More than a Few Words

Most business owners think success means being everywhere. Every platform. Every city. Every zip code. But the truth is, real growth usually starts much closer to home. Sometimes right down the street. In this episode, I sat down with Kyle Bailey, who spends his days helping home service businesses win where it matters most. Their local market. We talked about hyperlocal blogging, community connec...

Ever notice how being underestimated can light a fire under you? Too young. Too old. Not the right look. The wrong box. It’s frustrating. And it’s also fuel, if you know how to use it. In this episode, I sat down with Trevor Storm, a student entrepreneur running Media Wolf Marketing while earning his finance degree at Butler University. Yes, you read that right. And no, he’s not waiting for permis...

There was a time when conferences felt a little bit magical. You’d show up, coffee in hand, and before the first session even started, you’d be deep in a hallway conversation that changed how you thought about your work. Those little moments, sitting on the floor near an outlet, laughing over lunch, that’s where the real magic happened. But somewhere along the way, that magic started to fade. Big...

You know that feeling when you spend half your day chasing trends, tweaking hashtags, and wondering why your brilliant post is showing up three days late in someone’s feed? Yeah, me too. That’s why I sat down with Alice Seba, a content marketing pro who’s been helping online publishers turn persuasive content into real revenue for more than twenty years. She’s sold millions of dollars’ worth of co...

How do you establish meaningful milestones in your business? For years I treated my business plan like a glorified spreadsheet, a place to park projections and hope the numbers magically pointed me in the right direction. It took me longer than I care to admit to realize a plan without milestones is a lot like taking a road trip without those familiar green highway signs. You may get somewhere eve...

When was the last time you were pitch slapped? You know what I mean — you comment on someone’s post, and suddenly your inbox is full of “personalized” pitches that feel anything but personal. In this episode, I chatted with Billy Sammons of Live Local Marketing, who believes it’s time to push back against the noise and get back to what actually works: real, human connections. Billy’s been building...

If you think branding starts and ends with a logo, we need to talk. In this conversation, I dug into what really makes a brand work and spoiler alert, it has very little to do with what you personally like. We talked about why branding gets messy, where business owners go wrong, and how to build something that actually connects with the people you want to serve. I sat down with Jessica Adanich, an...

Welcome to 2026. This week is exciting for a lot of reasons. It’s the beginning of a new year, which means I get to close the book on last year and start fresh.  I will be bringing along what worked and letting go of what didn’t. This week is also special because on January 7, I’ll be marking a big milestone: the 16th anniversary of this podcast. It’s kind of hard to believe I’ve been talking that...

Some days the problem isn’t your KPIs. It’s the fact that you’ve been staring at your own brand so long you can’t read the label anymore. That’s where this conversation with Charlie Sells got interesting. We dug into how easy it is for business owners to chase goals, tweak dashboards, and sprint through to-do lists while completely missing the bigger opportunity hiding in plain sight: curiosity. C...

Ever feel like your marketing message is shouting into a crowded room? Every day, your customers are bombarded by thousands of messages—from family, friends, and brands all vying for their attention. So how do you make yours stand out? I chatted with Orly Zeewy, a speaker, educator, and facilitator of those “aha” light bulb moments, about one of my favorite topics: clarity. Orly helps entrepreneur...

In this episode of What Went Wrong, I chatted with Tim Bronson, the Fully Booked Coach, who came armed with not one but two “what went wrong” tales. Both are a little painful, a little funny, and packed with lessons marketers can actually use. First, there was the podcast that wasn’t. Back in 2008, Tim marched into a music store, dropped a grand on shiny equipment he didn’t understand, then prompt...

When you were a kid, having an imaginary friend was harmless, maybe even healthy. But as a business owner? That imaginary friend can tank your marketing. Too many businesses build their strategy around an avatar that looks neat on paper but has nothing to do with the real people who buy from them. In this episode of *More Than a Few Words*, Rachel Allen and I dig into why client avatars often miss...

We all have closet bullies. Those are clothes that don’t fit, don’t flatter, or just don’t feel right anymore. But we hang on to them anyway, hoping someday they’ll magically work. Every time we open the closet, there they are, reminding us of money wasted or goals unmet. Turns out, my marketing to-do list had a few bullies of its own. Projects I meant to start. Brilliant ideas that just never mad...

