The Branding Laboratory

Getting people to care about something is hard. Getting them to work together on it long enough to change anything is harder.

Hank Rubin, author of Collaborative Leadership and founder of the Institute for Collaborative Leadership, joins Deevo Tindall to talk about power, purpose, and how to build community around a cause.

Whether you are building a movement or a business, the same rules apply.

What we explore

• How a summer day in Rochester in 1964 set the direction of Hank's life at age 11
• Why the purpose of power is always to cause change, and what happens when it isn't
• What collaborative leadership actually is, and why charisma has little to do with it
• Hank's four P's for building community around a cause: purpose, principles, people, process
• Why big problems like homelessness need a shared system instead of separate missions
• The "designated worrier" every collaboration needs

About Hank Rubin

Hank Rubin, PhD, is the founder and principal consultant of the Institute for Collaborative Leadership and the founder of RocLeads, the Rochester Center for Collaborative Leadership. He is the author of the bestselling Collaborative Leadership: Developing Effective Partnerships for Communities and Schools (Corwin) and more than 70 books, articles, and chapters on leadership, education, and social justice. Hank has served as vice president of the Rochester Area Community Foundation, Associate State Superintendent of Education in Ohio, a dean and professor at universities in Illinois, Ohio, and Minnesota, and a commissioner on the Rochester Housing Authority. Today he coaches leaders who are building collaborations to solve social, educational, and community problems.

Guest Links

• Institute for Collaborative Leadership: https://collaborative-leaders.org
• About Hank: https://collaborative-leaders.org/about-hank
• Leadership Reimagined toolkit: https://collaborative-leaders.org/shop/ols/products/leadership-reimagined-reimagining-collaboration-when-the-world-is-pulling-us-apart
• ICL leadership blog: https://collaborative-leaders.org/icls-leadership-blogs
• RocLeads, the Rochester Center for Collaborative Leadership: https://collaborative-leaders.org/rocleads-1
• Collaborative Leadership (Corwin): https://us.corwin.com/en-us/nam/collaborative-leadership/book232488
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/collaborativeleadership/

Resources mentioned

• Collaborative Leadership by Hank Rubin
• Leadership Reimagined toolkit by Hank Rubin
• Start with Why by Simon Sinek
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey ("begin with the end in mind")
• HUD 2025 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report

Chapters

00:00 Cold open

00:49 Welcome to The Branding Laboratory

01:38 The thread: getting people to care and move together

03:52 Meet Hank Rubin

05:03 Rochester, 1964

06:42 A family on Joseph Avenue

07:21 "Where you fit into all this"

08:11 What 11-year-old Hank figured out

10:18 Deevo: a gift is a moral obligation

12:25 Ice rinks and neighborhoods

13:33 The rabbi's answer

15:02 You live on in the people you affect

15:58 We always choose how we show up

17:18 Deevo pushes back on "start with why"

18:27 The purpose of power is to cause change

19:19 Power without purpose is greed

20:21 Deevo's first renaissance

21:42 Power as responsibility with reach

22:06 Hank turns the question on Deevo

23:25 Making the unconscious conscious

24:39 Does power corrupt?

25:56 Learning from books instead of firsthand

27:26 Technology shows you, reading teaches you

28:25 What Hank does today

28:48 Thrust into leadership early

30:17 The mentors who stopped him

31:06 Superintendent, dean, executive director

31:28 The book Collaborative Leadership

32:01 What collaborative leadership is

33:10 Collaboration in a polarized time

34:08 From a dark age to a renaissance

35:08 Leadership Reimagined

36:23 Leadership is influence toward an outcome

37:16 Hank's work in 30 seconds

38:27 Real examples: homelessness and the arts

40:06 The problem is bigger than any one solution

41:44 Community is people in roles

42:05 Aligning people to a shared vision

43:24 The core tenets of building around a cause

45:41 Purpose, principles, people, process

48:40 Start by gathering the willing

50:26 The right people in the right discussion

51:37 Everyone brings a different stick

52:55 Deevo's homeless outreach experience

55:19 Deevo's case for a command center

56:32 So where do you start?

56:55 Why organizations work in silos

57:22 Hank's lesson from a $200 million philanthropy

58:30 Treat it like emergency medicine

59:38 The emotional thread

1:00:19 An alternative battle plan: a new renaissance

1:02:15 Deevo's five groups for Charlotte

1:04:29 Deevo's takeaway

1:05:10 The designated worrier

1:06:36 Where to find Hank

1:07:29 Deevo's close

1:10:53 Outro

About The Branding Laboratory

The Branding Laboratory is where founders and leaders bring the business, decision, or tension they are actually wrestling with and put it on the table. Deevo Tindall, Founder Business Architect and Strategic Advisor, follows the thread underneath the obvious problem to explore how identity, leadership, operations, positioning, relationships, and strategy shape what happens next.

