Podcasts about B2B

SaaStr 875: Who Owns Your Data Now? Agents vs. System of Record, ServiceTitan vs. Podium, Headless Salesforce, and Agentic Renewals on The Agents #013 The agents are writing data faster than any human ever could - and systems of record aren't ready for it. This week on The Agents, Jason and Amelia dig into the biggest meta-theme of 2026: what happens when your AI agents become the primary user of your CRM, your MAP, and every other system you've built your business on? Together, they unpack the ServiceTitan vs. Podium blowup, where an agentic lead gen tool slowly became a competing system of record until ServiceTitan shut them off with 30 days' notice, and why this is just the first of many fights like it coming across SaaS. Then Amelia pulls back the curtain on how SaaStr actually runs Salesforce headless through 10K, what it means that their agents have written 40 gigabytes of data into Salesforce without either of them logging in, and why the storage math is going to force a reckoning for every vendor jacking up API prices right now. Plus: the renewal agent Amelia built that generates a fully custom, hyper-personalized pitch deck for every single customer, using headless Salesforce, Gamma, social data, podcast mentions, and Gmail. And why Clay plus ZoomInfo plus Cowork turned out to be the best enrichment stack their agents have found yet. If you're building on top of systems of record, selling to companies that are, or just trying to figure out how agents change the economics of SaaS data, this one is essential listening. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 02:00 - ServiceTitan cuts off Podium: what happened and why it matters 10:00 - 40 gigs in Salesforce and neither of us logged in 16:00 - The API pricing reckoning coming for systems of record 22:00 - How SaaStr runs Salesforce headless with 10K 30:00 - The renewal agent: no account left behind 42:00 - Narrative-first pitching: getting the agent to sell 50:00 - Clay + ZoomInfo + Cowork: the enrichment stack that actually worked 58:00 - What comes next: agentic inbound proposals SaaStr hosts the world's largest community for B2B software founders and executives.

Der erste Rabatt sieht harmlos aus wie ein kleiner Steinschlag in der Windschutzscheibe. Aber der Riss zieht sich durch den ganzen Deal. Dieter zeigt mit einem echten Einkaeufer aus dem Training, warum Verkaeufer den Preis aus Angst herschenken und wie du ihn haeltst, indem du jeden Rabatt zum Tausch machst. Mit einer einfachen Beobachtungs-Aufgabe fuers Team.

Today's callers: Cristopher from Chicago wants to expand his family's salsa brand from farmers markets into retail. Next, Darcy in Australia considers adapting his protein bar brand's messaging to reach beyond his core enthusiasts. Finally, Seema in Canada seeks strategies to increase B2B sales for her ethical kitchen linen company. Plus, Daymond and Guy talk about what makes a great Shark Tank pitch, and why Guy decided to start How I Built This 10 years ago. Thank you to the founders of Sabor a Mexico, Raised Nutrition and Cooks Who Feed for joining us on the show.If you'd like to be featured on a future Advice Line episode—where Guy and former show guests take questions from early-stage founders—leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and a specific question you'd like answered. Send a voice memo to hibt@id.wondery.com or call 1-800-433-1298. And be sure to listen to FUBU's founding story as told by Daymond on the show in 2018. This episode was produced by Katherine Sypher with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Kwesi Lee.You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram and sign up for Guy's free newsletter at guyraz.com and on Substack.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Joseph Lee is the Co-founder and CEO of Supademo, an AI-powered platform that helps teams create interactive product demos and guides for sales, marketing, onboarding, and customer education. He leads Supademo's product vision and growth, building intuitive, self-guided experiences that enable companies to simplify product education and drive engagement. Previously, Joseph co-founded Freshline, a B2B e-commerce platform for food distributors, where he served as CPO and led product strategy and execution from customer insight through product development. In this episode… Product demos are no longer just a sales tool — they can shape how prospects understand a product, how customers learn to use it, and how teams drive adoption at scale. But what makes a demo effective enough to move users from curiosity to real product value? Joseph Lee, a two-time startup founder and product builder, says the most effective demos help customers understand value faster by letting them experience a product rather than passively watch it. He highlights the power of interactive, self-serve experiences that can support sales, onboarding, training, enablement, and product education. Supademo's product-led approach also allows users to experience advanced features through reverse trials, while AI helps teams personalize, translate, maintain, and scale demos more efficiently. As these experiences become more intelligent and agentic, companies can guide users through workflows with less friction and help them reach meaningful outcomes sooner. In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz speaks with Joseph Lee, Co-founder and CEO of Supademo, about using product demos to accelerate sales, onboarding, and adoption. They discuss interactive self-serve demos, AI-powered personalization, and in-app product education. Joseph also shares how Supademo evolved from SaaS into an agentic demo platform.

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

René Saúl spent seven years running an offline agricultural lending business in Mexico before selling it and pouring the proceeds into Kapital, a bet that the future of B2B fintech in Latin America belonged to companies willing to become regulated banks. Today Kapital is the largest B2B fintech in the region, and René is the only founder in the space who has bought not one but two banks, one of the deals agreed to on a napkin.What We CoveredWhy the future of fintech is regulated, and why that was a contrarian call in 2021René's seven years running an offline agricultural lending business in MexicoThe founding thesis behind Kapital's one-stop B2B banking ecosystemHow Mexico's electronic invoicing system became Kapital's underwriting moatThe "red car theory" of spotting opportunities before they arriveBuying Banco Autofin on a napkin, and growing its deposits from $150 million to $400 million in three monthsAcquiring the banking, brokerage and payments assets of Grupo Financiero IntercamBuilding instant, 24/7 cross-border payment rails on top of SWIFTClosing the small business financing gap with AI-native underwritingWhy Mexico is becoming a cornerstone of America's AI manufacturing boomThe limits of banking an economy that still runs largely on cashKapital's growth numbers and its path to a dual listing in New York and MexicoKey TakeawaysMexico's electronic invoicing mandate hands Kapital more than 50,000 data points per customer, a seven-year head start on underwriting that competitors using third-party providers cannot easily close.For large enterprises and cash-strapped SMBs alike, a banking license, not a slicker app, is what earns the trust needed to hold their money and their cash flow.Opportunities have to be hunted, not waited for. Kapital tracked potential bank acquisitions for years so it could move in days when the Autofin deal appeared.Staying liquid and profitable before either acquisition is what let Kapital move fast when the opportunity came, rather than scrambling to raise capital under pressure.About René SaúlRené Saúl is the co-founder and CEO of Kapital, which he built after selling an offline agricultural lending business that financed berry and avocado exporters in Mexico and Peru. Under his leadership, Kapital has grown into a licensed financial group serving more than 300,000 customers across Latin America, with more than $5.3 billion in assets and two bank acquisitions behind it.Connect with Fintech One-on-One:Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

This episode is presented by ProphetX. Our guest is ProphetX co-founder Jake Benzaquen — we address the relationship directly at the top of the episode. Jake Benzaquen co-founded ProphetX eight years ago, long before "prediction market" was a phrase anyone outside finance used. In June, ProphetX became the first sports-native platform to win CFTC approval as a regulated exchange — and this conversation covers everything that came with it: the sweepstakes years, the $35 million raise, what's shipping on the product side this football season, and the affiliated market making debate that's dividing the entire industry. Rob also presses Jake on the questions that don't have easy answers — the investor overlap on ProphetX's own platform, the 18-vs-21 age gap between prediction markets and sportsbooks, and what happens if the Supreme Court rules against CFTC jurisdiction entirely.

In this episode of the Power Producers Podcast, David Carothers and Matt Kistler of ForgePoint Growth Partners discuss how agencies can recruit, develop, and retain high-performing producers. They explore David's strategy of recruiting proven B2B salespeople from outside insurance, the importance of intentionally building agency culture, and Matt's “blueberry” philosophy of identifying and replicating successful producer behaviors. The conversation also tackles accountability for veteran producers, transferring knowledge to the next generation, and looking beyond compensation when attracting talent. Ultimately, David and Matt emphasize that successful agencies must build a culture where great producers can succeed, feel supported, and have a reason to stay. Connect with:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠David Carothers LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matt Kistler Linkedin ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Visit Websites:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Killing Commercial⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Crushing Content⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Power Producers Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Policytee⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Dirty 130⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Extra 2 Minute⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   

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

Are you struggling to build a resilient book of business in a fiercely competitive market, or thinking how the latest logistics technology is going to disrupt your daily freight sales process? What does it take to stand out and win customers when shippers are sick of the same old transactional pitches?  Dan Annunziata from The Sales DREAM gets straight to the facts on modern B2B sales in the freight brokerage business! We deep into his journey from cutting his teeth at the largest broker in North America to building custom supply chain tech, unpacking exactly what it takes to pivot from a sheer volume-based dialing strategy to a value-driven, multi-modal sales approach.  Dan lays out the reality of how AI and automated freight solutions are replacing average reps, and why leveraging a targeted tech stack while delivering a hyper-personalized customer experience is your only path forward to win deals.  If you want to stop losing market share, upgrade your freight sales strategy, and start executing at an elite level, you cannot afford to miss this conversation!   About Dan Annunziata Dan Annunziata is endeavoring to disrupt all things B2B sales and go-to-market, initially focused in logistics. Currently Chief Customer Officer at The Sales DREAM, the company behind Revogent, an AI-powered sales operating system built to give logistics and B2B organizations real command & control across their revenue teams. He has only ever known freight, as a third-generation logistics professional. His grandfather started in the industry after World War II, his dad put in 45 years, and Dan is 19 years in, a century of one family in logistics. Dan spent those 19 years at C.H. Robinson and Uber Freight, almost entirely on the customer and growth side of the business, and went on to lead two of the largest commercial organizations with the most complex go-to-markets in the industry. That seat came with a particular education: he bought most of the CRMs and sales technology on the market, nearly all of it promising to make sellers better and revenue higher. He also trained more than 5,000 sales reps and account managers across the industry, enough reps, in enough rooms, to know exactly where the promise and the reality separate. That's the perspective behind Revogent, where the target is big: disrupting how B2B sales organizations grow. The premise is that sales like all functions will be disrupted and his experience and background will lead the charge not Silicon Valley.  Dan also holds a commercial advisory role with Argus Logistics and is opening a few Scooter's Coffee shops. He lives in the Minneapolis area with his family.   Connect with Dan Website: https://thesalesdream.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-annunziata-03524610/  

My guest today is Neil Movva, founder of Sail. Sail is building what Neil calls a token factory, an inference company designed for a specific kind of future, one where AI agents run in the background for hours or days at a time rather than answering a human in real time.  In that world, latency matters less and cost matters more, and Neil has built the whole company around driving the cost of a token as low as it can possibly go. What makes this conversation special is that it is one of the most detailed tours I have ever done through the full stack of intelligence, the software, the chips, and the power, and how all three connect.  Along the way we cover the trade-off between speed and cost that lives inside every GPU, his scavenger strategy for buying the chips and power nobody else wants, his contrarian view on Nvidia, and why the premium the frontier labs charge for being three to six months ahead may not last.  Please enjoy my conversation with Neil Movva. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.  ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠. ----- ⁠Ramp's⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, ⁠Vanta⁠ continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to ⁠vanta.com/invest⁠.  ----- WorkOS⁠ is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- ⁠Ridgeline⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgeline.ai⁠. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:20) Neil Movva (00:03:22) Building a Token Factory (00:05:32) The Rise of Long-Running Agents (00:08:47) Deep Research and Cybersecurity (00:15:12) The Full Stack of Intelligence (00:20:03) Throughput Versus Latency (00:24:58) The Future of AI Chips (00:33:19) Why Transformers Work (00:36:43) The Future of Data (00:44:05) The Market for AI Chips (00:47:56) Is the AI Boom Different? (00:51:08) Reinventing the Data Center (00:56:43) Scavenging Power (01:01:04) Where Compute Is Most Inefficient (01:07:02) Open Versus Closed Models (01:10:37) A Trillion Tokens a Day (01:12:42) The Contrarian Case on NVIDIA (01:14:38) Advice for AI Hardware Founders

Struggling to scale your ads? Spending more won't fix the problem. Let's figure out why your growth strategies are not working. Talk to us at https://www.tiereleven.com/apply You've hired agency after agency, and no matter what they try, you can't scale your Google Ads. You don't have a Google problem. It's a creative strategy problem. Until you fix demand creation, no amount of campaign optimization is going to get you unstuck.In this episode, I break down a real client situation: a 14-year-old B2B SaaS company spending upwards of $200K a month on Google Search with no good answer for why growth has stalled. I'll walk you through why Google is a demand-capture platform, not a demand-creation one, and why 80% of any market lives in what I call the "zone of indifference." We also look at why the real fix lives in creative strategy on Meta, programmatic, and connected TV, not another Google audit. If your cost of acquiring new customers keeps climbing no matter what you spend, this one's for you.In this episode:- Why Google Search has a demand capture ceiling- The difference between demand capture and demand creation channels - Why branded search clicks cost 10-20x less than non-branded keywords - The "zone of indifference" and why it's 80% of your market - Why the agency rotation trap makes Google Ads more expensive- Why hook rate and hold rate matter more than landing page optimization - The B2B creative mistake of writing ads for users instead of buyers - How messaging extraction uncovers what decision-makers care about - Three questions to ask your agency if your Google spend has stalledMentioned in the Episode: Case Study on Optimizing Ad Spend: https://perpetualtraffic.com/podcast/episode-801-from-2-5m-to-4m-a-month-ad-spend-barely-changed-heres-why/ Tier 11's Data Suite: https://www.tiereleven.com/what-we-do/data-suiteJoin Ralph Burns and John Moran every Friday for The Ad Lab Live: https://www.youtube.com/@Tier11/streams Listen to This Episode on Your Favorite Podcast Channel:Follow and listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/perpetual-traffic/id1022441491 Follow and listen on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/59lhtIWHw1XXsRmT5HBAuK Subscribe and watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@perpetual_traffic?sub_confirmation=1We Appreciate Your Support!Visit our website: https://perpetualtraffic.com/ Connect with Ralph Burns: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/ Hire Tier11 - https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now Mentioned in this episode:https://perpetualtraffic.com/advertise-with-us/

Send us Fan MailDesde un restaurante de antojitos oaxaqueños que no entiende por qué su negocio "tiene que ser tan diferente", hasta un doctor con 11 socios que no sabe si primero destrabar la visión compartida o meterle sistemas de una vez.En Cracks Business School me he dado cuenta que todos los negocios son iguales. Platicamos de ventas B2B predecibles, de un negocio de yogurt congelado que llegó a su madurez, de cómo construirle marca a una logística que vive "detrás" de las grandes marcas, y hasta qué tanto automatizar un hotel nuevo en Acapulco.Si quieres vivir esto en persona, nos vemos en Business Masters Live, 8-10 de octubre en CDMX — tres días full para llevarte tu negocio al siguiente nivel.

