Episodios

  • 326: Steps to Leads on LinkedIn with Anthony Blatner

    326: Steps to Leads on LinkedIn with Anthony Blatner
    Mar 30 2026
    https://youtu.be/UcnTlk-Zv3A Anthony Blatner, Founder and CMO of Speedwork Social and host of LinkedIn Ads Radio, is on a mission to help B2B companies turn LinkedIn into a predictable growth engine. With a background in technology and marketing, Anthony helps businesses cut through noise, leverage authentic content, and use LinkedIn ads to consistently attract and convert high-quality prospects. We explore Anthony’s LinkedIn Lead Funnel: Top of Funnel (Tips & Tricks + Case Studies), Middle Funnel (Lead Capture), and Bottom Funnel (Boost Post & Retarget)—a simple yet powerful framework for generating demand, capturing leads, and converting them into customers using a combination of organic content and paid amplification. Anthony shares why traditional tactics like cold connection requests are losing effectiveness, how AI is reshaping content creation, and why human-driven, personality-rich content still wins. He also breaks down how to structure content, budget effectively, and build a sustainable LinkedIn strategy—even with limited time. — 3 Steps to Leads on LinkedIn with Anthony Blatner Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Anthony Blatner, the Founder and CMO of the Speedwork, LinkedIn Ad Agency, helping great companies get great customers with LinkedIn ads. Anthony, welcome to the show. Hey, Steve, excited to be here and to talk to you today. It’s great to have you here. So before we dive into all things LinkedIn, I’d like to ask my favorite question on this podcast, which is, what is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in your business? Yeah, I’ve always been just really into business. I grew up being around a lot of business owners. My dad ran his own business, and he was in the finance world, so he worked with a lot of other business owners. So since I was a kid, I've always been around a lot of business owners, and I've always just really enjoyed business, and then I just naturally gravitated to the marketing world there because I just really enjoyed the side of the business world.Share on X So my ‘Why’ has always been around helping and growing businesses. I come from the technology space doing software development, and now I’m in the marketing space and it’s just something I’ve always loved doing and it’s a very exciting space and it’s always changing very fast. So that’s been my personal ‘Why’, and just manifesting it every day in what we do in our work on LinkedIn. So it’s just always fun to be working with growing businesses. Yeah, this LinkedIn is a fascinating platform. I’ve been on it, I don’t know, probably over 20 years now. Is this possible? Yeah. Something like that. And there were other platforms at the time like Plaxo—I think that was one competitor platform—and I was on multiple platforms. Then I quit Plaxo, and I’m glad that I actually built on the right platform. I’ve also witnessed how people are getting more and more active on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is becoming kind of non-negotiable for B2B businesses. So tell me how you see this evolution and how LinkedIn has changed over the past 10 years. Yeah, it definitely has changed a lot. Back in the day, when we were first getting started, a lot of people would ask me, “Does anybody even use LinkedIn?” Ten years ago, it wasn’t as widely used, especially on the social side. It’s always been like the digital resume. The big change happened with Covid, when everyone was had to get online more. That’s when the big shift happened. Everyone got used to using it a lot more. And then since then, people are used to using it, and it has definitely evolved into being kind of the number one social platform for professionals. So anything business-wise, business content, people are going to go on LinkedIn to share that and talk about that. So it was kind of cemented in this place there. Then they just continued rolling out additional features and things that are useful for both users on reading, connecting with your colleagues, but then also on the marketing side of things. So the advertising platform has kind of come a long way. There’s a lot of new features, a lot of new capabilities there. So it’s been very interesting to watch how it’s evolved. And I think also at the same time we kind of see how other platforms have evolved differently. I feel like these days, if I ever go on Facebook, it’s just a lot of like AI-generated garbage content. So during the workday or during the work week, I want to be reading business stuff. I want to be learning things and I’m going to apply to my job. That’s why I go on LinkedIn to read that type of content. And I know that’s why a lot of other professionals do it. So it’s kind of just grown into its place there in the ecosystem. So people are used to using it a lot more. And there’s been a lot of new features that have come out to help ...
