What's Working with Cam Marston

Chris Lawrence has focused on the human capital space helping organizations identify, build, financially assess, implement, and manage outsourced recruiting and consulting solutions. His perspective gives a good view of today's workplace and workforce needs. We discuss how the workforce needs have evolved since the Great Recession and what he predicts going forward. Notably, Chris explains why the...

Shadrick Toodle hand-made t-shirts to wear to support his kids' sports teams. Other parents wanted them, too. Today he's selling promotional clothing for teams across his hometown area and well beyond. His presence at events is a big deal. Kids and parents want photos with him. He's a celebrity. And it all transfers into more and more and more sales of his gear, from football parents wearing shits...

Tony Tejas stumbled on his salsa recipe one night making something quick for a friend. Today Tony's Tejas Salsa can be found across the southeast . Tony is working on vegan soups and stews, too. His goal is to simply make the world a better place and his food products are how he's doing it - healthy food, fresh ingredients, no preservatives. He's a man on a mission and he wants us all to come alon...

Adam Sealey is the principal at Baldwin Prepatory Academy where he oversees the training and development of high school students and readying them to enter straight into the workplace. With enthusiastic support from corportate sponsors, Adam and Eric West - Career Technical Education Coordinator - are on the forefront of developing the skills employers are asking for. We discuss how the next gener...

I met Jill Schlesinger at a conference years ago. We chatted back stage and got along. On my next trip to New York City she took me around the CBS Studios and and introduced me to some of the national personalities you would recognize on TV. She was interested, kind, nice, and generous when she didn't need to be. Her path to journalism is non-tradiitonal. She started as a financial planner and has...

When we last checked in with David Morris , president of QB Country , he was busy training his "bread and butter" client - middle and high school quarterbacks. Now in eleven cities, he's now taken many of those young QBs into the college and pro levels and they're staying close. Any any given moment in the offseason, David is training quarterbacks whose names you'd know and who are on the field on...

After a degree from LSU in landscape design, Catherine Arensberg wondered if that career was her calling. She evaluated her options, tried a few things, then doubled down on the parts of landscape designe she enjoyed the most. At the same time she developed a social media profile and grew it relentlesly. Today she's as busy as she wants to be with her high-end clients and has an online following e...

The NFL attracts elite athletes. Chancellor Moody and Timaje Porter think they have what it takes. Timaje is preparing for NFL Day where scouts will look him over. Chancellor is preparing to join a college football team where he expects his skills to shine. They both have lots of support in their corner, they're doing the work to ready themselves for the tests they'll soon get, and their attitudes...

Nick Bloom is an economist at Stanford. He began studing work from home trends long before they became a thing with Covid. Nick gives me the final word on whether work from home is profitable for companies, how it impacts creativity, and what most organizations are doing now that employees are insisting on a work from home environment. He also shares that NOT commuting to work saves a ton of time...

Amy Morin made a name for herself with a blog that caught fire followed by a Ted Talk that caught fire. In both instances she wrote and spoke about what mentally strong people DON'T do. Avoid these pitfalls, she says, and you'll deal with life's inevitable adversity much better. In today's show I ask her to apply this mental framework to work, business, customers, and employees and she offers fant...

When huge chemical containers are cleaned at chemical plants, what happens to the left over hazardous sludge? What's done with the excess from some cosmetic overruns? What about those piles of tires we used to see stacked up behind old tire shops?  Ted Reese is president and CEO of Cadence Environmental Energy . His company destroys wastes that contain energy value by feeding it into long rotary k...

Are electric car batteries an environmental disaster like some would have you think? Or are they God's gift to planet earth as others would have you think? I speak with Maria Caballero, President of E-Mobility, a division of TERREPOWER and John Boyer , President of TERREPOWER, a division of BBB Industries. TERREPOWER takes used EV batteries and remanufacture them for resale. The execs say that, ye...