Send us Fan MailNick Hutchison walked into his senior year of college with a 0% homework average and zero interest in reading. Ten years later, he's read over 1,000 personal development books and built BookThinkers into a seven-figure book marketing agency serving hundreds of authors a year.In this conversation, Josh and Nick break down:• The reading system Nick uses to actually implement books instead of just consuming them• Why 4% of the books you read create 95% of the change in your life• The SMART goal framework you should set BEFORE opening page one• How Nick built BookThinkers as a side hustle while working a full-time B2B sales job• The failed Argentina app build that almost ended it before it started• The anonymous team survey that exposed his biggest leadership blind spot• The five-year "deposit strategy" that got Jim Kwik to invite him on stage• Why 84% of American adults read nothing — and how to reverse itIf you've ever finished a book and thought, "That was great — now what?" this episode is your operator's manual.——————————————CONNECT WITH NICKInstagram: @bookthinkersWebsite: bookthinkers.comGet his book: Rise Of The Reader (new edition launching November 1st)CONNECT WITH JOSHWebsite: joshkosnick.comInstagram: @joshkosnickGet The Kairos Code: joshkosnick.com/thekairoscodeRemember: the good and the great are the enemies of the possible. Lead like a Spartan today.CONNECT WITH ME HERE:FacebookInstagramLinkedInTwitterTikTokYouTubeSUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST HERE:Apple PodcastsSpotifyYouTube

Most CEOs think their sales problems are tactical but they're leadership challenges hiding in plain sight.   What you'll learn: a) Why most "closed won" deals aren't truly wins and how this tanks customer retention b) The surprising reason 61% of buyers now prefer a rep-free experience c) How outdated funnel thinking sabotages account growth in today's looping buyer journeys   Today, Janice B Gordon, the Customer Growth Expert, explains why sales underperformance is a leadership issue and how visionary CEOs can fix it to deliver predictable, scalable growth. She reveals the real reasons deal stall, buyers disconnect, and revenue growth flatlines in modern B2B sales.   Timestamps: 00:00 Uncomfortable truths about sales 2026 04:12 Message for CEOs and Founders 08:55 Rethinking the sales process 11:29 Improving sales approach strategy 13:16 Quarterly focus over long-term growth 17:26 Addressing structural issues in sales 20:58 Evaluating Leadership Capabilities 23:34 Addressing Leadership and Capability Gaps 27:34 Sales issues and leadership discussion   Connect with Janice Book Janice to speak at your next sales or leadership event: https://janicebgordon.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/janice-b-gordon/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janicebgordon Scale Your Sales Podcast: https://scaleyoursales.co.uk/podcast Enjoy the episode? Share your takeaway in the comments and leave a review on Apple Podcasts to help more leaders discover the show.

B2B marketer confidence jumped this year. But when researchers asked finance leaders the same questions, only 12% said marketing's financial impact holds up under pressure.This week, Elena and Rob talk with Daniel Sills of NewtonX and Dagmara Szulce of the ANA about their new Confident B2B Marketer study. They unpack why marketer confidence is rising, and why finance and revenue leaders aren't yet convinced. The group breaks down the vocabulary gap driving that disconnect, and how confident marketers grew brand investment in a year when most companies cut back.Topics covered: [03:00] Key findings from the Confident B2B Marketer study [04:00] What's driving marketer confidence up this year [09:00] The vocabulary gap between marketing and finance [12:00] How confident marketers grew brand budgets under pressure [18:00] Marketing to complex buying groups and AI search [22:00] Using AI without losing your data foundation [26:00] The one move to make before your next budget cycle To learn more, visit marketingarchitects.com/podcast or subscribe to our newsletter at marketingarchitects.com/newsletter. Resources: 2025 ANA and NewtonX Confident B2B Marketer Study: https://www.newtonx.com/article/confident-b2b-marketer-2026/Daniel Sills' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielpsills/Dagmara Szulce's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dagmaraszulce/NewtonX Website: https://www.newtonx.com/work-with-us/?utm_campaign=50131755-PER-PC-General-Podcast-Campaign-All-2026-01-01&utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=Marketing%20ArchitectsANA Website: https://www.ana.net/ Get more research-backed marketing strategies by subscribing to The Marketing Architects on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Lindsay Rios is a Fractional CRO & owner of GTM Done Right, helping B2B companies turn accidental growth into intentional growth. Many of the businesses she works with have built revenue growth through referrals, word of mouth and organic inbound. But eventually those channels stop producing the same results, growth becomes less predictable, and leadership realizes they need a more intentional go-to-market strategy. This is where Lindsay comes in to identify the real causes of stalled growth, whether it's a misaligned ICP, a disconnected revenue strategy or what she famously calls a "poopy pipeline." Lindsay also partners alongside Mandy McEwen, where they help business with their revenue growth by integrating social selling into their GTM strategy. Links https://www.lindsayrios.com https://yourfuturebiz.com https://nextwave.golumi.io If you're enjoying Entrepreneur's Enigma, please give me a review on the podcast directory of your choice. The show is on all of them and these reviews really help others find the show. iTunes: https://gmwd.us/itunes Podchaser: https://gmwd.us/podchaser TrueFans: https://gmwd.us/truefans Also, if you're getting value from the show and want to buy me a coffee, go to the show notes to get the link to get me a coffee to keep me awake, while I work on bringing you more great episodes to your ears. →  https://ko-fi.com/entrepreneursenigma Support me on TrueFans.fm → https://gmwd.us/truefans. Support The Show & Get Merch: https://shop.entrepreneursenigma.com Want to learn from a 15 year veteran? Check out the Podcast Mastery Community:https://www.skool.com/podcasting Follow Seth Online: Instagram: https://instagram.com/s3th.me LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethmgoldstein/ Seth On Mastodon: https://indieweb.social/@phillycodehound The Marketing Junto Newsletter: https://MarketingJunto.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did a $4M Amazon brand become a supplier to Amazon itself? Discover its Amazon B2B strategy, PPC shift, hidden Amazon programs, AI tools, and competitor tactics driving its next stage of growth.   ► Watch the Podcasts On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Helium10SeriousSellersPodcast?sub_confirmation=1 ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft   What happens when a decades-old industrial business starts treating Amazon like a serious growth channel? In this episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley Sutton sits down with Angie Mosqueda from Stardust, a company aiming for roughly $4 million in Amazon sales this year. What began as a traditional B2B business selling industrial products through distributors has evolved into a sophisticated Amazon operation with high-ticket products, business pricing, PPC clicks that can reach $20 or more, and even a six-figure-per-month product. But one of Stardust's biggest opportunities didn't come from a new keyword or advertising campaign. Through persistent networking at Amazon events and leveraging its business certifications, the company eventually became a preferred seller to Amazon itself—meaning Amazon warehouses can now purchase Stardust products. The company also became a preferred seller for Chicago Public Schools through Amazon Business. Angie explains how these opportunities took roughly a year and a half of networking, follow-ups, and navigating Amazon's programs, showing why sellers shouldn't overlook certifications, Amazon Business, or simply getting in the room with the right people. Angie also shares why Stardust recently moved its Amazon advertising away from outside agencies and brought PPC management in-house using Helium 10 Ads. While the account's overall numbers previously looked healthy, getting closer to the data exposed wasted spend hiding underneath those top-level metrics. She also explains how she's using Helium 10 Audience to validate creative decisions and the Helium 10 MCP with Claude to analyze bids, identify opportunities, make changes, and learn Amazon advertising as she goes. Bradley wraps up the episode with a live Cerebro deep dive into Stardust's top-selling spill kit, revealing how sellers can identify their real competitors, compare relative organic rank, uncover keyword gaps, and study historical advertising and BSR trends. Instead of guessing what might move the needle, sellers can reverse-engineer what changed when a competitor's sales and rankings improved. Stardust may already be approaching $4 million on Amazon, but this episode proves an important lesson: no matter how established your business becomes, there's always another layer of opportunity hiding in the data. In episode 762 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Angie discuss: 00:00 - Introduction 03:37 - Taking A Legacy B2B Brand Online 06:30 - Why Their PPC Clicks Cost $20+ 09:02 - Launching New Products On Amazon 11:49 - Becoming A Supplier To Amazon Warehouses 13:16 - Unlocking Amazon Business Preferred Seller Programs 15:39 - Certifications And Networking With Amazon 16:23 - Bringing Amazon PPC Management In-House 17:34 - Using Helium 10 Audience And AI 19:11 - Managing Amazon Ads With MCP 22:49 - Bradley's Live Cerebro Competitor Analysis 33:50 - Reverse-Engineering Competitor Growth Strategies

This year I set my sights on closing seven figure contracts, and I quickly realized that wanting the deal isn't enough. I had to change who I was showing up as first.In this episode I break down the truth about growing past your current deal size:Why you can change without growing, but you can't grow without changingGetting clear on your goals so doubt has less room to creep inCommunicating your sacrifices instead of just making them, including how I talk to my daughter about the work I doSeparating from the people who oppose you, even when their opposition comes from a good placeIf you're a B2B coach, consultant, or entrepreneur working toward your next level, whether that's your first 10K client or your first seven figure contract, this episode gives you the framework I'm using to get there.-----Are you ready to build credibility, generate qualified leads consistently, and close premium deals?Book a discovery call to learn about the Podcast Client System here: https://www.joewintersjr.com/start

Watch the full episode on our YouTube channel: youtube.com/@mreapodcastWhat if we stopped asking AI questions and started giving it jobs?John Lee is a New York Times best-selling author, serial entrepreneur, and AI expert who built his career from a dishwasher to an animator to a business owner. He joins us to break down how real estate agents can use AI to automate repetitive work, sharpen sales conversations, build a personal brand, and create more leverage.We also dig into John's bigger philosophy around money. He challenges us to think beyond income and status and focus on freedom, impact, and mission. His message is simple: start experimenting, build confidence by doing, and use AI to create more room for the work that matters most.Resources:Read Money Unlocked: How to Make It, Keep It, and Multiply It by John LeeVisit John Lee at johnlee.com Order the Millionaire Real Estate Agent Playbook | Volume 3Connect with Jason:LinkedinProduced by NOVAThis podcast is for general informational purposes only. The views, thoughts, and opinions of the guest represent those of the guest and not  Keller Williams Realty, LLC and its affiliates, and should not be construed as financial, economic, legal, tax, or other advice. This podcast is provided without any warranty, or guarantee of its accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or results from using the information.WARNING! You must comply with the TCPA and any other federal, state or local laws, including for B2B calls and texts. Never call or text a number on any Do Not Call list, and do not use an autodialer or artificial voice or prerecorded messages without proper consent. Contact your attorney to ensure your compliance.

Buyers have more information than ever, but that does not mean they have more confidence.In this episode, John sits down with Zachary Gropper, Founder and CEO of Insight Revenue, to talk about Challenger, platform sales, AI research, buyer validation, and why old sales motions are breaking under modern buying pressure. Zachary brings a practical lens from his years around CEB, Gartner, Challenger, Pavilion, and the teams now trying to sell more complex platform solutions in a market full of stalled deals.If you are in sales, leadership, enablement, or go-to-market strategy, this conversation gives you a clearer way to think about insight, trust, buyer confidence, change management, and what sales reps still need to do when buyers already show up with AI-generated research.Want to build a stronger sales motion before buyers get even harder to move? Visit Visit www.jbarrows.com and learn how you can Make It Happen.What You'll LearnWhy simply sending methodology books does not change sales behaviorHow AI can make reps sound smart while weakening real credibilityWhy buyers now need validation and trust before they commitHow platform sales require change management, not just product positioningWhy sellers need to build a bridge from customer strategy to the outcomeWhy asking why matters when buyers come to the call with AI researchZachary Gropper is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Insight Revenue. With more than twenty years studying the art and science of B2B sales and marketing best practice at CEB, Gartner, Challenger, and Pavilion, he helps commercial teams bring repeatable practices, processes, and go-to-market strategies into companies of any size or industry.Connect with Zachary Gropper:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zgropper/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zgropper/Learn more About Insight Revenue:Website: https://www.insightrevenue.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/insightrevenue/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCutptmXap5pi5PuPZcU1fDQJohn Barrows is a sales trainer, speaker, and founder of JB Sales with over 25 years of experience in the industry. He has made hundreds of cold calls a week, led startups to acquisition, and trained high-performing teams at companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Okta. Through JB Sales, John focuses on practical sales execution—helping reps fill pipeline, close deals, and build trust with buyers in today's AI-driven sales environment.Connect with John Barrows:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbarrows/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnmbarrows/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@johnmbarrows Check out John's Membership: https://go.jbarrows.com/ Join John's Newsletter: https://www.jbarrows.com/newsletter

#384 | A lot of people say B2B marketing is boring - those people couldn't possibly be in B2B. Take Clare Corriveau, VP of Marketing at Tekmetric: her buyer is an auto repair shop owner who isn't on LinkedIn, doesn't check email, and isn't downloading anything. Clare walks through how Tekmetric built its messaging around a founder who ran a shop for a decade, why every new hire visits an actual shop before touching a campaign, and how peer groups and an unmanaged 6,000-member Facebook community became a real lever in the company's growth engine. This episode focuses on marketing to an overlooked B2B category, and the huge upside that comes with it. The opportunity is anything but boring.Timestamps(00:00) - - Why "boring" B2B categories are actually the biggest opportunity (06:00) - - Why a founder who ran a shop for 10 years shapes every messaging decision (11:00) - - Events at scale: 100+ a year, plus a 1,000-person first-time conference (17:00) - - What the VP of Marketing job really is (21:00) - - Hiring humans when everyone is saying AI will replace them (24:00) - - Betting on channels the team almost skipped: Bing and Facebook (26:00) - - Peer groups and a 6,000 member Facebook community (30:00) - - How to get customers to love, support, and defend your brand (37:00) - - The real competitor is status quo (38:00) - - Why new hires visit a real shop before they touch a campaign (45:00) - - The opportunity: 5% market share in a category growing 50% a year Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletterLearn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/***Brought to you by:Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.Customer.io - An AI powered customer engagement platform that help marketers turn first-party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS, and push. Learn more at customer.io/exitfive.Vector - A contact-level ads platform that lets you build audiences from actual people on your site, clicking your ads, and checking out your competitors. Learn how to build an ABM program that scales at vector.co/exitfive.Join us in Stowe, Vermont for Drive 2026 - three days away from your desk to learn what's working in B2B marketing from the people who are actually doing it. Grab your ticket at exitfive.com/drive.Walker Sands - An integrated B2B marketing and growth services agency that helps marketing leaders turn strategy into measurable business impact through their Outcome-based Marketing model. Learn more at walkersands.com/exitfive.***Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.Visit hatch.fm to learn more