Great strategy, talented leaders, and the business still isn't firing on all cylinders.

Leadership system architect Philip C. Curran joins Deevo Tindall to explain leadership drift, the Drift Tax it puts on a company, and the eight promises from his book The Hidden Emotional Contract.

If you lead a team of any size, this is the conversation to have before your next leadership meeting.

This episode of The Branding Laboratory is supported by Chemical Free Body.

Detox and superfoods made with natural ingredients.

Learn more at www.chemicalfreebody.com

What we explore

• Why leadership works on two levels: the interpersonal and the enterprise
• The Hidden Emotional Contract and the eight promises leaders either honor or break
• Leadership drift and its three most common causes
• How one company's 12 executives gave 8 different answers about their own strategy
• The Drift Tax, and what leadership misalignment actually costs
• Why culture is the lived experience of employees interacting with their leaders

About Philip C. Curran

Philip C. Curran is the founder of Rinnovare, a senior advisory firm that works with CEOs, CHROs, and private equity partners on leadership and human capital systems. He calls himself a leadership system architect. Phil created the RQ™ System and the Hidden Emotional Contract framework, and he is the author of The Hidden Emotional Contract: The Eight Promises That Build Trust, Culture, and Performance. His career spans nearly 40 years in consulting, including 13 years at Mercer, leading the HR consulting practice for the western U.S. at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and serving as a chief human resources officer, including in a health system.

Guest Links (verified)

• Rinnovare: https://www.rinnovarehr.com
• Book a call with Phil: https://calendly.com/pcurran-rinnovarehr/30min
• Email: [email protected]
• Rinnovare Insights (Phil's articles): https://blog.rinnovarehr.com
• The Drift Tax™ Explained in Under 3 Minutes: https://blog.rinnovarehr.com (June 30, 2026 post)
• Philip C. Curran Advisory: https://pccadvisory.com
• The Hidden Emotional Contract (print): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H9P29X9X
• The Hidden Emotional Contract (Kindle): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H9Z6JY1X
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipcurran/

Resources mentioned

• The Hidden Emotional Contract by Philip C. Curran
• Peter Drucker's work on management and leadership
• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• Simon Sinek's work on leadership

Chapters

00:00 Cold open

00:44 The thread: how leadership lives in your people

01:16 Deevo on the many kinds of leadership

02:06 Leadership is a relationship

02:23 Two levels: interpersonal and enterprise

03:00 The explicit contract and the unwritten one

03:43 The Hidden Emotional Contract

04:23 Leadership as an operating system

05:05 When success depends on heroes

06:07 The human dynamics underneath

07:21 What good leadership looks like

07:46 What leaders are too close to see

08:45 "Great strategy, talented team, something is off"

09:16 Fire the coaches?

10:03 Leadership drift

11:21 What drift costs

12:04 Deevo's thesis: unconscious leadership

12:42 The three causes of leadership drift

13:21 Employees feel the relationship

14:10 Teams that dislike each other can still work

14:51 Operating rhythm and decision rights

15:31 Role clarity, turf wars, and orphaned issues

16:41 What teams learn when leaders duck issues

17:25 Leaders model expected behavior

18:15 Phil's journey

18:34 40 years in consulting

19:24 Mercer, a CHRO role, and PwC

21:01 Pulled into leadership work

21:38 The man in the mirror

22:36 "I don't want this guy raising my children"

23:16 His teachers: Drucker, Collins, Sinek

24:52 His father's advice on managers and leaders

26:11 Leadership system architect

27:23 Five domains, 20 sub-dimensions

28:04 The RQ score

28:48 The Drift Tax

29:25 90-day and 12-month corrections

29:36 Learned or intuitive leadership?

30:29 The eight promises

33:18 Deevo: is leadership systems or emotion?

34:07 The short answer is both

35:58 The emotional application layer

37:19 What Phil was missing at 31

38:35 Where is consistency?

39:11 Deevo's own consistency check

41:00 Boiling it down to eight

41:58 The hidden cost of bad leadership

42:04 Stop relitigating decisions

43:04 12 executives, 8 answers

44:50 The results six months later

46:13 Why healthcare

46:47 Decision fatigue in the CEO's chair

48:58 Deevo's hospital client

49:38 Everybody agrees culture matters

50:11 Culture is the lived experience of employees

50:43 Deevo's takeaway

51:14 Where to find Phil

51:54 Outro

About The Branding Laboratory

The Branding Laboratory is where founders and leaders bring the business, decision, or tension they are actually wrestling with and put it on the table. Deevo Tindall, Founder Business Architect and Strategic Advisor, follows the thread underneath the obvious problem to explore how identity, leadership, operations, positioning, relationships, and strategy shape what happens next.

