Arrows in Motion

A lot of young filmmakers think they have to leave St. Louis to make it. Bree Maniscalco has spent her career showing them another way.

In this episode of Arrows in Motion, Scott sits down with Bree Maniscalco, Executive Director of Cinema Saint Louis, for a conversation about what it takes to build a genuine film community in a city that most people don’t associate with cinema, and why that is changing faster than most people realize.

Cinema Saint Louis presents the St. Louis International Film Festival each November, runs Cinema for Students, one of the region’s most impactful youth film education programs, and in 2023 purchased the Hi-Pointe theater to give the organization a permanent community home. The film festival alone draws tens of thousands of participants, nearly half of them students.

We dig into the post-COVID resurgence of the communal cinema experience and why Gen Z in particular is showing up in ways nobody predicted. The third place conversation keeps coming up across AIM episodes and Bree puts it in sharp focus: a movie theater is exactly the kind of space people are starving for, especially young people who were robbed of those experiences during the pandemic.

We also talk about the return of Missouri film tax credits after a long fight, why St. Louis is one of the most affordable and versatile filming locations in the country, and what it means for the region that a major Hollywood studio is beginning construction in Illinois in 2027. The Midwest film industry is having a moment and Bree is one of the people who has been building toward it for years.

And we get into the harder parts of running a nonprofit arts organization in a funding climate that is actively hostile to the arts. The NEA grant Cinema Saint Louis had held for years was cut. Bree talks about what that moment felt like and how a diversified funding base allowed them to survive it.

This one is for the filmmakers, the arts advocates, and anyone who believes that great stories don’t only come from the coasts.

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Arrows in Motion

Most podcasts about business and marketing tell you what to think. Arrows in Motion asks better questions.
Hosted by Scott Heaton, Arrows in Motion is a long-form conversation podcast that goes deep with entrepreneurs, executives, and marketing professionals who've built real things, and learned hard lessons along the way. Each episode explores the gap between how success looks from the outside and what it actually takes to get there: the strategy, the grind, the pivots, the moments nobody posts about.

Whether you're a Fortune 500 VP rethinking what career advancement really costs, a small business owner trying to figure out if your marketing agency is actually on your side, or a fitness entrepreneur building something from scratch with nothing but drive, there's a conversation here for you.
For early-career marketers and marketing students trying to break into the industry, Arrows in Motion is the mentorship most people never get access to. Real talk on salary negotiation, building professional confidence, navigating agency culture, and what marketing careers actually look like beyond the job description. No gatekeeping. No fluff.

For experienced professionals, it's a mirror, and a reminder that the smartest people in the room are still asking questions.
New episodes drop on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. Subscribe wherever you listen.

Topics include: marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, career development, personal branding, agency vs in-house marketing, small business growth, corporate leadership, women in business, fitness entrepreneurship, professional development, entry-level marketing, marketing career advice, how to break into marketing, business podcast, career coaching, work-life balance, startup mindset, marketing for beginners, first job in marketing, college to career.

Wilder Politte forced his way into every opportunity he has ever had. And then AI took one of them away.

In this episode of Arrows in Motion, Cory sits down with Wilder Politte, freelance videographer and photographer based in St. Louis, for an honest conversation about what it looks like to build a creative career from scratch, lose it to something you never saw coming, and figure out what comes next.

Wilder's origin story is not a straight line. Fire Paramedic Science student who switched to advertising after watching Mad Men sophomore year. Lindenwood grad who bartended for two years trying to break in. Unpaid intern who forced his way from community management into photo and video by asking the right person at the right moment. Seven years of agency work, building skills and a reputation, and then a layoff he largely attributes to AI allowing companies to run leaner internal teams without paying agency rates.

We dig into the through line that connects everything in his career. Nobody is going to hand you the opportunity. You have to show up, speak up, and ask for the thing you want. He did it as an intern. He did it mid-career when he was getting handed impossible creative briefs. He did it when he was laid off with a baby at home and sent emails to every person he had ever known in the industry, even the one he had accidentally ghosted since the last time they talked in 2022.

