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Dr. Scott Geller, Alumni Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech and founder of the Actively Caring for People (AC4P) Foundation, has spent 56 years studying what moves people to act. His answer for leaders is research-based and practical. To motivate your team without micromanaging, build the 3 Cs of self-motivation: choice, competence, and community.

In this conversation with Dr. William Attaway, Dr. Geller explains humanistic behaviorism, the difference between leading people and managing behavior, and how supportive and corrective feedback can both land as positive when they are done well. He shares his campus crosswalk research on gratitude, the story behind behavior-based safety, and his favorite acronym, COACH: care, observe, analyze, communicate, help.

Connect with Dr. Scott Geller:
Actively Caring for People Foundation: ac4p.org

Chapters
00:00 Introducing Dr. Scott Geller
01:01 From cognitive psychology to making a difference
02:10 Humanistic behaviorism and the role of empathy
04:06 Leaders motivate by promoting self-motivation
05:06 The 3 Cs: choice, competence, and community
08:33 Every person matters
09:13 Actively caring for people
10:09 Leading people and managing behavior
11:30 Supportive and corrective feedback
14:11 Lessons from 56 years at Virginia Tech
16:54 The crosswalk gratitude study
18:48 Appreciation in the workplace
20:16 Behavior-based safety and the COACH acronym
25:33 The hunger for connection
28:46 Wins journals and small wins

Apply now to be a part of the High Capacity Leaders mastermind in West Palm Beach, Florida on November 9-10, 2026. Go to https://westpalm.highcapacityleaders.org/ for more information.

Check out Dr. William Attaway's new show, The Appreciation at Work Podcast!  

Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

• Free 30-Minute Discovery Call:
  Ready to elevate your business? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Dr. William Attaway and start your journey to success.

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Beth Jones spent more than 30 years as a forensic accountant and fraud investigator before a hypnotherapy session became the turning point of her own healing journey. She is a Leadership Performance Strategist, creator of The HEAL Framework™ (Hope, Evolve, Love), and author of "Becoming an Empowered Survivor: You, Too, Can Heal From Trauma and Abuse."

In this conversation with Dr. William Attaway, Beth explains why unresolved pain accumulates gradually and silently for years until it starts shaping decisions, relationships, and leadership without anyone noticing. She breaks down The HEAL Framework, the role of community in healing, and why leaders have to lead from a place of healing instead of managing from an unhealed one.

Connect with Beth Jones:

Apply now to be a part of the High Capacity Leaders mastermind in West Palm Beach, Florida on November 9-10, 2026. Go to https://westpalm.highcapacityleaders.org/ for more information.

Check out Dr. William Attaway's new show, The Appreciation at Work Podcast!  

Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

• Free 30-Minute Discovery Call:
  Ready to elevate your business? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Dr. William Attaway and start your journey to success.

Connect with Dr. William Attaway:

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Vinnie Fisher, Founder and CEO of SiteTrust, returns to the Catalytic Leadership Podcast to unpack the AI negligence insurance gap costing business owners thousands of dollars they didn't know they were exposed to.

Vinnie explains why most website consent trackers don't work, why wiretapping-statute lawsuits are climbing into the thousands, and why standard insurance won't cover AI mistakes made without human oversight. He connects it back to the deepfake problem that led him to build SiteTrust in the first place: proving the origin of content instead of being stuck proving a negative.

What we unpacked:

Connect with Vinnie Fisher:

Apply now to be a part of the High Capacity Leaders mastermind in West Palm Beach, Florida on November 9-10, 2026. Go to https://westpalm.highcapacityleaders.org/ for more information.

Check out Dr. William Attaway's new show, The Appreciation at Work Podcast!  

Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

• Free 30-Minute Discovery Call:
  Ready to elevate your business? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Dr. William Attaway and start your journey to success.

Connect with Dr. William Attaway:

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In this episode of the Catalytic Leadership Podcast, Dr. William Attaway sits down with John Briggs, CPA, founder and CEO of Incite Tax & Accounting and author of Take Breaks, Work Better. John shares the 2 a.m. moment that forced him to confront hustle culture head-on, the research behind human focus cycles, and the framework he now calls the 3.3 rule: work up to three hours, then take a 30 percent recovery break. Since implementing it, his firm has grown 492 percent while holding a 42-hour work week during tax season, the industry's busiest and most burnout-prone stretch.