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    25 m
  • 325: 5 Steps to Closing the B2B Revenue Gap with Ethan Giffin

    325: 5 Steps to Closing the B2B Revenue Gap with Ethan Giffin
    Mar 23 2026
    https://youtu.be/9jLLr7IPej0 Ethan Giffin, Founder of Groove Commerce and author of Closing the Digital Revenue Gap, is driven by deep curiosity, a passion for technology, and a desire to help businesses solve problems that directly impact revenue. With over two decades of experience in eCommerce, Ethan now focuses on helping manufacturers and distributors build scalable digital revenue channels that complement their sales teams and improve overall business performance. We explore Ethan’s Revenue Framework for Manufacturers and Distributors, a practical system for building and scaling digital revenue channels in complex B2B environments. The framework guides companies through Discover, Build, Pilot, Activate, and Optimize—starting with cross-functional alignment and strategy, followed by building the right system, testing it with key customers, scaling adoption across the customer base, and continuously improving performance. Ethan explains why B2B eCommerce is far more complex than a typical website project, how “quiet friction” can silently drive customers away, and why successful digital transformation requires long-term commitment, internal buy-in, and the right systems in place. — 5 Steps to Closing the B2B Revenue Gap with Ethan Giffin Good day, dear listener. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Ethan Giffin, the Founder of the Groove Commerce, eCommerce Agency, trusted advisors to manufacturers and distributors, and author of Closing the Digital Revenue Gap. Ethan, welcome to the show. Very excited to be here, Steve. Very excited to be here. Thank you. Well, we’ve known each other for quite a few years, probably, I don’t know, five or six years. 2018. So 2018. So that’s eight. Eight years. Eight years. Yeah. Oh my God. Okay. Eight years. So we’ve known each other a long time. I think you’ve been on one of the early versions of this podcast as well. But things have changed a lot since then. That was five years ago. And your business has transformed, and you have niched your business dramatically since. So I thought that it would be great to have a conversation and talk a little bit about where you come from, what you’re trying to achieve, what matters to you, and also the system that you developed, which I thought was very impactful for manufacturers. So before we dive into that, tell me about your personal ‘Why’ and how you manifesting it in your business? How many hours do you have, Steve? How many hours do you have? I think my personal “why” is that I have a deep curiosity about life in general. I’ve also always enjoyed technology and driving technology, and I’ve always enjoyed sales. A very odd to put all of that together, but I think that’s really has created my personal “why.” I’m just an amazingly curious person and want to continue to learn. And actually love helping people solve their problems that help make them money. It's pretty simple to me in that regard.Share on X If you asked people in my EO chapter, they would say, “Oh, you always ask great questions.” So I just love being curious and helping people. Yeah, definitely. The area you’re working in is very fast-moving, with lots of changes—especially with AI happening and so much innovation in technology. A lot to be curious about. I was personally very curious about the system that you developed. You call it the eCommerce Revenue Program Framework. And we are framework junkies here on the Management Blueprint, and I’d love to learn about what that does for manufacturers, distributors. What are the main pillars, and how does that system work? How do you generate revenue for them? That’s a great question. It’s a great question. So I’ve been building websites for well over 30 years and building eCommerce sites for, I think 22 years at this point. 2004 was my first really in-depth professional eCommerce website. Over that time, I’ve worked with a ton of different types of organizations, and a lot of common themes started to present themselves. As Groove has continued to evolve, we began to work a lot more with manufacturers and distributors who wanted to create online buyer portals so their customers could come in and buy from them. And they call it B2B eCommerce, and it’s very different from B2C eCommerce. Generally, you have to be approved to buy. There’s just a lot of things that goes into kind of replacing working with a salesperson, so to speak, in many of these industries. And I just found a lot of common threads. I also found a group of folks who may not be as digitally mature in the eCommerce space as other folks. And I needed to lay out a system that both the CEO, the CFO, the CTO, and the CMO could all understand and work within, and have some level of accountability within that. Yeah. Just one thing I’d like to mention here. I had a Vistage member when I started my Vistage groups who was running...
