With Guests Episodes

Erik and Molly dive into the real skill behind “speaking up” and why organizations fail: they don’t have an accurate shared reality—essential to actually make the best decisions, execute, and deliver great outcomes. Molly shares a simple, flexible framework that all professionals can apply: “Me–You–We” and explains how leaders and teams can create mutual understanding, hear tough truths, and turn communication into trust and faster execution. 👤 About the Guest Molly Tschang is a founder of Abe...

Erik and Jason Lauritsen dig into what “connection” really means at work, what drives it, and how it translates into motivation, performance, and retention. Jason shares findings from the Human Connection Study, including why “resonance” with purpose can matter more than human-to-human rapport. 👤 About the Guest Jason Lauritsen is CEO of Connected Performance Group and an advisor to leaders who refuse to choose between results and people. He developed Connected Performance Systems and helped pu...

Michael Summers shares how he went from professional musician and third-generation business owner to a politics-and-education leader, and why his north star is replacing fear with wisdom. From school board chairing during COVID to running for Oregon House District 53, he argues that bridge-building, disciplined priorities, and the “main thing” mindset can help communities disagree well and deliver better outcomes. 👤 About the Guest Michael Summers is a Central Oregon business owner and communit...

Drew Mehta explains why so many “AI strategies” fail in practice, and why owner-operators need end-to-end workflow decomposition, not deck-first consulting. We dig into the difference between consultants and builders, the “garbage equation,” and why AI should be used to fix weeks-long process bottlenecks, not just minutes of work. 👤 About the Guest Drew Mehta is an AI and product builder with 20+ years of experience creating data, analytics, and AI products for Major League Baseball, KKR, and P...

Shawn Busse argues that “growth marketing” hits an inherent ceiling when it becomes a commoditized, copyable process. He uses Hotelling’s law and the “Google beach” to explain why competitors converge, prices collapse, and differentiation fades. The antidote is creative, cross-functional marketing that also shapes product, pricing, and delivery. 👤 About the Guest Shawn Busse is the founder of Kinesis, a Portland growth studio helping businesses compete on creativity instead of conformity. A for...

Wanda J. Herndon shares how her commitment to telling the truth guided her through corporate PR, and how she navigated being stifled by “sure things” in old-guard companies before helping build Starbucks into a global brand. Her memoir, *Working Class to Breaking Glass*, connects leadership, belonging, and resilience. 👤 About the Guest Wanda J. Herndon is an award-winning communications executive, author, and trailblazer. Best known as Starbucks’ first SVP of global communications, she rose thr...

Fractional leadership is exploding for good reasons: shifting career expectations, cost optimization, and companies needing C-suite strategy without permanent headcount. Natalie Hoop breaks down how fractional differs from consulting and contracting, why ROI can be dramatic for clients, and how fractionals themselves must think and operate like business owners to price, position, and build a reliable pipeline. 👤 About the Guest Natalie Hoop is a fractional COO and coach for fractional leaders. ...

Danny Chazonoff, an OG of online payments, breaks down why “Pay Now” is really a high-stakes, multi-handshake system. From early online gambling and wallet innovations to issuer-acquirer conversations, fraud controls, and chargeback risk, he explains how payment processors built infrastructure for speed, trust, and reliability. He also shares the mindset that helped his teams scale and diversify into a multibillion-dollar outcome. 👤 About the Guest Danny Chazonoff is President/COO and co-founde...

Colby Wegter shares how he grew audience and trust without “performing,” why he thinks the customer must lead marketing, and how he rebuilt his life around gut-driven decisions. From agency ethics and “winning the first 48 hours” to parenting as repair work, he ties everything back to self-trust, discernment, and never outsourcing belief. 👤 About the Guest Colby Wegter is a former agency operator and newsletter writer who helps people who “look good on paper” but feel hollow. After serving 1,20...

Logan Yonavjak and Erik unpack why leadership “readiness” has been so hard to assess, and how Readiness Engine connects leadership traits like capacity, strategy, and adaptive intelligence to outcomes teams can act on. They discuss why traditional assessments fail (static, self-reported snapshots), the role of shared language, coaching interventions, and how product and category differentiation matters in crowded markets. 👤 About the Guest Logan Yonavjak is co-founder and CEO of The Readiness E...

Vincent Van den Broeck, founder of the UID Club and author of Everything Feels Impossible Until It’s Done, shares how hospitality sparked his creative drive, and how a life-threatening accident became a mirror for building resilience, non-negotiables, and daily “doing” instead of waiting for motivation. We explore grit, reframing failure, alignment in health and finances, and why believing “why not me” starts with accountability to yourself. 👤 About the Guest Vincent Van den Broeck is an entrep...

Scott Lauray shares how ProVia Partners helps middle-market owners make confident financial decisions, from business valuation to M&A advisory and fractional CFO work. He connects enterprise value with real owner goals, and frames business success as an engine for opportunity across employees, families, and communities. 👤 About the Guest Scott Lauray is founder and principal of ProVia Partners, delivering business valuation, M&A advisory, and fractional CFO support for privately held companies....

