Making BIG Shifts

Being louder doesn't make you more persuasive. Robert Begley, communication strategist and author of Voices of Reason , joins me to break down what actually makes communication memorable. We talk about clarity, confidence, authenticity, character, stage fright, presentation structure, and why some speakers influence a room while others are forgotten by the next day. Robert also shares one pres...

Why do good healthcare products still get stuck in endless meetings, delayed decisions, and deals that suddenly disappear? Fred Sheffield has spent his career helping healthcare and health tech companies navigate that exact problem. Fred is the Chief Growth Officer of Five Stones Growth, a go-to-market strategist, and author of Health Tech Giant Slayer . In this conversation, we break down how sma...

Most entrepreneurs start businesses because they want freedom. Years later, many discover they’ve created the exact opposite. In this episode, I sit down with Luke Mardigian, co-author of Exit Without Selling , to talk about owner dependence and why businesses can become completely reliant on their founder for decisions, relationships, knowledge, time, and revenue. Luke shares how he went from wor...

Most entrepreneurs spend years thinking about how to build a business. Far fewer think seriously about what it takes to leave one. Chris Slocumb built her agency over more than two decades before beginning a three-year exit journey that included roughly 50 buyer meetings, multiple letters of intent, several rounds of due diligence, and eventually a successful sale. In this episode of Making BIG Sh...

Most entrepreneurs start businesses because they want more freedom. Then the company grows, the team grows, the responsibilities grow, and suddenly every important decision still comes back to the owner. Dan Paulson calls it The Owner’s Trap . Dan is an executive advisor and bestselling author of Escape the Owner’s Trap . In this conversation, we dig into how owners become the bottleneck, why dele...

More AI. More data. More technology. But does any of that automatically create more revenue? Not even close. I sat down with James Roth, CRO of ZoomInfo , for a wide-ranging conversation about what the next era of sales and marketing actually looks like. James shares his unconventional path from college football and professional music to door-to-door sales and eventually the CRO seat at ZoomInfo....

Entrepreneurs are constantly told to keep going. But what happens when persistence becomes stubbornness? Nuri Otus has built seven companies, experienced successful pivots, raised capital, shut down ideas that weren’t working, and is now building DUO, an AI-powered matchmaking platform. In this conversation, we dig into how founders can recognize real market validation, why criticism can actually...

Referrals are fantastic, but they shouldn’t be your entire growth strategy. I sit down with Craig Lowder, author of Smooth Selling Forever , to break down how businesses can create a more predictable pipeline by bringing sales and marketing together. We talk target audiences, messaging, lead generation, sales processes, connector networks, and a really simple 4-quadrant outreach strategy any busin...

Big results usually require big bets, but how do you know when to keep pushing, when to pivot, and when you’re just being stubborn? Shawn Burcham went from labeling boxes at his kitchen table and selling chicken breading out of his garage to building a group of companies with operations reaching across the country. In this episode, we get into failure, gritt (spelled that way on purpose), focus, r...

Businesses pour money into finding new customers, but some of the biggest growth opportunities may already be sitting inside the relationships we have. I sit down with Jamie Shibley, CEO of The Expressory and author of Relationship First: Strategic Engagement , to talk about building a real relationship infrastructure around customers, prospects, referral partners, teams, and other people who infl...

Jermaine Ee spent years building companies, exploring new industries, and chasing the traditional definition of entrepreneurial success. Then that definition stopped feeling meaningful. In this episode of Making Big Shifts, Jermaine shares the personal and professional shift that led him to create HeirLight, an AI-powered estate planning platform built around clarity, family, and the things people...

AI knows a tremendous amount about copywriting. The real challenge is getting it to produce the right copy for the right audience. In this episode, I talk with Tyler Cook, founder of Hyper Media Marketing and author of Persuasion by Design , about the psychology behind effective marketing and the guardrails AI needs to create persuasive messages. Tyler explains how his background in door-to-door s...

Live streaming is moving far beyond concerts, webinars, and basic social broadcasts. In this episode, I talk with John Petrocelli, founder and CEO of Bulldog DM, about how live video is becoming a powerful tool for audience engagement, brand storytelling, commerce, and customer research. John shares how working with Prince helped shape his view of direct-to-consumer content, why passive video is n...

