The Branding Laboratory

Bobby Humes spent ten years as an Army combat veteran, then went on to serve as Chief HR Officer for the City of Seattle, before founding BH Consultancy to help executives, senior leaders, and public sector teams build cultures where people can actually contribute. This conversation on The Brand Lab covers what misalignment looks like in a leader long before anyone names it, why executive presence is a commodity that lives in someone else's mind and not just your own, and the specific mechanics of turning aspirational values into behaviors that actually hold up under pressure.

Bobby and Deevo trade metaphors for an hour, from double Dutch to roller coasters to Braveheart, but underneath the color is a genuinely rigorous framework for diagnosing bad leadership, confronting toxic political alliances inside organizations, and understanding why self-awareness without action is just a more sophisticated excuse.

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:

• What a misaligned leader actually looks like, and why it so often goes undiagnosed until burnout is already underway.
• The double Dutch metaphor for leadership: knowing when to walk in front, when to walk behind, and how to read that tension in real time.
• Three patterns of bad leadership Bobby has witnessed directly: the pet peeve collector, the traffic light who bottlenecks every decision, and the leader who cannot make a hard call.
• How to translate aspirational values into measurable behaviors, performance targets, and actual resource allocation instead of a poster on a wall.
• Bobby's method for confronting toxic political alliances and misplaced people inside an organization, using inquiry instead of accusation.
• Why self-awareness without action is a crutch, and what a real kitchen cabinet of 5 to 7 truth-tellers actually looks like.

About Bobby Humes:

Bobby Humes is an executive coach, leadership strategist, and founder of BH Consultancy, based in Tacoma, Washington. He served ten years in the United States Army as a combat veteran before leading human resources at the organizational level, including a term as Chief HR Officer for the City of Seattle. He holds a master's degree in human resource management and an executive coaching certification from the Hudson Institute of Coaching. His upcoming book, The Table, explores trust-centered leadership and what it actually takes to build cultures where people can contribute and belong.

🕐 TIMESTAMPS

00:00 — Welcome to The Brand Lab and introducing episode 102

02:18 — Introducing Bobby Humes

03:52 — The public sector as a place of innovation, not red tape

06:24 — What a misaligned leader actually looks like

08:27 — From jerk sergeant to leading from behind: a learned behavior

09:43 — The double Dutch metaphor: when to lead from front, when from behind

12:07 — Leadership as a roller coaster

12:45 — Three patterns of bad leadership: pet peeves, traffic lights, and indecision

15:56 — Deevo's executive bathroom story

20:28 — Translating aspirational values into measurable culture

24:02 — Values are revealed by repetition, not intention

26:15 — Getting full culture buy-in: message it 77 times, 77 ways

28:01 — Confronting rogue operators and political dissidence inside organizations

32:19 — The DEI misconception, and the difference between DEI and affirmative action

36:25 — Toxic political alliances and the wrong people in the wrong positions

41:04 — The hug, heart, or hand model for delivering feedback

46:11 — Self-awareness as a crutch vs. self-awareness as action

46:54 — The kitchen cabinet: 5 to 7 people who tell you what you need to hear

48:05 — Never arrived vs. you are already here: the debate

51:07 — Closing thoughts and where to find Bobby

Connect with Bobby Humes:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachbobby

Website: https://www.bhconsultants.co/

About The Brand Lab:

The Brand Lab is a thinking room for founders and leaders who are building something real. 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.

Subscribe so you never miss a conversation worth having.

Blaz Marolt spent his career being the person who could see the system behind everything: West Point, Army Ranger School, manufacturing plants, regional operations across eight countries, and the chief of staff seat inside a company that grew from six to seven figures. Then in 2023, a new boss put his entire team on a performance improvement plan to force higher output, 80% of the team quit, and Blaz ended up on six months of sick leave, unable to function.

This conversation on The Brand Lab includes a moment you do not usually get to see on a podcast: Deevo stops Blaz mid-pitch and coaches him, live, through refining his own positioning as a fractional COO. From there, the conversation moves into the identity crisis that followed his burnout, why everyone around him insisted he would make a great coach when it was the wrong fit entirely, and the full-body alignment he finally found once he stopped listening to what he was good at and started listening to what he actually wanted.