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

Quantas horas o seu time ainda perde resolvendo o que a tecnologia já deveria ter resolvido sozinha? Neste episódio, recebemos Thaise Hagge, COO & CTO do Compra Agora, plataforma B2B que nasceu dentro da Unilever e hoje conecta mais de 30 indústrias, 150 distribuidores e cerca de 530 mil lojistas em todo o Brasil. Ela conta como a reconstrução completa da tecnologia da empresa, migrada por regiões ao longo de um ano sem parar a operação, mudou a forma de decidir prioridades e permitiu que a inteligência artificial passasse a resolver 98% dos chamados no momento em que são abertos. Ficou curioso? Então, dê o play!Assuntos abordados:Migração de sistemas;Gestão de mudança;CTO e COO;Programa Conecta;IA em atendimento;Jornada de compra B2B;Expansão de segmento;Eficiência operacional.Links importantes:NewsletterDúvidas? Nos mande pelo LinkedinContato:  osagilistas@dtidigital.com.brOs Agilistas é uma iniciativa da dti digital, uma empresa WPP #eficienciaoperacional

Join the Millionaire University AI Mastermind at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠MillionaireUniversity.com/AI #1048 LinkedIn isn't just a “nice to have” anymore — it might be the fastest way to build real B2B pipeline if you know how to play the game! In this episode, host Brien Gearin sits down with Shamus Madan, founder of Dealroom Media, to break down how his team helps founders go viral on LinkedIn and turn content into sales conversations. Shamus shares his origin story (starting a podcast at 15, working his way up to landing Mark Cuban), the hard pivot that saved his business after nearly running out of money, and the simple system they use today: biweekly founder interviews, turning those into high-performing posts, scheduling + approvals, and tracking results. They also unpack the difference between “virality” vs. “pipeline content,” the three ingredients of a winning LinkedIn hook, how often to post, what actually matters on your profile, and why content-first companies will win the next decade! (Original Air Date - 12/22/25) What we discuss with Shamus: + LinkedIn as a pipeline engine + Virality vs. pipeline content + Founder-led personal brands + Three-part viral hook formula + Biweekly SME interviews + Content from conversations + Posting frequency (3–5/week) + Profile optimization basics + Month-to-month client model + Content-first growth strategy Thank you, Shamus! Check out Dealroom Media at ⁠Dealroom.media⁠. Watch the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠video podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ of this episode! Get your FREE 5 Minute Business Plan at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠MillionaireUniversity.com/Plan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To get exclusive offers mentioned in this episode and to support the show, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠MillionaireUniversity.com/Sponsors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Unwritten Rules of CRO Survival | Rick Smolen, CRO @ ShipHero Rick Smolen, CRO of ShipHero and sales advisor to Riverwood Capital's portfolio of more than 2 dozen enterprise software companies, joins Sam Jacobs, AJ Bruno, and Asad Zaman to argue that AI is leverage rather than a shortcut. Topics include why AI note-takers quietly degrade seller performance, why ShipHero has not raised a single quota despite real AI investment, and why the leading AI companies keep hiring classic enterprise CROs. Plus Rick's scorecard for judging revenue leadership beyond the number, an honest conversation about getting fired, and a bull case for HubSpot. In short... big episode! Key Takeaways: - AI widens the gap between the best and worst sellers instead of lifting everyone, and Rick Smolen, CRO at ShipHero, frames it in financial terms: "It's like debt... debt is leverage. It can make performance exceptionally good, or it can bankrupt you." His prediction is that the strongest performers get 10x better while the weakest become "unmistakable and hard to hide." - Outsourcing note-taking to an AI tool costs sellers the exact signal that closes enterprise deals. As Rick put it: "the computer can't capture the tone, can't capture the nuance, can't capture the content." His warning to any rep who treats it as time saved: "when a seller is going to say, oh cool, I don't have to do note-taking anymore, like their performance is going to go backwards." - The 3-to-5x rep productivity story does not survive contact with an enterprise sales cycle. Despite meaningful AI investment and measurable conversion-rate gains, Rick reports that at ShipHero "we have not raised quotas on anybody on the team," adding that "I don't believe that if I was to double somebody's quota that I give them any chance to be successful." - The AI-native companies scaling fastest are staffing go-to-market with the most traditional enterprise leaders available. Asad Zaman, CEO at STA, walks through the CRO hires at OpenAI, Cursor, Factory, and Anthropic and lands on the pattern: "we're back to like, let's just hire John McMahon's disciples and let them run at the market." Connect with the Hosts & Guests: Host: Sam Jacobs, CEO at Pavilion - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfjacobs/ Host: AJ Bruno, CEO at QuotaPath - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajbruno3/ Host: Asad Zaman, CEO at STA - https://www.linkedin.com/in/azaman1/ Guest: Rick Smolen, CRO at ShipHero - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricksmolen/ Topline is more than a YouTube Channel: Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://toplinemedia.substack.com/ Tune into Topline Podcast, the #1 podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-podcast Join the free Topline Slack channel to connect with 600+ revenue leaders to keep the conversation going beyond the podcast: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-slack Chapters:  00:00 Introducing Rick Smolen 02:37 AI Is Not Good Or Bad 05:19 The AI Slop Email Mystery 08:25 AI Note-Takers And Lost Nuance 12:01 The Best Get Better, The Rest Worse 15:24 The Soft Part Of Enterprise Sales 18:24 Can Reps Be 5x More Productive? 23:09 Have Quotas Gone Up At ShipHero? 26:48 Why AI Firms Hire Classic CROs 30:48 What Is Driving Pipeline Now 49:37 Leadership In A Confused World 56:44 Should A CRO Jump Ship? 59:35 Have A Plan, Not Excuses 1:06:08 Bulls And Bears: HubSpot 1:09:32 Vibe-Coded Demos And FDE Teams

Phil wants to buy a business and he's got a great network built up over the years who can help him grow a B2B services company, but being in a smaller city means he's got limited options and the best businesses are taken right away? What are his options? Should he do his own search? Start something? How could he grow his search to other cities in a manageable way? What about a manufacturing business that is actually a carveout? Are there things to be careful of in that situation? Watch now on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4xsqf-ehvvk **** - Join David's email list so you never miss any new videos or important information or insights, RECEIVE 7 FREE GIFTS!!- https://www.DavidCBarnettList.com **** Do Business with David using these incredible internet links... - David's Blog where you can find hundreds of free videos and articles, https://www.DavidCBarnett.com - Book a call with David and let him help you with your project, https://www.CallDavidBarnett.com - Learn how to buy a successful and profitable business in a risk-controlled way https://www.BusinessBuyerAdvantage.com - Get help selling your business, https://www.HowToSellMyOwnBusiness.com - Get better organized in your business, https://www.EasySmallBizSystems.com - Learn to make better cash flow forecasts and write incredibly effective business plans from scratch!, https://www.BizPlanSchool.com - Learn to build an equity asset with insurance! visit https://www.NewBankingSolution.com -Did you sign up for an expensive Merchant Cash Advance for your business and now struggle to make the payments? Find out how you can negotiate your way out at https://www.EndMyMCA.com

What if the biggest barrier to scaling your retail media investment isn't technology, but a fundamental disagreement on what success even looks like?Agility requires not just adopting new tools, but also being willing to challenge the measurement frameworks we've grown accustomed to.Today, we're going to talk about the nuanced world of in-store retail media measurement and why the old rules no longer apply. Specifically, we'll cover:- Why the standard approach to measuring in-store media, often borrowed from digital, is creating friction and stalling budget growth.- How to create a unified measurement language that aligns brands, retailers, and agencies around a common definition of success.- Practical steps to move in-store media from experimental budgets to scalable, repeatable investments grounded in actual product movement.To help me discuss this topic and ISM and IAB's recent report, I'd like to welcome Paul Brenner, SVP, Global Retail Media and Partnerships at In-Store Marketplace (ISM) and Collin Colburn, Vice President, Commerce & Retail Media at IAB) and Collin Colburn, Vice President, Commerce & Retail Media at IAB.About Paul BrennerPaul Brenner is Senior Vice President of Retail Media and Partnerships with 25+ years of leadership in media, entertainment, and ad tech. He has led innovation in audio and broadcast, driving advancements in audience measurement, in-car experiences, and data attribution, and later scaling in-store audio advertising through strategic growth and partnerships. Known for identifying high-impact technology and revenue opportunities, Paul now focuses on evolving the in-store retail media landscape.Paul Brenner on LinkedInAbout Collin ColburnCollin Colburn serves as Vice President, Commerce & Retail Media at IAB where he leads the Commerce Center of Excellence. In this role, he drives innovation, education, and standards across the commerce ecosystem to help brands, retailers, and technology partners deliver better media opportunities, customer experiences, and business outcomes. Prior to IAB, Collin led Growth and Go-To-Market Strategy at Horizon Commerce and spent over a decade at Forrester, where he pioneered the firm's performance marketing and retail media practice. He partnered with B2B and B2C CMOs to advance their marketing strategies, while also expanding Forrester's Fortune 500 client portfolio. Collin's insights have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Digiday, and MediaPost. A popular industry speaker, Collin has keynoted global industry events in addition to being a quarterly guest on Bloomberg TV.Collin Colburn on LinkedIn---------- Resources ----------In-Store Marketplace (ISM)The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems.Read the report mentioned in the show.We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save!Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit!Chaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Learn more at trychaser.com and use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).The most influential minds in software, AI, and engineering leadership will be at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, September 23-25 in San Jose.Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off.Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show.Connect with Greg on LinkedInDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more.Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology.The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two chefs. Two friends. One of them is getting ready to leave Florida and begin a new chapter. Chefs David Reyes and Nelly Buleje join Walk-In Talk for a conversation about something that goes far beyond what happens on the plate: mental health in the kitchen, camaraderie, and what it really means to show up for the people beside you. With Nelly preparing to move to North Carolina, the two friends look back at how their relationship developed through the industry, the pressures chefs often carry without talking about them, and why having people who recognize when you're not okay can matter as much as anything you learn in a kitchen. Of course, we still cook. Both chefs put their own spin on Crab Island Seafood Dip. David creates fried taquitos featuring Mexican Street Corn Crab Dip and shrimp, with salsa falsa, mole amarillo, salsa macha, charred corn, pickled onion and cilantro. Nelly brings his culinary perspective to a Causa à la Limeña featuring Crab Rangoon Dip, crab, avocado, pickled onion, quail egg, ají ricoto and olives. It's part farewell, part celebration and a conversation about the friendships this industry creates—and how those relationships can continue long after two chefs stop sharing the same kitchen or the same city. The Companies Helping Shape Hospitality Metro Foodservice Solutions - Commercial-grade storage, transport, and workflow systems that help professional kitchens operate efficiently. RAK Porcelain USA - Professional tableware built for performance, durability, and presentation at the highest level. TriMark USA - North America's largest foodservice design, equipment, and supplies provider, helping operators build smarter, more efficient kitchens. Testo North America - Precision measurement and food safety solutions designed for professional hospitality operations. Crab Island Seafood - Florida-based manufacturer of premium seafood dips and spreads inspired by coastal flavors. Citrus America - Commercial juicing solutions delivering consistency, speed, and quality to foodservice operators. Cahaba Club – Growing exceptional herbs, edible flowers, and specialty produce that bring fresh flavor and vibrant presentation to our studio kitchen. Shogun Farms - produces premium Florida wild boar through ethical sourcing, humane raising, and a natural feeding program that delivers exceptional flavor from farm to table. Walk-In Talk Media proudly supports organizations making a measurable impact on hospitality professionals and communities across North America and beyond. Operation BBQ Relief - Disaster response through hot meals served by culinary volunteers across the country. Sustainable Supperclub - Community driven dining experiences focused on sustainability, food access, and social impact. The Burnt Chef Project North America – Supporting mental health awareness and wellbeing throughout the hospitality industry.   Industry Events & Media Partnerships Florida Restaurant Show - Official Media Partner delivering on-site coverage of operators, suppliers, chefs, and hospitality innovation throughout the Southeast.  New York Restaurant Show - Official Media Partner highlighting the people, products, and stories shaping hospitality across the Northeast.  California Restaurant Show - Official Media Partner covering West Coast hospitality innovation, culinary trends, and foodservice leadership.  Pizza Tomorrow Summit - Official Media Partner covering the latest innovations, leadership, and growth in the pizza industry.  U.S. Culinary Open -Official Media Partner documenting one of America's premier live culinary competitions and the chefs competing at the highest level.  Creative Loafing Tampa Bay - Regional media partner sharing stories from the people, restaurants, and events shaping Tampa Bay's hospitality community. About Walk-In Talk Media Walk-In Talk Media is an industry-recognized B2B food and hospitality media company focused on chef-driven storytelling and real conversations inside the business of food.  Through cinematic video, photography, podcasting, documentaries, and live event coverage, Walk-In Talk Media highlights the chefs, operators, brands, and organizations shaping the future of hospitality.  From Michelin-starred chefs and independent restaurants to manufacturers, distributors, and industry associations, Walk-In Talk Media exists to tell the stories moving hospitality forward.      

