Coffey Talk

What does leadership look like when there isn't a playbook?

During the pandemic, association leaders were making extraordinary decisions behind the scenes, protecting professions, keeping industries afloat, and finding solutions to problems no one had faced before. Most of us never knew these stories were happening.

This week on Coffey Talk, I'm joined by Joanna Pineda, CEO and Chief Troublemaker of Matrix Group International and author of When It Mattered Most, a collection of 24 remarkable stories about associations that stepped up when it mattered most.

We talk about the courage to lead through uncertainty, the ripple effects of decisions made for the greater good, and why the work that makes the biggest difference often happens without recognition.

We also explore what those lessons mean for leaders today as we navigate another period of extraordinary change, driven by AI, technology, and the need to rethink how we've always done things.

And, of course, we talk about making a little good trouble along the way.

Connect with Joanna: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannapineda/

The book is available everywhere, including non-Amazon booksellers:

Kindle and paperback amzn.to/47IhtVO

Hardback https://www.amazon.com/dp/1963732464

Barnes & Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-it-mattered-most-joanna-pineda/1151584099?ean=2940196685064

Buy elsewhere https://books2read.com/u/31E607

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Women in Tech can't just be women talking to other women.

A year ago, Cam Sessinger joined me on Coffey Talk as we were getting ready to bring She Builds to Community Summit. This year, he's back, and there's a lot to celebrate. Women in Tech has grown from a one-hour luncheon to 11 hours of programming across Summit, She Builds is returning, and the conversation is getting bigger.

Ryan Gonzales joins us this time with an important perspective: men need to be part of it too.

We talk about why listening and education are so important, the difference between supporting women and actually advocating for them, and the practical ways we can use our own influence to open doors for other people.

We also dig into why She Builds works. Short stories. Different voices. Different experiences. And those powerful moments when you hear someone else's story and think, "Yeah. Me too."

Because creating space for women to connect matters. But if we want to create real, lasting change, eventually we have to bring the whole community into the conversation.

The door is open. Come join us.

LinkedIn for Cameron Sessler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameron-sessinger-b2916b14b/

Ryan Gonzalez: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-gonzales-12561749/

Women in Technology/DCI: https://learners.dynamicscommunities.com/women-in-technology/

Thanks for tuning in to Coffey Talk with Kate Coffey-Bacon!
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Sometimes the thing you build for other people starts with something you had to learn for yourself.

In this episode of Coffey Talk, Kate sits down with fractional CMO Monica Hoyer, founder of VOICES, for a conversation that starts with communication and ends somewhere much bigger.

Monica shares how coaching changed the way she listens, communicates, leads, and handles the tendency to absorb everything around her. They talk about the difference between truly listening and simply waiting for your turn to talk, why silence can be one of the most powerful things we give another person, and what happens when we stop trying to manage everyone else’s emotions.

Then the conversation turns to community.

When Monica entered the Microsoft ecosystem, she felt like an island. She was a B2B marketer trying to navigate a very specific ecosystem without realizing how many other marketers were experiencing the exact same thing.

Until she found them.

That realization eventually became part of the inspiration behind VOICES, a one-day online conference on November 12 created to give Microsoft partner marketers a place to learn from the people actually doing the work, have honest conversations, and find their community.

Kate and Monica also get into what it feels like to build something new when you can see the need but still have those moments of wondering: What if nobody shows up?

This one is about listening.

It’s about leaving space.

It’s about trusting yourself.

And it’s about realizing you were never really an island. You just hadn’t found your people yet.

Kate and Monica talk about:

• What coaching taught Monica about communication and herself
• Why being direct and being difficult are not the same thing
• The difference between listening and waiting for your turn to speak
• Why we’re so uncomfortable with silence
• Learning not to take responsibility for someone else’s emotions
• Feeling like an “island” as a marketer in the Microsoft ecosystem
• Why general B2B marketing advice doesn’t always translate to the Microsoft partner channel
• Finding community with people who understand the work you’re actually doing
• The origin of VOICES
• Creating space for marketers to learn with and from one another
• The self-doubt that comes with building something new
• Trusting that other people will see the need you see

👉🏻Contact information for Monica Hoyer

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicafrhoyer/

VOICES: https://marketingvoicesconference.com/about/

Thanks for tuning in to Coffey Talk with Kate Coffey-Bacon!
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In this Espresso Shot, Kate skips the guest chair and talks straight into the mic about something she keeps coming back to: what it actually means to find your voice. Drawing on conversations with Michelle Serna, Brittany Burke, Jen Rinfret, Danielle McNamee, and Tiffany Allen, she makes the case that finding your voice isn't a single moment of arrival. It's a slow accumulation of small, brave choices, saying the thing, asking the question, refusing to let the room rewrite you.