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:

• Why Blaz rejects the term coach entirely, and how his positioning as a fractional COO for coaches and consultants got sharper in real time during this conversation.
• What happened in 2023 when a new boss put an entire high-performing team on a performance improvement plan, and why 80% of them quit.
• The difference between being good at something and being aligned with it, and why Blaz spent a year building a coaching business he never actually wanted.
• How childhood trauma shaped Blaz’s relationship with structure, and why the military became the first stable system he ever experienced.
• The Jungian principle that until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
• Why Blaz decided his legacy is talking openly about mental health, and what changed in his relationships once he stopped maintaining friendships that no longer fit.

About Blaz Marolt:

Blaz Marolt is a West Point graduate and US Army Ranger School alum who spent five years in the Slovenian military before transitioning into manufacturing operations, IT consulting, and regional operations leadership across eight countries. He later served as chief of staff for a coaching company that grew from six to seven figures. He now works as a fractional COO and operations strategist, helping coaches and consultants streamline their back-end operations so they can stay in their zone of genius. He is based in Slovenia.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 — Cold open: were you always this way, or was it learned

00:39 — Welcome to The Brand Lab

01:11 — Introducing Blaz Marolt and his background

05:07 — From Slovenia to West Point: how an international cadet gets there

12:32 — The career arc: manufacturing, IT consulting, food delivery, coaching company

13:28 — Blaz's 30-second pitch, and Deevo stops him mid-sentence

19:27 — Refining the positioning live: from do everything to a clear zone of genius

20:17 — Childhood trauma, instability, and why the military became home

26:46 — Vision vs. strategy: the macro and the micro

38:06 — The burnout: 2023, the new boss, and the performance improvement plan

41:20 — Six months on sick leave and the road back

45:09 — 2024 into 2025: the identity crisis and the retreat inward

48:14 — The full-body alignment moment: choosing fractional COO over coaching

49:25 — Who is Blaz: working to live instead of living to work

50:45 — His legacy: talking openly about mental health

52:08 — How his community shifted once he stopped forcing misaligned relationships

54:57 — What working with Blaz actually looks like: audit, fit, and walking away

1:00:18 — The outcome: lower costs, more clients, an optimized customer journey

1:01:21 — Closing thoughts and where to find Blaz

Connect with Blaz Marolt:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blazmarolt/

About The Brand Lab:

The Brand Lab is a thinking room for founders and leaders who are building something real. 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.

Subscribe so you never miss a conversation worth having.

For 33 years, Charlene Wheeless was the person companies called when everything was on fire. She ran global communications for businesses worth up to $40 billion, walked more than a dozen mergers to the other side, and rebuilt brands until the market paid a premium to believe in them. She controlled the story for everyone else. Then she was diagnosed with two different cancers within six months of each other, and her body wrote a story she could not spin.

This is episode 100 of The Brand Lab, and it is dedicated to anyone who has been asking the hard questions but has not yet taken the time to listen to the answer. Charlene is a leadership strategist, keynote speaker, bestselling author, and cancer survivor. Her framework, choice not chance, was forged at 12 years old and did not fully take hold until three decades later, in the middle of a cancer treatment that forced her to ask who she actually was underneath a lifetime of performance.

What You'll Learn:

1: The moment at 12 years old that Charlene taught people would define her if she did not define herself first, and why that lesson took 40 years to fully learn.

2: Why she believes the emotional death that comes from losing your identity can be more disorienting than the physical death cancer threatens.

3: The difference between being a culture fit and being a culture contributor, and why chasing the former cost her more than she realized.

4: Why she believes some of the most insecure people in the world are sitting at the top of the corporate ladder.

5: The distinction between being a trailblazer and being a rebel, and why the difference matters more than it sounds.

6: What she regrets most about how she showed her daughters strength during treatment, and what she would do differently.

