Relationships Rule

Every Wednesday morning at the University of Michigan, someone put out donuts to lure the programmers away from their desks and into a conversation. Greg Peters was one of those programmers. When he launched his own web development business, Greg quickly learned that waiting by the phone doesn't bring in clients. He'd sit in the corner at chamber breakfasts, secretly hoping no one would join him....

There is an old marketing saying that Don Wexler brought up on this episode. Nobody wants a quarter-inch drill bit, they want a quarter-inch hole. It is not his own line, but it is one he leans on often, and it set the tone for a very engaging conversation. Don is a digital marketing and video strategist based in Lafayette, California. He got his start selling real estate, and today he has several...

Real growth in business rarely comes from being the loudest person in the room. It comes from being the person who introduces someone else. That is exactly how Trish Tonaj built her platform, Share Your Stories. More than 600 entrepreneurs across five continents have had their business stories told there, and it all started when a stranger at a Harvard course told her there are no average role mod...

Picture a video call, a prospect, and a tiny zucchini plant. Maria-Katarina Johannesson once held hers up on camera just because she felt like it, and the prospect turned her own camera around to show off her plant too. That small, unplanned moment turned into a real bond, and it says everything about how Maria-Katarina runs her business. Maria-Katarina is the founder of Linksandmaria, where she h...

Charles Reichelt built his business on introductions, with no cold calling at all. That says a lot about how trust travels. Charles is the founder of FTG Squared in Baltimore, Maryland, where he helps small business owners set up retirement plans for themselves and their teams. After a long career with large firms, he started his own company and learned that trust has to be earned one person at a...

Talent is not what makes a career in comedy. Relationships are. That is the case my guest Rosie Tran made on this episode. She has been a stand-up comedian for over twenty years, and she built Rosie Tran Presents, a show on Amazon Prime and Tubi that spotlights comedians who have the talent but have not always gotten their fair shot. Her path was not a straight line. A comedy club manager once tol...

Audley Stephenson has interviewed over 3,000 people, but the story he told me this week was his own. When the pandemic shut down professional basketball, it also took away his job as commissioner of a basketball league, and with it, the identity he had built his whole life around. He told me he did not even realize he was struggling until he said one sentence out loud to a friend: "ever since I lo...

Kristen Nolan says the word pitch should not exist in podcast guesting. That one belief shapes everything else she teaches. As a Podcast Guest Strategist at Interview Valet, Kristen helps business leaders and executives step onto other people's podcasts the right way. She reframes it entirely, treating every guest appearance as an introduction and the beginning of a relationship rather than a sale...

I sat down for pizza with my daughter and her friend, opened GoDaddy on my phone, and bought the domain before we finished lunch. That’s how Susan Dabbar describes the moment PROVOKED went from an idea to something real, and it tells you almost everything about how she moves through the world. Susan has designed nuclear submarines, run brand campaigns for Disney and Nestlé, played professional pok...

There was a moment on a retreat in Napa where Aaron Hendon realized something that had been true for years but he had never actually seen. He had the marriage, the kids, the business doing better every single year, and underneath all of it, a low hum of worry that never let up. He calls it the Jaws music. That moment cracked open everything we talk about in this episode. Aaron spent thirty years b...

Jared Harman started learning about people at age twelve, working in his family's restaurant on Granville Island. Tourists from everywhere, personalities from all over, and a quick education in how to show up for someone even when it is hard. That early lesson never left him. Today, Jared is the CEO and Co-Founder of The One Group Agency, a full-service digital marketing firm in Surrey, BC. His te...

There is a moment in this conversation that I keep coming back to. Zvi Band said something simple that landed hard: most people treat relationship building as an organic thing, something they will just get around to when someone comes to mind. And that, he says, is exactly why it falls apart. Zvi started as a software developer who walked into networking events, made a lap, and walked straight bac...

