DissedMedia: A Startup Story

On this episode of Dissed Media: A Startup Story, Ben talks sales motivation and sales execution with Drewbie Wilson, founder of Call The Damn Leads and five-time author who has generated over $15 million in sales. They dig into why most business leaders don't have a lead problem, they have an execution problem, and how self discipline outside of work builds sales confidence inside of it. Drewbie...

How do you monetize a podcast and turn it into a real business? In this episode of DissedMedia: A Startup Story, host Ben Olmos talks with Adam Torres, founder of Mission Matters and host of 15 shows with thousands of interviews behind him. Adam breaks down how to monetize a podcast from day one through live events, book publishing, PR, and paid guest experiences instead of waiting on downloads an...

Some of the most knowledgeable professionals in their fields are nearly impossible to find online. In this episode of DissedMedia: A Startup Story, host Ben Olmos sits down with Ashley Smith, a former realtor of 18 years turned personal branding strategist who studies what she calls the proof gap, the distance between what you know and what shows up when someone searches for you. Ashley explains w...

Most founders lose their best hours to the back office. Chore founder and angel investor Adam Spector explains how back office outsourcing hands HR, finance, compliance, payroll, and bookkeeping to a fractional team that runs all of it for you, so you get your time back for product and customers. Adam has founded four companies and made more than 200 startup investments, and he built Chore to solv...

What does it actually take to reinvent yourself after your career pulls the rug out from under you? Andrew Brummer found out at 53 — no degree, no external network, and a company that was winding down after a decade of his best operational work. In this episode, he breaks down how he rebuilt from scratch, why he became a double author and co-founder of multiple companies, and what it means to make...

What if your next client already trusted you before they ever called your office? That's the outcome Dennis "DM" Meador has been engineering for attorneys and professionals for the past two years, and it starts with a podcast. Dennis is the founder of The Legal Podcast Network and The Authority Podcast Network. He has built a system that runs 250 shows and produces 350 episodes a month with a team...

What separates a business that scales from one that stays stuck? In episode 76 of Dissed Media: A Startup Story, Ben Olmos sits down with Mark Gordon, founder of Integrated Go-To-Market Solutions, to break down the go-to-market strategy that turns struggling companies into growth machines. Mark grew Princeton Mortgage from $36 million to over $1 billion in annual production while holding a 98 net...

Wondering how to patent an idea and protect your intellectual property before someone else profits from it? In this episode of DissedMedia: A Startup Story, host Ben Olmos talks with patent attorney Austin Bonderer, who brings 25 years of experience, more than 700 secured US patents, and an insider's view from his years as a USPTO patent examiner. Austin reveals what most entrepreneurs get wrong a...

What if you could step away from your business for a month and come back to find it ran perfectly without you? In this episode, Ben Olmos sits down with Ral West, an entrepreneur who spent 25 years building a Hawaii travel company into a charter airline flying 35,000 passengers a year between Alaska and Hawaii, before selling it to Alaska Airlines. But that success nearly cost her everything that...

What if the biggest obstacle to your success isn't your strategy, your market, or your competition but the beliefs you inherited before you ever started a business? Randy Gage knows this firsthand. He went from a jail cell as a teenager to becoming a Speaker Hall of Famer, a multimillion-dollar entrepreneur, and the author of 16 bestselling books translated into more than 25 languages. His new boo...

What if the toxic work environment you keep trying to fix is actually a drama triangle problem? This week on DissedMedia: A Startup Story, Ben sits down with Charlie Sheppard, behavioral scientist, executive coach, and author of Save Your Drama for Your Mama (available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4u9q1Og ). With 40 years of experience working with organizations like AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Genente...

What happens when a professional tells you your life's work is losing value because of AI? That's exactly what happened to Wes Towers, founder of Uplift 360, an Australian digital agency with over 20 years of experience helping trades, construction, and service-based businesses get found, trusted, and chosen online. In this episode, Wes opens up about the gut-punch business valuation that forced h...

What if the words you're using right now are costing you clients, income, and opportunities, and you don't even know it? In this episode, Ben Olmos sits down with Aurora Winter, former Hollywood television executive, award-winning screenwriter, bestselling author, and founder of Same Page Publishing, to talk about one of the most powerful and overlooked levers in business: your message. Aurora sha...

