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Chapters:
(0:00) Intro
(2:28) We almost grew ourselves into bankruptcy
(8:58) The real cost of a bad hire
(14:13) Take the athlete over the 4.0 resume
(18:40) Why you need an integrator
(22:06) I don't know, what do you think?
(26:47) 2 things that make a business unsellable
(29:09) Making the first M&A documentary
(33:33) Leaving tens of millions on the table
(38:36) A movie instead of a steak dinner
(41:32) Building a 65,000-advisor referral network
(50:06) How to find your perfect referral partner
(58:03) Scott's dad's stroke at 62
(1:03:47) Most owners wait too long to sell

Whether you plan to sell or never sell, Dara offers a practical standard: build the business as if a buyer were already watching.

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Cliff W Gardner brings 30 years of M&A and corporate finance experience—and firsthand experience building a 165-million-part OEM auto-parts ecommerce platform that he sold to AutoNation.

In this episode, Cliff explains:

• Why the first offer may be far below what the right buyer would pay
• How two financially similar companies can have dramatically different valuations
• When earnouts create upside—and when they shift risk back to the seller
• The broker tails, upfront fees, and retrading tactics owners should scrutinize
• How EBITDA adjustments, due diligence, indemnities, and undisclosed surprises affect a deal
• Why preparing at least a year before a sale can protect your leverage and company value

For business owners considering an exit, this conversation offers a practical look at evaluating buyers, negotiating terms, and avoiding costly surprises during a company sale.

Brian shares why he wishes he had raised less at the start, how buying a business changed the way he thinks about risk, why the right people can help turn a company faster than the founder alone, and how he handles imposter syndrome when it shows up.

Watch if you are a founder deciding how much pressure, money, and personal risk this stage of the business can really handle.

In this episode, Varun explains what profitable creator companies actually need behind the scenes: clean books, tax help, clear scope, better pricing, and operators who understand the difference between growth and good business.

Brian and Varun talk about why a creator with 50,000 followers can make mid-six figures, why not every creator needs to chase MrBeast-scale growth, how Boring Stuff serves 50+ clients with a 5-person team, why monthly retainers beat revenue percentages, and what Varun learned from firing his first client.

A practical episode for business owners, agency operators, and service founders thinking about pricing, client quality, incentives, and productized operations.

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0:00 Meet Adam Connors
1:10 Wall Street to Hedge Funds: Adam's Wild Career
4:00 No Pedigree, But Harvard Grads Couldn't Compete
8:18 Network Mapping: Find Anyone Strategically
10:18 Trust Is the Holy Grail of Relationships
13:30 Direct Response vs. Brand Networking
20:43 $30M Target Crushed via Centers of Influence
23:40 Masterminds: Scaling Your Referral Network
27:17 Breaking Through Dunbar's 150-Person Limit
29:05 Find Adam + Network Wise

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---

0:00 Meet Michael Kleinmann
1:32 FreshPair to Subscription: The Pivot
3:15 Building an Audience Before Selling Anything
5:55 Why Subscription Forces You to Niche Down
9:14 High Churn Fixed by Letting Customers Preview
12:01 Doubling Conversion Rate in 30 Days
13:23 Read Customer Emails to Fix Your Business
16:42 Financials First: Finding Hidden Ops Problems
25:54 Finding Inventory (and Money) You Forgot You Had
30:27 Find Michael + Underwear Expert

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---

0:00 Meet Fernando Cao
0:30 From Personal Brand Agency to a $3M GTM Agency
2:08 Hiring 50 People in 4 Months "Sounded Sexy on Paper"
6:31 The Centralized Intelligence System Powering His Agency
13:32 How to Diagnose a Stalled Revenue Engine
27:53 The GTM Myths Most Founders Still Believe
32:55 How Claude Code Design Builds Every Sales Deck
45:04 The Value-First Outbound Move That Books Meetings
59:17 Hormozi's One-Channel Rule That Took Him to $350K
1:01:30 Find Fernando + RevenueFlow

Find Stefanie here:
www.themarketeergroup.com
https://open.spotify.com/show/2ciqhrDOYoow1OIKswNVXk
https://www.youtube.com/@TheDigitalMarketeerPodcast

