BLTNT Podcast

Father Tim McCabe grew up blue collar in Detroit, worked construction, ran refugee programs, and spent years with people at the bottom before he ever put on a collar. He was assigned to a day center for the homeless in 2015. But after five people died of fentanyl overdoses within a couple of days, his team sat together and someone said it doesn't have to be this way. So he started building and he...

Michigan has about 14,000 kids in the foster care system on any given day. Joe wasn't a nonprofit guy. He was a marketing professional in a cubicle, being laid off for the sixth time in nine years, miserable by his own admission. He'd started Love for a Child as a one-week-a-summer passion project. Then his wife looked at him and said: go full time with Love for a Child. He spent the next six mont...

Amy Peterson had the idea for Rebel Nell while hearing story after story from the women in a shelter near the Lion’s stadium. Rebel Nell has been helping women transition out of shelter living, as a self-sustaining social enterprise that sells jewelry and corporate experiences to companies like Ally Bank and the Atlanta Braves. It hasn’t been easy for Amy: her non profit has survived a year when i...

Brendan Walsh can trace everything in his life back to one moment: an 8-year-old saying yes to church choir. That decision set off a chain nobody could have predicted. It led him to DePaul's voice performance program, to a fraternity conference in Rosemont where he met his wife, to a decade in Washington DC booking keynote speakers, and eventually to the phone call he never expected to take from h...

Most people selling AI tools promise you a shortcut… Curtis Hays has spent 25 years watching what happens when you chase shortcuts without a foundation. He started in banking and IT, building help desks and deploying enterprise systems before most people had email on their phones. Over time, that systems mindset followed him into digital marketing, and eventually into AI. But instead of finding a...

Charlie Mann’s dad started Hunter Creek Club in 1958, when Charlie was a small boy. By the age of 26, Charlie owned it… He's the first to admit he had no business being the owner of a company that size at that age. But still, he figured it out. Until everything changed. 2008 hit and 85% of his business was automotive. General Motors banned corporate entertainment. Print media dried up. And the sto...

What does it actually mean to be a high performer? Aaron Salko grew up washing dishes at seven, then afterwards played D1 baseball at Seton Hall. His background in psychology, biology, and sales forced him to study why some people perform and why others don't. He and his business partner turned ten years of sales strategy sessions into a book, then a framework, and then a platform.... The result?...

Andy Appleby sent his resume to EVERY major league team; the Detroit Pistons were the ones who said yes. He was a kid from New England with no real connections, so he did the only thing he could - worked harder than everyone else... He spent 12 years with Palace Sports during the Bad Boys era, learning everything he could. Then he went out and built his own path. In our episode, we talked about: →...

Todd Loiselle is a CIO and author, who was told in first grade he wouldn't make it through high school. Todd has ADHD and dyslexia. In grade school, letters scrambled when he looked at them. He couldn't keep up and started acting out. While sitting across from his parents, his principal told them their son had a ceiling. He took that as a challenge and now has risen to Chief Information Officer, w...

Chris Bommarito runs Castor Engineering, a manufacturing automation company he built from scratch. He started the whole operation from the ground up after being suddenly laid off from a job he deeply cared about. It was a huge shock at the time, but it pushed him to build something of his own. Seven years later he has 20 employees, a growing AI practice inside his company, and an investment in an...

Monsignor Charles Kosanke has been called Mr. Fix It for most of his priesthood. When a parish is bleeding money or a seminary is on the verge of losing its accreditation, Chuck gets the call. He shows up and stabilizes the operation; then he gets assigned elsewhere. The St. Anne's project is a different story... After he hit a wall in fundraising and out of options, he went to the chapel, and pra...

Dr. Klint Pleasant has spent his career doing things that don't fit neatly into one box: Head Coach. Senior Vice President. Doctor of Education. Father. Son of a Legend. He grew up literally living in the dormitories of a college his grandfather built, watching his dad coach, pastor, teach, and lead all at the same time. Basketball was the world he knew. It's also the world he eventually had to ou...