We also get into what AI is actually doing to the creative production world. The tension between massive, practical, human-made productions and AI-generated content. The AI documentary editing tool he used to try to structure six hours of interview footage, what it did well, and why he ultimately went back to editing old school because no algorithm could match the specific vision he had in his head.

This one is for the freelancers, the creatives, and anyone who has ever had to rebuild something from zero.

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Arrows in Motion

Most podcasts about business and marketing tell you what to think. Arrows in Motion asks better questions.
Hosted by Scott Heaton, Arrows in Motion is a long-form conversation podcast that goes deep with entrepreneurs, executives, and marketing professionals who've built real things, and learned hard lessons along the way. Each episode explores the gap between how success looks from the outside and what it actually takes to get there: the strategy, the grind, the pivots, the moments nobody posts about.
Whether you're a Fortune 500 VP rethinking what career advancement really costs, a small business owner trying to figure out if your marketing agency is actually on your side, or a fitness entrepreneur building something from scratch with nothing but drive, there's a conversation here for you.
For early-career marketers and marketing students trying to break into the industry, Arrows in Motion is the mentorship most people never get access to. Real talk on salary negotiation, building professional confidence, navigating agency culture, and what marketing careers actually look like beyond the job description. No gatekeeping. No fluff.
For experienced professionals, it's a mirror, and a reminder that the smartest people in the room are still asking questions.
New episodes drop on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. Subscribe wherever you listen.

Topics include: marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, career development, personal branding, agency vs in-house marketing, small business growth, corporate leadership, women in business, fitness entrepreneurship, professional development, entry-level marketing, marketing career advice, how to break into marketing, business podcast, career coaching, work-life balance, startup mindset, marketing for beginners, first job in marketing, college to career.

Topics include: marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, career development, personal branding, agency vs in-house marketing, small business growth, corporate leadership, women in business, fitness entrepreneurship, professional development, entry-level marketing, marketing career advice, how to break into marketing, business podcast, career coaching, work-life balance, startup mindset, marketing for beginners, first job in marketing, college to career.

Tyler Wagner has been building websites long enough to notice something most people haven't yet.

In this episode of Arrows in Motion, Scott sits down with Tyler Wagner, Director of Website Development at Arrows Up, for a conversation about what AI is actually doing to web development, the creative industry, and the people building things in the middle of all of it.

Tyler breaks down how you can already identify an AI-built website by looking at it. Too perfect. Specific recurring motifs. The same layout repeated across dozens of sites. The general population is starting to pick up on it too, and once you see it you cannot unsee it.

We talk about the AI divide that has emerged in creative fields. In web development nobody blinks if you use AI to write code faster. In animation, stop motion, illustration, and design the reaction is completely different. Tyler walks through the backlash a stop-motion director faced after admitting he used a small amount of AI for touch-ups on a film he spent years making, and what that moment says about where the creative community actually stands.

We also get into talking to Claude while driving, the short-lived $280,000 prompt engineer salary bubble, why the Pi-hole is the most satisfying piece of home technology Tyler has ever built, and the escape room business that almost happened.

This one is looser than most. Two people who build things for a living talking honestly about the tools that are changing how everything gets built.

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Arrows in Motion

Most podcasts about business and marketing tell you what to think. Arrows in Motion asks better questions.
Hosted by Scott Heaton, Arrows in Motion is a long-form conversation podcast that goes deep with entrepreneurs, executives, and marketing professionals who've built real things, and learned hard lessons along the way. Each episode explores the gap between how success looks from the outside and what it actually takes to get there: the strategy, the grind, the pivots, the moments nobody posts about.
Whether you're a Fortune 500 VP rethinking what career advancement really costs, a small business owner trying to figure out if your marketing agency is actually on your side, or a fitness entrepreneur building something from scratch with nothing but drive, there's a conversation here for you.
For early-career marketers and marketing students trying to break into the industry, Arrows in Motion is the mentorship most people never get access to. Real talk on salary negotiation, building professional confidence, navigating agency culture, and what marketing careers actually look like beyond the job description. No gatekeeping. No fluff.
For experienced professionals, it's a mirror, and a reminder that the smartest people in the room are still asking questions.
New episodes drop on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. Subscribe wherever you listen.

