Is Anything Real?

Hip hop isn’t just music...it’s community infrastructure.

In this episode of Is Anything Real?, Adam W. Barney sits down with Jeffrey Roe (Beats, Rhymes y Comunidad) to talk about the difference between an audience and a community...and why founders, creators, and leaders keep confusing the two.

Here’s the clean line:

• Audience = one-to-many (you broadcast)
• Community = member-to-member (people belong)

Jeffrey breaks down hip hop as a real blueprint for building belonging:

DJ as curator. MC as storyteller. Graffiti as identity. Breaking as participation...where the community becomes the show.

If you’re building anything that needs trust, retention, or momentum, this one will land.

Guest: Jeffrey Roe

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

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

Host: Adam W. Barney

⚡ Transition Leadership Foundation Call (20 min): https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/foundation-call-20min

📘 Book launch day: Outrageous Startup Growth by Colin Hodge (Wiley) —out today (4/13).

The startup world is basically a myth factory…and founders inhale it like oxygen. Colin Hodge is here to punch a few of those myths in the face...with real receipts from building DOWN (formerly Bang With Friends) and spending years in the trenches of consumer psychology.

This one has a strong “listen twice” feel because it’s not hype. It’s mechanisms.

The 3 founder myths killing companies (and nervous systems)

1. You have to chase unicorn status, or you failed  
2. Growth comes from hacks, not understanding humans
3. Anything labeled “casual” can’t be meaningful (spoiler: it can)

The “viral moments” we unpack (aka the parts you’ll quote to your founder friends)

• Punching the unicorn myth: there’s another path to success that doesn’t require billionaire cosplay  
• Consumer psychology > hacks: stop chasing channels, start understanding how people choose  
• Good friction (IKEA effect): the right steps can increase commitment and retention with good friction
• One move you can run this week: use framing effects to shape decisions inside paywalls, onboarding, and pricing  
• Is Anything Real?: authenticity becomes a durable edge when the internet gets noisier and faker

Guest links

• Order "Outrageous Startup Growth: Uncovering the Secrets of User Psychology to Scale Your Success", out today!
• Colin Hodge (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/ckbhodge/
• DOWN Dating & Social Apps: https://www.downapp.com/
• Email: [email protected]

For leaders in transition...

⚡ Transition Leadership Foundation Call (20 min):

https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/foundation-call-20min

If you’re building a company right now and your brain feels like 27 tabs are open, send this to the one founder friend who needs the reminder: you don’t have to chase unicorns to be successful.

Daniel Perumal and Nick Alter (ThriveSide/Founders Best Friend) explain why paid ads don’t work like they used to...and what founders should do when they can’t “buy growth” anymore.  

We unpack the post-iOS reality, shrinking trust, platform incentives, and ThriveSide’s founder maturity model for building sustainable growth without skipping steps.  

You’ll hear when ads still help (micro-validation), why founders confuse spend with strategy, and the simple move most people avoid: build a list, start real conversations, and build community that referrals can run through.  

Guests:

Daniel Perumal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-perumal-882a1652/

Nick Alter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasalter/

ThriveSide: https://thriveside.com/

Founders Best Friend: https://www.foundersbestfriend.com/

Host: Adam W. Barney

Transition Leadership Foundation Call (20 min): https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/foundation-call-20min

Jim Matuga (proud resident of West Virginia and Founder of Inner Action Media) has built a 14+ year agency, a statewide storytelling platform, and a leadership philosophy that flips the script: real influence often comes from the middle, not the corner office.  

In this episode, we talk about:

• The hidden power of followership (and why it’s not “less than”)  
• How to exercise influence right now without a title
• Why most people communicate, but few truly connect  
• The “first second” reality of modern attention  
• How a consistent local podcast became a compounding impact engine  

Guest: Jim Matuga: [email protected]

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

Inner Action Media: https://inneractionmedia.com/

Book: https://humbleinfluencebook.com/
Positively West Virginia: https://positivelywv.com/positively-wv/

Host: Adam W. Barney

Transition Leadership Foundation Call (20 min): https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/foundation-call-20min

Penny Hill (Three Threads Consulting) brings a reality-first leadership take on one of the most worshiped myths in B2B marketing: that paid ads drive direct revenue.