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0:00 Meet Stefanie Beach
0:30 Laid Off After 12 Years in Paid Media
3:00 The Two "Aha" Stages of Hiring (Help → Systems)
6:00 Why Stefanie Won't Hire Junior People
9:00 The Senior Hire Who Ghosted Her Client
12:00 "If You Don't Trust, You're Siphoning Your Own Growth"
15:00 Building a 7-Fig Agency Through 9 Surgeries
20:00 AI vs Humans — The 2026 Hottest Take
25:00 The Marketeer Group + What's Next
29:00 Find Stefanie + The Marketeer Group

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Chapters

0:00 Meet William Harris
1:06 The Accidental Agency Origin
4:24 Hiring a Partner 3 Days Before COVID
5:22 Why Employees Beat Contractors at Scale
9:31 Remote Culture Built From Day One
17:07 The Hidden Cost of Great Agency Work
22:25 13 Acquisitions (Largest at $800M)
24:09 "We Bill Based on Facts"
30:18 The Inventory Problem No Agency Caught
35:34 Find Will + Elumynt

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Chapters

0:00 Meet Brent Ridge
1:25 The Target Deal That Almost Bankrupted Beekman
4:21 Why Big Brands Stock Their Own Shelves
6:52 "We Wouldn't Spend a Dollar Until We Made $1.50"
13:22 "We Never Made Ourselves CEO"
14:39 Three CEOs for Three Stages
18:55 The Power Grab That Ended a CEO
25:58 "The Empty Vessel Makes the Most Noise"
34:36 "A Bad Workman Blames the Tool"
37:35 Find Brent + Goat Wisdom

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---

0:00 Meet Jason Fishman
0:17 75 Pitch Decks to Raise $3M
1:10 Why He Built DNA in 2014
3:06 The Rule Change That Opened Investor Ads
4:49 From Basic Ads to Full-Funnel Investor Marketing
7:19 Which Companies This Model Works For
8:49 Why Most Campaigns Still Fail
10:40 Can Agencies Raise Capital to Acquire Businesses?
12:38 Equity vs Loans: The Real Tradeoff
14:23 The 1.8M Investor Database Moat
15:20 Rebuilding the Agency With Campaign Quarterbacks
21:52 "Hire Slow, Fire Fast" in Practice
24:01 The Training System: I Do, We Do, You Do
29:01 AI Adoption Rule: Better Than Human
31:15 Find Jason Fishman + Digital Niche Agency

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---

0:00 Meet Joshua Iverson
0:22 Selling the first ads on Facebook
1:12 The first scale moment
1:44 Losing $100K/month overnight
2:54 Building a genealogy ad network
3:54 First internal hire and arbitrage risk
4:46 What Ad Ops actually means
8:20 Why Google alone is not enough
10:11 Buyer-side vs seller-side Ad Ops
12:54 Laid off at NBC and starting over
14:29 The subscription-business entry point
15:55 Why local businesses struggle with agencies
18:33 The local agent-broker model
23:14 Pricing: retainers and media percentages
26:55 The 3x ROI promise and CPC reduction
30:07 Control vs scale in a license model
34:49 CRM, warm leads, and freemium offers
36:32 What most agencies miss with SMBs
39:06 Find Joshua + iMediaAudiences

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---

00:00 We Sold Out — Then Hit a Wall
00:19 NASA to Founder: Lori’s Unlikely Career Pivot
00:49 The Brutal “Hobby vs Business” Moment
04:11 The Price Increase That Changed Everything
06:20 Know Your Numbers or Stall Your Growth
08:27 Fixed Bid vs Hourly: What Actually Protects Margins
11:24 “Success Plans”: Win-Win Retainers That Work
11:53 The Leadership Skill Most Teams Avoid: Healthy Conflict
15:35 How to Introduce Conflict Culture After an Acquisition
20:31 Gossip, Triangling, and Unhealthy Team Dynamics
27:59 They Thought Remote Would Fail — They Were Wrong
33:50 Hiring for Values, Not Just Resume Skills
35:37 Buying a Business Isn’t “Easy Mode”
37:20 From Demand Surge to Capacity Crunch in Manufacturing
42:32 What Lori Is Focused on Now: Repeat Rate + Margin Growth