John and William unpack why founders who centralize every decision cannot sell what they've built, how the 3.3 rule protects both output and family life, and what it actually takes to build a leadership team that runs without you.

Connect with John Briggs:
therealjohnbriggs.com
linkedin.com/in/therealjohnbriggs
Book & free tools: takebreaksworkbetter.com

Chapters
00:00 Welcome John Briggs
00:47 From accountant to firm leader: John's journey
02:51 Why hoarding decisions kills your business
06:09 The hustle culture wake up call behind the book
08:31 The 2am moment that changed everything
11:31 The science behind a 492% growth story
14:41 The hidden cost of the 8 hour workday
16:41 Your brain's natural focus and distraction cycle
17:56 Inside the 3.3 rule
20:38 What changed personally: presence, health, freedom
24:49 Redefining success beyond hustle culture
26:00 Where to find John and his book

Apply now to be a part of the High Capacity Leaders mastermind in West Palm Beach, Florida on November 9-10, 2026. Go to https://westpalm.highcapacityleaders.org/ for more information.

Check out Dr. William Attaway's new show, The Appreciation at Work Podcast!  

Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

• Free 30-Minute Discovery Call:
  Ready to elevate your business? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Dr. William Attaway and start your journey to success.

Connect with Dr. William Attaway:

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Chad T. Jenkins launched more than fifty businesses before he decided to stop launching companies altogether. What he found was that the fastest growth never came from building alone. Chad, owner and CEO of SEEDSPARK and founder of SEEDSPARK CoLAB, joins William to make the case for collaboration over competition, and to show how the assets already sitting in your business become leverage the moment you combine them with someone else's. He walks through the VCR formula he learned from Dean Jackson, vision plus capability times reach, and unpacks how Kylie Jenner's lip kits and a single Nike and Tiffany collaboration prove the math. Along the way he explains the "exploded parts view" of an entrepreneur, the I AMs that make each leader unique, and why his task list has two columns instead of one. If you have been solving growth problems by hiring more or spending more on ads, this conversation offers a shorter road.

Chapters
00:00 Meet Chad T. Jenkins and the exploded parts view
02:06 Growing up on a South Carolina farm with a bigger vision
03:36 Turning the search inward: what do I already have
05:45 What fifty-plus businesses taught him
06:22 Value creation is everything, and everything is a recombination
08:05 From operator to leverage partner for founders worldwide
09:27 Building the CQ assessment for a collaborative mindset
11:51 The I AMs: insights, abilities, and multipliers
15:14 A go-giver community where no one is allowed to sell
17:41 The VCR formula: vision plus capability times reach
23:23 Nothing new without a who
25:25 The Daily GRACE routine that keeps him sharp

Books mentioned

• The Code to Collaboration by Chad T. Jenkins
• Friction Fuel by Chad T. Jenkins
• Just Add a Zero by Chad T. Jenkins
• The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann
• Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy

Connect with Chad on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/chadtjenkins, explore the CoLAB at seedspark.com, browse his books at chadtjenkins.com, and pick up his new bestseller at codetocollaboration.com.

Apply now to be a part of the High Capacity Leaders mastermind in West Palm Beach, Florida on November 9-10, 2026. Go to https://westpalm.highcapacityleaders.org/ for more information.

Check out Dr. William Attaway's new show, The Appreciation at Work Podcast!  

Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

• Free 30-Minute Discovery Call:
  Ready to elevate your business? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Dr. William Attaway and start your journey to success.