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    27 m
  • 324: Get Customers 17 Ways with Vance Morris

    324: Get Customers 17 Ways with Vance Morris
    Mar 16 2026
    https://youtu.be/47bH911YFF0 Vance Morris, consultant, coach, and speaker, helps service-based businesses break free from the ordinary and create extraordinary customer experiences that generate loyal customers for life. After spending more than a decade working for the Disney Company and learning its powerful systems and processes for customer service, Vance launched his own businesses and built them around those principles—eventually creating companies that run largely without his daily involvement. We explore Vance’s Customer Experience System, a framework for turning ordinary interactions into memorable moments that create lifelong customers. The system focuses on mapping all customer points of contact, ideating experiences for each boring touchpoint, prioritizing the biggest impact moments, and memorializing those experiences in systems or playbooks so they can be delivered consistently by the team. Vance explains how businesses can create “tellable moments,” recover from service mistakes in memorable ways, and build repeatable marketing systems that generate referrals and long-term customer loyalty. — Get Customers 17 Ways with Vance Morris Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Vance Morris, a consultant, coach, and speaker, who helps advisor-based businesses break free from the ordinary and step into the extraordinary. Vance, welcome to the show. I appreciate it, Steve. Thank you so much. Your background is very interesting and your whole idea of making customer experience unique, and also you have unique ways of acquiring customers. So let’s get into it. But I’d like to start with my favorite question: What is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in your business? My personal ‘Why’ is very strong, and that is I never want to be an employee ever again. I make a lousy employee. I don’t like to be told what to do. And so knowing that has kept me on this entrepreneurial path for the last 19 years. Okay, well, I can relate to this. I can relate to this. That’s a big thing when you are in charge of your own time. It’s a big blessing. Some people make a lot of money, but if they don’t own their time, it’s not ideal. I agree 100%. Yes, sir. Yeah. Love it. Let’s talk a little bit about your journey. I mean, how did you end up being a non-employee and being your own boss and advising companies, what the route led you down this path? Sure. Well, the long and short of it, I spent a little over a decade working for the Disney Company down in Orlando, Florida. Magnificent experience. Great company to work for. Towards the end, I was starting to get that inkling that maybe I should be doing something on my own. So I went out and worked as an employee and a consultant at the same time for a couple of different restaurant concepts. And then I had a couple of high-profile positions. I was catering director for the Smithsonian Museum System, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, things like that. And along the way, I realized that I do indeed make a lousy employee because I got fired a couple of times. So I own up to it. I’m okay with it. But I said to myself, let’s put something together that will be your own and we’ll be able to afford the lifestyle that you’re looking for. So about 20 years ago, I started a couple of home service businesses. I took all of my Disney knowledge and Disney systems and processes—both on customer experience and customer retentionShare on X and importantly pricing—and put those all into those businesses and started to grow them. And people started asking me, well, geez, Vance, you don’t look like you’re working very hard. How are you doing that? So I back in 2013, I started consulting with other companies, primarily professional services, on how to really deliver extraordinary customer experiences that will lead to what I call raving fans for life, or customers for life. I love it. No better place to learn than at Disney, right? Yeah, I mean, it was great. And one of the first things I learned there was that Disney operates 100% on systems and processes. I mean, I ain’t sure we learned how to pick up trash and smile at people, but the biggest lesson was Disney has a process for everything. You want to carry a tray in a restaurant, they got a process. You want to change a bus tire, they have a process. So I took that everywhere I went, which has actually led me to be fairly autonomous from my home service businesses because I put systems and processes in place, and I only spend about 90 minutes a week on those businesses. That’s fantastic. So let’s talk about these processes, particularly the customer experience processes that you have installed. And actually you have a process for installing processes, which is kind of a system to enhance the customer experience and then keep customers for a long time. You talk about keeping ...
