Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice

Where does your data go when you hand it to AI? Nicole Jiang, co-founder and CEO of Fable Security, joins Ryan Alford to break down the real security risks of AI adoption, and why most of them start with people, not technology. Nicole explains how messy data and loose permissions can turn AI tools into a liability, how attackers use AI to make phishing and impersonation scams more convincing, and...

Getting the click is the easy part. Steve Oriola, CEO of Unbounce, joins Ryan Alford to explain what happens after it, and why so many businesses waste ad budget by sending paid traffic to generic pages instead of focused landing pages. Steve explains how to think about customer acquisition cost all the way through to the sale, how attribution can tell you which traffic sources bring your best cus...

Scott Scovill was a self-described broken kid. He finished near the bottom of his class and flunked out of college, until a chance encounter with U2’s touring crew showed him a life he wanted badly enough to fight for. He joins Ryan Alford to talk about his new book, Tenacious: The Art of Relentlessly Pursuing Your Wildest Dreams, and the promise he made himself that night. Scott and Ryan unpack t...

Cisco put AI agents in the hands of all 90,000 of its employees, and Joe Vaccaro, an SVP at Cisco, is here to share what they learned. He joins Ryan Alford to break down how business leaders can roll out agentic AI quickly while still keeping the trust and guardrails that critical systems need. Joe explains why agents act like overconfident teenagers, why clear and specific direction beats vague p...

Derrick Hayes promised his father he would open a business. Years later, that promise became Big Dave’s Cheesesteaks, a Philly-born, Atlanta-built brand now franchising across the Southeast. The founder and CEO joins Ryan Alford to tell the story of going from selling Italian ice nobody understood to running a cheesesteak spot people fly into Atlanta just to try. Derrick explains what fishing taug...

Arturo Nuñez has told stories for some of the biggest brands on earth, including Nike, Apple, the NBA and Pepsi. He joins Ryan Alford to explain what separates great marketing from expensive noise, and why a customer telling your story beats anything a brand can say. Arturo shares rare stories about Kobe Bryant's savage competitiveness, Nike's open, inspirational culture versus Apple's need-to-kno...

What if the most profitable car in your driveway is the cheapest one? George Madden, co-founder of Car Rental Coach, joins Ryan Alford to explain how older economy cars under $12,000 can rent for the same price as $30,000 cars. He shares how one $8,300 SUV brought in more than $15,000 in a year. George gives the honest numbers: about $1,000 a month in revenue per car, not the $3,000 people claim o...

Is your job a "star" role or an "extra" role? Matt Britton, founder and CEO of Suzy and author of Generation AI, tells Ryan Alford that AI will multiply the impact of creative problem solvers. Meanwhile, anyone who shows up waiting to be told what to do is at risk. Matt explains why Gen Alpha, the first generation raised with AI, will bring the biggest change to business and culture since the inte...

Marketing channels have changed dramatically since Jason Kocina began helping companies build websites in the 1990s, but he argues that the foundation of effective marketing remains the same. The Publicity.com partner and digital marketing president joins Ryan Alford to explain how businesses can protect their visibility as audiences move from traditional search engines to AI-generated answers. Ry...

Many successful professionals are already coaching people for free without realizing their experience could become a meaningful source of income. Mitch Matthews joins Ryan Alford to share the Authority Bridge, his framework for adding coaching, speaking, and consulting to an existing career without destroying the life you have already built. They discuss why a small, well-defined audience can outp...

Artificial intelligence is transforming the workforce faster than schools and employers can update how they prepare people for it. Ryan Lufkin, Vice President of Global Academic Strategy at Instructure, joins Ryan Alford to examine the widening gap between traditional education and the skills modern businesses actually need. They discuss whether college degrees still hold value, why lifelong learn...

Robin Alex, co-founder of GoHighLevel, joins Ryan Alford to explain how better systems can make businesses more productive, profitable, and prepared to scale. He shares how GoHighLevel brings CRM, marketing automation, lead management, customer communication, scheduling, and other essential tools into one platform. Robin and Ryan examine the hidden costs of disconnected technology, manual follow-u...

