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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.

I want to invite you to check out the Committed Mastermind, a community I help lead along with world-class leaders like JC and Karen Hite, Vinnie Fisher, and Jonathan Mast, plus incredible mentors like Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages, and many others.

This is for entrepreneurs who want to build a thriving business without sacrificing their faith, their family, or their health.

Check out the Committed Mastermind at https://committedmastermind.com/

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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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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.

I want to invite you to check out the Committed Mastermind, a community I help lead along with world-class leaders like JC and Karen Hite, Vinnie Fisher, and Jonathan Mast, plus incredible mentors like Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages, and many others.

This is for entrepreneurs who want to build a thriving business without sacrificing their faith, their family, or their health.

Check out the Committed Mastermind at https://committedmastermind.com/

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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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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

I want to invite you to check out the Committed Mastermind, a community I help lead along with world-class leaders like JC and Karen Hite, Vinnie Fisher, and Jonathan Mast, plus incredible mentors like Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages, and many others.

This is for entrepreneurs who want to build a thriving business without sacrificing their faith, their family, or their health.

Check out the Committed Mastermind at https://committedmastermind.com/

----

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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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.

I want to invite you to check out the Committed Mastermind, a community I help lead along with world-class leaders like JC and Karen Hite, Vinnie Fisher, and Jonathan Mast, plus incredible mentors like Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages, and many others.

This is for entrepreneurs who want to build a thriving business without sacrificing their faith, their family, or their health.

Check out the Committed Mastermind at https://committedmastermind.com/

----

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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Send us Fan Mail

If your week feels like bouncing client to client with no room left to work on the business itself, this one will land. 

My guest, Landon Gatliff, is the founder of Gatliff Marketing Consultants, a marketing agency in rural Arkansas serving businesses and organizations both locally and out of state. Landon started the agency as a junior in high school building websites. He now runs it full time, covering brand, ads, commercials, and billboards, while finishing his degree online. 

What makes this worth your time is how early he learned something that costs founders years. Delegation for agency owners is not a reward you earn at scale. It is the thing that creates it. When his own company needed a commercial, he hired an outside crew rather than working both sides of the camera. The result beat anything he would have made alone. 

We get into the tension you know well: staying visible while staying booked, using AI without letting it become your voice, and choosing the right clients instead of every client.

Books Mentioned

• The Bible
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Guest CTA

Want to connect with Landon? Visit gatliffmarketingconsultants.com to book a consultation or run his marketing assessment, and follow him on Facebook and Instagram at Landon Gatliff.

I want to invite you to check out the Committed Mastermind, a community I help lead along with world-class leaders like JC and Karen Hite, Vinnie Fisher, and Jonathan Mast, plus incredible mentors like Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages, and many others.

This is for entrepreneurs who want to build a thriving business without sacrificing their faith, their family, or their health.

Check out the Committed Mastermind at https://committedmastermind.com/

----

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

If you built your business but still feel like everything runs through you, this episode will change how you see your role. 

My guest, Steve Rolle, a serial entrepreneur and investor whose businesses have generated over $100 million in combined sales, breaks down the exact shift from owner not operator that let him turn down a $6 million acquisition offer just two years into the business he built. 

Steve walks us through his four-part framework for understanding the real levers of growth: product, profit margin, distribution, and customer acquisition, and why most business owners stay trapped under the hood instead of getting behind the wheel. 

If you're ready to stop being the bottleneck and start owning the business you built, this conversation hands you the mindset and the math to get there.

Books Mentioned

• The Almanac of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgensen.

Guest CTA

Connect with Steve at steverolle.com, where you can pre-order or order his new book, The Future You Choose, or find him on social channels as @RollewithSteve.

I want to invite you to check out the Committed Mastermind, a community I help lead along with world-class leaders like JC and Karen Hite, Vinnie Fisher, and Jonathan Mast, plus incredible mentors like Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages, and many others.

This is for entrepreneurs who want to build a thriving business without sacrificing their faith, their family, or their health.

Check out the Committed Mastermind at https://committedmastermind.com/

----

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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Send us Fan Mail

If you're scaling fast and quietly wondering what it's costing your family, this episode will change how you think about growth. 

My guest this week, Houlie Duque, founder and CEO of Homeschool2Go Genius Lab, built the only personalized, fully bilingual education program of its kind and grew it by over 200% every year for five years straight. 

In this conversation, Houlie shows exactly how to scale without burnout: building systems that adapt to people instead of forcing people into rigid systems, rejecting the false sense of rush most founders accept as normal, and using AI to sharpen critical thinking instead of replacing it. 

