Cubicle to CEO

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The rules of PR are being rewritten, and most founders haven't gotten the memo yet.

This roundtable pulls together Lydia Bagarozza and Bridget Aileen Sicsko of Visibility on Purpose, Caitlin Copple of Full Swing PR, and Gloria Chou of Small Business PR to get honest about the state of PR in 2026.

What's the most valuable press a brand can land right now? Which outlets look impressive but don't actually convert? How is AI changing who gets discovered and who gets ignored? They get into all of it, including what most founders completely miss after finally landing a feature.

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Most brands have worked with an agency that felt like an external vendor. Rachel Leslie is building something different.

As the founder and editor-in-chief of Lāer Studio, Rachel has spent years developing a hybrid creative partner model that embeds her copywriting team directly into the brands they support - from their internal Slack channels to their campaign briefs. With clients like Away, Zola, Avocado Green Mattress, and FILA, she's seen firsthand what changes when a creative relationship goes long-term and the brand finally has a creative partner they can actually lean on.

In this episode, Rachel breaks down how she structures her team, how embedded support makes a difference to her clients during high-pressure moments, and how she keeps healthy boundaries without sacrificing the partnership model. She also shares what’s evolving with agencies and in-house creative teams in 2026 and beyond. 

Connect with Rachel:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://laerstudio.com/

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/laerstudio/

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Workshop: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelaleslie

Loving our bonus content and want more Cubicle to CEO in your ears? Join us every Monday on our subscriber-only premium feed for case study–style interviews with successful entrepreneurs debriefing their real-time growth experiments and results. Subscribe to get insider access to what's actually been working for businesses in the last 3-18 months: ⁠⁠cubicletoceo.co/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Plot twist: you don't have to land the PR feature to get visibility from your pitching efforts. Continuing our series on leveraging PR to grow your business, this case study shows you how to play the uno reverse card when your pitch is rejected.

Ayurvedic practitioner Bridgette Ochoa realized the topics journalists seek expert sources for are a cheat sheet to the exact type of content her audience wants to consume.

Bridgette walks us through the HARO and Quoted method that earned her four media features in six weeks, how she repurposes features as credibility anchors on social, and the unique way she capitalizes on PR opportunities even when her pitch doesn’t make the cut.

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This is a free preview of a paid episode (45 min), exclusively available on our subscriber-only premium feed. Become a premium subscriber to tune into the full episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cubicletoceo.co/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Going viral is part luck, but sustaining it is all skill. Kicking off our series on amplifying your business through PR, today's case study dissects what happened before, during, and after a viral celebrity moment: when Taylor Swift wore Fazit's Glitter Freckles Makeup Patches to a Kansas City Chiefs game in October 2024.

We’re going behind-the-scenes with Aliett Buttelman— Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and co-founder of Fazit— a brand she and co-founder Nina LaBruna bootstrapped with $13,000 in savings and built into a business on track to surpass $40 million in revenue.

We get into Fazit’s proactive outreach strategy to get their product in Taylor Swift’s hands (or in this case— face), what they’ve done to sustain the media momentum well beyond the initial viral spike, and how they’ve leveraged this attention to launch in 6,000+ retail locations, including Target, Walmart, and Sephora UK.

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This is a free preview of a paid episode (70 min), exclusively available on our subscriber-only premium feed. Become a premium subscriber to tune into the full episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cubicletoceo.co/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Selling tickets to an in-person event has never been more competitive or nuanced.

Wrapping up our series on leveraging events as a business growth engine, this roundtable pulls three women with very different event models into the same conversation: Dielle Charon, host of Millionaires of Color; Taylor Smith, host of The Power Table™; and Alisha Kumar, host of The Founder's Table.

With varied event types ranging from multi-city mastermind dinner series to high-ticket conferences, they get into the real mechanics of what’s actually working in 2026 to sell out events.

Visit our events directory: ⁠https://www.cubicletoceo.co/2026-events⁠

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This is a free preview of a paid episode (40 min), exclusively available on our subscriber-only premium feed. Become a premium subscriber to tune into the full episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cubicletoceo.co/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Continuing our series on leveraging events for business growth, today’s case study is a masterclass in using the resources and infrastructure of established brands to create co-branded experiences that accelerate your own brand expansion.

Marty McDonald, USA Today bestselling author of Audacious and founder of Boss Women Media, launched a national events platform from a strategic partnership pitch to Sugarfina’s CEO.

Her bold ask turned into sold out pop-ups in five cities, a 22,000-person virtual event, additional partnerships with Amazon and Capital One, and eventually, a book deal.