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    21 m
  • 323: Take 5 Steps to Transitioning Your Business with Laurie Barkman

    323: Take 5 Steps to Transitioning Your Business with Laurie Barkman
    Mar 9 2026
    https://youtu.be/_A__xfP6HBM Laurie Barkman, strategic growth advisor, former $100M CEO, M&A expert, and author of The Business Transition Handbook, helps construction, architecture, and engineering firms build scalable, sustainable businesses that create time, freedom, and long-term value. Having experienced a major acquisition firsthand and led companies through significant growth and change, Laurie now focuses on helping mature business owners navigate the complex journey of building enterprise value and preparing for future transitions. We explore Laurie’s BUILT Method—Blueprint, Unlock, Integrate, Lead, Transition—a strategic framework designed to help founders of established businesses scale beyond owner dependency and prepare for successful leadership or ownership transitions. Laurie explains how aligning the owner’s personal vision with the company’s future strategy creates clarity, why measuring enterprise value can unlock new growth decisions, and how proactive transition planning helps entrepreneurs avoid the identity crisis that often follows a business exit. — Take 5 Steps to Transitioning Your Business with Laurie Barkman Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS Group, and today my guest is Laurie Barkman, a strategic growth advisor, former a hundred-million-dollar CEO and M&A expert who’s helping construction and engineering companies build scalable, sustainable businesses that creates time, freedom, and value. Laurie is also the author of the Business Transition Handbook. Laurie, welcome to the show. Steve, thank you so much. I’m so excited to be with you today. Yeah, it’s great to have you. And you have a really interesting niche with the business transition and helping construction or architecture engineering firms. So what brought you to this point? What is your personal why, and how are you manifesting it in your practice? My personal why has been evolving over the years through my career. I think I was always an entrepreneur at heart. I had orbited entrepreneurial companies, like startups, in a big company. I was always the maverick. I was trying to be an intrapreneur and ultimately found myself in a position of finding a way to help business owners in the back part of their journey. While I love startups, I have found that my niche is in working with mature companies—so companies that are over five to seven years old—and helping entrepreneurs in the tough decisions.Share on X It’s the tough decisions that they really wrestle with, feel alone, and I’ve been in executive shoes, right? I’ve been lived that world. I’m living in the entrepreneurial world right now, but again, in this mature space where we think about life differently, we think about transitions differently, and I’ve just kind of embraced that idea, especially as a Gen Xer, of how to help other Gen Xers in that in-between. So is there like a personal reason why you are attracted to this whole idea of the transition? I’ve lived a lot of transitions, especially in the corporate world, going through an acquisition about 10 years ago, I was an outside hire at a third-generation company, and they said, “We’re looking to hire you not for the next three years, but for the next 20,” which was really exciting, but it ended up being three. And the reason why is because a little Bluebird, who wasn’t so little, a global company who was very in acquisitive, I was interested in this business, third-generation company. It was over a billion in revenue. My business unit was about 10% of the total. So again, sizable business unit, and myself and the other executives had to work really, really hard to keep our foot on the gas pedal, making sure that the deal, if we were, was going to go through that we helped make it go through—which we did. It was out of the blue. The company was not on the market. But I saw firsthand the innovation, the growth, and the transition over the three generations of the stories of how it went from one to the next was just so fascinating to me. So when I ultimately was part of the integration team, I left the business. The short answer was that I was just there for three years. And so after that I really saw an opportunity to help other entrepreneurs on their journey. So this notion of that we’re going to grow, we’re going to innovate, and then eventually we’re going to transition—maybe it’s a family business, maybe it’s founder-led. Nonetheless, we want to create value, we want to have good handoffs, and I saw things were working well.Share on X As I mentioned, I joined at the point of the third generation. Then it was up to the corporate gods take it from there. And so I thought about ways to add value and work with inspired entrepreneurs who envision a future legacy for themselves, the people they love, the communities they serveShare on X but they’re just stuck. They feel stuck in some way. They’re kind of on ...