A lot of successful men can keep the job, the family, and the calendar running long after their life has stopped fitting them.

Divorce coach Mark Aylward joins Deevo Tindall to talk about what happens when that illusion breaks, the choice between getting bitter and getting better, and how a man learns to lead himself first.

Two men, two divorces, and an honest conversation about rebuilding.

This episode of The Branding Laboratory is supported by Chemical Free Body.

Detox and superfoods made with natural ingredients.

Learn more at www.chemicalfreebody.com

What we explore

• Why many high-achieving men function inside misalignment until something breaks

• The choice that keeps coming back: get bitter, or get better

• Why vulnerability is a strength, and why so many men have nowhere to take it

• Kind candor, and the difference between being nice and being kind

• Masculinity as responsibility, and why showing up every day matters

• What "no one is coming" really means, and why it sets you free

About Mark Aylward

Mark Aylward is a divorce coach and mentor for high-achieving men, including founders and C-suite executives, and the creator of the R.E.A.L. Framework: Reflect, Evaluate, Activate, Lead. He spent more than 30 years in IT recruiting and staffing and built and sold two companies. After a ten-year legal battle in which he represented himself in family court, he won sole custody of his three children. He is now writing his first book, No One Is Coming.

Guest Links:

• Website: https://markaylward.com

• Free 5-minute R.E.A.L. Assessment: https://therealassessment.com/

• Book a free strategy session: https://calendar.markaylward.com/book

• Blog: https://markaylward.com/blog

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aylwardmark/

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@maylward

Chapters

00:00 Cold open

00:20 The thread: when the life a man built stops fitting

00:49 Meet Mark Aylward

01:39 35 years of career conversations

02:47 Ten years in a family courtroom

03:33 Why he chose founders and executives

03:52 What raising daughters taught him

04:14 Deevo on raising two daughters

05:45 Deevo's divorce 13 years ago

06:43 Mark's story and the stages of grief

07:43 So few resources for men

08:10 The night everything changed

09:16 "That's not sustainable": a series of choices

09:47 Fortify your body and your mind

10:51 Representing himself in court

11:33 We always choose how we respond

12:32 How men were raised then and now

15:37 Bitter or better

16:09 Who Mark is, and who he isn't

16:56 Has the world changed too much?

19:25 The biggest change: how we take in information

20:12 What men are taught to hide

20:23 Vulnerability and caring leadership

21:21 Getting men to have the conversation

21:59 Where shame comes from

22:49 Using guilt as a gauge

23:34 The Flywheel of Life

24:42 Alignment to what? Your values

25:24 Listen to what people say, watch what they do

26:04 Everything is information

26:26 High achievers function inside misalignment

27:16 Running on half a tank

28:42 Who is ready to do the work

29:07 Kind candor

30:03 We need to be reminded more than taught

30:28 Deevo: "I'm fine, I'm great"

31:51 Why pity never helped

32:11 Ten years without dating

33:02 Self-reflection is where the juice is

33:34 Deevo's sauna conversations

35:13 Men do want to talk about this

35:29 Trust and objectivity

36:37 Vulnerability opens the floodgates

37:38 When vulnerability gets punished

38:57 The day in court

40:22 Walking out and collapsing

41:34 Masculinity as performance or responsibility

43:08 The art of communication

43:53 Masculinity includes kindness

44:44 Deevo's definition of masculinity

45:17 The move from boy to man

46:01 Show up every day

46:43 Why accountability partners work

47:15 Deevo: communication is the through line

48:20 Communication in his relationship

49:28 Do you want me to listen or help?

50:08 What can I do for you?

50:24 What fatherhood teaches

52:01 Fatherhood is leadership

53:12 Pause before you open the door

54:02 Deevo on a friend out of alignment

55:20 No One Is Coming

56:22 Finishing the book

57:38 Where to find Mark

58:29 Personal and professional are connected

58:50 You don't have to isolate

59:47 Mark's close: don't do it alone

1:01:08 Deevo's takeaway: lead yourself first

1:02:24 Deevo's close

1:03:33 Outro

About The Branding Laboratory

The Branding Laboratory is where founders and leaders bring the business, decision, or tension they are actually wrestling with and put it on the table. Deevo Tindall, Founder Business Architect and Strategic Advisor, follows the thread underneath the obvious problem to explore how identity, leadership, operations, positioning, relationships, and strategy shape what happens next.

