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Here's the thing about AI that nobody wants to admit: everyone's talking about it, but most people still can't tell you exactly how it's changing the game right now, today, in real and tangible ways. This episode fixes that.

In this special edition of Liftoff Journeys, I'm bringing together four conversations with leaders who aren't just theorizing about AI. Mike Finnerty, CEO Co-founder, Mutinex,  Matthew Wilson, Global Head of Revenue, Social Scale AI, Aubriana Alvarex Lopez, Co-founder, Agnitio and Vince Walden, CEO, KonaAI. They're building with it, selling with it, and using it to solve problems that have frustrated marketers, compliance officers, and brand leaders for years. Recorded live from the Colossal Bowl event, these chats cover everything from AI-powered content creation that actually protects your brand, to a startup founder's raw advice on getting comfortable with hearing "no," to the future of marketing mix modeling, to why your compliance team might be the most exciting department in your company right now (seriously).

If you're a CMO trying to justify your next investment, a founder wondering when to take the leap, or a business leader trying to figure out where AI fits into your world without the hype and the fluff, this is the episode to turn up. You'll walk away with real frameworks, bold predictions, and the kind of practical wisdom that only comes from people who are deep in the work.

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What if the way we've been thinking about media, audiences, and even healthcare marketing is fundamentally broken... and the fix is already here?

In this special edition of Liftoff Journeys, I'm taking you aboard a mansion yacht in Miami (yes, you read that right) for three back-to-back conversations with some of the sharpest minds in media, healthcare, and advertising. And fair warning: this one's going to challenge a few things you thought you knew.

You'll hear from Sean Black, General Manager/SVP, Audience Path US, who believes the traditional approach to audience targeting is outdated and is building real-time, signal-based technology that watches what people are doing right now instead of relying on stale data from weeks ago. You'll sit in on a conversation with Cliff Covey, SVP, Group Director, Digital Activation at CMI Media Group, a healthcare media veteran who's been in pharma for two decades and is genuinely fired up about how AI could transform the way patients and doctors connect at the moments that matter most. And you'll meet Lorenzo Zefferino, Executive Media Leader at Evergreen Trading, a media buying innovator who breaks down why the human element still matters in an AI-driven world, why "win-win-win" is more than just a catchphrase, and why common sense is still the most underrated skill in advertising.

This isn't your typical "here's what AI can do" episode. These are real people sharing what they're actually building, what's working, what's broken, and the advice they'd give to anyone trying to keep up in a landscape that changes every six months. Whether you're in media, healthcare, advertising, or just trying to understand where things are headed, this conversation will give you something to think about.

Oh, and there may or may not be a story about blue-painted toenails. You'll have to listen to find out.

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Ashley Miles is the kind of person who makes you want to go rethink your entire business strategy and then actually do something about it before the day is over. She walked away from the corporate world with all its resources, the big teams, the trade events, the ability to snap your fingers and mobilize, and built Franklin West from scratch. Self-funded. No VCs. No safety net. Just a bold vision and the relationships to back it up.

This conversation gets into the stuff that every leader is feeling right now but not always saying out loud. Budgets are shrinking, expectations are skyrocketing, and the old playbooks aren't cutting it anymore. Ashley breaks down exactly how she's helping companies navigate that tension and she drops a stat that honestly stopped me in my tracks about where the workforce is headed by 2027. If you're a founder trying to scale, a corporate leader being asked to do more with less, or a young professional trying to figure out how to actually stand out, this one is going to hit in all the right places.

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There's an entire workforce out there, millions of women, who have been told for decades that their career has a ceiling. Francis Tesmer decided that was done. She didn't just talk about it, she built the first ever college degree pathway for beauty professionals in partnership with L'Oréal and then put over $1 million in scholarships behind it so that money would never be the reason someone couldn't walk through that door.

Francis is back on Liftoff because every time we talk to her, the impact has grown. Graduates are building bigger businesses, earning more, leading differently, and their daughters are watching. When a woman's child looks at her and says "I believe women deserve jobs at the highest level" because of what she saw her mother do? That's not a career program. That's generational change. Whether you're in the beauty industry or not, this conversation will make you rethink what it really looks like to turn passion into power and who gets left behind when we don't.

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This conversation made me hungry AND inspired, which honestly is the best combination. James Mazzuto spent 20 years in the corporate world, earned an MBA from Tulane, lectured at universities, ran a nonprofit, launched a solar startup, and was literally about to go to LAW SCHOOL on a chancellor's scholarship at Seton Hall when something completely unexpected happened. He walked into a restaurant to kill time for six months and got hooked. Like hook, line, and sinker hooked.

Now he's overseeing three restaurants across New Jersey, Allendale Social, Charlie's Place, and Saku — alongside partner Daniel Gray and Michelin-star chef Joey Sergentakis. And the way he talks about hospitality, about the trust that goes into something as intimate as sharing a meal, about why you can train someone to make a cocktail but you can't train them to CARE, that hit different. He also calls himself a "recovered MBA" which might be the best self-description I've ever heard on this show.

