Reanimated Stories

What does evaluating a high school pitcher throwing 95 mph have in common with hiring a project manager for a luxury pool build? Jeff Vaughn spent 13 years as an associate scout for the Washington Nationals. He learned how to read a player in warmups. He learned how one weakness at 18 becomes a career-ender at 25. And he learned that raw talent alone doesn't win championships. Today, he's a partne...

What drives a 55-year-old tech CEO to compete in 140-mile Ironman triathlons alongside 20-year-old Olympic athletes? Tony Medrano is 55 years old, still racing Ironman triathlons, and building the kind of health optimization tech that used to only be available to NFL locker rooms and Olympic teams. Tony's the CEO of Longevity Plan, an AI-powered peptide optimization platform. His background reads...

Jackson Edens is 20 years old. And he's already helping construction and trades businesses save serious time and make more money by bringing enterprise-level AI to the shops that big consulting firms never call on. His company, Digital Grove AI, offers a fractional AI employee model, because most small trades businesses don't have IBM or AWS on speed dial. Jackson steps in as the person who does....

Isabel Estevez has a day job most people didn't even know existed. She works in executive compensation for a company that employs 800,000 people globally. So she focuses on the base, bonus, and equity for the top 10,000 leaders. Or As she puts it: She helps very rich people make their yacht payments. Isabel shares the deeply personal story of losing her father at age 12 and the visceral shift that...

Leslie Lulham didn't set out to start a second company. She was building Sun Up Operations, her HR and biz ops consulting firm, when her husband's employer suddenly announced they were shutting down. That night, he spent six hours going through his LinkedIn connections by hand, trying to figure out which of his first-degree contacts worked at companies hiring the roles he wanted. Leslie heard "six...

How do you take a completely boring, commodity business...like carpet cleaning or dentistry...and turn it into a brand that customers can't stop talking about? You "Disney-fy" it. Vance Morris spent over a decade at Walt Disney World. Opening resorts. Designing character dining experiences. Running food and beverage at the Contemporary Resort. Then he left the mouse and did the last thing anyone e...

Joe Dauskurdas has lived more business lives than most people can count. helped grow Dell from $275 million to over $35 billion in revenue. He also lost everything in 2008. Today he runs Pro Growth Advisors and pours his hard-earned wisdom into founders trying to grow with intention. Joe shares his 30-year journey from growing up on the South Side of Chicago to navigating the corporate ranks at GE...

Mark Donahue isn't easy to put in a box. And honestly, that's kind of the point. He's the founder of Yo Beebo!, a Fractional/part-time business development partner for small businesses, startups, and nonprofits who can't afford a full team but still need to grow. He's also helping build Affero, a fintech and civic tech startup fixing the way aid money gets moved, tracked, and proven. And he is bui...

⚠️ Heads up: This episode covers human trafficking, including sex and labor trafficking. The conversation is honest, faith-based, and handled with care, but it is heavier than my usual episodes. Please listen with that in mind. What started as an effort to build a single children's home in Nepal shifted dramatically when Doug and his team learned a devastating statistic: over 10,000 girls were bei...

Did you know that 1 in 5 employees in your workforce is quietly working a second, unpaid job? There are 63 million caregivers in America. That's a 45% jump from ten years ago. And most of them? They're working full-time jobs too. They are Professionals...who are also Caregivers. Zack Demopoulos has been a caregiver since 2011, first for his father, now for his mother. He spent years in HR. He ran...

Cold calling does not look anything like it did 20 years ago...honestly, even 5 years ago. If you are relying on high-velocity, unpersonalized AI spam to hit your sales numbers, you are going to get ignored. Meet Ashley Beck Cuellar (Kway-ar), she spent 17 years in automotive marketing.... Then she walked away. No plan. Just knew it was time. What happened next? She ended up running the entire go-...

"I had never realized how much of my own self-identity and self-worth was tied up in what my title was and who I worked for." Melissa Cohen spent 30 years in fashion where she was a VP at Ralph Lauren. She thought that's where she'd retire. Then 2020 hit. The whole industry shut down and Melissa lost her job. What she didn't expect? Losing her sense of self right along with it. Suddenly, the title...

