Fix My Fees

Joe Price was doing $200,000 a year splitting his time between two kinds of work. He stopped doing half of it. The next year he did $550,000.

He started at Dale Carnegie in 1982, became one of the few instructors certified in all nine programs, and spent six years as the 12th highest producer in the world. What he teaches now is root cause analysis for business owners — why the sales problem you’re fixing usually isn’t the problem, why culture forms by default when you don’t build it on purpose, and why most people run their company reacting to whatever hit their inbox that morning. If you’ve ever put out the same fire twice, this is about the thing lighting it.

Chapters

00:00 — From a 1982 sales ad to the 12th highest producer in the world

03:09 — Treating the symptom vs. finding the root cause

06:31 — What actually causes the communication breakdown

09:58 — Why people trade one addiction for another

12:02 — The five whys, and how to use them on your own business

12:58 — Bird poop on the Jefferson Memorial

16:16 — Your internal operating system

18:10 — Intention is a wish. Intentional is a plan.

19:33 — ADHD, shiny objects, and staying on task

20:35 — Interrupted every 12 minutes, and what it costs you

22:33 — The if-then rule: decide before you get distracted

24:41 — Reward the behavior you want. Don’t punish yourself into it.

26:00 — Working in the business instead of on it

28:04 — 95% of us are reactive and don’t know it

30:44 — The angry customer who’s controlling you

35:37 — React, respond, or act intentionally

36:47 — Culture happens by default or by design. Pick one.

40:01 — The nine drivers: purpose, values, vision, plan, structure

45:12 — Right people, self-leadership, emotional intelligence

48:53 — Ten seconds of courage is all you need to start

58:54 — #1 in sales, then dead last, and the values conflict behind it

1:01:27 — His own $200K year, and the decision that made it $550K

1:05:49 — The four ways he works with people

1:08:54 — 200,000 miles on Gold Wings

Joe Price is a master corporate trainer and executive coach, founder of Intentional Achievements, and author of seven books with an eighth due in Q1. He spent years at Dale Carnegie before building his own root cause methodology.

IntentionalAchievements.com

Subscribe for new interviews twice a week. If you’re a business owner doing something worth hearing about, reach Tavious at [email protected].

FixMyFees.com · @fixmyfees

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A conversation about root cause analysis, executive coaching, business systems, and why most small business owners are reacting instead of deciding.

Baz Porter collapsed from burnout and lost every client. Five came back worth nearly $5M. He turned them all down.

Baz had built the thing everyone tells you to build. Then his body quit on him — diverticulitis, flat on his back, unable to get on a single onboarding call. Not one client offered him more time. When he recovered, he phoned each of them individually and ended it, walking away from close to $5M in a year he could not afford to lose it. He’d also been sold the standard promise years earlier: fix your identity in 90 days. He tracked his own rebuild from day one. It took 1,098. If you’ve done the retreats, the therapy and the holiday and something still feels off with no name for it, this is the conversation.

CHAPTERS

00:00 — Why he refuses to call himself a coach

03:06 — Advice is talking at you. Counsel is different.

05:24 — The eight-year-old still running your decisions

09:43 — Sold a 90-day fix. It took 1,098 days.

15:56 — The 95% of you that you don’t control

19:11 — How to vet a practitioner before you hand over your head

22:42 — Live on YouTube, in tears, in front of 28,000 followers

29:55 — RAMS: results, attitude, mastery, systems

31:18 — What are they saying about you at the dinner table in 1,000 years?

39:00 — The silent collapse: burnout with a successful profile attached

41:39 — 108 questions, built from 4,000 conversations

52:32 — 40 years of smoking, ended in one sentence from his wife

57:20 — The collapse, the five phone calls, the $5M he refused

1:04:24 — Where to start with Baz

ABOUT THE GUEST

Baz Porter is founder of Sovereign Leadership Architect, where he does identity work with CEOs, executives and entrepreneurs. British Army veteran and best-selling author, based in Colorado.

