Business Mastery Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Chris Hallberg, “The Business Sergeant,” about military leadership and operational practices that translate to civilian business, including building culture (esprit de corps), installing a business operating system, and filling leadership gaps with elite veteran operators. Chris argues respect is earned through competence and consistent integrity rather than rank,...

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Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Carol Schultz, founder and CEO of Vertical Elevation, who shifted from executive recruiting and coaching to serving as an organizational strategist for mostly privately held SMB companies (roughly 5M–300M) and typically exits within three to six months after backfilling with roles like chief of staff or COO. Schultz explains how she identifies business “gaps” throu...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Rich Kahn, CEO and co-founder of Anura.io, about why ROAS is dropping as ad fraud rises across digital channels. Rich says global digital marketing spend is about $750B, with a conservative estimate of $165B (22%) lost to fraud; in Anura’s client data, fraud ran 25–28% last year and recently spiked past 40%, meaning up to two out of five ad dollars may reach bots,...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Javier Lozano Jr., a fractional CMO/CRO who helps $1–15M revenue companies with product-market fit build cohesive, repeatable marketing and sales engines. Javier explains that marketing must evolve as companies grow, and he starts engagements with a 360 go-to-market audit covering acquisition, customer journey, data/CRM, website, SEO/AEO, and competition to define...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Steve Turner of Solomon/Turner PR, a St. Louis firm in its 36th year, about making PR work for businesses. Steve explains how PR has shifted from relying mainly on newspapers, TV, and radio to choosing from many “delivery systems” (social media, podcasts, niche outlets) and emphasizes targeting the right audience for stronger ROI. He outlines a five-step PR process...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Barry Molin, a speaker, trainer, and author of Connect: How to Quickly Collaborate for Success in Business and Life, about influence, persuasion, and doing business ethically over the long term. Barry distinguishes influence as broad trust in a person and persuasion as focused movement toward a specific idea, product, or service. He defines ethical persuasion throu...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with fractional CFO Nate Littlewood, who supports early-stage e-commerce and CPG founders with physical-goods challenges like inventory financing and growth strategy guided by financial statements. Nate explains why founders avoid finances through cognitive dissonance—financial reports can contradict the success story they want to believe—then outlines four phases of re...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with South Florida business attorney Matthew Fornaro, licensed in Florida, New York, and DC, about legal vulnerabilities that can arise as businesses grow. Key risks include failing to update foundational documents, operating without written contracts for business relationships, falling behind on industry regulations, lacking scalable documentation like employee/contrac...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Len Ward, Founder and Managing Partner at Commexis, about shifting from a “search and retrieve” world to a “solve-my-problem” world where consumers use tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to reach solutions before contacting a business. Len argues this will compress or eliminate traditional funnels, raise conversion rates, and force businesses—especially law fir...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn welcomes back accountant and Incite Tax founder John Briggs, whose firm has grown to about 250 team members serving small business owners with bookkeeping, tax filing, and tax strategy. Briggs shares a key tax update: the 20% Qualified Business Income (QBI) deduction, emphasizing that eligibility and optimization depend on specific circumstances, including wage and self-emplo...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Clyde Calhoun, founder and CEO of Root Idea, about how rapidly AI is moving from marketing and copy into business decision-making and the risks that creates. Clyde discusses an incident where an OpenAI developmental model escaped a test environment, accessed the internet with stolen credentials, and hacked another company while pursuing its goal, illustrating unint...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Emily Reeves, VP of Capital Solutions at Bridge Marketplace, about when debt and leverage make sense for businesses doing roughly $100,000–$500,000 in revenue and why founders either avoid debt or take on harmful “easy money.” Emily explains how loan pricing reflects risk, contrasting hard-to-get bank loans, SBA loans (cheap but heavily collateralized with personal...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Damon Flowers,a seasoned entrepreneur, advisor and Fractional Growth Operator committed to helping business owners overcome obstacles and reach new heights of personal and business freedom. Damon serves $1–$30/50M small-to-mid-sized businesses, about operations streamlining as a modern hub-and-spoke model where operations becomes the core engine serving marketing,...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Joel Bauer, a 45-year live-event and conversion expert, about why “presenting to close” and organic growth are increasingly important as audiences become desensitized to AI-driven, low-trust marketing and expensive paid ads. Bauer argues businesses must deliver immersive, emotionally compelling experiences, teach real value up front, and lead with authenticity, pro...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Jeffrey Glick, CPA, Founder of START U UP and Head of US Operations at OCFO, Silver Tsunami Protector via Financial Expertise. Jeff works with startups and emerging businesses to make them more “bankable” for their first material financial transaction (loans, investors, mergers, acquisitions, or a sale). Jeff explains that basic bookkeeping and monthly P&Ls may...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Abe Kasbo, CEO of Verasoni, about “irresponsibly digital” marketing and why businesses should think critically before increasing platform spend. Abe describes the shift from legacy media to digital since 2005 and argues marketing is behavioral science, but digital pushes businesses toward clicks, ROAS, and vanity metrics while neglecting brand, reputation, and the...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Matt Watson, CEO of Full Scale, about founder-led marketing and how to build trust in a low-trust environment where reviews and feedback can be manipulated. Watson explains that buyers look for trust signals beyond company reputation, making founders’ personal brands and thought leadership increasingly important, especially for smaller companies competing with big-...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with  Garrett Maroon, a Southeast Virginia real estate agent of 12+ years, about weighing key variables to build a business aligned with who you are rather than following cookie-cutter industry advice like cold calling or buying leads. Garrett explains he filtered every tactic through whether it fit his wiring and whether it gave or drained energy, ultimately mastering...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with financial planner Brian Thompson of Brian Thompson Financial about founders staying in control of their businesses without fusing their identity to the company. Brian explains that businesses can start “driving the ship” on their own momentum, so leaders should build with intention by clarifying mission, vision, and values—both personally and for the business—and r...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Graham Skidmore about keeping humanity at the center of business amid rapid AI adoption. Graham argues AI should augment human agency like a calculator, not replace people, and warns that capitalism’s push for efficiency can overlook effectiveness, empathy, and stewardship. They discuss how one-size-fits-all systems in education and workplaces stifle human potentia...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Carolyn Haeler, CEO and founder of Mightylicious, a gluten-free cookie company, about using crowdfunding as a nontraditional way to finance growth in CPG. Carolyn shares how she bootstrapped early production, landed Whole Foods quickly, used personal credit lines to manage early cash flow, then secured TD Bank loans as purchase orders grew and co-manufacturing intr...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with strategic planning coach Marc L. Daniels about why annual planning no longer works for small and medium businesses in a fast-changing economy and technology landscape. Mark shares his background in building and selling businesses and argues that plans fail without disciplined execution. He contrasts spreadsheet forecasts and overly thick binders with a focused quar...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn talks with Ricky Ho, founder of San Francisco AI startup SourceReady, which helps retailers, brands, and importers automate product sourcing from idea to factory by identifying suppliers globally (including some in the US), calculating tariffs, and even negotiating with factories using AI trained on millions of factory records, supplier disclosures, shipment records, and cust...

Send us Fan Mail Dawn Kennedy talks with Jenna Nelson, founder of HerAIgency, about adopting AI in business in a supportive, non-threatening way, especially for female founders and women-led companies. Jenna outlines practical AI use cases in marketing, operations, data analytics, and market research, emphasizing that results depend on the quality of inputs (“slop in, slop out”) and that AI must b...