There are thousands of people who do what you do, with the same skills and the same promises.

Laura Bull, former Sony Music executive and author of From Individual to Empire, joins Deevo Tindall to break down what a personal brand actually is and why it is the thing that separates you when everything else is equal.

If you have ever felt like you sound like everyone else in your industry, start here.

This episode of The Branding Laboratory is supported by Chemical Free Body.

Detox and superfoods made with natural ingredients.

Learn more at www.chemicalfreebody.com

What we explore

• Why personal branding works differently from product branding, and what that means for founders
• Finding the "swoosh" inside a person, and why your red is different from my red
• Shared values as the only real driver of brand loyalty and word of mouth
• The trust deficit, AI-written content, and why so much of LinkedIn sounds the same
• Brand pillars: the Venn diagram of image, narrative, and product that makes you recognizable
• Marketing is what you say for 20 days, branding is what you say for 20 years

About Laura Bull

Laura Bull is the founder and CEO of The Brand Management Co. and the author of From Individual to Empire: A Guide to Building an Authentic and Powerful Brand. She spent ten years at Sony Music Entertainment, where she became one of the company's youngest executives and led marketing and artist development. She holds a BBA from Belmont University's Mike Curb School of Music Business and a master's from SMU, where she also taught as an adjunct at the Temerlin Advertising Institute. Today she helps entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and public figures turn who they are into competitive, sustainable business brands.

Guest Links (verified)

• Website: https://www.thebrandmgmt.com
• Free brand checklist: https://www.thebrandmgmt.com/brand-checklist
• Brand Equity Quiz: https://www.thebrandmgmt.com/quiz
• Free chapter and the book: https://www.thebrandmgmt.com/the-book
• From Individual to Empire on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1632992612
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurabullbranding/
• Instagram (Laura): https://www.instagram.com/thelaurabull/
• Instagram (company): https://www.instagram.com/thebrandmgmtco

Resources mentioned

• From Individual to Empire by Laura Bull
• The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor
• Grit by Angela Duckworth
• Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles
• The Hour Between Dog and Wolf by John Coates [CONFIRM this is the book Deevo meant]
• Hemingway Editor

Chapters

00:00 Cold open

00:28 The thread: why a personal brand separates you

00:50 Meet Laura Bull

01:19 Personal branding versus product branding

03:01 Finding the swoosh inside a person

03:50 The perfume analogy

04:16 Identity work comes first

05:56 Your red is different from my red

06:37 Shared values create brand loyalty

09:11 Deevo's first pair of Jordans

11:44 Branding is about an emotional response

12:24 You are not for everybody

12:47 What a buyer is really asking

13:59 Social proof and followers

14:48 Marketing brain and branding brain

15:10 Go deep before you go wide

16:25 The level playing field

17:53 How many touches it takes now

19:04 Is know, like, trust dead?

20:20 The trust deficit and AI content

21:34 Why everyone on LinkedIn sounds the same

22:03 Laura's path from Belmont to Sony

24:06 Working at Sony while still in school

24:32 Leaving Sony: nobody knew marketing from branding

25:25 Marketing is 20 days, branding is 20 years

26:10 Writing the book at SMU

27:32 Would she do it all again?

28:27 Social media is marketing, how you show up is brand

29:40 The psychology of color

30:56 Your zone of genius meets your customer

31:42 No response is a response

32:08 AI, LinkedIn, and thought leadership

33:49 The Venn diagram: image, narrative, product

35:08 Brand pillars work as a group

37:19 Consistency is key

38:15 Brand pillars elevate, content pillars change

38:41 Talent is never enough

40:32 Superstars who turn down $10 million deals

41:48 There is no such thing as an it factor

42:38 Skill versus story

44:16 The market needs a reason to choose you

45:36 Where to start: introspection

46:13 Positive psychology and the What's Next sections

47:02 "If you think I want a sentence, I want a paragraph"

48:07 Your ego brain and your business brain

49:58 Identity work and shadow work

50:48 Running a SWOT analysis on yourself

51:43 From the face of a business to a real business

53:15 Get the first product right before you extend

53:59 Laura's three brand pillars

55:49 Deevo's pillars, and Laura's correction

57:17 The hide-the-name test

58:12 Where to find Laura

58:49 The business case for personal branding

1:00:37 Why you, why this, why now

1:01:19 Closing thoughts

1:01:41 Deevo's close: everyone else is already taken

1:03:17 Outro

About The Branding Laboratory

The Branding Laboratory is where founders and leaders bring the business, decision, or tension they are actually wrestling with and put it on the table. Deevo Tindall, Founder Business Architect and Strategic Advisor, follows the thread underneath the obvious problem to explore how identity, leadership, operations, positioning, relationships, and strategy shape what happens next.

