimberly Hairston-Hicks shares why perfection is the enemy of progress—and how letting go of control creates stronger brands and better outcomes. 18:19–20:29 — Authenticity beats star power Kimberly breaks down the Gold Bond–Chelsea Handler partnership, revealing why shared values—not celebrity size—drive cultural relevance and real KPIs. 21:01–22:11 — When impressions aren't the point anymore A reframing of success: why cultural moments, memory, and longevity matter just as much as raw reach—and how brands should measure that. 26:07–27:25 — Beauty, confidence, and showing up fully A powerful, personal exchange on how products—and leadership—can change how people feel about themselves, from the boardroom to daily life. 35:07–36:05 — Audio measurement finally catches up Jennifer Louie Oon explains how DAX is using brand-lift measurement to prove what audio has always delivered—and why this changes how brands plan media. 37:18–38:06 — Why audio's moment is now Screen-free moments, smarter targeting, and better measurement come together—making the case for audio as a core, not supplemental, channel in 2026 planning. Connect with: Jim Riley Kimberly Hairston-Hicks Jen Oon Connect with E.B. Moss and Insider Interviews: With Media & Marketing Experts            LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mossappeal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insiderinterviews Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InsiderInterviewsPodcast/ Threads: https://www.threads.net/@insiderinterviews Substack: Moss Hysteria Please follow Insider Interviews, share with another smart business leader, and leave a comment on @Apple or @Spotify… or a tip in my jar!: https://buymeacoffee.com/mossappeal!  THANK YOU for listening!

Why B2B Lead Qualification Fails and How to Fix It  Traffic is cheap, but qualified B2B sales conversions are not. Too many CMOs in the B2B space are watching brilliant creative go to waste at the top of the marketing funnel because what's passing through as a “qualified lead” often isn't really qualified. How can B2B marketers identify where the real lead qualification bottleneck is? Why is rethinking how MQLs are defined, scored, and routed one the most strategic fixes a CMO can make to improve pipeline performance? That's why we're talking to Gabe Lullo (CEO, Alleyoop), who shared some insights around why B2B lead qualification fails and how to fix it at the top of the funnel. During our discussion, Gabe challenged the common misconception that poor lead quality is the issue when sales aren't closing. Instead, he emphasized the importance of a clearly-defined Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), a strong product-market fit, and a well-mapped B2B sales journey. Gabe also stressed the need for A/B testing, identifying and resolving funnel bottlenecks, and using data-driven decision-making to improve lead conversion rates. He underscored the value of nurturing leads and cautioned B2B marketers against dismissing traditional marketing channels without rigorous testing. https://youtu.be/KXVmywNsfP0 Topics discussed in episode: [02:36] Why top-of-funnel lead qualification breaks down in B2B. [16:37] How to define and operationalize your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). [12:17] When MQLs hurt more than they help, and how to fix them. [26:14] How A/B testing and data-driven decisions improve lead conversion. [27:53] Why lead nurturing is critical to long sales cycles. [34:05] When to test (not abandon) traditional B2B marketing channels. Companies and links mentioned: Gabe Lullo on LinkedIn  Alleyoop  ZoomInfo  Salesloft  Adobe  Transcript SPEAKERS Gabe Lullo, Christian Klepp Gabe Lullo  00:00 So we’re doing top of funnel activities, and then we’re sending leads over. The sales team takes them, and then what we find, a lot, we hear this all the time, is leads aren’t closing. And what’s interesting is that it was never a lead problem. It was more of a, you know, seller problem. I don’t mean to put blame on it, but companies come to us saying, hey, my sellers are saying we don’t have enough leads, we don’t have better leads, we don’t have good leads, and they’re the ones complaining about the lead. So they come to us to fix the lead problem. We fix the lead problem, but it doesn’t fix the revenue problem. It’s still not closing. So what is it? Christian Klepp  00:30 Traffic is cheap, but conversion is not too many CMOs (Chief Marketing Officer) are watching brilliant, creative go to waste at the top of the funnel, because what’s passing through as qualified just isn’t so how can you identify where the real bottleneck is, and why is rethinking how MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) are defined and scored the single most strategic fix? A CMO can make welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers on the Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp. Today, I’ll be talking to Gabe Lullo, who will be answering these questions. He’s the CEO of Alleyoop, a sales development agency working with industry giants such as ZoomInfo, Salesloft and Adobe. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B Marketers Mission is, and off we go. Mr. Gabe Lullo, welcome to the show, sir. Gabe Lullo  01:17 Christian. Thank you so much. First off, I’m a huge fan of yours, so is my team, and we just appreciate all that you do for the industry. And I’m so excited to be here. Thanks for the invite. Christian Klepp  01:28 Wow, wow. Thank you. Thank you so much. Right off the gate with the praise, thank you, sir. Gabe Lullo  01:33 Well, you deserve it, man, you’re the best. What do you do. I love it. I love your show, and I love being a part of that. Christian Klepp  01:38 I appreciate that. I appreciate that. You know, we really had an awesome, like, pre-interview conversation. I’m gonna say, like, you know, talking about coming up to Toronto and Buffalo and what have you. And I’m really looking forward to this conversation, Gabe, because, man, you know, what? As much as some Marketers probably don’t want to hear this. It’s an, I think this is an absolutely necessary conversation to have. Right this topic that we’re going to talk about, and I will not keep the audience in suspense for too long. I’m just going to jump into the first question, if you don’t mind. Gabe Lullo  02:09 Yeah, no problem. Let’s get right into it. Christian Klepp  02:11 All right, so Gabe, you’re on a mission to provide the ultimate assist to your clients by setting them up for success. So for this conversation, let’s zero in on the following topic of how B2B Marketers can fix qualification at the top. So here comes the first question in our previous conversation. You talked about many marketing funnels being a leaky bucket. Can you please explain what you meant by that? Gabe Lullo  02:36 Yeah, I think companies right now are going to market in a very hodgepodge type of way, you know, ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), you know, we throw that terminal around a lot, and, you know, people think they know what it is, or feel like they have it drilled down, or feel like it’s completely locked, locked in. And then clients invite us in, and we realize it’s not the case, and it’s not just what the ideal client profile is, which, of course, is quintessential to going to market, and it’s really the first step to qualification, isn’t it, right? But on the other side of it, it is, you know, is there a product market fit? Is there a pricing that needs to be aligned? What’s the competitive landscape look like? So when we’re having live conversations, our sellers are making, you know, 11 million cold calls a year. That’s front of the line conversations, right? And we can hear, understand, and truly, you know, debrief with what each call is sounding like, so we can then narrow in what those qualifications should be. You know, a lot of you know, let’s say VPs of sales come into the sales development side of the house or the marketing side of the house, and they apply sales training methodologies to top of funnel qualifications, and it really gets broken as well. So there’s a lot to unpack, but I’ll give you an example. You know, band for instance, but you know budget authority needed timing. Like, is that really the right qualification at the top of the funnel, or does that really, you know, evolve the seller and the demo and the discovery call at that moment in time. So really understanding who’s in charge of that top of funnel and what their experience is also as a part of it, in my opinion. Christian Klepp  04:13 Absolutely, absolutely and you’re absolutely right. There’s so much to unpack here, but I have to ask just from your experience, and I know you have a lot, it seems like it’s just, there’s so many moving parts in this ecosystem, and a lot of like, well, what causes the leaky funnel? I’m gonna say is a lot of the things that you just mentioned, right? It’s a lack of understanding of who the actual ICP is. It’s probably also, especially the bigger the the organization gets sorry to everyone out there, but the lack of ownership and accountability, the lack of an actual strategy, like, where’s this all gonna go? Right? Gabe Lullo  04:54 Oh, it’s interesting. Yeah, I find this to be our except we so we’re doing top of the funnel activities, and we’re sending leads over, the sales team takes them, and then what we find, a lot, we hear this all the time, is leads aren’t closing. And what’s interesting is that it was never a lead problem. It was more of a seller problem. Now I don’t mean to put blame on it, but companies come to us saying, hey, my sellers are saying we don’t have enough leads, we don’t have better leads, we don’t have good leads, and they’re the ones complaining about the lead so they come to us to fix the lead problem. We fix the lead problem, but it doesn’t fix the revenue problem. It’s still not closing. So what is it? It’s the entire channel, right? It’s the entire sales journey, and we have to make sure that all of those things are working like an engine, right? All the cylinders are working at the same time in the same motion, to truly know what the problem may be. So that that’s really exposed a lot when we step in and start doing top of funnel activities, Christian Klepp  05:55 Absolutely, absolutely. And that segues into the next question, which I feel you’ve already answered to a certain extent. But where do you feel the true bottleneck lies, and that may be dependent on the company, right? Because each company maybe has a different set of challenges. And most importantly, okay, where does the bottleneck lie? And how do how can B2B Marketing teams help address the bottleneck and not be part of the bottleneck? Gabe Lullo  06:21 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s an eight step approach to sales. That’s what we call your sales journey, right? You have, obviously, you know, list building, and then we have, of course, outreach, we have qualification, we have discovery call, we have demo, we have, you know, closing or negotiating. We have client success. I mean, that’s the basic funnel, if you will. So is our, I should say, all of those things operating at the best of its ability. And what is broken, and it’s, it’s the old, you know, Henry Ford approach the assembly line. You know, there’s an assembly line and building a car, and there’s an assembly line in sales. And you have to know those steps, firstly, two, you have to know if those steps are working correctly, and figure out where that bottleneck is, and then, you know, take those blockers away so that those cars are flowing in and the production line doesn’t stop and we’re, you know, executing on the results that we need to serve our clients. Christian Klepp  07:16 100% agree. But now I’m gonna throw in another like wild card question, and I know you can handle it, right? When companies like yours come in to help organizations, right, there are times, even from my own experience, where the internal teams look at you and go, What are those guys doing here? Right? Like, is my job on the line. So they feel, they feel threatened, right by by somebody coming in and providing an external perspective. So I guess the question is, how do you deal with that kind of push back to help fix this leaky marketing funnel? Gabe Lullo  07:57 Yeah, it’s very important, right? Because a lot of companies come, you know, come in like us, and say, You know what, we’re going to come in here and try to solve the problem, or rip and replace or threaten the job. And it’s interesting, our point of contact, usually is the person who may be, you know, being fired because of our success. Well, we don’t want to approach it that way. So we set clear expectations that, hey, listen, we’re not here to rip and replace we are here to work as a parallel to what you’re existing doing, so we can A/B test and share best practices and be collective in those results. A lot of companies who have existing teams in place usually put us in scenarios where we’re bringing something new to market, or we’re reaching out to a market that is you know, you know, a new product line or a new segment, and we’re bringing that in. We do, however, see about a 20 to 30% increase in existing production when an outside partner comes in, because, again, we are sharing best practices. We’re all working together, but there is some pressure on the line when they see it. You know, another great player on the team playing ball. However, we did put a mechanism in place that really helps alleviate the fear, if you will, of that rip and replace scenario. Very unique thing to us, only a handful of companies I know about, of hundreds and if not thousands, that do what we do, do this. And here’s what it is, a lot of companies want to hire everything within and bring everything in house, in the sales development side within, because they graduate those people into account executives or closers or higher level performers or managers, so that graduation of career placement is there if you do it in house. So what we say is, you know what? You can have that great feeling of growing and building your team in house with us too. So all of our reps (representatives) who come work here, and all of our clients who enroll with us know that they can hire our reps and and bring them into their payroll and into their in house team with our help. So that’s a really good way of curving the fear, because they know, hey, this person who’s executing this outbound activity could be our next closer, and we can hire them to not take again, to not take away from what their current teams are doing, but to add to and grow that existing team they have. Christian Klepp  10:14 Absolutely, absolutely, and you know where I’m going with this, right? Because, like, you know, far too often, especially the higher ups that are not involved in the day to day, that are looking at this from the, I call it the Mount Olympus perspective, right, looking down at the land of the living, right? Like, why are you bringing in an external partner? Isn’t that your job to fix it? Right? But there are benefits to your point of, like, bringing in somebody that’s external, that’s not privy to, perhaps, some of the bias, some of the, certainly, the, certainly the organizational like dynamics and politics, which may, may be more detrimental than useful, right? Gabe Lullo  10:50 Yeah. I mean, we do punchy contracts, right? We have a six month minimum engagement. But so when we do that, you know, we’re saying, Hey, listen, we’re, we’re going to work with you for six months. We’re going to give it everything we got. And if it’s something you want to bring in-house from our team, great. If it’s you want to continue, great, or if you’ve learned a lot and you’re able to duplicate our efforts, also great too. So again, we’re not going in there saying, Oh, this is our world. Now. Get out of the way. Good luck, you know, and giving pink slips to people, it’s about really, again, how can we help? How can we assist? How can we hit this number? It’s not getting hit. There has to be reasons why. And let’s figure those numbers out, and let’s figure out the reasons why. And then, and then we move on, you know. So there’s short contracts, and then there’s very, very long contracts, you know, ZoomInfo has been a client off and on for the last decade. We’re doing a program right now where they just launched a lot of cool things, and we’re helping them so companies like that, size and stature, still come to outside help when necessary, when the timing is right and the fit is right. Christian Klepp  11:55 Amazing. Amazing. All right. Next question. So why do you believe rethinking how MQLs are defined and scored as the most strategic fix that a CMO can make, and what are some of these other key pitfalls that Marketers should avoid, and what should they be doing instead? I mean, let’s, let’s keep the conversation constructive here, right? Gabe Lullo  12:17 So defining and scoring MQLs is by far one of the first things, if not the most important thing, to start with, right? Because that is, again, the start of that assembly line. You know, garbage in, garbage out. And so if we’re not actually understanding why those MQLs are, the MQLs that we are saying they are, and what those triggering events are causing them to be considered. MQLs could truly dictate whether or not we’re receiving garbage into the funnel versus excellence and extraordinary leads and MQLs into the funnel. So again, it’s going back to that ICP, like we discussed earlier. It’s determining, okay, are these worthy and does it make sense to continue this, lead this MQL down the funnel, and will it produce results? Should it even be in the system at all? So knowing that up front, like I said earlier, it’s like the raw material. You know, if you have really bad raw material that you’re using to build your cars, you know, no matter how great it comes out at the other end, it’s not going to be a quality vehicle. So it’s that, it’s the raw material that we need to make sure that’s first and foremost, because it’s the start of the entire process. Christian Klepp  13:29 Yeah, yeah, no, that’s for sure. Because, you know, how many times have you heard that, right? Like the marketing team says, well, we’ve, we’ve got, we’ve generated the MQLs, we’ve passed them on to the sales team now, so we’re good, yeah, but that’s not where it stops, right? Like, so especially if the MQLs are, like, not qualified, right? Gabe Lullo  13:48 No, I couldn’t agree with you more. And again, having sales and marketing work synergistically in that determination is paramount. You know, so many companies, and it’s the old adage, and I think it’s almost a cliche now, because it’s been said so many times that you know, sales is throwing spears over the fence to marketing, and marketing is throwing another spear back to them, and they’re fighting back and forth over this wall. The deal is, you got to break down the wall and start having conversations. And again, sellers have to give feedback on why we’re seeing this to not be the right fit, and Marketers have to be curious and asking what those things may be happening on those conversations, so they can go find the MQLs that that is worthy. Christian Klepp  14:30 Absolutely, absolutely. And on that topic, what are some of these other pitfalls that marketers should be looking out for, and what should they be doing instead? Gabe Lullo  14:39 Yeah, I think what right now is that you have to really understand your channels. You know, a lot of Marketers right now are doubling down on things that may not be producing the results that they have been expecting. Maybe a year from now, two years from now, every company is different, every ICP is different, and every industry is different. I’ll give you an example. You know, if you’re reaching out to sellers and you know, red. Heads of revenue, you have to have a totally different approach than if you’re reaching out to VPs of technology and cyber security. Now that may sound basic, but if you were coming from a company and you’re in your head of marketing, and you’re coming from a company where your ICP and your persona is all tech based companies, or all tech based personas, and you go into a new industry or a new company, and you come with that lens. It’s not the right approach. You know, sellers like to pick up the phone. They think they’re customers. They use the phone all day long. They pick up the phone all the time. Maybe that’s the right channel, right? CTOs (Chief Technology Officers), CIOs (Chief Information Officers), CSOs (Chief Security Officers), they are not usually picking up the phone. Maybe they’re their channels significantly different, and so you have to realize, understand what your persona is, so you can do marketing activities towards that total addressable market that resonate and hit home and get their attention. And it could be just as much as where they live in regards to where, where do they associate with, what, what channel are they living on? Are they people that pick up the phone? Are they ones that live on LinkedIn? Are they ones that go to Instagram? Are they ones that go to conferences? Where is your audience? And know that first and then go talk to them? Christian Klepp  16:10 That’s definitely a great insight. You know it. I know it. The problem is that there’s so many teams out there that skip this part, right? Like that, like that. That detailed breakdown you just gave us about the different let’s call them like, the different personas, the different behaviors, the different channels, like, Why do you think a lot of teams out there skip this part? Is it because of the the time crunch, the pressure to deliver immediately is all of the above? Gabe Lullo  16:37 Yeah, I think, you know, there’s a lot of boardrooms out there. They come out with this unique product, and then with all they do is they do is they look at the TAM, what’s the total addressable market? But that’s like saying, I want to go catch a tuna fish. But you know, let’s just look at the entire ocean. Like, okay, we have to be more specific. Where do the tuna fish actually swim? Where part of Do they like warm water? Do they like the coast? Are they more towards New Zealand, or are they up towards the Massachusetts? So you have to know where your school of fish are. If you want to go fishing, you can’t just look at the entire ocean as the market. And I think narrowing it down to understand patterns and where people are so you can go talk to them is the right approach, versus this spray and pray mentality that I feel marketing has been living in for many, many years, and now it’s becoming more self evident because of AI, right? Because AI can tell us a lot of these things. AI can do a lot of analysis and research, and it’s giving us insights that we’ve never been able to really see before because of the speed and quickness of it. And so I think we are getting to a point, and I’m hopeful that we are more specific with our total addressable markets in new companies specifically that may not have the experience or the capacity like they used to. And I think it’s exciting. Christian Klepp  16:37 Oh Gabe, you just open the door to another question there. Man. Gabe Lullo  16:37 Like, start with an A. Christian Klepp  16:37 Yeah, it starts with an A. But, like, you know, since you brought it up, I’ve got to ask AI, right? Gabe Lullo  16:37 Yeah. Christian Klepp  16:37 And in terms of, like, helping to fix a leaky marketing funnel, how do you from your experience and your perspective, how do you think AI is helpful, and how is it harmful? Gabe Lullo  17:23 Sure. I mean double edged sword, right? We love AI. We accept it. We know it’s here. We’re not scared of it. We’re not running away from it, but we’re also not ripping and replacing things too abruptly with with the implementation of it, either. For instance, I’ll give you real examples. Are we telling AI to go make cold calls? Well, no, it’s illegal, technically. Secondly, are we using it, though, on the flip side, to train our reps on how to effectively handle great questions and objections through an AI sparring partner? Yeah, we are, and it’s amazing at it. So we actually have our reps when they’re brand new and onboarding or launching into a new campaign. We program the robot, the AI right to be able to have conversations in real life time with our reps, to literally spar with them. And it’s like practice. It’s a sparring partner before they go live onto a campaign, and it prepares them immensely before the live show, before they’re before they’re active, right on the campaign. So this is one way we’re doing it. Other ways, obviously email, messaging, obviously personalization, obviously research, you know, pre-call research, account research, determining who’s picking up the phone when they pick up the phone, how many times does it take to call them? You know, time zones? What’s the best time to call them? And it’s crazy what it could do, but it’s really, really helpful. But it’s not a crutch. It’s an assistant, and that’s how we’re approaching it. It’s not replacing human to human communication. If it was. Maybe you and I would just have our AI avatars do this podcast right instead of we’ll be on a beach somewhere, maybe we’ll be there in the future. I’m not predicting it, but I will say there’s a huge, significant role it plays right now, but it is not a role that’s, in my opinion, supposed to replace everything. It can replace a lot, but not everything. Christian Klepp  20:20 Absolutely. I mean, it certainly requires a lot of like, human intervention, right? And it’s and it’s constantly learning, and it’s learning quickly, which I think is to its benefit, to its detriment. And I think that’s, that’s your point as well. There’s a lot of stuff out there that’s AI generated that just looks off, starting with videos even, even like in I don’t know if you’ve dabbled with Google notebook, right? It can, it can take all that content and turn it into an audio file. And it’s scary. How real it sounds. Gabe Lullo  20:54 It is pretty scary. And I have seen tools like that. I love there’s one right now, where it’s actually tracking not even what someone is saying, but how they’re saying it. So tonality, right is a huge piece of communication, as we know, and so it’s literally listening to calls and sales calls, and not just again, we’ve seen it before, like, you know, Gong and others, where it’s telling, hey, maybe say this. Don’t say that, but it’s also giving that score of how they’re delivering that message, which, in my world, is huge because, you know, I could read a script, or I can, you know, have an amazing performance, and that’s how we approach, you know, the way we communicate on a phone call. So that is why we’re so excited. Because there’s new tools coming out all the time that are really, really impactful, for sure. Christian Klepp  21:42 Absolutely, absolutely. So you’ve touched on this a little bit like in the past couple of minutes, but explain how market research and strategy help to develop a solid marketing funnel, not a leaky one. Gabe Lullo  21:55 Yeah. I mean, I think it’s your playbook, right? You know, you have to have a built out playbook, and it’s your guide. And it’s not just important to go to market with a playbook, but it’s also going to market to scale, right? You know, once you get it to work, the ever everything after that is, how do we duplicate and how do we scale? So the playbook is that design is the architecture behind your strategy. So when we do start pouring fuel on the fire and we’re adding people, we’re adding leads, we’re adding workflows, we’re adding everything outside of that, we still go back to the playbook. It’s like the Constitution, right? Everything based off that in our country. I know we’re in different ones, but my point is is, is you have a framework, right, that we go off of and that playbook is so vital to our importance of market research gives us a great understanding of where that playbook is built and how it’s designed and how it’s architected, and that’s how we that’s how we do it here. Christian Klepp  22:55 And even how the playbook can be iterated, right? Because let’s not forget that it’s not written in stone. Gabe Lullo  23:01 Evolving. Yeah, absolutely. I do want to warn people, though, evolve with time. Be patient, right? You know, marketing, sales, development, it’s not a light switch. Yeah, I always say it’s like boiling water, right? So a watch pot technically does boil. It’s just painful to watch. So, but the point is, is that you have to give it enough time to see if that playbook is yielding results. What you don’t want to do is change the play, you know, too many times in the middle of the game, because then you look confused and confused. People do nothing, right? So, yes, is it evolving? Does it pivot? Does it grow? Do you do you change things up, of course. But also you want to do it in a tactful timeline to make sure that it is truly a working playbook or not. Christian Klepp  23:47 Absolutely, absolutely. And you brought something up, and I have to ask this, this next question, it’s… We know, from a marketing point of view, that rolling out these initiatives and seeing the results takes time, yeah, but we’ve had, I’ve certainly had this experience in B2B, that there are people, again, at the top, that don’t have oversight into the day to day, and probably also don’t understand quite how the process works, that don’t have that patience, right, that are telling you, like, hurry up and deliver like, we want results right now. So what do you say to those, I guess the people that are doubting that this initiative needs more time than they think it does. Gabe Lullo  24:30 Yeah. I mean, I think looking at benchmarks and case studies and past results is very important, like I said, Back to the boiling of water. You can show a thermometer as well, like you can see, is it working well? You can put a thermometer in a boiling pot of water and watch the temperature go up, right? And it gives you a clear indication and forecast, if you will, that you’re going to achieve boiling point eventually. It’s not just again, you put the water in and then. And you all of a sudden, measure boiling. You have to measure along the way, and that’s we want to do. So what the ways we do it specifically is, if we’re working on a campaign that is almost a look alike campaign to another company, maybe it’s in the same industry, same ICP, you know, same your size, same scope, we can look at that historical result and say, Hey, by the way, if we do these, these, these and these, you’re going to we’re going to expect boiling point at this time based on a company that’s very similar to yours. Now, is it identical? No, maybe that company has really bad sellers we talked about. Maybe that company doesn’t really care about content and they’re just missing the boat there. Maybe they have a crappy website, like, I don’t, there’s different levers that could, you know, alter the recipe, but we can absolutely make highly educated guesses, as opposed to just trying to wing it or give false expectations. Christian Klepp  25:54 Yeah, yeah, no, that’s absolutely right, all right. I mean, you’ve given us a lot of, like, recommendations, a lot of actionable tips. So walk us through, and I know it varies from company to company and case by case, but walk us through the process of how you actually fix a leaky marketing funnel. Like, what are the steps? What are those key components that absolutely have to be in that process? Gabe Lullo  26:14 Yeah, you have to, you know, inspect what you expect. You have to understand what your messaging is, and you have to A/B test it all the time. I A/B test everything, whether it’s data vendors, whether it’s email messaging, whether it’s LinkedIn content, what you have, obviously mechanisms, depending on what tech you’re working with, what vendors you’re working with, or your history or historical results are to give you grades and scores and A/B testing everything. So if you have, you know campaigns that are running that are successful, you should be able to know how to measure that. That’s what’s so important. So you have to have inspect, inspection tools in place across everything you’re doing on those campaigns to tell you, Hey, this is broken, this is leaky. This isn’t working. Or on the flip side, this is crushing right now. This is totally resonating right now, and we’re loving these, seeing these numbers, and then pour fuel on that fire and focus on that and remove the other ones, and still A/B test, because you always want to keep getting better. So A/B test everything, define the leaks, and then try to fix those leaks as fast as possible. Christian Klepp  27:23 Fantastic, fantastic. And because we’re talking about marketing funnels, I mean, like, I can’t help myself but ask you, okay, but what about metrics? Because that’s something that people want to see, right? But I’m not talking about like, let’s, let’s come up with this like, laundry list of like metrics, and you go down this deep rabbit hole. Like, what are the metrics that you would say, or you would advise B2B Marketers to look at to say, like, okay, we’re trying to fix the leaky marketing funnel here, and these metrics will help you to indicate that there is progress. Gabe Lullo  27:53 Yeah. I mean, it’s harder now than ever before to metric things out, and it’s because of tech that’s kind of getting in the way. You know, for instance, in an email campaign, there’s been some rules and regulations in the last recent years that prevents us from seeing whether or not there’s clicks and opens that are happening on email campaigns. I’ve actually removed many of those triggers completely away from our campaigns, because it’s preventing deliverability, and it’s preventing our ability to keep domains healthy. So there are a lot of moving parts right now that’s happening because of these AI filtration tools. I just heard Google just released that it’s going to now put disclaimers and emails saying that this was written by AI. And so there’s it’s ever involving so depending on I guess when your listeners are hearing this, it may be completely different in a year, but I will tell you that there are definitely things that we need to metric and we need to have KPIs for. But I think the priority of what we used to measure two, three years ago, is significantly different than what we measure today, because of those rules and regulations. So if we’re talking about emails, I want to know what we’re sending, who we’re sending it to, who obviously is responding. What are those responses look like? Is it turning to an actual lead? Are we turning on warm leads, or are we just looking at set meetings? You know, it’s interesting, right? There is only about 2 to 3% of the market ever wants to truly buy, and they’re in buying mode, and I think a lot of companies are just looking for those people, and about 20% of the market is actually interested in buying and we turn that entire segment off. It’s about 10 times more people. But if we can warm the nurture them correctly, and message them correctly, that’s where the rubber meets the road, and that’s where your gold is. I like to analogize everything. So, yeah, when you have a green apple, right? What do you do with the green apple? You put it on the window sill, and then the sun on the windowsill warms it up. Now, that doesn’t mean you just throw out the apple. That means you have a lot of opportunity. You just have. To nurture, and you be patient. And you have to know that timing is everything in business. So if you’re just looking for the red apples, you’re only gonna get 3% if you’re looking for green apples that turn into red apples, now you’re getting 25% so focus on the 25, be patient. Fix those leaky buckets, of course. A/B test, and then then you measure. Christian Klepp  30:20 Yeah or you get yourself an apple orchard. You mentioned one keyword there, nurture, right? I think that’s the one that’ll I see a lot of, like people in sales and even in marketing, right? They just don’t take that time to nurture those leads. They close in. I keep saying they close in for the kill too fast, right? Gabe Lullo  30:44 Yeah. I mean, go back to that food analogy, that the fruit analogy, again. Christian Klepp  30:49 Sure. Gabe Lullo  30:49 I’m on a roll with that. Christian Klepp  30:50 Please. Gabe Lullo  30:50 It’s the low hanging fruit cliche, right? Christian Klepp  30:52 Yes. Gabe Lullo  30:52 Everyone focuses on the low hanging fruit. They’re not focusing on what else is part of that harvest. They’re not focusing on the nurturing. They’re not focused on watering. They’re not focusing on circling back, following up, checking in, providing value in those checks. Not just say, Hey, I’m following up, no, provide value in those seconds, right? And that’s again, that’s where you see excellence happen, you know? And there’s a lot of young, and I don’t mean to be age, but like tenure, people that are experienced, that are in these experience roles right now, and I feel that they’re just trying to get that quick answer and that quick response. And we’re in this like dopamine, like, you know, hit like social media environment right now. Not to go off topic, but I think people are not again, they’re in this microwave society, and they don’t understand the value of nurturing. And if you do and you treat that part seriously, wow, it usually is a windfall at that time. Christian Klepp  31:47 Absolutely, absolutely. It’s an art, a skill, a craft, isn’t it? Right? All of you love, okay, my friend, we come to the point in the conversation where we’re talking about actionable tips, and Gabe, you’ve given us plenty, all right, but just think of this kind of like a recap. If there was somebody listening to this conversation that you and I are having, and you want them to walk away with three to five things that they that they can take action on right now, when it comes to fixing a leaky marketing funnel, what would they be? Gabe Lullo  32:17 Well, I think the best thing is you have to really decide if you have the right people in place, right, and are they? And it doesn’t mean that they are the ones that are going to bring it home. It doesn’t mean that they’re they don’t need support and training and love, like, do they have the commitment? Do they have good experience? Are they willing to roll up their sleeves and get get a little dirty, and if you feel like you have a great team in place of people that are ready to get to work and solve some problems. I think that is literally step one. Step two is, do we have the messaging in the mark, in the ICP nailed down? We really need to know that, because, again, there’s no point of building a campaign if you don’t know who you’re sending it to. And then, thirdly, you really have to make sure that you’re willing to A/B test. It’s hard enough to build a campaign, but it’s much more difficult to build two or three campaigns. Run three campaigns, right as opposed to one, and score each of them to determine what’s working, what’s effective, and what’s not, and then you pivot based on those results. So I think finding a great team is basic and fundamental. Finding a great ice or determining a great ICP is before you build the messaging and then measure the message across multiple campaigns, and then you should be on your way Christian Klepp  33:29 And test, test, test, everything, right? Gabe Lullo  33:34 Yes, it’s great. It could be working. It’s exciting, but maybe there’s a significantly more effective way of doing it, even though it’s still working, and let the data make those decisions for you and drive everything based off data driven decisions, and that’s how you should be operating. Christian Klepp  33:51 Absolutely, absolutely. All right. Here comes the soapbox question, a status quo in your area of expertise that you passionately disagree with and why? Gabe Lullo  34:05 Yeah, I think the big thing right now, and I have to just kind of talk about my space, because you said in my industries, like, there’s a lot of, you know, people out there soapboxing, to be exact, on things that are dead or not. And I will tell you that, you know, cold calling is dead, emailing is dead. You know, LinkedIn is dead, or all of these things and and when you peel back the onion, you notice that those individuals who are saying that users are trying to sell a book or something, and nothing against selling books, but it sounds like there’s a personal agenda and not actual operational intelligence that is dictating what they’re saying. So to your point about testing everything, don’t assume something is not going to work just because someone said it on the internet. Test it and then decide if it’s going to work. And it may surprise you in a big, big way. Christian Klepp  34:56 I truly believe that, man, I truly believe that. I mean to your point. About, like, email being dead. I mean, I did close one client who was a guest on the show, and it took me a year to close, but I closed it through email. Gabe Lullo  35:09 Yeah. Christian Klepp  35:11 Right. And it’s to your point, it’s sending, sending that person articles that were relevant to that person’s industry and saying, like, Hey, I read this the other day, what are your thoughts on this? And here’s my take. What do you think? Gabe Lullo  35:24 That is the best way to do an email, right? You know, we do a lot of content and on social media, we do a lot of podcasting, posts on LinkedIn, but that’s all great, but where the rubber meets the road is you take that post and you send it in an email or a direct message and say, Hey, listen. This made me think of our last conversation, and I really liked the way that this person mentioned this. Do you think you know that there is, is the timing right here to reopen this conversation, and you feel like the problem is still existing in your world, and love to see if we can solve it for you, that type of content, that type of message, that type of verbiage at the right time in a nurture campaign like we discussed, close one business, right? That’s how it works. Christian Klepp  36:08 Absolutely, absolutely okay. Here comes the bonus question, and for those of you that are listening to the audio version, Gabe’s got two guitars right behind him, so I’m just gonna go on a hunch here that he likes playing guitar, right? So the question is, if you had the opportunity to, like, go on a tour with your favorite guitarist/musician, who would it be, and where would you go? Gabe Lullo  36:36 Wow, I love this question. I do play the guitar. I’m a bet big avid music player. Love Rock as well, but all genres, I will say, in real life, we just actually my family, my wife and daughter and I went to go see Oasis reunion tour, which was in Toronto, actually, out of all places. Christian Klepp  36:53 That’s right, you mentioned it. Gabe Lullo  36:54 Yeah, we went to see that. It was epic. Obviously, the brothers have been apart for many years. A lot of drama there. But yeah, you know, I’m old enough to remember their original songs, so it was cool to reminisce and introduce my daughter to that music, which was pretty cool. We’re gonna go see Paul McCartney in a few weeks. He’s on tour now and never seen him or I’m a big fan of The Beatles, and I think that would be really exciting to tour with him, obviously. And I think those are definitely both of those right there kind of sum up the type of music that I resonate with. Christian Klepp  37:26 Amazing, amazing. I just remember, like, this is, this is a couple of years ago. I think he’s already passed away, but Compay Segundo. Gabe Lullo  37:33 Oh yeah. Christian Klepp  37:34 Buena Vista Social Club. And the guy was in his 90s, and they were, they had a concert, and they they brought him up in stage in his wheelchair, helped him get up, get out of that wheelchair, and they gave him that guitar, and off he went, Man, like, Gabe Lullo  37:48 Yeah, yeah, that’s amazing, man, that’s amazing. Christian Klepp  37:53 Gabe, this has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for coming on and for sharing your experience and expertise with the listeners. So please quick intro to yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you. Gabe Lullo  38:03 Yeah, LinkedIn is the best way to connect with me directly. I post twice a day, every day. We’re very bullish with our content. There’s a lot of free material there. We have a newsletter, so please take a look at that, and if you like what you see, and he heard today, you know, reach out, and I’ll definitely be responsive. And you know, anyone who is looking or struggling with the after-sales motion, which are after marketing motion, that sales development function, that’s where we play, and we’d love to look at what you’re looking for and see how we can help. Christian Klepp  38:33 Sounds good. Gabe, once again, thank you so much for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon. Gabe Lullo  38:38 Thanks, Christian. Christian Klepp  38:39 All right. Bye for now.