Aaron Beam says it was his boss' drive for weath that put pressure on him to fudge the numbers. Aaron admits he liked the wealth that Healthsouth had generated for him, too. But that moment in his boss' office when things got heated about missing the quarterly numbers, Aaron says he should have said No. His inaction in that moment has shaped his life since.  Show Sponsors: Mason Hills Farms - True...

Dr. Kevin McGarry is the CEO of iLeading 360 . His research has put him at the forefront of understanding, managing, and guiding the Millennial generation. The focus of much debate over the years, the Millennials remain the most vexxing generation in the workplace today. With a background in leadership in financial services, McGarry's research has led him to developing tools for management and lea...

The workplace is permanently changed by Covid. Getting team members to return to the office during the work week will require new tactics including mandatory days in the office and a new office design upon arrival. Rebecca Swanner should know. She designed her company's new Los Angeles workspace with the new hybrid work arrangements in mind. She runs  HED's Workplace Sector and spends time with he...

Childcare was in a crisis before the pandemic. Too many kids. Too few spots. Many people who wanted to work were forced to stay home and care for young children and this burden impacted females much more so than males. Not much has changed since. In fact, it may have gotten worse. Many of the grants and subsidies offered during the pandemic are no longer available.  Autumn Zellner runs STARS Early...

Josh and Jared Higginbotham found just shy of 100 kernals of heirloom corn in a freezer in a barn. They were the last of their grandfather's stash and these brothers decided to plant it and see what happened. Today their Bayou Cora Farms non-GMO corn products are purchased across the country from their farm in south Alabama and they're looking for more acreage to try to meet the rising demand.  Sh...

Marty Grunder began Grunder Landscaping in 1984 as he was making his way through college, running it from his dorm room to pay his bills. Today it's a regional powerhouse in the industry and Marty has taken the lessons he's learn to create The Grow Group which coaches other landscaping companies across the country in their growth. Marty's lessons on leadership transfer across industry. He tells hi...

Danny Lipford started in TV in Mobile, Alabama, taking calls in the studio about home repairs to fuel his home remodeling business. Upon announcing his retirement, Danny's Today's Homeowner was broadcast in nearly every TV market in the nation and over five hundred radio stations. His media empire grew through lots of hard work and through a genuine appreciation by his audience. Danny's viewers an...

University of Alabama Professor Paul Reed, PhD is the Distinguished Teaching Fellow in the Department of Communicative Disorders. Despite the heady title, he's easy to talk to about accents and the impressions they make on others. I read a quote from him in  The Economist magazine and had to reach out. As a guy that travels a lot, I hear many accents and I have been told many times "you don't soun...

Only 187 medical students nationwide graduate into platic surgery any given year. It's an elite field and those that populate it are constantly curious about new procedures, new products, and better outcomes. Dr Chris Park epitomizes this and continues to bring the newest technologies and treatments to his practice. "You'd be amazed," he said, "what we can do now that we couldn't do a short time a...

Martha Underwood's father fell when helping a neighbor clean up after a hurricane. He was in Florida and for a while he was incapacitated. Martha, in Birmingham, needed access to his documents that are so important in critical moments like this but...where were they? Her story is not unfamiliar. We all have documents that family, doctors, accountants, lawyers may need at critical moments. Martha h...

AI was predicted to change medicine a long time ago. Little happened. Robert Pearl believes that time has come. A Forbes author, a podcaster , Stanford professor, physician, and former leader of The Permanente Medical Group in California and then leader of the Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group, Robert Pearl has unique insight into healthcare due to the transformations he's led in both organiza...

Kate Teague is committed to making music. She can't help it; it's what she does. She lives in the hyper-comptitive music scene of Nashville where every street corner has an aspiring musician or singer-songwriter trying to get noticed and make it big. Kate is doing the things necessary for her career to catch on fire, from performing to writing to shooting music videos (featuring her non-actor fath...

Friend of What's Working, Brent Barkin , is back to update us on his journey. After selling the family business about sixteen months ago, Brent had the luxury to spend time and consider his next move . Not ready to stop working, Brent evaluated what he liked doing and what he was good at and made his decision. Hear how he assessed his talent and made his choices and what lessons you and I can take...