What's Working with Cam Marston

Episode Summary In this final installment of a multi-episode tradition, Cam sits down with his youngest son, Mack Marston, 19, days before Mack heads off to the University of Alabama. What starts as a father-son farewell turns into a remarkably candid window into how the next generation thinks about work, learning, responsibility, friendship, technology, and what a good life actually looks like. F...

Every year a Marston kid graduates from high school, Cam sits them down and puts them on the record. This time it's Ivey Marston — his youngest daughter, twin, varsity volleyball captain, NHS treasurer, and AP scholar — hours before her baccalaureate ceremony and but a few months before she heads to Auburn University to study aerospace engineering. It's a candid, unscripted conversation with a sha...

If you've ever chased a prospect for months only to get ghosted, delivered a perfect proposal and heard nothing back, or found yourself unable to walk away from a deal that was going nowhere — this episode is for you. Arthur Gonzales, Managing Director of Cypress Consulting Group and area franchisee for Sandler Training, joins Cam to talk about why most salespeople struggle and what to do about it...

Kyle Sweetser is back on What's Working for a second conversation with Cam Marston. A former lifelong Republican who described himself as betrayed by a party that abandoned its own values, Kyle is now running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Tommy Tuberville. In this wide-ranging conversation, Kyle and Cam dig into healthcare, energy policy, executive overreach, the challeng...

Matt LeMond and Luke Peavy have done something most restaurateurs only dream about — they've built six thriving concepts in Mobile, Alabama, and kept them running. From the original O'Daly's to Post Downtown, Post on the Hill, Stamped Sandwich Company, Cedar Street Social, and the Insider/Outsider complex, Matt and Luke (along with partner and former MLB pitcher Jake Peavy) have quietly assembled...

Retired FBI Special Agent Dan Sigmond returns to  What's Working to discuss his 21 years investigating financial crimes, a remarkable story of how a previous episode of this very podcast helped crack a case, and his new private-sector firm, Special Agent Advisory Group. Dan shares how fraud always comes down to the manipulation of trust, offers vivid case stories ranging from a Jamaican lottery sc...

Mobile, Alabama's development scene is quietly building something significant — and it's being done one catalytic project at a time. Cam sits down with John Ruzic, who helps run day-to-day operations at Porchlight Communities, a small and nimble real estate development firm focused on long-term impact over short-term gains. From affordable housing in Oakdale to the historic Ace Theater on MLK Aven...

Something genuinely exciting is happening in Mobile — one of the city's most treasured cultural institutions, the 143-year-old Excelsior Band, is on the verge of a remarkable renaissance. Led by Hosea London, this legendary walking jazz band — founded in 1883 by Creole firemen who played instruments between calls — is preparing to establish a permanent home at the historic Ace Theater on Davis Ave...

This episode of What's Working introduces SNASY (Special Needs Assistant Station for You), founded by Dale Jackson after years of struggling to take his severely disabled teenage son to public events with no accessible adult changing facilities. Dale connected with Julian and Olivia Stevens — parents of a wheelchair-bound, ventilator-dependent 14-year-old — after spotting them at an Auburn game, a...

Jo Bonner is president of the University of South Alabama and in that role is building the school in both students and infrastructure. A couple jobs before that he represented Alabama's Distict 1 in Washington, taking over from Sonny Callahan for whom he was chief of staff beginning in 1989. Joe spent a lot of time in Washignton and has insights on what has changed and what has driven the change i...

Christina Woerner McInnis is running for Alabama Agriculture Commissioner , and the job turns out to be far bigger — and far stranger — than most of us realize. Once she and I started talking, the scope unfurled like a county fair map: everything from how many gallons come through the gasoline pump to whether the grocery-store salad bar scale is honest, all the way to steering timber policy across...

Bradley Byrne served in Washington for Alabama's First Distrct from 2014 to 2021. Today, he says, he couldn't get elected as a Republican. He's not Republican enough. The party has moved further right and any act of working with Democrats to find solutions to national issues or creating local opportunities would put a target on his back, almost literally. He, like the other poiticians I've intervi...