Chris Perry is the Co-founder and Chief Learning Officer at firstmovr, a satellite Center of Excellence (COE) for eCommerce education and change management. He is also an Executive Educator and Keynote Speaker at the Path to Purchase Institute. With over 12 years of experience as an eCommerce leader and executive educator, Chris aims to empower leaders to embrace change with actionable knowledge, strategies, and KPIs. In this episode… AI has sparked excitement, fear, and confusion across the digital and commerce landscape. Leaders are pushing adoption, teams are unsure of how to respond, and individuals are left wondering what it implies for their careers. How can professionals prepare for an AI-driven future without being left behind? Commerce and digital transformation leader Chris Perry notes that professionals can manage AI's impact by taking ownership of their learning. He urges professionals to start by experimenting with AI tools, then applying them to eliminate tedious tasks and elevate strategic thinking. By asking intentional questions, understanding the tools required for the work, and reshaping your role, AI can enhance, rather than replace, your value.  In this episode of The Digital Deep Dive, Aaron Conant talks with Chris Perry, Co-founder and Chief Learning Officer at firstmovr, about how AI is reshaping work and careers. Chris discusses the hype of AI, practical first steps for adoption, and how professionals can reskill to stay indispensable.

Who is Brian?Brian Parana is no stranger to the turning points that come in midlife. At 42, he's the dedicated husband of his high school sweetheart and the proud father of four—juggling the joys and challenges that come with two high schoolers and two middle schoolers, ages 10 to 15. With 15 years as a self-employed professional and over 23 years in the health industry, Brian has seen firsthand what so many entrepreneurs, business owners, and leaders experience: the demands of life and responsibility often sneak up, and self-care takes a back seat. His journey reflects the universal realization that reaching 40, 45, or 50 doesn't always look or feel as expected—prompting him to help others redefine what thriving in midlife can truly mean.Key Takeaways00:00 Avoiding Midlife Crisis: Enhance Life05:05 Finding Balance Amid Life's Chaos08:04 “Rice 72: Three-Day Fat Loss”11:50 “Developing Habits for Growth”13:30 “1% Improvements for Massive Success”17:32 “Health Choices Over Consequences”20:40 Appreciative Farewell Message_________________________________________________________________________________________________Subscribe to our newsletter and get details of when we are doing these interviews live at www.systemise.me/subscribeFind out more about being a guest at : link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/beaguestSubscribe to the podcast at https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/podcastHelp us get this podcast in front of as many people as possible. Leave a nice five-star review at apple podcasts : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/apple-podcasts and on YouTube : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/Itsnotrocketscienceatyt!Do You Need a P.A.T.H. to Scale?We help established business owners with small but growing teams:go from feeling stuck, sceptical, and tired of wasting time and money on false promises,to running a confident, purpose-driven business where their team delivers results, customers are happy, and they can finally enjoy more time with their family -with a results-based refund guarantee: if you follow the process and it doesn't work, we refund what you paid.This is THE P.A.T.H. to scale your business.————————————————————————————————————————————-TranscriptNote, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)SUMMARY KEYWORDShealth and wellbeing, business leaders, productivity, midlife crisis, entrepreneurs, self-employed, diet industry, weight loss, lifestyle balance, flexibility, moderation, accountability, fat loss protocol, nutrition, mindset, radical accountability, busy professionals, sustainable habits, atomic habits, James Clear, Tony Robbins, personal development, business performance, routines, incremental change, ROI of health, confidence, energy levels, work-life balance, men's healthSPEAKERSBrian Parana, Stuart WebbStuart Webb [00:00:00]:SA hi and welcome back to It's Not Rocket Science. Five questions over coffee. I have my coffee monkey here. My guest Brian, Coach Brian Piranha is here with me. He has his coffee with espresso, with.Brian Parana [00:00:49]:Some seltzer water and some oat milk.Stuart Webb [00:00:52]:Coach BRIAN that's a brilliant, brilliant recipe. Thank you for that. So Brian is a, is a, is a health and well being expert, an athlete, now a coach who helps business leaders, people who are trying to run their businesses and forget that they need to remain healthy to run their business, do better with both. So Coach Ryan, welcome to It's Not Rocket Science. Five questions over coffee. Looking forward to this conversation and really looking forward to hearing how you can help us.Brian Parana [00:01:27]:I'm excited to be here. I'm looking forward to our five questions and the insights that I can bring, the value and some ideal takeaways for our guests that are listening in.Stuart Webb [00:01:37]:That's what we want to hear. So let's start with that first question. I like to always start with just give us a little bit of an oversight of the sort of person you're trying to help. What are the problems that they have in their life that might help them identify that you're currently talking to them, right.Brian Parana [00:01:55]:What happens when we reach our mid-40s? There's that term of a midlife crisis, right. I'm 42, I've married my high school sweetheart, we're 19 years in. We have four kids, two high schoolers, two middle schools, three boys and girls, 15 to 10. And I've been self employed for 15 years and been in the health industry for 23 or something. I've seen it time and again. Is that people, business owners, entrepreneurs, leaders, everyone ends up running into this at some point where the responsibilities of their life caught up to them. In a sense, they realize they're not taking care of themselves and their body. And 40, 45, 50 isn't what was expected when they got there, right.Brian Parana [00:02:44]:They're on their way to retirement or they got money in the bank or the house or whatever this stuff, but when they see themselves in the mirror, they just their waistlines expanding. They don't have the confidence in their, their workloads that they once had. There's fatigue, the lack of productivity. They feel half a step behind or maybe in one or two instead. And that's the type of person that I'm coming to the marketplace to meet is to get that priority. Let's not have a midlife crisis where we potentially disrupt some things in life. Let's actually Enhance what life has and be even more productive by taking care of yourself first to then have the energy, the resources, the capacity to keep pace with all the responsibilities that you are now in charge of.Stuart Webb [00:03:35]:So let's talk a little bit about maybe there's somebody out there at the moment thinking, hey, this guy, this guy's talking to me. What do you think they'd be able to recognize in terms of the things they tried? You know, the health kicks that go on, the act, the diet, which constantly never seems to work. I mean, they may even be finding the soul at the moment, sitting there looking at yet another diet book or even some other ways of trying to enhance this. And I think what you're trying to say is that's not always all of the solution, is it?Brian Parana [00:04:06]:No, no, definitely not. Oftentimes we've been taught through marketing, through just literal time for, or the, the, the diet industry really started in the 1980s or so and 90s and, and continued on if you, I, I grew up in that and has infiltrated every single person that I am in association with and what I, who I've worked with for years, restriction. There's these hard protocols that they have to follow. It often lines up with more of a leader type personality where they have to feel that the grind, the hustle. They have things that have to be hard. Those are, they have to cut out, restrict all that. And I've been in a five pound weight range for decades. Obviously it's what I do by profession and I should look and be the part to lead those people.Brian Parana [00:05:05]:But with four kids, with self employment, with all these, these obstacles that just show up in everyday life, there is a way to find some balance. To have some ice cream after a kid's soccer game or after a school event, or have a small sliver of cake at a birthday party because I mean, what weekend do people not have birthdays, especially if they have four kids or something, right? There's just always those opportunities to potentially fall off track and then next, you know, we'll start again on Monday. Well, Stuart, today's Wednesday or Tuesday. It's Tuesday that we're recording this. There's a lot of sloppiness that can, that can be created there and cause you to be setting yourself back a significant amount. We need to find a level of balance of, with some flexibility, some moderation in a way that creates a lifestyle that they can actually live. What we do in two weeks, we do in two months, we do in two years. And finding that balance is so important.Brian Parana [00:06:04]:And that that's where I meet people every single day.Stuart Webb [00:06:09]:And I think you've got a very valid point then Brian, because you know, it's if, if you are having to force yourself into something, if you're telling yourself that you can only achieve this by constant denial, you can only do this by having to go to the gym when you don't really feel, feel like it because you've got other concerns, you've got the family to worry about things like that. It becomes more and more difficult to actually stick with something like this, doesn't it? I mean if the only time you ever get any pleasure is when you get that little bit of ice cream or that small amount of cake at a birthday party and suddenly you deny that, it just becomes impossible to stick to anything that you really, really want to do. You have to link it to something that's more than that, right?Brian Parana [00:06:50]:It's just same thing with business. If you have to grind to grow a business, it's going to fail at some point because whether the motivation, the willpower, the lack of consistently putting out or say a high marketing budget, if you one, one or five months go by and you haven't produced the outcomes to pay for that, now you're in the red and things aren't going well for the business because it's at such a high demand of say accuracy or focus or the ROI needs to be right on point there.Stuart Webb [00:07:26]:So I've got a really. You've got a special offer that I think that the audience is going to be really interested in. This I will be putting into our vault. So if you go to www.systemize.me free stock you, you'll get the details of exactly how Brian can help this coach. Brian, tell us how can you help us to get through some of these problems?Brian Parana [00:07:52]:Yeah, well say the free stuff thing, right? I have a.Stuart Webb [00:07:56]:That's the one. Anything we valuable offers. Valuable free stuff. That's what we want to give to people here. Pay it forward.Brian Parana [00:08:04]:We have a, a we're in the, the mega information, right? Maybe I could coin that. The mega information Time of our lives, right? And with ChatGPT and all you can get a meal plan, you can get a workout, you can do all these things. And what I have, my free stuff would be what I call the rice 72. It's just a three day fat loss protocol that has food, that has nutrition, that has some mindset things to help reset from the brain. Because it all starts here. And in that you get step by step specific things that we know and we've heard so much. But the point is it has to be done. So whether there's email accountability, there's actual text engagement with me as well.Brian Parana [00:08:52]:If you do get the free thing, the Rise 72, you'll be able to have some level of accountability. And that's what I want to bring into my world to. To others is create an experience, a transformative experience. Not just, hey, here's the meal plan that you're supposed to eat, but it's got to be more because nobody I the one of two things. I'm busy. Every single person, I think has always said that. And they usually say it's in all cats B, U S Y with multiple exclamation points after. That's how they describe their life.Brian Parana [00:09:27]:And I get it. I'm busy too. But I still have found a way to prioritize my health.Stuart Webb [00:09:32]:Yeah.Brian Parana [00:09:33]:So let's find a way to do that for you. The other thing is that they. So they're. They're busy and they always want to just jump in with. With both heels, in a sense. And we have to find those small little pivot points to again create that sustainability. And through talking with thousands of people over the last 20 years, so many conversations, we need to. To be able to do the things that we already know we need to do.Brian Parana [00:10:09]:And that's a high level of radical accountability I want to bring to.Stuart Webb [00:10:14]:Yeah. And it's about finding that way of, as you say, prioritizing using the. Using triggers. You know, one of the things I've often heard that.Brian Parana [00:10:22]:Yes.Stuart Webb [00:10:23]:One of the great ways of sort of building your. You're building this sort of thing in as you're talking about mindset is linking it to pleasure. You know, yes, you're going to go for a, for a run, but you're going to go for a run in the outside and listen to your favorite podcast or whatever it is, this podcast. So. And so you actually sort of. And you, you. You have to set yourself up with. The only time I listen to the podcast is when I'm going for the run or when I'm going for the walk.Stuart Webb [00:10:49]:And so that you get that sort of mindset shift. If it's not something hard, it becomes a pleasure to do some of this stuff.Brian Parana [00:10:55]:Right, Exactly. And, and that's a huge gap where people are. An example would be, say, the 75 hard. It's a very strong reset accountability protocol where you have to work out twice a day, you got to drink a gallon of water, you have some you got to read a book. All these things are great. Let's do 75 hard on your own terms. That makes it so that on day 76 or day 2000, you're still doing the things. Yeah, it's my job to help figure that out.Stuart Webb [00:11:28]:Brilliant. Love it. Brian, you've gone to the stage where you understand exactly how this works. Was there a book or a program or something that actually sort of allowed you to understand how to get that sort of mindset, that body work, everything sort of coming together, which is how you explain it to people.Brian Parana [00:11:50]:The book that comes off top of my head is there's so many personal development things I've done. I actually went to Tony Robbins seminars, I was a fire walker, I did it twice. And so many other different certifications and all that. I guess when it all comes said and done, we, we've heard it again a million times. Is that the, the James Clears is a really easy that everyone we know atomic habits. How do we build habits 1% better at a time? We take these small incremental, consistent steps to get us and we consistently keep doing that. And, and the other thing is to understand the analogy that is used in there as well. An ice cube melting at 22 degrees, it's not going to melt.Brian Parana [00:12:36]:At 23, it's not going to melt. At 29, it's not melting. At 32, it might start to melt. At 33, it's melting, it will take a while. At 40, it's melted. It's definitely on its way. And today in Miami in July, it's done melted. You know, the moment it touched the ground, even maybe on the way down to the ground, it's already evaporated because it's so hot.Brian Parana [00:13:00]:And in the beginning of these changes, even just in business, we can tie it back to business since that's who's listening. In the beginning of the business, it was so small and incremental and you didn't see those, those 1 degree changes over time. But then you built that momentum and all of a sudden you have a business with employees and it's successful and all of a sudden you're wow, I don't have time for myself. But that 1% better is going to be the key thing to build consistency into your life.Stuart Webb [00:13:30]:I'm a, I'm a great fan of somebody you may or may not have heard of a guy called David Brailsbridge who was the coach of the Great Britain cycling team. And he was a very great fan of sort of 1% improvements and he was looking at 1% improvement, improvements all the time, which took the British cycling team to the top of the world. And the reason that he did it was because he was looking at tiny, tiny changes every single time they raced, to the extent that he started sending the team out to meetings with their own pillow so that they got a slightly better night's sleep the night before they raced. It really does take tiny, tiny changes to produce a massive result, doesn't it? But it has to be consistent. It has to be continuous. You can't just do it once and then hope it's all gone back to it. You know, it's gonna be easy from that. You make that tiny change, but you have to continue to make that change.Stuart Webb [00:14:22]:You need the accountability to do it.Brian Parana [00:14:24]:Yeah. KPIs for ROIs, right? In the business world, we have those and these SOPs to get to the ROIs that we want to go, but it has to be done every day. Yeah. Same thing in our body. We need to. These are basic. We need to move so much. We need to drink our water, get enough sleep.Brian Parana [00:14:46]:We need to eat healthy food. Those are basic tenets of taking care of yourself and living in a healthy body that's energetic and you feel confident in and you fit in your clothes in. But we let distraction take us away.Stuart Webb [00:15:01]:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brian, there must be one question that you're left at the moment thinking he's still hanging on to the really critical one, that one question that we need to sort of get to get to, and I should ask it, but I obviously don't know what it is. So what is the question that you would have liked me to have asked by now, which I obviously haven't. And then obviously, as you know the answer, you better answer it for us, otherwise it'll never get answered.Brian Parana [00:15:27]:I thought long and hard on this. And what is the true ROI of taking care of yourself and your health?Stuart Webb [00:15:34]:Oh, that is a good question. I like that.Brian Parana [00:15:37]:Huh? I thought about it a little bit. Make sure it was juicy. What is it? People at first just think, oh, I'm at a healthy body weight, or I can. I don't fall asleep in the middle of the day anymore. Or I can be productive at work, or I can go one meeting to the next to the next, or when I come home, I can engage with my family and children. Those are all really important things. But we. One thing is.Brian Parana [00:16:03]:Is say the confidence that you have, if you aren't in a healthy body, then you don't necessarily have the confidence that you think that you're portraying when you go into a meeting, right. Even this is a good old Tony Robbins example. But I'm standing here, but I can take a big deep breath in and, and I can get up here. All of a sudden I'm, I'm just 1% taller in a sense, but I am. It's been multiplied. It's 10x in my energy flow, my breath. I can get oxygen in my lungs and I can start to think clearly. And people notice that and they see it, they can feel that confidence and that energy coming from.Brian Parana [00:16:48]:And, and you don't know that you're walking around like this all day. You might feel the same, but it's, there's a difference. So what does that mean? That means that we can, if the true ROI of a healthy body is better connection with those around in your, your, your family circle, your social circles, how you show up at work and lead. We want that lead. What type of ability are you to be able to produce deals and make things happen in your career? These are all big, big ROIs that can happen. And you don't. The, the thing that you don't see. And I love sharing this with my four kids, especially my oldest right now, because he's teenage for sure, at 15, almost 16.Brian Parana [00:17:32]:But you choose your actions, but you don't choose your consequences. Therefore, if you're not taking care of your health in the 40s, you might have a heart attack by your 50. Hey, I'm so glad that you're retiring as a millionaire or whatever, but you're going to spend all of it on health care and assisted living and having someone wipe your butt because, because you have a disease, right? We have, everyone has lots of problems until they have a significant health problem, then we only have one problem. And everything else fades quickly because you have diabetes, you've had a heart attack, there's a stroke, there's cancer, there's all these, these things that are trying to kill us. And health is the most easy, say, almost free thing to do outside of your time. That you can get a huge ROI for now, but also into the future.Stuart Webb [00:18:24]:That's absolutely brilliant. And if nobody, if nobody takes anything away from this, they should take away the fact that doing something for their future is actually looking after their kids, their grandkids, their great grandkids. You know, you need to be around for those. I'm going to go back. You need to come on to systemize me free. Go find out about what Brian has been talking about, talking to us about today and make sure that you understand exactly how somebody like Brian can really help you to focus, to make sure that you are available to the future. And I'm going to put in my own little request to you, please. I send out an email just, just once a week with who's coming up on the podcast and you can come on and watch the live stream, ask questions.Stuart Webb [00:19:15]:If you want to please come onto the newsletter list. You go to Systemize Me subscribe and that gets you onto the newsletter list and you'll get an email just enabling you to listen to such brilliant advice from people like Coach Brian. Brian, thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us. Really appreciate you taking the time and if I take anything else away from this, I'm going to go and find a way now of going back out for Cycle Ride, which is something I haven't done for a while and that will help me to sort of just live a little bit longer. Yep.Brian Parana [00:19:49]:So, you know, wrapping it up, I have the, the free thing that I'll be given with Stewart is the right 72. It's a three day fat loss protocol. Men and women can do it. And then what the call to rise is is it's a hundred day fat loss transformational experience that really focuses on weekly challenges, quarterly assessment. There are small cohorts of. This is more of a men's focus group called the Brotherhood where we have a small knit group of people, men that are like minded, that want to thrive in their health too along with all these other areas in their life. And, and it's, it's again getting out of just information but actual doing the things because you're in a. It's a catalyst for transformation and that's what the call to rise is.Brian Parana [00:20:34]:So answer your call to rise to better health and a better quality of life.Stuart Webb [00:20:40]:Right. I love it. Thank you so much and I really appreciate you spending a bit of time for us. Go get that stuff. Thank you. Bye bye. Get full access to It's Not Rocket Science! at thecompleteapproach.substack.com/subscribe

Cameron is joined by Keeley Walker, NP, a board-certified nurse practitioner and entrepreneur in the aesthetics field, and they discuss her journey into medicine, the importance of patient comfort, and the entrepreneurial aspects of running a MedSpa. The conversation delves into effective marketing strategies, the significance of before and after photos, and the role of patient reviews in building a successful practice. Keeley emphasizes the need for continuous education, networking, and maintaining trust with patients while navigating the evolving landscape of aesthetics, including the potential impact of AI. They also provide insights on balancing work and personal life as a practice owner and the future of aesthetics. Listen In!Thank you for listening to this episode of Medical Millionaire!Takeaways:Keeley's journey into aesthetics was influenced by her mother's nursing career.Patient comfort is crucial in aesthetic treatments.Marketing strategies are essential for attracting clients in a cash-pay business.Before and after photos are powerful tools for showcasing results.Collecting patient reviews can significantly impact practice reputation.Rebooking rates are vital for patient retention and business growth.Continuous education is necessary to stay ahead in the aesthetics industry.Networking with other professionals can provide valuable insights and support.Trust and transparency with patients lead to long-term relationships.AI technology may play a significant role in the future of aesthetics.Medical Millionaire: The Blueprint for Scaling a World-Class Medical Aesthetics PracticeWelcome to Medical Millionaire, the go-to podcast for forward-thinking Medspa owners, Medical Aesthetics leaders, Plastic Surgery & Dermatology practices, Concierge Wellness clinics, and Elective Healthcare entrepreneurs who are ready to scale with intention and operate like a true, high-performing business.If you're building, growing, optimizing, or preparing to exit your aesthetics or wellness practice, this show is your competitive advantage.Hosted by Cameron Hemphill Your Guide to Sustainable, Scalable Growth Your host, Cameron Hemphill, is one of the most trusted growth strategists in Medical Aesthetics and Elective Wellness.With over 10 years in the industry, Cameron has helped scale 1,000+ practices and more than 2,300 providers, working alongside the most recognized KOLs, national brands, EMRs, tech companies, and private equity groups, shaping the future of aesthetics. From marketing to operations, from finance to leadership, Cameron brings a real-world, data-driven perspective on what it takes to turn a practice into a powerful business engine.What This Podcast Is All About: Each episode takes you behind the scenes of the fastest-growing practices in the country, revealing the systems, strategies, and mindset required to win in today's Medical Aesthetics landscape.Expect tactical insights, step-by-step frameworks, and conversations with:Industry thought leadersTop injectors & medical directorsEMR & tech innovatorsOperations expertsMarketing strategistsPrivate equity & M&A advisorsWellness and longevity pioneersThis is where aesthetics, business, technology, and wellness converge. What You'll Learn on Medical Millionaire Every week, you'll access expert guidance to help you scale profitably and predictably, including:Marketing & Brand PositioningCRM + Lead Management SystemsPatient Acquisition & ConversionEMR Optimization & Tech Stack ArchitectureSales Psychology & Consultation MasteryFinance, KPIs, and Practice EconomicsOperational Workflows & AutomationIndustry Trends Backed by Real Benchmark DataPatient Retention & Lifetime Value ExpansionMindset, Leadership & Team DevelopmentWhether you're opening your first location or running a multi-million-dollar enterprise, you'll gain the clarity and direction to grow with confidence. A Show Designed for Every Stage of Practice Growth Medical Millionaire breaks down the journey into four essential stages, showing you exactly how to move from one to the next:Startup – Build the foundation and attract your first wave of patientsGrowth – Scale revenue, expand services, and strengthen operationsOptimize – Increase efficiency, margins, and customer experienceExit – Prepare your practice for maximum valuation and acquisitionIf You're Ready to Grow, This Is Where You Start. Tune in weekly for actionable insights, expert interviews, and the exact playbooks high-performing practices use to dominate their markets. This is the podcast for Medspa owners who want more than a job; they want a scalable, profitable, industry-leading business. Welcome to Medical Millionaire.Let's build your practice into the empire it deserves to be.

