Authority in the Wild

The most polished marketing is the marketing nobody remembers. Ada Wardzala started in the call center of the company that publishes Harvard Business Review in Poland and was directing its marketing by age 23. Today she runs SUUR, a B2B agency where clients wait for her availability.

In this conversation, we get into:

- Why 80% of your effort belongs on the part most teams treat as an afterthought

- How three women in Utah turned Stan...

Vaughan Broderick has worked on more than 300 innovation projects and trained over 350 leaders across 20 industries. In all of it, he kept seeing the same thing: good ideas dying before they ever reached the people they were meant for. Not because the ideas were weak. Because of the part of innovation almost nobody teaches.

In this conversation, Vaughan breaks down why organizations jump to solutions before they understand the real ...

Carolyn Haeler spent nine months losing her hair, going gray, and wasting away before anyone figured out what was wrong. Then she bit into a gluten-free cookie that was barely edible, and decided to fix it herself.

Carolyn is the founder and CEO of Mightylicious Gluten Free, nationally distributed across 43 states, available at Whole Foods, Walmart, Costco, and 2,600+ specialty stores. She was also the first female LGBTQ+ founder to...

In 2026, the smartest person in the room is losing. Not to better ideas. To better packaging.

Brian Miller built a 3.7M-view TEDx talk using a framework that fits on one page. He spent twenty years figuring out why brilliant people fail on stage, and it has nothing to do with charisma, voice, or slides. In this conversation, we get into:

• Why asking "what do I want to say?" is the question that kills most talks before they start
• W...

The founder who seems fine is often the one who needs this most.

I sit down with Dr. Margaret Rutherford, clinical psychologist, author, and TEDx speaker, to walk through Perfectly Hidden Depression, the form of depression that doesn't look like depression at all. It hides behind high performance, emotional control, and the identity of being someone who handles things. And it's disproportionately common among entrepreneurs and found...

Andrej Persolja built a product with a 4.9-star rating and real clinical proof it worked. He launched in one market and it took off. He then launched to the US and nothing happened. No customers. No conversions.

Four years and tens of thousands in ad spend with almost nothing to show for it. He eventually figured out why. Then he ran a structured test. One thing changed. Revenue went up 200%. His cost to acquire a customer dropped b...

This is not a "do less" conversation. Erika Coleman built a million-dollar company, lost her mother, and then collapsed on her couch the day she finally finished her to-do list.

Then she went to Harvard to figure out what went wrong.

In this conversation, we get into:

- Why effort is not the same as achievement, and how that confusion creates burnout

- The Olympian who won gold by stepping back, and the one who shattered her leg by g...

Scott Proposki spent 28 years photographing the White House, National Geographic shoots, and celebrities like Sylvester Stallone and Robin Williams. Then COVID hit, and a 28-year career disappeared in 24 hours.

In this conversation we get into:

• What actually happens when your identity dies overnight
• Why $1 million in sales paid him less than $200K solo
• The 3 words from Bill Belichick that restarted his career
• Why AI is not the death...

Miriam Katz coaches executives at Google or Deloitte on public speaking. She also hosts Ex Appeal, a podcast where she interviews every person she's ever been romantic with.

In this conversation, we get into:

• Why the real fear behind speaking has nothing to do with being polished

• How improv exercises expose defense mechanisms we've carried since childhood

• What interviewing her exes taught her about herself

• Why she believes the stori...

Mike Montague got fired by Billy Idol on stage in front of thousands of people. He now runs  Avenue9  a human-first AI marketing agency that has worked with LinkedIn, Uber, and the Kansas City Chiefs, and his podcasts have 3.7 million combined downloads.In this episode:- Why producing more AI content can actually weaken your authority- The three types of work and which one AI makes worse when you apply it- How to turn one...

Greg Heilers recounts spending nearly seven years on organic farms and conservation projects worldwide before abandoning a planned culinary internship in Rome to move to Beijing after meeting his now-wife in Guatemala, shifting from “voluntourist” nomad life to building a home and transitioning into digital work.

He describes adapting to China as a foreigner, starting with English and cultural localization editing, then ...

An AI expert with a confession: nobody has figured this out, including her.

Marinela Profi builds machine learning models for banks and financial services and advises enterprises on navigating AI agents.

In this conversation, we get into:

- Why large language models predict rather than reason, and why that gap matters

- How outsourcing decisions to AI may feel like control while quietly removing it

- The generational trust divide in AI,...

The top 1% of AI users save 31 hours a week. The bottom 50% save six. That gap does not come from smarter tools. It comes from how people build their context, codify their processes, and put agents to work on their behalf.

Iwo Szapar co-created the AI Maturity Index, a Harvard-validated diagnostic used in 75 countries with 400,000+ data points. It was acquired by ISG, a Nasdaq-listed company, in January 2026. He built his AI Second ...

A gas delivery YouTube channel with 5,000 subscribers controls 80% of his country's market and charges the highest prices. His clients don't switch suppliers because no other supplier has a face they recognize.

That's Anastazja (Nastia) Debowska's client. She spent six years inside YouTube and Google managing over 800 channels. What she discovered contradicts most of what creators are told about growth: subscriber counts don't deter...

What if the biggest problems are the ones everyone's ignoring?

In this episode, I sit down with Andy Ellwood, Founder and CEO of Stretch, to talk about building companies that solve real human problems, not just convenient tech problems.

Andy shares how he went from selling life insurance and private jets to building startups acquired by Facebook and Google, why his pandemic-era company Basket didn't survive, and what he learned abou...

Most podcasters burn $2000/month duct-taping 30+ tools together. Nathan Gwhilliam felt that pain, had an exit in his pocket, and instead of retiring, invested $5.8 million to solve it.

This isn't a comeback story. It's a deconstruction of what happens when an entrepreneur chooses systems over the beach and why that decision reveals more about building authority than any exit multiple ever could.

Nathan sold adoption.com, the world's ...

She's coached 24 TEDx speakers across Europe, India, and the US. She's worked with 400+ leaders from 47 nationalities. And she spent her first six months teaching communication skills hoping every class would be canceled.

Ioana (Jo) Jongsma breaks down why everything you've been told about managing stage fright is backwards and what actually works when the stakes are high.

We cover:

• Why "be yourself" destroys nervous speakers
• The n...

Tyler Wagner reveals how he guarantees bestseller status for any book. After dropping out of college at 19 with $80,000 in debt, he built Authors Unite into an 8-figure book marketing agency that has helped 5,000+ authors sell millions of books.

In this episode, Tyler deconstructs the invisible mechanics behind bestseller lists, explaining why Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and New York Times all operate...

Most salespeople give prospects the ick. They check boxes, recite scripts, and reek of commission breath. April Palmer does the opposite and closes enterprise deals by saying no, asking kindergarten-level questions, and letting clients talk 80% of the time.

In this episode, April breaks down the invisible mechanics of sales that actually work: why telling prospects "this isn't right for you" builds more trust than any pitch, how to ...