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A conversation about founder burnout, executive collapse and the identity work underneath both.

A climate tech client hired Matt Pressberg to get their seed round into the tech press. He told them no — and landed the Wall Street Journal instead.

Matt spent years as a business journalist at the LA Business Journal, International Business Times, The Wrap, and The Information before crossing over to the other side. Now he’s a partner at Vectis Strategies, where he uses what he learned in newsrooms to figure out which stories actually get published. The short version of his advice: you can’t brute-force PR, most of the job is the stories that never run, and if AI is now recommending vendors to your customers, it’s citing reporters — not your company blog.

Chapters

00:00 — A journalist who crossed over to corporate comms

02:31 — Show, don’t tell: why most press releases read like sales documents

04:50 — Pre-med to private equity to journalism school after 2008

07:00 — “I wish we’d thought of that” — the moment he switched sides

09:08 — The client wanted TechCrunch. He pushed back.

10:30 — One third of the revenue was going to middlemen

11:20 — Being willing to disappoint the client

12:22 — You can’t brute-force PR. It’s not a numbers game.

13:28 — Six months to send one email to one reporter

14:40 — Vanity metrics vs. what actually moves the needle

15:45 — What crisis comms actually looks like for a small business

18:15 — Write the two-sentence holding statement before you need it

19:29 — AI visibility, and why the models want third-party sources

25:36 — Podcasts, transcripts, and what AI likes to scrape

27:12 — Why journalism still lights him up

31:35 — What to read if you want to learn this

34:39 — Who he works with: tech, real estate, nonprofits

36:39 — Fifty countries, and a waterfall in Slovakia

Matt Pressberg is a partner at Vectis Strategies and co-founder of Hypelab. He spent years as a business journalist, including stints at the LA Business Journal and The Information.

VectisStrategies.com · MattPressberg.com

Subscribe for new interviews twice a week.

If you’re a business owner doing something worth hearing about, reach Tavious at [email protected].

FixMyFees.com · @fixmyfees

Apple Podcasts · Spotify

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Your biggest competitor isn’t the other firm. It’s that nobody knows you exist.

Candyce Edelen has spent two and a half decades building B2B brands, including her own company that failed — and the four competitors who hired her afterward and all got acquired. Her argument here is that buyers build their shortlist before they ever start looking, so if you’re invisible during that window, the deal was decided without you. She also walks through exactly how she turns months of scattered notes into six published articles in an afternoon.

Chapters

00:00 — Your competition isn’t the other firm. It’s your invisibility.

01:23 — The buyers who picked their shortlist before shopping

04:57 — “I run ads, isn’t that visibility?”

05:48 — How martech taught everyone to measure the wrong thing

06:45 — Everyone’s harvesting the same 5%. Nobody’s planting.

07:22 — What HubSpot and Marketo actually did vs. what they told you

10:48 — Channel overwhelm: pick one, maybe two

12:11 — Why LinkedIn is what the AI models keep citing

13:05 — Voice notes in, articles out — her actual workflow

14:24 — Six articles in five hours, after weeks of collecting

16:37 — You’re still posting like it’s 2012

18:09 — The average LinkedIn visit is 87 seconds

20:53 — Don’t post and ghost

21:34 — The founder-brand numbers: leads, close speed, deal size

24:44 — A post with almost no engagement that AI cited anyway

26:56 — Her company failed. All four rivals sold.

32:14 — The one thing only the founder can do

37:03 — Alienation at scale: the AI bot that broke trust in one message

42:16 — Ken Follett, Lake Como, and three weeks off

Candyce Edelen is founder and CEO of Propel Growth, a B2B marketing and sales consultancy she started in 2007. She writes and ghostwrites founder-brand content for small companies.

LinkedIn: Candyce.Edelen · PropelGrowth.com

Subscribe for new interviews twice a week. If you’re a business owner doing something worth hearing about, reach Tavious at [email protected].