Topics include: marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, career development, personal branding, agency vs in-house marketing, small business growth, corporate leadership, women in business, fitness entrepreneurship, professional development, entry-level marketing, marketing career advice, how to break into marketing, business podcast, career coaching, work-life balance, startup mindset, marketing for beginners, first job in marketing, college to career.

Topics include: marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, career development, personal branding, agency vs in-house marketing, small business growth, corporate leadership, women in business, fitness entrepreneurship, professional development, entry-level marketing, marketing career advice, how to break into marketing, business podcast, career coaching, work-life balance, startup mindset, marketing for beginners, first job in marketing, college to career.

Most small businesses think branding is a logo. Cory Montero has spent his career proving it is everything else.

In this episode of Arrows in Motion, Scott sits down with Cory Montero, Chief Creative Officer at Arrows Up, for a conversation about what brand strategy actually looks like when you strip away the jargon and get honest about why most small businesses get it wrong.

Cory breaks down the two stages every business goes through. The first stage is survival: a good product, some connections, maybe some charisma. It does not matter what you look like if those things are working. The second stage is where most businesses stall, when they have money coming in and realize they are unrecognizable from where they started. That is when brand foundation becomes the difference between growing and grinding.

We dig into the red flags Cory looks for when he first meets a potential client: a website that does not tell you what the business does, language so vague it sounds like corporate jargon, visual identity that changes depending on which platform you are looking at. None of these are small problems. They are all symptoms of the same thing.

We also talk about the emotional reality of rebranding. Cory recently led the rebrand of Arrows Up itself, and he will tell you the reaction from the team was the same as every client he has ever worked with. Oh no. Then they iterated. Then they loved it. The same pattern every single time.

And we get into the difference between spray and pray marketing and what Cory calls the sniper approach: doing the brand foundation work upfront so that every dollar you spend on ads is working against a clear, consistent, memorable identity rather than fighting against itself.

This one is for the small business owner who knows something is off with how their brand is showing up but cannot name what it is yet.

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Arrows in Motion

Most podcasts about business and marketing tell you what to think. Arrows in Motion asks better questions.
Hosted by Scott Heaton, Arrows in Motion is a long-form conversation podcast that goes deep with entrepreneurs, executives, and marketing professionals who've built real things, and learned hard lessons along the way. Each episode explores the gap between how success looks from the outside and what it actually takes to get there: the strategy, the grind, the pivots, the moments nobody posts about.
Whether you're a Fortune 500 VP rethinking what career advancement really costs, a small business owner trying to figure out if your marketing agency is actually on your side, or a fitness entrepreneur building something from scratch with nothing but drive, there's a conversation here for you.
For early-career marketers and marketing students trying to break into the industry, Arrows in Motion is the mentorship most people never get access to. Real talk on salary negotiation, building professional confidence, navigating agency culture, and what marketing careers actually look like beyond the job description. No gatekeeping. No fluff.
For experienced professionals, it's a mirror, and a reminder that the smartest people in the room are still asking questions.
New episodes drop on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. Subscribe wherever you listen.

Topics include: marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, career development, personal branding, agency vs in-house marketing, small business growth, corporate leadership, women in business, fitness entrepreneurship, professional development, entry-level marketing, marketing career advice, how to break into marketing, business podcast, career coaching, work-life balance, startup mindset, marketing for beginners, first job in marketing, college to career.

Ed Rodriguez did not set out to build a recruiting agency.

In this episode of Arrows in Motion, Scott sits down with Ed Rodriguez, founder and CEO of Hire LATAM, for a conversation about what happens when the market tells you something your original plan didn't account for.

Ed spent years as an engineer before taking the leap into entrepreneurship with a cleaning business. What Ed learned in those years building a service business from scratch shaped everything that came after.

The transition to Hire LATAM was not a pivot he planned. His clients started asking him to help them hire talent from Latin America. He resisted. Then he stopped resisting. And before long he had built one of the few dedicated Latin American recruiting agencies in the US that does nothing else.

We dig into the misconceptions that slow businesses down when they consider hiring from the Latin American market, why Ed made the decision early on to stay niche as a LATAM-only agency when everyone around him expanded into other regions, and what it actually sounds like when someone from Colombia or Argentina picks up the phone to represent your business to a customer.