In 25 years, Penny says she’s never seen paid ads tie cleanly to direct revenue in B2B...and that the real role of paid is often air cover and brand surround sound, not pipeline heroics.  

We also dig into the leadership failures that quietly wreck growth:

• ICPs that are too complex to operationalize
• attribution models that create sales vs marketing turf wars
• dashboards that reward quantity over quality

Penny shares what to simplify, what to measure honestly, and how to stop gambling with budget and start building a system sales can trust.  

Guest: Penny Hill

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/penny-hill-644a42/

Three Threads Consulting: https://www.threethreadsconsulting.com/

Host: Adam W. Barney

Transition Leadership Foundation Call (20 min): https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/foundation-call-20min

Episode 50 is a milestone - but it’s also a pivot report.

After 50 conversations across growth, leadership, culture, equity, energy, and truth-telling, the same pattern kept showing up: most advice sounds good in a vacuum. This episode is about what still works under constraint.

No guest, just me, host Adam W. Barney - transition leadership coach and author of Make Your Own Glass Half Full: The Path To Empowered Optimism and Autonomy.

The 5 Truths

• Constraints reveal reality.
• Trust compounds outcomes.
• Energy is the constraint.
• Clarity beats volume.
• Systems beat willpower.

The Reality Filter

Behavior → Trade-off → Proof → Constraint test.

If it can’t pass those, it’s not strategy, it’s noise.

Work with Adam

If you’re leading through change and want a reality-first reset, book a Transition Leadership Foundation Call (20 min): https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/foundation-call-20min

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwbarney/
My Website: https://www.adamwbarney.com
My Newsletter: Plugged In Leadership

Guests mentioned (thank you):

• Patty Civalleri: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattycivalleri/
• Nikhil Vaish: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhilvaish/
• Pauline Schmiechen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pauline-schmiechen/
• Colin James Belyea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinjamesbelyea/
• Chuck Garcia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuck-garcia-015128/
• Sharon Hurley Hall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharonhh/
• Yasmine de Aranda: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasminedearanda/
• Alexander Michael Gittens: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amgittens/
• Christina Quinn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinamquinn/
• Mike Tadasco: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todasco/
• Steve Biegel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-biegel-1b03503/

If your “conversions” are just page views, you’re not reporting performance.

You’re committing fraud with better fonts.  

In this episode, Dana DiTomaso (Principal & Founder, Kick Point Inc. | Founder & Instructor, Analytics Playbook) breaks down why fake conversions keep surviving...and how leaders can rebuild measurement that reflects reality.

This isn’t just an analytics episode. It’s a leadership episode: because truth requires standards and psychological safety, and client trust collapses when dashboards become theater.  

What you’ll learn

• The most egregious conversion setup Dana’s seen (and how it makes revenue look imaginary).  
• Why “contact page views” are not leads...and the cleaner alternatives.  
• Why GA4 + paid platforms don’t always match and how GTM trigger mismatches create measurement chaos.  
• Dana’s metric take: stop using bounce rate; use engagement rate.  
• The agency founder play: improve measurement, then wean clients from bad metrics to good metrics without detonating trust.  

Connect with Dana

• LinkedIn (where she posts most): https://www.linkedin.com/in/dditomaso/  
• Kick Point: https://kickpoint.ca/
• KP Playbook: https://kpplaybook.com/

⚡ Your next step

Book a Transition Leadership Foundation Call (20 min):

https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/foundation-call-20min

SURPRISE DROP - Podcasthon Week (supporting the ACLU).

Donate to the ACLU: https://action.aclu.org/give/now

Podcasthon: https://podcasthon.org/

Trader Joe’s has become a mythology factory - and when information is scarce, myths multiply.