Takeaways

• Finding your voice rarely happens all at once. It builds gradually, one small brave moment at a time.
• There's a difference between reading a room and letting a room rewrite you.
• You have to use your voice before you're fully sure of it. Confidence tends to come after, not before.
• Community matters because it gives you a safe place to think out loud and hear your own ideas back.
• Your voice usually isn't something new you have to go find. It's something you've had all along, underneath everything you thought you were supposed to sound like.

Thanks for tuning in to Coffey Talk with Kate Coffey-Bacon!
Real people. Real stories. Conversations that stir something in your soul.
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🎧 New episodes every Monday at 8 AM ET.

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This week's episode solo one, just Kate and a cup of coffee, talking about curiosity: what it is, why we lose it as we grow up, and what happens when we let ourselves become beginners again. Kate traces curiosity across past Coffey Talk conversations, from Kevin Armstrong's reminder to stay in discovery mode, to Mel Wilhelmi following one interesting question into a whole new career direction, to Sam Bush getting curious about her own life instead of pushing harder, to Kim Dallefeld's throughline of curiosity and resilience across decades of reinvention. Kate talks about giving ourselves permission to try something we might be terrible at, to notice our feelings instead of immediately judging them, and to loosen our grip on the stories we've told ourselves for so long that they start to sound like facts. This one is a nudge, not a to-do list: find one place your life has gotten certain, and poke at it a little.

Takeaways

• Curiosity tends to fade as we prioritize competence and having the answers.
• Following an interesting question, without a mapped-out plan, can open doors we didn't see coming.
• Getting curious about our own feelings, instead of judging them, creates room to understand what they're telling us.
• Some of our limitations are real, and some are just stories we've repeated long enough to believe.
• Small, low-stakes curiosity, trying something new, talking to a stranger, sitting in the quiet, can expand our sense of what's possible.

Thanks for tuning in to Coffey Talk with Kate Coffey-Bacon!
Real people. Real stories. Conversations that stir something in your soul.
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Yvette Carter's career reads like a lesson in following curiosity. Fashion design, cake decorating, wedding and wine club coordination, oil and gas events, and eventually a move to Colorado that led her into the Microsoft Dynamics partner space, where she now runs DAXDude365 with her husband Justin. In this conversation, Yvette and Kate dig into the thread that connects every chapter, long before Justin was ever part of the story: organization, service, and a genuine belief that we are stronger when we link arms with the people around us. Yvette opens up about a passion project that shaped how she thinks about giving back, the boundaries she had to learn the hard way, and what she hopes to teach her three daughters about confidence, communication, and knowing their own worth. This is a conversation about community, courage, and finding your place, even when your path looks nothing like anyone else's.

Takeaways:

• Skills are transferable across industries. Organization, communication, and service show up everywhere Yvette has worked.
• Some of the biggest growth comes from learning to say no and setting boundaries, even in work you love.
• Being book smart on something and being proficient in it are two different things, and both matter.
• Community and mentorship, linking arms with the people around you, create opportunities that going it alone never will.
• There is a real gap in awareness among young people about non-traditional career paths in tech.

👉🏻Contact information for Yvette Carter

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yvettencarter/

Thanks for tuning in to Coffey Talk with Kate Coffey-Bacon!
Real people. Real stories. Conversations that stir something in your soul.
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One year ago, Kate launched Coffey Talk with no real expectations of what it could become- she just felt a calling to act. In this special anniversary episode, she sits down with her husband Sterling, the man who wrote the show's theme song and has heard every single edit, to look back on the first year. They talk about how the show started as a simple idea about books before becoming something else entirely, the self imposed rule Kate had to let go of, and the story behind the theme song that plays before and after every episode.

Takeaways:

• Kate's biggest growth this year wasn't in finding guests, it was learning to trust her own voice as a host.