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    27 m
  • 322: 3 Ways to Forge an Identity for Your Business with Josh Block

    322: 3 Ways to Forge an Identity for Your Business with Josh Block
    Mar 2 2026
    https://youtu.be/UgAJ4-221HA Josh Block, President of Block Imaging, Founder of Cube Mobile Imaging, and author of People Matter at Work, is on a mission to restore work as a positive force in people’s lives. After unexpectedly stepping into the presidency of his family business at just 29 years old, Josh began asking a bold question: What if we could create a place where people love to work — and become someone they never dreamed of because of it? We explore Josh’s “Me Cycle” to “We Cycle” Framework (3Ts) — Work Together, Make Thoughtful Decisions, and Be Transparent — a leadership model designed to build trust, ownership, and thriving team cultures. Josh explains how slowing down sharpens decisions, why empathy must shape executive choices, and how radical transparency strengthens accountability. He also shares how defining a clear organizational identity — including mission, values, and thriving mindsets — creates a culture that attracts the right people and repels the wrong ones. — 3 Ways to Forge an Identity for Your Business with Josh Block Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS Group, and my guest today is Josh Block, who’s been President of Block Imaging for the last 15 years. He is also the Founder of Cube Mobile Imaging and the author of People Matter at Work. Josh, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Steve. It’s good to be with you. I’m excited to have you because you’ve taken over a company as president and CEO, then changed the culture, and written a book about it. So we’re going to dive into all this. But before we go there, I’m curious: what is your personal “Why,” and how are you manifesting it in Block Imaging, Cube Mobile Imaging, and your new company? Yeah, I grew up in a home that work was a positive thing. I never heard my dad complain about work. And yet as I went to college and then moved into my twenties, I recognized that work had become kind of a four-letter word in our day—more of a “have to” than a “get to.” So at 29, when I became president of our family business, the collision of my own experience and the world’s experience led me to ask the question: What if we could create a place where people love to work? Culture often gets labeled as soft stuff, but not just love to work, but become someone they never dreamed of because they’re challenged, they’re connected to a mission, they respect their leader, and go home as better people? And so, over the last 15 years, we’ve sought to create that kind of place—where kids would grow up in homes and say, “I want to work at a place like Mommy and Daddy work.” And they’d actually experienced what I experienced as a young person. That’s great that you had such a positive experience, and I agree. I mean, that’s what we want as entrepreneurs. We want to create this experience for our people as well. So how do you actually do that? How do you create this experience? Do you have a framework that will help people? Perhaps you write about it in your book to get that. I think you call it going from the “me cycle” to the “we cycle.” What does that mean, and how do you get there? Yeah. In most organizations, “me” is the driver. Bosses are extracting from people. They’re focused on themselves, or maybe they’re focused exclusively on performance. But in the “me cycle”, bosses look out for themselves, and then employees return the favor. And really nobody wins because it’s more of a cannibalistic approach. And so 322: 3 Ways to Forge an Identity for Your Business with Josh BlockShare on X Leaders set the tone. They’re the ones who go first, and they create a culture where people are cared for. In the book, I talk about the “three Ts.” I didn’t have them at the beginning — I kind of stumbled upon upon them over the last 15 years. And really, these three Ts allow us to create a culture where people feel safe, seen, and successful. And when they do that, they feel safe, seen, and successful, they give back in incredible ways. They take ownership of the business, and ultimately, trust builds. And when that happens, it shares the burden across the leaders and the team. Everything gets easier. Everyone wins. Performance blossoms. And so that’s really what I highlight along with sharing my story into becoming president is the shift from “me” to “we”. I loved it. So when did you recognize that this was something that needed to happen, and how did you create the vision of what it would look like if you wanted to create it? So when you came into the business, was it more of a “me” culture, and did you change it, or did you pick it up, recognize it, and articulate it even though it was already there? Yeah, I think there were positives and negatives, and maybe I’d classify it as neutral. I wouldn’t say it was a thriving team culture, but I wouldn’t say it was toxic either. My ...