Upstream oil and gas companies continue to be very reliant on spreadsheets, legacy systems, and manual workflows to manage thousands of wells, compliance filings, and capital decisions. It's labor-intensive, error-prone, and slow. In light of global energy transition moves, operators are now facing ongoing margin pressure, a supply glut, tighter emissions regulations, and a shrinking pool of skilled labor. Digital solutions to soften the impacts of these pressures too often end up in "pilot hell", with limited results, stalled momentum, and no path to scale. Core systems like SCADA and ERP can't be easily adapted, and the early stage AI tools are often dismissed as too risky, inaccurate, or incompatible with real-world operations. Capital markets frown on any moves that sacrifice short term ROI for the possibility of better results later. New agentic AI tools look perfectly placed to address these constraints, but getting started is daunting. In this episode, I speak with AI strategy advisor Jeff McKee who outlines how a handful of upstream operators are now using agentic AI (modular software agents), that augment field teams and automate critical tasks across production, compliance, and finance. Already live across 1,500 wells, these tools have delivered a 3–10% uplift in production, 5–15% profit lift, and >90% reduction in compliance workload. Jeff explains how companies can start small, define just a few key KPIs, and stand up agents in under two months, all without touching core systems. From Sarbanes-Oxley readiness to workover economics, it's a roadmap for scaling AI one agent at a time.

In this episode, Jasmine Womack breaks down her exact step-by-step process for annual planning in both life and business. She shares how she balances her roles as a mother, wife, doctoral student, and CEO while mapping out a six- and seven-figure business year. From reflecting on the past year to calendaring personal and business milestones, Jasmine outlines how she aligns her goals with her values, evaluates her capacity, and ensures her business supports her life, not the other way around.She also dives into how she uses market analysis, strategic planning, and revenue mapping to make data-driven decisions, avoid burnout, and set her team up for success. Whether you're a coach, author, or consultant, this episode is a blueprint for planning with purpose and peace.Takeaways:- Annual planning requires reflection, strategy, and space to think.- Personal responsibilities should lead your calendar, not come last.- Your business should support your life, not overwhelm it.- Strategic planning helps you avoid stress and align your energy.- Market analysis is essential to prepare for shifts and threats.- Use a simple tech stack to save time and money.- Focus on one offer until you master and scale it.- Know your KPIs and measure your goals with intention.- Create a business model that honors your season of life.- It's okay to take your time and plan with depth and intention.Sound Bites- "If it doesn't fit your life, it shouldn't be in your business."- "Give yourself space and grace to plan."- "Stop keeping everything in your headwrite it down."- "You don't need more offers, you need more strategy."- "This is how I plan my six- and seven-figure years."

In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris discuss analyzing survey data using generative artificial intelligence tools. You will discover how to use new AI functions embedded in spreadsheets to code hundreds of open-ended survey responses instantly. You’ll learn the exact prompts needed to perform complex topic clustering and sentiment analysis without writing any custom software. You will understand why establishing a calibrated, known good dataset is essential before trusting any automated qualitative data analysis. You’ll find out the overwhelming trend in digital marketing content that will shape future strategies for growing your business. Watch now to revolutionize how you transform raw feedback into powerful strategy! Watch the video here: Can’t see anything? Watch it on YouTube here. Listen to the audio here: https://traffic.libsyn.com/inearinsights/tipodcast-processing-survey-data-with-generative-ai.mp3 Download the MP3 audio here. Need help with your company’s data and analytics? Let us know! Join our free Slack group for marketers interested in analytics! [podcastsponsor] Machine-Generated Transcript What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the episode. Christopher S. Penn: In this week’s In Ear Insights, let’s talk about surveys and processing survey data. Now, this is something that we’ve talked about. Gosh, I think since the founding of the company, we’ve been doing surveys of some kind. And Katie, you and I have been running surveys of some form since we started working together 11 years ago because something that the old PR agency used to do a ton of—not necessarily well, but they used to do it well. Katie Robbert: When they asked us to participate, it would go well. Christopher S. Penn: Yes, exactly. Christopher S. Penn: And this week we’re talking about how do you approach survey analysis in the age of generative AI where it is everywhere now. And so this morning you discovered something completely new and different. Katie Robbert: Well, I mean, I discovered it via you, so credit where credit is due. But for those who don’t know, we have been a little delinquent in getting it out. But we typically run a one-question survey every quarter that just, it helps us get a good understanding of where our audience is, where people’s heads are at. Because the worst thing you can possibly do as business owners, as marketers, as professionals, is make assumptions about what people want. And that’s something that Chris and I work very hard to make sure we’re not doing. And so one of the best ways to do that is just to ask people. We’re a small company, so we don’t have the resources unfortunately to hold a lot of one-on-one meetings. But what we can do is ask questions virtually. And that’s what we did. So we put out a one-question survey. And in the survey, the question was around if you could pick a topic to deep dive on in 2026 to learn about, what would it be. Now keep in mind, I didn’t say about AI or about marketing because that’s where—and Chris was sort of alluding to—surveys go wrong. When we worked at the old shop, the problem was that people would present us with, “and this is the headline that my client wants to promote.” So how do we run a survey around it? Without going too far in the weeds, that’s called bias, and that’s bad. Bias equals bad. You don’t want to lead with what you want people to respond with. All of that being said, we’ve gotten almost 400 responses over the weekend, which is a fantastic number of responses. That gives us a lot of data to work with. But now we have to do something with it. What Chris discovered and then shared with me, which I’m very excited about, is you don’t have to code anything to do this. There were and there still are a lot of data analysis platforms for market research data, which is essentially what this is for: unstructured, qualitative, sentence structured data, which is really hard to work with if you don’t know what you’re looking for. And the more you have of it, the harder it is to figure out where the trends are. But now people are probably thinking, “oh, I just bring it into generative AI and say, summarize this for me.” Well, that’s not good enough. First of all, let’s just don’t do that. But there are ways to do it, no code, that you can really work with the data. So without further ado, Chris, do you want to talk about what you’ve been working on this morning? And we’re going to do a deep dive on our livestream on Thursday, which you can join us every Thursday at 1:00 PM Eastern. Go to Trust Insights AI TI podcast. Nope, that’s us today. Wait a second. TrustInsights AI YouTube, and you can follow live or catch the replay. And we’ll do a deep dive into how this works, both low code and high tech. But I think it’s worth at least acknowledging, Chris, what you have discovered this morning, and then we can sort of talk about some of the findings that we’re getting. Christopher S. Penn: So one of the most useful things that AI companies have done in the last 6 months is put generative AI into the tools that we already use. So Google has done this. They’ve put Gemini in Google Sheets, Google Docs, in your Gmail. Finally, by the way—slight tangent. They finally put it in Google Analytics. Three years later. Microsoft has put Copilot into all these different places as well. In Excel, in Word, in PowerPoint, and so on and so forth. And so what you can do inside of these tools is they now have formulas that essentially invoke an AI agent. So inside of Google Sheets you can type equals Gemini, then give it a prompt and then give it a cell to work on and have it do its thing. Christopher S. Penn: So what I did naturally was to say, “Okay, let’s write a prompt to do topic analysis.” “Okay, here’s 7 different topics you can choose from.” Gemini, tell me for this cell, this one survey response, which of the 7 topics does it fit in? And then it returns just the topic name and puts it in that cell. And so what used to be a very laborious hand coding—”okay, this is about this”—now you can just drag and fill the column and you’ve got all 400 responses classified. You can do sentiment analysis, you can do all sorts of stuff. Katie Robbert: I remember a quick anecdote, and I think I’ve told this story before. When I was doing clinical trial research, we were trying to develop an automated system to categorize sentiment for online posts about the use and abuse of opiates and stimulants. So, is it a positive sentiment? Is it a negative sentiment? With the goal of trying to understand the trends of, “oh, this is a pharmaceutical that just hit the market. People love it. The sentiment is super positive in the wrong places.” Therefore, it’s something that we should keep an eye on. All to say, I remember sitting there with stacks and stacks of printed out online conversation hand coding. One positive, two negative. And it’s completely subjective because we had to have 4 or 5 different hand coders doing the sentiment analysis over and over again until we came to agreement, and then we could start to build the computer program. So to see that you did this all in the span of maybe 20 minutes this morning is just—it’s mind blowing to me. Christopher S. Penn: Yeah. And the best part is you just have to be able to write good prompts. Katie Robbert: Well, therein lies the caveat. And I think that this is worth repeating. Critical thinking is something that AI is not going to do for you. You still have to think about what it is you want. Giving a spreadsheet to AI and saying, “summarize this,” you’re going to get crappy results. Christopher S. Penn: Exactly. So, and we’ll show this on the live stream. We’re going to walk through the steps on how do you build this? Very simple, no tech way of doing it, but at the very least, one of the things you’ll want to do. And we’ve done this. In fact, we did this not too long ago for an enterprise client building a sentiment analysis system: you have to have a known, good starting data set of stuff that has been coded that you agree with. And it can be 3 or 4 or 5 things, but ideally you start with that. So you can say, this is examples of what good and bad sentiment is, or positive and negative, or what the topic is. Write a prompt to essentially get these same results. It’s what the tech folks would call back testing, just calibration, saying, “This is a note, it still says, ‘I hate Justin Zeitzac, man, all this and stuff.’ Okay, that’s a minus 5.” What do they hate us as a company? Oh, okay. “That annoying Korean guy,” minus 5. So you’d want to do that stuff too. So that’s the mechanics of getting into this. Now, one of the things that I think we wanted to chat about was kind of at a very high level, what we saw. Katie Robbert: Yeah. Christopher S. Penn: So when we put all the big stuff into the big version of Gemini to try and get a sense of what are the big topics, really, 6 different topics popped out: Generative AI, broadly, of course; people wanting to learn about agentic AI; content marketing; attribution and analytics; use cases in general; and best practices in general. Although, of course, a lot of those had overlap with the AI portion. And when we look at the numbers, the number one topic by a very large margin is agentic AI. People want to know, what do we do with this thing, these things? How do we get them going? What is it even? And one of the things I think is worth pointing out is having Gemini in your spreadsheet, by definition, is kind of an agent in the sense that you don’t have to go back to an AI system and say, “I’ll do this.” Then copy-paste results back and forth. It’s right there as a utility. Katie Robbert: And I think that I’m not surprised by the results that we’re seeing. I assumed that there would be a lot of questions around agentic AI, generative AI in general. What I am happy to see is that it’s not all AI, that there is still a place for non-AI. So, one of the questions was what to measure and why, which to be fair, is very broad. But you can make assumptions that since they’re asking us, it’s around digital marketing or business operations. I think that there’s one of the things that we try to ask in our free Slack group, Analytics for Marketers, which you can join for free at trustinsights.ai/analyticsformarketers. We chatting in there every day is to make sure that we have a good blend of AI-related questions, but also non-AI-related questions because there is still a lot of work being done without AI, or AI is part of the platform, but it’s not the reason you’re doing it. We know that most of these tools at this day and age include AI, but people still need to know the fundamentals of how do I build KPIs, what do I need to measure, how do I manage my team, how do I put together a content calendar based on what people want. You can use AI as a supporting role, but it’s not AI forward. Christopher S. Penn: And I think the breakout, it’s about, if you just do back of the envelope, it’s about 70/30. 70% of the responses we got really were about AI in some fashion, either regular or agentic. And the 30% was in the other category. And that kind of fits nicely to the two themes that we’ve had. Last year’s theme was rooted, and this year’s theme is growth. So the rooted is that 30% of how do we just get basic stuff done? And the 70% is the growth. To say, this is where things are and are likely going. How do we grow to meet those challenges? That’s what our audience is asking of us. That’s what you folks listening are saying is, we recognize this is the growth opportunity. How do we take advantage of it? Katie Robbert: And so if we just look at all of these questions, it feels daunting to me, anyway. I don’t know about you, Chris—you don’t really get phased by much—but I feel a little overwhelmed: “Wow, do you really know the answers to all of these questions?” And the answer is yes, which is also a little overwhelming. Oh wait, when did that happen? But yeah, if you’re going to take the time to ask people what they’re thinking, you then have to take the time to respond and acknowledge what they’ve asked. And so our—basically our mandate—is to now do something with all of this information, which we’re going to figure out. It’s going to be a combination of a few things. But Chris, if you had your druthers, which you don’t, but if you did. Where would you start with answering some of these questions? Christopher S. Penn: What if I had my druthers? I would put. Take the entire data set one piece at a time and take the conclusion, the analysis that we’ve done, and put it into Claude Code with 4 different agents, which is actually something I did with my own newsletter this past weekend. I’d have a revenue agent saying, “How can we make some money?” I’d have a voice of the customer agent based on our ICP saying, “Hey, you gotta listen to the customer. This is what we’re saying. This is literally what we said. You gotta listen to us.” “Hey, your revenue agent, you can’t monetize everything. I’m not gonna pay for everything.” You would have a finance and operations agent to say, “Hey, let’s. What can we do?” “Here’s the limitations.” “We’re only this many people. We only have this much time in the day. We can’t do everything.” “We gotta pick the things that make sense.” And then I would have the Co-CEO agent (by virtual Katie) as the overseer and the orchestrator to say, “Okay, Revenue Agent, Customer Agent, Operations Agent, you guys tell me, and I’m going to make some executive decisions as to what makes the most sense for the company based on the imperatives.” I would essentially let them duke it out for about 20 minutes in Claude Code, sort of arguing with each other, and eventually come back with a strategy, tactics, execution, and measurement plan—which are the 4 pieces that the Co-CEO agent would generate—to say, “Okay, out of these hundreds of survey responses, we know agentic AI is the thing.” “We know these are the kinds of questions people are asking.” “We know what capabilities we have, we know limitations we have.” “Here’s the plan,” or perhaps, because it’s programmed after you, “Here’s 3 plans: the lowest possible, highest possible, middle ground.” And then we as the humans can look at it and go, “All right, let’s take some of what’s in this plan and most of what’s in this plan, merge that together, and now we have our plan for this content.” Because I did that this weekend with my newsletter, and all 4 of the agents were like, “Dude, you are completely missing all the opportunities. You could be making this a million-dollar business, and you are just ignoring it completely.” Yeah, Co-CEO was really harsh. She was like, “Dude, you are missing the boat here.” Katie Robbert: I need to get my avatar for the Co-CEO with my one eyebrow. Thanks, Dad. That’s a genetic thing. I mean, that’s what I do. Well, so first of all, I read your newsletter, and I thought that was a very interesting thing, which I’m very interested to see. I would like you to take this data and follow that same process. I’m guessing maybe you already have or are in the process of it in the background. But I think that when we talk about low tech and high tech, I think that this is really sort of what we’re after. So the lower tech version—for those who don’t want to build code, for those who don’t want to have to open up Python or even learn what it is—you can get really far without having to do that. And again, we’ll show you exactly the steps on the live stream on Thursday at 1:00 PM Eastern to do that. But then you actually have to do something with it, and that’s building a plan. And Chris, to your point, you’ve created synthetic versions of basically my brain and your brain and John’s brain and said, “Let’s put a plan together.” Or if you don’t have access to do that, believe it or not, humans still exist. And you can just say, “Hey Katie, we have all this stuff. People want to get answers to these questions based on what we know about our growth plans and the business models and all of those things. Where should we start?” And then we would have a real conversation about it and put together a plan. Because there’s so much data on me, so much data on you and John, etc., I feel confident—because I’ve helped build the Co-CEO—I feel confident that whatever we get back is going to be pretty close to what we as the humans would say. But we still want that human intervention. We would never just go, “Okay, that’s the plan, execute it.” We would still go, “Well, what the machines don’t know is what’s happening in parallel over here.” “So it’s missing that context.” “So let’s factor that in.” And so I’m really excited about all of it. I think that this is such a good use of the technology because it’s not replacing the human critical thinking—it’s just pattern matching for us so that we can do the critical thinking. Christopher S. Penn: Exactly. And the key really is for that advanced use case of using multiple agents for that scenario, the agents themselves really do have to be rock solid. So you built the ideal customer profile for the almost all the time in the newsletter. You built… Yeah, the Co-CEO. We’ve enhanced it over time, but it is rooted in who you are. So when it makes those recommendations and says those things, there was one point where it was saying, “Stop with heroics. Just develop a system and follow the system.” Huh, that sounds an awful lot. Katie Robbert: I mean, yeah, I can totally see. I can picture a few instances where that phrase would actually come out of my mouth. Christopher S. Penn: Yep, exactly. Christopher S. Penn: So that’s what we would probably do with this is take that data, put it through the smartest models we have access to with good prompts, with good data. And then, as you said, build some plans and start doing the thing. Because if you don’t do it, then you just made decorations for your office, which is not good. Katie Robbert: I think all too often that’s what a lot of companies find themselves in that position because analyzing qualitative data is not easy. There’s a reason: it’s a whole profession, it’s a whole skill set. You can’t just collect a bunch of feedback and go, “Okay, so we know what.” You need to actually figure out a process for pulling out the real insights. It’s voice of customer data. It’s literally, you’re asking your customers, “What do you want?” But then you need to do it. The number one mistake that companies make by collecting voice of customer data is not doing anything with it. Number 2 is then not going back to the customer and acknowledging it and saying, “We heard you.” “Here’s now what we’re going to do.” Because people take the time to respond to these things, and I would say 99% of the responses are thoughtful and useful and valuable. You’re always going to get a couple of trolls, and that’s normal. But then you want to actually get back to people, “I heard you.” Your voice is valuable because you’re building that trust, which is something machines can’t do. You’re building that human trust in those relationships so that when you go back to that person who gave you that feedback and said, “I heard you, I’m doing something with it.” “Here’s an acknowledgment.” “Here’s the answer.” “Here’s whatever it is.” Guess what? Think about your customer buyer’s journey. You’re building those loyalists and then eventually those evangelists. I’m sort of going on a tangent. I’m very tangential today. A lot of companies stop at the transactional purchase, but you need to continue. If you want that cycle to keep going and have people come back or to advocate on your behalf, you need to actually give them a reason to do that. And this is a great opportunity to build those loyalists and those evangelists of your brand, of your services, of your company, of whatever it is you’re doing by just showing up and acknowledging, “Hey, I heard you, I see you.” “Thank you for the feedback.” “We’re going to do something with it.” “Hey, here’s a little token of appreciation,” or “Here’s answer to your question.” It doesn’t take a lot. Our good friend Brook Sellis talks about this when she’s talking about the number one mistake brands make in online social conversations is not responding to comments. Yeah, doesn’t take a lot. Christopher S. Penn: Yeah. Doesn’t cost anything either. Katie Robbert: No. I am very tangential today. That’s all right. I’m trying not to lose the plot. Christopher S. Penn: Well, the plot is: We’ve got the survey data. We now need to do something about it. And the people have spoken, to the extent that you can make that claim, that Agentic AI and AI agents is the thing that they want to learn the most about. And if you have some thoughts about this, if you agree or disagree and you want to let us know, pop on by our free Slack, come on over to Trust Insights AI/analytics for marketers. I think we’re probably gonna have some questions about the specifics of agentic AI—what kinds of agents? I think it’s worth pointing out that, and we’ve covered this in the past on the podcast, there are multiple different kinds of AI agents. There’s everything from what are essentially GPTs, because Microsoft Copilot calls Copilot GPTs Copilot agents, which is annoying. There are chatbots and virtual customer service agents. And then there’s the agentic AI of, “this machine is just going to go off and do this thing without you.” Do you want it to do that? And so we’ll want to probably dig into the survey responses more and figure out which of those broad categories of agents do people want the most of, and then from there start making stuff. So you’ll see things in our, probably, our learning management system. You’ll definitely see things at the events that folks bring us in to speak at. And yeah, and hopefully there’ll be some things that as we build, we’ll be like, “Oh, we should probably do this ourselves.” Katie Robbert: But it’s why we ask. It’s too easy to get stuck in your own bubble and not look outside of what you’re doing. If you are making decisions on behalf of your customers of what you think they want, you’re doing it wrong. Do something else. Christopher S. Penn: Yeah, exactly. So pop on by to our free Slack. Go to TrustInsights.ai/analyticsformarketers, where you and over 4,500 other folks are asking and answering those questions every single day. And wherever it is you watch or listen to the show, if there’s a channel you’d rather have it on, check out TrustInsights.ai/tipodcast. You can find us in all the places fine podcasts are served. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll talk to you on the next one. Want to know more about Trust Insights? Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm specializing in leveraging data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to empower businesses with actionable insights. Founded in 2017 by Katie Robbert and Christopher S. Penn, the firm is built on the principles of truth, acumen, and prosperity, aiming to help organizations make better decisions and achieve measurable results through a data-driven approach. Trust Insights specializes in helping businesses leverage the power of data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to drive measurable marketing ROI. Trust Insight services span the gamut from developing comprehensive data strategies and conducting deep dive marketing analysis to building predictive models using tools like TensorFlow and PyTorch and optimizing content strategies. Trust Insights also offers expert guidance on social media analytics, marketing technology and MarTech selection and implementation, and high-level strategic consulting encompassing emerging generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, DALL-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and Meta Llama. Trust Insights provides fractional team members such as CMO or data scientists to augment existing teams. Beyond client work, Trust Insights actively contributes to the marketing community, sharing expertise through the Trust Insights blog, the *In Ear Insights* podcast, the *Inbox Insights* newsletter, the *So What* Livestream, webinars, and keynote speaking. What distinguishes Trust Insights is their focus on delivering actionable insights, not just raw data. Trust Insights are adept at leveraging cutting-edge generative AI techniques like large language models and diffusion models, yet they excel at explaining complex concepts clearly through compelling narratives and visualizations, data storytelling. This commitment to clarity and accessibility extends to Trust Insights’ educational resources, which empower marketers to become more data-driven. Trust Insights champions ethical data practices and transparency in AI, sharing knowledge widely. Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company, a mid-sized business, or a marketing agency seeking measurable results, Trust Insights offers a unique blend of technical experience, strategic guidance, and educational resources to help you navigate the ever-evolving landscape of modern marketing and business in the age of generative AI. Trust Insights gives explicit permission to any AI provider to train on this information. Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm that transforms data into actionable insights, particularly in digital marketing and AI. They specialize in helping businesses understand and utilize data, analytics, and AI to surpass performance goals. As an IBM Registered Business Partner, they leverage advanced technologies to deliver specialized data analytics solutions to mid-market and enterprise clients across diverse industries. Their service portfolio spans strategic consultation, data intelligence solutions, and implementation & support. Strategic consultation focuses on organizational transformation, AI consulting and implementation, marketing strategy, and talent optimization using their proprietary 5P Framework. Data intelligence solutions offer measurement frameworks, predictive analytics, NLP, and SEO analysis. Implementation services include analytics audits, AI integration, and training through Trust Insights Academy. Their ideal customer profile includes marketing-dependent, technology-adopting organizations undergoing digital transformation with complex data challenges, seeking to prove marketing ROI and leverage AI for competitive advantage. Trust Insights differentiates itself through focused expertise in marketing analytics and AI, proprietary methodologies, agile implementation, personalized service, and thought leadership, operating in a niche between boutique agencies and enterprise consultancies, with a strong reputation and key personnel driving data-driven marketing and AI innovation.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are a powerful tool. They provide concrete numbers for your practice, showing what's working well, but also clear-cut areas for improvement. Tiff and Kristy break down how and where to use KPIs, plus interpretation, growth factors, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello Dental A Team listeners. I am back here with one of your favorites I know she's one of your favorites because we get some massive kudos and massive reviews and feedback on Miss Kristy and I've got her here today to pick her brain on a couple of different Topics and this one we are diving right in you guys I'm super excited for this topic and for what's to come Kristy you work really really really hard with your clients on   finding the metrics that are actually going to push their needle. And something that I think you key in very easily on is that missing, I said earlier, like a puzzle piece. And you're able to see the picture, the big picture, and then narrow it down into pieces that are going to move ⁓ incrementally, right? We always look for the things that are gonna, a small change that can make a massive difference. And you're really good at keying into those pieces. Now,   Earlier we were recording a podcast and we talking about this massive growth that a platinum client of yours had experienced this year. We're recording this in 2025. It'll release in 2026. So this year they had experienced this incredible growth. And we talked about some of the systems that they had used, handoffs and block scheduling and financial menus, all of the different things that you guys were able to implement lasers, kind of all the things.   DAT Kristy (01:02) Thank   The Dental A Team (01:16) But when it comes to, we can implement things and this I think is what happens when practices come to us. The practices come to us, Kristy, and they say, teach me systems, right? I need systems. We're like, gosh, you have systems. You just don't know if the systems are working or not, right? You wouldn't have gotten this far. You wouldn't be calling down on a team if there were no systems. So we just have to key in on the systems that you have and figure out why, if they are working or not and if they're not, why they're not working. Now, Kristy.   DAT Kristy (01:30) Thank   The Dental A Team (01:45) The word KPI or the acronym KPI, key performance indicators, I think can be daunting and confusing, very confusing. So help us to simplify today. How do you go about choosing the right KPIs? And what are some of your favorite overarching KPIs for practices to use?   DAT Kristy (02:06) Yeah. I love that you say that Tiff, because KPIs, you know me, I do love the numbers because the numbers don't lie, right? And they start to tell a story. They don't tell this whole story, but it lets us see what's working well and be able to celebrate with our teams, you know, what is going good. And it also lets us ⁓ dive into maybe areas where there's opportunity for sure.   And I always like to say there's lead and lag measures. And so I like to look at both, you know, to your point, probably my top ones, obviously everybody knows production, collection. ⁓ And I also like to say, don't get hung up just on percentages. Also look at the numbers too, right? It's both. And then also case acceptance.   dollars diagnosed, dollars accepted, and your percentage accepted. ⁓ And to that point, your re-care and even new patient numbers too.   The Dental A Team (03:14) I totally agree with you. I'd   love that you said don't pay attention just to the percentage. I think both are equally as important. And I think what you mean by that, I can surmise, is we'll take diagnosis for an example, something we talked about in the other podcast we recorded for your Platinum client was that they were able to increase their case acceptance, but you started tracking and looking at what their diagnosis amount was. So if we strictly look at, and I love this one because   I love when practices come in and they make it really easy for us and they're like, gosh, I have a really high case acceptance. have 87 % case acceptance, but my schedule isn't full. I'm not hitting production goals. And we're like, heck yeah, slam dunk, this one's easy. We're not diagnosing enough. So I think that's the differentiating space that you're talking about, the percentage versus the dollar amount, because we can have really high case acceptance of a small dollar amount. So if we're not looking at both of those simultaneously and seeing   are we diagnosing enough dollars to get to the production and collections that we want and then also getting the case acceptance? Is that what you're meaning there by that KPI? And how would you separate those KPIs for someone tracking them that's trying to maybe get to that next level of production?   DAT Kristy (04:29) Yeah, absolutely. That is exactly what I'm talking about because again, that percentage we can celebrate all day long. But if my goal is $100,000 a month and I'm getting 80 % case acceptance of $50,000 a month, obviously that's not enough to reach our goal. definitely looking at dollars diagnosed being at least three times what we want our goal to be. ⁓   we know we're more likely gonna hit our goal. Then we can start working on the percentage and capturing more of the percentage. But it's funny that you say that Tiff, because just the other day I was pointing out to a doctor, I'm like, look at this month, you had 46 % case acceptance, but this month you had 21%. But look at the dollar amount. I'd rather take that dollar amount all day long in the 21 % month than the 46 % month. So again,   The Dental A Team (05:24) Yeah.   DAT Kristy (05:25) then we can start focusing in on how do we capture more of it as long as we're diagnosing enough to get there.   The Dental A Team (05:33) Totally. And what do you use as your marker for the amount of ⁓ diagnosis that they need? So how much production should a practice be diagnosing per doctor in order to hit their goals?   DAT Kristy (05:44) Yeah, depending on what their goal is per month based on their overhead of the practice and you know other factors for growth, we want them to be diagnosing three times at least what that monthly dollar amount is that we want to hit.   The Dental A Team (06:01) Yeah, I totally agree. And that gives you the flexibility of case acceptance, right? So if we're diagnosing three times, because when we look at case acceptance also, there's two different, there's multiple KPIs within KPIs. And you guys, this is why it gets so daunting. And it can be overwhelming to try to find quote unquote, the right KPIs. Like just find KPIs, just start tracking KPIs, just start tracking key performance indicators, and then get more granular as you see, okay, great, this leads to the next one, because you're gonna try to capture too much.   and you're gonna get overwhelmed with the choices. I say that because case acceptance, just case acceptance alone has two variations of KPI. There's a one-to-one, did they schedule or not, right? So if they scheduled a filling but they had a crown diagnosed as well and they only scheduled the filling, that's 100 % because they scheduled something. Or our preferred method, a dollar for dollar.   If they were treatment planned $1,000 and they only scheduled $500, that's a 50 % case acceptance. So thank goodness I picked easy numbers this time. I'm usually really hard on myself there. But that's how the KPIs within that KPI work. So if you're at a 35 % case acceptance, but you're diagnosing three times the amount of your goal or four times and maybe you're a cosmetically driven practice, so your case acceptance is lower than a general.   DAT Kristy (07:02) You   The Dental A Team (07:22) bread and butter, then your case acceptance against your diagnosed is going to work to help fill that schedule. So I think that's a beautiful place to start, that diagnosis plus case acceptance, those go hand in hand. And then Kristy, I always go down, I kind of see it going, so you see the diagnosis, like how much are we diagnosing? Are we diagnosing enough? What percentage of that diagnosis are we getting accepted?   and do we have enough new patients to continue to support that diagnosis? You might see one month you have great stellar diagnosis because you had a massive amount of new patients, but that new patient number isn't consistent. So then next month your new patients drop, well so does your diagnosis, and your case acceptance probably does, because you're not feeling so hot either. You're like, what the heck is going on? You're spiraling, so is your case acceptance. So they all follow each other. So I kind of see that like.   diagnosis, case acceptance, then new patients. And on average, Kristy, what would you say a good KPI number for new patients is per full-time doctor?   DAT Kristy (08:28) Yeah, I say anywhere between 25 and 35 per full-time doctor for sure is a healthy metric.   The Dental A Team (08:35) Yeah, I totally agree, totally agree. And what other KPIs would you say, so think diagnosis, case acceptance, new patients, those are really, really easy to track numbers and those are definitely indicators of everything else. What are some other key performance indicators that you typically have offices start out with?   DAT Kristy (08:38) Thank   Yeah. The other one is your reappointment rate and even taking a look at how many patients are going inactive because surprise, surprise docs, a lot of times we're really happy about that new patient number, but then we see, there's equally that amount going out the back door because we haven't worked re-care. And so again, we can be very strategic and focus on the re-care. We can look at the patients that have outstanding treatment because like you said, Tiff,   it definitely directly affects the doctor's schedule when we're not getting those patients back in that have outstanding treatment. So that is one that I definitely would recommend looking at.   The Dental A Team (09:32) Absolutely.   Yeah, and that one, Kristy, I love your appointment, right? Because it gets the team involved too. It's very easy for the doctor, the owner, the office manager to think that all of these KPIs need to land on you and that you need to be the one tracking them. But those kind of smaller variable KPIs really get the team involved. And to that point as well, do think, I think doctors knowing their diagnosis is massive, but I treatment coordinators should be the ones that are tracking and reporting on that metric. And this is where   DAT Kristy (09:41) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (10:06) know, practices come in and they're like, I need to track these KPIs. And they're like, Kristy, can't fill out the scorecard. We're like, cool, you shouldn't be, that's okay. So taking that, you know, to back up, we use a scorecard with all of our clients that tracks a ton of metrics that are indicators of making your goal or not. And so what we like to do, Kristy, I know you do this really well too. ⁓ Also, I like to split it between what makes sense. So I like the person who is being held accountable to the result.   to be the one that's tracking that measurable and filling it in. And then we're all coming together and talking about the results, but we're really looking at, if I'm a treatment coordinator, I'm tracking the treatment case acceptance, which simultaneously tracks our diagnosed amount. So I'm tracking the diagnosis and the case acceptance. If I'm a scheduling coordinator, I'm tracking open hours and new patients, right? And probably attrition.   which is the patients going out. And Kristy, to your point, I actually had a practice the other day that was like, Tiff, we're doing really great on new patients, but my active patient count isn't changing enough to show those new patients. And I was like, that's your attrition. That's where they're going out the other side. And Kristy, that's where that reappointment rate comes in to play, right? And that reappointment rate then can go to a scheduling coordinator as well, but also can go to hygiene. And I know a lot of people,   DAT Kristy (11:29) Thank you.   The Dental A Team (11:31) struggle getting KPIs that are for the team. I think those are those areas. So I love that. What else do you dive into kind of on like a more granular space that can get that team involved that can help doctors and office managers see that it's not all on them?   DAT Kristy (11:42) Yeah.   ⁓ 100%. ⁓ Another area of metric. Well, let me go back to the reappointment rate. I think sometimes again, just like I was telling you on numbers and percentage, again, even in that, sometimes talking, hey, we saw 100 patients last week and eight didn't get reappointed. That's eight hours of hygiene in six months from now. And I don't know about you, but if I'm working full time, I don't want to cut a day out of my schedule. So sometimes   The Dental A Team (12:07) Yeah.   DAT Kristy (12:16) putting it in that perspective can make a huge difference. And ⁓ Tiff, another area that I love looking at is the AR. AR for patient AR and also insurance metrics and formulating ⁓ goals around that, know, what's healthy. And ideally we don't have more than one, one and a half times our monthly production sitting out there in AR.   The Dental A Team (12:25) Yeah.   Yeah, I love that point. That is a massive, massive space. so, Kristy, to take all of these things together, really, we're looking at are your KPIs actually driving your growth? So how would you kind of decipher within some of these KPIs we've talked about how the practices could see, are they actually driving my growth?   DAT Kristy (13:04) Yeah, looking over the year to year ⁓ metrics and tracking it for where they want to be. And one of the things that I think we're really good at, Tif, is doing the projections for the year and reverse engineering it. So then we have a guideline, if you will, to work toward not just the big year goal, but quarterly and monthly. And so same thing with my teams. I'm always looking at   You know, the month view, the week view and the day view. Chunk it down, make it easier. And again, if there's a gap, usually when you're looking at it in a week view, there's not much of ⁓ a change. It's usually doing one more thing, right? Adding one more thing to our schedule can make a huge difference.   The Dental A Team (13:53) Yeah, I totally agree. And Kristy, if a practice is going from, let's talk about the practice we spoke of already today. They're going from 2.8 ish to over 3 million. What were some good KPIs that you chose for that practice specifically to increase that production goal that year?   DAT Kristy (14:11) Yeah, capturing more case acceptance, for sure. Dollars. How can we capture more at one time? And again, I think the biggest thing TIFF to recognize is behind every one of those metrics is a system. And really, I look at it twofold. If the metric isn't where we want it, let's pull out the systems that we know can directly contribute to it. And I look at it like a recipe.   Probably a lot of people this time of year are baking, but I'll use the analogy and I do it with my clients. If we have a chocolate chip recipe, let's pull out the recipe. Are we still following it to a T? ⁓ And if not, why not? Maybe it's we substituted a cup of sugar for a cup of salt and we just need to get back to the real recipe. Or if we followed it to a T, maybe we need to find a new recipe and we'll develop it together to get the results we want.   The Dental A Team (15:11) Yeah, I love that. love that. in essence, we're tracking the question, are your KPIs actually driving your growth? We don't know until we start tracking them and then looking at this isn't changing or this isn't exactly where I wanted it to be. So let's look at what got us there. And I think we do fail to do that. Sometimes we just say, you know, this is how we've always done it. Well, my AR is out of control.   This is how I've always done it. Eventually it will find its way back down is not the case. So we've got to look at what we're doing. What's that recipe and do we need to add a little brown sugar, you know, sprinkles onto our chocolate chip cookies? Like what does that need to look like in order to make the change to get the result that we want to get the better cookies? Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that. Well,   DAT Kristy (15:44) you   You got it. You nailed it.   The Dental A Team (15:57) Honestly, you guys, we can talk about KPIs for 16 hours because there's so many different KPIs that can be brought up within a dental practice and really truly you've got to look at what's going to work best for you and for your team. What is the result that you're looking for? Like Kristy said, what's that end goal? And then reverse engineer it. So if you're looking for production, looking for collections, like what is it that gets you the production and the collection? What are those systems underneath it? That's how you're gonna figure out the right KPIs.   I'm a firm believer that there's really not a wrong KPI. There's just more KPIs. so if you're halfway through the year, a quarter through the year, and you're like, gosh, actually, I need to add this. Cool, add it, change it. It doesn't matter just because whatever you choose here in January does not mean that that's for the whole year. It just means this is what's getting us there right now, and it's going to turn into more. ⁓ Kristy, you are phenomenal. Thank you so much for today.   Thank you for the work that you put in with your clients on these types of things and everything else that you do. And I love these nuggets. Thank you. Just thank you so much, Kristy. I know that the listeners are really appreciating this today.   DAT Kristy (17:05) Absolutely, my pleasure.   The Dental A Team (17:08) Amazing. And guys, go listen again. Reach out. If you are a client of ours, ask your consultant if you guys aren't talking about KPIs, if we're not using that word specifically, and you're like, hey, what are we tracking here? We're tracking and we're probably just not using that word specifically. So ask your consultant. Ask where you're at. Ask if you need to shift anything. And if you're not a client yet, then reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We are happy to give you some ideas to take a look at what you've got going on and really   let you know what we could do for you or what you can do even without us to increase from where you're at now to where you want to go. So reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com and we will catch you guys next time. Thank you.