We dig into the pitch, follow-up, and execution in this episode.

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Gemma Bonham-Carter has been making money online since before Instagram existed. After building a 7-figure education business helping over 20,000 entrepreneurs, she made a bold move: retiring multiple signature programs to go all-in on AI education in a market flooded with generic ChatGPT content. 

While most online educators struggled in 2025, Gemma had her best year yet and is now targeting $10M. The founder of AI All Stars and host of the annual AI Unlocked conference, Gemma is a recognized voice in the industry with features in Entrepreneur, Inc., Business Insider, and Fast Company. But what sets her apart isn't the accolades - it's how she thinks about AI as business infrastructure.

In this episode, she pulls back the curtain on what actually made her recession-proof when others weren't, why she was confident enough to retire the offers that were working, and the one mindset shift that could move your business forward this week.

Connect with Gemma:

⁠⁠⁠Website: ⁠https://gemmabonhamcarter.com

⁠⁠⁠Instagram: ⁠https://instagram.com/gemma.bonhamcarter

⁠⁠⁠Workshop: ⁠https://gemmabonhamcarter.com/aiworkshop

Loving our bonus content and want more Cubicle to CEO in your ears? Join us every Monday on our subscriber-only premium feed for case study–style interviews with successful entrepreneurs debriefing their real-time growth experiments and results. Subscribe to get insider access to what's actually been working for businesses in the last 3-18 months: ⁠cubicletoceo.co/podcast⁠⁠⁠

If you enjoyed today's episode, please:

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This is a free preview of a paid episode (44 min), exclusively available on our subscriber-only premium feed. Become a premium subscriber to tune into the full episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cubicletoceo.co/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Questions about our premium podcast subscription? Send us a DM ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@cubicletoceo

Continuing our series on leveraging events to grow in 2026, we’re joined today by Tiffany McQuaid.

Tiffany McQuaid is the Regional Director of Strategy and Performance at SERHANT and author of The INth Degree: How To Stand Out By Going All In.

Tiffany’s case study looks at how she built a multi-million dollar real estate brokerage in a crowded market through creative community events like a concert series, stone crab festivals, and safari-themed open houses that created brand awareness and meaningful relationships. The results? $22 million in real estate sales in her first year of hosting events and a 400% increase in office foot traffic.

In today's episode, Tiffany unpacks the full strategy behind "Rockin' on the Bay" and her broader community creation event playbook —including how she got the first event off the ground with no budget and why experience-based marketing continues to outperform everything else she's tried.

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Does your brand accurately reflect the quality of your work? Alison Gardner, Founder and Creative Director of Perspektiiv Design Co., believes that when a brand is truly aligned with your values, your voice, and your vision, it stops being a source of stress and starts becoming one of your strongest business assets.

A lifelong creative entrepreneur and mother, Alison brings both strategic depth and real-world experience to the brands she builds for visionaries and business owners who are ready to grow without burning themselves out in the process.

In this episode, she breaks down the biggest misconceptions about branding that are keeping business owners stuck, the practical shifts that make a brand actually convert, and how to build something that feels clear, confident, and completely authentic to who you are.

Connect with Alison:

⁠Website: https://www.perspektiiv.com

⁠Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/perspektiivdesignco/

⁠Newsletter Sign Up: https://mailchi.mp/perspektiiv/newsletter

Loving our bonus content and want more Cubicle to CEO in your ears? Join us every Monday on our subscriber-only premium feed for case study–style interviews with successful entrepreneurs debriefing their real-time growth experiments and results. Subscribe to get insider access to what's actually been working for businesses in the last 3-18 months: cubicletoceo.co/podcast⁠⁠

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This is a free preview of a paid episode (49 min), exclusively available on our subscriber-only premium feed. Become a premium subscriber to tune into the full episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cubicletoceo.co/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠

Questions about our premium podcast subscription? Send us a DM ⁠⁠⁠⁠@cubicletoceo

It’s a stretch for most events to attract 200 paid attendees; Create & Cultivate’s Festival is setting a new bar by reaching those numbers in speakers alone, and then selling out 2,000 tickets— their biggest event to date (with goals to double attendance this fall for round 2).

Here to give us the playbook on exactly how they did it is Marina Middleton, the CEO + Co-Partner of Create & Cultivate: the largest events and media platform advancing women through access, connection, and opportunity.

To kickoff ourseries on leveraging events as a business growth engine, Marina spills the tea on how Create & Cultivate differentiated Festival from other business events by creating value outside of content programming, and walks us through the timeline of strategic pricing and promotional pushes that sold out a 2,000 person event.

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