The conversation began, as many of mine do, with a topic I think we already understand.  This time it was influencer marketing. But before I could even roll my eyes at another mention of hashtags and brand deals, the discussion took a sharp turn toward something far more interesting: trust, storytelling, and what it really means to build relationships in a digital world that doesn’t trust much any...

Sometimes, early success can fool you into thinking you’ve built the perfect business. That’s what happened to Danny Kirk, who launched a software-as-a-service company right after finishing a music degree. He and his co-founder found a great niche, landed a $4,500 sale on a $300 MVP, and took off fast. The catch? Neither of them could actually build the product beyond that first version. They were...

Building custom GPTs for real work, not just party tricks is tricky. That's why I invited Len Ward to sit in my guest chair.  He's a former Wall Street pro turned agency builder, now leading Comexis, and he has the scars to prove what works and what does not. We covered where these tools shine, where they trip you up, and how to keep them sounding like you, not a committee of the internet. Key poi...

I sat down with Cara Chatellier, the founder and creative director of Bubbly Creative, to talk about something that hits home for every small business owner, the little things. You know, those simple, doable tweaks that don’t require a rebrand or a six-month strategy sprint, yet somehow manage to make your marketing sparkle. Cara calls them her “five tiny fixes,” and I couldn’t wait to dig in. Car...

Brands are personal. AI is not. So how do you use a tool that has no feelings, no experiences, and no voice of its own to help you build a brand that feels deeply personal and unmistakably you? It starts long before you ever open ChatGPT. Define Your Brand Before AI Touches It  Before you hand anything over to AI, take time to define your brand yourself. Ask: Who are my customers? What do they thi...

Angel Tuccy is an award-winning speaker, radio host, TV producer, media specialist. She's the author of 15 bestsellers, and hosts multiple successful online events.  A recent one had 6,000 attendees.  So this girl knows how to throw a party. So I was surprised, when we talked about the first party she tried to throw which didn't go the way she hoped.  What Was the Idea? Angel wanted to create a sp...

I might have been a little late getting started today because I fell down a rabbit hole on Reddit — and let me tell you, it was worth it. If you’ve never explored Reddit, think of it as a sprawling collection of dinner parties happening all at once. Each “subreddit” is its own table — one might be deep in marketing trends, another swapping cat photos, and a third arguing about the best way to brew...

Reddit: once the quirky cousin of the internet, now a front-row player in the SEO and LLM (large language model) game. If your carefully crafted blog posts are suddenly being outranked by Reddit threads, you’re not alone. That’s exactly what sparked this week’s conversation with Danny Kirk—musician-turned-marketer and the founder of Reddit Reach. Lorraine sits down with Danny to ask the question o...

Recruiter, podcaster, and process evangelist Darren Saul returns to More Than a Few Words to unpack a painfully relatable story: the one that got away. After weeks of work, multiple interviews, and a seemingly perfect match, Darren’s top candidate vanished right after receiving the offer—without so much as a “thanks, but no thanks.” Ouch. But this isn’t just a story about recruitment. It’s a wake-...

Do you remember marketing meetups? Not the polished, sponsor-filled kind. I mean the scrappy, “grab a coffee and chat” kind. No agenda. No name tags. Just people who geek out over marketing gathering to swap stories, ideas, and maybe a slice of pizza. Then  social media distracted us.  It was easier to post on Twitter and LinkedIn from the comfort of your bet then it was to get out of bed and come...

I had a conversation with Laura Chattington, a strategist who’s helped companies with enough zeros to make your head spin. We didn’t talk about prompts, plugins, or the latest hack for writing Instagram captions in 30 seconds flat. We talked about something much more important: how to make AI part of your marketing strategy instead of just your to-do list. Laura reframed the conversation around tw...

Is It Too Late to Start a Podcast? Roy Coughlan Doesn’t Think So I sat down with Roy Coughlan, a serial entrepreneur turned podcast coach, to tackle a question that’s been floating around like last week’s leftovers: Is podcasting still worth it? If you’ve been wondering whether the market is too crowded or if there’s even room for one more voice (yours), Roy has a clear answer: Yes, there’s room....