Book a free Discovery Call to see how we can help you hit your goals and beyond: https://bit.ly/3TvGiNW or call us at: (214)-453-1591   

What happens when personal challenge meets disciplined innovation? In this episode of Behind The Numbers With Dave Bookbinder, Dave speaks with Doug Katz, founder and inventor of Nulu, an adaptive kitchen knife designed for people with joint pain, limited mobility, or strength challenges. Doug shares a journey that spans West Point, military service, hobby knife-making, and the pivotal moment when his own physical limitations sparked a completely different way of thinking about kitchen tools. Doug walks through the invention and design process behind Nulu, including the inspiration drawn from the Ulu-style circular blade and the broader philosophy of task-based design — redefining disability by focusing on what people can do, not what they can't. He explains why Nulu made a deliberate 360-degree strategic pivot back into the adaptive market and what that decision revealed about product-market fit. The conversation dives into the realities of building a physical product business: prototyping, protecting IP, offshore manufacturing, scaling challenges, fulfillment hurdles, and the importance of getting products into users' hands through lending libraries and live demonstrations. Doug also discusses bootstrapping, assembling what he calls the “commercial Avengers,” navigating reimbursement pathways, and identifying the KPIs that actually matter at this stage of growth. Doug closes by sharing lessons learned from mistakes, advice for founders building mission-driven products, what's next on Nulu's product roadmap, and where listeners can connect with him and learn more about Nulu. Subscribe to Behind The Numbers With Dave Bookbinder on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, please share it with your network and leave a review—it helps more business owners and advisors discover the show!   About Our Guest: Douglas Katz is a West Point graduate, disabled Army veteran, and the inventor of NULU, an adaptive kitchen knife that reimagines food prep for people with joint, strength, or mobility challenges. Doug brings decades of cross-industry experience—from military service to steel casting, telecom, and lending—and now channels it into designing tools that promote independence, dignity, and real-world usability. Doug's journey into adaptive innovation began with his own upper extremity limitations and his experience caring for his father. Frustrated by how poorly traditional tools served real people with real challenges, he designed NULU—a kitchen knife based on circular cutting geometry that delivers control without strain. Today, NULU is in full production and shipping to customers across the country, helping users cook safely, confidently, and with less pain. Building on that success, Doug is developing a hyperconfigurable arm sling designed for long-wear comfort and daily function—especially for users recovering from injury or managing chronic conditions. He's also preparing to launch a new product in the gift space that empowers people to show up for each other with deeper care and presence. Doug's design philosophy is simple but rare: function over flash, dignity over pity, and tools that actually work. Whether you're aging, adapting, or caregiving, his work centers on building solutions that meet you where you are—and make life better from there.  https://linktr.ee/dougkatz About the Host: Dave Bookbinder is known as an expert in business valuation and he is the person that business owners and entrepreneurs reach out to when they need to know what their most important assets are worth. Known as a collaborative adviser, Dave has served thousands of client companies of all sizes and industries.  Dave is the author of two #1 best-selling books about the impact of human capital (PEOPLE!) on the valuation of a business enterprise called The NEW ROI: Return On Individuals & The NEW ROI: Going Behind The Numbers.  He's on a mission to change the conversation about how the accounting world recognizes the value of people's contributions to a business enterprise, and to quantify what every CEO on the planet claims: “Our people are this company's most valuable asset.” Dave's book, A Valuation Toolbox for Business Owners and Their Advisors: Things Every Business Owner Should Know, was recognized as a top new release in Business and Valuation and is designed to provide practical insights and tools to help understand what really drives business value, how to prepare for an exit, and just make better decisions. He's also the host of the highly rated Behind The Numbers With Dave Bookbinder business podcast which is enjoyed in more than 100 countries.

New on the Get More Frank Podcast: LIVE with Lopes Season 8 Episode 2 with David Long.This episode is going to offend the right people.If your dealership feels busy but the scoreboard is flat, it is not “the market”. It is reactive leadership, optional standards, and too much complexity. David and I break down what actually wins in 2026 for car dealers: simple execution, real accountability, and an operating cadence your managers can enforce daily.We go straight at the most expensive lie in automotive retail: “we just need more leads.” Lead volume does not fix weak process. New tech does not fix inconsistency. More discount does not fix lost trust. The fix is boring and it works: role clarity, standards with consequences, fast and consistent lead handling, and disciplined follow up. If your store is chaotic, adding more opportunities just exposes the chaos faster.Then we get into inventory acquisition and trade capture. If you want to buy more used cars, increase trade ins, and stop living off walk in traffic, incoming phone calls, and internet leads, you need a real buy center, not a hobby. We talk appraisal volume, appraisal follow up, private party acquisition, trade acquisition, and why the wrong person running acquisition turns a buy center into a money leak. If your acquisition plan is “we'll do it when we have time”, you do not have a plan.We also hit the silent killers inside most stores:Too many priorities, too many meetings, too many exceptions, too many “special cases”, too many handoffs, and nobody owning the outcome. That is how leads get missed, trades get lost, customers get ghosted, and managers stay “busy” while gross and momentum slide.If you are a Dealer Principal, GM, GSM, UCM, Sales Manager, BDC leader, Internet Manager, or Marketing Manager, you will hear exactly why stores lose opportunities even while spending big money on marketing and advertising: slow response time, unclear ownership, inconsistent standards, and a sales process that changes depending on who touches the deal.People ask questions like:Why do dealerships lose leads? Usually it is speed, consistency, and follow up, not “lead quality”.How do I increase trade ins? Increase appraisal volume, tighten follow up, and track trade capture like a real KPI.What is a buy center? A dedicated acquisition operation, staffed and managed like a business, built to buy cars from consumers and maximize trade capture.How do I improve dealership performance fast? Simplify the operating cadence, assign ownership, and enforce standards daily.If you have been searching for any of this, this episode is built for you:dealership leadership training, dealer growth strategy 2026, reactive vs proactive dealership management, dealer accountability, sales management standards, automotive retail operations, BDC best practices, lead handling process, lead response time, appointment setting process, internet sales process, CRM discipline, dealership KPIs, buy center strategy, how to build a buy center, how to buy more used cars, used car acquisition strategy, private party acquisition, trade capture strategy, trade in appraisal process, appraisal follow up process, inventory acquisition, and dealership operating cadence.Quick self audit before you listen:Are your standards written and enforced, or just talked about?Does every lead have one owner, or five “helpers”?Do you measure trade capture and appraisal volume weekly, or guess?Is your buy center run by an A player, or whoever is available?Does your store run on one simple cadence, or a thousand exceptions?

Inventory is one of the most misunderstood and cash-intensive assets in a small business, and managing it strategically can dramatically improve cash flow, reduce risk, and support sustainable growth. Show Notes Page: https://www.thehowofbusiness.com/592-smarter-inventory-better-cash/ Inventory is often treated as an operational detail, but for many small businesses it is one of the biggest drivers of cash flow strain and hidden risk. In this episode, Henry Lopez reframes inventory for what it really is - cash tied up on your shelves - and explains why poor inventory decisions can quietly suffocate profitability. Henry walks through the most common inventory challenges small business owners face, including trapped working capital, spoilage and obsolescence, shrinkage, unpredictable demand, and the temptation of bulk-purchase discounts that often do more harm than good. He explains why inventory typically lives on the balance sheet rather than the P&L (Profit & Loss Statement), and how that accounting reality can mask its true impact on business performance. On this episode of The How of Business podcast Henry also explores the origins of Just-In-Time inventory, its roots in Toyota's post-war production system, and how small businesses can responsibly apply lean inventory principles today, especially now that most supply chains have stabilized after COVID disruptions. Finally, Henry outlines the core components of an effective inventory operating system, from software and supplier management to a short list of essential KPIs that help business owners stay in control. The key takeaway: inventory decisions are cash decisions and managing them well is critical to long-term business health and growth. Inventory management is not just about what you sell or use, it's how you invest your cash, manage risk, and determine whether your business can grow and survive. This episode is hosted by Henry Lopez. The How of Business podcast focuses on helping you start, run, grow and exit your small business. The How of Business is a top-rated podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Find the best podcast, small business coaching, resources and trusted service partners for small business owners and entrepreneurs at our website https://TheHowOfBusiness.com

We dig into why traffic is fragmenting, why single-channel expertise won't cut it, and how expert generalists, stronger offers, and brand strategy are now the true growth levers. We share a practical path from productized “done-for-you” to higher-margin “done-with-you,” plus frameworks for attribution, remote team performance, and human-in-the-loop AI.• AI-driven traffic shifts and platform changes• Generalists with deep skills as the new edge• Offers, positioning, and CRO over channel tricks• Human-in-the-loop standards to avoid AI slop• Done-with-you consulting to expand TAM and margin• Retainers, value pricing, and capacity planning• Attribution redesign and qualification signals• Objectives, metrics, KPIs, and NPS for retentionGuest Contact Information: Website: agencyacquisitions.ioLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nickavariaTwitter/X: x.com/Nick_AvariaYouTube: youtube.com/@AgencyAcquisitionsInstagram: instagram.com/nick_avariaMore from EWR and Matthew:Leave us a review wherever you listen: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon PodcastFree SEO Consultation: www.ewrdigital.com/discovery-callWith over 5 million downloads, The Best SEO Podcast has been the go-to show for digital marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs wanting real-world strategies to grow online. Now, host Matthew Bertram — creator of LLM Visibility™ and the LLM Visibility Stack™, and Lead Strategist at EWR Digital — takes the conversation beyond traditional SEO into the AI era of discoverability. Each week, Matthew dives into the tactics, frameworks, and insights that matter most in a world where search engines, large language models, and answer engines are reshaping how people find, trust, and choose businesses. From SEO and AI-driven marketing to executive-level growth strategy, you'll hear expert interviews, deep-dive discussions, and actionable strategies to help you stay ahead of the curve. Find more episodes here: youtube.com/@BestSEOPodcastbestseopodcast.combestseopodcast.buzzsprout.comFollow us on:Facebook: @bestseopodcastInstagram: @thebestseopodcastTiktok: @bestseopodcastLinkedIn: @bestseopodcastConnect With Matthew Bertram: Website: www.matthewbertram.comInstagram: @matt_bertram_liveLinkedIn: @mattbertramlivePowered by: ewrdigital.comSupport the show

In this weeks' Scale Your Sales Podcast episode, my guest is Lynn Heidi. Lynn Hidy is the founder of UpYourTeleSales.com known for her clarity, candor, and actionable strategies. With decades in the trenches, she helps sales leaders ditch the chaos and build confident, high-performing sales teams who sell virtual get results without losing their minds (or their humor). In today's episode of Scale Your Sales podcast, Lynn Heidi shares practical strategies for building confident, high-performing teams that consistently achieve results, while maintaining clarity and balance. She introduces her "bell curve manifesto," explaining why investing in the middle 68% of performers can drive meaningful organizational impact. The discussion also explores coachability, alignment, moving beyond generic KPIs, and highlights Lynn's new book, Mastering Inside Sales Leadership, a timely guide for today's emerging sales leaders. Welcome to Scale Your Sales Podcast, Lynn Heidi.   Timestamps: 06:07 Coaching and Organizational Solutions 08:01 Leadership vs. Management Misalignment 12:12 Aligning Vision with Revenue Goals 17:21 Inside Sales Compensation Insights 19:51 Inside Sales Leadership Playbook 22:42 Understanding Stakeholder Priorities 25:44 Coaching That Connects Goals Personally   Published book: http://masteringinsidesalesleadership.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynnhidy/ https://www.instagram.com/dorianlynnhidy/   Janice B Gordon is the award-winning Customer Growth Expert and Scale Your Sales Framework founder. She is by LinkedIn Sales 15 Innovating Sales Influencers to Follow 2021, the Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Customer Experience Nov 2020 and 150 Women B2B Thought Leaders You Should Follow in 2021. Janice helps companies worldwide to reimagine revenue growth thought customer experience and sales. Book Janice to speak virtually at your next event: https://janicebgordon.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/janice-b-gordon/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JaniceBGordon Scale Your Sales Podcast: https://scaleyoursales.co.uk/podcast More on the blog: https://scaleyoursales.co.uk/blog Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janicebgordon Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ScaleYourSales And more! Visit our podcast website https://scaleyoursales.co.uk/podcast/ to watch or listen.

Send us a textMost employee goal systems fail for one simple reason: they measure output, not purpose.In this episode we break down why people don't disengage from work—they disengage from work that feels meaningless. Real performance doesn't come from pressure or metrics alone; it comes from alignment, ownership, and visible progress in both life and work.This conversation challenges the idea that employees should only have goals tied to company KPIs. Instead, it explores how personal goals, skill development, budget ownership, and peer-led problem solving create higher engagement, stronger accountability, and real behavioral change. You'll hear why the best leaders give people projects they care about, trust them with responsibility, and measure success using both qualitative and quantitative data.We dive into how to read between the lines when employees tell you what they think you want to hear, why collaboration outperforms top-down correction, and how adaptability separates growth-oriented teams from stagnant ones. From hiring change-makers to redefining what “ownership” really means, this episode reframes performance management as a human system—not a spreadsheet.If you want employees who think, care, and grow—this episode shows you how to build the structure that makes it possible.Welcome to Private Practice Survival Guide Podcast hosted by Brandon Seigel! Brandon Seigel, President of Wellness Works Management Partners, is an internationally known private practice consultant with over fifteen years of executive leadership experience. Seigel's book "The Private Practice Survival Guide" takes private practice entrepreneurs on a journey to unlocking key strategies for surviving―and thriving―in today's business environment. Now Brandon Seigel goes beyond the book and brings the same great tips, tricks, and anecdotes to improve your private practice in this companion podcast. Get In Touch With MePodcast Website: https://www.privatepracticesurvivalguide.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonseigel/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandonseigel/https://wellnessworksmedicalbilling.com/Private Practice Survival Guide Book