Most founders have 20 years of stories and still answer "what do you do" with a job title.

Ghostwriter and author Joey Himelfarb joins Deevo Tindall to talk about the questions that pull a real story out of a career, and why so many leaders keep hiding behind their credentials.

If you have ever felt like you have nothing worth sharing, this one is for you.

This episode of The Branding Laboratory is supported by Chemical Free Body.

Detox and superfoods made with natural ingredients.

Learn more at www.chemicalfreebody.com

What we explore

• Why "when you pass away, a library goes with you" changed how Joey listens to people
• The three questions Joey asks every person: where were you, where are you, where are you going
• The teeth trick that keeps you quiet long enough to actually hear someone
• How a SWOT analysis on a person opens up the story they forgot they had
• Why so many accomplished people hide behind their resume, and the emotional risk of being seen
• Where Joey draws the line on AI in his writing process

About Joey Himelfarb

Joey Himelfarb is an author, speaker, ghostwriter, and founder of Narrative Partners LLC. He calls himself a conversational challenger. Trained in physics and mechanical engineering, he built his career in sales, wrote a book to help job seekers sell themselves, and has spent 20 years presenting to people in career transition. Today he helps people turn the life they have lived into a story in their own voice.

Guest Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/himelfarb/ (Joey: "I think I'm the only Joey on LinkedIn")
• Joey's book for job seekers: https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Paint-Your-Kitchen-Yourself-ebook/dp/B0B61YH2NJ?ref_=ast_author_dp&th=1&psc=1

Chapters

00:00 Cold open

00:43 Meet Joey Himelfarb

01:48 An unemployment networking group in 2003

03:53 When you pass away, a library goes with you

04:12 Where were you, where are you, where are you going

05:04 Be interested before you're interesting

06:41 Is curiosity a skill?

07:09 The topper problem

08:38 Why people struggle to listen

09:27 The teeth trick

09:42 Guardrails as a host

11:48 The signs he saw as a kid

13:07 To thine own self be true

14:59 Positive beats negative

17:50 The four D's of the news

19:26 What he loves most: the conversations

20:00 Imposter syndrome

21:22 Being the catalyst

22:57 We always choose how we respond

23:20 Joey in 20 seconds

24:33 Why are you writing, and who is it for?

25:41 Your story, my words, your voice

27:01 The IP belongs to the client

28:42 Where Joey stands on AI

31:41 What is worth turning into thought leadership

34:04 A SWOT analysis on a person

35:21 Deevo's keynote in Tampa

37:46 Hidden Figures and the stories we never hear

38:39 Why people hide behind their credentials

39:59 The emotional risk of being seen

40:39 Advice or a question?

41:38 Thomas Edison

43:25 Writing and self-awareness

45:01 The thread through past, present, and future

47:13 From engineer to salesperson to problem solver

48:58 For anyone who thinks they have nothing to share

51:52 Where to find Joey (and what his name means)

52:15 Deevo's close: a library of stories

54:35 Outro

About The Branding Laboratory

The Branding Laboratory is where founders and leaders bring the business, decision, or tension they are actually wrestling with and put it on the table. Deevo Tindall, Founder Business Architect and Strategic Advisor, follows the thread underneath the obvious problem to explore how identity, leadership, operations, positioning, relationships, and strategy shape what happens next.

Carl Jung had a name for the strange period before a major life change: the constellation of the unconscious, when something inside you activates long before you understand what it means.

In this solo monologue, Deevo breaks down a five-stage framework for recognizing that period, working through it without blowing up your life prematurely, and turning what you discover into an actual decision.

If something in your business, your relationships, or your own motivation has quietly stopped working the way it used to, this episode gives you a real place to start looking.

This episode of The Branding Laboratory is supported by Chemical Free Body.

Detox and superfoods made with natural ingredients.

Learn more at www.chemicalfreebody.com

What this monologue explores:

• Why the explanations we default to, burnout, midlife crisis, loneliness, sometimes cover for something deeper actually happening.
• The first diagnostic question: what has started losing its charge, and what that thing was actually giving you.
• Finding the thread: why the same pattern often shows up across your business, relationships, and parenting at once.
• Why the version of you who built your current life might not be qualified to design the next one.
• Why rebuilding too quickly after a identity shift usually backfires, and what to do in the uncomfortable space instead.
• The four questions that turn awareness into an actual decision, rather than just insight you never act on.