Most people think they know what makes a great presentation. They are wrong. In Episode 69 of DissedMedia: A Startup Story, Ben Olmos sits down with Debbie Fay, founder of Bespeak Presentation Solutions and author of Nail It: Create and Deliver Presentations That Connect, Compel, and Convince. Debbie has been coaching entrepreneurs, executives, and everyday professionals on public speaking since 2...

If you're serious about personal development, this episode of DissedMedia: A Startup Story is exactly what you've been looking for. Dr. Andy Neillie, bestselling author, keynote speaker, and leadership consultant with over 20 years of experience, joins Ben for a deep dive into the leadership skills that separate great leaders from bad bosses. Dr. Neillie's personal development journey starts with...

Are you drowning in admin tasks and losing sight of why you started your business in the first place? In this episode of DissedMedia: A Startup Story, Ben sits down with Anna Brambilla, founder of Virtually Aligned, to talk about how hiring the right virtual assistant can help entrepreneurs reclaim their time, refocus on their zone of genius, and fall back in love with their business. Anna shares...

What makes someone a great leader? According to Rich Ashton, it is not something you get to decide for yourself. The people who follow you make that call. Rich Ashton is the founder of Growing Your Own Leadership , a program built specifically for small businesses that need to develop managers from within. After spending 40 years running companies, including a nearly bankrupt HVAC business he purc...

Most founders think the gap between a great idea and a funded business is a product problem. Pamela Cytron has spent 30 years proving it is a sales problem. Cytron is a award-winning technology entrepreneur, co-founder of Pendo Systems, and the architect of Founder's Arena, a nonprofit WealthTech accelerator built specifically because she grew tired of accelerators that produce great pitch decks a...

What if the secret to building confidence, growing a business, and improving your health had nothing to do with massive effort and everything to do with tiny, consistent action? In this episode of DissedMedia: A Startup Story, Ben Olmos sits down with Dr. Christiane Schroeter, TEDx speaker, bestselling author, health economist, California professor, and founder of the Petite Practice framework, to...

What if the best business idea in America was hiding in a small town in the Polish Alps? That is exactly where Jessica and Damien Zouaoui found it. Jessica and Damien were living the corporate dream in New York City. Good salaries, promising careers, and absolutely zero professional fulfillment. So they did what most people only talk about. The month after getting married, they quit their jobs at...

What happens when a former CIO with a decade of AI experience sits down to have an unfiltered conversation about where artificial intelligence is really headed? You get this episode. Stephanie Sylvestre is the founder and CEO of Avatar Buddy, an AI company she started building in 2016 before most people had heard the term machine learning. A former Chief Information Officer and Chief Programs Offi...

Most entrepreneurs start a business chasing freedom. What they get instead is a job they can't quit, a team that can't move without them, and a calendar that owns every hour of their life. David Salerno built a packaging solutions company from zero to eight figures with fewer than 20 people, and then walked away. Not because he burned out. Because he built it right. In this episode of DissedMedia:...

What happens when your startup faces a crisis and you have no plan? In Episode 60 of DissedMedia: A Startup Story, Ben Olmos sits down with Joshua Altman, Fractional Chief Communications Officer and founder of Beltway Media , to break down crisis communications strategy for startups and small businesses. Joshua shares the three-tier framework every founder needs — story, narrative, and brand archi...

What happens when a Wall Street veteran bootstraps a Kickstarter campaign into a seven-figure e-commerce business and then turns around to help other founders do the same? In Episode 59, Ben sits down with Nate Littlewood, founder of Future Ready CFO, to unpack the financial truths most founders learn too late. Nate shares how he grew Urban Leaf from a crowdfunded idea into a thriving CPG brand, w...

What happens when algorithms replace editors and social media becomes America's newsroom? In this episode of DissedMedia: A Startup Story, host Ben Olmos sits down with Julian Baron, Managing Editor of Off The Press and Baltimore Sun contributor, to tackle one of the most urgent challenges facing managers, leaders, and entrepreneurs today: how do you build trust in a world where the information yo...