In this episode, I’m joined by Patty Civalleri, author of Becoming Trader Joe, co-written from Joe Coulombe’s journals. Translation: we’re not doing hot takes. We’re doing what actually happened - and what leaders can actually learn from it.

This is a leadership episode disguised as a brand story:

• Constraints create strategy
• Culture is what you reward + refuse
• Differentiation isn’t a slogan, it’s a system
• And community matters (including who you let in and what energy you protect)

What we cover

• The real Trader Joe’s origin insights people get wrong
• The Four Pillars of Differentiation (and how to apply them today)
• Why myths spread when leaders don’t control the narrative
• Building a culture people can feel (not just read)
• Energy discipline: protecting the mission from negativity

Patty Civalleri (site): https://pattycivalleri.com/

Patty Civalleri (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattycivalleri/

Book (Becoming Trader Joe): https://bookshop.org/a/72042/9781400225439

Your next step

Transition Leadership Foundation Call (20 min):

https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/foundation-call-20min

Most marketing teams are still trapped in a fake war: brand vs. performance. Jesse Resnick and Walter Shock (Co-Founders of Ei Digital) argue that’s the wrong fight, and that attribution is basically a magician: great at misdirection, terrible at telling the truth.

In this episode, we break down what actually compounds in 2026: building end-to-end systems that connect creative, targeting, measurement, and learning...so your funnel doesn’t just “perform”…it improves.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why treating performance like “just a numbers game” is a fool’s errand (the art + science have to work together)
• The real modern flywheel: data → creative insights → more creative → better algorithmic matching
• Why last-click attribution keeps steering budgets wrong (and why Google often “gets credit” it didn’t earn)
• A real-world test: turning off brand keywords (yes, even with a massive brand) and what actually changed
• How to use Meta as a real-time learning lab with a Minimum Viable Campaign (MVC) instead of “focus group theater”
• The leadership move most teams skip: second-order metrics (because lower-funnel reality can invalidate upper-funnel “wins”)

Connect with Jesse, Walter, and Ei Digital

• Ei Digital: https://eidigital.com/
• Jesse Resnick (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesseresnick/
• Walter Shock (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/walter-shock-40486119/

Want help building leadership + growth systems that actually hold up in the real world?

Book a Transition Leadership Foundation Call: https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/foundation-call-20min

Most people talk about brand from the neck up: strategy, tactics, frameworks.

Alexander Michael Gittens talks about brand from the soul: identity, humanity, equity, belonging…and the kind of leadership that actually holds up under pressure.  

This episode is for founders, leaders, and creators who feel the quiet tension of modern business:

“How do I grow without becoming someone I don’t respect?”

Alexander brings a rare outsider-insider lens (Caribbean roots, Canadian upbringing, lived experience across cultures) and uses it to cut through the “us vs. them” nonsense and get to what actually moves people: connection, context, and character.  

In this episode, we get real about:

• Why influence starts with identity, not expertise...and why the next decade belongs to people who can hold space for truth and humanity, not just “be loud online.”  
• The “legacy test”: before you sell anything, ask whether you’re okay with your entire legacy being based on the quality of that output. (Yes, this one hits.)  
• Allyship as a series of choices (not a stance), rooted in real conversations and origin stories, not performative labels.  
• Why the fastest way to “vanquish your enemy” is…get to know them (and what that reveals about privilege, meritocracy myths, and entitlement).  
• The gut-punch closer: what good is “getting everything you ever wanted” if you lose you - the real you?  

Resources mentioned:

• Alexander’s work + essays: alexandermichaelgittens.com  
• Rupert Rodney (company): connect via Alexander on LinkedIn  
• Video essay: “Higher Profit” (search “Higher Profit Rupert Rodney”/“Higher Profit Alexander Michael Gittens” on YouTube)  

Want to build your leadership + energy like it actually matters?

Book a Transition Leadership Foundation Call: https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/foundation-call-20min