"We had this crazy thought that if they could have advertising taken off their plate... they could go spend some time with their children and be present, guilt-free." Anneliese is a fourth-generation entrepreneur who never planned on running her own business. After 14 years in the corporate advertising world, the pandemic hit. When she was wrongfully terminated for refusing to make 50 cold calls a...

"It is a whole different skillset to be a leader than it is just to be good at your job. Technical skills are about looking at the work of one... leadership skills are about amplifying the work of many." Dana Echert is the founder of Inspire, where she helps grow leaders with high emotional intelligence. Her background is in HR and learning and development. After years of watching companies build...

What time do you wake up? Well if you like waking up before the crack of dawn, you're in luck! So does my next guest Jayme Shiarla! Jayme is an executive wellness coach, NLP practitioner, and community builder. She wakes up at 4:03 AM every day to train her body and her brain. (Ya she is into Crossfit!) She explains how pushing through a grueling CrossFit workout sets the tone for the rest of her...

Everyone talks about the freedom of owning a business. Nobody talks about what it actually costs you. Stephen Crockett has been in telecom sales since the beginning. Entry-level rep. A hundred cold calls a day. All the way up to VP at a large corporation. Then Stephen realized that playing corporate politics was not for him. So, he decided to build his own thing: Evolve Network Solutions, a cloud-...

I am sure you have the expression: 'He had it all'.... Well, Dan Dowdy did have it all: A successful family plumbing business, a dream home, and a comfortable life... Then, he sold it all, moved his wife and four kids into a camper, and launched a coaching business for tradesmen in January 2020....yup, then the world shut down. In this episode of Reanimated Stories , I chat with Dan to talk about...

When people hear "accessibility," they think disability ramps and screen readers. Rebecca Prejean thinks bigger than that. Roger and Rebecca sit down to talk about why most corporate training fails. Rebecca had no lens for accessibility until her son was diagnosed with autism. Now, she runs EB Graphics and Consulting, helping companies fix their broken training, onboarding, and internal communicat...

"What AI has done is brought a salesman into the room." People aren't Googling things the same way anymore. They're asking AI. And if you're not showing up there, someone else is — even if they're less qualified than you. Kevin Vaughan is an AI visibility specialist and the founder of KTV Digital. He helps small and medium-sized businesses get found in AI search and turn those educated, ready-to-b...

Most business owners don't need more tactics. They need someone to help them think. Mike Nasche spent years jumping out of airplanes with the 82nd Airborne Division before getting his MBA and becoming a business coach. Now, he helps small business owners make better decisions faster. We sat down to talk about why so many entrepreneurs are "corporate escapees" and how military tactics (like standar...

Do your Monday morning meetings end with everyone nodding in agreement, only to go back to their desks and work entirely in silos? If so...you're not alone. This week I sat down with Amy, a corporate escapee turned leadership coach, to figure out why a group of superstars rarely acts like a superstar team. Amy explains how she uses a scientific assessment to find out if your team actually collabor...

"I have startup companies that come to me saying, 'I need a website!' I ask them how many times they've sold their product yet... If you don't know your sales conversation, no one else is going to know what you sell." In this episode of Reanimated Stories , I sit down with Jessica Gruber , founder of the Buzzworks web design agency and COO of Success Champions Networking. Jessica brings over a dec...

What if you had permission to NOT go to a meeting...? Well, if you don't have a plan, you can! This week I chatted with Alberto to talk about why work feels like a mess of pointless emails and long meetings. Cool thing is he spent years as an anthropologist looking at how groups talk to each other. He says the problem is that we treat "culture" and "communication" as soft feelings instead of actua...

Alec Rios saw a problem many young professionals face. You can achieve everything you want and still end up alone in your penthouse. Sound familiar? In this episode, Alec shares how he built the Young Professionals Network in Austin. It's not your typical networking group. They combine Chamber of Commerce-style connections with real community building and nonprofit work. Whether you're building a...

If you were ever wondering what the focus of your podcast should be, this episode is for you! I recently chatted with Greg Wasserman, the man in charge of relationships at RSS.com . Greg spent years in media sales fighting giants like Google before moving into the audio world. He believes life boils down to two things: time and people. If you start a podcast just to watch a download counter, you m...