In today’s episode, we talk with Johanna Gottlieb about what we can do -in our own businesses, and in our community- to affect change. Despite her incredibly busy work, Johanna makes time to chair two teams that are important to her values: PromoKitchen and most recently, chair of PPAI’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force (2021) which is the subject of our chat with Jo today.

Today our community of distributors achieved an incredible milestone: $1 Billion in network volume. Together, we achieved this in less than 10 years. While we did some virtual high fives around the virtual office, this milestone is not about us, it’s about you, the skummunity.

Adam Bluestein’s article is written from the perspective of someone outside of our business who did a tremendous amount of research into the companies that use branded merch and why.

So, what happens when the largest distributor in Canada and one of the most progressive brands in the business face integrating their companies, their brands and their clients? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the story of how Mitch Freed, Genumark’s Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, and Stephen Musgrave, Rightsleeve’s Vice President and General Manager guided the merger, their clients, and their teams over the past several months.

Josh Kozinski is the founder and CEO of Sky High Marketing. Sky High Marketing serves many Fortune 500 brands, they are the official promotional merchandise partner of the Milwaukee Bucks and they have offices both in Las Vegas and Milwaukee. Today, we talk with Josh about several timely topics including shops, inventory, and more!

Lee Fine is the co-founder and the head of sales and strategy at Juice Marketing, a marketing production house focused on creating interactive experiences, which includes disciplines like branded merch, web development, and video production, fulfillment, print, and creative services too.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, many of us were inspired with ideas about how we could help our communities. Showpony is a branded merch company located in Augusta, GA and together with their sister company Wier/Stewart, a strategic creative firm, they too wondered how they could help.

Sarah Whitaker is the Owner and Client Success Manager for Williams Advertising and the founder of its newly launched division called Branded. What Sarah does so incredibly well is that she obsesses over the user experience. And being a native to all things digital, she naturally bridges human-to-human engagement with digital sales proficiency.

Our guest today is Paul Roetzer, Paul is the creator of the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute and is the founder of the agency PR 20/20. In this #skucast, we talk with Paul about the results from this landmark study but we chat with Paul not just as the preeminent leader of AI progress in marketing but also as an entrepreneur and marketing professional himself.

Our guest on this #skucast is Rhys Bowen, VP of Sales for Name Brand Promotions and we kick off our conversation talking about this decisive moment when it comes to creating campaigns for clients.