Governor Frank Keating was elected as a Republican in a state full of Democrats. He figured out how to work across the aisle to achieve some major accomplisments. He was reelected due to his success. Today Washington is in a standstill with a government shutdown. Gov Keating discusses what worked for him and what may work today. He insists that it is the responsibility of the citizens to give back...

James Ballentine has lived and worked in DC for thirty plus years, lobbying and working for both sides of the aisle and serving in leadership positions for various members of congress. He's widely admired for his integrity and knowledge of how things work inside the beltline and, suffice it to say, Mr Ballentine has never seen anything like DC in its current state. He knows I think that a third pa...

Kyle Sweetser is as sick of politics and politicians as the rest of us. His big beef, though, is that the people elected to represent Alabama in Washington, DC have forsaken their state and, instead, are puppets of the White House. They back the tarrifs that are harming Alabama citizens and businesses. Furhermore, they won't do their jobs as a branch of the federal government and instead are doing...

Tony McCarron is Mobile's Public Safety Recruiting Coordinator. He and I first met three years ago and he came on What's Working, when the microphones were off he told me that the Mobile Police Department was 120 officers short of what they were budgeted for. That's a lot of law enforecement vacancies and the criminally minded, had they known that, may have taken advantage of it. Today they're ful...

What's Working has been quiet for a while. It's time to get back with a conversation with mayoral candidate Spiro Chieriogotis. His vision for the City of Mobile is what compelled me to reach out to him for this podcast. Too many mayoral candidates are running on their pasts or, in my opinion, grievances with something or someone. That makes for good fiction or TV movies but not good governance or...

Well, holy crap. I was pointed to an AI that will take content and turn it into a dialogue between two AI voices. This is the introduction to my book called What Works . I've turned it into an interview between two AI voices and... it's pretty doggone good. Take a listen - do you like this? Is it worth doing all ten chapters?  It's amazing. How to best use this?  Let me know what you think: Cam@Ca...

I've never met a soul who dislikes Frankie Little. I've never met anyone who doesn't like the food at Roosters. I've never met a successful entrepreneur who doesn't advocate creating multiple streams of income. Frankie's got it going on. His story is of a guy who says "why not try?" He's got initiative and drive and a dream of something bigger than himself. There's seldom a time I'm with him that...

The cathedral in San Antonio, Texas displays a remarkable light show every night . People gather to watch it and they have for years. Tourists and locals alike are drawn to the spectacle of the history of San Antonio done in rich, overlapping moving images and the music that accompanies it. Xavier De Richemont created it and wants to bring one of this light shows to Mobile to display it on the Mob...

We rushed this episode to the front due to its timiliness. Connor Lokar was on with me this fall and he and I agreed to check back in after the election. Oddly, we felt if SHE were elected President it would lead to uncertainty. Instead, HE was elected and we've gotten degrees of uncertainty that no one had predicted. Connor and his collegues at ITR say growth is coming this year, UNLESS....too ma...

Devon Harris is a female tech leader for OberaConnect based in Fairhope, Alabama. It's a company she started with her father and now includes her sister. Their growth has been intense, fueled by the rise in demand for tech services by small businesses and regional and local governement clients and Devon and her team's remarkable commitment to client relationships. All companies claim relationships...

Many cities need more urban housing with Mobile, Alabama certainly being one of them. It's hard to find, though, and where you do find neighborhoods and houses many of them are blighted and unsuited for living.  Porchlight is changing that. By carefully identifying properties, doing the often cumbersome work of locating property owners and then building homes that match the design and spirit of th...

Mark Colson has oversight of the Alabama Trucking Association and has insight into the 131,000 people the industry represents in the state. That's 1 out of every 13 jobs. They're good people, Mark says, who get a bad rap. It's an expensive business to run - the rigs cost a good but, the drivers and diesel mechanics earn a nice salary and wage, but its the insurance that hurts these small businesse...

The "modern elder." It's a strange term. Chip Conley describes it this way: As curious as you are wise. I heard Chip at a conference in San Francisco, wrangled a meeting with him, and booked this podcast. I was moved by his content. If modern medicine has its way, we're going to live a long time and need a place to apply ourselves during and after middle-age. Chip went through this transformation...