Chapters

00:00 A strange psychological thing before major change

00:24 Carl Jung’s constellation of the unconscious

00:47 The signs: losing interest, people feeling different, goalposts going empty

01:07 What we call it instead: laziness, confusion, burnout, midlife crisis

02:03 When it is actually your identity losing its grip

02:36 Why the business is rarely the first thing changing

03:24 The five-stage rubric, and why journaling matters

03:42 Stage one: what has started losing its charge

05:20 What the thing was actually giving you

05:34 Stage two: what have you become unable to ignore

06:49 Finding the thread: the common denominator across your life

08:33 Stage three: what version of you built the life you are living

08:57 Is that person still qualified to design the next chapter

09:49 Why identity is emotional, not intellectual

10:31 Stage four: do not rebuild too quickly

11:02 The intermediate state, and why it is valuable

11:44 What to actually pay attention to while you wait

12:29 Stage five: turning awareness into architecture

12:54 The four questions: what no longer belongs, what still belongs, what you are pretending not to know, what decision you are avoiding

15:00 What you would do differently if you trusted what you learned

15:30 The guy in the sauna who wasn’t doing anything

16:41 The warning: not every hard thing is destiny

17:14 Everything is data, including your feelings

17:52 Back to Jung: awareness is everything

19:03 Closing thoughts and the actual work

About The Branding Laboratory

The Branding Laboratory is where founders and leaders bring the business, decision, or tension they are actually wrestling with and put it on the table. Deevo Tindall, Founder Business Architect and Strategic Advisor, follows the thread underneath the obvious problem to explore how identity, leadership, operations, positioning, relationships, and strategy shape what happens next.

Deevo Positioning: Founder Business Architect and Strategic Advisor

Robert Manasier has spent decades building companies, launching products, and studying customers across more than 180 startups and 400 products and services.

This conversation covers why growth and scale are not the same thing, why 90 to 93 percent of businesses fail for reasons that have nothing to do with the idea, and what it actually looks like to stay in your lane without trapping yourself inside of it.

If your business has too many ideas, too many tools, or too much overhead right now, the diagnostic in the middle of this episode gives you a real place to start.

This episode of The Branding Laboratory is supported by Chemical Free Body.

Detox and superfoods made with natural ingredients.

Learn more at www.chemicalfreebody.com

What we explore:

• The massive early failure that changed how Robert has built every company since.
• Why outsourcing does not mean giving away your power, and how to actually vet who you bring in.
• The difference between growth and scale, and why confusing the two quietly wrecks businesses.
• The feasible, marketable, viable framework, and why viability is the piece that has not changed in decades.
• Why disconnection from reality, not a bad idea, is usually what actually kills a business.
• Deevo’s own admission that he might not be the best CEO for his own company, and what that actually means.

Guest Bio

Robert Manasier is a business builder and advisor who has spent decades launching products, building companies, and studying customer behavior. He has worked across more than 180 startups, hundreds of growth-stage companies, and more than 400 products and services, with a reported 100 percent retention rate across his portfolio companies. He is a first-generation American who started his first business, a property management and landscaping company, at age 13.

Guest Links

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertmanasier/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCqb-0vszz1LZCftekScKuAA

Chapters

00:00 The central question: how do you build around your zone of genius

00:31 Welcome and today’s thread

01:03 Introducing Robert Manasier

02:15 Why calling yourself an expert should worry you

03:18 Who Robert is as a man before the business talk

04:10 100 percent retention, and why relationships are the whole business

05:26 Starting a business at 13 to pay for college

07:25 The massive failure that changed everything

08:29 Is college still necessary

14:47 The thread of the show begins

15:44 What failing taught him about systems

19:02 Outsourcing does not mean giving away your power

20:41 Deevo’s own admission: am I the best CEO for my business

28:19 Secret shopping your own hires

31:14 Where to start when a business has too many ideas

31:50 The AI lead-gen trap: a thousand leads, twelve clients a week

40:33 Growth vs. scale, and why most people confuse them

44:41 Self-awareness as the single most important trait

49:11 What you do best, what you are weak at

51:27 The one thing that keeps businesses from surviving

54:32 The pizza parlor owner and real cash flow genius

54:50 Disconnection from reality, and the story of the yogi

01:00:26 Closing thoughts and the thread that keeps showing up

01:06:38 The symptoms of losing the thread

01:09:11 Simplicity as returning to the thread that connects everything

01:10:02 Closing reflections and where to find Robert

About The Branding Laboratory

The Branding Laboratory is where founders and leaders bring the business, decision, or tension they are actually wrestling with and put it on the table. Deevo Tindall, Founder Business Architect and Strategic Advisor, follows the thread underneath the obvious problem to explore how identity, leadership, operations, positioning, relationships, and strategy shape what happens next.