https://youtu.be/7yugccgcgs8 Justin Nassiri, Founder and CEO of Executive Presence, is driven by the power of human connection and a mission to harvest CEO stories that reveal authentic experiences and valuable insights. By serving as thought partners to C-suite executives, Justin and his team transform personal perspectives, mistakes, and lessons into compelling LinkedIn content that builds trust and distinguishes leaders from generic, AI-generated voices. In this conversation, Justin introduces The Content Strategy Framework—Use the 40:30:20:10 Content Formula, Harvest Stories, Borrow Thought Patterns, and Apply Curiosity. He explains why leaders should build visibility through personal profiles, how skilled interviewers uncover stories executives may overlook, and why Thought Leader Ads can extend the reach of proven content. Justin also discusses growing through referrals and warm relationships, using 10-week improvement cycles to revisit every business process, and developing autonomous team members who use AI to solve problems while preserving human connection. — Harvest CEO Stories with Justin Nassiri  Good day, listeners. Steve Preda here, and my guest today again is Justin Nassiri, the Founder and CEO of Executive Presence, a fully managed LinkedIn thought leadership service for C-suite executives at growth-stage B2B companies. Justin, welcome back to the show.  Great to be back. Thanks, Steve.  So we just reminisced that it was three years almost to the day that you came here, and I can’t believe it. It feels like yesterday. But your business has grown dramatically during that time, so I think you have some new insights that you’ll be able to share with us, I’m sure.  Thank you. It’s good to be back. We just made the Inc. 5000 list, which is a first for me. I’ve never been on that before, but we’re celebrating that.  Yeah. Congratulations. That’s a great milestone to hit. And you only started in 2022, right?  Yeah, yeah.  So, pretty freshly minted, fast-growing Inc. 5000. So my question to you is, what is your personal why, and how are you manifesting it in Executive Presence, in your business?  There’s a very potent macro or micro why for me, and then probably a broader why. I think that the biggest why for me right now, like many parents, is my kids. I’ve got a three- and a seven-year-old. And so when I think of my professional life, I certainly think about not just providing for them but also trying to set an example of someone who is trying to do their best and trying to stretch and trying to grow.Share on X  And so I think that’s probably the highest leverage that I have. But I think the through line in the companies that I’ve done is just the value of human connection. My first company was all about companies using Instagram in a way to be more authentic and more genuine with their community, and that’s very true to what we’re doing now at Executive Presence, just really helping people connect to other people.  In this case, it’s executives using LinkedIn to connect with a broader audience, but I really feel like that human connection is so important, and I think it’s becoming even more important in the era of AI. So that’s a little bit more specific why in what I do right now.  Yeah, it’s fascinating how human connection is evolving in the age of AI, and I agree. I mean, I see that because there’s so much more noise out there, human connection is perhaps more important than ever. People want to make sure that they are talking to authentic people and hearing from authentic people who have authentic lived experience. So how does that impact communication for executives on LinkedIn? How do they have to evolve their voice or how they approach things?  I think if you look at LinkedIn in particular right now, I think it still remains the place where the largest source of our professional network is. And so I think there’s still a lot of value there, and I think that LinkedIn is facing a lot of growing pains. Specifically, I think that there are three things driving it. One is more people are just showing up on the platform. The secret is out, and people realize that there’s value to LinkedIn.  So, all things else equal, more people are more active on LinkedIn, which generates a lot of noise. And then the second thing is AI is making it easier to create content, so I think it’s creating not just more content, but lower-quality content. And then the third thing is it does seem as if LinkedIn is following what Facebook did over a decade ago and saying, “Look, to get reach, you’ve got to put money into ads now.”  And we saw that transition with Facebook company pages a long time ago, but it really does feel like you cannot get as much visibility today as you could have two years ago unless there’s some sort of ad buy behind it. And so I think those are kind of the three problems. I think that the answer is still there’s value in showing up, but I think that you have to show up even more human. I think that the experiences that make you unique and the mistakes that make you who you are and the things that you know and the stories that you can tell, those still hold value, and that differentiates you from generic or AI-generated content.  I also think that there’s value to using LinkedIn ads, and we can talk about that, but I think that that has to be part of one’s strategy now if you’re trying to significantly use LinkedIn for what it’s good for, which is brand building.  Yeah, and maybe this is a slight question, then we’re going to talk to you about the framework. But as I understand, LinkedIn now allows individuals to also boost their posts as opposed to just companies, which used to be the case in the past. So how does it impact companies? Is there more emphasis now? Is emphasis shifting to individual posts because there’s no real reason to build up the company pages? How is that evolving?  Yeah, I mean, four years ago when I started the company, before these Thought Leader Ads, these individual people ads were a thing, I still would’ve said to you, “Look, there’s not much value in company pages. People connect with other people. They’re not going to connect with a faceless organization.” So even four years ago, I would’ve said, “Man, if you really want to raise visibility for your organization, you’ve got to do that through your key leaders.  You’ve got to do that through actual names and faces and voices and perspectives.” And I think that the ads make that even more pronounced now because I can now take my personal post as Justin Nassiri. If it does well on LinkedIn, I can put a $50 or $500 ad buy against it, and I can make sure that essentially specific people are going to see my post. If I’m selling to CEOs of tech companies in Cincinnati that have grown 10% last year and they’ve been at their company for five years, I can have an insane level of targeting, and I could put my personal content in front of them in a way that most people still don’t realize is an ad.  It will say, “Promoted by,” and then the company name, so “Promoted by Executive Presence.” Most people, when scrolling, don’t even notice that. Yeah. And so I think there’s a tremendous opportunity then to take very human and personal content and put it in front of exactly whoever you’re trying to get in front of.  Yeah, I love that. You also say on your LinkedIn page that it takes an executive only 90 minutes a month to actually work with you guys and have you amplify them. So how do you extract all those personal stories and experiences? What is your framework for that so that when you meet with an executive, you’re able to create those posts without them having to be involved? Yeah, I think the framework is pretty universal for anyone listening. We tend to start with the content strategy. And the way that we typically start is we’ll say, okay, 40% of the content we would call industry thought leadership. And that is great if you can talk about current events and relate them to your industry. It’s great if you can share things about your industry that no one knows or that you disagree with people.  But do that 40%, which is the biggest of any of the categories, as really the education, as the subject matter expert. You are showing up as an authority in cybersecurity, or you are showing up as an authority in leadership, or you’re showing up as an authority in B2B supply chain. And I think the key here is the more niche, the better. The more narrow, the better. We are not Joe Rogan. We’re not trying to get 300 million people to look at your content. We want to get in front of a very narrow group of people, typically prospects, customers, potential employees, potential investors.  We really want to narrow where your voice can be fairly large in a very finite realm. So that's the industry thought leadership piece.Share on X The second one, about 30% of the content, we call it leadership and career journey. And what we’re trying to do here is a blend of humanizing the executive while also giving them credibility. And so if we are working with someone who is a CEO at a company, well, they’ve done things prior to that. So what did they learn in college or a previous workplace? What was a mistake that they made? What was a mentor that said something to them?  So that’s a way of us imparting one of their values or something that they know, but wrapped in a story from their history, which humanizes them. And that would be generally 30% of the content. Twenty percent, obviously they’re doing this to promote their company, so 20% would be about their company, spotlighting an employee, recent events, things like that. Again, trying to do it through stories if possible. And then the last 10% is usually the highest-performing 10%, and we would call that work-adjacent content. So we want to, again, make them a three-dimensional person. What do they do outside of the office? Is that family?  And we usually use what we call the dinner party test for this. If you were with prospects and potential employees, what’s fair game to talk about over dinner and drinks? Some people would definitely talk about their kids. Some people would never talk about their kids. Some would talk about their hobbies. Some would never talk about that. So that's a good filter to figure out what they could talk about that's not just always talking shop. So that's kind of the framework that we use.Share on X  But I think that the way that we harvest this information is really the skill of the people that I hire on my team. It’s people who are really good at pulling insights out of someone and getting someone to open up and having that heat-seeking missile approach of, what is a story that they’re sitting on that they don’t even realize is a compelling story? And that’s one thing that has stood out. Some of the best-performing LinkedIn posts, the person didn’t even think that that would be interesting to anyone else.  We’re often not the best filter for ourselves of what’s going to land. And that’s one of the values of LinkedIn, is that you can actually put out ideas and stories and insights, and very quickly, in an 18-hour time period, get signal from the market if people value that from you or not, and then follow that trend.  Yeah. That’s fascinating, and it sounds a little bit like being a ghostwriter for someone, that you can really get those stories out and you can have them open up so that their brain is going to surface those things that maybe they don’t think about. Maybe they are not extroverted and they won’t be able to bring this up on their own. But if you catalyze it, then they come to life that way.  Yeah. I think of it as a thought partner. I kind of realized this because I hosted a podcast for a long time as well, and you kind of realize the power—exactly what you’re doing—the power of curiosity and the power of distance, right? You are showing up, you’re curious about my experience.  You have enough distance from it that you’re asking questions that might even seem intuitive to me, or it might be one of those things where I’m like, “Well, everyone knows this.” But then you bring an outsider in, and it’s like, “No, not everyone knows this,” or, “I think people would find this interesting.” So having that thought partner to be the outside observer of what others would benefit from.  Yeah. That’s amazing. That’s a real skill, and that also brings in that human skill that an AI is not going to be able to prompt those kinds of questions, that kind of curiosity, that there’s an emotional driver behind it. That’s a very journalistic trait, I suppose. That’s a new form of journalism that you’re practicing here, isn’t it?  Yeah, it is. And the type of person I hire to do that are ex-consultants because they’re really good. They’re really good at coming into a business and understanding the objective and understanding how to get very senior people—because we work with CEOs of publicly traded companies and CEOs of smaller companies—to really get very prominent people to open up. And being comfortable interrupting or redirecting or pushing back, it really is a unique skill set.  Yeah, I love that. So that brings me to my next question. What drives growth in your business? How did you get, in four years, on the Inc. 5000? What was the engine here, the fuel?  Well, it’s so funny because I ask this of every CEO I meet with as well, to learn from them. Everyone always says referrals, so I’ll be generic and say referrals do drive—it’s probably the single biggest source of revenue. When I first started the company, I actually used LinkedIn. And so this actually came out of another company that I was running, and they had the idea. And so I went to LinkedIn and I said, “I think that the type of person who would be interested in this is CEOs of companies with at least 50 employees.” And I put that into Sales Navigator, and it came up with a couple hundred first-degree connections.  And I just sent out a fairly generic message of, “Hey, Steve, just wanted to give you a quick update. I’m launching this new service, and this is what we do. Let me know if you know of anyone who would like to chat.” And I actually got probably 60 or 70K in monthly recurring revenue from that, of people I wasn’t really aware of what they were up to. One of the guys who’s still a client, I had met with him 10 years previously when he was an investor, and then now he was CEO and founder of a company that ultimately went public.  So I wouldn’t have thought of that person, but that’s a great thing about LinkedIn, of saying, “Here’s someone who might be interested in what I’m doing.” And so that sort of outbound of warm connections has played a role. Obviously, I’m active on LinkedIn. I get a lot of leads from that. I do a fairly good job of keeping in touch with my network and seeing when people might be needing us. I think, back to the human connection, I do think conferences are playing a bigger role.  I’m starting to go to more conferences and realizing the value of meeting people in person and how that kind of seems to accelerate the process of building trust and building relationships. We do cold email. We do AdWords. We do a newsletter. We do a lot of content marketing, and so I think each of them plays their own part. But referrals certainly are the biggest one. LinkedIn is probably number two. Yeah. That’s very interesting. And do you see a lot of competitors? Is this a crowded field?  It is. We have expanded beyond LinkedIn largely because of the competitive nature, where I think just as people have flocked to LinkedIn. I would say the biggest faction is a lot of solopreneurs. A lot of individuals will work with a few executives, and so that’s probably the lower-level competitors. There are a handful of companies that are doing something similar to us, and then more established PR companies that will say, “Yes, we do LinkedIn as well.” But I think at this point, we’ve got the deepest track record of executives.  We work with over 400 now, which, as far as I’m aware, is the largest set. We actually present our data to LinkedIn every year because it is the largest data set of just executives rather than influencers. And I think the play for most professionals and most executives is different than what an influencer would do on a platform like LinkedIn, and I think it’s important to do what’s appropriate for an executive.  So you mentioned on your LinkedIn page that you bootstrapped this company to three million ARR.  Yep.  So what do you expect to be different from going from 60,000 monthly recurring, 700 ARR, to three million, to going from three million to 10 million? How is it going to be different?  Yeah, that’s such a good question. And I balance this because I really like Paul Graham’s thought that you have to do things that are not scalable to be able to scale. And so oftentimes, I’m looking for things to do consistently, but it’s really helpful for me not to constrain myself in that way and to think of things that—it still feels like guerrilla warfare at times—what are little things that we can do to get an edge?  I think that the thing that I think about most right now in getting from three to 10 million is creating a machine for experimentation, and experimentation not just in our service, but also in our sales and marketing. And so how do we create a culture? Let’s just take the service side of things. I never want our service to plateau. I have run a company before where our product became stale and a competitor put us out of business. I never want that to happen again. And that the way that we minimize the probability that that happens is that we are always experimenting.  We are always listening to our clients and understanding what else we could do to make their life better.Share on X But then we’re also looking at the market and thinking, what else might our clients not even realize they need but would benefit from? And I love that phrase from Henry Ford, “If I had listened to my customers, I would have built a faster horse.” I think that there’s a value in listening to customers, but also a value in being one or two steps ahead of them. And so, for example, one of the things that we’re heavily looking at right now is the thought of AI visibility for executives.  And where GEO is getting more and more prominence for organizations, we see a world where it’s very important not just to cultivate a human audience and a human group of people who view and like your content and respect you, but also essentially cultivating an AI audience and making sure that your content is visible by LLMs and making sure that Claude and Perplexity see you as the authority and are referencing you. And so that’s something that our clients aren’t yet asking for, but we’re already developing a solution and a thesis because we think that that’s the way that the world is going.  But the central point is, how do we create an engine for experimentation so we are always testing out new things and seeing if they work, and reinvesting in the ones that work and letting go of the ones that don’t work? And I think that if we can do that for our clients and for ourselves, it always keeps us evolving. We’re always upping the game. We’re always improving, because I think the moment that we stop doing that, that’s when we stagnate or that’s when someone else comes along and puts us out of business.  So how do you maintain this alignment and this entrepreneurial energy? Because experimentation is innovation. It’s entrepreneurship in your business. How do you perpetuate it? So as you’re growing the business, you’ve got 40 people now, maybe you’re going to have more, you’re going to have AI agents running around. So how do you keep that experimentation and this entrepreneurial energy as you are getting further and further from the newest hires?  So the first thing that I love—and this is my VP of Ops, Shelby, who came up with this—but I really like it. She instituted a 10-week cycle composed of one- to two-week sprints. And she oversees all of our client work. So what she did is she broke everything we do for our clients into different sections. She instituted a system of saying, “Okay, these are all the different things we do. If you have an idea about how to do something better, or if you have a complaint about how something’s not working, or if a client mentions something, I want you to put it in this spreadsheet so we can keep track of how we can improve each thing.”  And what we’re going to do is, this week we’re doing a sprint on interview questions—how we prepare our interview questions for our clients. We are going to invest a week-long sprint in improving that process through technology, AI, and processes. And then we’re going to go through every other aspect. But guess what? Ten weeks later, we’re coming back to interview questions again. What that does, I think, in today’s landscape is not only does that keep us always thinking of improving something, but every 10 weeks we’re re-looking at specifically AI to see, what are its capabilities now? It’s changing so quickly.  From 10 weeks ago, it might be able to do something better or different. So let’s create a system so that we are periodically refreshing every aspect of our business from team feedback, client feedback, but also technological improvements. And it’s mind-boggling to think that that’s the pace now, and that 10 weeks might not even be sufficient in the future with the rate at which things are changing. That’s the best example I can think of how we’re trying to create that mindset of constant and incessant improvement.  And how do you build your team? Are you remote, or do you have an office somewhere?  We are all remote. Yeah, we are 100% remote. So we’re in seven different states, all still in the United States. It does pose challenges as you grow of how do you get in person and create connection. And so we’ll do things like happy hours online and different ways to get to know each other. But I also think, for those others listening who create a remote-first culture, you filter for people who thrive in that environment and do their best work when they have a fair amount of autonomy. And I think that autonomy for us has been helpful because we want people who are individual problem solvers, and I think that overlaps well with people who prefer a remote-first workplace.  Yeah, that’s fascinating. So if you had a magic wand and you could fix one thing in your business in the next 12 months, what would you do?  That is a really good question. I mean, it almost feels like the world is moving towards more entrepreneurs, not fewer ones, which I, for one, like. I’m a huge fan of both entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs. But if I could wave a magic wand, it would be making everyone on the team think like an entrepreneur, which would have probably been a liability 12 months ago. But the way I approach everything now is—I literally, right before this, was using Claude for my personal finances.  On the business side, it is now connected to QuickBooks, and on the personal side, I have a system of creating a report exactly the way I want it, which I, for one, love—the capability of AI to personalize things. I don’t have to use Mint or QuickBooks anymore. I can build it exactly in the way that works for my crazy brain. But I was updating and realizing that the tools have changed, and so, like, upgrading the way that I track my personal finances. And that’s just kind of very natural for me, and I do that for my kids’ menus, and I do that for everything. I kind of have a project or an approach on AI.  And I think that that’s a similar mindset that I need for my team, is thinking like an entrepreneur. How do you get better at everything? How do you get more efficient at everything? How do you look for new ways of solving things? I think it used to be that the entrepreneur was the visionary and setting the vision for the company, and everyone was more or less following orders or a system.  I still see a role for the visionary, but it's almost as if everyone on the team has to be their own visionary of envisioning how to improve their workflowShare on X and how to make themselves more productive and how to utilize tools and realize where that can make them more effective. And I don’t know that it’s going to be top-down anymore. I think that the advantage of the tools we have today is, like, the way that I use AI, Steve, might be completely different than the way that you use it. And that’s the beauty of it, is that our brains are different, our worldviews are different, our skill sets are different, but we can almost bolt this technology on us to make ourselves superhuman.  But the way that it works for you is going to be different than me, and that will be true in a team. So, very long answer, but if I could wave that magic wand, it would be imparting that entrepreneur mindset of finding problems and the best way to solve them, and never stop solving problems.Share on X  Yeah. So it’s just a feeling, and maybe I won’t articulate it well, but I’m just looking at your business. You’re building this remote team, and then you’re making everyone more autonomous so that they are working with AI to improve their productivity. In a way, it is supercharging everyone individually, but what about the team cohesion? So how do you make sure that people don’t get isolated?  Isaac Asimov has a novel which is in the distant future, on a distant planet, and basically everyone has 1,000 robots, and everyone is in their own world, and they just communicate on video screen because personal contact is no longer even appropriate. And everyone gets super rich and super efficient, but something gets lost.  So I wonder, how do you see the tension between empowering people, having AI help everyone be super productive in their individual way, in a remote culture? How do you keep this constellation together going forward?  Yeah. It still comes back to human connection for me. I think that, let’s just say on a client level, if my company’s doing our job well with our clients, if we are having them become thought leaders, having them grow influence and audience, I want that to lead to more human connection for them. And the way that I have seen that showing up is they go to a conference and people know them and people come up.  Like, people are literally—they might not have created connection before, but they recognize them, they know who they are, and that draws them to in-person interactions. That’s human connection coming out of what we do. For our team, I hope it leads to more human connection, that as we become more efficient, as we become better at what we do, as the company grows, we will get together in person more often. We'll be able to be in the room together and brainstorm because that becomes more valuable, and we're all craving that.Share on X  So, sci-fi is my favorite genre of literature and cinema, and I don’t think that we will ultimately end up with VR goggles on our head and not talking to each other. I think that in the same way that we have seen with social media, that it has a purpose, but we still want to be around each other and benefit from being in person. I think that we will become more and more like that. I don’t think it will drive us apart. I think it will lead to more connection. That’s my optimist view on it.  Yeah. Love it. Well, I hope you’re right.  Yeah.  Okay, so if someone who is a founder of a business, a growing business, or maybe a C-level in an enterprise, and they don’t have time to manage their LinkedIn, but they realize that they’re missing out with their thought leadership and they need help or they want to explore, where should they go and how can they connect with you and your colleagues?  Yeah, I appreciate that. I would just say, in general, every leader needs to know that their personal brand is going to impact both their career as well as their company, and them being able to articulate their viewpoints and what they think and believe is going to be a vital skill. And that could be on stage at a conference, it could be on YouTube, it could be on LinkedIn, it could be in a book, it could be in articles, but they have to have a way to know what they believe, to know what knowledge they have that is valuable, and find a way to add value to others.  I think that that’s just more and more the direction things are going. And it can be really hard because you are probably growing an empire, you are probably doing so many different things. And just know that there are people like Executive Presence, where our skill set is figuring out where your zone of genius is and figuring out what stories you have that are really good assets, and figuring out who you are and how you want to present online, and then helping you do that consistently across different channels.  And so if that’s of interest, I obviously love talking about this stuff, but I’m happy to talk with anyone who listens to the show. If you go to executivepresence.io and fill out our contact form, it gets to me. You can find me on LinkedIn, Justin Nassiri, or my email is justin@executivepresence.io. Any of those three work. But I just believe that this is going to be more and more valuable for leaders to develop that skill, and would love to help anyone listening do that.  Well, if you’re out there listening, you see that something is working because Justin propelled his company from a standing start to the Inc. 5000 in three or four years, and he is pushing the envelope on generative AI and reinvention every 10 weeks of his company. So if you’d like to be part of that and you have to take advantage of promoting yourself on LinkedIn with a cutting-edge approach, then reach out to Justin Nassiri on LinkedIn or executivepresence.io. And if you enjoyed this conversation, stay tuned because every week I bring a couple of successful entrepreneurs who are sharing their frameworks of how they’re being successful. So thanks for coming, Justin, and thanks for listening. Important Links: Justin's LinkedIn Justin's website Justin's Email: justin@executivepresence.io