We also get into the truth about sales that most people learn the hard way. The deal does not close when someone signs. The sale continues through the entire relationship. And no matter how much gets automated, no one is putting a credit card in for a high-ticket decision until they have talked to a human being.

This one is for the entrepreneurs who built something they did not plan to build and found out it was exactly what they were supposed to be doing.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Arrows in Motion

Most podcasts about business and marketing tell you what to think. Arrows in Motion asks better questions.
Hosted by Scott Heaton, Arrows in Motion is a long-form conversation podcast that goes deep with entrepreneurs, executives, and marketing professionals who've built real things, and learned hard lessons along the way. Each episode explores the gap between how success looks from the outside and what it actually takes to get there: the strategy, the grind, the pivots, the moments nobody posts about.
Whether you're a Fortune 500 VP rethinking what career advancement really costs, a small business owner trying to figure out if your marketing agency is actually on your side, or a fitness entrepreneur building something from scratch with nothing but drive, there's a conversation here for you.
For early-career marketers and marketing students trying to break into the industry, Arrows in Motion is the mentorship most people never get access to. Real talk on salary negotiation, building professional confidence, navigating agency culture, and what marketing careers actually look like beyond the job description. No gatekeeping. No fluff.
For experienced professionals, it's a mirror, and a reminder that the smartest people in the room are still asking questions.
New episodes drop on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. Subscribe wherever you listen.

Topics include: marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, career development, personal branding, agency vs in-house marketing, small business growth, corporate leadership, women in business, fitness entrepreneurship, professional development, entry-level marketing, marketing career advice, how to break into marketing, business podcast, career coaching, work-life balance, startup mindset, marketing for beginners, first job in marketing, college to career.

Josh Jones took a pay cut to be present for his daughter. That one decision changed everything.

In this episode of Arrows in Motion, Scott sits down with Josh Jones, Business Development Manager at Digital Strike in St. Louis, for a conversation about what it actually means to sell with integrity in an industry that doesn't always reward patience.

Josh started in AT&T corporate retail, climbed to managing 50 apartment properties across three states, and walked away from all of it when his daughter was born because he was missing everything that mattered. He took a significant pay cut to move into email marketing and never looked back.

What he carried with him was a sales philosophy built on one principle: do what is best for the person in front of you even when it costs you the deal.

We dig into the long game in sales — why Josh plants seeds years before they produce anything, why no lead ever dies in his CRM, and why the clients he helps for free today are the ones who come back with budget later. We talk about the discovery-first sales process, why building a real strategy with the service team before the pitch eliminates most of the fires that happen in the first 90 days, and why front-loading the hard conversations is the only sustainable way to grow a service business.

Josh also shares his take on what is changing in marketing. AI is automating everything that can be automated. The things that cannot be automated are becoming more valuable. Handwritten notes. Showing up. Remembering what matters to someone. The pendulum is swinging back toward the human.

Two ways to grow a business. Sell new clients. Retain the ones you have. Do both really well and everything else follows.

_________________________________________________________________

Arrows in Motion

Most podcasts about business and marketing tell you what to think. Arrows in Motion asks better questions.
Hosted by Scott Heaton, Arrows in Motion is a long-form conversation podcast that goes deep with entrepreneurs, executives, and marketing professionals who've built real things, and learned hard lessons along the way. Each episode explores the gap between how success looks from the outside and what it actually takes to get there: the strategy, the grind, the pivots, the moments nobody posts about.
Whether you're a Fortune 500 VP rethinking what career advancement really costs, a small business owner trying to figure out if your marketing agency is actually on your side, or a fitness entrepreneur building something from scratch with nothing but drive, there's a conversation here for you.
For early-career marketers and marketing students trying to break into the industry, Arrows in Motion is the mentorship most people never get access to. Real talk on salary negotiation, building professional confidence, navigating agency culture, and what marketing careers actually look like beyond the job description. No gatekeeping. No fluff.
For experienced professionals, it's a mirror, and a reminder that the smartest people in the room are still asking questions.
New episodes drop on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. Subscribe wherever you listen.



