With Hat and Cattle

You can know your work inside and out and still have trouble explaining why someone should pay for it. David Cohen founded Superposition to help Data and AI consultancies sell, deliver and grow more effectively. In this conversation, he and host Dani Raschel Chou talk about why technical experts lose people in the details, how to explain complicated work in plain English, and why trust matters as...

What makes a networking event worth coming back to? And how do you turn a room full of strangers into a community that lasts? Sanjay Kalluvilayil of The AI Space Podcast joins Tim Mata and Tori Begg of Mind and Machine DFW for a conversation about building community with intention. Together, they share how they got people into their first events, what makes a room welcoming, why community building...

You can grow a business and an audience, but how do you make sure you still recognize yourself along the way? Adam Aguirre, owner of California Pool Man and known online as Adam the Pool Builder, joins host Dani Raschel Chou to talk about entrepreneurship, building trust, and showing up authentically when more people are watching. At 18, Adam was servicing pools for about $80 a month. By 27, he wa...

A man got fired on a Friday for bad lettering. On Monday, Beau Dromiack sat down at his desk. He was a high school junior on his first architecture job, finding out his teacher had been right. He has spent the forty years since arguing something his own profession doesn't love hearing: Achitects didn't lose ground to fees or software. Their craft slipped, somebody else filled the gap, an...

You leave a networking event with a few business cards and a good conversation. Now what? Wes Hoblit, land use consultant, joins host Dani Raschel Chou to talk about all the networking tips, like how to follow up after a networking event, build professional relationships, and ask for introductions without rushing the relationship. His approach is practical: Remember something specific, send a shor...

Can grief affect your body? Why do we numb difficult emotions instead of feeling them? What does it actually mean to process grief? And can practices like somatic or energy healing help someone reconnect with themselves after loss? Guest Emma Guenther’s answer begins with a loss that divided her life into before and after. In 2023, Emma’s daughter Magnolia was stillborn. Emma went home postpartum...

What if the right way to prepare for AI isn’t to trust it more, but to get better at thinking for yourself? Chris Trevino is Vice President of Technology at The Judge Group, but some of the most useful lessons he brings to this conversation came long before AI. He spent five years serving aboard a nuclear submarine, where preparation mattered because when something went wrong, there wasn’t time to...

You can spend years chasing success without ever stopping to ask a surprisingly important question: Whose definition of success am I using? This month, host Dani Raschel Chou, Nicki Ketcham, and Wes Hoblit brought three very different books to the With Hat and Cattle table: Robert Cialdini’s Influence , Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy’s The Gap and The Gain , and Tim Powers’ supernatural pirat...

Sharon Flatte once walked into one of Dallas’ best-known tattoo shops looking for work. The owner told her he didn’t hire women. Two years later, she owned the shop. But that might not even be the most important part of Sharon’s story. Sharon built her career without a business degree or a carefully mapped-out plan. She and her husband learned as they went, eventually building multiple tattoo shop...

What do you do when you can't afford therapy? When host Dani Raschel Chou said that out loud at work, an intern (younger than her, junior to her) knew something she did not: Ask for a clinician who is still accruing supervised hours. The person she found working on hours became her counselor for seven years. It's one of five lessons in this episode, and they all point in the same directi...

What do you do when a surgeon tells you to schedule four joint replacements? Dan Esposito, a former NFL running back diagnosed with fibromyalgia and degenerative arthritis in his early forties, declined all four, spent the next four years reading studies, and is now a two-time USA Track and Field Masters National Champion at 54. This is how he got there. Dan Esposito did not play a down of footbal...

TL; DR: Is vibe coding safe to use in a business? Host Dani Raschel Chou asks Dr. Yeshwant Muthusamy, a thirty-year AI veteran with seven U.S. patents, and his answer is yes, with one condition: somebody has to read the code before it ships. Then he tells the story of what happened when nobody did. Dr. Yeshwant Muthusamy is the owner and principal of Yeshvik Solutions in Allen, Texas, and a fracti...

Do networking events terrify you? And what do you actually say at a networking event when you don't know anyone? In this episode, host Dani Raschel Chou and Nicolle Ketcham walk through one start to finish what to bring, where your name tag goes, which question to open with instead of “What do you do?”, and how to leave a conversation without apologizing for it. Nicolle "Nicki" Ketc...