---

00:00 Meet Lior Eldan
00:20 From a Kitchen in Israel to Google and Samsung
00:58 "We Kind of Stumbled Into Being an Agency"
02:44 The Moment AI Felt Like an Existential Threat
05:42 Why Lior Built an AI Champions Program
10:58 "Most Companies Just Send an Email About AI"
11:19 Why Canceling Billable Work Was the Only Option
14:57 How the Hackathon Became a Monthly Product
17:02 The Boring Legal Step That Unblocked Everything
20:12 Why Home Tests Are Now Useless for Hiring
22:14 When Product, Design, and Dev Become One Role
25:05 The New Hire That Vibe Codes on Weekends
27:40 Builders vs. Domain Experts — You Need Both
31:57 "Skills Are a Commodity — Data Is Our Secret Sauce"
35:08 The Tool Scanning Reddit for Client Opportunities
38:17 Find Lior + Moburst

---

0:00 Meet Stephane Gringer
1:10 When Brand Owners Couldn't Tell It Was AI
2:14 The 1,000-Ad Problem Nobody Talks About
4:08 How to Know When Your Brand Is Drifting
8:27 "People Buy With Emotion — Even in Enterprise Sales"
11:41 Building His Wife's Modeling Agency From Scratch
16:35 When to Map the Business vs. Just Build
18:46 How AI Changed the Way He Transforms Companies
21:43 The Batman Moment That Changed His Career
25:08 "I Walk In on Monday — Where's My Team?"
27:33 The 7-Day Shutdown That Fixed Everything
30:02 The Two Hires That Solved 90% of His Problems
32:21 Scaling AI Without Killing Your Brand
34:48 Find Stephane + Voxaic.ai

----

00:00 Meet Jason Berkowitz
01:12 The Exit Interview That Forced Him to Delegate
02:33 Building Links From His Queens Apartment
05:39 Why He Went Fully Global (Zero US Employees)
10:02 "Getting Ghosted by Girls AND Employees"
12:10 Rules vs. Core Values (The Difference)
17:24 "The Hills You'd Die On" Aren't Worth It
19:32 Not Firing Fast Enough (The Fear of Things Breaking)
24:49 The 7 Pillars of His Agency
29:44 "Kickass Service AND Kickass Communication"
32:54 No Contracts — Earn It Every Month
36:01 The "Gap of Disappointment"
38:59 "Nine Times Out of 10, We Avoid Founders"
41:20 When Clients Get Promoted, They Bring Him Along
44:04 Find Jason + Break the Web

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00:00 Meet Kathryn Wilson
00:56 She Built an Agency From Scratch — Senior First
03:08 Why Most Founders Hire Too Late and Too Junior
03:20 "Lack of Leadership Is Expensive"
04:10 How to Audition 18 Directors Before You Hire One
06:27 Hiring the Chief Innovation Officer
08:28 More Expensive Per Hour, Cheaper Per Project
10:30 "We're Not Selling Sneakers — People's Lives Are at Stake"
11:10 Why She Hired a Personal Chef (Not a Foosball Table)
14:51 The "Zero Asshole Policy" in Hiring
16:09 Building Teams With Personality Data
18:54 Flat Structure: Five Pods, Three Products Each
21:33 Skills Get Screened Before Kathryn Ever Shows Up
23:37 Matching 300 Freelancers to Clients With AI
26:33 No Annual Reviews — Just Weekly KPIs
28:07 Find Kathryn + VUE Health

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00:00 Meet David Reske
01:11 The Moment Nowspeed Became Real
02:39 Why Founders Can't Build Sales Teams
04:30 The 3 Things That Fixed Sales
07:15 "The Number One Thing: Stop Hiring"
09:28 Flat Orgs vs. Structured Orgs
11:52 "The CEO Becomes the Bottleneck"
13:21 Why Nowspeed Went 100% Remote
16:10 The Camera Rule That Changed Culture
17:36 Why Outsourcing Nearly Broke Them
19:42 Agency vs. Contractor: How to Decide
23:14 The Cost-of-One-FTE Marketing Model
28:40 What Is Generative Engine Optimization?
29:57 The Solar Installer Moment
35:35 Find David + Nowspeed