Connect with Dr. William Attaway:

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Laura Parker built The Exodus Road into a global anti-trafficking organization, then hit the wall every founder hits: the business could not grow past what she could personally hold. Laura Parker, CEO and co-founder of The Exodus Road, joins the show to talk about letting go of control, the real reason it is so hard, and what changed when she finally handed off the work she was never gifted to do. She and William dig into the EOS visionary-integrator split, the communication breakdowns that come with delegation, and why she now aims for excellent instead of perfect. If you are the bottleneck in your own business, this episode names it and shows you the next right step out.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Laura Parker and The Exodus Road
02:16 A two-year contract in Thailand becomes a mission
04:25 The scale of human trafficking most people miss
05:44 Fighting overwhelm by taking the next right step
07:49 The founder to CEO transition few leaders make
08:28 Traction, Rocket Fuel, and the visionary-integrator split
10:12 Getting okay with 80 percent
14:08 Inside Influenced, the digital safety program for families
19:00 Full-time motherhood and full-time leadership
20:39 Why you can have some, not all
23:27 Leveling up by asking better questions
26:23 Living above the line as a leader

Books Mentioned
The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer
Traction by Gino Wickman
Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters
Emotionally Healthy Spiritual Leadership by Peter Scazzero
Good to Great by Jim Collins

Connect with Laura Parker
theexodusroad.com and on LinkedIn. Explore her digital safety program for families at influenced.org.

Apply now to be a part of the High Capacity Leaders mastermind in West Palm Beach, Florida on November 9-10, 2026. Go to https://westpalm.highcapacityleaders.org/ for more information.

Check out Dr. William Attaway's new show, The Appreciation at Work Podcast!  

Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

• Free 30-Minute Discovery Call:
  Ready to elevate your business? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Dr. William Attaway and start your journey to success.

Connect with Dr. William Attaway:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
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• TikTok
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Send us Fan Mail

Your team can feel it before you say a word. AI is moving faster than your job description can keep up with, and underneath the excitement about tools and leverage, a quieter fear is spreading through your people about whether the company still needs them. Dr. William Attaway opens Season 5 of the Catalytic Leadership Podcast with the keyphrase for the entire season: your team is still human. He unpacks why 94 percent of companies run a recognition program while turnover and engagement keep sliding, why people leave over feeling unseen three times more often than over pay, and why appreciation is not the same skill as recognition. Using a real story from an agency owner who almost lost his team to silence, William shows what it looks like to name the fear in the room and replace it with real value. He closes with three moves leaders can make before Friday and two questions worth sitting with all week, starting with whether they are leading like their team is still human.

Apply now to be a part of the High Capacity Leaders mastermind in West Palm Beach, Florida on November 9-10, 2026. Go to https://westpalm.highcapacityleaders.org/ for more information.

Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

• Free 30-Minute Discovery Call:
  Ready to elevate your business? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Dr. William Attaway and start your journey to success.

Connect with Dr. William Attaway:

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Send us Fan Mail

Agency growth gets expensive when every new client replaces one who just left. Brett Linnenkohl, fractional COO and founder of Evergreen Strategic Systems, and Josh Koeller, co-founder of The Customer Profit Engine, join Dr. William Attaway to unpack a more useful way to manage customer churn. Their work helps account managers move beyond subjective health-color ratings by finding the signals already buried in calls, CRM activity, support, and customer conversations. They share how a pilot reduced churn by four percentage points in ninety days, why proactive coaching produces stronger client relationships, and how the right data can uncover retention and expansion opportunities before a customer has one foot out the door.

Chapters
00:00 Welcome and why retention matters
02:45 From fractional COO to customer focus
07:20 The three numbers agencies miss
09:02 Turning customer health into data
14:05 The problem with CRM notes
20:29 Connecting Slack, calls, and email signals
22:06 Pilot wins a $6K upsell
26:04 Escaping the churn treadmill
29:19 Proactive coaching beats reactive firefighting
31:10 Beyond agencies, MSP, solar, and more
35:18 Coaching CSMs without breaking trust
41:37 Mining past churn for hidden revenue
45:39 Beta offer guarantee and next steps

Connect with Brett and Josh
Explore the Customer Profit Engine and the Account Manager Profit Accelerator at customerprofitengine.com. Connect with Brett Linnenkohl and Josh Koeller on LinkedIn.

Apply now to be a part of the High Capacity Leaders mastermind in West Palm Beach, Florida on November 9-10, 2026. Go to https://westpalm.highcapacityleaders.org/ for more information.