FixMyFees.com · @fixmyfees ·

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Michelle Walters spent 25 years in marketing for brands like Google and Clorox. Now she hypnotizes people for a living.

Chapters

00:00 — 25 years in marketing, then a hard left turn

01:46 — What she actually does: getting people unstuck

04:20 — You know flying is safer than driving. You still can’t board.

06:17 — The novel that made her change careers

08:25 — “Do you want to get run over by the AI train, or drive it?”

10:32 — Your subconscious isn’t woo-woo. Its job is keeping you alive.

13:05 — It doesn’t work if you don’t believe it works

14:17 — Thirty feet from the car to the door, and she ran it

17:05 — Raise Your Rates: the confidence to quote a different number

18:16 — Underpriced, overbooked, and scared the jump loses everyone

20:24 — What the MRI scans actually showed

32:10 — Six months of medical leave, then back without the title

35:41 — Where to find Michelle

Michelle Walters is a certified clinical hypnotherapist and 25-year digital marketing veteran. Author of ABC’s of Conscious Leadership, co-host of Mind Power Meets Mystic.

MichelleWalters.net · MakeMyHypno.com

Subscribe for new interviews twice a week.

If you’re a business owner doing something worth hearing about, reach Tavious at [email protected].

FixMyFees.com · @fixmyfees ·

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Ryan Bland lasted 1 day of college.
Eight years later he’s the one teaching the class at TCU.

He’s built two YouTube channels to #1 in their spaces, taken an e-commerce brand to #1 on Whop, and landed on the Inc. 5000 — all by getting clear on the right details first. In this episode he breaks down the leadership, systems, and data tracking that decide whether your business scales or stalls.

00:00 — 1 day of college, then he never went back

01:55 — Why he thinks in systems now

03:37 — What his granddad and dad actually taught him

07:25 — The first thing he looks at walking into a business

09:52 — Killing key-man dependency before you hire

11:32 — Teaching personal branding at TCU

13:53 — The 12-question worksheet, free in the description

16:12 — Stuck info business? Look at your data first

18:02 — The most expensive mistake creators make on YouTube

21:08 — You are your own best marketing

23:38 — Finding the real bottleneck

24:57 — What success looks like eight years in

27:07 — "I failed so much I ended up winning"

33:53 — Feed your mentor's SOPs to your AI

Connect with Ryan: @rbland on Instagram

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Laura Berman Fortgang was a broke actress and waitress who never cleared $36,000 a year. Then she got depressed, called an old mentor, and stumbled into a profession that barely existed yet.

Thirty years later she's logged more than 20,000 coaching hours, helped found the International Coaching Federation, written six books published in 13 languages, and pulled 2 million views on a TEDx talk that still brings her clients today.

In this episode she breaks down the CFO who got a global promotion by going to fewer meetings, the coach who spent 20 years stuck below six figures until he built systems, and the pricing test that tells you exactly when it's time to raise your fees. Plus the line that should be on every business owner's wall: consistency beats perfection.

What you'll learn:
• How to know when your fees are too low (hint: it's about who isn't pushing back)
• Why hiring help before you can afford it is a growth strategy, not a risk
• The difference between coaching and advice — and why most "coaches" are just giving advice
• How a CFO earned a global promotion by cutting his own calendar
• Why imposter syndrome is cured by action, never by thinking harder
• How to leverage a book to raise your speaking, coaching, and consulting fees
• What AI will and won't take from the coaching industry

Chapters
00:00 Meet Laura Berman Fortgang
01:54 From waitressing and Broadway auditions to coaching
04:20 Writing six books and knowing when you have another one in you
06:29 How the coaching industry changed — and got saturated
08:41 Coaching isn't advice, it's diagnosis
09:17 The TEDx talk that hit 2 million views
10:55 What her days actually look like
12:04 Case study: the CFO who got promoted by skipping meetings
13:20 Case study: 20 years in business, finally past six figures
16:38 The biggest misconception about spending money to make money
19:05 What leaders miss about acknowledgment and culture
21:04 How to leverage a book into higher fees
22:25 The real cure for imposter syndrome
25:22 When and how to raise your fees
27:00 Building a business that survives your life
32:19 Consistency beats perfection
33:48 What AI does to the coaching industry

Connect with Laura:
LauraBermanFortgang.com — coaching, free newsletter, and her A-List Coach program

Got a business worth talking about?
Email [email protected] — we're always looking for operators with a real story.