Topics include: marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, career development, personal branding, agency vs in-house marketing, small business growth, corporate leadership, women in business, fitness entrepreneurship, professional development, entry-level marketing, marketing career advice, how to break into marketing, business podcast, career coaching, work-life balance, startup mindset, marketing for beginners, first job in marketing, college to career.

Topics include: marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, career development, personal branding, agency vs in-house marketing, small business growth, corporate leadership, women in business, fitness entrepreneurship, professional development, entry-level marketing, marketing career advice, how to break into marketing, business podcast, career coaching, work-life balance, startup mindset, marketing for beginners, first job in marketing, college to career.

Some businesses start with a market opportunity. Some start with a mission. And some start with a moment so painful that making something beautiful is the only response left.

In this episode of Arrows in Motion, Scott sits down with two Kirkwood artists whose nonprofits were born from personal tragedy and grew into something that touches thousands of lives.

Mark Borrela has been making a living as an artist since college. His dad cut him off when he moved in with his girlfriend, so he started selling art to survive and never stopped. Twenty years ago a friend of his son was diagnosed with neuroblastoma. The child was dying. Mark walked into his studio and started making hand-painted balls to give to the child and the family. That single act of love became Seeds of Happiness, a nonprofit that now delivers hand-painted art objects to hospitals, hospices, and cancer centers across the region.

Mark also takes his message into the corporate world through three distinct talks. One explores how we touch each other's lives through time without ever knowing it. Another uses a clay puzzle with no edges to teach teams that every voice from the janitor to the CEO is essential. He also pushes back on one of the most common creative myths: that talent is something you're born with. He learned to paint through purposeful practice and hours of work. He believes anyone can do the same.

Angela Ricketts founded Sight Stones after her own experience with degenerative eye disease. She creates small painted stones delivered to people facing vision loss, carrying one message she lives by: Never Lose Sight. Her studio in Kirkwood is open to the public. People walk in, sometimes share things they have never told anyone, and leave having made something with their hands.

This episode is quieter than most. But it carries more weight than almost any conversation the show has had. It is about what happens when people choose to respond to the worst moments of their lives by creating something for someone else.

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Arrows in Motion

Most podcasts about business and marketing tell you what to think. Arrows in Motion asks better questions.
Hosted by Scott Heaton, Arrows in Motion is a long-form conversation podcast that goes deep with entrepreneurs, executives, and marketing professionals who've built real things, and learned hard lessons along the way. Each episode explores the gap between how success looks from the outside and what it actually takes to get there: the strategy, the grind, the pivots, the moments nobody posts about.
Whether you're a Fortune 500 VP rethinking what career advancement really costs, a small business owner trying to figure out if your marketing agency is actually on your side, or a fitness entrepreneur building something from scratch with nothing but drive, there's a conversation here for you.
For early-career marketers and marketing students trying to break into the industry, Arrows in Motion is the mentorship most people never get access to. Real talk on salary negotiation, building professional confidence, navigating agency culture, and what marketing careers actually look like beyond the job description. No gatekeeping. No fluff.
For experienced professionals, it's a mirror, and a reminder that the smartest people in the room are still asking questions.
New episodes drop on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. Subscribe wherever you listen.



Topics include: marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, career development, personal branding, agency vs in-house marketing, small business growth, corporate leadership, women in business, fitness entrepreneurship, professional development, entry-level marketing, marketing career advice, how to break into marketing, business podcast, career coaching, work-life balance, startup mindset, marketing for beginners, first job in marketing, college to career.

Topics include: marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, career development, personal branding, agency vs in-house marketing, small business growth, corporate leadership, women in business, fitness entrepreneurship, professional development, entry-level marketing, marketing career advice, how to break into marketing, business podcast, career coaching, work-life balance, startup mindset, marketing for beginners, first job in marketing, college to career.

Episode 12: RJ Shay

Some careers are planned. RJ Shay's just kept going.

In this episode of Arrows in Motion, Scott sits down with Bob, known professionally as RJ Shay, a St. Louis illustrator, caricaturist, and commercial artist with more than 50 years of work behind him and no intention of stopping.