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00:00 Meet Nate McKelvey
01:06 Building Jets.com Before Google Existed
04:05 "I Maxed Every Credit Card I Had — and My Wife's"
04:55 Growing Too Fast (It Set Them Back a Full Year)
05:59 How Nate Helped Planet Fitness Go From 300 to 1,000 Locations
07:51 "I Owed My Client a Hundred Thousand Dollars"
11:48 "They Didn't Want Nate — They Wanted Arnold"
12:24 The Ceiling You Hit When You Can't Scale Yourself
12:54 "What Used to Take Years Now Takes Minutes"
19:22 Running Dozens of Clients as a Team of 2
21:11 AI LinkedIn Replies That Don't Break the Rules
23:55 Find Nate + Bobos.ai

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0:00 Meet Alessandro Bogliari
0:11 From $1,500 to Google, Sony & Hyundai
0:52 The Moment He Couldn't Do It All Alone
4:13 Why Finance Was So Painful
6:30 Agency vs. In-House: What Broke
8:24 When to Hire Employees vs. Contractors
10:12 How He Split the Finance Team
14:14 60 People: How the Team Breaks Down
15:42 Adding Layers So the CEO Isn't Pinged 24/7
18:40 Strategists vs. Executors: How Pods Work
20:07 Why Onboarding Is a Goldmine
22:07 How He Caught the Broken Telephone Problem
25:24 Onboarding, Culture, Change Management
27:12 "Don't Think Other Businesses Are Perfect"
31:50 How to Prioritize With Unlimited Ideas
32:49 Phase 1: Market Share With $1,500
35:07 Phase 2: Operations & Margins
35:50 Phase 3: Senior Hires to Scale
36:30 Phase 4: Think Like a Buyer, Not a Founder
39:44 What He's Fixing in the Next 90 Days
40:09 The RFP Game With Fortune 500s
42:57 Where to Find Alessandro

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0:00 Meet Blake Kim
0:44 "A Traditional Agency Is a Ponzi Scheme"
1:04 Why the Agency Model Is Broken
6:13 What Members Get Instead of a Salary
9:13 Why Myosin Pays Everyone in Stablecoins
10:57 The Reputation Score System (Peer Reviews + Bayesian Average)
16:09 How Compensation Actually Works Across 100 Freelancers
18:54 Overseas Talent, Geographic Pay, and the New Reality
22:14 "If You're Not Using AI, You Will Get Left Behind"
22:43 Why AI Won't Replace Creative Directors
25:12 "Traditional Agency on the Front End, Network on the Back End"
29:32 Vibe-Coding Their Own Internal OS (Synapse on Replit)
32:40 Freelancers Take 60–70% of Gross Revenue
33:48 "What Used to Cost $200k Now Costs $200 in AI Credits"
34:33 Network Effects, Flywheels, and the IPO Plan
36:23 Find Blake + Myosin.xyz

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00:00 Intro
00:29 What She Walked Into
02:32 Why Clients Were Shaky
05:13 Fixing At-Risk Clients
07:08 Rating Every Client 1–5
09:20 Using SWOT Analysis
12:54 SWOT Explained Simply
16:33 Strategy vs. Tactics
19:54 Strategy vs. Plan
25:01 Failing Fast
26:13 Fail Fast at Converge
31:01 Are We Organized Right?
35:08 Positioning at 60 People
38:28 What Is Positioning?
43:25 The Positioning Formula
46:23 Positioning for Campaigns
49:23 Advice to Yourself on Day One
53:00 Where to Find Shoshana