Keep more. Grow more. Live better.
FixMyFees.com · @fixmyfees

Siddiqi Ray spent 30 years behind a camera — the first woman on staff at the Associated Press, at Mayo Clinic, at Target. She photographed the Dalai Lama 15 times on three continents. She shot underwater for the Navy SEALs. And every single one of those jobs came from a gut feeling she couldn't explain.

Then in March 2020, that same feeling told her to get out of Los Angeles. She got on the last plane New Zealand let in before the borders closed, and got stuck there for two and a half years.

In this episode, Tavious sits down with Siddiqi to talk about the thing nobody in business wants to say out loud: the hire everyone had a bad feeling about, the spreadsheet that looked off, the deal that felt wrong on paper it shouldn't have. She calls the cost of overriding that signal the "I knew it tax" — and she's got the receipts, including a client who lost $3.2 million two weeks after her financial advisor talked her out of a gut call.

This isn't woo. Siddiqi breaks down the actual research, the documentation method she teaches executives, and the nervous-system work she learned from the Navy SEALs to go from random hunches to on-demand access.

In this episode:

• Why ignoring your gut has a real, measurable line-item cost
• How to tell the difference between intuition and anxiety
• The documentation habit that turns a hunch into a track record you can defend in a boardroom
• Why the NASA O-ring engineers all "knew," and said nothing
• How she went from world-renowned photographer to advising leaders full time
  

Chapters
00:00 – Intro
01:36 – The mission: 10,000 women leaders
02:42 – What "Siddiqi" actually means
05:28 – Intuition is a muscle, not a gift
06:51 – The #1 mistake people make
08:17 – The $3.2 million "I knew it tax"
10:48 – The science, and how to spot your own signal
13:40 – Intuition vs. fear vs. anxiety
18:43 – How this shows up at work: bad hires, bad numbers, NASA
22:09 – Why we need a shared language for it
23:47 – The Dalai Lama, the Navy SEALs, the Kennedys
28:28 – The check that said "cat psychic"
30:15 – The last flight into New Zealand
35:06 – The SEAL breathing method for high-stakes decisions
37:15 – What she wishes everyone knew
38:33 – Off the clock: grills, dogs, and the best ceviche in New Zealand

Connect with Siddiqi Ray
Free Intuitive IQ quiz: SiddiqiRay.com
Instagram / LinkedIn / Facebook: @SiddiqiRay

Got an interesting business? Reach out to Tavious at [email protected] — we'd love to have you on.

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FixMyFees.com · @fixmyfees

Sheela Abdi took a three-day temp receptionist gig for one reason: to scope out a company from the inside before deciding whether she wanted to work there. Three days later she walked into the CFO's office and said, "I'm not a receptionist." She left as their HR Director.

That's the whole personality of this episode. Sheela is a senior people operations executive with 20+ years across music, entertainment, streaming, and beer — Bug Music/BMG, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Insomniac, Live Nation, Pluto TV through its exit — and she's spent that entire career refusing to be the version of HR everyone expects. Today she runs Limitless HR Group, a fractional people operations team that gives business owners a full HR department without the headcount.

Host Tavious Washington digs into why the companies that want HR least are usually the ones bleeding money without it, what actually changes when culture becomes a line item, and why "no" should almost always be followed by "but."