Olivier Roth, Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at The Swarm, explains how relationship intelligence helps B2B sales teams turn hidden network connections into warm introductions. He shows how mapping investors, advisors, customers, and former colleagues surfaces paths CRM records alone can't reveal, and why treating LinkedIn as an audience rather than a network changes how teams should prospect. Learn more at https://www.theswarm.com/.

#383 | YouTube is the second-largest search engine on the planet, yet few B2B marketers know how to use it optimally. Dasha Shakov, the newest Exit Five podcast host, sits down with Samu Kovács, founder of the B2B YouTube agency KS Media, to unpack why he calls YouTube the hedge against AI slop. Samu breaks down the research process his team runs before writing a script, what belongs in a hook that keeps people watching, and how clients repurpose high-performing LinkedIn posts into YouTube videos instead of starting from zero. They also cover the realistic 90-day timeline for results, how to tell if YouTube is lifting your other channels, and the exact AI stack his team uses for scripting and thumbnails.Timestamps (00:00) - - Why YouTube is B2B marketing's hedge against AI slop (02:19) - - Who hires a B2B YouTube agency, and why YouTube still scares most marketers (06:26) - - The direct and indirect ROI of nailing YouTube (08:33) - - Where YouTube fits in the funnel, and when a niche is too small for it (13:33) - - Mapping ICP pain points, then reverse-engineering proven video formats (19:54) - - Doing the research yourself, and diagnosing a failed YouTube strategy (22:39) - - The hook, the structure, and repurposing LinkedIn content into scripts (33:09) - - Publishing cadence and the realistic 90-day timeline (35:44) - - Shortening sales cycles and proving YouTube's impact across channels (39:42) - - Where AI fits in the process, from research to scripting to editing (44:22) - - Samu's exact AI model stack Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletterLearn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/***Brought to you by:Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.Customer.io - An AI powered customer engagement platform that help marketers turn first-party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS, and push. Learn more at customer.io/exitfive.Vector - A contact-level ads platform that lets you build audiences from actual people on your site, clicking your ads, and checking out your competitors. Learn how to build an ABM program that scales at vector.co/exitfive.Join us in Stowe, Vermont for Drive 2026 - three days away from your desk to learn what's working in B2B marketing from the people who are actually doing it. Grab your ticket at exitfive.com/drive.Walker Sands - An integrated B2B marketing and growth services agency that helps marketing leaders turn strategy into measurable business impact through their Outcome-based Marketing model. Learn more at walkersands.com/exitfive.***Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.Visit hatch.fm to learn more

In this episode Dealsynchq.com founder Shalom Ben Or joins the show to unpack why $1.5 trillion in asset-based lending and roughly $250 billion in B2B trapped capital still moves through emails, PDFs, and meetings. He explains how CFOs are stuck reacting to cash flow problems instead of controlling them, and why traditional revenue-based financing breaks down for AI and outcome-based companies. Shalom walks through how Dealsynchq.com turns complex, non-standard revenue into a financeable asset using AI-driven judgment at the CFO level. The conversation covers market size, early adopters, and what is next for the company's growth. Key Takeaways: 8:19 — What is trapping 20 to 30 percent of B2B revenue in the sales to cash process? 14:05 — How did building a fintech company in Africa shape Shalom's view of broken financing? 22:04 – Who is adopting Dealsynchq.com first, and why? 25:04 — When does Shalom expect Dealsynchq.com to hit its next major milestone? Quote of the Show (21:00):"We want to make sure the CFO can control the cash flow at the onset, not react to problems." — Shalom Ben Or Join our Anti-PR newsletter where we’re keeping a watchful and clever eye on PR trends, PR fails, and interesting news in tech so you don't have to. You're welcome. Want PR that actually matters? Get 30 minutes of expert advice in a fast-paced, zero-nonsense session from Karla Jo Helms, a veteran Crisis PR and Anti-PR Strategist who knows how to tell your story in the best possible light and get the exposure you need to disrupt your industry. Click here to book your call: https://info.jotopr.com/free-anti-pr-eval Ways to connect with Shalom Ben Or:Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shalombenor/ Company Website: https://dealsynchq.com How to get more Disruption/Interruption: Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=disruption+%2F+interuuptionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What does it actually take to rebuild a $100M vertical SaaS company around AI - not just add AI features, but make AI the core of how your customers run their business? Adam Guild, CEO of Owner, shares the full story: how they went from zero AI-first customers to 83% of their base in just two years, why they had to rethink pricing, sales, and onboarding from the ground up, and what it means to serve small business owners who need results, not tools. Adam breaks down the hard lessons - the customers who churned when AI didn't deliver fast enough, the moments that forced the team to simplify, and why the restaurant industry became the proving ground for a new kind of AI-native vertical SaaS playbook. If you're building in vertical SaaS or trying to figure out how to actually move your customer base to AI, this one is required listening. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 02:00 - From 0% to 83%: the timeline and what changed 07:00 - Why vertical SaaS is the right place to go AI-first 13:00 - Rethinking onboarding, pricing, and sales for AI customers 20:00 - What churn taught them about AI adoption 27:00 - The operational reality of rebuilding a $100M company 35:00 - What comes next SaaStr hosts the world's largest community for B2B software founders and executives.

The storefront stopped being the differentiator. Kibo CEO Ram Venkataraman argues the money and the difficulty both moved to order management, and that most B2B distributors have an OMS problem they have no name for.Rick opens on accountability. An autonomous agent takes an order, routes it to the wrong warehouse, approves a return it shouldn't have. Who owns that outcome? Ram says shoppers will blame the retailer every time, and the burden falls on vendors to build systems that earn the retailer's trust. He also draws a line most vendors blur. Kibo's routing runs on machine learning models, not LLMs, because LLMs stay too probabilistic for that job today. The LLM work sits in configuration and explainability, and every write operation keeps a human in the loop.Also in this episode: why Ram calls OMS the margin layer and a conversion rate optimizer; how account hierarchies, quoting and scarce supply make B2B order matching harder than first come first served; Ace Hardware as roughly 5,000 separately owned businesses running their own pricing on one platform; Vulcan Materials selling construction aggregates by the truckload to contractors and by the bag to homeowners; Kibo's path from Vista's 2016 roll-up through the Mozu rebuild and the Certona and Monetate divestiture; and Ram's answer on what the Forrester Wave placement should mean to a buyer. The commissioned Forrester Total Economic Index study can be found here: https://kibocommerce.com/resource-center/forrester-total-economic-impact-oms/Plus the one tell that exposes a distributor with an order management problem. Out of stock on the website while the product sits in the warehouse.The Watson Weekly interview is sponsored by Avalara.. See what they built for growing brands at avalara.watsonweekly.comChapters 00:00 Who owns the outcome when an agent gets the order wrong 03:04 What Kibo is and the four complexity vectors 07:00 Why the energy moved to the back office 09:20 What B2B calls order management instead 13:01 Ace Hardware and Vulcan Materials 16:28 Sponsor: Avalara 19:48 Engage, configure, explain, analyze, optimize 23:20 Deterministic vs non-deterministic order workflows 25:55 Where Kibo's growth is coming from 29:09 Vista, Mozu, and the Forrester Wave 33:50 The one sign you have an OMS problem#watsonweekly #KIBOcommerce #ordermanagement #b2bcommerce #acehardware

