Business Origin Stories for Entrepreneurs, Coaches, and Leaders

Send us Fan Mail Divorce is one of the most financially and emotionally high-stakes events in a person's life — but most people walk into it completely unprepared. In this episode, Amy sits down with Courtney Harkness, a divorce strategist who helps successful women leave high-conflict partners with clarity, strategy, and their financial future intact. Courtney shares her own journey from run...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when leadership growth becomes less about gaining skills and more about understanding yourself? In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Jason Daily , founder of Anchored Leadership, shares the experiences and leadership principles that have shaped his work helping leaders unlock their full potential through self-awareness, communication, and coaching. Jason has co...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when life takes you away from the workforce for nearly two decades? For Heather Nemelka , that question became the foundation for a mission that is now helping women, career changers, and workforce returners rediscover their confidence and create new opportunities. In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Heather shares her remarkable journey from returning to work...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the life you've built no longer aligns with who you are? In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Tucker Branham shares how his unconventional journey shaped a career dedicated to helping individuals and organizations find alignment between values, purpose, leadership, and work. After leaving college, working multiple jobs, and navigating an unexpected pa...

Send us Fan Mail What if the biggest obstacle to scaling your agency is not your marketing strategy, but your leadership systems? In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Amy sits down with Dan Newman , founder of Learn to Scale, to talk about the people side of agency growth. Dan works with small marketing agencies to solve communication breakdowns, leadership bottlenecks, and culture issues t...

Send us Fan Mail What if executive presence has less to do with performance and more to do with service? In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Amy sits down with Katya Davydova , leadership coach, facilitator, and communication expert, to explore how leaders can communicate with greater confidence, authenticity, and impact. After spending a decade working in people operations, learning and d...

Send us Fan Mail What changes when leadership decisions carry real consequences? In this episode of Business Origin Stories , I sit down with David Fivecoat , a former U.S. Army Colonel turned executive coach and founder of The Fivecoat Consulting Group . After more than two decades leading soldiers in some of the world's most complex and high-stakes environments, David now works with executi...

Send us Fan Mail Most people don’t struggle with the desire to give. They struggle with knowing how. In this episode, Elena Fracchia shares what she has learned working across nonprofit management, fundraising, and wealth strategy. After seeing both sides of philanthropy, she identified a consistent gap. People are surrounded by financial advice, but no one is helping them connect their values to...

Send us Fan Mail Most companies wait too long to develop their next generation of leaders. In this episode, Amy sits down with Randy Hain , executive coach, author, and founder of Serving Partners, to talk about the gap most organizations ignore: investing in early-career professionals before they become senior leaders. Randy brings over 30 years of experience as a senior executive and now coaches...

Send us Fan Mail The path from college to career is not working the way it used to. In this episode of Business Origin Stories, the founder of YoPro shares what he’s seeing firsthand after working with more than 70 young professionals trying to land jobs in today’s market. His perspective comes from 25 years in marketing working with Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies, followed by a layoff that...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the traits that made you successful start working against you? In this episode, Claudia Beck , founder of Better Together Group, shares her journey from a 30-year corporate career to coaching senior executives on conscious leadership. After reaching senior leadership and experiencing a forced exit, Claudia was confronted with a fundamental question: who do you wa...

Send us Fan Mail What if the number you’re chasing in business isn’t actually the number you need? In this episode, Amy sits down with Carrie Veatch , who helps entrepreneurs build time, location, and financial freedom in a way that is grounded in their real life, not arbitrary goals. Carrie’s work starts with a simple but often avoided question: what do you actually need? Instead of chasing exter...

Send us Fan Mail Most leaders don’t think about HR until something breaks. But by then, it’s already costing time, energy, and momentum. In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Neil Katz shares how his fractional HR firm helps companies remove the operational burden of people management so leaders can focus on growth. Neil works with businesses ranging from five to five hundred employees, help...

Send us Fan Mail AI is no longer optional. But rushing into it may be the most expensive mistake your business can make. In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Matt Murphy shares what he’s learned from deploying AI inside real companies and why most of those efforts fail. With 30 years in technology and the last five focused on AI, Matt has worked across ERP, cloud, HRIS, and enterprise syste...

Send us Fan Mail Many founders imagine that selling their company will be the finish line. But for many leaders, the exit is actually the beginning of a new identity crisis. In this episode of Business Origin Stories , Amy Schutte sits down with Peter Corbett , former agency founder turned executive coach, to explore what happens after entrepreneurial success. Peter built a digital agency that gre...

Send us Fan Mail When a leader walks into a struggling organization, the instinct is often to fix things fast. But Mark McFatridge learned early in his career that real turnaround work begins with listening. After earning his first bank president role, Mark relocated from Indianapolis to Springfield, Missouri to lead the worst performing banking group in the company. He didn’t know the team, the c...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when leaders measure their value by how busy they are? For many nonprofit and government leaders, the pressure to respond to every crisis becomes a badge of honor. The calendar fills up, the phone never stops, and the mission feels too important to slow down. But that approach comes with a cost. In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Julie Jakopic joins Amy Schut...

Send us Fan Mail If you’ve ever looked around online and thought, “What’s working for everyone else, and why doesn’t it work for me?” this episode is for you. In this conversation, Amy sits down with Macy Robison , a longtime friend from the StoryBrand Guide community, to talk about why so many experts get stuck chasing shiny strategies and how to come back to the way you are actually wired to lea...

Send us Fan Mail When the old leadership model stops working, most leaders assume the problem is external. The market. The team. The generation. The culture. In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Amy Schutte sits down with Traci Philips , founder of the Innate Coach and an executive leadership and performance coach working with high performers in major transition, especially in the mergers a...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when women are taught to be palatable instead of powerful? In this episode of Business Origin Stories , I sit down with Sophie Jane Lee , CEO and founder of Electric Peach , to talk about her debut book, Beyond Palatable —a bold, compassionate manifesto for women who are tired of shrinking, apologizing, and silencing themselves to fit in. Sophie shares her deeply pers...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the business gets hard and there’s nowhere to hide? In this episode of Business Origin Stories,  I sit down with executive coach Steve Smith for a grounded, honest conversation about leadership when comfort zones collapse, money gets emotional, and identity is forced to change. Steve has spent over 16 years coaching leaders across industries, from startups to For...

Send us Fan Mail Leadership problems rarely start at the top. They start in the middle. In this episode of Business Origin Stories , I sit down with Keith Repko, a former healthcare executive who spent decades leading one of the largest VA medical systems in a five-state region. Over his career, Keith oversaw thousands of employees, multiple hospital campuses, and complex operational systems, and...

Send us Fan Mail What if the real leadership crisis isn’t burnout — but never having time to work on what truly matters ? In this episode of Business Origin Stories , I sit down with Frederick Buskey , a former assistant principal turned leadership coach, to explore how leaders — especially in education — can escape the constant pull of urgency and reclaim their time, priorities, and humanity. Fre...

Send us Fan Mail What if the way we work is the very thing that’s breaking us—and what if there’s another way? In this episode of Business Origin Stories , I’m joined by Olivier Egli , a business guide who stands at the intersection of leadership, neuroscience, psychology, and spirituality , offering a radically different blueprint for work—one that breaks from our traditional, toxic approaches to...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when family, business, legacy, and pressure collide? In this episode of Business Origin Stories, I sit down with Scott Gingold, a self-described family business therapist who helps founders, owners, and multi-generational companies untangle conflict, rebuild trust, and move forward without blowing up the business, or their relationships. Scott’s path to this work is a...