Making BIG Shifts

Being louder doesn't make you more persuasive.

Robert Begley, communication strategist and author of Voices of Reason, joins me to break down what actually makes communication memorable.

We talk about clarity, confidence, authenticity, character, stage fright, presentation structure, and why some speakers influence a room while others are forgotten by the next day.

Robert also shares one presentation mistake almost everybody makes: ending with Q&A.

We dig into lessons from Aristotle, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Winston Churchill, and other great communicators, then bring those principles back to modern leadership, sales, marketing, and business.

One of my biggest takeaways was pretty simple: communication is not just about what you want to say. It's about what the audience needs to hear.

And whether you're speaking from a stage or writing positioning for a healthcare practice, the principle is pretty much the same.

Clarity builds trust.

Why do good healthcare products still get stuck in endless meetings, delayed decisions, and deals that suddenly disappear?

Fred Sheffield has spent his career helping healthcare and health tech companies navigate that exact problem.

Fred is the Chief Growth Officer of Five Stones Growth, a go-to-market strategist, and author of Health Tech Giant Slayer. In this conversation, we break down how smaller healthcare companies can compete, reach the real buying group, create urgency, and build a repeatable growth system.

We talk about healthcare positioning, the difference between ROI and cost of inaction, internal champions, referrals, pipeline development, AI in healthcare, and why human connection may become even more valuable as AI becomes more common.

For me, one of the biggest takeaways comes back to marketing fundamentals: know exactly why you exist, what makes you different, and how that difference matters to the organization you are trying to reach.

A great conversation for anyone working in healthcare marketing, sales, health tech, or growth.

Most entrepreneurs start businesses because they want freedom. Years later, many discover they’ve created the exact opposite.

In this episode, I sit down with Luke Mardigian, co-author of Exit Without Selling, to talk about owner dependence and why businesses can become completely reliant on their founder for decisions, relationships, knowledge, time, and revenue.

Luke shares how he went from working 70+ hours a week in his insurance agency to becoming almost unnecessary to its daily operation, and the framework he now uses to help other owners do the same.

We talk about true values, building a dream team, letting go of control, hiring A players, the “prison of success,” and why a business that has existed for 30 years may sometimes have simply repeated the same year 30 times.

If you’ve built a good business but still feel like you can’t step away from it, this episode will challenge how you think about growth, leadership, and what you’re ultimately building toward.

Most entrepreneurs spend years thinking about how to build a business.

Far fewer think seriously about what it takes to leave one.

Chris Slocumb built her agency over more than two decades before beginning a three-year exit journey that included roughly 50 buyer meetings, multiple letters of intent, several rounds of due diligence, and eventually a successful sale.

In this episode of Making BIG Shifts, Chris and Josh talk about the parts of selling a company founders rarely hear about.

They dig into valuation, recurring versus project revenue, founder dependency, paying yourself properly, choosing the right buyer, negotiating earnouts, and why a great financial outcome can still create a major personal identity shift.

Chris also shares lessons from her book, Mastering the Exit Gauntlet, and the three questions founders should answer before deciding to sell:

Why do you want to sell?
When do you want to sell?
What number do you need?

If an exit might be somewhere in your future, start thinking about it long before you actually want out.

Most entrepreneurs start businesses because they want more freedom.

Then the company grows, the team grows, the responsibilities grow, and suddenly every important decision still comes back to the owner.

Dan Paulson calls it The Owner’s Trap.

Dan is an executive advisor and bestselling author of Escape the Owner’s Trap. In this conversation, we dig into how owners become the bottleneck, why delegation and training so often break down, how to create real accountability without micromanaging, and why reducing owner dependence can dramatically change the long-term value of a business.

We also talk about succession planning, better meetings, simpler KPIs, employee onboarding, and one lesson Dan learned after a major health scare forced him to look at his own business differently.

The biggest takeaway is simple: if you know something in your business needs to change, don’t assume you’ll get to it tomorrow.

Start today.

More AI. More data. More technology.

But does any of that automatically create more revenue?

Not even close.

I sat down with James Roth, CRO of ZoomInfo, for a wide-ranging conversation about what the next era of sales and marketing actually looks like.

James shares his unconventional path from college football and professional music to door-to-door sales and eventually the CRO seat at ZoomInfo. We talk about why leaders need enough competence to challenge the experts around them, why listening directly to customers matters more as you move up the organization, and why being willing to admit what you don't know can actually become a competitive advantage.

We also get deep into AI.

James explains how businesses are thinking about build versus buy, why AI is only as useful as the context and data underneath it, how small businesses are adopting these tools, and where ZoomInfo is headed next as it brings more of its go-to-market capabilities together.

A really interesting conversation about AI, leadership, sales, marketing, and what still matters when everything around us seems to be changing.

Entrepreneurs are constantly told to keep going.

But what happens when persistence becomes stubbornness?

Nuri Otus has built seven companies, experienced successful pivots, raised capital, shut down ideas that weren’t working, and is now building DUO, an AI-powered matchmaking platform.

In this conversation, we dig into how founders can recognize real market validation, why criticism can actually be incredibly valuable, how positioning affects whether a product gets traction, and the signals that tell you when it might finally be time to change direction.

Nuri also shares how an elevator conversation led to an investment from AOL, why DUO gained users almost immediately after launch, and why some of his best business lessons came directly from mistakes.

A very real conversation about entrepreneurship, product-market fit, marketing, and knowing when to keep pushing versus when to move on.

Referrals are fantastic, but they shouldn’t be your entire growth strategy.

I sit down with Craig Lowder, author of Smooth Selling Forever, to break down how businesses can create a more predictable pipeline by bringing sales and marketing together.

We talk target audiences, messaging, lead generation, sales processes, connector networks, and a really simple 4-quadrant outreach strategy any business owner can start using immediately.

One of the biggest takeaways: most sales problems actually start much earlier than the sales call. If you don’t know exactly who you’re targeting and why they should care, everything downstream gets harder.

Big results usually require big bets, but how do you know when to keep pushing, when to pivot, and when you’re just being stubborn?

Shawn Burcham went from labeling boxes at his kitchen table and selling chicken breading out of his garage to building a group of companies with operations reaching across the country.

In this episode, we get into failure, gritt (spelled that way on purpose), focus, risk, work ethic, hiring great people, relationships, and what it really takes to build something that lasts.

Shawn and I dig into failure, persistence, focus, hiring great people, open-book leadership, financial literacy, relationships, and the difference between being stubborn and having enough conviction to keep going.

We also get into something I think matters a lot in marketing right now. AI may be changing how companies reach people, but Shawn still believes relationships and personal connection are at the core of great businesses.

If you’re an entrepreneur, founder, or leader trying to build something that lasts, this one is worth your time.

Businesses pour money into finding new customers, but some of the biggest growth opportunities may already be sitting inside the relationships we have.

I sit down with Jamie Shibley, CEO of The Expressory and author of Relationship First: Strategic Engagement, to talk about building a real relationship infrastructure around customers, prospects, referral partners, teams, and other people who influence your growth.

We talk about staying top of mind without constantly selling, Jamie’s seven-week relationship rule, emotional loyalty, authentic customer engagement, and why listening and human connection could become even more valuable as AI becomes part of everything we do.

A really practical conversation about marketing, positioning, retention, referrals, and simply being better at relationships.