More than a Few Words

I had a conversation with Deanna Russo, LinkedIn pro and founder of Leverage Up, about one of those ideas that sounded great in theory—but fizzled out in practice. Her LinkedIn group community was supposed to be the perfect extension of her one-on-one coaching work. But in the end, it didn’t quite land the way she hoped. Deanna built a network of over 30,000 followers on LinkedIn, so she knows a t...

I am going to start this marketing monologue with a story.  I'm going to start with a story. I was about four years old and I went into a bakery with my dad. And while he was ordering breads and pastries, I was standing there looking in the glass counter at these beautiful pastries. Eventually, my dad looked down and he says, Lanie, do you want one? Yes, Daddy. So the woman reaches behind the coun...

What if I told you there was one metric that could truly move your business forward—and most business owners aren’t even paying attention to it? That’s what we’re diving into in this episode of More than a Few Words. I had a conversation with jake Tlapek, aka the Wizard of Marketing, who’s spent the last decade helping struggling brands become high-growth success stories using battle-tested SEO an...

Joseph ( Dr. Joey) Drolshagen, left behind a high-powered corporate career to launch his own coaching business built on the SMT Method—Subconscious Mindset Training. He's seen incredible success helping companies grow, but in this conversation we’re not talking about the wins. We're digging into one of his biggest flops: a year-long coaching program called Struggle to Soar—designed for men navigat...

What Went Wrong: I Was Talking to the Wrong Audience After years of interviewing guests about their marketing mistakes, I decided it was time to turn the microphone on myself. This solo episode of More than a Few Words dives into one of my biggest missteps—fifteen years in the making. When I launched More than a Few Words, I imagined it as a smart marketing resource for small business owners. I wa...

 Phillipa Games, has spent more than 25 years swimming in the deep end of digital strategy and analytics. With experience across nearly 500 clients and websites that have brought in hundreds of millions of dollars, Phillipa has seen it all from the good, to the bad, and the wildly overlooked. In this conversation, we peeled back the curtain on website analytics, not the overwhelming, chart-filled...

Imagine being a fly on the wall, hearing what people really say about your business when you’re not in the room. That’s the promise of AI-driven SEO today. I sat down with Michael Buckbee, a marketing and tech veteran, to talk about how tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are reshaping brand visibility. This isn’t your standard SEO conversation, it’s a peek behind the digital curtain to dis...

My guest, Steven Lewis, broke one my big rules.  It is ok, to make mistakes, you just don't want to make the same mistake twice.  And he did. Yep, Steven started not one, but two businesses that were—how shall I say this?—a bit too far ahead of their time. And in this candid chat, we unpack what he learned, how it shaped the work he does today, and what you, as a business owner, can take away with...

Have you ever had that one brilliant idea—the one you were sure would be a game-changer—only to watch it sputter out despite all your careful planning? Oh, friend, you’re not alone.  I sat down with Whitney Bateson, a passionate entrepreneur who helps wellness professionals build their online credibility. But this time, we weren’t talking about wins, we were unpacking a launch that landed with a t...

“Yes, the world feels like a hot mess right now. But what if the real power lies not in fixing the chaos ‘out there,’ but in finding our footing ‘in here’?” That was the heart of my recent conversation on More Than a Few Words with the always wise and wonderfully grounded Deborah Sunderland. We didn’t talk strategy or spreadsheets this time—we talked soul. How we, as women business owners, can nav...

Andrew Laws has back in my guest chair (if you missed our first conversation, find it here) it, you’ll find the link in the show notes). This time we shifted away from SEO tips and took a different route—down a bumpy road lined with good intentions, disastrous mistakes, and a hacker with way too much free time. Andrew’s story is packed with humor, hard-earned lessons, and a healthy reminder that i...

If you've been around here for a while, you already know—I’m an email marketing geek. Not the kind of geek who builds robots in her basement, but the kind who gets excited about subject lines and open rates the way some folks get excited about the first tulips of the season. That’s why chatting with Ellen McDowell Strauss felt like talking to an old friend who also happens to alphabetize her spice...