What Kate learned this year:

• We are more alike than we think we are. A year of hosting these conversations keeps proving that, one guest at a time.
• Real stories don't fit inside a stopwatch. The 20 minute rule made sense on paper and fell apart the moment a conversation needed room to breathe.
• Holding space for someone else's story only works if you're also willing to hand over your own.
• The instinct to sense when a story is about to turn isn't something you learn. It's something you already have and just start trusting.
• Some of the most meaningful moments this year didn't happen on the mic. They happened after, when a listener recognized their own story in someone else's.

Thanks for tuning in to Coffey Talk with Kate Coffey-Bacon!
Real people. Real stories. Conversations that stir something in your soul.
☕ Subscribe and join the Coffey Talk community.
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Summary
Tom Campbell, founder of the Gotta Look Up movement, joins Kate to talk about what happens when we stop paying attention to our own lives. Tom shares the family values that shaped him, the season of his life that tested everything he believed, and the three ideas he now uses to help people find their way back to purpose: Life's Quicksand, Trees of Joy, and Anchors of Hope. This episode is about presence, faith, and choosing to look up.

Takeaways

• True success is measured by how many lives you touch, not how many assets you accumulate
• Getting “stuck” in quicksand (a hard season, a bad relationship, a loss of identity) requires calm, not thrashing
• Trees of Joy are the small, personal things that bring you back to yourself when life gets heavy
• Anchors of Hope are the future you're building toward, not just the crisis you're surviving
• Technology is a tool. Whether it improves your life or controls it is a daily choice

👉🏻Contact information for Tom Campbell

Gotta Look Up: https://www.amazon.com/Gotta-Look-Up-Reconnect-Rediscover/dp/1962674428

Instagram: @tom_campbell24 @gotta_look_up LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasrcampbell/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.campbell.5015/

Thanks for tuning in to Coffey Talk with Kate Coffey-Bacon!
Real people. Real stories. Conversations that stir something in your soul.
☕ Subscribe and join the Coffey Talk community.
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Shawn Sissenwein has spent almost thirty years building systems, community, and confidence, starting on a family farm and moving into nearly three decades of Business Central and NAV implementation work. In this episode, she talks about founding Weekend Power Platform, co-authoring a book with Kim Cogiton, and now building her first AI Copilot Agents in full view of her community. Shawn shares what she learned from an agent that didn't work the first time, why requirements matter more than the technology itself, and why she believes you don't have to be the loudest person in the room to build something that matters.

Takeaways

• Shawn's first AI Copilot Agent failed because the requirements weren't clear going in, not because the technology couldn't handle it
• Weekend Power Platform started from a friend's offhand suggestion and grew into a real, dependable community built on shared learning
• Even after decades of implementing software, Shawn has found that plenty of experienced people are still nervous about what AI means for their work
• A single solo conference session became the turning point that changed how Shawn saw herself as a speaker
• Her core message for listeners: you don't have to be loud to build something that matters, you just have to start and be willing to learn out loud

👉🏻Contact information for Shawn Sissenwein

Weekend Power Platform: https://weekendpowerplatform.com/podcast/

WeekendPower Platform on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawn-sissenwein-994543389/

Shawn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawn-sissenwein/

Thanks for tuning in to Coffey Talk with Kate Coffey-Bacon!
Real people. Real stories. Conversations that stir something in your soul.
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Yuliya Kuklina didn't grow up dreaming of a career in tech. She grew up in Siberia dreaming of driving a bus. Her path to becoming a Microsoft Dynamics and Odoo consultant wound through finance, teaching, nail technician work, and luxury retail, and through TechFluent Academy, long before technology entered the picture. 

In this episode, Yuliya talks with Kate about moving to the United States, learning to trust her own timeline, and why she believes no experience is ever wasted.

Takeaways:

•  Your past jobs aren't unrelated to your future ones. They're the foundation for them.

•  It's never too late to start over, no matter your age or where you're starting from.

•  Mentorship and community can carry you through the hardest transitions.

•  Success isn't just a salary number. It's waking up glad to go to work.

•  Curiosity, more than a five-year plan, is often what leads to the right career.

Contact Yuliya Kuklina: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuliya-kuklina/

TechFluent Academy: https://techfluentacademy.org/

Thanks for tuning in to Coffey Talk with Kate Coffey-Bacon!
Real people. Real stories. Conversations that stir something in your soul.
☕ Subscribe and join the Coffey Talk community.
💬 Follow @_CoffeyTalk on Instagram for daily inspiration and behind-the-scenes stories.
🎧 New episodes every Monday at 8 AM ET.

👉 Visit us at CoffeyTalkPodcast.com