Erik talks with Joshua Altman about why communication gets “random acts” treatment, and how fractional chief communications officers bring strategy and consistency without full-time cost. Joshua shares two core frameworks, Story-Narrative-Brand and the Four Languages (read, see, hear, experience), plus why trust, authenticity, and even lighting and audio matter for message delivery. 👤 About the Guest Joshua Altman is an experienced storyteller and strategist who leads Beltway Media, a DC-based ...

Jaclyn Orent joins Erik to unpack her path from legacy sales success to a mission focused on culture change. She explains “selling from force vs. from listening,” the science language behind her work on surrender and consciousness states, and how identity-based marketing helps cultural catalysts opt in, align, and execute systemic change from the top down. 👤 About the Guest Jaclyn Orent is CEO and co-founder of the Cultural Catalyst Network. After nearly 20 years in sales and sales leadership, ...

Gavin Lorenzo explains why AI struggles to truly understand people, not just store facts. He shares how Tellbloom builds a “third-party”-like model of a user by learning from passive interactions, then uses that context to improve responses. The conversation also covers testing, privacy, and the governance challenges raised by frontier models like Fable. 👤 About the Guest Gavin Lorenzo is the founder of Tellbloom, working from Georgia with support from the Alabama Entrepreneurship Institute. A ...

John Marshall argues the hardest challenge of becoming an interplanetary species is not rockets, it’s psychology. He explains how “humescence” helps individuals and organizations redesign inner, interpersonal, and communication systems so missions teams can handle stress, conflict, and sabotage. The goal is mission performance and accelerated learning, powered by psychologically safe, conflict-ready culture that scales. 👤 About the Guest John Marshall is founder of Humescence, a human-centered ...

John C. Kill explains why supply chain stays invisible until it breaks, using the “duck paddling under water” metaphor. He shares what friction really looks like: last-mile trucking pressures, supplier consolidation, weather and geopolitical ripple effects, and why supply chain teams fail only when “the wheels come off.” He also digs into low-risk practice, leadership trust, vendor relationships, and how AI should augment people, not replace them. 👤 About the Guest John C. Kill is a seasoned su...

Selling a business is often the largest financial transaction of an entrepreneur’s life—but according to Gregory Kovsky, most business owners underestimate how complex the process really is. In this conversation, Erik sits down with Gregory Kovsky, President and CEO of International Business Associates (IBA), to unpack the realities of business brokerage, M&A advisory, and what separates elite dealmakers from average brokers. Gregory shares lessons from more than 30 years in the industry, inclu...

What happens when an HR executive, hospitality operator, and culture strategist all show up in the same person? In this conversation, Erik sits down with Olivia Bryant to explore one of the most misunderstood topics in business: culture. Drawing from decades of experience spanning hospitality, technology, finance, HR, and operations, Olivia shares why culture isn't a soft concept—it's a business system. Together, they unpack the post-COVID shift in employee values, the hidden power of hospital...

In this conversation, Erik sits down with Eric Wiklendt, Managing Director at Speycide Equity, to pull back the curtain on private equity, acquisitions, and the future of manufacturing. Eric explains how investors think about value creation, why stable cash flow beats optimistic projections, and what separates companies that are attractive acquisition targets from those that struggle to command premium valuations. Along the way, they explore the differences between private equity and venture ca...

Vince Azzolina shares how his career pivoted from CFO to COO at Myers Wells Service, moving from behind-the-scenes finance to hands-on operational leadership. They discuss incentives, the shift from cost-per-barrel to hourly pay to reduce unsafe driving, and how safety and engagement became core to profitability and retention. 👤 About the Guest Vince Azzolina is COO of Myers Wells Service, an oil and gas trucking provider headquartered in Western Pennsylvania. He leads financial performance and...

Lauren Cappell and Erik unpack why realizing ROI from AI adoption in law is harder than it sounds, especially under legacy business models. Lauren argues the real shift is not just efficiency, but value creation: new kinds of work, faster cycles, better workflows, and better pricing that aligns incentives. They also dig into the training and QA demands required to ensure AI outputs are trusted. 👤 About the Guest Lauren Cappell is a strategist at the intersection of enterprise, law, and artifici...

Jason Robinovitz explores what education needs to become in an AI-saturated world. He argues that AI will increase opportunities, but only if schools keep teaching students to think for themselves. He shares practical classroom tactics to reduce cheating, why incentives in education often fail learning, and which human skills, like critical thinking and soft skills, will matter most as hiring shifts. 👤 About the Guest Jason Robinovitz is CEO, COO, and General Counsel at Score at the Top Learnin...

Rocky Batzel, inventor and CEO of Snapslide, shares how a decade of tinkering became a child-resistant pill bottle closure designed for one hand and for people with arthritis or other limitations. From the original “aha” at a liquor store to prototyping, patents, and certification testing, Rocky explains the path to commercial viability and what scaling manufacturing for over a million units per month means next. 👤 About the Guest Rocky Batzel is the inventor and CEO of Snapslide. He left medic...