Real estate investor Justin Brennan grew up around construction and watched his father’s business collapse during the 2008 financial crisis. He joins Ryan Alford on Right About Now to explain how that experience led him toward recurring-income assets, apartment investing, and a collaborative approach to raising capital. Ryan and Justin discuss real estate syndication, cash flow, bonus depreciation...

The workforce shortage is not only a labor problem. According to Nicole Feenstra, it is also a storytelling and marketing problem created by companies that fail to make their opportunities meaningful. The DNA Agency founder joins Ryan Alford on Right About Now to discuss employer branding, workforce development, skilled trades, artificial intelligence, employee retention, and the changing expectat...

Jason Brown grew up sleeping in sleeping bags, entered the stock market with $500, and eventually transformed a $10,000 student loan into a six-figure trading account. After one emotional trade wiped out approximately $250,000, he was forced to move home and rebuild his finances and investment strategy from the beginning. On Right About Now, The Brown Report founder and Five-Year Millionaire autho...

Brett Farmiloe built Featured after seeing small-business owners with deep expertise but no reliable way to get quoted by the media. He joins Ryan Alford to discuss earned media, digital PR, AI search visibility, and the revival of Help a Reporter Out. They explain how media citations may influence LLM recommendations, why AI is compressing the marketing funnel, and why a single high-profile featu...

Lisa Holladay has spent her career building loyalty for Mercedes-Benz, The Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, and now TIGER 21. She joins Ryan Alford to explain how intentional customer experience turns transactions into lasting relationships and why product quality alone cannot create brand love. Their conversation covers customer journey mapping, experiential marketing, surprise-and-delight moments, commu...

Yarin Gaon started his first company at 14, built and sold Israel’s largest military-goods e-commerce platform, and now helps founder-led businesses make smarter decisions about growth. On Right About Now, he joins Ryan Alford to explain why so many companies stall after reaching $1 million to $5 million in revenue and how “growth by subtraction” can improve profitability. Their conversation cover...

Before founding Global Processing Systems, Moses Heredia worked crop fields with his immigrant mother, entered merchant services at $4.25 an hour, and survived a period when he could not afford basic utilities. One Spanish-language sales appointment showed him what commission could unlock; after becoming a top performer and rising through management, he walked away from an executive track to build...

Tony Vieira spent 36 years in beverage science and operations, helping Blue Moon recover from near cancellation and supporting White Claw through one of the fastest growth periods in the alcohol business. Now the former brewmaster and quality executive has left the corporate safety net to build mōcean drinkwerx with his son, Christian. Tony joins Ryan Alford to explain how product quality, consume...

The podcast industry no longer looks like the creative, audio-first business it was a decade ago. Jeff Umbro, founder and CEO of The Podglomerate and host of Podcast Perspectives, joins Ryan Alford to examine the rise of video podcasting, media consolidation, programmatic advertising and the decline of high-cost narrative shows. Jeff explains how creators can separate audience acquisition from ret...

Mode Mobile co-founder and CEO Dan Novaes joins Ryan Alford for a conversation about entrepreneurship, business pivots and turning smartphone activity into income. Dan shares how his instinct for finding overlooked opportunities took him from selling Pokémon cards as a kid to building a multimillion-dollar international electronics business before he finished college. Ryan and Dan unpack the creat...

Chandler Bolt, founder and CEO of SelfPublishing.com, joins Ryan Alford for a tactical conversation about writing, publishing, and using a book to grow a business. Chandler shares the eight milestones his team uses to move authors from an idea to a finished launch and explains the four Ps behind a book that connects with the right reader. Ryan pushes on the questions entrepreneurs actually care ab...

Steve Pratt joins Ryan Alford to explain why brands can no longer force people to pay attention. As the author of Earn It and co-founder of Pacific Content, Steve has spent decades studying what makes audiences willingly choose, remember and return to content. The conversation explores why traditional advertising metrics often reward weak marketing, how short-term thinking undermines long-term gro...

Dani Lynn Robison joins Ryan Alford to explain why lasting wealth is usually built through consistent, repetitive decisions instead of exciting short-term opportunities. From working as a musician on cruise ships to building Freedom Family Investments and Oodles of Leads, Dani’s career has been shaped by learning where her strengths create the most value. She explains why many aspiring landlords e...