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    19 m
  • 321: 7-Steps to Winning Products with Anya Cheng

    321: 7-Steps to Winning Products with Anya Cheng
    Feb 23 2026
    https://youtu.be/6yCIm3guPPo Anya Cheng, Founder and CEO of Taelor, is making personal styling accessible to everyday professionals with an AI-powered clothing-on-demand service built for busy men and influencers. After 15 years leading product teams at companies like Meta, eBay, McDonald’s, and Target, Anya turned her own frustration with shopping and laundry into a mission-driven business that helps people look great, feel confident, and save time—while also supporting sustainability by keeping more clothing out of landfills. We explore Anya’s Product Management Framework, the structured approach she uses to build and scale products. Instead of starting with technology, she begins by Identifying the Right Problem, then Looking at the Persona, Validating the Buying Journey, and Identifying Pain Points. From there, she Selects Decision Criteria to prioritize what matters most, Brainstorms Solutions, and finally Identifies the Right Solution based on impact, feasibility, and business value. She explains how this framework guides everything from launching Taelor to deciding which AI features to build next. — 7-Steps to Winning Products with Anya Cheng Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, Founder of the Summit OS Group. And my guest today is Anya Cheng, the Founder and CEO of Taelor, an AI-powered clothing on-demand service for men and social media influencers. Anya, welcome to the show. Hello, this is Anya from San Francisco. I’m the founder of Taelor. We use AI to pick clothes for busy men. In the old days, only celebrities had their own human stylists. Now everyone can have their own AI stylist, and we send people real clothes to rent. Before starting the company, I spent 15 years in big tech companies. Most recently at Meta, where I helped build Facebook and Instagram Shopping. I was Head of Product at eBay and helped them launch new businesses in the US, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. I was also a Senior Director at McDonald’s, where I helped build their food delivery business globally when Uber Eats just started, and I helped Target build a tech office here in Silicon Valley. I’m excited to share more. Okay, well we already got a lot out of you, so thank you for giving this quick bio. What I’m very interested in is what drives you. So you worked for Target. I think you worked for Amazon, at least with Amazon. You worked for other big tech. EBay, McDonald’s, and Facebook. Yes, so big tech companies like Meta. What makes someone who is a successful leader in big tech break out start as an entrepreneur? What is your personal “Why” that drives you and that you want to manifest in your business? Yeah, it actually start with my personal problems that I had. When I was working for Meta, I was a few female leaders there leading large technology team. So I felt a little bit of imposter syndrome. I wanted to look great, but I don’t want people to find out that I’m freaking out every day. So I tried some subscription boxes like Stitch Fix, which is similar to the old Trunk Club. It’s good that someone styles you. But once you receive those boxes, you have to decide right away: how many times am I going to wear these clothes? And you have to buy before you can wear them. So can I find something even cheaper somewhere else? How do I pair these items? And once I buy them, I have to do laundry, ironing, and folding. It’s just a lot of work. So I started using rental companies. I rented from companies like Nuuly, which is a $500 million revenue company, or companies like Rent the Runway, which is a public company. They are all great—you can rent, you don’t have to buy. But they require people to pick from hundreds of thousands of garments. You spend two hours picking, picking, picking, browsing, browsing, browsing. And I’m not into fashion. I don’t like fashion. I don’t have time to do shopping. I’m not fashion-forward, so I don’t even know how to pick. That was the “aha” moment for me— I realized most fashion companies are designed for people who are into fashion, not for people like me who just want to get ready for the day and be successful.Share on X So I started doing research. Are there other people like me—who hate shopping and laundry but need to look good, be socially active, go to meetings, close deals, get jobs? It turns out there are a lot of people like me: busy men, single guys, salespeople, consultants, pastors, recruiters, professors. There are 15 million single men, 14 million sales professionals in the U.S., and it turns out we started Taelor to help people like me look great without having to think about fashion. Well, I don’t know—if you look at my shirt, I probably could also use some Taelor treatment, an AI telling me how to dress better. So what drives you? I understand this is a great idea and definitely necessary, but what makes you excited about it? I think I’ve personally always been passionate about helping...