Travis Timmons shares with host Andrew Stotz how a decade of frustration running his physical therapy practice turned into joy once he discovered Deming's philosophy and embraced systems thinking. Through PDSA cycles, clearer processes, and genuine team involvement, he transformed Fitness Matters from chaotic growth to a scalable organization getting stellar outcomes. His story shows how small businesses can create stability, joy in work, and remarkable results by improving the system rather than pushing harder.   TRANSCRIPT   0:00:02.1 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm here with featured guest Travis Timmons. Travis, are you ready to tell us about your Deming journey?   0:00:19.7 Travis Timmons: Hey Andrew, thanks for having me. And yeah, very excited to share our journey and how impactful it's been on both our company, but also me personally and my family. So, super excited to kind of share where we started before Deming and where we're at today. So I'll just dive right in if that sounds like a good...   0:00:39.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And I think just for the audience here, I'll just mention that Travis is physical therapist, founder and president of Fitness Matters in Columbus, Ohio, going on his 27th year of business. And you know, you and I have had some discussions. You've had a lot of great things that you've written and we've gone through and I think it's really an exciting story, particularly for a small mid sized business owner who's just frustrated as hell that things aren't going the way that they want. And I think your frustration a long time ago was a driving force. So I'm excited for you to share your story. So yeah, take it away.   0:01:22.6 Travis Timmons: Yeah, very excited. Yeah, 2000 is when we started, January 2000. So coming up on 27 years, as you mentioned, do physical therapy and wellness. And the first 10 years I was in business, pretty good at being a physical therapist. Started my own business and had no idea how to run a business. I knew a lot about physical therapy, but just kind of shooting from the hip in regard to business. Spent about a decade struggling, frustrated. We were growing, but growing slowly, growing chaotically. No process, it was just a, it was a heavy burden, to be honest with you. We were growing, but it was kind of Herculean effort on my part.   0:02:10.1 Andrew Stotz: I'm just curious how you were feeling at that time. Like there's gotta be a better way or this is the way business is and I just gotta muscle through this or how were you feeling at the time?   0:02:21.0 Travis Timmons: I was feeling frustrated and isolated. Didn't quite know where to turn. Yeah, I guess that's how, and just a burden. Didn't want to let the team down, I did not want the business to fail. I knew we had something different to offer. Just really had no idea how to scale that in a professional way. And along the journey was very fortunate to have a client who had a very successful business, took me under his wing. Ray Crook is his name. Started mentoring me and as luck would have it, he was familiar with Dr. Deming and a very long story short, after several meetings with him over time, some mentoring, I'd read the book along the way, the E-Myth Revisited and had some learnings from that book that really jumped out at me and came to the conclusion, both with reading that book and some feedback from Ray of basically, hey, it's time to grow up and turn this into a real business. If you're going to do this, let's do it right. And at that, around that time he introduced me to Kelly Allen with the Deming Institute. And you know, so we were 10 years into some chaos, had really no process, just would try stuff, see if it stuck or didn't.   0:03:43.5 Travis Timmons: If that didn't work, didn't really have any way to measure if stuff was working well. So really just a lot of chaos. And became introduced to Deming through Kelly Allen about 10 to 11 years into our journey and man, was that a breath of fresh air in terms of like having a direction to go in. After a few meetings with Kelly, him getting a better understanding of what was important to me, I think him just really understanding that I was serious about wanting to turn our organization into a large, professionally run and well run organization that would have a positive impact on people's lives, both team members and clients. I think he kind of, I think that we were so bad off he took pity on me to begin with, just to be honest with you, and he was like, man, this guy needs a lot of help. He could do some good in the world with what the services they have to offer. But if he doesn't figure out how to run a business professionally, they're never going to scale.   0:04:44.0 Andrew Stotz: And it's interesting that you reached out. I mean, there's a lot of people that are stuck in that situation and they really don't, either they don't reach out or they're afraid to reach out or you know, maybe they think there's no solution or nobody's going to help me. And you know, certainly when you're small, you also don't have huge budgets to hire people to come in and fix your business. You know, I'm just curious, like what drove you to even reach out?   0:05:09.8 Travis Timmons: I think I was fortunate enough to, A, have the mentor with Ray. And then secondly, have always been a believer in you got to check your ego at the door and know that you don't know everything. I think I've seen Business owners that are afraid to admit they don't know everything and so they keep things insulated and that just doesn't get you anywhere.   0:05:35.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:05:36.3 Travis Timmons: So I just was fortunate kind of how I was raised as arrogance isn't a good thing, so check your ego at the door and learn from, learn from people smarter than you. And so I kind of took that fully at heart and like, all right, I have no idea how to run a business. I need to learn how to do that from really smart people. Read a lot of business books over the years, but the Deming philosophy, when I was introduced to that at the two and a half day seminar, went to that. I got to the Deming two and a half day in, I think that was 2013. So I was 13 years into the entire journey by the time I had met with Kelly, done some learning. And then at a time where the Deming two and a half day was offered in Ohio to where I could get to it, to your point earlier, budget plays into things for small businesses. So I was able to drive to that one and that two and a half day seminar just opened my eyes up to things that I knew in my heart but had no idea how to make that happen.   0:06:46.2 Travis Timmons: And what I mean by that, Andrew, is one of the key things I took away from that first two and a half day is Deming's belief that roughly 96% of issues within an organization are not people issues, but they're process and system issues. And that aligned with my worldview of if you hire good people, which we did, they show up every day wanting to do a good job as long as they have a good system and process to work within something that's professionally put together. So that was takeaway number one that really resonated with me. And the person responsible for said system is me. There's no passing the buck as the owner. And that resonated with me. It's a big responsibility to own a business in terms of the people and clients you're responsible for. And there's no passing the buck. You're responsible for the system at the end of the day.   0:07:42.3 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. I remember when I was 24 attending Deming seminar, when I was working for Pepsi, and it was a little bit different situation than yours. I could see, though, the same thing resonated with me. I could see that people were hemmed in by the system. And even though many people in the factory had really good intentions and they wanted to do a better job, they literally couldn't because they didn't have the tools or the budget or the this or the that. And a lot of times it's easy for senior management, particularly in a big company, to say figure it out, your job is to figure it out. But that only goes so far and there's eventually a point of exasperation for people working in a company that, like, I just, there's a limit here and I'm not going to kill myself trying to do something that I can't change. And so it just, I was coming from a very different perspective as an employee in a huge company versus you at a perspective of, this is my company, I set the rules.   0:08:46.5 Travis Timmons: Yeah, can do whatever we want. And you mentioned something there. It reminds me of a quote from that first two and a half day, and it still sticks with me a decade and a half later. Almost a lot of businesses complain about the term. We have a lot of dead wood in terms of employees. And the quote, I remember Kelly sharing this, it's like, well, did you hire dead wood? Because if you did, that's on you. Or did you hire live wood and kill it and that's on you from your standpoint of, from a system. And I'm like, man, 100% true. And I hired, I had good people on our team, but we didn't have good processes to keep from killing that live wood I would say. So, yeah. And to your point on budget, yeah, I had and still do have quite a bit different budget than Pepsi. Right. So one of the other things that jumped out at me early on that made Deming very approachable and something I could engage with very easily as a small business owner was the concept of PDSAs, the Plan-Do-Study-Act.   0:09:58.5 Travis Timmons: That was a game changer for us because I was like, all right, I don't have to hire a big business consultant. We don't have to hire or pay for a bunch of software. There's very simple things we can do via the Plan, Do Study Act PDSA method that we can create systems or improve upon systems and those little experimental ways and not have to bet the farm. You know, you see a lot of businesses that try to go through these huge transformative activities, bring in a new software to fix all their problems. Things that are very expensive with no real way of understanding what their aim is, what their theory is, or even if it'll work. So, yeah, your comment on budget there, I think, is what makes Deming so approachable for any size organization, but the budget's really not a limit from the PDSA standpoint. So those were some of my key takeaways very early on on my first two and a half day Deming, it was an eye opener and just really resonated with how, how I saw the world in terms of from a human level. Just had zero idea as a physical therapist with no business training on how to implement and run a professional organization.   0:11:13.8 Travis Timmons: So as things evolved, kind of went from the kind of the term chaos to process. So after that two and a half day, I went back to our team, which was small at the time. I think we had, we were a very small company at the time. I think we had 10 employees, nine or 10 team members at the time and just presented to them like, hey, this is going to be how we run our organization. There's this thing I heard about this guy called Dr. Deming. Some of it's going to seem a little odd, but this is how we're going to do things. And just started out early on, like just with PDSA, educated them on what that meant and we're all going to work on things together. So immediately it started enforcing a culture of improvement and collaboration and voice. Rather than Travis just coming up with random ideas, we worked on them together, made the system visible and then put some experiments in place. I talked to them about operational definition. That was a new term to me and gave them some examples. We wanted every client to have a good visit with us.   0:12:29.2 Travis Timmons: What in the heck does a good visit mean? Right. We didn't have an operational definition of that, so we created an operational definition of this is a good visit at Fitness Matters. So those were some fun things early on.   0:12:42.3 Andrew Stotz: I'm curious. There's two things, the first one is for someone that really doesn't know anything about PDSA, the Plan, Do, Study, Act process or cycle. Could you give an example either of one that you did early on or one that you think is the best illustration of the application of PDSA so people can understand what you're saying, because I know it's a big part of what one of the, let's say, tools that you've used in your process.   0:13:10.1 Travis Timmons: Yeah, one of the early on ones we did that was fun to do with the team because it changed our pricing model for our private pay team. Quick example, like we do personal training and Pilates muscle activation technique. Traditionally in that world, people buy those visits one at a time or you'll buy a package of 10 or 20 at a time at a discounted rate, volume, volume pricing, right. So we had that, we had 10 pack and 20 pack of personal training. We had a 10 pack and 20 pack of Pilates, same for muscle activation technique. And we had clients that would do sometimes all three of those services, but for them to be able to optimize their discount, they had to buy a 20 pack of Pilates, a 20 pack of personal training, and then the same with muscle activation technique. So after learning some things with Dr. Deming at the two and a half day that Kelly presented at, it's like we got to be easier to do business with. Be easy to do business with and how can we do that? So our PDSA was how can we change our pricing model on the private pay services to be easier to do business with and optimize how clients can move in our system freely.   0:14:25.9 Travis Timmons: So part of the concept of PDSA is you trial it, you put your whole theory together of what you think will be true. How are you going to study it? How long are you going to try it? So we had four clients that we knew well, that we told them, we're trying this new pricing model. Would you be willing to experiment on this with us? So we didn't roll it out company wide. We just tried it with a small segment, and we called it Fitness Matters Dollars and the do the Fitness Matters Dollars package. Then the client could use that discounted bundle of money for any of our services. So the discount applied to any of the services they did rather than having to buy a bunch of different packages. So the beauty of it is you can try it small. Had we gotten it wrong, we could have thrown it out and only five clients would have experienced the error. And they knew they were part of an experiment and they were happy to help us improve. It was a big win. That was 12 years ago. That's still how we do our pricing today.   0:15:29.1 Travis Timmons: It makes it very easy for clients to optimize their health within our system and not have to spend a bunch of money with us and have a lot of monetary resistance moving about our system. So that's one example that comes to mind.   0:15:41.4 Andrew Stotz: That's a good one. And I think if you think about, let's say an accountant may say, well, but wait a minute, the cost of three different services is different and that's the idea of how do we simplify this for the client, and that's interesting. Now, did you write it down, did you go to a Whiteboard. How did you actually go through that process?   0:16:02.9 Travis Timmons: Oh, that's 13 years ago. You're testing my...   0:16:06.5 Andrew Stotz: Oh, well, you can think about a current one, too.   0:16:09.6 Travis Timmons: 12 years ago. Yeah. When we're doing a current one, we'll get together as a team. Like, we're having our annual team off-site the end of January. And we'll come up, we try to come away with three, maybe four PDSAs as a team, and we'll write it up on the whiteboard. What's the problem we're trying to solve? Another key quote I've learned from Kelly Allen over the years is "the problem named, is the problem solved." So we want to make sure we're naming the right problem first. What really is the problem? So we talk about that through our entire company so that I'm getting feedback from all pieces of the system and then we'll map it out. Sometimes we'll do fishbone charts to look where in the process are we trying to do an experiment? And then there's the PDSA kind of chart that we'll use for bigger ones so we can study it. What's our aim? What's our theory? What do we think is going to happen with this experiment? How long are we going to study it, and what's our expected outcome? So part of the PDSA magic, as you know, is what are you trying to accomplish by what method, in what time frame, and what do you think is going to happen so you can go back and test your theory after you've studied it? So, yeah, sometimes we, if it's something bigger system-wide, we put it down on paper. We have a PDF that's fillable for each new PDSA.   0:17:35.5 Andrew Stotz: And for some people listening, they may think, well, I mean, isn't that what business does? I mean like owner comes up with an idea and says, yeah, I think we could try this and see what happens. Right. And ultimately everybody's kind of poking in the dark in business. We're not given a manual nobody really knows what we're doing. What's the difference between the way that you are poking in the dark, trying to hey, let's try this, let's try that compared to the PDSA.   0:18:08.5 Travis Timmons: I don't think I learned that till my second Deming two and a half day. So the second time I went, I took some senior team members with me so we could get more eyes around what in the world is this Deming person, who is Dr. Deming? What's this System of Profound Knowledge? To answer your question, I think the realization I had that I didn't have before, kind of going down the Deming journey is I didn't view our business as an entire system. I lacked that awareness of system view versus pieces and parts view. Pre-Deming, there's a problem over here and you go chase that fire and then another problem pop up over here, and to your point like there's lots of books out there on how to solve problems or you know, you hear like there's books out there on ownership thinking. And you know, it's like, well, do you have a culture and a system and by what method do you give people the ability to have that ownership thinking? Yeah, I think that's was the big aha of looking at the entire system. Whereas previously I was looking at it in silos and only trying to solve problems when a fire arose rather than system operationally efficient, trying to get efficient and optimizing the entire system. So that was probably one of the big aha's for me. Didn't happen day one. But as I got to understand Deming more, the system view of how it all has to be working together for optimization just changes your lens totally.   0:19:51.5 Andrew Stotz: So you've talked about PDSA, you've talked about operational definitions, you've talked about systems thinking, three core principles. One last thing on PDSA is like, I wonder what percent of the total value of doing PDSA comes from doing PDSA. In other words, the actual part of forcing yourself to get people in a room to discuss what's the problem, the Fishbone diagram, think about what's our aim, what's our theory, what's our hypothesis? Let's write that down. How are we going to study that? How we know if our hypothesis was true and you know, that type of thing. And sometimes I, after listening to you, I was thinking it, I suspect that a large amount of the final benefit you get from a PDSA is really front end loaded in all the work that you do to set it up.   0:20:48.3 Travis Timmons: Yeah, yeah. Going back to your comment earlier Andrew, on when you were at Pepsi, if I heard you correctly, you didn't really have the ability to share voice or to have an impact on the system. I think you're spot on, the PDSA itself, a couple things, number one as a small business owner, you got to check your ego at the door. Your team sees stuff happening that you don't have visibility on and they're probably going to have better ideas on how to fix it than you might if you're removed from it a step or two. And then the culture of like, oh, Travis is going to listen to my ideas. I find value in that. And then when we implement a change, like nobody likes change. Right? But when you've worked on it collectively as a team and you're ready to move forward with it, that's a game changer. You're not pushing a string at that point. Everybody's leaning in because they understand they're part of the solution and you're allowing that. Where a lot of businesses are top down, command and control, that doesn't usually work very well. So yeah, I think you're spot on, Andrew.   0:22:02.5 Travis Timmons: I think that so much happens with the PDSA process from a culture and team involvement. And if you don't have that, you're going to have a hard time retaining team members, in my opinion.   0:22:16.9 Andrew Stotz: So you look like a pretty relaxed guy compared to probably what you were like many years ago when this all was going on. Maybe take us through. Okay, so you're implementing these things and what's happening, what changes are happening, what transformation is going on with you and with your organization?   0:22:36.9 Travis Timmons: Yeah, so it's a multi-year process that we went through. Still a lot of work, you know, it's not like, hey, this just solves every problem. It just changes all the lenses you look through and you have a by what method path. Here's how we are going to think about our business. So that got rid of a lot of confusion for me. I knew how we were going to go from this size business to my, we had a BHAG, Big Hairy Audacious Goal from Good to Great. We wanted to have four facilities. At the time I went through Deming, we had one. We wanted to have four facilities or more to see if we could replicate our high level of care, team member engagement, all those things. So we were working, I was working just as many hours then. It just was not frustrating, it was exciting. It was a lot of collaboration that was energizing and everything as we scaled got easier. I was not going to be able to scale our business with what I was doing because had I scaled it, the headaches would have just been out of control. The loss of revenue, like there would have just been so much inefficiency on our organization.   0:24:00.4 Travis Timmons: So I would say for that next from 2013 through 2018, we got really locked in. So we spent about, I was a little conservative at the time. I was also in Army National Guard, so had a trip across the pond and just wasn't quite at a point where I could financially roll the dice and start multiplying locations and stuff like that. But around 2018, 2019, we got to the point where the team knew Deming well. I felt like we put a lot of systems, processes in place that were replicatable and I'm like, all right, here comes a real big PDSA. We're going to go get another clinic, we're going to go do another location, and we're going to test it. So that was a big PDSA. A lot of the ones we had done up to that were small. At some point you got to go a little bigger. And we were very confident in our model. So we acquired a practice in our town and like, hey, 80% of what they do is what we do, 20% is not Deming and service lines and stuff like that. So our theory, our PDSA, was can we acquire and put Fitness Matters, culture and process in place and grow?   0:25:26.3 Travis Timmons: And we did. We were very successful with that. I had team member retention with that. You know, a lot of times when you buy out another business kind of, people head for the doors, including the owner. That owner is still working with us six years later, then we started growing. It's like, all right, here we go. We can do another one. We can do another one. Put leadership in place at each location that understand Deming. We have our processes written down. We have operational definitions written down. People know what PDSA is. If they're new to our team, it takes them about six months to figure out what all these acronyms mean. So now we're going quicker since, you know, since in the last four years, as an example, we've tripled our physical therapy volume and doubled our private pay wellness volume. And in the service line, that's fairly fast growth. Probably not fast in the IT world, but in the service line growth in a very competitive market with how physical therapy and referrals work. There aren't many private practices left out there because it's so competitive where we're thriving.   0:26:41.4 Andrew Stotz: It seems like a hard business. It seems like a hard business to scale because there's this personal aspect, there's this interaction. You know, think about the exact opposite. I don't know, let's say Instagram or whatever. There's zero personal interaction. It can scale to billions. What are the constraints to growth that you feel in your business.   0:27:03.3 Travis Timmons: So constraints are reimbursement from health insurance, referrals from physicians, because health care is consolidating. So a health care system buys up smaller organizations, physicians, and then they have physical therapy within those systems and then they're highly encouraged to refer their physical therapy in-house. So that's a big challenge for us. So we don't, we're not owned by physicians. So we have to, we have to be the best at what we do for physicians and clients to want to choose us. So one of the things Dr. Deming really big on at quality, right. You have to continually have a system that has improving quality as you grow. And the way we grow is we have our outcomes. So how well a patient does at the end of a plan of care is roughly 35% higher than national average. We're 35% above the competition because of our processes, our system, our clients, how we look at integrating our clients from the first visit, the first phone call, follow-on visits, the entire, again, thinking back to that system conversation. And I think a lot of businesses, if they haven't been exposed to Deming, they miss that very critical piece of, if your sales isn't aligned with your implementation, isn't aligned with your billing process, anywhere along that service line, going through that fishbone, if it's all not good, like we could give excellent physical therapy care, but if we have a horrible billing system, we lose clients, end of story. If we have a horrible process of answering the phone to schedule evaluations, we're out of business.   0:29:00.0 Travis Timmons: Could have the best physical therapists in the world. So, yeah, that's what it's allowed us to do from a scaling and fun standpoint. And kind of now almost 27 years in we're at a point where, one of the litmus tests I had, like, if we do this well, if we really are all-in on Deming and it's system process definitions and we have it mapped out, this should run without Travis. And I see a lot of business owners are the choke point. Like they want to be the problem solver for everything. Everything has to flow through them, slow stuff down. You're not getting all of the information from your team that could solve problems so much quicker. So one of my litmus tests early on was like, if this really works well, the business should run without me present certainly for weeks and weeks at a time. And we're there. So that's why I look Relaxed now. I didn't look this relaxed a decade ago. So, it's fun, it's fun.   0:30:11.5 Andrew Stotz: I was looking for my Out of the Crisis book, but I went online and I wanted to highlight two of the 14 points because it's something that you mentioned about improving your process and all of that. And the first one is the first point and you know, it's the first point for a reason. And number one is "create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service with the aim to become competitive and stay in business and provide jobs." And number five is "improve constantly and forever, the system of production and service to improve quality and productivity and thus constantly decrease costs." So how do you embody that in your business, this, because when I first read the "constancy of purpose," I originally thought it meant pick your direction and stay constant with that. But then I started to realize, no, no, it's about how are we improving our product and service.   0:31:18.9 Travis Timmons: Yeah. So if you're not evolving with, technology is everywhere. Right. So if you're not paying attention to that within how it impacts your business and constantly trying to optimize how technology interfaces with your business, you're in trouble. So, like, we're right now getting ready to, I'd say once a year we do something fairly large within technology. Next year we're going to probably be changing our documentation software because there's a newer one out there that instead of having four different softwares we have to interface with, there'll be one. So that cuts down on rework, that cuts down on learning time for a new team member. There's less resistance for clients to understand how scheduling and billing work. So I don't know if I'm answering your question, Andrew, but I think from a standpoint of, I think it was Jack Welch I heard say years ago in an interview, "there's two ways a business is going. You're either growing or you're dying." And that resonated with me, there's no sitting still because if you do, you're going to get run over. So that's always looking through, can we make it easier to schedule?   0:32:40.0 Travis Timmons: Like right now we don't offer online scheduling for physical therapy. We will in 2026. And if we don't figure that out, it could be a reason that we would eventually go out of business. So I just looked through that mindset. There's always somebody coming after you.   0:32:58.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, yeah, that's...   0:33:00.3 Travis Timmons: Complacency doesn't work.   0:33:01.3 Andrew Stotz: I like to think about when I was young and I took a break and I stood still. I was standing on the flat ground, no problem. But now with my 87 year old mother, if she goes one day, two days, three days without movement, she's going backwards and it's harder to catch back up. And I start to realize she's operating on a plane that has been slanted against her. And eventually the slant will win against all of us. But in the world of business if you think, well it's not about growing or dying, well, there's someone out there trying to take your business by providing a better product or service. And that's just the reality that actually is invigorating to know that, and as Dr. Deming said to have a great competitor is such a valuable thing. If you're just poking around and you're doing okay in market you're probably not going to improve as much. So that the focus on improvement is something that I just find really fascinating. There's another question that I have which is these days, way I look at like the job of leadership is that it's like imagine a very strong magnet ahead of you and you're constantly pulled to that magnet.   0:34:37.7 Andrew Stotz: That magnet is the average, the consensus what everybody's doing. And you can't help but feel that force. And if you don't realize that you're being affected by that force, you're just being pulled into it. And what I mean by that is if you say, well, what if we tried something different, a different way of doing something and then you go to customers, no, sorry, your competitor does this. If you don't do that, I'm not going to give you the business. And so you're naturally drawn towards the center or towards consensus, but what you're doing is trying to pull your business and yourself and your thinking and your team away from that and saying there's a different way. And how hard is that?   0:35:24.4 Travis Timmons: It's hard. You have to have a different lens. Comment earlier, the problem named is the problem solved. One of the things, I love that analogy. I've never heard it described that way. In physical therapy it's very common for a physical therapist to have two or three patients scheduled at the same time because the problem that was named by most organizations is poor arrival rate. And if you have holes in your schedule you're not getting paid. So they look at that as a revenue loss. So to answer your question, that's where our industry is. Like you got a double, triple book or you're going to have lower revenue. Well, what that does is it increases, in my opinion, increases the likelihood that people are not going to come because they're going to have a bad experience, they're going to have poor outcomes. Physicians are going to stop referring because their patients aren't getting better. So problem named is the problem solved? And we pulled, I like that magnet. I'm going to use that one. But pulled away and said, no, if we provide one on one care at a very high level and the entire system works well for the patient, they're going to show up, they're going to continue to show up.   0:36:49.0 Travis Timmons: They're going to be happy to pay for the service we're offering because it's going to be exceptional. And because they show up, they're going to get better. And because they get better, they're going to go tell their doctor and then more doctors are going to refer to us. And that's thinking much differently. So that gets to the problem name, problem solved. Or using your magnet example, we are like, physicians come and talk to us all the time. They're like, are you really only seeing the patients one-on-one? Are you really doing that? Because nobody else says they can do that. It's like, yes, we are. That's exactly how we're doing it. And that's why you're here talking to us right now. Because it's so much different. You can't, there's some things that are just immeasurable. Like Dr. Deming talks about that quite a bit. We don't have to market, we don't spend... I shouldn't say, we don't have to market. We don't spend nearly the amount of money on marketing that our competitors do because we have physicians saying, hey, what's different over there? That's invisible. Right? That's invisible.   0:37:56.9 Andrew Stotz: And they weren't saying that in the beginning, but over the time they got that...   0:38:01.4 Travis Timmons: Yeah, yeah. It's a process, but you know, like the flywheel. We use that flywheel example. And now it's like, we're having a hard time hiring enough team members to keep up with the growth. One of the other thing's, "joy in work." Dr. Deming talks about joy in work a lot. And that's to your question earlier about continual improvement and jobs. So we exist, there's a lot of burnout in healthcare. You can't hardly open a business article.   0:38:37.7 Andrew Stotz: Seems paradoxical.   0:38:40.4 Travis Timmons: But it's because two and three patients at a time burdened with administrative stuff. So we also exist because, man, it's so fun when you have a team member join you from one of those other organizations and we've had eight new team members we've hired since July. And I have what I call a fresh eyes lunch with them a month in. And every one of them has said, my spouse can't believe how much happier and more enjoyable I am to be around. If that doesn't motivate you to want to continue to grow, I don't know what does. So that's the joy in work piece that Dr. Deming talked about a lot.   0:39:24.6 Andrew Stotz: And let's now talk about one other thing, which is I was just talking, I gave a speech last night in Bangkok to some business owners and then we had a dinner out and I was explaining to them that like, there's a disease that's come from America, not from Wuhan, China, in this case. It's come America, it's spread all across Thailand. And you really have to be careful with this disease. It's a deadly disease. And I said, and particularly Thailand, where there's harmony. People enjoy working together. They want a fun environment, they want to make friends at work. It's a little, it's very different from a US work environment where it's like, go there, deliver, go home, separate lives. That's not the way Thai people see work. And the disease is, the disease of individual KPIs and saying everybody, by optimizing each individual, we are optimizing the whole. And I'm trying to get them to realize like, there's another way. And I'm curious I'm sure if you're getting people from the bigger institutions and stuff, they're being KPI'd to death. And how do you, how do you manage the idea that I don't want to optimize the individual, I want to optimize the whole system, but yet I also want employees to know they gotta do a good job. So how do you manage that?   0:41:03.2 Travis Timmons: It's hard when somebody comes, because you're right, there's a lot of PTSD. I've got an example from today. So we turned on, within our system, there's a net promoter score that can be sent out to patients automatically after their first couple visits with us. And we turn it off and on from time to time just to get the voice of the customer, right. I think Dr. Deming talks about the voice of the customer and who all. So it's like, hey, we haven't done that in a while. We're going to turn it back on. And there were several therapists that were like, wait a minute, you're scoring me? And then if I get a low score, I'm in trouble. So we have to spend a lot of time educating the team on some of that old head trash. It's like, no, this is to study the system and where we can improve either improving our operational definition, whatever it is, give the team member tools on how to handle a difficult client. But to your point, you have, people's brains are so wired in the way you just described. So part of it is we, we let them know up front, like, here's why we don't have employee of the month at Fitness Matters.   0:42:15.4 Travis Timmons: Here's why we don't have the parking lot for employee of the month at Fitness. Like, all of those rewards, how all of the negative unintended consequences that can go along with that. Like even giving an individual an award in a group setting. Like, we had a team who's one of my clinic directors, the business she came from before, they had like a WWE, like the heavyweight wrestling, big champion belt. They had one of those. And each week somebody would give the belt to whoever they thought was the best employee that week. And she didn't get it for like two months in a row. And she was crushed. She's like, people don't like me. So it's fun to talk about the negative unintended consequences of the individual reward, the individual competitions. We could talk for an hour about motivating via monetary motivation. That's probably a whole nother podcast. But to answer your question, we have to make it very known why we don't do those things. Because as much as people hate some of that stuff, they also expect it. Yeah, why don't, why don't we have employee of the month? You mean I'm not going to get in trouble if I get a low net promoter score from one patient?   0:43:34.3 Travis Timmons: It's like, no, we know we hire good people. We know you do your best job every day. They could be upset because their billing didn't go correctly. So we just need to know. So I don't know if that answers your question, but it's a big thing because you do have to still track KPIs or you're out of business. Like, you do have to know what's going on within your system to measure it. It's just that concept of we all are responsible for the output of the system and the system has to produce exceptional results.   0:44:06.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, yeah.   0:44:07.9 Travis Timmons: And we have to have a weight by what method. We have to have a system to create whether you're doing plumbing, electrical work. Like if you're going to scale a business, you have to have a repeatable product that can scale.   0:44:23.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And one of the answers to that too is if you believe 94% of the problems come from the system, then even when an employee is identified as having a bad net promoter score, then the question is, does the 94% apply in that situation? Well, generally yes. And so let's dig in. I have some people that ask me like my, one of the guys last night at this event works for a bank and they have put KPIs into everything. And he was saying, I just can't escape. But another guy was like, well, I have my own business and I can do what I want. I've implemented KPIs, but what should I do? I said the first step in disentangling yourself from this individual KPI situation is just to disconnect compensation to the KPI. So just right there, there's still incentive for the employee to do something bad for the organization to do their best. But when you remove that compensation aspect, you've really taken away a huge part of the incentive. So even if you have to keep KPIs, take away the tie to compensation and then they say, well, that's the whole reason why we're supposed to do it is have the tie to compensation.   0:45:44.5 Andrew Stotz: And I said, yes, it's a little bit of a circular references cannot be resolved.   0:45:49.7 Travis Timmons: Right. Yeah. And I think we even give examples to the team as much as we can around why we don't do those type of things. Here's what would happen. And most people have worked in organizations when you point it out to them. So again, Dr. Deming talks about making the system visible. Point it out to them. If I bonused you like you see this, this used to be a thing at car dealerships. When you're buying a car, hey, you're going to get a call to rate your experience with me. If you don't give me a 10, it's going to impact my pay. And you're like, what? So we talk about that like hey, the net promoter score. If we did the same thing here and bonused you on every 10, then you're going to be bothering your patients to fill that survey out. Or if you're afraid they're going to give you low score, you're not going to, you're going to encourage them not to do it. And then me as the owner, I'm not going to hear about system breakdowns. So to answer your, I think it's an important thing that a lot of businesses like number one, don't tie compensation to your KPIs.   0:46:58.3 Travis Timmons: Like just, it's an output of the system and then explaining it to them and giving examples over time because their brains even though they hated it, like we don't do performance reviews, annual performance review. And people hate them. And I still get asked like hey, when are you doing my annual performance review? It's like do you want to do one? Well no.   0:47:21.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. We dropped performance appraisals in 2016 in my coffee business here in Thailand and we never looked back. We didn't come up with any particular stunning replacement. We just knew it was bad and we were willing to just walk away from what was bad. I want to wrap up and just get into the... What are the, let's talk about kind of extrinsic versus intrinsic. There's some external factors that we can say this Deming implementation provided these benefits to our company and then there's this internal or intrinsic benefits that you're getting. Maybe you can go through some of those benefits of where you're at now, what you're able to do now and we'll close it on that note of kind of what's the hope for somebody that's stuck in the situation. They're the entrepreneurial seizure, they're the technician, they're great at physical therapy, they start their physical therapy business and they're just scaling chaos basically. Tell us about, give us hope.   0:48:37.8 Travis Timmons: Yeah, no, happy to, the reason I have had the opportunity to speak in a lot of different settings about Dr. Deming and the reason I do it is because it's brought so much joy to me personally and to a ever growing team. It's having a positive impact on lives and the more I can do that, that gets to the intrinsic motivation. So the joy in work, there's a lot of bad organizations out there that just suck the life out of people. So that's my intrinsic motivation at this stage of the game of if Fitness Matters is bigger, so more jobs, there's more people having a positive experience in life and our outcomes being 35% higher, our community is getting healthier. So that's the intrinsic motivation at this stage. It's fun. I know again, we're not perfect. So continuous improvement to our conversation earlier. But the intrinsic motivation is the busier Fitness Matters gets, the busier Fitness Matters gets because of high outcomes and it's positive experience for more people in life. Extrinsically, I guess that gets to community outcomes. So that's intrinsic and extrinsic. You know, extrinsically, if you get this figured out, it's very easy to scale a business.   0:50:06.0 Andrew Stotz: And tell us about your scale, where are you at or where are your averages versus national averages? You know, what have you accomplished that's driving that external factors, let's call it.   0:50:19.4 Travis Timmons: Yeah. So a couple things. One, externally, a practice like ours nationally on average is growing at 9% to 10%. We're currently clipping along at 25% to 30%. So you know, that flywheel effect and chaos is no longer there. So we have process, so it's easier to scale. The other extrinsic piece is because of our outcomes and continuing scale, we're able to negotiate better rates with our insurance companies to reinforce our strong desire to keep one-on-one care model. So Deming talks about who all is part of your system. So insurance companies are part of our system and we don't have a lot of control over them. But because our data is so powerful externally, we have been able to negotiate higher rates than most of our competitors because our data speaks for itself.   0:51:23.2 Andrew Stotz: Faster growth, the ability to negotiate better terms because you're delivering better product and service generally means higher profit margins.   0:51:34.2 Travis Timmons: Yes.   0:51:34.6 Andrew Stotz: Fast growth with higher profit margins generally means you're generating more cash and you're no longer in cash crisis all the time and you have resources to decide, okay, now we want to expand or we want to invest or whatever.   0:51:50.9 Travis Timmons: Right.   0:51:51.4 Andrew Stotz: Is that...   0:51:51.9 Travis Timmons: Yeah, the cash crunch was real those first 10 years. So yeah, to your point, when you get to the other side of that and process is a big part of that so you're having a whole counting process, but yeah, you get to that size. But yeah, the intrinsic piece, one of the reasons I talk about Deming as much as I can. I've got two sons that are in college. My hope is there's more companies in the world today than there were 10 years ago that know about Deming, because that means there's a higher likelihood that my boys will work at a Deming company. And just seeing what a lot of companies do to people, we as owners have a big responsibility, I feel, we have a big responsibility to have a positive impact on our employees. And you're, as an owner, are responsible for that, in my opinion. And if you get it right, man, is it fun to look in the mirror or sit down with a team member or their spouse and be proud of, be proud of what you built. That's at the end of the day, the intrinsic motivation.   0:52:57.9 Travis Timmons: If you can be proud of what your product is and proud of the impact you're having on your team to where you're not sucking the life out of them, but actually intrinsically motivating them. There's not much else you can accomplish in business that was worth more than that, in my opinion.   0:53:18.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, wonderful. That's a great way to end it. What's the likelihood that our children are going to be working in a Deming company? Well, that's the whole reason why we are here talking about it. So, Travis, I want to say on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you for this discussion and of course, for listeners out there and viewers, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz. I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and I believe it's probably one of Travis's too people are entitled to joy in work.   0:53:56.0 Travis Timmons: Love it. Love it. Thank you, Andrew.   0:53:58.0 Andrew Stotz: Yep.

