Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank: Business Growth & Entrepreneur Stories

Brett Farmiloe explains how experts can win earned media placements by answering journalist queries quickly and precisely. Through HARO, reporters submit a query that is approved and sent in a three-times-a-day email, and any qualified source can reply. Featured.com adds real-time matching and status tracking from pitch to publication so you can see what is happening. To protect your time, he recommends starting with a free account, setting three keyword alerts, and only responding to topics where you have real credentials. His best-performing format is direct and concise: skip greetings when possible and deliver a clear four-to-eight-sentence answer that quotes your real experience. Use AI only to polish language, not to generate the substance, because attribution to a real person builds authority in a world flooded with generated content. The takeaway is to be selective, be human, and repeat what works until pitching becomes a simple habit.

Susan Schwartz explains how emotional intelligence helps leaders reduce churn, improve teamwork, and get better business results. She defines EQ as managing your reactions, staying aware of how you show up, and choosing responses that fit the moment. Her starting move is simple attention: notice what others need, spot the 'gotchas,' and communicate so your message is received as intended. Promoted subject experts must shift from 'me to we,' replacing micromanagement with delegation, trust, and constructive feedback. Using tools like the EQ-i 2.0 assessment, she builds new workplace norms and meeting habits that pull opinions out instead of broadcasting. A restaurant case shows a three-tier system and a 'banana problem' cue that cut constant interruptions from 20-30 a day to 3-4. The takeaway: practice small, repeatable behaviors that make conflict manageable and turn your team into a more confident, high-retention unit.

Danielle Putnam explains how menu pricing turns routine service calls into higher revenue and less stress for technicians and owners. Instead of one take-it-or-leave-it quote, she presents a base repair with four upgrade options so homeowners self-select. She says this menu approach has driven over $2 billion in new revenue, with customers moving up roughly 80% of the time. Adoption starts with a "champion in the truck" who pilots the tablet menu with close manager support, then trains the team. A pricing reset follows, recalculating true overhead and the billable hour so rates match local markets rather than staying stale for years. Her library of 73,000+ menus across HVAC, plumbing, electrical, chimney, and indoor air quality can be copied and edited on the fly. The biggest takeaway is simple: give clear choices and keep your pricing current, and both profits and retention improve.

Zac Palmer shows how to rebuild a sales team so morale rises and deals close consistently. He treats selling as curiosity: ask questions that uncover pains, desired outcomes, and resistance before pitching. He says issues change by revenue stage, from wasted manual tasks to owner-led sales bottlenecks. To scale, capture the founder's best conversations, turn them into a repeatable script and training loop, and let reps "pay for speed." He hires with four filters: fit for the client, fit for the culture, belief in the product, and the skill or aptitude to deliver. Near $10M a year, he adds FTC-compliant messaging and flags the hidden cost of tolerating one toxic top performer. Best takeaway: improve the quality of your questions, and you improve the quality of your results.

Jacob Levin breaks down how an "injectable" marketing team helps brands break plateaus and hit the next growth inflection point. He starts by proving who the real customer is, using data instead of founder assumptions about being "luxury" or chasing the wrong demographic. Next he stress-tests focus by running funnel-wide experiments across channels, ad creative, and landing pages to find the segment that actually converts. In one athletic brand stuck after seven years, narrowing from everyone active to marathon runners unlocked a story that made even casual buyers think, "If it's good enough for a marathon runner, it's good enough for me." That repositioning, backed by results, helped the company double or triple revenue year after year once the winning thread was pulled. He also outlines three ways to engage: quick consulting, fractional leadership to fill team gaps, or full-scope strategy plus execution from top to bottom. When decisions feel shaky, follow his rule "If there's doubt, there's no doubt" and let tested data guide the next move.

Jed G. Morley explains how founders can unlock hidden brand value by turning vague messaging into clear promises that scale revenue. His starting point is escaping the internal echo chamber with customer insights, using a message market fit test of draft language. Teams articulate hypotheses, put them in front of buyers, and iterate in a build-measure-learn loop until words consistently resonate. In one SaaS case he and the product team ran 65 interviews to reverse engineer the problem that triggered purchase and to support enterprise licensing. He frames strategy as moving from current perception P1 to desired perception P2, so the brand grows up without constant rebrands. To execute, his Backstory Brand Wheel links brand foundation, brand expression, and brand performance so audiences see relevant value propositions. The most useful takeaway is to keep a meaningful promise by blending data with intuition and listening relentlessly to customers .

Reena Friedman Watts shows how story-first podcasting can grow your audience and turn interviews into real opportunities. Her first habit is to record from the moment you start talking, because the best "behind the scenes" bits appear early. To make conversations fun, she pre-researches guests on LinkedIn and recent episodes, then asks a referrer for one unexpected curveball. She evolved from chasing only shock stories to mixing in creators with built-in audiences who have never shared their personal dad story, sparking spikes like 50,000 listens in four days on one episode. For beginners, she suggests practicing with a ChatGPT-written solo script, guesting on other shows first, and pitching by naming episodes you genuinely enjoyed. She also uses quick 10-minute LinkedIn chats and Craigslist TV/film listings to break into new circles. The core takeaway: nothing changes unless you change, so mix things up and keep shipping.

Aleksandar Svetski explains how to build a travel social network without burning out as a founder. He vets ideas by market timing, his capacity, and whether the work truly stretches him. His shift from a 20s buffet to a 30s filter is simple: say no to anything that dilutes the main focus. Satlantis uses an interest graph and social graph to surface relevant places and events when you land in a new city. The long game is to make stale directories obsolete by combining people, content, merchants, and events in one experience. He raised a $2 million seed, targets a July release, and plans to raise $5 to $10 million while delegating to avoid 100 hour weeks. Most useful takeaway: build strength in advance, then concentrate it on the single mission worth defending.

Zack Holland explains how an AI marketing manager can cut marketing chaos so teams launch faster with less tool hopping. Avery.ai begins with strategy, using marketer-built models plus memory that remembers your product, goals, and past work. It then drafts blogs, ads, and other content, and its prompt library turns quick inputs like "research my competitors" into proven, longer prompts. If AI is not enough, it matches you to a vetted US-based specialist across roughly 115 categories, from brand design to cold-email deliverability. He emphasizes balanced marketplaces: experts get transparent flat rates and customers get simple hiring without endless interviews. From his own founder roller coaster, he recommends separating identity from business outcomes and building steadiness with meditation and stoic habits. The takeaway is to lock in a clear plan first, then use AI for speed and humans for judgment and craft.

Dr. Kimberley Linert shows high achievers how to find real fulfillment by aligning values, vision, and attention so success feels satisfying again. She starts by naming what you want in each life area, then reviewing goals quarterly to put the "big rocks" on your calendar first. To identify values, she has you brainstorm a long list and rank them with an optometrist-style "one or two" comparison until a top five is clear. When choices come up, you keep what matches those values and drop what does not. She distinguishes external vision (focus plus peripheral awareness) from internal vision (imagination), and says training both creates more pathways to the same goal. Optic BrainFit adds a "workout of the day" for brain, vision, and movement, and she frames ADHD as "visual inattention" that improves with practice. Start where you are, stack small wins, and let your values guide the next move.