Carl Jung believed you are considerably more than the person you consciously think you are, and Deevo has spent ten years exploring what that actually means.

In this solo monologue, he breaks down identity coherence, the difference between control and agency, and why your shadow might contain your greatest strengths rather than just your worst impulses.

If you have ever felt like transformation should feel more like progress and less like confusion, this episode explains why the confusion is often the actual sign that something is working.

This episode of The Branding Laboratory is supported by Chemical Free Body.

Detox and superfoods made with natural ingredients.

Learn more at www.chemicalfreebody.com

What this monologue explores:

• Why transformation never feels like transformation while you are actually inside of it.
• Identity coherence: what happens when who you believe you are, what you say matters to you, and how you actually behave begin to line up.
• The difference between control and agency, with concrete examples from business, relationships, and parenting.
• Why the shadow is not just the parts of you that are ugly, it also contains strength, boldness, and authority you may have exiled.
• Synchronicity, the red truck theory, and why your attention genuinely changes what you notice in the world.
• How all of this connects directly to the Thread Method, the framework Deevo actually uses with clients.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome, and why this one is a monologue

00:45 What this show usually does, and why today is different

01:47 Ten years down the Carl Jung rabbit hole

02:34 Why transformation never feels like transformation while you are in it

03:43 Jung’s core proposition: you are more than who you think you are

05:00 Not interested in the manifestation version of this

06:21 Identity coherence, defined

06:43 The tests that reveal whether your identity actually holds

07:57 The brain as a prediction machine

09:05 The numinous, and holding both science and mystery as true

11:33 Alan Watts: you are something the universe is doing

12:12 A confession about control as a costume for fear

14:03 From control to agency

15:43 Complexes, and the Jung quote that changes everything

17:26 The shadow: not just what is ugly, also what is powerful

19:23 The cost of emotional suppression

20:45 Projection as a mirror and a doorway

22:26 Synchronicity, and the red truck theory

24:50 Unus mundus: the one world

26:19 The Thread Method, explained

26:45 The transcendent function: holding the tension instead of forcing a decision

30:42 Inflation, and an honest story from a week in Sedona

32:05 Individuation: building a self, then questioning it

34:14 A message to himself, and to anyone listening

39:35 The homework: pay attention, there is usually a thread

About The Branding Laboratory

The Branding Laboratory is where founders and leaders bring the business, decision, or tension they are actually wrestling with and put it on the table. Deevo Tindall, Founder Business Architect and Strategic Advisor, follows the thread underneath the obvious problem to explore how identity, leadership, operations, positioning, relationships, and strategy shape what happens next.

Deevo Positioning: Founder Business Architect and Strategic Advisor

Danielle Mercurio was told she was too much for most of her life, by the people closest to her, before she ever had the language to push back on it.

This conversation covers what that actually did to her, the years she spent escaping herself instead of facing it, and how she eventually built a business on the exact instinct she was once told to suppress.

If you have ever been handed a label by someone else and spent years living inside it, the second half of this episode names exactly how to stop.

This episode of The Branding Laboratory is supported by Chemical Free Body.

Detox and superfoods made with natural ingredients.

Learn more at www.chemicalfreebody.com

What we explore:

1: The zodiac scroll she took from a grocery store at four years old, and the sentence that shaped the next four decades.

2: What escapism actually looked like for her, and why understanding it builds compassion rather than judgment.

3: Why a business problem is almost never actually a business problem.

4: The coach who told her his own business model was to dangle a carrot, and why she told him he was in the wrong industry.

5: The business card found in a bathroom on a bad date, and the nonprofit it led her to help build.

6: The moment she finally understood what Deevo actually does, and why that understanding is what makes her recommend him to others.

Guest Bio: Danielle Mercurio is an astrologer, intuitive advisor, spiritual guide, speaker, performer, and retreat leader based in Austin, Texas. A former Gabby Bernstein insider, she has worked as a certified life coach for more than a decade, helping entrepreneurs, creatives, and visionaries navigate the crossroads moments where life looks like it should be working but something still feels off.

