Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind Business Growth & Business Development

Influencer marketing is not “send free product and pray they post” anymore. Creators know their worth. Consumers know when they are being sold to. And brands that still treat creator marketing like a one-off transaction are usually the ones wondering why the campaign looked good on paper but did not actually move the business. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Tommy Johnson, Sen...

Pet influencers are adorable but not always profitable. A lot of brands see a cute dog with a big following and assume they’ve found the perfect influencer. But just like with humans, follower count is one of the least useful numbers on its own. The real value comes from audience demographics, engagement, platform fit, usage rights, content quality, and the person behind the pet. In this episode o...

Most founders are wrong about personal branding. They think it’s about ego, selfies, and posting your life story online. But according to Rachel Gogos, CEO of The Brand ID, your personal brand is not about being louder. It’s about making your business feel more human, more trustworthy, and more real. In this episode of Humans of Growth, Aly Hathcock sits down with Rachel Gogos to talk about the ro...

Your best-looking marketing campaign might be the one quietly killing your growth. Most businesses look at ROAS, cost per lead, and in-platform ad reports and assume they know what’s working. But those dashboards are often rewarding the easiest conversions, repeat buyers, retargeting, brand search, while the campaigns actually creating new demand get ignored or killed too soon. And that’s how comp...

Most business owners think they have a lead problem. They don’t. They have a follow-up problem. Because you can spend thousands on ads, SEO, website traffic, Google Business Profile optimization, and lead generation, but if no one responds quickly, if the sales process is messy, or if leads disappear into a broken CRM, that marketing spend is wasted. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down...

Most companies confuse visibility with credibility. Getting featured feels like the win — but the headline is just the start. Real PR is what happens after the article runs. The investor who finally takes the call. The $30K speaking spot that costs nothing to earn. The partnership that lands because you've been showing up in the right rooms for years. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit dow...

Your expertise is killing your messaging. The more you know about your product, the harder it gets to explain it in a way customers actually understand. And this is why most companies lose buyers in the first five seconds someone lands on their website. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Roy Abdo, CEO of Digital Revamp, to break down how to fix your brand messaging, why your CEO...

During COVID, a lot of home service businesses got fat and happy. The phones were ringing, the leads were rolling in, and marketing budgets quietly disappeared into other line items. Now those same companies are watching their leads dry up and wondering what changed. Their competitors didn't get lazy. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Megan Bedford, co-founder of Home Services M...

Scott Armstrong lost a major AT&T deal by selling the big idea while his client was trying to ask about the budget. Her CEO had cut her budget 30 minutes earlier. She asked three times to see the numbers. Scott kept pitching — and walked out down 60% of his agency fees. That meeting reshaped how he runs an agency 30 years later. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Scott Armstr...

Paid ads are renting. SEO is buying. Most business owners pour their marketing budget into Google Ads and Meta because the math feels obvious — drop in a dollar, pull out five. But the channel that actually compounds, the one that builds lead generation you don't have to keep paying for, usually gets pushed to the back of the budget. And that's how most businesses end up funding Mark Zuckerberg's...

Most brands start scrappy, hungry, and a little bit weird. Then they grow up — and somewhere on the way to becoming a "real" company, they lose the thing that made anyone care in the first place. Campaigns get safer. Tone gets stiffer. The marketing starts to sound like every other brand in the category. And customers quietly stop showing up. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Br...

Most CEOs and CMOs are staring at dashboards that make them feel productive while the business quietly pays the price. Because clicks, impressions, and pretty reports can make it look like the marketing is working… …even when growth is flatlined and your audience does not actually feel connected to your brand. In this episode of Humans of Growth, Aly Hathcock sits down with Tiffany Wade, Media Dir...

You can write all the content you want and still lose to someone with worse copy and stronger backlinks. Because SEO is not just about what lives on your website. It is also about who on the internet is pointing back to you, vouching for you, and helping Google decide whether your business matters. In this episode of Humans of Growth, Aly Hathcock sits down with Adam of Tork Media to break down th...

Most businesses are forgettable simply because they don't make people feel anything. There's no true depth of feeling and emotion behind the brand. In this episode of Humans of Growth, Aly Hathcock sits down with John of Human Design to unpack what actually makes a brand feel human — and why emotional connection matters far more than polished messaging, feature lists, or surface-level aesthetics....

Posting more isn’t the strategy. Connection is. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Hannah Olivas, co-founder of She Rises Studios, to talk about what actually drives trust and revenue in 2026. From publishing and media to large-scale women’s events, Hannah has built a global ecosystem by focusing on real relationships — not vanity metrics. We unpack what it truly means to build a...

You’re not too busy to grow. You just don’t have the right operations systems in place. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Brandon Bowers, COO of SMB Team, to unpack what actually keeps founders stuck in the day-to-day — and how to fix it. We break down delegation, documentation, hiring triggers, and the systems required to scale without burning out. Inside this conversation, you...

Most B2B companies invest in visibility before they invest in credibility. That’s backwards. In today’s market, attention is cheap — but trust is rare. And if your brand reputation isn’t strong, no amount of ad spend will fix it. That’s where reputation marketing comes in. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I’m joined by Katy Hendricks, CMO at Powell Communications, a B2B PR agency that helps cr...

If you can’t clearly explain why growth is happening — or why it’s not — you’re headed towards disaster. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Liz Ross, CEO of Shift Paradigm, to unpack what really breaks inside growing companies long before revenue flatlines. We talk about why so many leaders believe they’re practicing data-driven decision making — when they’re actually operating o...

If your in-person event isn’t selling out, it’s not the algorithm. It’s your funnel. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Brian Bauer, CEO of Bauer Entertainment Marketing, to break down what actually drives ticket sales in today’s attention economy. This is a masterclass in entertainment marketing for anyone running concerts, festivals, sports games, or live experiences. We unpack...

Most companies think PR is about sending a press release and landing a feature. It’s not. Public relations isn’t hype. It isn’t pay-to-play placements. And it’s definitely not about controlling the media. It’s about credibility — and credibility has to be earned. So what does that actually look like today? In a world flooded with AI-generated pitches and sponsored features, how do you build a real...

If your phone rings and nobody answers, your marketing didn’t fail. Your business did. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Daniel Perlacchi, VP of Experience Strategy at ServiceDirect, to talk about the future of lead generation for local service businesses. We break down how pay-per-call marketing, home services marketing, local business lead generation, customer experience, and...

Most businesses are still marketing like it’s 2016. Run some ads. Boost a few posts. Hope the phones ring. But today’s buyer doesn’t move in a straight line — they move across dozens of touchpoints. Search. Social. Streaming. Email. Reviews. Your website. Then back again. That’s the reality of the omnichannel customer journey. In this episode of Humans of Growth, we break down why the old 7-touchp...

Most B2B marketing isn’t failing because of bad creative. It’s failing because it’s mistimed. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Kara Brown, CEO of Lead Coverage, to break down what’s actually driving revenue in modern B2B: precision, timing, and systems that identify buyers before they raise their hand. We dive deep into B2B intent data — what it is, how it works, and why form f...

What if the biggest thing holding your business back isn’t sales… It’s the admin work you shouldn’t be doing? In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Noel Pulanco, CEO of Yes Virtual and designated broker of HomeQwik, to talk about how small businesses can scale faster by offloading the right tasks, building better systems, and hiring smarter. We break down what it actually looks like...

Most companies say they want referrals. However, what they actually want is a tool that they can flip a switch on and watch revenue roll in. That’s not how referral marketing works. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Ben Dixon, CEO of Naxum, to break down what a real referral marketing strategy looks like when you treat it like a true growth channel — not a forgotten link in your...