Follow The Brand Podcast with Host Grant McGaugh

Send us Fan Mail AI is moving faster than most organizations can govern, and that gap is where the real danger lives. From Omaha, I sit down with Naresh Samlal, CEO of Cloud Source, to talk about the side of AI that rarely makes headlines: what happens when employees upload sensitive files into public AI tools, vendors promise the moon, and leadership is left trying to protect data they can no lon...

Send us Fan Mail If your teams are shipping fast but the business still feels stuck, the problem probably is not talent or tooling. It is ownership. Grant McGaugh talks with five-time founder and Full Scale CEO Matt Watson about why companies quietly trade ownership for activity, then wonder why outcomes stall even when the roadmap stays full. We get practical about personal branding and LinkedIn...

Send us Fan Mail AI is finally in everyone’s hands, and that’s exactly why it’s getting risky. Grant McGaugh sits down with veteran tech leader Darrell T. Black (CIO, CTO, CDO) to discuss what it really takes to bring AI into a business without compromising trust, compliance, or the back office. We get into the difference between experimenting with a chatbot and deploying AI inside the systems tha...

Send us Fan Mail A lot of leaders talk about resilience. Far fewer can explain how to turn resilience into something a whole team can actually use when the pressure is on. Grant McGaugh sits down with Jason Gallo to trace that shift from a “power through it” mindset to authentic leadership built on tools, trust, and empowerment, shaped by Jason’s Brooklyn upbringing and a Grand Canyon moment where...

Send us Fan Mail A stroke or heart attack rarely happens in a doctor’s office, it happens on an ordinary day when nobody is watching the subtle warning signs. We sit down with healthcare innovator and RM2.ai CEO Corlette to talk about the invisible gap between appointments and why that gap is where preventable crises quietly build. If you’re caring for aging parents, managing chronic disease, or s...

Send us Fan Mail Most men don’t collapse all at once. They drift, they numb out, they get busy, and then one day they realize they’ve been “fine” for years while quietly losing their edge, their joy, or their family. Grant McGaugh sits down with Derek Jackson, a longtime healthcare leader and the author of Men Dying Garden Moments: The Hidden Crisis of Masculinity and the Journey Back to Life, for...

Send us Fan Mail If your content is consistent but your opportunities are not, you might be dealing with a problem most leaders cannot name: the authority gap. I define it as the distance between looking visible online and being genuinely trusted by the people who can hire you, fund you, or partner with you. After 30 years in healthcare technology and now building an AI-powered business accelerato...

Send us Fan Mail AI can generate a thousand posts before lunch, but it cannot manufacture empathy. That’s the tension we dig into with David J. Ebner, founder of Content Workshop, as we talk about what actually makes brand storytelling work when buyers are skeptical and content feels interchangeable. We break down the practical difference between story-first marketing and content-first output. A s...

Send us Fan Mail AI is already deciding who gets surfaced, summarized, and recommended, and that reality changes personal branding and business development in a way most leaders have not fully faced. I walk through the moment that broke something in me, when a preventable delay in a broken healthcare system cost my father his life, not because doctors lacked skill, but because the system could not...

Send us Fan Mail Cold outreach is louder than ever, yet most of it still feels like cardboard in the mail. Host Grant McGaugh sits down with mortgage professional, networking coach, and speaker Sarah Hubbard to get real about what actually drives growth in a crowded sales market and why old school “spend money to make money” tactics can leave you stressed, broke, and disconnected from the people y...

Send us Fan Mail A nonprofit can have the purest mission in the world and still fail if it’s run like a hobby. We sit down with Dr. Sharon Elefant, CEO of The Nonprofit Plug, to talk about what it really takes to operate a “business with a cause” with the same seriousness you’d bring to a for-profit company. We dig into the real differences between nonprofit vs for-profit organizations, why tax re...

Send us Fan Mail Most founders don’t lose deals because they lack hustle. They lose because they show up at the wrong moment, pitching someone who is still “happy enough” with the status quo. We sit down with Craig Elias, creator of Trigger Event Selling, and Brandy, startup builder and coach, to map the moments that actually make buyers move and how to be first in the door when they do. We break...