https://youtu.be/jPTlkjF8M-c Tanner Taddeo, CEO and Co-Founder of Stable Sea, is driven by a mission to bring Wall Street-grade financial services to Main Street while embodying the principle Stay Put in Your Convictions. By combining blockchain technology, stablecoins, tokenized capital markets, and AI advisory services, Tanner helps businesses access investment opportunities, put idle cash to work, and move money globally with greater speed, transparency, and capital efficiency. In this conversation, Tanner introduces The Lionel Messi Startup Framework—Develop a High-Level Thesis, Talk With and Learn From the Market, Run 30-Day A/B Tests, Iterate Your Offering, and Stay Resolute With Your Convictions. He explains why founders should observe patiently, validate their ideas with customers, and act decisively when market opportunities emerge. Tanner also discusses balancing long-term conviction with continuous experimentation, unlocking 24/7 liquidity through tokenized capital markets, reducing friction in cross-border payments, and finding urgent “morphine” problems that customers cannot afford to leave unsolved. — Stay Put in Your Convictions with Tanner Taddeo  Hello everyone. Steve Preda here, and my guest today is Tanner Taddeo, the CEO and Co-Founder at Stable Sea, an autonomous treasury management platform that helps finance teams and global businesses access capital market products and move money around the globe to 40 currencies with the cheapest FX rates. Tanner, welcome to the show.  Steve, thanks for having me. Excited for the conversation today.  It’s very interesting that this is how you position your business because most businesses in your industry, as I see them, position themselves with low transaction fees, but really their money is made on the FX. So if you do preferential FX rates or cheap FX rates, that can be a very transparent way of getting business. So I don’t know if that connects to your personal why, but I’d love to learn about your personal why and how you manifest it in your business.  Yeah, definitely. At Stable Sea, we’re very mission-driven in terms of everything that we do. The team itself comes from Block, which was formerly known as Square. Yeah. And everyone on the team has been focused on building products for the real economy, for consumer use cases, for business use cases, et cetera, over the course of everyone’s career.  And so when we started at Stable Sea, our primary thesis was, with blockchain, with stablecoins, with some of the tokenized capital markets products like money market funds, bonds, equities, et cetera, that are coming on-chain, how can you really take Wall Street-grade financial services and provision them out to Main Street for businesses that need them the most? And so the why for Stable Sea, for myself, for the team, is really around helping businesses drive greater capital efficiency in their operations. And we service businesses in the real economy that typically make widgets or some sort of physical hardware devices, and they need to send them around the world.  We help them because we give them access to different types of capital markets products, so money markets and private credit and fixed-income products, et cetera. And then we help them move their money around the globe a little bit more efficiently than they could with either their state bank or their credit union or some third-party cross-border payments provider. Because our firm thesis has always been, if you and I ran Coca-Cola or a large organization, we would have the best-in-class transaction banks helping us put our idle capital to work at every point in time during the day.  If you and I ran a steel manufacturing company in Missouri, you typically have a checking account and QuickBooks, and that’s about it. And so for us, it was always about helping businesses grow, save more money, and then operate more efficiently with some of the new technologies that are out there today.Share on X  So that means, presumably, that what you focus on is more about the investment side of the business rather than crypto and blockchain, and helping people access financial products through the blockchain. Help me understand a little bit what you do and how it is different from what people can get from banks?  Yeah. So everything that we do, all the technology that we build and provision, is on-chain. So all of the capital markets products are tokenized. So tokenized bonds, tokenized equities, tokenized fixed income, tokenized money markets. All of the payment services and settlement services that we offer are through the use of stablecoins, and we can send that around the globe, settle it instantly, and then have low FX rates off the back of that. And then we have some of our AI advisory services.  But from a broad paintbrush perspective, at Stable Sea, you’ve got three products that hang off of our platform. You’ve got capital markets, you’ve got global settlement, and you’ve got advisory services. And then with all of that, we share a common architecture, and that architecture is built across many different blockchains. And then we utilize stablecoins and we utilize RWA tokens, or real-world asset tokens, to provision those use cases.  So everything that we do is stablecoin-native, but we don’t lead with that from a messaging perspective. And the reason we don’t lead with that from a messaging perspective is that if you and I ran a bakery here in Brooklyn, New York, and we had a point-of-sale terminal that just got offered RTP access from the Fed for instant settlement, the bakery owner doesn’t really care about the technology underneath it.  They just care, “Do I trust it? Is it going to get me my money quicker, and is it going to be cheaper than my current alternative?” How it happens, not very many people care unless you’re in the industry and you’re a builder, product manager, et cetera, and you want to nerd out on the actual mechanical nature of how the product works. But for us, it’s always been leading with the narrative of, what is the value proposition and how can we drive greater value to the businesses? So that’s how we lead. But to your point on what the difference is, with any new technological paradigm that occurs, rarely is it so disruptive in nature that folks can’t recognize it.  Everything that happens in terms of the innovation paradigm is typically you stand on the shoulders of giants and you make things incrementally better. And so for us, what we do with capital markets is, the first value proposition is that many businesses in the United States just don’t have access to a diverse array of capital markets products. So the first thing that we have done is just provision access, which is an innovation in and of itself because in the traditional markets, if you want to access a money market fund or a fixed-income product, you typically have high hurdle rates, meaning that as a business, you need to invest at least $10 million at the asset manager in question.  You need to hold that there so then you can get access to all these products. With us, you don’t. There’s only a $1 minimum to clear, so I think most folks can handle a $1 minimum. And then secondly, as things go on-chain, the value proposition there is that you have 24/7, 365 liquidity and tradability. And so what that means is that, just from a money market fund perspective, the interest accrues daily and it pays out daily.  So you get this interest that is dripped into your account daily as opposed to waiting for a month. You also have the ability—so let’s say that you and I run this bakery in Brooklyn. Let’s say that we close our business on Friday, and we’ve got $100,000 sitting in our checking account, and we’re closed on Saturday, Sunday because it’s the July 4th holiday. So we know $100,000 is just going to be sitting in our checking account Saturday, Sunday, not being put to work. With Stable Sea, you can put that to work in a tokenized money market fund because it operates 24/7, 365.  So what we see is businesses now that close their books on Friday can just do an auto-sweep into a money market fund, generate yield Saturday, Sunday, get back to U.S. dollars for their open of business. And again, it’s one of those things where it might not sound like the most revolutionary concept in the world, but if you can help businesses, especially in the mid-market, lower mid-market, operate a little bit more efficiently, I mean, saving an additional $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 a year is a big value-add to them in the real economy, right? If you’re a large Fortune 100 company, you probably don’t care, or it’s not as valuable. But for us, the companies that run on us, these small increments, standing on the shoulders of giants, a small derivation in innovation is actually really valuable for the end user.Share on X  Well, I think it is because, looking at the inverse of it, I used to be in banking, and I know that one of the biggest moneymakers for banks is float. Yeah. So it’s basically the money that doesn’t earn interest, which they have access to just because they cash the check a day later or make the wire two days instead of one day. And essentially, what you’re doing is you’re taking this money from the bank and you’re giving it to the company that actually should have it in the first place, right? Yep.  Then the question is, how are the banks going to survive if you take away their bread?  Yeah. That is the debate that’s happening right now. I think if you’re one of your G-SIBs, your major banks, you’re going to be okay. So the top 25 banks in the U.S. are going to be just fine, and they make money in tons of different ways, and you’re not going to disrupt that trust ultimately. In the long tail is where I worry because a lot of credit unions and a lot of state banks, they just don’t offer—they’re smaller banks, right?  So they’re not managing—they don’t have a ton of money by virtue of assets under management. So with the deposits that they receive, they need to turn around and recycle that because it’s fractional depository lending, meaning that if I have a checking account, I put 10 grand into it, the bank is then turning around with that 10 grand, making money on it somehow. And you have to think, how does the bank actually make money on that? Well, they typically make it through debt facilities, so mortgages, auto loans, student loans, cards, et cetera.  They’re putting it to work in high-margin financial products back into the economy. They’re not taking that and then buying some money market fund from an asset manager where they make 10 basis points and provisioning that out to the businesses, right? There, I think that we’re seeing a lot of companies move off. They’re taking their money from their checking account, moving it to Stable Sea because we can put it in these capital markets products.  I think that overall, that’s a net positive for the business because the business now has a higher degree of operating capital on hand that they can make money with. But by the same token, if the state banks and the credit unions don’t wake up and respond to this, their depository base will be, if not fully eroded, tarnished and diminished. And what that means for local community health, I’m not sure because banks do play a very important role, especially credit unions and local banks.  You know your local community the best, and so you lend back into that community with the deposits that you receive from that community. So there’s a cyclicality to it which has some poetry in it. And so it’s not apparently clear to me that some of this stuff is going to be a net positive. But at the same time, living in one of the most capitalistic countries and markets in the world, there’s a clear demand for this, and if the banks aren’t going to wake up and serve it, we’ll be there to help businesses do what’s best for them.  Yeah. It’s the invisible hand, right? You increase the efficiency, which will force the banks to also increase their efficiency. And yeah, the smaller banks might have to be more innovative. But they are more nimble, so maybe there are other ways that they can serve the community.  So I’d like to switch gears here and talk a little bit about frameworks. So this is a podcast of frameworks, and 350 episodes in, I’m always looking for some kind of a framework, shortcut, a mental model that you have come across or developed yourself that helps you make more sense of the world around you, get something done. It can be explained in three to five steps, something like that, which the listeners might get some ideas out of and be able to improve their businesses. So what comes to mind for you?  Yeah, two things. I’ll start with a high-level analogy and then go a little deeper. It’s the World Cup right now, so I don’t know if you or any of your listeners are following the World Cup. But if you watch Messi play, his playing style is a great analogy for startups. And whether that be a startup externally where you raise venture capital, or even just intrapreneurship if you’re inside of a big company and you’re on an innovation team, et cetera.  From the outside, it looks like startups are always building things and they’re always moving fast, et cetera. But in reality, if you watch Messi play, Messi really doesn’t move that much on the pitch. He just sits around, he observes, he watches, and then when a hole opens up and some opportunity opens up, he breaks for it, and then he goes and executes. But he spends the vast majority of time just sitting there, tinkering, observing, watching. And then if you’re watching him, you’re like, “He’s not working that hard. He’s just sitting around.”  And then he goes and executes. But he’s always observing, he’s always watching, and there’s a real learning in that. I feel like Silicon Valley, as it relates to startups, there’s this pressure that you always have to be building, you always have to be shipping, you always have to be constantly grinding. I think that wisdom is actually counterintuitive because you want to have a thesis in the market, and then you want to be able to test that thesis quickly. So in some respects, you do want to be shipping all the time.  But you don’t want to be working for the sake of work. You want to have a thesis in the market. You want to be building towards that thesis that will happen in the next six months, 12 months, two years. And then you always want to be learning and talking to the market because when that hole does open up, you’ll have the right product at the right time to go and execute on. So I think that's something that we have learned: being patient and staying resolute in your conviction that what you're building is right.Share on X And it can’t just be a gut feeling. It has to be validated by the market.  So we do a bunch of A/B tests every 30 days where we have an idea about a feature or a product or a direction we want to take it. And the thing is, if you can’t get five CEOs on the phone in 30 days to validate if a product is going to be interesting or not, then that’s a signal in and of itself, right? So for anything that we do, we always have a thesis on the market, and then we spend 30 days testing it. And at the end of those 30 days, we get some feedback.  The reason why we do these A/B tests, just to drill down into one level further, is that the idea of a startup or a product that you have in your head, it’s a living entity. It’s always evolving on the basis of who you talk to, what your team is thinking, what you’re reading in the market, et cetera.  And then you’re trying to take that living concept and plug it into a market. But the market itself is also living, right?  You’ve got regulations, you’ve got different macroeconomic cycles, you’ve got companies that have budget, don’t have budget, people getting laid off in different organizations. The market itself is living and evolving. So you have this idea that is living and evolving, and you have a market that is living and evolving, and you need those two things to stick together. And so for us, we’re always wedded to this concept that product at time A is not going to be product at time Z. You need to constantly be doing A/B tests to figure out what that right fit is.  And then when you have that fit, you need to double down on it and grow it into a line of business. But you also need to recognize that there are very few businesses in this world that have been around for more than 200 years, if at all. So whatever your original product idea is, or whatever the feature that gave you product-market fit is today, you have to consciously be aware that, “Hey, that’s not going to be the thing that gets us to IPO in five years’ time.” So you can’t be lulled into this false sense of security. You always have to be waiting, observing, testing, experimenting, growing, and then if you see opportunity, you strike.  Yeah, this is fascinating. Especially now, things are moving very fast with AI creating capabilities all the time for people to test products or to create capabilities that then get disrupted in a couple of months. So it’s interesting that you say that you have to stay resolute in your conviction. So there is a tension there. You build a thesis and you stay resolute, but then you’re testing and the market might tell you not to be resolute.  And then you also told me that companies don’t live forever. So how do you resolve this tension of being stable with your thesis and not letting your conviction be upended, but also being nimble in the changing market dynamics and everything to respond to? So how do you manage the tension?  Yeah, it’s a good question. There has to be a high-level thesis, right? So for us at Stable Sea, it is as simple as: In 10 years from now, will more finance teams and businesses be on-chain or off-chain than today? And so our high-level conviction is, in 10 years’ time, more businesses will be running their treasury stack on-chain. So that’s our conviction. We know, come hell or high water, that is going to be where the puck is going to be in the future, and we’re going to skate to that future.  So if you start with this high-level conviction that more companies are coming on-chain, that is what we’re building for. Now, how they come on-chain is a matter of debate, which is where the A/B test comes in, right? We originally thought it was going to be for payments. So we built all the stablecoin infrastructure to do global payments in 40 different markets.  Turned out to be not the case, actually. And then we started tinkering as we saw the data coming in and were like, “Okay, some companies are using stablecoins for payments, but there’s a bunch of inefficiencies. That world’s still going to take two or three years to wake up. Where is the wedge in the market today?” And so when we started experimenting with capital markets products, we found that there was this massive opportunity that businesses just didn’t have access to a diverse array of yield-bearing strategies, and they wanted that.  And so that was where we were like, okay, let’s get businesses into the on-chain economy through capital markets. And then what we’re finding is, as folks come onto the platform, everyone uses us today for capital markets, and then 20, 30% of our companies say, “Actually, I do have a cross-border payment need, and I already hold money with you. Can you facilitate that payment or that settlement to Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, South Africa, et cetera?”  So for us, when I say you need to stay resolute in your conviction, our why is always: We want to take Wall Street-grade financial services and provision them out to Main Street.Share on X The conviction behind that is that you can do that through on-chain technology. And then in 10 years from now, more businesses will be on-chain than off-chain. How we get to that future in 10 years, who knows, right? And that’s where the fun of the startup is.  You’re always testing. And so for us, we’ve waxed and waned on different product strategies, primarily because the market has changed. And as people start to educate themselves on what the value props are, you see where folks find value, and then you build to that value. And in theory, in three, five, seven years, we should be living in a world where more companies are operating on-chain, and then they might use that full product suite.  But out of the gate, it’s kind of like, where is that value, that wedge? You charge as hard as you can into that wedge, and then you continue to expand your product set over time. All with that high-level conviction of, in 10 years from now, we believe that more businesses will be on-chain than off-chain.  So basically, you want to find the point where you can penetrate that market opportunity, and then it’s a land-and-expand kind of thing. And then you expand from there as the market opportunities evolve over time. But you already have a customer, you’re already building trust with them, and now they’re going to be more disposed to buying from you.  Yeah, that’s right. And I think it’s interesting from a mental place being a startup because you’re forced to think so short-term because you just need to generate revenue, get to the next capital round, et cetera. So you’re always building for the moment. But what we try to do at Stable Sea is we try to think as if we were already a Vanguard and a large company, to the extent that we have the luxury of planning for 10 years.  If you think about it in that regard, it takes a lot of the day-to-day anxiety away. It’s a little bit like, if you listen to Warren Buffett, any time that there’s volatility in the market, he’s like, “Well, it doesn’t really bother me because I’m investing for 50 years.” So, is it up 20%, down 20%? Who cares? In 50 years, it’s going to be up 200%, so that’s all I’m worried about, right? And there’s a real luxury when you come and think about it that way. So that’s why I think if you’re founding anything, or if you’re starting something inside of a company as an intrapreneur, you need to have a strong conviction on where the market’s headed in five or 10 years, and then you need to test towards that future. But that also makes the day-to-day operations of the business a little bit more palatable.  So often, you can get caught up in this whipsaw of, “Big Company A launched this product. Regulation came down, wiped out this company. This competitor raised a Series C, and they have way more money in the bank than we do.” And so you can get caught up in all this minutiae, but it doesn’t really matter if you sit back and you say, “I know that I’m going to find a way to make this business exist for the next 10 years.” In 10 years’ time, what does the future look like? Do I feel strongly that that’s going to be the case? Cool. I’m going to build towards that future. And then whatever the headwinds are in the interim, they’re just short-term temporal problems that kind of come and go along.  Yeah. I mean, I totally agree with you. And interestingly, 20 years ago, or 25 years ago, I didn’t feel like I had enough time to think that long term. But now that I’m older, I actually am more patient to have the long view, which is very counterintuitive.  And Dan Sullivan, who is a coach and the founder of Strategic Coach, he is now, I think, north of 80, and he has this thesis that even at his age, he has a 25-year plan, and that allows him to actually create more value. So that’s fascinating. So switching gears here, what drives growth in your business right now?  Yeah. So we govern the business with an assets under management model. So we have USDC, we’ve got money market funds, we’ve got fixed-income products, we’ve got Bitcoin on platform. So we just look at overarching platform balance. And so that’s the primary, very simple heuristic for how we define success: Is that thing growing month over month, quarter over quarter? That’s how we define growth and measure our growth.  But again, the value prop in terms of what drives that, why do companies actually sign up to Stable Sea? Primarily because they just don’t have access. Almost every business that we have talked to so far, and honestly every business that I’ve interacted with, has idle cash sitting in a checking account someplace. Full stop. And that idle cash could sit there for the weekend, i.e., two days, or it could sit for a quarter. If you’re gearing up for quarterly bonuses in Q1, you will escrow a million, $2 million in Q4 so you can pay out in Q1. Not just the U.S. economy, but every economy, there’s just cash sitting around at a bank, and it’s being underutilized.  And so for us, when we go and finally chat to businesses in the mid-market, lower mid-market, even SMBs, we have a customer on platform that invests $2,500 every week. It almost looks like a checking account, or almost looks like retail behavior in some ways. But they do it because they say, “Hey, I don’t make a lot of money with my business, but if I can eke an additional two, three grand at the end of the year, that’s valuable to me.” And there’s a real poetry to that because they’ve never had access to it. They’ve always wanted it.  But banks, large and small, won’t go build for the long tail of the economy. And so finally, we show up and we say, “Hey, here’s your menu of investment options. Here’s the risk profiles. Here’s how you should think of it. Based on the seasonality of your business, we can get you into the right products.” There’s real utility there, and that’s what kind of drives the value proposition and the growth of the business and the business’s assets under management overall.  So you’re looking for opportunities where you can be additive to customers, where there’s a situation where maybe there’s a gap in the market or there’s friction that they are experiencing with investing their money, and you can be the wedge in that situation and offer them a 3X better solution.  Yeah. Correct. Correct. And again, our tagline internally is, “Keep your bank, upgrade your capital.” Because we really don’t want to compete with the checking account. Where you run payroll, where your invoices land if someone pays you, your day-to-day spend, keep your banking relationships because it’s very difficult to usurp that. And also, we don’t want to get into that. That puts us squarely in this neobank realm where you’ve got great companies like Mercury and Rho and Ramp and Brex and a thousand other companies there.  We don’t really want to go compete with that. We’re more of, if you had the privilege of working with some of the largest transaction banks in the world, that’s what we’re trying to be and essentially provision those services out to the real economy, which is typically access to capital markets, access to global foreign exchange for payments and settlement, and then advisory services, tax reporting, et cetera.  Almost like a democratized private banking service.  Yeah. Yeah. All of us at Stable Sea, we’re trying really hard to steer away from the banking narrative, but yes, in the future, if you take that 10-year perspective, yeah, we will most likely be a private banking solution, a democratized version of that.  Yeah. Fascinating. So what’s one thing that you’re actively trying to figure out right now in your business?  Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, the one thing that we’re actively trying to figure out is two things, really. One is, so we build directly into ERP systems like QuickBooks or NetSuite or Oracle or SAP, and we have advisory services. So we take a lot of that data, we build our own model weights on top of it, and then we offer that out to our customers so that they can essentially query their own transaction data and use it for different services.  Now, we’ve got strong signal on the first value proposition for that, but I’m curious mostly for owner-operators in the real economy: What are their biggest back-office pain points? And that’s something that we’re trying to figure out because we hear a lot, “Yes, we don’t have access to savings products.” Okay, we can solve that today. “Yes, cross-border payments are frustrating, slow, and expensive.” Yes, we solve that today.  So we’re looking for that third pillar. One of our VCs always talks to us about morphine versus vitamins, where it’s kind of a crude analogy, but if you go to the hospital and you’re in dire pain, you don’t want to be sold vitamins. You want some morphine, and that’s what you’re going there for, right? And when you’re in a startup and you create products, you’re really looking for that morphine of, people just cannot live without this product. And then you can sell all the value-added services around it, which are essentially the vitamins.  And so for us, we’ve found two morphine-like products where there’s a real pain point for accessing capital markets. Primarily, there is no ability to access that today. And then second, cross-border payments: slow, difficult, expensive, opaque, all the things. Solved that. So the third one that we’re trying to figure out now is: How do we A/B test quickly enough to figure out—we have a treasure trove of data building into ERP systems—what is the highest signal-to-noise product that we can build using a diverse data set to help owners operate their back office a little more efficiently?  So you say highest signal-to-noise. Is it the ratio of signal to noise? So what is the product value which you can detect as being a need in the market? Is this what you mean by that? Yeah, yeah. It’s like, what is that one pain point that is so resolute that people are like, “I would do anything to have this thing solved”? There’s all these value-adds like cash flow reporting and automating some of your tax stuff at the end of the year, which are all nice-to-haves. We’re curious. We’re trying to figure out what it is that folks will say, “I’ve got all this data in my ERP system. I would love to know one, two, three things and have A, B, C automated so my back office can run a little bit more efficiently and my accountant doesn’t have to ask me every quarter-end, ‘Where is X, Y, and Z statement?'”  Yeah. I mean, I’ve got some ideas, but I’m sure that you’ve already thought about most of it, so I’m not going to share them. So if someone is listening to this who is a small business or medium-sized business, and they’ve got some cash just sitting around, or they’d like to invest, but they don’t have big enough balances or the transaction costs are prohibitive for their size of investment, whatever the reason, but they are curious about exploring how to have access to better FX rates, more investment products, where can they learn more, and how can they connect with you?  Of course. Well, connect with me on LinkedIn, Tanner Taddeo, pretty easy to find. And then the platform is stablesea.com. So, free to sign up, no cost whatsoever. Also, no cost to use the platform at all. So feel free to sign up right online, and then, yeah, typically it takes us two days to run through the KYB document requests, and then you’re up and running. So, pretty simple. Stablesea.com, free to sign up and start putting your capital to work. Awesome. We try and make it as seamless as possible.  So I’m just wondering, the name of the company, is it something to do with stablecoin? Is it a sea of opportunities for stablecoin?  It was stablecoin for sure. So we started with the word “stable” and then “sea” because we wanted to provide a sea of liquidity. Both for FX, because we do B2B settlements, which are typically large transactions, low volume. You’re not doing twenty $10 million transactions a day. You’re typically doing one $10 million transaction a week or every other week. But you need a deep pool of liquidity to service that.  And then also, from a capital markets perspective, we wanted to be able to provide a sea of liquidity there for different investment options that companies could access based on the seasonality of their cash flow or the risk tolerance that they have as a business. So stable meets sea, so Stable Sea.  Okay. Well, if you want to keep your bank but upgrade your capital, then reach out to Tanner Taddeo, the CEO and Co-Founder of Stable Sea. He’ll get you more investment opportunities that maybe you have not had access to. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts. Do not miss any episode with exciting entrepreneurs like Tanner. So thanks, Tanner, for coming, and thank you for listening.  Thank you, Steve. Important Links: Tanner's LinkedIn Tanner's website