In this episode:
• Why "no, but — can I show you this?" beats a compliance lecture every time
• The transferable skills you already have and can't see in yourself
• When a growing business should actually bring in HR (hint: earlier than you think)
• Scaling Pluto TV to an exit, and what the founder wanted repeated at his next company
• The Zen Zone she built for EDC Vegas staff on almost no budget — and the headliner who wandered in by accident
• Undercharging, executive coaching, and learning to believe her own numbers
• Fractional HR: the whole department, none of the overhead or liability

Chapters
00:00 — Not your typical HR guest
01:51 — What Limitless HR actually does
03:07 — The companies that don't want HR need it most
06:31 — "No, but" — finding another route to the same outcome
07:32 — The client who leaned over her desk and said "you hate this"
09:02 — The transferable skills she didn't know she had
11:43 — 2008, layoffs, and landing in entertainment
12:49 — The receptionist recon mission
14:50 — Becoming an acquisition-side HR executive
15:27 — Pabst Blue Ribbon, Insomniac, and companies that don't want HR
17:10 — The biggest misconceptions about HR
19:16 — When should a business bring in HR?
20:00 — Scaling Pluto TV to exit, then building Telly from day two
22:53 — Sturdy, and building culture for creatives
31:47 — The Zen Zone at EDC Vegas
36:04 — Why she leads with people instead of numbers
37:33 — Learning to charge what the work is worth
40:15 — Who she is when the business hat comes off
46:54 — Who should be calling Limitless HR
49:10 — What a fractional HR department actually gets you

Connect with Sheela Abdi
Limitless HR Group → https://www.limitlesshrgroup.com
Email → [email protected] or [email protected]
Men's mental health nonprofit → https://www.amindspursuit.org

Fix My Fees
Merchant services is boring. The people in business aren't. Every week, Tavious Washington sits down with operators who did something interesting and asks how they actually did it.
Website → https://www.FixMyFees.com
Want to be a guest? → [email protected]
Instagram → @fixmyfees

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Every retirement message you've ever seen is about money. Plan your finances, plan your estate, you're good to go. Dale Power spent 25 years as a marketing consultant watching business owners sell, cash out, and then hit a wall about six months later — golf, travel, dinners with friends, and then a Tuesday morning with nothing on the calendar and no idea what comes next.

The part nobody warns you about isn't financial. It's that you're going through three massive transitions at once, and one of them is losing the entire community you spent 30 years inside of.

Dale is the founder of Share Your Courage and creator of Reimagine Retirement, a small-group program that helps people design the chapter after the exit. In this episode she breaks down when to actually start planning (hint: the moment you first hear yourself say "maybe in a couple years"), why "service" is far bigger than volunteer work, and the tiny-experiments approach that lets you test a new life without committing to it.

In this episode:
• Why the six-month honeymoon ends and what replaces it
• The phone call Dale got decades later: "You saved my life"
• The financial planner who sold his firm and watched his community stay behind
• When to start planning your exit — earlier than you think
• Why service is the core of meaning, and why most people define it too narrowly
• The 84-year-old engineer who's busier now than in his career
• Tiny experiments: how to test a new chapter without a full commitment
• Why planning this alone is the hardest way to do it

⏱️ Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:28 25 years of watching owners drift after the sale
03:07 The phone call: "You saved my life"
04:02 Why she started Share Your Courage
05:45 The community you lose when you exit
08:00 When should you actually start planning?
08:45 Why more runway means more options
10:16 The 84-year-old who never slowed down
11:50 Service is bigger than volunteer work
12:43 The boredom nobody warns you about
14:19 Sixth graders pitching real businesses
16:03 Why eight people in a room beats planning alone
17:21 The one thing she wishes everyone knew
19:32 Tiny experiments: test before you commit
22:00 Make this the most brilliant chapter
25:26 Who this is for and how to start
28:03 Community gardens, Eagle Scouts, and six years as a clown

Connect with Dale Power
🌐 shareyourcourage.com
📧 [email protected]

About Fix My Fees
Merchant processing is boring — so we bring on interesting people instead. Real conversations with business owners and experts about building something that lasts.

💚 Keep more. Grow more. Live better.
🌐 FixMyFees.com

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📱 @fixmyfees