Value Creators

Following principles of business administration is the path to disaster for your business or any business. Yet business administration is what’s taught in business school and revered as the highest goal of management. We need to change how we think about business, which requires changing our mental model. Entrepreneurial leadership is the new mental model.. In Part 2 of the special 3-part series o...

The most damaging error for a business is to run in administration mode. It’s the worst way to run a business. Yet it’s given the highest accolade: the greatest credential you can get is an MBA, a master’s in business ADMINISTRATION.  Administration mode is parroted in every business book, business periodical, and online business education. Administration is a trap baited with best practices, proc...

What is the real purpose of the firm: creating value or capturing it? In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast , Hunter Hastings is joined by Ashutosh Garg to explore one of the most fundamental misunderstandings in modern business thinking—the confusion between value creation and value capture. While traditional economic and management frameworks emphasize profit extraction, pricing power, a...

We’ve been taught that business success comes from logic, prediction, and data-driven strategy. But what happens when uncertainty makes all of that break down? In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast , Hunter Hastings speaks with Angus Fletcher, author of Primal Intelligence , about why entrepreneurs don’t succeed by predicting the future — but by creating it. Angus Fletcher is uniquely qual...

How do you build a real business — not just a product — inside a marketplace like Amazon? And how does generative strategy change the way entrepreneurs think about scale, risk, and value creation? In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast, Hunter Hastings talks with Neil Twa, founder and coach of Voltage Holdings, to break down what it really takes to build, operate, and exit successful market...

In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast, Hunter Hastings speaks with Professor Mohammad Keyhani to explore generativity — the ability of ideas, tools, and technologies to create more ideas and innovations beyond their initial intention. Instead of seeing AI as a replacement for human creativity, Professor Keyhani explains how it can become an amplifier that unlocks exponential innovation, wh...

What does it really take to build a successful entrepreneurial business—and a successful entrepreneurial life? In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast , Hunter Hastings speaks with entrepreneur and author James Harold Webb, whose career spans multiple eight-figure businesses across healthcare, diagnostics, and fitness. James shares the foundational principles behind his success: clarity of m...

Customer experience is the new gold — valuable, and becoming more valuable. In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast , Hunter Hastings speaks with Sujay Saha, CEO of Cortico-X, a leader in experience design, to explore how the world’s most forward-thinking companies are reshaping customer experience in the AI era. Sujay introduces a new discipline — experience-led architecture — where strateg...

What do billion-dollar founders see that the rest of us don’t?  What separates those who build legacies from those who just build businesses? And how can storytelling—not just strategy—be the most powerful tool for influence and growth? In this episode of the Value Creators Podcast, Hunter Hastings talks with Doug Crowe, brand strategist and founder of Author your Brand, to unpack the timeless pri...

In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast , Hunter Hastings speaks with Ryan Turnipseed about the greatest enemy of entrepreneurial value creation: bureaucracy. Value creation is a universal economic goal, so how and why have bureaucratic restraints emerged, and why are they so resistant to innovation? Drawing on the contrasting theories of James Burnham and Ludwig von Mises, Ryan explains how...

Corporations were built for stability, hierarchy, and control—but the world now moves in networks, flows, and continuous change. In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast , Hunter Hastings speaks with Dr. Ross Wirth, a world-renowned organizational transformation expert with decades of experience in the energy industry, in academia, and in hands-on consulting. Wirth explains why “change manage...

What does it mean to build a civilization that advances forever—and what role do entrepreneurs play in that project? In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast , Hunter Hastings interviews John Deming (author) and Mike Hamel (editor) about their book Blueprint for a Spacefaring Civilization: The Science of Volition . Deming and Hamel frame markets, innovation and entrepreneurship through the le...

This episode has been reposted from Strategy Meets Reality Podcast . How do organizations create meaningful value in a world that’s complex, nonlinear, and constantly changing? In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast , Hunter Hastings talks with Mike Jones — consultant, organizational psychologist, and host of Strategy Meets Reality — about systems thinking, value creation, and practical imp...