In this episode of Future Finance, hosts Paul Barnhurst and Glenn Hopper welcome Alex Curran, CEO of Aptitude Software, to discuss AI-native ERP, the changing role of CFOs, and how finance teams can prepare for AI adoption. Alex explains why strong data foundations, flexible architecture, and real-time finance systems are becoming essential.Alex Curran is the CEO of Aptitude Software, a company with decades of experience building finance solutions for complex organizations. After more than 12 years at Aptitude, Alex became CEO in late 2023 and now leads the company's focus on AI-native finance technology, including the Fynapse platform.In this episode, you will discover:Why CFOs are becoming strategic partners in business decisions.Why clean, detailed data is essential for effective AI adoption.What makes an ERP system truly AI-native.How CFOs can evaluate legacy and newer AI-native ERP platforms.Why flexible AI models and real-time finance are becoming more important.Alex explains that successful AI adoption requires more than adding AI features to existing finance systems. Organizations need the right data and architecture to support changing AI technologies while meeting complex finance requirements. Follow Glenn:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gbhopperiiiFollow Paul:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thefpandaguyFollow Alex:Website: http://fynapse.app/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-curran-9aa593b/Future Finance is sponsored by QFlow.ai, the strategic finance platform solving the toughest part of planning and analysis: B2B revenue. Align sales, marketing, and finance, speed up decision-making, and lock in accountability with QFlow.ai. Stay tuned for a deeper understanding of how AI is shaping the future of finance and what it means for businesses and individuals alike.In Today's Episode:[00:56] – Meet Alex Curran[02:32] – Aptitude Software and Fynapse[05:16] – The Changing CFO Role[07:03] – Finance's Data Problem[10:53] – AI-Native Finance Systems[14:33] – Evaluating ERP Options[17:32] – The Future of AI-Native ERP[18:59] – Closing Thoughts

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

My guest today is Ben Thompson, the founder and author of Stratechery. Ben is one of my favorite business thinkers and I love talking to him about everything happening in markets and technology.  We go through every important company, including OpenAI, Nvidia, Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. We also discuss why he thinks it would be dangerous for the United States to win the AI race outright, what container shipping and the railroads of the 1870s tell us about the buildout, and why the binding constraint on all of this may be capital rather than compute.  Please enjoy my conversation with Ben Thompson. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.  ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠. ----- ⁠Ramp's⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, ⁠Vanta⁠ continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to ⁠vanta.com/invest⁠.  ----- WorkOS⁠ is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- ⁠Ridgeline⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgeline.ai⁠. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:16) Winning the AI Race With China (00:08:28) Timing, Capital, and the Railroads (00:11:34) Berkshire, Google, and Absolute Profits (00:14:23) Verifiable and Unverifiable Domains (00:20:20) Aggregation Theory in the AI Era (00:22:06) The Real Cost of Inference (00:25:40) Why Consumer AI Needs Advertising (00:30:08) Compute Shortages and Commodity Markets (00:35:46) Memory Cycles and Boom Bust Dynamics (00:42:08) TSMC, Intel, and Where Risk Goes (00:44:51) The Best Setups in Big Tech (00:52:14) The Frontier Model Contenders (00:54:27) Microsoft's IBM Playbook (01:00:45) Meta, Attention, and Advertising (01:07:29) NVIDIA, Commodities, and Power

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AI is changing how B2B buyers research, evaluate, and choose vendors. As automation and AI-generated content become more common, trust, community, and authentic human relationships are becoming the real competitive advantage.In this episode of StrategyCast, Lori Jones sits down with Carter Hostelley, founder of Leadtail, to explore why community-driven marketing, advocacy, and credibility matter more than ever. They discuss how buyer behavior is evolving, why traditional demand generation is losing effectiveness, and how marketers can build brands that buyers actually trust in an AI-first world.And don't forget! You can crush your marketing strategy with just a few minutes a week by signing up for the StrategyCast Newsletter. You'll receive weekly bursts of marketing tips, clips, resources, and a whole lot more. Visit https://strategycast.com/ for more details.==Let's Break It Down==01:42 Carter's journey into social media and community building05:31 Why marketers don't control the brand anymore07:04 Community, advocacy, and the future of B2B marketing08:56 How AI is changing buyer behavior and decision making11:20 Authenticity versus AI-generated content14:00 Why advocacy beats traditional demand generation17:55 Building community by adding value first23:03 Why LinkedIn is becoming the new email31:00 LinkedIn newsletters, events, and articles that marketers overlook36:25 What successful B2B marketers will do over the next five years38:29 Final advice and where to connect with Carter==Where You Can Find Us==Website: https://strategycast.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/strategy_cast/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/strategycast==Leave a Review==Hey there, StrategyCast fans!If you've found our tips and tricks on marketing strategies helpful in growing your business, we'd be thrilled if you could take a moment to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback not only supports us but also helps others discover how they can elevate their business game!