If you're building something ambitious and refuse to trade away what matters most to get there, this episode hands you a real blueprint.

Head over to homeschool2go.org (soon redirecting to homeschoolgeniuslab.com) for Houlie's free masterclass, or apply for a one-on-one with her team.

I want to invite you to check out the Committed Mastermind, a community I help lead along with world-class leaders like JC and Karen Hite, Vinnie Fisher, and Jonathan Mast, plus incredible mentors like Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages, and many others.

This is for entrepreneurs who want to build a thriving business without sacrificing their faith, their family, or their health.

Check out the Committed Mastermind at https://committedmastermind.com/

----

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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Send us Fan Mail

What if the only thing standing between you and freedom is the story you keep telling yourself? My guest this week, Melanie Cox — CEO of EMC Property, founder of Blue Oak Rescue, and Amazon #1 bestselling author of You Have to Know — spent over a year in bed, convinced she wasn't enough. Today she leads a real estate business spanning 4,000+ acres, veteran housing, and multifamily development, and she's been married 31 years. 

If you feel stuck in your leadership or your own head, this conversation will help you get unstuck. Melanie shares the daily choice that moved her from depression to unstoppable, the delegation approach that lets her work half the hours she used to, and the boundary she holds when integrity and profit collide.

Connect with Melanie at MelanieCox.org, or find her on Instagram as It's Melanie Cox. DM her the word "book" and she'll send you a free digital copy of You Have to Know.

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I want to invite you to check out the Committed Mastermind, a community I help lead along with world-class leaders like JC and Karen Hite, Vinnie Fisher, and Jonathan Mast, plus incredible mentors like Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages, and many others.

This is for entrepreneurs who want to build a thriving business without sacrificing their faith, their family, or their health.

Check out the Committed Mastermind at https://committedmastermind.com/

----

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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Send us Fan Mail

Are you leading every person on your team the exact same way and wondering why it's stopped working? In this episode, I sit down with Sam Shriver and Suzie Bishop of the Center for Leadership Studies, co-authors of a new book applying the situational leadership model to today's fast-changing workplace. Sam brings 45+ years of research into this framework; Suzie leads product innovation at CLS after 15 years of turning research into real-world training. Together, we unpack why one-size-fits-all leadership breaks down during constant change, how the situational leadership model gives you a repeatable way to diagnose exactly what each person needs task by task, and why trust erodes the moment you skip that step. We also dig into Gallup's engagement data and why adaptability, not just intelligence, is becoming the defining leadership skill in the AI era. If you've ever felt like you're leading in the dark, this conversation hands you the lens to lead with clarity again.

Books Mentioned

• Situational Leadership®: The Model for Leading Others, Navigating Change, and Unlocking Performance by Sam Shriver and Suzie Bishop
• Management of Organizational Behavior by Paul Hersey

Connect with Sam Shriver and Suzie Bishop on LinkedIn, explore their work at situational.com, and pick up their new book on the situational leadership model at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or your favorite retailer.

I want to invite you to check out the Committed Mastermind, a community I help lead along with world-class leaders like JC and Karen Hite, Vinnie Fisher, and Jonathan Mast, plus incredible mentors like Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages, and many others.

This is for entrepreneurs who want to build a thriving business without sacrificing their faith, their family, or their health.

Check out the Committed Mastermind at https://committedmastermind.com/

----

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
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Send us Fan Mail

You know what good leadership looks like. The question is: what happens to it when the pressure hits?

This week, I sat down with Ed Brzychcy, Army infantry veteran, former Babson College professor, and organizational culture consultant to mid-market high-growth companies. Ed spent over a decade researching what separates the CEOs of the fastest-growing companies from everyone else, and what he found wasn't what he expected.

It wasn't the culture artifacts. It wasn't the perks or the values on the wall. It was how the leaders grew. And there's a specific four-stage journey every one of them walked through, including one stage that Ed says was emotionally harder than anything they faced at the beginning.

If you're building a team and wondering why leadership under pressure keeps breaking down, this conversation is going to give you a clear map and the courage to take the next step on it.

Books Mentioned

• Thomas Willing: The Banker Who Made America by George Vague
• Lost Worlds by Patrick Wyman

Connect with Ed on LinkedIn, or visit his website at leadfromthefront.net.

I want to invite you to check out the Committed Mastermind, a community I help lead along with world-class leaders like JC and Karen Hite, Vinnie Fisher, and Jonathan Mast, plus incredible mentors like Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages, and many others.

This is for entrepreneurs who want to build a thriving business without sacrificing their faith, their family, or their health.

Check out the Committed Mastermind at https://committedmastermind.com/

----

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