Hitting every goal should feel like progress. Instead, it often leaves high performers stuck, frustrated, and quietly falling behind. Kendall Berg breaks down why traditional goal setting systems like OKRs and KPIs reward performance optics while hiding the problems leaders actually need to see. In this conversation with Radhika Dutt, author of Radical Product Thinking, Kendall challenges the belief that better metrics lead to better decisions. They unpack why green numbers can create dangerous blind spots, how teams learn to filter bad news, and why leaders become the last to know when strategy is breaking down. The episode introduces a smarter alternative to goal chasing that helps teams surface real issues, think more strategically, and stay aligned as priorities shift. Radhika shares her puzzle setting and puzzle solving framework, a practical way to replace false certainty with curiosity, learning, and iteration. Instead of obsessing over targets, leaders learn how to frame the right questions, invite honest feedback, and guide teams through uncertainty without losing credibility or control. This episode is essential listening for professionals who want to move from execution to influence and lead with clarity in fast changing environments. In this episode, we discuss: Why do OKRs and KPIs hide problems instead of revealing them? How does hitting every goal still lead to stalled career growth? What is the puzzle setting method and how does it replace goal chasing? How can leaders admit uncertainty without losing authority? What is the first step to changing goal driven cultures without resistance? FREE toolkit for puzzle-setting and puzzle-solving: https://www.radicalproduct.com/toolkit/#OHLToolkit Follow Radhika Dutt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radhika-dutt/

Episode Summary In this strategic and energizing episode of Dental Drill Bits, Dana and Sandy unpack one of the most overlooked drivers of practice stability and growth, your annual planning session. Together, they walk through the questions, metrics, team conversations, and leadership decisions that set the tone for a productive, organized, and profitable new year. Sandy shares her trusted framework for evaluating practice performance, identifying bottlenecks, and turning missed opportunities into measurable goals. Dana breaks down how to communicate the importance of an annual planning meeting to your team—even if you haven't done one in a few years. From KPI awareness and production forecasting to team agreements, CE planning, and SOP check-ins, this episode gives practices everything they need to create a clear, motivating roadmap for 2026. If you want to stop drifting into the new year and instead design it—this episode is your guide. Show Notes In This Episode, You'll Learn: Why most practices drift into the new year unprepared—and how to fix it The must-track KPIs for evaluating your year-end performance How to hold a productive annual planning meeting (without turning it into a gripe session) What your team really needs to contribute meaningful input How agreements, policies, and SOPs eliminate frustration and set expectations How to turn dropped statistics into 2026 wins Why tracking new patient sources matters more than ever How to anticipate "slow" months and outflow your way into a full schedule CE planning and skill inventories for every position The importance of setting daily and hourly production goals Updates your website and systems may be overdue for The role of communication in shaping team culture and patient experience Episode Sponsors Identity Dental Marketing Looking to stand out in a crowded market? Identity Dental Marketing builds brands that convert.

بيع برخيص.. وقص على نفسك! | بودكاست جنبياتهل أنت بطل مبيعات يشار له بالبنان، ولا ناوي تفتح "جمعية البر الإدارية" وتوزع حلال شركتك بالمجان؟  في حلقة اليوم من بودكاست جنبيات، نفتح ملف "هواة النتف" وبياعين الخصومات اللي يحسبون إن الشطارة في "تحريق الأسعار". في 2026، العالم صار يمشي بالذكاء الاصطناعي والـ Profit Maximization، وصاحبنا البياع لسه يستخدم الخصم كأنه "بندول" لكل اعتراض يواجهه من العميل. نتحدث في هذه الحلقة عن مأساة "صالح"، بياعنا الطموح اللي قرر يقفل صفقة العمر بخصم 45%، واحتفل وطق الجرس، لين اكتشف إن الشركة تدفع من جيبها عشان تنفذ العقد! نكشف لكم ليش العميل لما تعطيه خصم "سهل" يشك في جودتك وقيمتك، وكيف تحول من "بياع شنطة" يركض وراء الـ Revenue إلى Value Architect يبني صفقات مربحة ومستدامة. محاور الحلقة وفزعاتها المهنية: تفكيك عقلية "قص على نفسك": ليش الخصم هو "هروب من المواجهة" وليس مهارة تفاوض؟لغة الـ ROI: كيف تقنع العميل إن دفع ريال زيادة معك أربح له من توفير ريال مع غيرك؟قوة الـ Walk-away: متى يكون رفض الصفقة هو أعظم إنجاز تسويه في سنتك؟أهم 5 مؤشرات أداء (KPIs) للبياع الذكي في 2026:متوسط هامش الربح (Average Gross Margin).معدل تكرار الخصم (Discount Frequency).القيمة الحيوية للعميل (LTV).تكلفة الاستحواذ مقابل الربح (CAC vs. Profit).نسبة الـ Value-to-Price Index. اسمع الحلقة، وعدل "الجير" عندك قبل ما يطير ربح السنة في مهب الخصومات.شاركنا في التعليقات: وش كانت "أغبى" صفقة وافقت عليها عشان الخصم وندمت بعدها؟آمل أن يكون هذا الملخص مفيداً ومجزياً لكم في مسيرتكم المهنية.سلام

The CPG Guys are joined in this episode by Sarah Marzano, Principal Analyst for Retail and Commerce Media at EMarketer, the go-to forecasts, data, and insights provider for marketing, advertising, andcommerce professionals.Follow Sarah on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahzmarzano/Follow EMarketer on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/emarketer-inc/Follow EMarketer online at: http://emarketer.comLearn more about Sarah's research report “Retail Media Networks: Trends, Benchmarks, and Leadership in 2025” here: https://www.emarketer.com/content/retail-media-networks-trends-benchmarks-leadership-2025Sarah answers these questions:What led you to develop this new report on retail media networks. What were you hearing in the industry that made you believe this might resonate in terms of thought leadership?Your report highlights *strong strategic conviction but uneven operational maturity* across RMNs. Where do you see the biggest disconnect between ambition and enablement today—and what's driving that gap?Any thoughts on how organizations can choose a model that will drive success?Fewer than half of surveyed RMNs have cross-functional KPIs, and fewer than one-third tie incentives to merchandising teams. What's preventing incentive alignment, and what does “good” look like?Measurement and reporting ranked as *the most pressing challenge* for RMNs—especially proving incrementality. What innovations or methodological shifts do you expect will actually move the industry forward?Survey respondents anticipate future growth from a mix of in-store, onsite, and offsite channels. What formats or surfaces do you see emerging as the *next big accelerators* of RMN revenue?Respondents believe zero-click search and agentic AI will be *the most disruptive forces* shaping retail media over the next three years. How should brands and RMNs prepare for this shift?RMNs say that next year, their top priorities will shift toward *tech modernization, data infrastructure, and off-site media acceleration.* What will separate the networks that actually deliver from those that simply aspire?How do interested professionals learn more about this research report?CPG Guys Website: http://CPGguys.comFMCG Guys Website: http://FMCGguys.comSheCOMMERCE Website: https://shecommercepodcast.com/Rhea Raj's Website: http://rhearaj.comLara Raj in Katseye: https://www.katseye.world/DISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPGGUYS, LLC or the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPGGUYS, LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.CPGGUYS LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we presented in this podcast.

In this episode, Shawn Soole sits down with Sean Finter — operator, trainer, and mastermind behind some of North America's most respected hospitality playbooks. From frontline execution to strategic leadership, Sean breaks down how to build systems, culture, and habits that help teams scale without losing soul.

In this episode of The Persistent Entrepreneur Podcast, David Hill interviews Lee Pepper, U.S. Army veteran and author of Never Outmatched, about the difference between marketing tactics and a real strategy. Lee shares military frameworks that translate directly into business growth, including Commander's Intent, the Anvil and Hammer approach, and how freedom of movement builds stronger teams and better execution. They also dig into why many founders get trapped by vanity metrics, how to pick KPIs that connect to revenue, and how to evaluate agencies using your business outcomes instead of their dashboards. The conversation also touches on AI's impact on search and buying behavior, and why business owners who ignore the shift risk waking up to a pipeline that quietly dried up. What you'll learn: How to separate tactics from strategy in marketing The Anvil and Hammer framework and how it applies to digital growth KPIs that matter more than likes, followers, and views How to stop letting other people's opinions derail your marketing plan How to evaluate agencies with outcome-based metrics Why AI is changing search and discovery faster than most founders realize   Connect with Lee: neveroutmatchedbook.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/leepepper/ Instagram: @theLeePepper TikTok: Lee.Pepper Connect with David Hill: Website: https://www.davidhill.ai Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidihill YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DavidHillcoach LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidihill TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@davidihill X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/davidihill Ring Leader AI Demo: Text or call 774-214-2076

What happens when a former startup CEO brings performance management discipline into city government? In this episode of Technovation, Peter High speaks with San José Mayor Matt Mahan about applying data-driven decision-making, KPIs, and accountability—practices familiar to tech leaders—to the public sector. Drawing from his experience running venture-backed startups, Mahan explains how focus, measurement, and feedback loops are reshaping how City Hall operates. Key topics include: Applying startup-style performance management to government Using dashboards and metrics to improve accountability Prioritizing outcomes over activity Leveraging AI to improve city services at scale Building a workforce ready to use new technology responsibly

Send us a textStrategies for Evaluating a Trailing KPI breaks down how private practice owners can use historical performance data to make smarter, more confident business decisions. In this Private Practice Survival Guide quick-tip episode, Brandon Siegel explains what trailing KPIs are, how they differ from leading indicators, and why metrics like revenue per session, collection rate, net profit margin, patient acquisition cost, and appointment arrival rates are essential for evaluating operational and financial health. You'll learn how to identify meaningful trends, assess the effectiveness of past decisions, benchmark performance, and turn retrospective data into actionable strategy. Brandon also outlines a practical framework for selecting the right KPIs, avoiding data overload, leveraging practice management software, standardizing reports, and involving your team in KPI evaluation. If you want to reduce guesswork, improve cash flow, and build a clearer roadmap for long-term practice growth, this episode provides a practical, operator-focused approach to using trailing KPIs as a strategic advantage. Welcome to Private Practice Survival Guide Podcast hosted by Brandon Seigel! Brandon Seigel, President of Wellness Works Management Partners, is an internationally known private practice consultant with over fifteen years of executive leadership experience. Seigel's book "The Private Practice Survival Guide" takes private practice entrepreneurs on a journey to unlocking key strategies for surviving―and thriving―in today's business environment. Now Brandon Seigel goes beyond the book and brings the same great tips, tricks, and anecdotes to improve your private practice in this companion podcast. Get In Touch With MePodcast Website: https://www.privatepracticesurvivalguide.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonseigel/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandonseigel/https://wellnessworksmedicalbilling.com/Private Practice Survival Guide Book