Why do customers choose one offering over another—often in a split second? In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast , Hunter Hastings talks with Duncan Berry, PhD, a consultant to leading brands at the intersection of semiotics, psychology, and neurology. Duncan explains how value is meaning from the customer’s point of view, why most behavior is pre-conscious and emotional, and how entrepren...

How should entrepreneurs act when uncertainty is everywhere—from volatile markets to chaotic policies and global instability? In this episode of the Value Creators Podcast , Jeremy Vesta helps us explore the role of entrepreneurship in uncertain times, including those caused by the chaos of government intervention and policy chaos. Building on insights from Austrian economics, this conversation di...

AI is now at the leading edge of value creation, where creativity, innovation and new business thinking will exercise great leverage. Entrepreneurs - and especially young entrepreneurs unburdened with the baggage of old business models - will lead the value creation revolution.  Dr. Raushan Gross is a professor, author, and expert in AI, in business systems, and in entrepreneurship, all of which h...

Many businesses and business functions are grappling with the question of the role of AI in future value creation, none more so than marketing agencies and the marketing function in business. Bryan Phelps is CEO of the marketing agency Big Leap, actively navigating this challenge every day. Bryan shares how his team developed a clear AI policy to guide innovation—and why humans must remain at the...

 How do you design a company—and an AI—that leads with empathy? In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast , Hunter Hastings speaks with Stephen Sakach, founder and CEO of The Zero Company and creator of aiCMO, an AI-powered marketing platform built to scale human connection. Stephen shares his journey through digital media, consciousness studies, and systems design to develop a framework where...

The robots are here. Are they useful? Are they ethical? In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast , Hunter Hastings speaks with Marianela Nanninga, CEO of ToDo Robotics. Marianela shares her journey from global tech sales to building one of the most innovative commercial robotics ventures in the U.S. Focused on usefulness over hype, she explains how robots are transforming hospitality, healthc...

What does it take to unlock capital in a system full of red tape, landmines, and outdated institutions? In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast , Hunter Hastings is joined by Dave Kotter, CEO of Integrity Capital and founder of the Hybrid Debt Fund. Dave pulls back the curtain on commercial real estate financing, innovative lending structures, and how technology—especially AI—is transforming...

Entrepreneurial leaders are focused on value for others, especially customers and colleagues. They deliver through innovation, which is the implementation of a better future for those customers and colleagues. This outer-directed focus must start from a place of trust, clarity, and purpose. A place Jim Murphy calls Inner Excellence. Jim Murphy is a high-performance coach and author of Inner Excell...

What makes a business truly stand out in the hyper-competitive challenge to create customer value? It’s not just the product—it’s the experience, and the system that generates and sustains it. In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast , Hunter Hastings speaks with Vance Morris, former Disney leader and expert in service system design, about why a customer experience system is the most strategi...

How do you build a retail business around passion—and scale it successfully? What does it mean to think in systems, not just solve problems? In this episode of the Value Creators Podcast, Hunter Hastings speaks with serial entrepreneur Joe Zentmyer, founder of Snaggletooth Goby and builder of thriving passion communities—from indoor climbing gyms to tropical fish hobbyists and service ventures. Jo...

How we lead is who we are. In this episode of the Value Creators Podcast, Hunter Hastings speaks with Becky Schmooke—entrepreneur, leadership coach, and author of Choose the Handle That Holds . Becky shares how the system of philosophy we label as Stoic generates practical tools for leadership, self-awareness, and resilience. Rather than hierarchical leadership vested with titles and administrativ...

The term alternative investments refers to investment opportunities that the financial regulators want to preserve for financial elites and protect from the average “retail investor” like you and me. They’re investments like venture capital, private equity, and hedge funds. They’re too sophisticated for individuals who are not “accredited”. These potentially high-yielding investments must be fence...