There are leaders who talk about putting people first, and then there are leaders who have actually staked their life on what happens when a system loses its rhythm. Hanna Bauer is the latter. Hanna is the founder of HEARTnomics Enterprises and faculty member with the Maxwell Leadership team. She has spent nearly three decades helping CEOs and leadership teams find the real root of why organizatio...

There are people in your life who would pick up the phone at 3 AM if you called. Not many … but they exist. Now ask yourself honestly: how intentional were you about building those relationships? Or did they just happen? That question sat with me after my conversation with Nida Leardprasopsuk, a Master Certified Coach, serial entrepreneur, TEDx organizer, and founder of IRL, the world's first Rela...

Alisha Esmail has built two very different businesses, and the thread running through both of them is the same. Trust and loyalty. And paying close attention to the people already in your world. That lesson did not come easily. It arrived as an email, at the dinner table, from one of Road Coffee's biggest clients. Subject line: we have decided to go in a different direction. Alisha had no idea it...

That is the question I opened with when I sat down with Tim Dumas. Tim is, as he loves to say, an executive strategic coach by day, and a high school football coach by night. Two very different arenas. One consistent philosophy. Tim has spent over a decade helping executives, business owners, and leadership teams build the kind of loyalty that does not show up on a balance sheet, but drives everyt...

There are relationship skills — and then there are business skills. For most of my career, I assumed they were pretty much the same thing. This conversation with Joëlle Lydon stopped me in my tracks. Joëlle is a certified relationship coach, author of Unbreakable Us: Removing the Barriers to Love, and creator of the 7-Step Relational Growth Pathway. She has spent over 30 years helping individuals...

When I sat down with sisters Amy and Nancy Harrington, co-founders of The Passionistas Project, I realized within the first few minutes that we were kindred spirits. Maybe it was the shared love of all things Hollywood, or maybe it was just how easy the conversation felt, but either way, this episode quickly became one of my favourites. Amy and Nancy grew up in a small town outside Boston in a hou...

I’ll be honest, when the outreach came in for this guest, I hesitated. Someone who writes content for other people? That is not quite my world. I live in the LinkedIn inbox, building one relationship at a time. But the more I got to know Kaila Vander Horn, Head of Content at Speedwork, the more I realized we are speaking the same language. She just comes at it from a different angle. She built Spe...

I have to be honest with you, this conversation almost did not happen. The first time Dawn Andrews and I sat down to record, my tech had other ideas. But as I said at the top of the episode, I saw it as a bonus, because any excuse to spend more time with Dawn is a good one. Dawn is an executive leadership consultant, business strategist, and host of the She's That Founder podcast. She works with f...

I have been looking forward to this conversation for a while, and it did not disappoint. Michael Roderick is a return guest, who was on the show back in 2021 (episode 118), in my very first year. We lost touch for a while, and then something funny happened. His name kept coming up in rooms he was not in. A guest from New York turned out to be a friend of his. That friend introduced me to two peopl...

I had such a great conversation with Gina Cotner, founder and CEO of Athena Executive Services, and I have a feeling this one is going to hit home for a lot of you. If you have ever told yourself, it is just easier to do it myself, you are in good company. I have said that more times than I can count. But Gina made me see that the resistance we feel around delegation is not really about the task....

I have wanted to have this conversation for a while, and I am so glad we finally made it happen. Andrew Allen is someone I have known for years. I remember watching him perform at a backyard concert in Richmond, BC, long before keynote stages were part of his story. Even then, there was something about him that was different. He was not just performing. He was connecting. Today, Andrew is a multi-...

Today we are talking about something that often gets overlooked in business conversations, yet affects everything! The quality of relationships. My guest, Norman Wolfe, challenges the traditional view of organizations as machines and introduces a more human-centered way of thinking. We talk about why even the best strategies can fail, what really motivates people at work, and how leaders can shift...

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Lisa Riegel to explore something we often overlook in business relationships: trust. Trust is not just a soft skill. It is rooted in how our brain is wired. Lisa shares a powerful and practical perspective on how our past experiences shape the way we perceive others, react in the moment, and build connection. We talk about what really happens when we read the r...