If you've ever wondered whether it's too late to completely pivot your career or whether that thing scratching an itch you didn't know you had might actually be your calling, this one's for you.

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I have been looking for someone who lives at the intersection of creativity and business strategy and Paul Koslowski is exactly that person. He's an award-winning architect and co-founder of Dunn Koslowski, a firm that's spent nearly 24 years creating spaces that don't just look beautiful, they make people FEEL something. We're talking restaurants where you don't even realize you've been drawn up to the second floor, residences that are a pure expression of someone's personal brand, and hospitality spaces designed to work just as well for a post-yoga lunch as they do for the biggest celebration of your life.

But what really got me in this conversation is how Paul thinks about brand in a way most marketers and business leaders never consider. He dropped this 80-20 rule that honestly every business owner needs to hear — and the way he breaks down why most companies get design completely wrong might make you rethink that Pinterest folder you've been building.

If you've ever wondered why some spaces just hit different or why your dream vision might actually be working against you this is the episode to listen to.

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This one is personal for me. Over 10 years ago, Stan Rosenberg was my intern, and watching where his career has gone since then honestly makes me so proud. While he was still in HIGH SCHOOL, this guy started a nonprofit called Trip of a Lifetime that has now raised over a million dollars and sent more than 350 students on transformational travel experiences. Since then, he's scaled teams at major companies and now runs his own firm, Storm King Consulting, where he's built a community of over 550 leaders all paying it forward.

But what really makes this conversation special is how Stan talks about the things nobody tells you about sales, community, and knowing what you're NOT good at. He's a self-described introvert who people didn't think would last three months in sales, and the way he flipped that into his biggest strength is something every leader needs to hear.

If you've ever felt like you have to be the loudest voice in the room to win, this episode is going to change the way you think about that completely.

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So I've been a little obsessed with Ross Simmonds ever since I came across one of his presentations and this conversation did NOT disappoint. Ross is a global thought leader and entrepreneur who helps brands scale through content, but the way he thinks about content is completely different from what most marketers are doing right now. He says things that honestly make a lot of people in the industry uncomfortable, like that distribution matters MORE than what you actually create, and that the channels most brands are afraid of are exactly where they should be showing up.

But it's what Ross said about the person on the other end of the screen that completely shifted my perspective. He has this way of breaking down something we all know deep down but keep ignoring, and once you hear it you won't be able to unsee it in your own marketing.

And if you're leading a stretched-thin team right now trying to keep the lights on AND be creative at the same time? Ross shared something his company does every single week that I think every business should steal immediately. You're going to want to hear this one all the way through.

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Alex Bennett started washing dishes at his parents' restaurant at 16, and by 25, he was running the whole place. But then life threw him some curveballs: a divorce, a master's degree he couldn't use at the worst possible time, and a career pivot most people wouldn't see coming. And somehow, all those detours led him to write a historical fiction trilogy about bourbon, pirates, and a Scottish rebellion. Yeah, you read that right.

What really got me is how Alex talks about letting life take you where it's going to take you instead of fighting it. He has this incredible way of looking at setbacks not as failures, but as setups for something better. And the story behind how the book came together, including one random conversation with a kid at the bar that made him rewrite an entire manuscript. I won't spoil it, but let's say the details matter more than you think.

If you've ever felt stuck between what you planned for your life and where life actually took you, this one is going to hit different. Alex drops some seriously good advice for anyone chasing a dream, starting over, or just trying to figure out their next move. Plus, you're going to learn something about whiskey history that will make you the most interesting person at your next happy hour. Trust me on that one.

Listen now and find out how a dishwasher turned bartender turned author figured out that the best stories, in books and in life, come from the chapters you never planned to write.

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Imagine taking your child to a therapist for help with their behavior, only for the therapist to basically call you a bad parent and tell you it’s your fault they act the way they do? I sat down with Karen Thomas, the founder and CEO of Naturally Recovering Autism, and what she shared about her journey had my jaw drop.

This mom spent over a decade and more than $100,000 of her own money researching, experimenting, and figuring out how to help her son recover from autism symptoms, naturally. Spoiler alert: She did it!
 
Her son went from struggling in kindergarten to being a college graduate living independently, and she's helped other parents see incredible results too, including a mom whose nonverbal son started talking and reading within two months of starting Karen's program. 


This is a mom who refused to accept "there's nothing we can do" and built an entire recovery roadmap from scratch! And she did it all before AI. Whether you're a parent navigating autism, dealing with health challenges in your own family, or just trying to figure things out when nobody has the answers, you're going to feel so seen listening to this. 

Grab your copy of my new book the Trust Threshold, available on Amazon https://www.liftoffcompany.com/the-trust-threshold/

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