Episode note: This episode includes a brief reference to sexual assault (~18:00). A content note is included in the audio. What happens when two brothers from Portland, Oregon decide to build a vaudeville career in the 21st century with no roadmap, no safety net, and "well-meaning" people telling them it won't work? AJ and Colescott Rubin, known as The Rubin Brothers, are Berklee Co...

Can you actually recover from sex and love addiction, and build a life you’re proud of? Host Dani Raschel Chou says yes, and this week she tells her own story of living as a high functioning addict. After years of asking guests to be honest about the hardest parts of their lives, Dani hands the microphone to friend of the show Jeff Mercier and takes the guest seat herself. Dani Raschel Chou is the...

What does an 800-year-old samurai code have to do with your inbox? More than you’d think. In Part 2 of this conversation, marketing strategist Ely Delaney explains how the seven virtues of Bushido shaped both his business and his life, and why respect and kindness are practical skills, not soft ones. If you're finding us on Part 2, start with Part 1 for networking as an introvert, archery as...

Can introverts actually be great at networking? Marketing strategist Ely Delaney says yes and proves it. In Part 1 of this conversation, Ely joins Dani Raschel Chou to unpack how to build real business relationships without faking extroversion, why mastering one skill beats dabbling in ten, and how archery became his meditation. Ely Delaney is your Email Marketing Architect and is also known as &q...

Amir Habib is a digital transformation and AI strategy executive with 25+ years of experience leading service delivery for some of the world's largest enterprise clients. In this conversation with host Dani Raschel Chou, Amir traces the entrepreneurial instincts that shaped his path: from a childhood dream of owning a chain of Buc-ee's, to selling phone cards and financial services, to a...

Eric “Big Juicy” Love led the campaign for Joe Exotic's presidential pardon. Colin Weatherwax walked away from a CEO title to sell insurance in a small Texas town. His 9-year-old daughter Kennedy might be the wisest person in the room. This episode is about what's actually left once the title, the title, and the tragedy are gone. And it's about joy. On this episode of With Hat and C...

Paul Byrne rage-quit a corporate job, built a tech company from scratch with an Italian degree, and wrote Adapt or Die: The Real AI Playbook -- a framework for people who didn't go to MIT but still need to understand what AI is actually doing. In this episode, Paul breaks down how AI really works, why most people are using it wrong, and what you should actually be doing about it (no technical...

What does business development and relationship building look like when you've been doing it for 35 years in Dallas, Texas? Guest Mike Nurre knows.  He's built a career, a community, and a reputation on one principle: give first, and keep giving. In this episode of With Hat and Cattle, host Dani Raschel Chou sits down with Mike Nurre: business broker, financial advisor, and Dallas commun...

In Part 2 of this unscripted live coaching session, Enneagram and Purpose Factor coach Darin K. Newbold takes host Dani Raschel Chou and her best friend Nicki Ketcham deeper than either of them planned to go. They unpack their Purpose Factor assessments, identify the patterns holding them back, and walk through a real-time framework for managing emotional triggers at work and at home, all in the n...

What does a live executive coaching session actually look like? In Part 1 of this two-part episode, host Dani sits down with Enneagram coach Darin K. Newbold and best friend Nicki Ketcham for an unedited walkthrough of the BoldGPS framework: Darin's Bold Guided Purpose System that combines the Enneagram with the Purpose Factor Assessment. Following Darin's first appearance on With Hat an...

AI can write the message, but it can’t carry your reputation. In an era where everyone is starting to sound polished, automated, and put-together, what actually separates the leaders people trust from the ones they don’t? In this episode of With Hat and Cattle, host Dani sits down (again) with Amir Khawaja, engineering executive and co-host of the Black Belts and Boardrooms podcast, for a candid c...

What happens when you follow a passion so relentlessly that the world eventually has no choice but to make room for you? In this episode of With Hat and Cattle , Dani sits down with Jim Futrell: amusement park historian, 11-time author, and the man the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions trusts to capture the soul of an entire industry. And here's the twist: Jim never...