Todd has spent 27 years proving that hiring is much, much more than finding the right resume. Todd Hohauser is the CEO of Harvey Hohauser & Associates, a boutique and relationship driven retained executive search firm. He grew up watching his dad build the business while talking about culture and fit before Todd really understood their implications. When it was time to take over, he inherited...

1) The “Oh Crap” Call (Incident Response) A Detroit-area manufacturer came to us during a cyber incident. We helped respond to the issue, and then stayed with them to improve security and support their CMMC compliance work. Translation: We help you stabilize the emergency and reduce the odds it happens again. 2) “I’m Frustrated With My MSP” Leaders come to us overwhelmed — too much confusion, too...

Jan Griffiths grew up on a farm in Wales and was supposed to stay there. Instead, she left at 23 with no real plan and spent the next three decades building a career in automotive, working her way from a temp role on a factory floor to VP of Global Supply Chain Management. She's held leadership positions at companies like BorgWarner, Bosch, GKN, and Inteva Products. She was named one of the top 10...

Katie Bigelow, a former Black Hawk pilot, launched Mettle Ops in the summer of 2013 — the same season she was diagnosed with melanoma while facing significant personal challenges. By early fall, life had intensified in ways that required her to step away from the business for about a year. But she started again. Today, Mettle Ops builds reactive armor tiles for Army combat vehicles, manufactures U...

From an early age, Mark Panciera's dream was to become a funeral director just like his dad. He became exactly that. Also... ￫ He 5x'd the family business. ￫ He was covered in the Wall Street Journal. ￫ He had private equity firms calling. But it all it nearly destroyed his relationship with his father. Mark spent years on the wrong side of ego, choosing to be right instead of staying in the relat...

Christine spent eight years at Northern Trust managing billion-dollar philanthropic portfolios. Adam helped steward 400-year-old legacy brands in the music industry. But when COVID hit, something shifted. They needed a change. T hey both cashed out their 401ks, sold their house, and bought a 50-year-old ski shop in Northern Michigan. My conversation with Christine Donovan and Adam Weems covers the...

From ICU rooms to the boardroom, Lori Lancaster’s story is one of reinvention, resilience, and fearless leadership. Lori Lancaster Vice Chair at Dakkota Integrated Systems joins Matt Loria, CEO of Auxiom, to share how she went from critical care nursing to leading multi-million dollar manufacturing and mobility companies , including her latest bold move with Emotiv Mobility , set to debut at CES 2...

In this episode of the BLTnT Podcast , Matt Loria, CEO of Auxiom , sits down with Jay Hawreluk , founder of AcuMax , a cutting-edge assessment platform that helps organizations hire better, lead smarter, and build teams that functions. With decades of experience helping private companies — from startups to multi-million-dollar enterprises — Jay shares how understanding a person’s natural wiring ca...

Bite-sized insights across BLTnT—built for leaders, learners, & curious minds who want faster takeaways that stick & ignite something explosive 🧨

Bite-sized insights across BLTnT—built for leaders, learners, & curious minds who want faster takeaways that stick & ignite something explosive 🧨

On this episode of the BLTnT Podcast , Matt Loria, CEO of Auxiom, sits down with Guy Gordon — a legendary Detroit broadcaster, journalist, and radio host who’s spent four decades helping people make sense of the world around them. Guy’s voice is iconic — but his perspective is even more powerful. Now stepping into the next chapter of life and leadership, Guy reflects on the state of the media, the...

Bite-sized insights across BLTnT—built for leaders, learners, & curious minds who want faster takeaways that stick & ignite something explosive 🧨

Bite-sized insights across BLTnT—built for leaders, learners, & curious minds who want faster takeaways that stick & ignite something explosive 🧨 Use a Reverse Bucket List: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGBVf1wwAj0&t=2s