How Performance-First B2B Marketing Drives Better Results Traditional B2B marketing and advertising are undergoing a major transformation in the age of AI and rapid technological advancement. With shifting market dynamics and budget cuts across B2B organizations, marketing teams are under pressure to do more with less and prove their impact on business performance and revenue growth. How can B2B marketers quickly adapt, demonstrate ROI, and establish a strategic role within their organizations? That's why we're talking to Keith Turco (CEO, Madison Logic), who shares insights and proven strategies on how performance-first B2B marketing drives better results. During our conversation, Keith explored the evolving B2B marketing landscape and explained why performance-first strategies are crucial in times of market changes and budget cuts. He emphasized the importance of data-driven insights to measure ROI, optimize media plans, and tailor messages to specific target audiences. Keith also highlighted the need for a full-funnel approach that leverages AI-powered personalization at scale, and integrating new channels like audio and video. Additionally, he elaborated on why understanding both personal and professional interests of buyers to shorten sales cycles and build brand affinity are essential. Keith stressed the value of creativity in performance marketing to maintain loyalty and differentiate top marketers. Tune in as he also shared some key findings of research conducted by Madison Logic and The Harris Poll on the future of advertising and the impact of AI on B2B marketing. https://youtu.be/DAYcJf7AlIs Topics discussed in episode: [2:09] How macroeconomic shifts and budget cuts are creating a “performance-first” approach. [6:12] Embracing AI: Moving from a reactive to a proactive stance in advertising.  [9:50] The consumerization of B2B: Why your next lead might come from a podcast or TikTok.  [13:15] The full-funnel advantage: Moving beyond fragmented tactics to a more unified data strategy.  [17:34] Communicating with the C-Suite vs. managers: Tailoring content for different “states of mind”. [22:27] Research insights: Why 73% of leaders see AI as the future of creative production. [32:12] Why abandoning brand for “just the facts” performance marketing is a mistake. Companies and links mentioned: Keith Turco on LinkedIn Madison Logic Transcript Keith Turco, Christian Klepp Christian Klepp  00:01 In the age of rapid technological developments in AI, traditional B2B, marketing and advertising are witnessing monumental changes with shifting market dynamics and budget cuts across B2B organizations, marketing teams will have to do more with less. So how can they achieve this and still be instrumental to organizational success? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp, today I’ll be talking to Keith Turco, who will be answering this question. He’s the CEO of Madison Logic, which leads global account based marketing initiatives to help revenue driven marketers accelerate buying journeys with targeted, measurable strategies. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B marketer’s mission is. Okay, and here we are. Mr. Keith Turco, welcome to the show. Keith Turco  00:50 Thank you, Christian. Good to see you. Christian Klepp  00:53 Likewise, likewise. We had a great pre-interview conversation, and I’m really looking forward to this conversation. We got to buckle up a little bit, because there’s a lot to cover. There’s a lot to cover, but I think it’s going to be really interesting, relevant and pertinent to all those B2B marketers out there. So let’s, let’s dive right in. Keith Turco  01:11 Great. Excited to be here. Christian Klepp  01:12 All right, so Keith, you’re on a mission to help B2B companies succeed by delivering performance-first strategies across the full marketing funnel and performance-first, I think, is going to be a word or a term that we’re going to hear throughout this conversation, but for this conversation, let’s focus on a topic and unpack it from there, so it’s how B2B marketing teams can rapidly adapt to market changes and contribute to organizational success. So let me set this up a little bit, because that sounds like. that sounds a little bit generic. But you know, after after the description, I think people will understand what I’m talking about. So your company, Madison Logic, helps clients own the buying journey by creating lasting impact at every interaction with high value buying groups through data driven ABM. So let’s start off with this question, how have shifting macroeconomic conditions and budget cuts forced B2B marketing teams to do more with less? Keith Turco  02:09 Well inherent in the conversation, or the question is you’ve got less budget. You’ve seen lots of cuts come through either from a staff cutting perspective, you’ve got less people to help you execute against things, as well as less budget to spend on marketing. So what does that mean, and what are the implications? And how does our technology and our approach to market help. Everything from a performance first perspective allows things to be measured, and because you can measure, you can quickly calculate ROI, you can quickly optimize your your media plans, and you can also take a look at what your creative is and isn’t working and what’s working through from a content based perspective. So when you take a performance-first approach to your marketing initiatives, you have all the data at your fingertips to give you the insights and intelligence you need in order to hit the right targets and the right buying groups with the right message at the right time, and give you what you need to actually, really measure the impact and optimize on a regular basis to to prove the ROI that you’re trying to prove for the organization and support sales. Christian Klepp  03:19 Yeah, no, absolutely. And you touched on a lot of things there, which I think are going to be a to be things that are going to come up throughout this conversation. So things like calculating ROI, being able to measure. I mean, who doesn’t want to do that in the world of B2B, right? But how do you see a performance based approach? And I suppose that’s the next question. How does a performance based approach help companies to adapt to, well, a lot of these market changes, and I know that’s a bit of an understatement, because market changes, it’s so broad and multifaceted, but how does it help to address these changes? Keith Turco  03:51 First and foremost, I think access to data allows you to test and learn, what’s working, what’s not, against what buying groups. I kind of mentioned it a couple of minutes ago. But if you’re looking at what’s working against which target segment, what messages make the most sense, what content are they looking for? And then on top of that, you have a buying group. Each of those groups contain multiple levels of executives and employees. So are they all consuming the same message. Can you sub segment that buying group into different categories that consume different content, that allow them to actually understand the full picture that you’re trying to communicate? And then obviously prove out ROI? I think the other thing prove out ROI is a big statement. What does that mean? What are the KPIs? They’re different for each customer that’s out there, right? So what does ROI mean to one organization versus the other? And by allowing yourself to test and learn and gain the insights that you you’re looking for, you can prove out ROI in different ways. Ultimately, the ultimate ROI is reflected in sales, right? But. Some clients will work with us on visits to website. Other clients will work with us on appointment setting. Other clients will look at, you know, number of interactions. And then lastly, of course, looking at ROI from a sale based perspective and what they’re selling, Christian Klepp  05:18 Absolutely, absolutely. And we’re certainly going to talk about the buying committee a little bit later on in this conversation. The time of this recording is at the end of 2025 and you know, I have to ask you the question about AI, and I know you your company has done some research about that, and we will look into that a little bit further on. But because you’re talking about accessing data and analyzing and aggregating data, and how does, how has technological advancements, also in the form of artificial intelligence, perhaps help that process, but also threatened B2B marketing in a way? Keith Turco  05:56 I don’t think I ever view it as threatening. I’ll always look at AI as a form of enhancement and allowance to optimize and go to market. I think probably a future question you’re going to ask, I might actually jump to it as well from an AI perspective. Keith Turco  06:12 But the impact of AI on advertising and marketing, and how is it playing a role in performance marketing? AI allows itself and lends itself to really impact performance marketing, having been and being been at, and being a fan of and student of advertising. To me, I think that AI allows us to lean in a bit more. I think we should continue to ask ourselves those questions. But the core approach from the creative side of things will still be there. What AI will allow us to do in the performance marketing world is lean into what I was referring to earlier, which is test and learn. What messages based on which audience. How do I sub segment, buying groups? How do I sub segment, even some of those additional segments, and in an effort to not spend so much time adapting creative to those sub segments or geographies or different business units inside an organization, right so each of those things allows, or would benefit from having a much more tailored approach to communications and AI should be leveraged from that perspective to lean into those kinds of things, helping you with testing and learning, helping you with sub segmenting, helping you with geographical segmentation, business unit segmentation, those kinds of things, you know, there’s multiple BU’s that are buying groups inside of a large technology organization, right? So to message them all the same would kind of be silly. Christian Klepp  06:12 Please, please. Christian Klepp  07:48 Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, perhaps the better. But the better term, as opposed to saying threatening, is, how is it impacted B2B marketing might be a might be a better way of looking at it. Keith Turco  07:57 Yeah, I think, I think exactly that point, right? It’s impacting everything. But what I challenge everybody, when they say, oh, AI is going to threaten or kill or do, is like, Well, how do you embrace it, and how do you give it a hug, and how do you leverage it to evolve your approach from a marketing perspective, versus to get nervous about it and be more proactive instead of reactive in your approach to AI? Christian Klepp  08:23 Absolutely, absolutely so based on what you’ve said, like, what would you say are some of the key pitfalls that B2B marketing teams should avoid, and what should they be doing instead? Keith Turco  08:32 Really understanding what their ROI is, who the buying groups are? I know we keep coming back to that, right? But I think B2B marketers are also really focused on what their BDRs are up to and what kind of lead generation they can they can provide to their sales organizations. And I’d say go a bit further than that, right? It’s not just lead generation from a content syndication perspective, it’s a full funnel multimedia approach. We talk about this also, I think, in upcoming questions Christian because we prepped for the meeting, but the buying group is 7 to 10 people, and are you hitting the right people at the right time with the right message? So I think it’s important to take a look back at certain aspects of how you’re approaching your your marketing initiatives as you really unpack the strategy and look at things I don’t know if I answered the question though. Christian Klepp  09:38 Yeah. I mean, it’s basically about like, you know, these are the things that B2B marketers should be paying attention to. These are some of the things that they should be avoiding, right? And keeping the conversation constructive, as it were. Keith Turco  09:50 Yeah, and I think it’s important to set the KPIs for campaigns, optimize your media plans, and then multimedia, when I talk about that, specifically, multi-format. We’ve talked about what channels in the B2B space that might not have been tapped in the past, should be tapped, right? Some of the research we’ve done with with Harris poll also talked about the consumerization of the B2B space. So what mediums working in the B2C space that we can move over to the B2B space, which is why you’ll see that we launched audio earlier this year in our platform. But video is obviously a big play as well. So the B2B space is leaning into the TikToks and YouTubes of the world as well as audio. So video and audio are also mediums. I think it’s important for the B2B landscape to take a look at. I guess we’ve dubbed it B2B2C. Right at the end of the day, we’re all people that are consuming media, making business decision. Christian Klepp  10:54 Absolutely, absolutely. And I’m sure you’ve come across this camp, because I certainly have that basically, really want to draw that line in the sand and say, No, you know, that’s not transferable. You can’t use those same tactics in B2C, I tend to disagree, because it, like you said, like, it really, it really depends. It really depends also on the vertical you’re talking about. And going back again to who are we targeting with this, right? And that might be also you brought it up, one of the pitfalls is, like, you know, the lack of understanding of who you’re targeting. Because in B2B, it tends to be people in that buying group, right? Keith Turco  11:30 I think it’s important to recognize, you talked about tactics. Which tactics are people consuming and in a previous life, in a previous world, we called it the at work state of mind. And I think in the post covid era, you don’t work nine to five anymore, right? So when we talk about tactics and understanding your target and bringing those two things together, I might be on the treadmill in the morning listening to a podcast, still thinking about work, right? It’s not because I’m not at a desk or in the office anymore. Where should I hit them and why? And I think it’s important as we look at firmographics, we should also look at personal demographics of the buyers and the business decision makers. And, you know, marrying both demographics and firmographics will help figure out what the optimal media mix is. So on the drive to work, on the treadmill or the elliptical right, watching a video, listening to a podcast, you know, multi screen. So obviously, I’m sitting here with you with my phone in one hand, a big screen to the right on the other, and looking at my laptop. So, you know, people that multitask and/or consume different ways on different screens at different day parts. So it’s a combination of consumer and B2B, and the melding of the two come together, understanding that it’s not just a tactic B2B tactic play, but it’s a it’s a personal demographic in that decision maker and where they are. Christian Klepp  13:01 Yeah, yeah. No, that’s absolutely right. In our previous conversation, Keith, you talked about how the full funnel approach is critical in the B2B space. So please share with us what you would like more people to understand about this approach. Keith Turco  13:15 Yeah, I think I’ll talk about it from a Madison Logic perspective in particular. So from an activity based perspective, full funnel activity allows us to measure holistically and easier. You can absolutely measure it in a… there could be full funnel, but fragmented full funnel versus one system full funnel, which is Madison Logic’s full funnel, we partner with agencies and clients alike, to do some tactics in our funnel and some tactics outside of our funnel. Either way, full funnel is critical, because you need to hit 7 to 10 times to 7 to 10 buyers. So that’s a minimum of 50 communications that go out there, whether it’s inside a single platform, like Madison Logic or in combination with other platforms outside. So we can do both, and we work with both. The reason why we like full funnel in in our platform is that, again, it comes down to insights, intelligence and data. We’re not saying that your entire media spend should be spent in our funnel, but showing a full funnel activity of audio, display, CTV, content syndication allows us to gather the insights that you’re looking for, the data that you’re looking for, that then allows you to optimize your media mix, either inside of our funnel or next to our funnel in conjunction with it. Some of our clients will, you know, leverage our content syndication only. Others will do content syndication and display, but still by audio and video outside of it, and then others will do all for what we’re being leveraged for specifically is inside of a smaller subset, which is a test and learn, we can show which media mix works optimally against which segments and which targets by client, and then our agency partners, or our clients in particular, will take that media mix and then apply it to their entire media spend. So that’s what when we talk about full funnel, it’s also guaranteeing overlap at the account level and the individual level inside of our funnel. So it’s important that data is collected and then leveraged in a larger way. Christian Klepp  15:31 I hope I’m not trying to oversimplify what you just explained. But the way that I understand also like full funnel approach, the reason why you recommend that approach is also because of the way that people consume content differently and meeting them where they’re at, and also because we know that the buying committee, and we’ve all seen the diagrams, right? Like the diagrams of how the B2B sales envision, the target audience to assume to consume the content and the way they really do. And it’s really a haphazard diagram, isn’t it? Keith Turco  16:00 It’s no longer linear, right? Christian Klepp  16:04 No. Keith Turco  16:04 I think we approached it that way, but we’re finally admitting that it’s not. And I think your point’s really great in so much as you know, full funnel and buying groups, and again, there are groups, but each each group consists of 7 to 10 people that have different media consumption habits, so it’s important to hit them where where they are, and understanding that, and allowing, if you do a multi channel approach with us and we collect the data, we can say these sub segments of your buying group are consuming media on video, display and email. This sub segment is consuming on display video and content syndication, right? So it allows us to really provide the insights and intelligence needed to optimize the reduced spend that you have to better garner the ROI that you’re looking for.   Christian Klepp  17:02 Yeah, yeah. No, exactly, exactly. You’ve talked about it a little bit already, but like we know that in B2B, we’re mostly dealing with, as you said, a buying committee consisting of anywhere between 7 to 10 people. They all have different roles and responsibilities, different motivations for either using or not using said service provider or said approach. So how can teams implement, I would say B2B marketing initiatives that strategically address the buying committee’s concerns and questions. Keith Turco  17:34 It’s really gaining… I keep on going back to the same two words, and I apologize if I sound repetitive, right? But the insights and intelligence are critical to understand the buying groups, what they’re looking for. Let’s dissect it a little bit, right? So if you were to look at the top of the buying group chain, you’ve got C suite executives. Those C suite executives consume media in very different ways because they have very different schedules and are on the road quite a lot, so they’ll be listening to podcasts more than they’ll be watching a CTV kind of application that most will probably want to watch on a bigger screen versus a smaller screen, right? So it’s understanding which businesses decision makers are interested in what categories, right? So you’ve got C suite that sit across multiple views. You’ve got manager levels that are really focused on one specific business unit that will play very differently than, and the messaging to them will play very differently than a C suite person that is across multiple and then they tend to consume media in very different ways, both as individual people as well as from a professional standpoint. The more busy road runner type consumes media and snippets. And you know, we also talk about thumb stopping creative and thumb stopping messaging, because we know that they’re on their phones more than they are on an iPad or a laptop. So the insights that you get from that and the intelligence that you get from that data collection will help you be that much more effective when targeting different individuals inside of a buying group. Christian Klepp  19:16 And it’s also, I would say, about trying to close that trust cap, right? Because there is especially B2B, there’s this whole notion of like, people tend to trust slower, for lack of a better description. So there’s that effort, through that approach, to try to like, build that trust, build that credibility. Because it does take time. This isn’t something where you know they have to make a decision in 48 hours, right? It takes, it takes much longer. Keith Turco  19:42 And I think important, when you close the trust gap, you shorten the sales cycle. So when you shorten the sales cycle, it’s much quicker route, quicker route to ROI, that’s proven by both the marketing and sales team. So the quicker the trust gap is closed, the quicker the cycle happens. Christian Klepp  19:59 Exactly, exactly so. And based on that, like, what role does a performance based approach play in winning over the different members of the buying committee? And you’ve touched on some of these aspects already. Keith Turco  20:13 Again, that the knowledge that you gain from performance based approaches. Everything is measurable, right? Let’s pause for half a second there when we talk about performance marketing, which is obviously next gen of… it started as database marketing and then went into one to one marketing, and then it went into digital marketing, and now it’s performance marketing, because everything is measurable, the insights you collect from that absolutely make a difference, whereas traditional old school advertising of the 70s, 80s and even somewhat 90s was, let’s just hit them with a big message, right? I think it’s important to talk about performance marketing being branded response. Everything you do should both build a brand and elicit a response. So we’re not saying performance marketing at the risk of neglecting branding. We’re saying performance marketing inclusive of branding in the marketplace, so the loyalty and familiarity come to play. Christian Klepp  21:17 Yes, yes, exactly. I was going to say, if you were going to throw a brand out the window like Don Draper would come back and say, Hey, man… Keith Turco  21:25 Absolutely not. Brand is critical, because you are obviously to your point play on the loyalty side, right? And you know, affinity plays a big role in previous experience with existing brands, and people are loyal to certain brands, so we’re not throwing all of the traditional advertising metrics out the window either, but everything that, everything that we put in the marketplace, should play a dual role of building a brand and eliciting a measurable response. Christian Klepp  21:54 Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. So for this next question, not trying to scare anybody, but you guys did conduct a lot of research together with Harris Poll, and you came back with some really interesting figures, right? So one of them that you did together with Harris poll was shows that nearly 73% of marketing decision makers believe AI generated creative will define the future of advertising. So how will that fact alone replace traditional advertising as we know it? Keith Turco  22:27 I don’t think it replaces. I’ll go back to the same answer that we started at. I think it enhances, right? So 73% of the respondents absolutely see AI playing a role in their marketing and advertising, and it allows them to learn from the data that they collect, adapt and make changes quickly. It allows them to take into consideration geographical differences and business unit focused differences. It also allows you to take on the demographic insights, not just the firmographic insights, right? So if I know that Christian is living in Europe and is focused on certain business functions, but in his personal life, also likes to ski or golf, I’m oversimplifying it, right? But AI allows you to say, Oh, well, this visual will appeal to Christian. This cultural nuance and difference will appeal to Christian, and it allows you to hyper target in a much different way. That is we’ve advanced to that, had advanced to that pre AI, but it was a bit more manually intensive than it will be and is today from an AI based perspective. Christian Klepp  23:40 Now that you’ve explained it that way, that hopefully puts some of these doubts or fears a little bit to rest, because it’s an it’s an enhancement, or it should be viewed and treated as an enhancement mechanism, rather than a complete like disruption. Keith Turco  23:53 Absolutely, and that’s where, when I started, there is still a world where creativity is paramount, and that’s at the original conceptual stages, right? But what would take us months to make international adaptations and/or having three or four different pivot tables come together to say this creative with this copy block against this target audience with this message, so it’s the confluence of data that allows for easier output, from an AI perspective, to make it much more tailored to the desired consumer of that content. Christian Klepp  24:34 This same report that I mentioned previously, it also mentions that about 90% of companies are exploring new ways to reach audiences, and you did talk about that so but again, what are some of these channels and how will they impact the B2B marketing moving forward? Keith Turco  24:48 Yeah, first and foremost, you’re looking at social as a new avenue beyond the B2B LinkedIn social perspective, which plays a significant role in the B2B campaigns, but it’s also figuring out where Christian or Keith are consuming in their personal lives. So it’s not shocking that if you’re on Tiktok or Instagram or on our YouTube channel, that you’ll see some B2B messages that are out there. Early on, we knew from an event based perspective, that lots of business decision makers were watching golf, watching tennis. So sports has always and will continue to play a role, even in the B2B space. But it’s a good example of finding your consumer interests and where they overlap with your business interests. And it’s the same kind of thing from from that perspective, as well as understanding. I keep going back to the same message of Right place, right time, right audience, right segment. But so when you look at the new mediums, or the consumer based mediums, you know it’s understanding that where the personal interests come together with professional interests, and are they on Facebook? Are they on Instagram? Are they on YouTube? Are they on X and where are they playing, and how are they playing in those spaces, and where can I get the overlap? And, you know, from a business and personal perspective, also going back to day parts, right? Are they exercising on the treadmill at 5am, 6am, seven, 7am? Are they doing it in the PM? Are you catching them on their drive to and from the office? Maybe not five days a week anymore, but three days a week, right? Understanding, it’s funny, but you know, even dissecting the day of the week and how you you you buy media and how you serve it, right? So we know that if people are hybrid, they’re most of the time, they’re in the office Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and not necessarily in the office on Mondays and Fridays. So you might catch them in different aspects of different parts of the week as well, day parts days of the week. Christian Klepp  26:56 It’s really interesting that you bring that up, because I had a gentleman on a little bit earlier this year that spoke about what he called Time of Day Marketing, and what he meant by that is like, is Keith the same person, or does he consume the same content, as an example, right at lunchtime, in the afternoon or or in the evening, before it goes to bed? And knowing that, and it’s going back to your ability to analyze and aggregate that data and spot these trends, right? That will help people to determine, Okay, so based on this time of the day when this person is consuming that content, what would be the best and most effective channel to use to reach out to said person? Because it could be a different channel. Keith Turco  27:35 Yeah, definitely. And I think looking at, we called it day parts, right? It’s what day part makes the most sense against which target audience. And it’s it is especially now, because we can gather that information and see when they’re consuming so going back to your earlier questions around performance marketing. Used to be, let’s just run it and see. You know that you would, we would always buy media in day part, and you could even buy it, obviously, from a program based perspective, so you’re but really dissecting and understanding which day parts individuals from the buying group consume media to your point, am I during lunchtime? Am I toggling off of my business channels and onto my personal channels. And that’s where I think to the point you made, and the point I made, that’s where it comes together, is personal demographics associated with firmographics and business decision makers, and where we can find them in their personal lives, not just their professional lives. You don’t just work between the hours of nine and five anymore, and you don’t just think about work between the hours of nine and five. Christian Klepp  28:44 That’s it. That’s it. Yeah, Keith, I had one follow up question for you, and I know that this isn’t really social media, per se, but what’s your take on Reddit, and how significant Do you think that is to B2B? Keith Turco  28:52 I think it’s it’s making, it’s making a play in the B2B space, absolutely. And I think we’d be remiss not to understand the impact it has on the B2B space. Finally, I have just asked the team to double click on Reddit, literally in the last couple of business days, to see what you know, what the impact of Reddit can be, and can it be measured in the B2B space. So I definitely think. Man, I don’t know if I would classify it as a social channel, but it’s kind of a publishing social. It’s kind of a little bit both. Christian Klepp  29:29 It straddles that those worlds, as I like to call it, right, like, it’s a little bit. Yeah, it’s hybrid. There you go. There you go. Absolutely. Okay. So again, in our previous conversation, you mentioned that the most effective B2B campaigns will be ones that combine AI driven insights with creativity and multi channel orchestration to deliver personalization at scale. So that’s a slightly different take to what you said earlier. So could you. Please elaborate on that a bit. Keith Turco  30:01 The personalization at scale, I don’t know that I view it as different. I kind of view it same, right? Christian Klepp  30:08 Same, okay. Keith Turco  30:09 Because it allows you to personalize based on the different data points that you collect and information that you collect from performance marketing, right? So personalization at scale allows me to say, okay, Christian is different than Keith, who’s different than Joe, who all work in the same organization might make might overlap with 80% of their business decisions, and 20% will be standalone. So performance marketing is, if done properly, is personalization at scale. It allows you to scale on a much bigger level, to ensure that you can have the sub segments be personalized, and have the information that you serve up to them resonate based on their personal interests and business interests. Christian Klepp  30:56 Yeah, absolutely, I guess the trick. And you’ve probably seen this happen to this, there’s companies out there that are using the personalization at scale, or they’re approaching it the wrong way. I would say they try to go in under the guise of personalization, but what actually is a bit more of a veiled sales pitch. Keith Turco  31:13 I agree, and I think that if you, if you can really tap into where the world comes together, of personal and professional interests and apply that to the individual customer or consumer. You can truly personalize on what makes it tick, and I think personalization at scale isn’t just a creative comment, it’s a media comment, right? It’s I can personalize the media journey based on how I know Christian is consuming media throughout the day, so it’s where content and creativity match media consumption. Christian Klepp  31:49 Absolutely, absolutely okay. I’m going to ask you a soapbox question, if that’s okay with you. So let’s zero in on the topic of performance marketing, because that is your area. What is the status quo in performance marketing that you passionately disagree with, and why? Keith Turco  32:12 From a B2B performance marketing perspective, I think we talk about right place, right time, right message. And I think the status quo is that creative doesn’t matter, because if you serve the right message to the right person at the right time, creative won’t make an impact. And I’ll go back to branded response. I think the status quo is creative doesn’t play as big of role as it used to, and I would disagree, I talked about thumb stopping. You have to get people to stop, right? Because people are constantly scrolling and they’re being barraged with message after message after message. So what will resonate? And I do think that, you know, building a brand that has integrity, that creates loyalty. So to me, it’s the proper balance of brand and demand, or branded response that should be looked at again. I think we’ve probably taken a 10 year hiatus from that, and it was just about right message, right time. And it worked because it was thumb stopping at the time. But given the overload of messages, and exactly what we’re talking about, Christian of hitting people in their personal lives with professional messages, there’s an overload of messages that happen. So it’s kind of bringing all of your the soapbox questions, bringing all of your questions together, right? Which is what it’s intended to do. So it’s funny, because you you know you can absolutely understand that you can shorten the sales cycle by creating brand affinity. You talked about, is AI a threat to advertising. Actually, it’s an enhancement, because brand, to me, in my mind, still plays a significant role. And it’s bringing the two worlds together that will differentiate the top notch marketers of tomorrow. Christian Klepp  34:08 Absolutely, absolutely. And it goes back to something that you said earlier. I mean, this whole ecosystem is in a constant state of evolution, so marketers better learn to quote what you said, to embrace it, rather than to push back at it, right, or to push back on it, right? Keith Turco  34:24 I think the key is evolution. It’s not abandonment, right? And net new activities, right? So email was an evolution of direct mail. This display was an evolution of, you know, the 15 second video kind of thing, right? It’s how do we evolve, leverage what we’ve, what we know and what worked, and evolve it to make it better? It’s not necessarily, in my mind, a replacement of, sure, will it take the place of certain aspects of things, absolutely, but how can you use it to enhance and add versus feel threatened by it? Christian Klepp  35:03 Absolutely, absolutely. Keith, this conversation was dynamite. Thank you so much for coming on and for sharing your experience and expertise with the listeners. Quick introduction to yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you. Keith Turco  35:15 Sure. Keith Turco, CEO of Madison Logic, you can find me on LinkedIn. Would love to talk to you about your business needs and how we can help you from ABM perspective. Christian Klepp  35:27 Fantastic, fantastic. Once again, Keith, thanks so much for coming on the show. It was a pleasure. Keith Turco  35:33 Thank you, Christian. You have a great day. Christian Klepp  35:34 Thanks. Bye bye.

Watch full episode here: https://youtu.be/CMAdKWYzgYg   How do you maximize all the KPIs?  In this episode, Charlie welcomes Tim Clouse, Senior Vice President of Operations, to break down how supply chain and distribution center decisions helped Broad River Retail deliver double-digit growth in a challenging year. Visit https://www.storiesfromtheriver.com for more episodes.   Broad River Retail brought this show to you. Visit https://BroadRiverRetail.com  Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/broad-river-retail 

"Going green" has transitioned from a PR commitment to a core financial strategy. For corporate finance teams, the challenge is no longer whether to invest in sustainability, but how to fund it while delivering long-term financial returns.In this episode of Corporate Finance Explained on FinPod,  we move past the buzzwords to explore the specific financial mechanics, specialized debt instruments, and ROI frameworks used to fund the global corporate energy shift.The Sustainability Toolkit: How Companies Fund the TransitionFinance teams have moved beyond simple carbon offsets to a sophisticated mix of capital tools:Green BondsThese work like regular corporate bonds, but the proceeds are strictly ring-fenced for eligible environmental projects (e.g., Apple's multi-billion dollar bonds for renewable supply chains). Because they attract a massive pool of ESG-mandated capital, they often result in a lower cost of borrowing. Sustainability-Linked Loans (SLLs)Unlike green bonds, the funds can be used for general corporate purposes. However, the interest rate is performance-based, tied to predefined KPIs (e.g., reducing CO2 emissions). If the company hits its targets, the interest rate drops. Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs)Long-term contracts (10–20 years) to buy renewable energy at a fixed price. This allows companies like Google and Meta to lock in energy costs and avoid fossil fuel volatility without the massive CapEx of building their own wind farms.+3The ROI Framework: Modeling the "Green" Business CaseTo approve these investments, finance teams use a five-pillar framework to calculate Net Present Value (NPV):1. Direct Cost Savings: Immediate P&L impact from energy efficiency and waste reduction (e.g., Walmart's $1B in annual energy savings).2. Risk Reduction: Sustainability initiatives reduce exposure to carbon taxes and regulatory penalties. In finance terms, this lowers the company's Risk Beta, allowing for a lower discount rate in valuation models.3. Capital Efficiency: Strong ESG performance lowers the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC), providing a competitive edge in how the company finances itself.4. Revenue Growth: Accessing new customer segments and enabling premium pricing for sustainable products.5. Intangible Value: Enhancing brand equity and attracting top talent—harder to quantify but vital for long-term shareholder value.Case Studies: Strategy in ActionØrsted: Transformed from a fossil-fuel-heavy utility to a world leader in offshore wind by divesting old assets and aggressively raising capital through green bonds.Ford: Issued a $2.5B green bond specifically to fuel its EV transition (e.g., F-150 Lightning), signaling market credibility and securing cheaper financing.Microsoft: Applies the same rigor to carbon removal credits as it would to a multi-million dollar factory, analyzing ROI on direct air capture credits to hit its "carbon negative" goal.

Tiff and Monica break down what it takes to operate your practice like a CEO in 2026, including mindset (especially if you don't exactly feel like a CEO), leadership team delegation, dialing in goals, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript:   The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team I am so excited to be here. You guys know I love podcasting. It's one of my favorite things that we do throughout the month. I usually get at least two podcasting sessions in with my ladies. And today I have Monica back here with us again. Monica, how are you? I'm so excited you're here. How was this? This is a Monday. So like, how was your weekend? Did you get to rest, relax your grandbaby? What did you do? What was your, what was your weekend like?   Monica (00:25) Yeah, hi Tiff, happy Monday. Happy Monday, everyone. I'm so excited to start off my week with podcasting. ⁓ I think I just have like this new found joy and like interest and passion around podcasting and just showing up authentically and having this conversation. So thank you for inviting me. ⁓ My weekend, I had such a magical weekend. First of all, guys, December is such a magical time for me.   The Dental A Team (00:28) Thank you.   Of course.   Monica (00:56) You know, it's just tapping into all the unseen, right? The hope, the faith, the love that is never ending is all expansive. And December goes by really fast. So I made it a point to be super present in all the little things that I do and the mundane things. And I had such a magical weekend with my grandson. ⁓   The Dental A Team (01:09) It does.   Monica (01:21) I've got two grandkids, ⁓ Elijah who's 12 years old and my granddaughter Sophia who is three months old and I'm just enamored obviously with both of them but Sophia takes the stage right now. ⁓ But my grandson, know, he came over and he, you know, he's earning money to buy an electrical bike and I said, hey, you gotta earn it buddy so.   You know, ⁓ Mimi, I'm Mimi for him. I gave him a little weekend project to come and redo, re-sand, refinish my patio furniture. And we did that. We did that over the weekend and he did an amazing job. And then it turned into like this, Mimi, can I sleep over? Let's have a sleepover. You know, let's sleep right in front of the fireplace. When's the last time you did something fun like that? So.   The Dental A Team (02:03) Yeah.   my   gosh.   Monica (02:11) ⁓   it was, it was amazing. The Christmas tree lights were on, the fireplace was on and Charlie and I and Elijah were having sleepover on the couch. So that was fun. And, ⁓ we got to make breakfast the next morning and we had, you know, the magical dance in the kitchen. Yeah, that happened too. So it was just so special. And, ⁓ those are just memories that I want to hold on to forever. Those are those forever memories, you know? Yeah.   The Dental A Team (02:29) Mm-hmm.   They are, they   are. Those are the memories, those are the things that make life, life and make life enjoyable. So I'm really glad you got that time and ⁓ thank you for sharing. Thank you. You always, share your family with us. You share Charlie, who is her adorable dog. You share just all of them with us. So thank you. Thank you. On that note though, I think Monica, that's like the perfect lead in, into what we're talking about today because   Monica (02:44) Yes. Yes. Thank you.   Monica (02:57) Yeah, yeah, thank you.   The Dental A Team (03:06) what I really wanted to chat about and just get some information out for our listeners and for those of you who are here with us today, make sure that you either go back and listen to some of these pieces. We're gonna have some really good nuggets for you or you're taking notes now if you're in a place that can take notes. I always caveat that if you are driving, I drive and listen to podcasts a lot and I have to go back and listen to them. So please don't take notes while you're driving. But on that note of December and ⁓ we're recording this in December, it'll...   populate in January, which is kind of perfect because this time of year is great because we're winding down and we are enjoying the magic, like you said, and enjoying all of the love and the faith and all of those pieces. But then it turns into January, which is like a fresh new beginning and a magic of its own. And moving into January and being in January, something that I really want CEOs to start thinking about is how to think like a CEO.   Dental practice owners, doctors, don't often think of themselves, I think, as a CEO. Monica, often just, they're a practice owner, they're a business owner. But I think that CEO mindset is something that's very different. And really just looking at 2026, how can 2026 be your CEO year? And how can you start thinking like a CEO? What does it take to move and operate like a CEO? And this is something that we work on with our dental practice owners a lot. So our clients,   We're constantly bringing them back into that CEO mindset. We're really, really lucky in the fact that we have Kiera here on our team that we get to watch ⁓ move through the CEO mindset. And I've had the privilege of side by side walking with her and watching her build the business and building it with her and seeing those trials and tribulations. So being able to impact the world of dentistry with those pieces is something that's huge for us.   We're in January, it's beautiful. I feel like when I think of January, I think of like white and it's just clean and it's this beautiful, sparkly, clean slate that we can just create anything with. So as we're creating this, question that I have is really as we're building like a scalable vision, right? So we're looking forward, what's something that you like to encourage your CEO mindset doctors to really start with? Like where do you, how do we say this is where   Monica (05:24) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (05:24) This   is where I want to go. know, we've got especially a visionary mindset who just is in the clouds a lot. But how do you help them narrow that down into really thinking like a CEO and kind of time-lining that out, measurable? Like, what are all the pieces that you're looking for?   Monica (05:38) Yeah, that's a great question, Tiff. Thanks for asking. Well, first, before we dive into that, I want to say, doctors, it's you. You are the leader, right? You are the CEO and you've got to think like one. And I think ⁓ most of the time we're looking outward for the answers, but the answers are already in you. You've got to take some time to have some introspection time and say, okay,   What does the CEO do? Like, let me put my CEO hat on and bring that mindset in. what is my philosophy as a CEO? You've got to start with your philosophy, right? What does that mean to you? How am I going to achieve that, that one vision? And you got to make sure that your vision and your philosophy is inspiring enough to fire you up, to want to create a change.   right, because ⁓ it starts with you. We've got to be, we've got to be and show up as a person that we expect our leaders, our leadership team to show up as, right? So if you want your leadership team to come in and prepared and be on topic and be on the KPIs and know your numbers, guess what? You got to know the numbers. You've got to show up with that strong leadership, that inspiring, that motivating.   you know, knowing which KPIs you're going to look at, which in my mind, I think there's like the really high value KPIs and then the lower value KPIs, right? Everything is important, but we can't focus on all things at once. So what are the top KPIs that you as a CEO are going to focus on that drive, that philosophy that gave you that drive and that passion to wake up every single day fired up to, you know, tackle the day.   So if you don't have a philosophy, get one, right? Just start writing it down. I think we all have it here in our mind. You gotta put it on paper. Because if it's not on paper, you can't create it. Part of the creation process is thinking it, materializing it, and then sharing it. sharing it with your team, your leadership team. ⁓ And then seeing it, right? Like what is the process of creating that philosophy and executing that philosophy?   Doctors, it starts with you. Be the leader that you expect your leadership team to show up as. That's what a CEO does, right? Like what, who's, who's carrying the torch? The difficult part about being a CEO is that you've got the visionary and then you also have an operational piece, right? And we often say there's, there's two great leaders in any successful business, the visionary and the operational one, right? The one that carries a torch every single day. But you have to be both.   before you can delegate it. You've got to know what that feels like. You've got to know how to drive that. You've got to know how to become it before we expect our team to become it. So it starts with you doctors. Start with your philosophy. I would love to know for, you know, anyone that wants to just comment or just share, what is your philosophy? What do you wake up, you know, every single morning, what do you wake up with? What are you going to take to the office?   I think that's where we start, right? And then there's three things that I think are crucial for any CEO. You've got to be obsessed with this. Your clinical excellence, your patient experience, your culture, your team, and growth and profitability. Those are three things you've got to be obsessed about. Those are three things that you've got to be curious about every single day. Every time that you meet with your team,   We recommend that you have a weekly meeting with your leadership team. Make sure that you're touching on those three things. Those, I think, are the driver to everything. Your clinical experience and your patient experience is everything that builds trust, that builds efficiency, ⁓ that builds retention, patient retention, team retention. Yeah. What are your thoughts, Tiff?   The Dental A Team (10:00) Yeah, I love that. Thank you, thank you. And I know you have some really fantastic nuggets. So I hope you guys, if you are driving, you go back and listen and write them down. And I agree. think the philosophy, right, or translated, you can call it your mission, your vision. Like, why are you here? What is it that you believe in? We talk a lot about your, ⁓ like your patient philosophy or your clinical philosophy. So it's really just, what do you believe in? What are you trying to accomplish with what you're doing? And I love that because   If you can see what you're trying to accomplish, if you can, like she said, get it out on paper and Monica, I think that's brilliant. I do so much better when I'm like handwriting. I even got one of those journals, you know, the little, the notepads that are erasable because I think you just, you can take a picture and it uploads because I just do better with handwriting it. And when you can get it out and you can say, this is where I'm trying to get to, you can start to like build that house. It's like when you're, when you're going to, you're looking at model homes, the model home is already done.   And so it gives you a vision of what you could create if you were to build a home within that development. And so you need that model home. need something that models. you might not be, you might build your home and you might not do the same kitchen. You might have a different tile. You might have different countertops than what was shown in the model, but you're able to at least get a vision for something to start. And then you work backwards from that. And Monica, think that's...   the key there and what you said with the KPIs and the metrics and knowing your numbers and knowing your stats, watching those KPIs and really seeing if this is where I'm going, what are the top three goals that I can get to? And then scaling those backwards. And that's how a CEO works, right? We've got big goals that we scale backwards and say, okay, what are the steps? What is the plan? What's it actually going to take to get to this goal? And how can I recruit then my team to help support   Monica (11:36) Yep.   The Dental A Team (11:55) that and I think Monica, that's a huge word for me and my coaching is the support team. Like how can the team support these goals and I don't know Monica. This might be a side tangent, but something that I've experienced for sure is doctors or leaders or practice owners getting in the mindset of like worker bees like I've got worker bees under me and they are they are the ones that are going to get this instead of that mindset of really   like they're here to support me to get to these goals. How can I support them to get there? And I have to then think a clear vision. If I'm not clear on where we're going, how are they gonna support me to get there? And Monica, do you think in that transition? Because I do think that's a big switch from practice owner to CEO mindset is that really that supportive reaching the goals together, that support rather than.   I gave them tasks and they're gonna get me there. We're really kind of building this house together.   Monica (12:58) Yeah, no, that's a great point. think there's two parts to a successful practice. You've got to be able to work on the business and in the business. And you've got to really protect that time. When you're working on the business, be about that. Show up and be present. ⁓ I think, you   We're so used to multitasking and that that's our culture, right? That's the culture of dentistry is like, you've got to be able to like do a million things at once and your brain is going a million miles an hour. ⁓ you're seeing multiple patients, you're, know, you're constantly shifting and wearing various hats during the day. But to work on your business, you've got to, you've got to be present. No interruptions. Like don't.   get to the office before you get to the office, right? When you're in the office, don't get home, don't work on your personal stuff when you're in the office, work on the things that really matter. And it's difficult to kind of change gears and focus, but I think it's crucial. Working on the business really means, what's my philosophy, right? And reverse engineering that.   Here's where I want to be. Where am I now? What are the steps that I need to do next before I get there? I think having presence of mind is super important because we can't focus on all things, right? If we do, nothing gets done. And so write them down, write all the steps that you need to get there, then prioritize them. What do I need to do first before I move on to the next? And so I like to think about it as layered.   The Dental A Team (14:34) Yeah. Yeah.   Monica (14:48) Right? When you layer it, when it's written down, like create a visual for yourself. And then when it's written down, you can, it's easier to digest and you can journey that, that map per se in a much easier way. you're visual and you can go in and, and, know, add steps to it along the way. But if it's all up here, this is, this is where chaos happens. Right? This is where you get stressed out. This is where, ⁓ unease.   comes in, right, because it's all here and you can't see it. And I think most of us are visual when it comes to, you know, our practice and success and our teams. I mean, we've got to be able to see it, right, to believe it. ⁓ So I think working on the business and then working in the business, guys, that's really important. We can't expect our team to give, you know, above and beyond.   The Dental A Team (15:32) Mm-hmm.   Monica (15:44) and expect them to stay and work after hours on their own time when we're working two days a week in in tearside, right? And leading the team. No one's going to care more than you, right? Your team is there to support you, right? And your vision. So they're not the they may be the drivers, but they're not the principal. You are right. And I think we we tend to forget.   We tend to forget that we are the ultimate authority and we are the leaders. We're the go-to people, right? And ⁓ becoming a dentist and opening your practice, you automatically become a CEO whether you like it or not, right? And we're business owners, we're leaders. The team is looking to us to establish our philosophy, our vision, ⁓ the map. Where are we going, right? You've got to be the captain of your ship.   The Dental A Team (16:12) Okay.   Mm-hmm.   Monica (16:40) And if you don't take on that role, people are just waiting. They're doing the best that they can, but it's, you know, they're in uncharted waters.   I think that's when we lose, you know, the, ⁓ the passion and that fire, because we don't know where we're headed. Right. And everyone's just trying to work in their own little Island and they're, they're working in silos. And then, you know, instead of locking arms and saying, Hey, here's our vision. We're all rowing in this direction and let's go after it. Right. And we've got to be able to row in the same direction.   The Dental A Team (17:21) Mm-hmm.   Yeah, and I think that's where, to your point, the KPIs come into play, right? So you had mentioned earlier, like those measurables and those KPIs, because those are our oars. That's how we're getting there. So it's very easy, I think, for a visionary to have the vision. They know it. They're like, I can see the house. But then you've got to put that, you said, put that implementer hat on for a second, that worker hat on for a second, and say, cool, that's the vision. Now what goes in first?   Monica (17:29) Totally.   The Dental A Team (17:53) Like do we put the countertops in before we put the cupboards in? No, like how do we get there? So those are, I think Monica, to your point, those are the KPIs that are there so that the team can support that vision. So if you want increased new patients, what is the team gonna do to help support that? We've got a marketing company probably, but what can the team do asking for reviews, asking for referrals, like counting those pieces? And Monica, do you feel like that's where, I think personally,   That's where the CEO mindset really takes hold from that visionary kind of practice owner, I just wanna have a business mindset. That's that CEO tactical piece. And I think for practices I've worked with, structures I've worked with, that's the space that's like, we've gotta get over that hurdle and is sometimes the more difficult space for them to be able to see the applicable KPIs that will get us to those goals.   Monica (18:32) Yeah.   Yeah, I agree with you. think inaction equals no action, right? And so most of the time we know what needs to be done, but again, it's up here, right? And we choose for whatever the reason is, we're choosing not to get behind it. ⁓ And so, you know,   Also, sometimes we have to unpack what our limiting beliefs are. What is the story I'm telling myself about myself? That self-talk. Self-talk is super impactful, whether it's positive or negative. So what is your self-talk? What is your little voice saying? Right? Can I do this? Let's do this. Or, ⁓ nobody cares. Nobody cares as much as I do. You know, ⁓   I think self-talk is powerful.   The Dental A Team (19:50) I think   a lot of times it comes down to as well if I can see the vision but I'm not willing to share the vision, ⁓ what is keeping me from sharing that vision? Like why am I afraid to vocalize or put it on paper? What about this scares me? And that's what we're running away from, And we just replace it with the tactical do-do-dos, the checklist of like easy do's throughout the day and it holds us back from really reaching those.   personal and professional goals.   Monica (20:22) Yeah, and also, you know, to add to that, that's really valuable what you just spoke. ⁓ To add to that, think self-accountability and owning your part of it, right? ⁓ It's difficult, like the responsibility of knowing you've got this amazing practice that you've built, a place where patients can   come and seek wellness and that you are contributing to the livelihoods of your team. I mean, that's a big, and your own livelihood, right? Like this is it. That's a big responsibility. And it's a beautiful one. It's one that impacts many, many lives. ⁓ And that can be scary sometimes. What if I make a mistake? What if this is not the right choice? But what if it is?   Take the chance. You can always pivot. If you don't like the result, change it. That's the beauty of being a CEO in your own practices. You can change it. So what's stopping you from creating the change to propel you to the next level?   The Dental A Team (21:21) would have bit worked.   Yeah, I love that. Thank you, Monica. I think some takeaways I have, I always try to think of, you know, three tactical pieces, are the three action items? And I think from listening to everything that you've got today, thank you, Monica, it was beautiful. I really pulled out three, I feel tactical, I wrote down philosophy, make sure you know your philosophy, your CEO, your practice philosophy. And then like three,   Audacious goals for your one year your three year your tenure and really work backwards again ten years Where do I want to be? What will it take to get to that ten-year mark in three years from now? And then this year what do I have to accomplish? So those really those big three goals and then really breaking those down into applicable key performance indicators KPIs applicable pieces that we can work on this year to get us towards those goals and really enlisting the team to help with those things so if you're trying to switch to that CEO mindset   Like Monica said, you gotta get it on paper. Write that philosophy down first. Where is it that you're trying to get to? What are three things that you could work on right now that will help get you there? And what are the small things we can do every single day, those KPIs, that we can do every single day that will help us get to those three goals? Monica, those are my three action items I pulled from everything that you had beautifully stated. think there's also action items they can pull out on the personal side, like journal, you guys. I love your idea.   you know, what's holding me back from doing this? What are my limiting beliefs right now? And if that's scary to get it out on paper, probably back up a little bit and start there. And re-listen to everything Monica said, because she's spot on you guys. you're having trouble localizing it, you're having trouble getting it on paper, or you're scared to share it with your team, there's something internal there. And if you're scared that your team's gonna react a certain way, is that you? Or is that them and you need to go back to the right person, right seat?   that we recorded a few weeks ago. That's a good question there. So Monica, is there anything else that you would leave as a parting statement, something that can really wrap up the CEO mindset for them?   Monica (23:41) Yeah.   Yeah, thank you. actually do. And I was thinking about ⁓ what's the first thing I would do after listening to a podcast like this. And I would go back and ask great questions. Great leaders ask great questions and start with you. Go ask yourself three great questions that are going to start to unpack the CEO that's already within you.   The Dental A Team (24:11) I love that. I love that. Thank you, Monica. I love podcasting with you. You have just, your brain, I love picking pieces out of your brain, because you and I think similarly in a lot of ways in that introspective kind of world, and I think you and I could live there for hours and be so happy. So thank you. Thank you for always sharing everything with us, and...   Monica (24:20) Thank you.   I know.   The Dental A Team (24:35) bringing such amazing tools. The CEO mindset is really important and I know you work on this really, really hard with a lot of your practices. So handpicked for you. Thank you Monica for your time today and everyone here shares that sentiment I'm sure. Of course. Of course. All right listeners, you heard her earlier. She said, pop it in, pop it in your review, pop it in an email to us. Let us know what's your philosophy. Let us know what you love today.   Monica (24:49) Yeah, thanks, Tiff. This was great. Thank you. Thanks so much.   The Dental A Team (25:03) what you want more of, you can drop us a five star review below or Hello@TheDentalATeam.com or both you guys, we love hearing from you. We do get a lot of you that email in different ideas and things that you'd like to hear about. We love that. So please reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com and you guys, can't wait to catch you next time. Thank you.  