Chapters

00:00 The point of the show: that crossroads

00:19 Welcome, and introducing Danielle Mercurio

01:46 A 30,000 foot check-in

02:02 The zodiac scroll at four years old

06:49 Being told she was too much

09:14 The line between too much and too much for the wrong people

12:03 Society’s timeline and the mid-20s reckoning

13:07 The voice she heard

16:13 Escapism as a survival strategy

19:10 Childhood, parents, and being homeschooled

26:10 The pivot to meditation

28:31 Isness explained

29:48 A live heart meditation

32:21 The retreat and the guardian angels

36:22 From self-work to a real business

38:01 Who her ideal client actually is

40:28 Why it is almost never really a business problem

45:16 How she manages herself as a coach

48:54 The coach who called dangling the carrot his business model

51:13 Financial boundaries and reverse engineering her pricing

54:12 The business card in the bathroom

56:16 What she actually does, and why she loves it

59:12 The moment she finally understood what he does

01:00:39 Closing reflections

01:02:31 What Deevo actually does

01:04:33 Sign off

Connect with Danielle Mercurio

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daniellemercurio

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@DanielleMercurio⁩

Website: https://daniellemercurio.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-mercurio-%E2%9C%A8-61892237/

About The Branding Laboratory The Branding Laboratory is where founders and leaders bring the business, decision, or tension they are actually wrestling with and put it on the table. Deevo Tindall, Founder Business Architect and Strategic Advisor, follows the thread underneath the obvious problem to explore how identity, leadership, operations, positioning, relationships, and strategy shape what happens next.

Deevo Positioning: Founder Business Architect and Strategic Advisor

Christina Kimbrough got sober on February 6th, 2020, weeks before the world shut down. What could have been a devastating coincidence turned into the best possible timing, and what started as a small meetup with a friend eventually grew into Free Life, Hampton Roads' first fully nonalcoholic mobile bar and a community built entirely around the idea that connection does not require a drink in your hand.

In this conversation on The Brand Lab, Christina and Deevo go deep on what alcohol was actually doing for her before she quit, how military spouse culture shaped her drinking, why sober does not mean boring, and the much larger conversation underneath all of it: why an entire generation is lonelier than any generation studied before it, and what that has to do with digital convenience, the death of third spaces, and social skills nobody was ever taught to maintain.

This episode of The Branding Laboratory is supported by Chemical Free Body.

Detox and superfoods made with natural ingredients.

Learn more at www.chemicalfreebody.com

What You'll Learn:

• How military spouse culture and undiagnosed ADHD shaped Christina's relationship with alcohol, and what getting sober right before Covid actually looked like.
• How a casual meetup with one friend grew to 500 people in five months, and became a fully bootstrapped nonalcoholic mobile bar business.
• Why Christina's tagline, deep connections without alcohol, is really about community first and sobriety second.
• The concept of micro tears in the social fabric, and how Uber, DoorDash, and digital convenience have quietly eroded the muscle of relying on other people.
• Why sensitivity and the need to feel seen became the engine behind Christina's entire business, and how that shows up in her Staying in the Room workshop.
• The real difference between conscious listening and waiting for your turn to talk, and why most conversations fail before they even start.

About Christina Kimbrough:

Christina Kimbrough is the founder and CEO of Free Life, a social enterprise based in Hampton Roads, Virginia, reimagining how people gather through elevated, alcohol-free experiences. She is six years sober and openly shares her journey through addiction, mental health, and recovery to help break stigma and reduce isolation. She leads workshops including Storytelling That Sells and Staying in the Room, and has spoken at Brown University and Tidewater Community College. She is an active-duty military spouse based in Hampton Roads, Virginia.

🕐 TIMESTAMPS

00:00 — Cold open: how a small idea grew into something big

01:19 — Welcome to The Brand Lab

02:12 — Introducing Christina Kimbrough and Free Life

06:55 — The military spouse culture and how her drinking began

08:54 — Childhood, faith, and why alcohol was never present growing up

10:23 — What alcohol actually did for her: loneliness, undiagnosed ADHD, and trauma

12:03 — Getting sober February 6th, 2020, weeks before Covid

14:02 — We are all enough as we are: unpacking the core belief

16:06 — How Free Life started: a meetup that grew to 500 people

17:12 — The nonalcoholic mobile bar: from pitch competition to real business

20:04 — The stigma of loneliness, and why we are living in one of the loneliest periods on record

25:52 — The theory on women, the workforce, and the changing shape of the family

32:36 — The overconsumption of technology and the digital convenience economy

36:27 — Feeling unseen as a child, and how that became the engine behind Free Life

44:04 — Staying in the room: teaching people how to actually listen

48:53 — The membership debate: why Christina keeps some events free

50:39 — Closing thoughts and where to find Christina

Connect with Christina Kimbrough:

http://www.freelifellc.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinagraw/

http://www.instagram.com/ckimbrough1

About The Brand Lab:

The Brand Lab is a thinking room for founders and leaders who are building something real. Our host Deevo explores the intersection of identity, positioning, and strategy with people who have already done the work and are still doing it. New episodes every week.

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