Bob grew up in East St. Louis in the 1950s and 60s, when it was one of the fastest growing cities in America. He graduated, walked into Obata Design, and was hired on his second day. He moved to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1974, ran four or five freelance jobs simultaneously the entire time he was there, and left after nine years because his freelance income was three times his salary. He has been on his own ever since.

We talk about what it actually meant to be a commercial illustrator before digital tools existed. Drawing artwork to fit newspaper column shapes. Scaling with a proportional scale. FedExing finished pencils from vacation stops to meet deadlines. Drawing by the light of a campfire on a float trip and shipping it the next morning. He did all of it. He loved almost all of it.

Bob also talks about designing 38 coffee table books for a historian friend from East St. Louis who recently passed at 87, running the illustration section at the St. Louis Art School for seven years, and his alter ego Bad Bob, a caricature of himself on a 1975 Harley Super Glide that he rode solo across the country for 32 days.

And then there is the thing he says that most creative professionals never figure out. There is more than enough work out there for everybody. He has never once been jealous of another artist. Not one time in 50 years.

This one is for the creatives, the lifers, the people who found the thing they were made for and never let go of it.

_________________________________________________________________

Arrows in Motion

Most podcasts about business and marketing tell you what to think. Arrows in Motion asks better questions.
Hosted by Scott Heaton, Arrows in Motion is a long-form conversation podcast that goes deep with entrepreneurs, executives, and marketing professionals who've built real things, and learned hard lessons along the way. Each episode explores the gap between how success looks from the outside and what it actually takes to get there: the strategy, the grind, the pivots, the moments nobody posts about.
Whether you're a Fortune 500 VP rethinking what career advancement really costs, a small business owner trying to figure out if your marketing agency is actually on your side, or a fitness entrepreneur building something from scratch with nothing but drive, there's a conversation here for you.
For early-career marketers and marketing students trying to break into the industry, Arrows in Motion is the mentorship most people never get access to. Real talk on salary negotiation, building professional confidence, navigating agency culture, and what marketing careers actually look like beyond the job description. No gatekeeping. No fluff.
For experienced professionals, it's a mirror, and a reminder that the smartest people in the room are still asking questions.
New episodes drop on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. Subscribe wherever you listen.

Topics include: marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, career development, personal branding, agency vs in-house marketing, small business growth, corporate leadership, women in business, fitness entrepreneurship, professional development, entry-level marketing, marketing career advice, how to break into marketing, business podcast, career coaching, work-life balance, startup mindset, marketing for beginners, first job in marketing, college to career.

Topics include: marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, career development, personal branding, agency vs in-house marketing, small business growth, corporate leadership, women in business, fitness entrepreneurship, professional development, entry-level marketing, marketing career advice, how to break into marketing, business podcast, career coaching, work-life balance, startup mindset, marketing for beginners, first job in marketing, college to career.

Episode 12: Brian Bauer of PHENIX Investigations

Brian Bauer has been doing one thing since he was 20 years old.

In this episode of Arrows in Motion, Scott sits down with Brian Bauer, founder and CEO of PHENIX Investigations, for a conversation about what it looks like to build a career and a company in one of the most misunderstood industries in America.

Brian started investigating right out of college and never stopped. Thirty years later, with no other profession on his resume, he runs one of the most respected private investigation firms in the country. He still loves the work. The job just looks different now.

We dig into the moment he realized he could move the needle more as a leader than as an investigator, what the early days actually looked like when the biggest priority was whether the mailman would bring a check big enough to make payroll, and how his leadership style evolved from rub some dirt on it to genuinely understanding what motivates each person on his team.

Brian also breaks down the misconceptions that follow his industry everywhere. It is not like television. The work is methodical, documented, legal, and increasingly digital. And if someone guarantees you results before they even know your situation, he has a simple piece of advice: run the other way.

We talk about the PHENIX bootcamp onboarding model, why transparency with clients is the only sustainable business strategy, what it means to have a direct blunt style as both a superpower and a curse, and what Brian would tell a young investigator today who wants to build something that lasts.

Focus on the client. Perfect your craft. Never overpromise.

That is the whole thing.