He Made the NFL. He Always Saved His Dad a Seat in the Stands   Every game Corey Parchman played, in any city, he got to the stadium early and found a seat in the stands. That's where his father was sitting, in his mind. His dad died of a heart attack at thirty nine, when Corey was ten.   Corey has spent his career proving he can figure things out alone: five seasons in the NFL after going undrafted, a real estate portfolio he built by never over-leveraging, and now a business acquisition company built to buy small-town companies from retiring owners before they disappear. This conversation is about what all of that actually resolves, and what it doesn't.   What was covered: Why "you don't get free lunch, I'll pay for it" became the rule Corey has run his whole life on What his father taught him about the difference between a coach who's given up and one who hasn't Why Corey saved his father a seat in the stands at every game he played, in every city Why six million small businesses may close by 2032 because their retiring owners have no one to hand them to What a $250,000 piece of land taught Corey about due diligence that no class could Why most business owners believe their company is worth far more than a bank ever will   About Corey Parchman: Corey Parchman is a former NFL wide receiver, real estate developer, and the founder and CEO of CorePar Holdings, an Indianapolis-based buy-and-build platform that acquires essential B2B service businesses across Indiana. Corey has built businesses from scratch — including a real estate development firm and an all-boys preschool — so when he says buying an existing business beats starting one, he's speaking from experience on both sides. He's the author of Already Built, a practical guide to business acquisition for the next generation of entrepreneurs, and he's on a mission to make buying a business the most accessible wealth-building strategy in America — especially for those who've never been told this path exists.   Links: Website: https://coreyparchman.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/corey-parchman-2a8a2790/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61584586944141 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coreyparchman_business/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@coreyparchman1181   Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@richersoul Richer Soul Life Beyond Money. You got rich, now what? Let's talk about your journey to purposeful, intentional, amazing life. Where are you going to go and how are you going to get there? Let's figure that out together. At the core is the financial well being to be able to do what you want, when you want, how you want. It's about personal freedom! Thanks for listening! Show Sponsor: http://profitcomesfirst.com/ Schedule your free no obligation call: https://bookme.name/rockyl/lite/intro appointment 15 minutes If you like the show please leave a review on iTunes: http://bit.do/richersoul https://www.facebook.com/richersoul http://richersoul.com/ rocky@richersoul.com Some music provided by Junan from Junan Podcast Any financial advice is for educational purposes only and you should consult with an expert for your specific needs.

Recently, I met David Krauza, VP of Enterprise Data Strategy and Products & Governance at Comcast, at the 2026 CDOIQ symposium, and after chatting for a bit, he agreed to come on the show to talk about how he, as an enterprise buyer, thinks about B2B software purchases in the age of AI. As vibe coding makes internal development more accessible, David explains why the buy-versus-build decision isn't simply about whether a company can build a solution itself. Leaders need to weigh long-term roadmaps, maintenance, integrations, and whether they want to take on the responsibility of becoming a software company. The real question is not just what can be built, but what makes the most strategic sense to own. David also highlights an important consideration vendors frequently overlook: the data their own products create and the possible importance of that to an enterprise data leader. This is particularly true when the product's primary intended purpose is not analytics itself. In a complex sales environment, which may include a senior data leader as a champion or decision maker, product metadata, or what you might currently be thinking of as a byproduct, might actually be a primary decision point in an enterprise purchasing conversation. David then outlines the pre-implementation work required before any of this can be evaluated: establishing shared definitions, explicit success metrics, and a documented “before-picture” you can run at renewal time to understand the ROI of the product. We also explored the hidden costs that can undermine an otherwise compelling product. A polished UI may still create UX friction if users have to constantly move between systems, while complex data integrations can introduce additional labor and operational burdens. This friction should be considered during the evaluation rather than discovered after development. David says vendors can stand out by demonstrating that they understand where a customer's business is headed and how their roadmap supports that direction. He also dropped some real gold about the difference he sees as a buyer when being pitched by a founder vs. a B2B salesperson—and what the latter is missing when they pitch him. Highlights / Skip to: Why buy any products when AI allows you to build them yourself? (2:03) Allowing use cases and goals to dictate the adoption of internal solutions (4:03) Making data capture, accessibility, and ecosystem fit part of the buying decision (5:54) Is data missing in sales conversations due to a lack of marketing or of results? (8:36) Comcast's method for deciding to renew when the intelligence is invisible (11:22) The importance of pre-post analysis when making a renewal argument (14:02) Where David sees the most time being wasted in the pitch process and why vendors who did _____ win more often (16:36) The hidden costs that often go undiscussed during the sales process (20:07) How Comcast evaluates UX friction (back-and-forth of switching between applications to accomplish work) (22:22) Other hidden factors that can prevent your sale from closing (25:13) Differences David sees between founder-led sales and sales-led sales (26:41) David's advice for founders selling in the analytics and data space right now (28:14) Links David Krauza's LinkedIn David Krauza's Substack

What if the business you're building could make more money, create a bigger impact, and give you more freedom with your family? When Megan joined my Online Entrepreneur Academy, she was working full-time as a dietitian for first responders while building a side business that had already started gaining traction. But there was no real structure behind it. She was creating offers, speaking, and making money, but she knew that if she wanted to turn her side hustle into something bigger, she needed support, strategy, and a vision for what the business could actually become. In this episode, Megan shares how she went from making $35K in her side business to $55K, then $85K, $175K, and now being on track for a $300K year. We talk about the decision to leave a six-figure full-time job, why she waited until the timing and finances were right, and the shifts that helped her move from $6K months to $25K–$30K months. Megan also opens up about being diagnosed with autism as an adult and how understanding her neurodivergence changed the way she approaches business. Instead of forcing herself into strategies that drain her, we've built around her strengths, created stronger boundaries, and found marketing and sales strategies that actually work for the way she operates. We also break down how she diversified beyond traditional one-on-one coaching through speaking, workshops, digital training products, brand partnerships, and B2B contracts. Megan shares why having an incredibly specific niche helped her become a sought-after expert, how she turned speaking engagements into content that builds authority, and why she's now thinking beyond being a dietitian and stepping into the role of CEO. In this episode, I cover: How Megan grew her side business from $35K to being on track for $300K a year Why she continued investing in coaching even after her business started making significant money How her adult autism diagnosis changed the way she works and runs her business Why you don't have to force yourself into marketing strategies that work against your strengths How Megan knew when it was finally time to leave her six-figure full-time job Why she built a financial cushion before making the leap into full-time entrepreneurship The content and sales shifts that helped take her from $6K months to $25K–$30K months How a highly specific niche helped Megan build authority and create opportunities Why speaking became one of the biggest revenue streams in her business How she diversified her income beyond one-on-one coaching Why building a product suite can create opportunities to move clients up and down your offers The difference between thinking like a practitioner and thinking like a CEO Why reinvesting in coaching, specialists, and support has been essential to her growth How Megan is building a business that could eventually become an agency and create jobs for other dietitians Why consistent "messy reps" matter more than waiting until you have everything figured out How entrepreneurship has given Megan more flexibility and time with her daughter What she's changing as she works toward a $500K year and, ultimately, a seven-figure business Connect with Megan: Instagram: @rescue.rd Website: https://www.rescuerd.com/ Listen to our previous episode: Landing Speaking Gigs and Breakdown of an $85k Year To receive my weekly newsletter with more business, marketing, and entrepreneurship insights, send me the word "newsletter" in a DM. And if you enjoyed this episode, leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your support means more than you know. Connect with Deanna: Instagram: @dietitiandeanna and @online.entrepreneur.academy   Want my help and strategies to have $30, $50 or $100K launches of your online program? Apply to OEA Scale

Watch the full episode on our YouTube channel: youtube.com/@mreapodcastWhat if the biggest source of future listings is already sitting inside our database?Ryan Young leads a team on pace to sell more than 500 homes this year, with roughly 65% to 70% of that business coming from listings. His appointments are also up 40% year over year. He joins us to break down how his team built a database-driven business focused on homeowners, relevant value, and long-term relationships.We also dig into how Ryan is using AI to track engagement, start conversations and hand motivated opportunities back to his team. Since February, the system has generated 726 handoffs and helped create 125 additional appointments. If we want more listings without constantly buying new leads, Ryan's model gives us a clear place to start.Resources:Visit Fello AIFollow Ryan Young on InstagramOrder the Millionaire Real Estate Agent Playbook | Volume 3Connect with Jason:LinkedinProduced by NOVAThis podcast is for general informational purposes only. The views, thoughts, and opinions of the guest represent those of the guest and not Keller Williams Realty, LLC and its affiliates, and should not be construed as financial, economic, legal, tax, or other advice. This podcast is provided without any warranty, or guarantee of its accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or results from using the information.WARNING! You must comply with the TCPA and any other federal, state or local laws, including for B2B calls and texts. Never call or text a number on any Do Not Call list, and do not use an autodialer or artificial voice or prerecorded messages without proper consent. Contact your attorney to ensure your compliance.Any text or materials generated by artificial intelligence (AI) should be reviewed for accuracy and reliability as there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies. The use of generative AI is subject to limitations, including the availability and quality of the training data used to train the AI model used. Users should exercise caution and independently verify any information or output generated by the AI system utilized and should apply their own judgment and critical thinking when interpreting and utilizing the outputs of generative AI. Do not input confidential financial or proprietary information into any AI tool unless it provides a secure, isolated environment. This includes a robust InfoSec infrastructure and guarantees from the provider that your data is used exclusively for your purposes and is not used to train the model or shared with others.You must follow the TCPA and all other applicable federal, state, and local laws if you want to leverage AI for use with calls or texts. The TCPA prohibits AI-voice calls unless you have received prior express written consent from the call recipient. AI-initiated text messages must disclose to recipients that they are interacting with AI, not a human. Contact your attorney to ensure your compliance with applicable law.

What happens when an AI agent does your shopping — and how do you make sure it doesn't order two grills instead of one? In Part 2 of his conversation with Motley Fool CEO Tom Gardner, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach breaks down the company's Agent Pay protocol, explains why machine-to-machine payments could transform B2B commerce, and reveals why Mastercard just acquired the world's largest stablecoin platform. He also gets into what the AI revolution really means for employment, why proprietary transaction data is Mastercard's deepest competitive moat, and how he personally stays sharp running a $500 billion company.  Host: Tom Gardner  Guest: Michael Miebach  Producers: Bart Shannon, Lauren Budabin  Disclosure: Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. The Motley Fool and its affiliates (collectively, “TMF”) do not endorse, recommend, or verify the accuracy or completeness of the statements made within advertisements. TMF is not involved in the offer, sale, or solicitation of any securities advertised herein and makes no representations regarding the suitability, or risks associated with any investment opportunity presented. Investors should conduct their own due diligence and consult with legal, tax, and financial advisors before making any investment decisions. TMF assumes no responsibility for any losses or damages arising from this advertisement. We're committed to transparency: All personal opinions in advertisements from Fools are their own. The product advertised in this episode was loaned to TMF and was returned after a test period or the product advertised in this episode was purchased by TMF. Advertiser has paid for the sponsorship of this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week Dan sits down with Jeff Grass, co-founder and CEO of Hungry, the B2B platform reinventing corporate catering, office pantries, and workplace food culture. Jeff shares the "dumb luck" story of landing A-list investor Usher, and breaks down the nine core values that has guided his company to $100 million in revenue — helping the businesses of independent chefs in the process. If you have an appetite for success, it's time to dig in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if the AI tools you bought to make your team faster are quietly making that team harder to coordinate?Agility depends less on how quickly you adopt new technology and more on how well you understand the work that technology is supposed to improve.Today, we're going to talk about:- The operational costs buried inside customer-facing work — and why they're so hard to see, let alone measure.- Why layering more automation onto a coordination problem often makes the problem worse.- What it takes to build AI into core workflows so that efficiency and customer experience improve together instead of trading off against each other.To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome, Kevin Yang, Director of AI at Front.About Kevin YangKevin Yang is the Director of AI at Front, the only customer operations platform built for B2B complexity, where he leads the company's AI strategy across automation, analytics, and customer insight. His work is grounded in the belief that the most valuable business intelligence lives inside customer conversations. At Front, Kevin is building AI systems that operate within real workflows—helping over 9,000 businesses better understand what their customers are saying and translate those insights into action with full visibilityKevin joined Front through the acquisition of Idiomatic, the AI-powered voice-of-the-customer platform he founded and led as CEO. Earlier in his career, Kevin worked in frontline support while building his first company, EAT Club, a leading virtual cafeteria serving over 1,000 companies, including Google, Netflix, and Tesla. Kevin Yang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yangkevin/---------- Resources ---------- Front: https://www.front.comFront is a customer operations platform that helps organizations manage customer communication across email, chat, voice, SMS, and other channels in one place. The platform is designed for teams handling complex customer relationships, where resolving an issue often requires coordination across multiple people, systems, and departments.We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873fChaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Learn more at trychaser.com and use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).The most influential minds in software, AI, and engineering leadership will be at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, September 23-25 in San Jose. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/60a7299222a7bcf1Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/93531742a7625a20Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstromDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716baCheck out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.comThe Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is Eric Vishria, a General Partner at Benchmark.  Eric has spent his career in software and cloud, and few people know the history of these markets as well as he does. What makes him special is his ability to use that history to make sense of today.  We discuss what the rise of AWS teaches us about AI, what he has learned from investing in Fireworks, Sierra, and Cerebras, and how the criteria for winning have changed for founders and investors.  Please enjoy my conversation with Eric Vishria. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.  ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠. ----- ⁠Ramp's⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, ⁠Vanta⁠ continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to ⁠vanta.com/invest⁠.  ----- WorkOS⁠ is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- ⁠Ridgeline⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgeline.ai⁠. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:20) Learning the World Through Fireworks (00:05:42) AWS Was Going to Eat Everything (00:07:40) The Zero-Sum Thinking Trap (00:09:01) Comparing Cloud and AI Adoption (00:11:03) Becoming Enterprise's AI Sherpa (00:13:05) Building Sandcastles (00:14:55) The Return to Being Technical (00:17:13) The Shifting Competitive Frontier (00:22:10) Why the Old Playbook Fails (00:27:53) Energy as the Binding Constraint (00:29:38) The Cerebras Story (00:37:57) The Virtue of Productive Naivete (00:39:19) What Robotics Still Needs (00:45:58) What Makes a Great Board Partner (00:51:13) Raising A Growth Fund (00:55:39) What the Big Winners Taught Him (00:57:37) Hard Work Versus the Hole-in-One (00:58:38) The Best Reasons to Go Public (01:01:09) Debates Inside Benchmark (01:02:16) What If It All Works (01:03:35) What Geoff Hinton Got Wrong