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    22 m
  • 320: 5 Steps to Heart-Driven Leadership with Hanna Bauer

    320: 5 Steps to Heart-Driven Leadership with Hanna Bauer
    Feb 16 2026
    https://youtu.be/nZ_4d91QlUk Hannah Bauer, CEO of Heartnomics Enterprises and a leadership strategist grounded in Lean Six Sigma, Zig Ziglar, and Baldrige Excellence, is driven by a personal ‘Why’ of transformation—helping people live with love, excellence, and fulfillment. We explore Hannah’s remarkable origin story: diagnosed with a serious heart condition as a child, enduring years of unpredictable tachycardia and two heart attacks at age 10, and ultimately receiving a pioneering ablation procedure that saved her life. Out of that journey, she built Heartnomics—the “economy of the heart”—and teaches her HEART Leadership Framework: Hope, Empowerment, Accountability, Results, and Trust, a values-based model that fuses emotional resilience with operational discipline to create ethical, high-performing leaders and cultures. — 5 Steps to Heart-Driven Leadership with Hanna Bauer Good day, dear listener. Steve Reda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Hannah Bauer, a leadership strategist who teaches leadership performance, continuous improvement. She’s also the CEO of Heart Enterprises, and she is well-versed in Lean Six Sigma, Zig Ziglar Baldrige Excellence, and many disciplines. So I’m excited to welcome you to the show, Hannah. Thank you Steve. Thanks for having me. Alright, so you have lots of interesting stories and lots of interesting concepts and frameworks, which we are into. I’m also interested in your personal ‘Why,’ and how are you manifesting that in your coaching practice? Well, my personal why is transformation. I believe that as human beings, we have the authority and ability to transform, and I believe the way that we do that is through love and excellence. We've all been created by love and the ability to do good works, excellent works—the ones that are going to leave a positive footprint.Share on X That’s my why. I want to be able to be fulfilled in what I do and help other people be fulfilled in the lives that they live. Wow. So love, access, and fulfillment. That is a very positive vision. I am happy to sign up for that. It’s positive. It’s true. You know, and I think that’s the thing. It’s like we really can attain that in this lifetime. And sometimes we look at it like, “Oh, it’s so far away.” or “One day,” but it’s like—that’s the amazing thing that we have as human beings. We have the ability to live that out regardless of what’s going on. Well, that’s a very significant for you to say that because it’s part of your story that when you were 10 years old—and correct me the details—you were diagnosed with a serious heart condition. So tell me your origin story, and how did you actually beat out of this huge challenge and obstacle that you had, the kind of life that you are teaching others right now? Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for asking that. Yeah, I will say probably the ones harder than me. I would think of many points as my parents, because I was the kid, right? I was the kid. I was diagnosed at four, when at the time was considered a terminal diagnosis with heart; a lot of research had not been done yet at that time—we’re talking about like the late seventies, early eighties. So there was not really much information on heart disease.—for women, much less on kids. Kids just don’t get heart disease, right? I mean, if there’s anything, it’s like a structural thing. In mine, it was where my heart would go suddenly really fast into tachycardia, but it would also be arrhythmic, which would be abnormal rhythms. It was unexpected. It could be just—I’m just talking to you—I sneeze, and then it would just go into tachycardia, or I’m in the middle sleeping and I turn the wrong way, it will start going into that tachycardia. And that would be like—think about a resting, normal resting heart rate is between the sixties to eighties. Well, for me, a normal heart rate would be anywhere from 180 to 240. So basically like on—yeah, on like that zone five—what you all are feeling when you are working out. That’s what my heart would be as a kid. But it wouldn’t just be for like, a few minutes. It could last hours, days into the extreme. It lasted weeks, and drugs didn’t work for it. Interventions didn’t work. I’ve had a DH of 10 actually, which was significant at that time. So I went through two heart attacks. That’s really what— really the both a miracle and what opened the door. I think always our greatest opportunities are always surrounded by the greatest of circumstances and obstacles. And as much as painful as that whole experience was, it also opened the door for my parents to courageously uproot our family, come to the US in search of a cure that didn’t yet exist. And it was a journey for about five years. Nothing really inside as far as the, “Hey, if we do this, this will happen. If we do that, again.” It was a lot of the things that happened ...