You know, I’ve spent years telling business owners to get laser-focused. Find your niche, talk to your niche, sell to your niche. It’s like that old saying: “You can’t please everyone, so pick your people.” But every once in a while, someone comes along and flips my perfectly organized marketing world on its head. That someone was Matt Diamante, founder of Hey Tony, a marketing agency that helps s...

We've all had those “seemed like a good idea at the time” moments. Hers involved a Voxer coaching program, and in the spirit of learning from those detours, we unpacked what happened, what she learned, and how there might still be life in that idea yet. Main Points: Great ideas don’t always land the way you expect. Danielle created a Voxer-based coaching program for personal brand support between...

In this edition of What Went Wrong, I got a chance to explore mistakes, missteps, and the humbling reality that even seasoned pros can land flat on their face with repeat guest Robin Waite. This time, he didn’t come with a polished pitch or a shiny success story. He brought a cautionary tale about Facebook ads, cold leads, and a £9,000 lesson in what happens when you trust the algorithm more than...

You know, I’ve always believed marketing should feel more like a warm hug than a high-pressure sales pitch. So when Alesia Galati and I got to chatting about social media burnout (oh yes, that nagging, energy-draining beast), it was like she reached into my cluttered content calendar and whispered, “There’s a better way.” We laughed, we nodded, and somewhere between SEO tips and podcast rants, I f...

When a Great Idea Doesn’t Get a Second Chance This is another one of my What Went Wrong? conversations, and I love these because we all have ideas that don’t turn out the way we hoped. Sometimes, they’re just bad ideas. Other times, we give up too soon. That’s exactly what happened to Nina Froriep, who had a smart, scalable concept for video production—but abandoned it after a rough first attempt....

Yes, we’re talking about AI again because, let’s be honest, it’s everywhere, everyone is using it and most people are using it wrong. It’s easy to feel like you’re just throwing AI at problems without a real plan. That’s why I was excited to talk to Melissa Reeve, an expert in agile marketing, about her TRISS framework—a simple way to decide where AI can make the biggest impact in your business. I...

Most small business owners dream of growing our small businesses into something bigger. But scaling comes with challenges—hiring, infrastructure, and managing processes without losing control. I sat down with Anthony Franco, a serial entrepreneur who has launched, scaled, and sold multiple businesses. He’s also the host of How the Founder, a podcast where he and his co-host dive deep into the chal...

My guest today is Iris Goldfeder, founder of Gas Stove Creative . Iris and I are two out-of-sync New Yorkers who somehow ended up in Indiana, crossing paths in the small business community for years. But today, instead of swapping stories about pizza and city life, we’re talking about something every business owner faces at some point: the growing pains of change. Iris recently had a lightbulb mom...

We’ve all done it—Googled ourselves or our businesses, only to find something outdated, inaccurate, or just plain wrong. And the scary part? Most people believe whatever Google tells them. If Google says you’re permanently closed (even when your business is booming), potential customers won’t bother double-checking. They’ll just move on. That’s why it’s so important to take control of what Google...

Marketing is all about connections, but too often, we skip over the most important piece—people. Sure, we love talking about product, price, place, and promotion, but what about the humans behind the strategy? That’s why I brought back Dave Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, for a lively chat about the Four P’s of People—peers, pros, patrons, and promoters. Spoil...

Tina Bakehouse is living proof that even the best teachers are always learning. As an intuitive communication coach, she’s built a reputation for helping others communicate with confidence and authenticity. But as she shares in this conversation, her early days in business were filled with valuable lessons—especially about getting clear on her offers. Like many of us, Tina learned that trying to b...

A few years ago I sat down with Wayne Mullins, founder of Ugly Mug Marketing, to dive into his unique “3-5-3” formula for turning your website from a static space into a real business driver. If you missed the original release of this episode, you want to be sure to catch it now.  His approach is all about honing in on what users need, and it starts with capturing attention in the first three seco...

Sometimes, as business owners and marketers, we get so wrapped up in what excites us about our products or services that we lose sight of what matters to our audience. That’s exactly what Brad Koch, a coach and business strategist, discovered the hard way. Brad talks about what went wrong as he shared a story of a marketing campaign that fell flat—and the lessons he learned about crafting messagin...