The harder you chase a sale, the more buyers tend to pull away. Nancy Kay Coy, author of Stop Selling, Dammit! , joins Making BIG Shifts to explain why pressure, scripts, and aggressive closing tactics are becoming less effective with today’s informed and skeptical buyers. Nancy breaks down the four emotional drivers behind purchasing decisions, the extra question every seller should ask before cl...

What if your business is actually stealing your freedom? Josh Anderson sits down with entrepreneur Justin Lund to discuss the lessons he learned through addiction, recovery, entrepreneurship, and building systems that buy back your time. They cover delegation, eliminating low-value work, the importance of having a North Star, and why your time may already be worth hundreds of dollars per hour. If...

Most entrepreneurs are chasing more revenue, but Phil Calandra says that may be the trap. After making his first million dollars, Phil found himself during the 2009 financial crisis with payroll due, his mom’s name at the top of the list, and only eight cents in his checking account. That moment forced him to learn the difference between income, revenue, and real wealth. In this episode, Josh talk...

Are you building a valuable company, or have you simply created a demanding job for yourself? Muriel Touati, founder of Exit 3D Studio, joins me to explain the structural problems that can make a business difficult or impossible to sell. We dig into founder dependency, customer concentration, recurring revenue, customer churn, acquisition systems, and the marketing infrastructure buyers want to se...

Wade Foster, CEO and co-founder of Zapier, walks through the real origin story of how a hackathon project in Missouri became a $200M+ automation platform powering thousands of integrations and hundreds of employees. This episode covers the unfiltered startup journey: • Building Zapier from a real personal frustration with software integration • Why YC rejected them the first time, and what changed...

What if your book was not just something you sold, but one of the most powerful marketing tools your business could ever have? In this episode of Making BIG Shifts , Josh Anderson sits down with Henry DeVries, publisher of Indie Books International, host of Agency Rainmaker TV, and ghostwriter/editor of more than 200 business books. Henry breaks down why business leaders, consultants, agency owner...

Most high performers don’t burn out because they fail. They burn out because they succeed at the wrong game. In this episode of Making BIG Shifts, Josh Anderson sits down with Monica McKitterick, nurse practitioner, CEO of Impact Family Wellness, and founder in the Direct Primary Care space. After years inside a system driven by insurance, paperwork, and volume over care, she made a $20,000 bet on...

In this episode of Making BIG Shifts , host Josh Anderson sits down with Graeme Barlow, four-time founder, CEO of Iversoft, and founder of FounderLink and Barlow Consulting, to talk about the hard lessons that come from building, scaling, and selling companies over more than two decades. Graeme shares the most expensive mistake of his career, losing focus, and how expanding Iversoft into too many...

In this episode of Making BIG Shifts, Jonathan David Lewis, President and Partner at McKee Wallwork and author of The Rebuilders, shares why the best leaders know when to say no, how to lead through disruption, and why rebuilding yourself is the first step to rebuilding your business. From navigating industry change and AI to creating thriving cultures, Jonathan delivers practical insights for fou...

In this episode of Making BIG Shifts, host Josh Anderson sits down with Dusty Holcomb, leadership strategist, founder and CEO of Arcqus Group, and host of the Leadership Unlocked podcast. After 21 years inside the American Automobile Association and a stint as a company CEO, Dusty burned the boats to build a leadership practice focused on helping founders and senior executives unlock their next le...

In this episode of Making BIG Shifts, host Josh Anderson sits down with Barry LaBov, founder of LaBov Marketing Communications and Training and author of The Power of Differentiation. With 45 years of experience, Barry has worked with iconic brands like Harley-Davidson, Audi, and Volkswagen, helping them uncover what makes them truly rare in a sea of sameness. Barry never planned to be an entrepre...

In this episode of Making BIG Shifts, we are joined by Vlad Pivnev, CEO of Stivi and co-founder of Acoda, a leader helping businesses integrate AI into their marketing and sales strategies to drive real growth. Vlad brings over sixteen years of experience building and running a traditional digital marketing agency. But when he saw the landscape shifting beneath him, he decided to pivot. Rather tha...