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    37 m
  • 319: 3 Ways to Exit Your Business with Tim Martinez

    319: 3 Ways to Exit Your Business with Tim Martinez
    Feb 9 2026
    https://youtu.be/ecq40Pnldrw Tim Martinez, Value Creation, Strategic, and Exit & Succession Planning Advisor—also known as “The Inside Man”—is on a mission to empower entrepreneurs and make the world a better place with his philosophy of “No entrepreneur left behind.” In this episode, Tim shares how he evolved from starting small businesses as a teenager to advising founders on high-stakes growth and exit decisions. We explore Tim’s 3 Exits Framework, which breaks exit planning into three critical phases: Mental Exit (separating identity from the business), Role Exit (building leadership and succession so the business can run without the owner), and Technical Exit (valuation, deal structure, and the formal sale process). Tim also explains why AI is accelerating business disruption, why minimalism is a competitive advantage, and what keeps so many businesses stuck at the $3M revenue ceiling. — 3 Ways to Exit Your Business with Tim Martinez Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS Group. And I have as my guest today Tim Martinez, who is a Value Creation, Strategic, and Exit & Succession Planning Advisor, also known as “The Inside Man.” Tim also has a successful Substack with lots of followers, which has a similar title, Inside Man. He’s also built his own ChatGPT API, so he’s running with the times. Tim, welcome to the show. Thanks, Steve. Great to be here. Finally, we have someone who is ahead of the curve on AI and the technological evolution that’s part of this new industry revolution. So let’s start with my favorite question. What is your personal ‘Why’ and how are you manifesting it in your practice and in your business? Yeah. My personal ‘Why’ is to make the world a better place and to empower entrepreneurs. “No entrepreneur left behind” has kind of been my motto. Since I was a kid—I started businesses very young, like 15 or 16—people would ask me, “How are you doing this?” And I would help however I could. And it was just always felt really good to help my fellow entrepreneurs, whether I was helping them in a small way or a big way. And there's nothing better than seeing some of the advice you're able to give someone actually get implemented.Share on X Then you see them go, “Wow, oh my gosh, this is great.” And again, sometimes it’s small, sometimes it’s big. But I believe entrepreneurs rule the world, and I do my part every day—whether it’s writing my Substack, jumping on podcasts, or writing books. I’m always here just to share what I’ve learned, because I think that’s what makes the world go round. Well, you have a boundless energy, because you are writing books, you are writing your blog, you are doing these podcasts. Then you also have to gather the information, right? You have to work with clients—otherwise there’s no raw material. That is very impressive. So what took you to this point? How did you evolve? I mean, you started at 15, but surely you were not coaching or consulting people at 15. Yeah, so I probably spent about 10 years just starting small businesses. I had the lemonade stand, then a coffee business and a silk-screen business. I had a DJ business, a retail store, a marketing and advertising agency, a small one, but I was able to sell it. And I got lucky and sold a couple of these small businesses. I built websites, built apps—I mean, anything you can do to make a buck. I was just kind of hustling and figuring it out on my own. And at a certain point in time, maybe like 10 years later, someone asked me to help them write their business plan. It was the first time I thought, “Huh, someone wants to pay me to help them write a business plan. That sounds interesting.” Okay. And I had written all of my own business plans for 10 years. I used to go to SCORE—the Senior Corps of Retired Executives, a division of the SBA—and they would consult for free. They still do, by the way. And I always said my long-term goal was to be an old advisor at SCORE, because they helped me so much when I was a kid.Share on X So I charged money for my first business plan. That person was able to raise money from their uncle. Then they said, “Well, hey, we got this money. What do we do now?” So I said, “Well, I think I can charge you. I think this is called consulting. Maybe I’ll just charge you to help execute your business plan.” It was a small business, and I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a book that was like this big—How to Start a Consulting Business. I just sat there and highlighted the whole thing. It had CD-ROM forms in the back. I knew nothing about consulting. And probably for the next handful of years, I just focused on writing business plans and helping people. That’s kind of what got me into consulting and working with bigger businesses. It really started with business plans and small businesses.Share on X Yeah. I mean, business plans are great because...
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