People On Purpose®

Everyone's an expert, everyone's confident, and everyone's posting about how well it's going. This week my friend Kaili, owner of Reveal Studio Co. and a copywriter and sales strategist, and I ask the question underneath all of it: can you be happy and successful, or are we all just faking it?

We're yapping all about:

• Why someone becoming an expert on AI (or anything) overnight should make you ask some questions
• The GPT Kaili built and has to sunset, and what it taught her about building on a platform you don't own
• Why "this doesn't sell anymore" usually comes from someone about to sell you the fix
• The year I made the most money in my business and was the most miserable I've ever been
• What success looks like when you close the laptop

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Nobody really knows what's working in marketing right now, and Tayler Cusick Hollman, co-founder of Enji, is comfortable saying so. AI dropped a giant boulder into a dusty patch, and until the dust settles, she's putting her energy into what she can actually count on.

We're breaking down:

• Why tracking your numbers keeps you honest about what's working (and why nothing in marketing is precious)
• The ads, PR, and events experiments that didn't pay off, and why she's still glad she tried them
• Why Tayler is the face of Enji on purpose, and what getting rejected every day has taught her about trust
• How she and her husband built a bootstrapped company on three part-time contractors, with no paychecks for themselves
• What's next for Enji? Connecting your marketing to Claude and ChatGPT instead of competing with them

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Were you online enough this week? If not, here’s what you missed:

1. A recruiter posted that bringing an iced coffee to an interview is unprofessional and would probably cost a candidate the job.
2. The internet lost it.
3. I had to ruin my own TikTok algorithm just to catch up on the discourse, and you might not like my take: the recruiter isn't wrong.

In this week’s episode we're breaking down:

• The three things that actually drive a hiring decision, and why only one of them is in the candidate's control on interview day
• Why "unprofessional" is a culture-specific judgment, not an objective fact, and why that's actually not a bad thing
• What happens when your culture is undefined and your team is making hiring calls on vibes instead of something you've actually written down
• The question I want every founder listening to this to sit with: what's your iced coffee?

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Some things are just impossible to ignore, and after working with over 150 businesses at Paradigm, I’ve noticed a pattern too good to keep to myself.

This week I’m talking all about the three traits I notice in founders who scale, compared to the founders who seem to stay stuck right where they are.

We're breaking down:

• Why needing too much information to make a decision can actually hold you back
• What it actually means to be calm in the eye of the storm
• And why founders who can say the hard things clearly are the ones who find the most success (and burn the fewest bridges)

One caveat before you hit play: not every trait here is right for every stage of business. I'll tell you exactly who this episode is for in the first few minutes — and if the timing isn't right, file it away for later.

The traits themselves are simple. Building the track record to actually trust them is the hard part.

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If you're using AI to help run your business (and let's be honest, who isn't), there's a real chance it already has access to employee information it legally shouldn't.

This week we're breaking down:

• The three places employee data can accidentally end up in an AI's hands: your Drive settings, your AI's own settings, and your internal policies
• Why "business" or "enterprise" AI plans protect you less than you'd think
• A simple email trick to keep sensitive employee files out of reach entirely
• Why your recorded meetings could end up read back to you in a courtroom someday

None of this is about fear-mongering AI, but it is about making sure the tools you're already using don't accidentally put your team, or your business, at legal risk.

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This week we’re joined by Braden Drake: wedding industry lawyer and longtime friend.

We cover a lot in this episode, but it all keeps circling back to one idea: information used to be the thing a business could sell. Now that AI can get you information in a snap, connection is what’s really for sale.

We're breaking down:

• Classifying your team by what you actually need, not what’s easiest to avoid
• What to do when someone steals your work (hint: it’s not a lawsuit)
• The real reason people quit small teams.
• Braden’s “green flag” system for actually following through on priorities.

We ask a lot of important questions in this episode, but an important one remains unanswered: Should Braden and I start a podcast?

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Every founder bottleneck comes down to one of two things:

First, capacity. You don’t have time to do everything (and it certainly doesn’t help that what you think is a “quick 15-minute task” usually takes much longer to complete.)

Then there’s clarity. Your team doesn’t have the information or permission to make decisions without you, so you become the thing in the way of getting things done.

We can’t snap our fingers and give you more hours in the day (believe me, we’ve tried), but we can help with the clarity problem, and that’s exactly what we’re doing in this episode.

We’re breaking down:

• Why founder bottlenecks are usually about control, not capability
• How to approach clarity bottlenecks differently than capacity ones
• What your team’s questions actually say about you as a leader
• What happens when you avoid feedback to hide from difficult conversations

Talking about being the bottleneck in your business can feel awkward and boring. But being the bottleneck in your business can be the difference between moving forward or staying stuck.

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Can your business run without you? This question is a bit of a two-parter.

First there's the day-to-day. Your team, your SOPs, your business's ability to keep things moving whether you're there or not.

Then there's the bigger picture. Quality control, vision for the future, the judgment calls nobody else can make for you. That's what this week's episode is all about.

We're breaking down:

• Why revenue isn't the tell-all metric. The year Kira ran her business almost entirely without her, and what it cost long after the P&L still looked fine.
• The four things that stay yours, no matter what you delegate. What quality looks like going out the door, the relationship context living in your head, the "no list" you enforce without saying it out loud, and the escalation logic your team is guessing at.
• What getting laid off from her own COO job taught Kira about culture. Thirteen and a half years in, and how a right-hand person can quietly absorb the whole business without anyone deciding that on purpose.

Season 3 runs on questions like this one. Subscribe to the newsletter to keep the conversation going every week.

This week we're sitting down with Stacia, founder and CEO of Switch It Up Designs, a seven-figure digital marketing agency, and co-founder of authority.io — a DIY ad platform that lets small business owners run expert-level ads in four clicks. Her team manages over $8 million in annual ad spend and has helped generate over $500 million in client revenue. She's also one of our clients — so we can personally vouch for the culture she's built.

Listen in to hear:

• How she went from a modern dance degree and a failed $99-a-year business to a seven-figure agency
• Why paid media is the only marketing channel that can actually guarantee your growth
• What authority.io is and why it's changing the game for small business owners
• Why the founders with the best retention are the ones who just genuinely give a shit
• The AI conversation nobody is having honestly enough

Nobody wants to be in this position. But if you clicked on this one, you probably need it — and we're glad you're here.

Nothing we say can make firing someone feel good, but this episode breaks down everything you need to know to ensure you're letting someone go with integrity, in a way that protects your business and lets you come out the other side with your culture intact. Because firing someone thoughtfully can actually strengthen your team's trust in you. Doing it poorly can destroy it.

Listen in to hear:

1. Why firing someone is not a failure of leadership — but avoiding it when it's necessary usually is
2. The mistakes leaders make that turn a clean exit into a compliance nightmare
3. Why most termination lawsuits aren't about the firing — they're about the story that doesn't add up
4. What your team is actually watching for when someone gets let go
5. The things you should never say in a termination meeting — and what to say instead
6. Why by the time you're ready to have the conversation, your team probably already saw it coming

Get the Clean Exit Bundle: https://paradigmconsulting.thrivecart.com/clean-exit-bundle/