_________________________________________________________________

Arrows in Motion

Most podcasts about business and marketing tell you what to think. Arrows in Motion asks better questions.
Hosted by Scott Heaton, Arrows in Motion is a long-form conversation podcast that goes deep with entrepreneurs, executives, and marketing professionals who've built real things, and learned hard lessons along the way. Each episode explores the gap between how success looks from the outside and what it actually takes to get there: the strategy, the grind, the pivots, the moments nobody posts about.
Whether you're a Fortune 500 VP rethinking what career advancement really costs, a small business owner trying to figure out if your marketing agency is actually on your side, or a fitness entrepreneur building something from scratch with nothing but drive, there's a conversation here for you.
For early-career marketers and marketing students trying to break into the industry, Arrows in Motion is the mentorship most people never get access to. Real talk on salary negotiation, building professional confidence, navigating agency culture, and what marketing careers actually look like beyond the job description. No gatekeeping. No fluff.
For experienced professionals, it's a mirror, and a reminder that the smartest people in the room are still asking questions.
New episodes drop on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. Subscribe wherever you listen.

Topics include: marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, career development, personal branding, agency vs in-house marketing, small business growth, corporate leadership, women in business, fitness entrepreneurship, professional development, entry-level marketing, marketing career advice, how to break into marketing, business podcast, career coaching, work-life balance, startup mindset, marketing for beginners, first job in marketing, college to career.

Episode: Hunter Butler of Streib Company

Everyone has a vision of what HR is. Most of them involve Toby Flenderson.

Hunter Butler wants to change that.

In this episode of Arrows in Motion, Scott sits down with Hunter Butler, Director of HR at Streib Company, St. Louis's premier nonunion electrical contracting firm, for a conversation about what HR looks like when it's built around people instead of policies.

Hunter joined Streib three years ago because of one thing. The CEO, an electrician first and a businessman second, had built an entire company around a single question: how do we make this better for the next person coming behind us? Hunter had never seen that before. He wasn't going to walk away from it.

We dig into the Streib Education Center, an internal Department of Labor-certified apprenticeship program that just made a major shift. Six first-year students last year. Thirty-two this year. And starting now they're doing it during the day, paying students while they're in class, and cutting the time they spend away from their families at night. The teachers are active Streib electricians who just lived the work they're teaching.

We talk about what HR actually looks like when it's done right. Hunter's model is Ted Lasso. Be curious not judgmental. Lead with genuine care for the human being in front of you. He traces that directly to his dad. We also get into the culture vs management question, why EBITDA-or-die is not a culture strategy, and the Nintendo story about a company that cut everyone's pay instead of laying anyone off and why that's the culture everyone actually wants.

For small business owners who have been avoiding the HR conversation, Hunter has a clear message. Don't wait until you're 250 people. The earlier you bring someone in who genuinely cares about building humans, the better everything else goes.

_________________________________________________________________

Arrows in Motion

Most podcasts about business and marketing tell you what to think. Arrows in Motion asks better questions.
Hosted by Scott Heaton, Arrows in Motion is a long-form conversation podcast that goes deep with entrepreneurs, executives, and marketing professionals who've built real things, and learned hard lessons along the way. Each episode explores the gap between how success looks from the outside and what it actually takes to get there: the strategy, the grind, the pivots, the moments nobody posts about.
Whether you're a Fortune 500 VP rethinking what career advancement really costs, a small business owner trying to figure out if your marketing agency is actually on your side, or a fitness entrepreneur building something from scratch with nothing but drive, there's a conversation here for you.
For early-career marketers and marketing students trying to break into the industry, Arrows in Motion is the mentorship most people never get access to. Real talk on salary negotiation, building professional confidence, navigating agency culture, and what marketing careers actually look like beyond the job description. No gatekeeping. No fluff.
For experienced professionals, it's a mirror, and a reminder that the smartest people in the room are still asking questions.
New episodes drop on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. Subscribe wherever you listen.

Topics include: marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, career development, personal branding, agency vs in-house marketing, small business growth, corporate leadership, women in business, fitness entrepreneurship, professional development, entry-level marketing, marketing career advice, how to break into marketing, business podcast, career coaching, work-life balance, startup mindset, marketing for beginners, first job in marketing, college to career.