00:00 Intro — Meet Patrick Gilbert
01:17 How Patrick Went From AI Hater to AI Superfan
04:41 Doubling Every Year — Then Hitting the Wall
08:06 What Structure Did He Cut (and Why)?
10:06 Build First or Get Revenue First? AI Changes the Game
13:38 Why They Were Anti-Tech (But Pro-AI)
15:38 What Does 'Structure' Even Mean?
17:37 SOPs vs. Culture — The Big Trade-Off
20:55 Builder Mentality — The New Culture at AdVenture
22:43 Idiotic Optimism — AdVenture's Secret Weapon
24:52 The Hackathon Mistake — A Lesson in Culture Building
27:52 Why 'Idiotic Optimism' Beats 'Smart Optimism'
33:42 "Pessimists Are Often Right, But Optimists Are Often Rich"
41:30 It's Not Risk — It's Side Projects That Change Everything
46:33 Patrick's New Book — "Never Always Never Never"
55:26 Red Ocean vs. Blue Ocean — Why Marketing Agencies Are Shrinking
1:06:03 Nobody Actually Has a Strategy
1:17:52 Business Strategy vs. Marketing Strategy
1:25:12 YouTube Ads Are TV Ads (and Nobody Knows It)
1:28:12 How AI Actually Helps (It's Not Just Productivity)
1:35:19 Non-Technical Founders Using Claude Code
1:41:06 Where to Find Patrick + His AI-Powered Book

00:00 Meet Adrian Fagerlund
00:15 Launching a marketplace during COVID
00:57 The chicken-or-egg problem, getting the first brands and publishers
2:31 "We had to hire 15 people at once"
4:51 How he decided which roles to hire for
6:49 Going 100mph but slowing down for hiring
8:35 "The structure hasn't really changed," what he got right early
9:09 Why he doesn't use recruiters or AI to hire
12:16 The 4-step hiring process: vibe check, sample, puzzle piece fit
14:55 "Blinded by glossy packaging," the hire that burned him
15:37 The cultural difference that changes interviews in America
19:53 How to vibe check when you can't describe your culture
22:52 "Lifers," the employees who followed him across companies
24:37 "You can't teach hunger," the ESOP and commission structure
26:33 How to tell if someone is moldable and hungry in an interview
28:06 The type of questions that reveal real candidates
29:23 Can you spot moldability before the 30/60/90?
30:59 Day-in-the-life testing and giving feedback live
32:20 The onboarding process that keeps people around
35:23 Training library: what's async vs. live
37:59 How to decide what to train at $1M to $5M
39:00 Training by need: new products, new skills, new focus
40:48 How to make sure 100+ people actually adopt a new skill
44:57 How to know if people understand AND do what you trained
47:43 AI Visibility: helping brands rank inside ChatGPT
50:02 What is reverse pitching?
50:29 Use case: how an ecomm brand uses Linkby
54:48 The publisher side: how writers make money with Linkby
58:10 Where to find Adrian + Linkby

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00:00 Meet Samuel Schmitt
00:18 Building an SEO tool with zero SEO knowledge
00:59 Why he kept the tool completely free for 2 years
05:07 Losing 3 years of growth by not charging early enough
06:40 The 10 mistakes you shouldn't make when building a SaaS
07:18 Building a SaaS as a side project while working full-time
08:59 Why too much cash in the bank account is a problem
10:49 Learning to delegate when you've never hired before
13:09 Paying 10 copywriters to write the same article as a test
15:30 Running a 70,000-user tool with 4-5 part-time freelancers
16:25 Why he refuses to hire full-time in France
19:08 How he structures steady part-time workloads every month
22:13 The fear of giving your code to a stranger on Upwork
24:20 Why SaaS isn't dead but having just one product is risky
29:03 A private bank client built a $50K tool alone with Claude Code
32:45 Building a portfolio of SaaS products in the next 12 months
35:09 Where to find Sam

0:00 Meet Gilad Bechar
0:11 All-In on AI (But Hiring More, Not Less)
0:48 "We Thought We'd Downsize"
3:32 The Roles Nobody Expected to Create
6:48 Why Every AI Tool Needs a Product Manager
8:17 The LinkedIn Content Machine (Full Breakdown)
12:24 Tinder for Content — Swipe to Schedule
14:39 The Chef Analogy — Tasting AI Output
16:00 Writers Became Editors-in-Chief
19:00 Every Role Got Promoted
21:12 One AI Engineer Can Transform a Full Agency
25:56 "50% of Our Hires Need to Be AI Native"
28:18 The Token Bill That Doesn't Scale
32:45 How to Test for AI Skills in Hiring
36:24 Five Acquisitions and Counting
40:09 What Moburst Is Buying Next
43:05 Find Gilad + Moburst