Check out Dr. William Attaway's new show, The Appreciation at Work Podcast!  

Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

• Free 30-Minute Discovery Call:
  Ready to elevate your business? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Dr. William Attaway and start your journey to success.

Connect with Dr. William Attaway:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
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• TikTok
• YouTube

Send us Fan Mail

You scaled past seven figures. The revenue is real. So is the exhaustion.

In this episode, I sit down with Damiano Raveenthiran, founder of The Agency Business and an operator who built a 75-person, $8.4M agency, exited three companies, and now runs a portfolio of seven. He did what so many agency founders dream about: he removed himself from the center of his own business and turned it into an exit ready agency.

Damiano shares the moment his son's health crisis forced him to step away, what he rebuilt on the other side, and the enterprise sales strategies that helped him close $25M in deals. He breaks down the shift from freelancer to CEO, the role AI automation plays in agency operations today, and why clarity on your purpose changes every decision you make.

Connect with Damiano Raveenthiran:
Website: theagency.business
Instagram: @DamianoR
YouTube: The Agency Business

Books Mentioned:
Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell
Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount

Apply now to be a part of the High Capacity Leaders mastermind in West Palm Beach, Florida on November 9-10, 2026. Go to https://westpalm.highcapacityleaders.org/ for more information.

Check out Dr. William Attaway's new show, The Appreciation at Work Podcast!  

Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

• Free 30-Minute Discovery Call:
  Ready to elevate your business? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Dr. William Attaway and start your journey to success.

Connect with Dr. William Attaway:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
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• TikTok
• YouTube

Send us Fan Mail

The leadership pressure test reveals what a leader has already practiced. In this episode, I sit down with Jon Sheldon, founder of BelleauWood Coaching, to explore the leadership pressure test through lessons he learned as a Marine squad leader and Fortune 500 sales executive.

Jon explains why clear decisions begin with knowing yourself. His professional blueprint centers on purpose, vision, the environment where you thrive, and what motivates you. Then he pressure-tests those answers against real behavior. Courage is more than a value on paper. A leader has to show where courage held and where it gave way.

We also talk about radical honesty, the cost of making firm calls, and the discipline of keeping the mission in view when emotion runs high. Jon shares a simple framework for those moments: define the mission, name the obstacle, and choose the first action. If you lead a team through growth or uncertainty, this conversation offers a grounded way to respond with clarity.

Chapter Breakdown

• 00:00 Meet Jon Sheldon: Marine Leader and Executive Coach
• 02:29 How Responsibility Forged a Leader
• 05:12 Why Mistakes Are Inevitable Under Pressure
• 06:40 Learning to Think 13 Moves Ahead
• 08:54 The Mission, Obstacle, Actions Framework
• 10:06 Build Your Professional Leadership Blueprint
• 13:33 Pressure-Test the Leader You Claim to Be
• 15:26 Why a Four-Hour Seminar Cannot Build a Leader
• 17:49 Radical Honesty and the Courage to Be Unpopular
• 20:35 The Cost and Loneliness of Leadership
• 24:20 Protect Time to Keep Growing as a Leader
• 29:19 Books That Make Leadership Practical

Books Mentioned

• The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday
• Leadership Strategy and Tactics: Field Manual by Jocko Willink
• Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
• Because I Said I Would by Alex Sheen
• Your Desired Future by Dr. Henry Cloud
• A Return on Failure by John C. Maxwell

Connect with Jon Sheldon

Visit BelleauWood Coaching, connect with Jon on LinkedIn, or follow @belleauwood_coaching on Instagram.

Apply now to be a part of the High Capacity Leaders mastermind in West Palm Beach, Florida on November 9-10, 2026. Go to https://westpalm.highcapacityleaders.org/ for more information.

Check out Dr. William Attaway's new show, The Appreciation at Work Podcast!  

Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

• Free 30-Minute Discovery Call:
  Ready to elevate your business? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Dr. William Attaway and start your journey to success.

Connect with Dr. William Attaway:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Instagram
• TikTok
• YouTube