Send us Fan Mail Your personal brand is already selling for you or silently costing you deals. In a world where B2B buyers can compare options instantly and AI can generate endless content, the only way to stand out is to be unmistakably real, specific, and proven. Grant McGaugh, founder of 5 Star BDM and host of the Follow the Brand podcast, joins us to explain how executives and founders turn re...

Send us Fan Mail Most marketing advice sounds confident right up until you try to turn it into revenue. We sit down with Eric Huberman, founder and CEO of Hawke Media and founding partner of Hawke Ventures, to talk about what actually holds brands back and why so many companies get burned when they hire “an agency” like it’s a commodity. Eric doesn’t mince words about the low barrier to entry in m...

Send us Fan Mail AI is everywhere right now, but most small business owners are still asking the same hard question: when does it actually turn into cash? We sit down with Andy Stoyer and Andrew Lippman from WeLevel to break down what it looks like when AI is connected to the sales engine instead of living as a disconnected “tool you meant to learn someday.” The result is a practical conversation...

Send us Fan Mail AI hype is loud, but what’s happening inside real enterprises is much more interesting and much more practical. We talk with Michael Fauscette, founder and CEO of Ariane Research and author of Building the Digital Workforce, to get specific about what “agentic AI” actually means when software can plan, act, and operate as a digital worker. The big shift is simple: generative AI cr...

Send us Fan Mail The fastest way to waste money on “branding” is to start with the website and skip the story. On The Diaspora Show, we talk with Grant McGaugh, CEO of Five Star BDM and a globally ranked brand strategist, about what actually creates a five-star brand: the experience people have with you and what they say when you are not in the room. We get concrete about brand strategy and busine...

Send us Fan Mail Agentic AI stops being “just software” the moment it can take actions across your systems and that’s where leadership, cybersecurity, and trust collide. We sit down with Mark Lynd, a globally recognized cybersecurity and AI thought leader and former CIO, CTO, and CISO, to get specific about what enterprise teams misunderstand when they talk about autonomous AI agents. The promise...

Send us Fan Mail Imagine a teammate who never sleeps, never burns out, and never forgets a playbook. That’s the promise of modern AI agents, and we brought on Daniel Hindi, founder and CEO of Noem.ai, to unpack how teams move beyond clunky chatbots and into human-like, action-taking systems that actually sell, support, and scale. We start with the pain: SDR and CS turnover, endless retraining, and...

Send us Fan Mail Want to see your PDFs think like a database and your chatbots answer with context, not guesses? We sit down with technologist and entrepreneur Max Riggsbee Jr., co-founder of Gadget Software, to unpack how compute-ready documents—what he calls semantic twins—turn unstructured content into structured, queryable knowledge that both humans and machines can trust. Max explains why sim...

Send us Fan Mail Healthcare keeps moving, even when budgets shrink and teams burn out. We sat down with strategist Carol W. Kamangu to unpack how leaders can align infection prevention, operations, and technology to build safer, more resilient systems—and make AI actually useful. Instead of chasing hype, we dig into governance that protects PHI, strengthens trust, and keeps teams focused on patien...

Send us Fan Mail Tired of AI that adds noise instead of value? We open the doors to the ICABA AI Accelerator, a four‑week sprint designed to help professionals reclaim 20+ hours a month, scale content that sounds like them, and build authority through human‑led systems. Rather than flood you with demos, we focus on judgment, workflows, and data—so AI works for you, not the other way around. We sta...

Send us Fan Mail Responsibility breaks where AI moves fastest, and that’s exactly where we go today. Grant sits down with Daniel Ikem—strategic operator at the intersection of emerging technology, intellectual property, and public policy—to unpack how shadow AI, data limits, and legal gray zones collide inside modern organizations. From boardrooms pushing Copilot to teams quietly pasting prompts i...

Send us Fan Mail The ground is shifting under our feet as AI moves from answering questions to taking action. We dig into what that transformation really means for leaders: how operating models evolve, where risk compounds, and what it takes to capture speed without inviting chaos. With Dr. Jamila Amimer, CEO of MindSenses Global and a recognized AI strategist, we unpack practical steps to go from...

Send us Fan Mail What if the gap between talking about AI and profiting from it is only one habit wide? We sit down with Kellen Coleman—PR strategist, government contracting pro, and builder of AI-powered tools—to unpack how creators and small teams turn brand visibility into real revenue. The throughline is simple: certificates don’t close deals. Consistency, timing, and proof of work do. We star...