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00:00 Meet Tom Coburn
00:54 7 years of "fake" product-market fit
03:10 Winning a business plan with no code and dropping out of pre-med
05:15 The eBay Churn: Losing $2M in ARR overnight
07:08 Why the entire go-to-market strategy was wrong
12:25 The 2.5-hour meeting that saved the company's culture
20:35 Joining Sam Harris to run the Waking Up app
24:40 Scaling a business heavily focused on product, not marketing
27:45 Why the team flat-out rejected paid UGC actors
30:30 The 10x difference between authentic partners and paid influencers
35:18 Optimizers vs. Sufferers: Customizing the user journey
40:14 Why a management team was finally necessary
43:47 Where to find Tom

---

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0:00 Meet Kevin Roy
0:18 Starting from Craigslist (The Early Days of Green Banana)
1:55 The "Favorite Rock Band" Hiring Filter
3:20 The One Trait Kevin Refuses to Hire Without
4:50 Using AI to Forecast Your Next Hire
8:18 "Inches Away from Going Out of Business"
10:07 2.5 Years of Just Gym and Work
15:33 Why Relationships Beat Results (Client Retention Secret)
24:26 The Retention Problem That Had Nothing To Do With Performance
26:40 The Client Making 16x Returns — Who Thought We Were Failing
30:20 Why Kevin Kept Sales Flat for 2 Years on Purpose
32:57 Catching Candidates Faking Interviews with AI
36:50 The Role Kevin Still Can't Replace Himself In
38:31 The Golden Age of SEO Is Happening Right Now
39:06 Find Kevin + Green Banana SEO

---

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0:00 Meet Matt Sullivan
0:45 The "Oh Shit" moment, "I can't do this alone"
2:07 Why hiring generalists was a mistake
7:10 "We were the guinea pig" testing on yourself before selling
11:22 Hiring the Mac and Cheese reviewer
15:06 Mrs. Monday, The COO who fixed everything
24:08 AI vs humans, where each wins
28:14 How Matt checks capacity and forecast hiring
34:36 ChatGPT recommended Torro to a prospect
37:50 "Deeper vs wider," the growth strategy shift
43:53 What an A-player actually means
49:03 Hiring differently for doers vs leaders
54:28 "Deeper vs wider," what's working now
59:08 Hooks that got them 40,000 emails + millions of views
1:02:34 Hack ChatGPT to reverse engineer your visibility
1:08:31 Where to find Matt + Torro

————————————

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0:00 Meet Billy Moyer
0:54 "We crashed and burned" scaling before ready
3:14 The retainer model that changed everything
6:10 Why great consultants can't sell (and how Billy profits)
8:56 Training part-time coaches without losing quality
14:55 "Coaches were paying to work for us"
22:19 The founder who’s overseas hires failed (now has 15 hires)
31:41 Selling consulting by giving it away for free
38:26 The private equity play Billy's building inside his firm
43:09 The handshake deal that burned him
47:28 The shadow side of leadership, what's really holding you back
58:35 Where to find Billy + The Upside Down Leader

Want his free GEO playbook?

Message me on LinkedIn or Twitter and I’ll send it to you (links below)

————————————

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0:00 Meet Tom Shapiro
1:03 Need to turn the business around
4:20 Why following best practices = failure
8:27 Be Radically Different (in Marketing)
13:09 Japan vs US Business culture
18:59 Your business culture is an extension of you
19:43 Avoid these hiring mistakes
23:40 Testing candidates (across levels)
25:21 When to use a Freelancer vs hire in-house
29:20 The investment everyone misses (Onboarding!)
32:59 What to do when you sell too much
36:28 How you see the world different (in next stage of business)
39:00 Get Tom’s AI SEO playbook