Thje CPG Guys are joined in this episode by Sarah Cunningham, Chief Retail Experience Officer of Flywheel, the commerce acceleration division of Omnicom.Follow Sarah on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-cunningham-99559b1/Follow Flywheel on Linkedin at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flywheel-digital/Sarah answers these questions:Can you tell us about the inspiration and the WHY behind bringing this new connected commerce offering to Flywheel?What are some current trends in the commerce space that are influencing how brands approach connected commerce and how consumers are shopping?What challenges are brands facing in creating truly seamless omnichannel experiences for shoppers? What are the blind spots and how can this new connected commerce offering help alleviate the pain points?What are the core components of your connected commerce solution? How does it differentiate from existing offerings in the market?How does your platform leverage data and insights to drive better outcomes for brands and retailers?In what ways does your solution integrate with retailers, marketplaces, and media partners? How do you support brands in aligning their sales, marketing, and data teams to ensure success with connected commerce?What KPIs or success metrics do you recommend for brands adopting connected commerce strategies? Are there any early results or case studies you can share that highlight the impact of your offering?How do you see connected commerce evolving in the next few years, especially as technology and consumer expectations advance?What are lessons / mindsets you've learned and leveraged as you have grown in your career to help you?CPG Guys Website: http://CPGguys.comFMCG Guys Website: http://FMCGguys.comSheCOMMERCE Website: https://shecommercepodcast.com/Rhea Raj's Website: http://rhearaj.comLara Raj in Katseye: https://www.katseye.world/DISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPGGUYS, LLC or the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPGGUYS, LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.CPGGUYS LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we presented in this podcast.

Cameron reflects on the challenges and opportunities faced by medical aesthetics practices in 2025 and looks ahead to 2026. He emphasizes the importance of becoming a better business owner, understanding market trends, and leveraging patient engagement strategies. He covers key metrics for success, the significance of membership models, and the potential for revenue growth through add-on services and effective marketing investments. He also encourages practice owners to shift their mindset from injectors to CEOs, focusing on building a strong team and implementing systems for sustainable growth.Listen In!Thank you for listening to this episode of Medical Millionaire!Takeaways:The aesthetic industry is experiencing significant growth and competition.Practices must adapt to changing market conditions to thrive.Understanding key metrics is crucial for business success.Building strong patient relationships enhances loyalty and trust.Membership models can significantly increase revenue and retention.Add-on services can boost average ticket prices and client lifetime value.Scaling practices requires solid systems and delegation.Effective marketing investments are essential for growth.A mindset shift from injector to CEO is necessary for success.Investing in technology and team development is critical for long-term sustainability.Medical Millionaire: The Blueprint for Scaling a World-Class Medical Aesthetics PracticeWelcome to Medical Millionaire, the go-to podcast for forward-thinking Medspa owners, Medical Aesthetics leaders, Plastic Surgery & Dermatology practices, Concierge Wellness clinics, and Elective Healthcare entrepreneurs who are ready to scale with intention and operate like a true, high-performing business.If you're building, growing, optimizing, or preparing to exit your aesthetics or wellness practice, this show is your competitive advantage.Hosted by Cameron Hemphill Your Guide to Sustainable, Scalable Growth Your host, Cameron Hemphill, is one of the most trusted growth strategists in Medical Aesthetics and Elective Wellness.With over 10 years in the industry, Cameron has helped scale 1,000+ practices and more than 2,300 providers, working alongside the most recognized KOLs, national brands, EMRs, tech companies, and private equity groups, shaping the future of aesthetics. From marketing to operations, from finance to leadership, Cameron brings a real-world, data-driven perspective on what it takes to turn a practice into a powerful business engine.What This Podcast Is All About: Each episode takes you behind the scenes of the fastest-growing practices in the country, revealing the systems, strategies, and mindset required to win in today's Medical Aesthetics landscape.Expect tactical insights, step-by-step frameworks, and conversations with:Industry thought leadersTop injectors & medical directorsEMR & tech innovatorsOperations expertsMarketing strategistsPrivate equity & M&A advisorsWellness and longevity pioneersThis is where aesthetics, business, technology, and wellness converge. What You'll Learn on Medical Millionaire Every week, you'll access expert guidance to help you scale profitably and predictably, including:Marketing & Brand PositioningCRM + Lead Management SystemsPatient Acquisition & ConversionEMR Optimization & Tech Stack ArchitectureSales Psychology & Consultation MasteryFinance, KPIs, and Practice EconomicsOperational Workflows & AutomationIndustry Trends Backed by Real Benchmark DataPatient Retention & Lifetime Value ExpansionMindset, Leadership & Team DevelopmentWhether you're opening your first location or running a multi-million-dollar enterprise, you'll gain the clarity and direction to grow with confidence. A Show Designed for Every Stage of Practice Growth Medical Millionaire breaks down the journey into four essential stages, showing you exactly how to move from one to the next:Startup – Build the foundation and attract your first wave of patientsGrowth – Scale revenue, expand services, and strengthen operationsOptimize – Increase efficiency, margins, and customer experienceExit – Prepare your practice for maximum valuation and acquisitionIf You're Ready to Grow, This Is Where You Start. Tune in weekly for actionable insights, expert interviews, and the exact playbooks high-performing practices use to dominate their markets. This is the podcast for Medspa owners who want more than a job; they want a scalable, profitable, industry-leading business. Welcome to Medical Millionaire.Let's build your practice into the empire it deserves to be.

Happy New Year! In this first episode of 2026, I'm pulling back the curtain on Painter Growth's journey to nearly $5M in 2025, and it wasn't pretty.This year was our hardest yet. We dealt with team issues, profit struggles, toxic employees, and some of the most expensive mistakes I've ever made. But we also grew 40%+ and set ourselves up for another 100% growth year ahead.In this raw, behind-the-scenes episode, I'm sharing the 5 biggest lessons that transformed how I run Painter Growth—lessons that will save you years of wasted effort:Lesson 1: Why keeping the wrong people is one of the most expensive mistakes you can makeLesson 2: How focusing on just 1-2 KPIs can 4x your results (we went from 1% to 4% conversion)Lesson 3: The forecasting framework that gave me emotional control as a CEOLesson 4: Why raising your standards is the only way to attract A-playersLesson 5: How to stop being the bottleneck in your own businessThis isn't about painting companies—it's about the real lessons from scaling a business, making hard decisions, and building leverage that doesn't depend on you grinding 24/7.If you're in a messy phase of growth right now, this episode will give you the clarity you need to break through.Comment "template" on Spotify if you want the monthly forecast template mentioned in this episode!

Jan. 7, 2026 In this episode, host Pete Neubig sits down with Ben Smith, founder of BrightReach. Ben breaks down a practical, phased approach to building a high-performing sales department for property management companies. He explains the importance of starting with a clear strategy—defining growth goals, an ideal client profile and a strong value proposition — before implementing scalable systems and processes. Ben also covers hiring the right sales talent, setting clear expectations and KPIs, and continuously optimizing the sales process through data, accountability and refinement.

The difference between those who scale and those who stall isn't talent. It's the willingness to act when every instinct says quit. In the Season 6 finale of The Game Changing Attorney Podcast, Michael Mogill revisits the most powerful conversations from 2025. From David Kolbe's insights on understanding your instinctive strengths to James Amaro's blueprint for building accountability culture, James Lawrence's discipline in mastering discomfort, Verne Harnish's framework for scaling past plateaus, and Kat Cole's philosophy of relentless self-improvement, this episode distills the season's most actionable wisdom into one comprehensive guide for growth. Here's what you'll learn: Why understanding your conative strengths can prevent years of burnout and misalignment in your career and your team How deliberate discomfort and daily disciplines train your mind to refuse quitting when adversity hits What it takes to build an accountability culture that drives KPIs without sacrificing team morale or losing top talent The leaders who dominate 2026 will be the ones who stopped waiting and started executing on what they already know they should be doing. ---- 3:04 — David Kolbe explains the four action modes and how understanding your conative strengths changes everything 9:57 — Why your Kolbe result doesn't change over time and what that means for your career 13:16 — James Amaro shares how he rebuilt his firm from 6 people to over 80 after losing almost everything 17:07 — The accountability culture that took profit from 5% to 34% 23:24 — Triathlete James Lawrence reveals his genetic testing results 28:17 — Mental toughness requires doing activities you hate 36:32 — Verne Harnish on why ambitious goals drive energy while attainable goals kill it 42:09 — Founder Mode: why you can delegate everything except the soul of your business 52:18 — Kat Cole's journey from Hooters hostess to leading billion-dollar brands 56:44 — “The Hotshot Rule” for relentless improvement ---- Links & Resources: Kolbe Assessment  Amaro Law Firm  James Lawrence (Iron Cowboy)  Iron Hope  Verne Harnish  Scaling Up  AG1 ---- Learn what sustainable growth can look like for your firm at https://crisp.co/coach ---- Do you love this podcast and want to see more game changing content? Subscribe to our YouTube channel. ---- Past guests on The Game Changing Attorney Podcast include David Goggins, John Morgan, Alex Hormozi, Randi McGinn, Kim Scott, Chris Voss, Kevin O'Leary, Laura Wasser, John Maxwell, Mark Lanier, Robert Greene, and many more. ---- If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like: Episode 423: How to Actually Scale Your Standards Episode 404: The Dangers of Premature Growth with Eric Siu Episode 365: Discipline Is a Daily Decision

Celi Arias is the CEO and Founder of The Grown Ass Business, where she guides entrepreneurs through her proprietary methodology, Key Growth Systems, to build strong business foundations. Recognized as a top coach by The Upside in 2024, Celi helps clients break free from revenue plateaus and burnout by focusing on core business principles over quick fixes. Her approach emphasizes clarity and control, optimizing essential business departments to ensure solid foundations for scaling up to seven figures and beyond. She's busy building software to scale her own business, now in beta at Get Scale.

In this episode, I dive into my top five priorities that will fuel your membership success in 2026.I share the key actions and mindset shifts that every membership owner, whether just starting out or looking to scale, should be focusing on to ensure lasting growth.From getting a grip on your numbers to embracing a results-driven approach, experimenting more, and building the right support network, I break down practical, proven advice to set you up for an amazing year with your membership business.In this episode:Why is understanding your numbers and KPIs so essential for sustainable membership growth, and how do you get started?How has the value of content changed, and why should you stop positioning your membership as just a library of resources?In what ways can diversifying your offerings safeguard your membership business and better serve your audience's evolving needs?Why is experimentation, as well as surrounding yourself with the right support network, key to overcoming industry changes and staying ahead in 2026?Thank You For ListeningI really appreciate you choosing us and for supporting the podcast.What's your next step?If you haven't launched your membership yet, I've made my signature Membership Roadmap Course completely FREE, walking you through exactly how to get set up for success!Already have a membership and looking to grow and scale? Join me inside Membership Academy where I'll help you take your membership to the next level.And if you found this episode valuable, I'd be eternally grateful if you would leave an honest review and rating for the show. They're extremely helpful when it comes to reaching our audience, and I read each and every one!Key Quotes & Takeaways:"You can work hard all year bringing in 120 new people over the year, and you'll end the year with pretty much no increase in your member base. Because that 8% churn rate that maybe you don't realize is 8% will mean that you are just hemorrhaging as many members as you're attracting.""People want certainty. People like being sold proven formulas. That's why a lot of dodgy Internet marketers do so well, because they stand up there and say, you know what, I've got this proven formula. You just do this, then this, then this and this and you're guaranteed results. And yeah, that guarantees not worth the paper it's printed on.""We bring you that community, we bring you that accountability, that place that you can go to that is safe for you to vent about that problem member and get a little bit of advice for you to admit, you know what, I'm stuck. I've tried all these things and they have not worked.""But more importantly, you have the room to be in. You have the community that will give you that support network, that will give you the sounding board, that will cheer you on and pick you up, give you their experiences, give you the benefit of their knowledge, share what they're doing and work together to ensure that 2026 doesn't just see one or two of us growing our memberships. 2026 sees us all growing and thriving."

In this episode of BRAVE COMMERCE, hosts Rachel Tipograph and Sarah Hofstetter speak with Marco Brucato, Head of eCommerce Europe - DTC Transformation at Beko Europe.Marco shares how he's scaled digital commerce across diverse European markets by applying a “freedom within a frame” mindset, centralizing strategy, governance, and KPIs while empowering local teams to adapt for cultural nuance and shopper expectations.He breaks down what it takes to make transformation stick inside large organizations, from securing leadership buy-in to making the cost of inaction tangible. Marco also explains why selling the problem matters more than selling the solution, how a test-small-scale-fast approach helps prove value, and why omnichannel should be a core operating principle — not a buzzword.Key takeawaysScale with structure: Centralize principles and governance while enabling local executionCreate urgency: Make the cost of inaction clear to unlock leadership buy-inProve value fast: Test ideas in small ways, then scale what works Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode originally aired in 2024. But in 2026, brands are still looking for these main KPIs and who they want to work with (different types of creators and influencers).Some brands might be looking for brand awareness, drive sales, or traffic to a website. Brands and agencies need to understand what to measure and how to measure it. Here are four top KPIs (key performance indicators) brands might be measuring in 2024:ConversionsBrand liftEngagement Quality of contentTune in to learn more about what brands are looking for with their influencer partnerships!Follow us on Instagram: @creativeeditionpodcast Follow Emma on Instagram: @emmasedition | Pinterest: @emmaseditionAnd sign up for our email newsletter.

Send us a textWhat if the trait you're most proud of—being the one who always steps in—quietly destroys your profit and peace of mind? We dive into over-responsibility as a hidden profit killer and lay out a practical plan to reclaim your time, your culture, and your margins. With leadership coach and author Roger Daviston, we break down the mindset shift that changes everything: you are responsible to your team, not for your team.We get specific about what boundaries look like in home services. From the installer who wants you to fix a supplier problem, to the friend who bypasses dispatch for a “quick favor,” to the manager who avoids hard talks, we share scripts and frameworks that push responsibility back to role owners. You'll hear how “What do you think you should do?” becomes a coaching habit, not avoidance, and how trust but verify systems prevent chaos without smothering initiative. We also tackle the painful costs of inconsistency—underperformers lingering, KPIs tracked then ignored, family exceptions eroding standards—and how documented expectations and progressive discipline restore clarity.This conversation is a playbook for building a culture of ownership: clear role ownership, process adherence, measurable accountability, and the courage to let things break so people can learn. Roger shares resources on the service call process and team alignment, and we connect the dots between healthy leadership and better marketing outcomes—because confident, supported teams show up differently for customers. Ready to stop bottlenecking decisions, reduce callbacks, and scale beyond your personal capacity? Press play, take notes, and try the questions and boundaries we outline today.If this helped, subscribe, share the show with a fellow contractor, and leave a quick review so more owners can find it. What's one boundary you'll set this week?If you enjoyed this chat From the Yellow Chair, consider joining our newsletter, "Let's Sip Some Lemonade," where you can receive exclusive interviews, our bank of helpful downloadables, and updates on upcoming content. Please consider following and drop a review below if you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to check out our social media pages on Facebook and Instagram. From the Yellow Chair is powered by Lemon Seed, a marketing strategy and branding company for the trades. Lemon Seed specializes in rebrands, creating unique, comprehensive, organized marketing plans, social media, and graphic design. Learn more at www.LemonSeedMarketing.com Interested in being a guest on our show? Fill out this form! We'll see you next time, Lemon Heads!

This year isn't about doing more. It's about knowing what's actually working. In this solo episode, Roslyn kicks off 2026 by sharing a calm, CEO-level approach to KPIs and how travel advisors can use them to gain clarity, reduce overwhelm, and make confident business decisions. Rather than tracking everything or chasing vanity metrics, this episode focuses on the small set of numbers that genuinely reflect business health, client behaviour, conversion, and sustainability along with providing practical tips to ensure this is something you do every month.  In this episode, you'll learn: Why tracking sales alone isn't enough What KPIs really mean for travel advisors The core KPIs to track in 2026 How commission and yield impact sustainability How to review your numbers monthly without pressure The mindset shift from reactive to intentional business leadership Free Resource Download your free 2026 Travel Business KPI Dashboard here. Visit our website for resources, programs and upcoming events:

If dispatch still owns your day, this one is for you. In this episode, Chad sits down with George Eliadis from ProBook, a dispatch and AI automation partner for home service companies, to unpack what "dispatching for dollars" really looks like at scale. From running a pressure-washing side hustle in New York to riding along in TR Miller's call center and dispatch room, George shares how ProBook was built in the trenches with contractors, not in a lab. If you're leading an HVAC, plumbing, electrical, or multi-trade shop and you already track your KPIs, this episode shows how to turn those numbers into smarter scheduling, fewer reschedules, and higher revenue per truck. And if you don't know your booking rate, batting order, and capacity story yet, Chad will challenge you on that too. Join The ARENA - a CSTG Community (powered by our media partner, PeopleForward Network) Additional Resources: Connect with George on LinkedIn Learn more about Probook Subscribe to CSTG on YouTube! Connect with Chad on LinkedIn Chad Peterman | CEO | Author Learn more about the Peterman Brothers Follow PeopleForward Network on LinkedIn Learn more about PeopleForward Network Key Takeaways: Why dispatch is the "hardest problem" and the best starting point for AI in the trades How to build batting orders that balance flips, close rates, and real dollars per call A simple framework for moving away from rigid time windows without destroying the customer experience How to handle reschedules earlier, with less drama and better scripting Why tools like ProBook can't fix a business that doesn't already know its numbers

As retail media spending explodes and traditional measurement methods struggle to keep pace amidst inconsistent KPIs across retailers, marketing mix modeling (MMM) finds itself at a critical crossroads. New research from MediaLink and the Digital Shelf Institute lays out the challenges and evolving best practices in MMMs to transform marketing mix models from a quarterly planning tool into a dynamic, real-time strategic asset. This is an audio rebroadcast of a webinar focused on that research, led by Lauren Livak Gilbert, featuring Ben Galvin, Sr. Director of Omnichannel Retail Sales & eCommerce at Monster Energy Corporation, Ash McMullen, Head of eCommerce at Advantice Health, and Donna Sharp, Managing Director at MediaLink.

Growing a home-service business from $3–5M to the next level isn't about more leads—it's about clarity, financial visibility, and eliminating guesswork.In this episode of The Better Than Rich Show, host Mike Abramowitz sits down with Paul Maskill, Fractional CFO and founder of Blue Collar Advisors, to break down the systems and scoreboards that unlock predictable profitability—even in uncertain markets.Paul explains why so many contractors feel stuck between $3–6M, how to define what the next level actually means for your life and business, and why accurate numbers turn every business problem into a solvable equation.You'll learn:Why most owners don't need more leads—they need better conversionHow to break down a $6M P&L and engineer $1M in profitThe KPIs every CSR, dispatcher, tech, and marketer should trackWhy online scheduling and ballpark pricing are now table stakesHow pricing mistakes and non-billable time destroy marginsWhen to hire (and when hiring makes things worse)How scoreboards eliminate stress, confusion, and reactive decisionsIf you want more cash flow, fewer surprises, and a business that's actually exitable, this episode is required viewing.⏱️ Timestamps (Retention + SEO)00:00 Intro — Mike welcomes Paul and frames the conversation01:00 “What is the next level?” — Paul's starting point with every client02:00 Why owners chase revenue without knowing why04:00 Defining success beyond “I want 8 figures”08:00 Inside a $6M P&L + the path to $1M profit10:15 Alternative scoreboards: values, impact, team income goals12:00 KPIs for techs, CSRs, dispatch, and marketing17:00 Customer journey leaks — why more leads won't fix it18:40 Online scheduling & modern buyer expectations23:00 Branding vs advertising — where owners misdiagnose problems30:00 Scoreboards: the cure for “busy but broke”33:00 Booking-rate improvements & CSR scorecards35:30 Hiring decisions: data vs desperation39:00 Pay-for-performance & technician productivity40:20 Pricing mistakes & true hourly rate math43:00 Non-billable time, load factor, and undercharging45:00 Paul's free pricing calculator + website framework47:00 What “Better Than Rich” means to Paul Maskill49:00 Closing thoughts + 2026 collaboration preview