About Charlene Wheeless:

Charlene Wheeless spent 33 years in corporate communications, running global communications strategy for businesses worth up to $40 billion and guiding more than a dozen mergers through to completion. After surviving two cancers diagnosed within six months of each other, she left corporate to become a leadership strategist, keynote speaker, and bestselling author. Her framework, choice not chance, now guides C-suite leaders and executives who are ready to stop running their lives on default.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 — Cold open: the epiphany that came with cancer

00:35 — Welcome to The Brand Lab

01:07 — Introducing Charlene Wheeless and episode 100

02:40 — Choice over chance: the system born from crisis

06:01 — Charlene introduces her work: coaching C-suite leaders

07:15 — It is not that you ran out of energy, it is what the energy was spent on

08:02 — The question Charlene asks every client before they climb the next rung

10:32 — Can authenticity coexist with financial greatness?

12:38 — Culture fit vs. culture contributor

12:56 — The epiphany: two cancers in six months

16:09 — I don't have it in me anymore: the nervous breakdown moment

17:03 — The mental aspect of cancer nobody talks about

23:04 — Why does it take pain to wake us up?

24:32 — Age 12: the cheerleading tryout that started everything

26:14 — Her first moment of choice, not chance

30:19 — Charlene today vs. Charlene at her corporate peak

38:33 — Branding yourself after 33 years of building other people's brands

43:24 — Trailblazer vs. rebel: the distinction that matters

44:42 — What it feels like to be the only Black woman in the room

58:11 — Why men are in crisis too: a conversation on masculine and feminine energy

1:11:23 — Hot Seat Round: regrets, billionaire disease, and her 30-year-old self

1:20:39 — Closing thoughts and where to find Charlene

Connect with Charlene Wheeless:

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

Website: https://charlenewheeless.com/

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

About The Brand Lab:

The Brand Lab is a thinking room for founders and leaders who are building something real. 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. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation worth having.

A widget is a widget. That is how Latif Hamilton describes the fundamentals of building a business, whether you are selling faux fur coats or bags of chips. But underneath that simple line is a much deeper argument about the tension between creativity and operations, and why most founders eventually lean too hard into one side and wonder why nothing is working.

Latif is the founder of Spirithoods, a lifestyle brand he built over 15 years into a company doing more than $50 million in revenue, with appearances on Shark Tank and CNBC along the way. He is now also running The Growth Operative, a consultancy helping other founders navigate the same tension he spent over a decade learning to manage. In this conversation on The Brand Lab, Latif and Deevo go deep on the infinity loop between creativity and structure, the spiritual dimension of entrepreneurship, and the six-year autoimmune journey that forced Latif to unlearn the hustle patterns that had gotten him this far in the first place.

What You'll Learn:

1: The infinity loop framework: why too much slack between creativity and operations causes disruption, and too much tension breaks the whole system.

2: Why the fundamentals of building any product-based business are the same, whether you are selling faux fur coats, chairs, or bags of chips.

3: How to build a perpetual feedback loop, both internally between your own creative and operational modes, and externally with your customers.

4: Why saying we instead of I reduces ego and completely changes how you see your own company.

5: The six-year autoimmune condition that forced Latif to unlearn the hammer-to-everything mentality that built his first $50 million.

6: Why entrepreneurship is spiritual work, and what attachment theory has to do with how you run a business.

About Latif Hamilton:

Latif Hamilton is a creative entrepreneur and the founder of Spirithoods, a lifestyle brand he built over 15 years into a company generating more than $50 million in revenue, with appearances on Shark Tank and CNBC. He is also the founder of The Growth Operative, a consultancy helping brands across fashion, e-commerce, and general consumer categories navigate the balance between creative vision and operational structure. He writes on Substack under his own name, covering the psychology of entrepreneurship and practical business fundamentals.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 — Cold open and pre-show conversation

06:00 — Welcome to The Brand Lab and introducing Latif Hamilton

10:00 — Latif's 30-second elevator pitch: Spirithoods and The Growth Operative

13:00 — A widget is a widget: the inherent qualities of every business build

15:00 — The infinity loop: the tension between creativity and operations

17:00 — Why the least expensive campaigns often perform the best

18:00 — The photography kit analogy: simplification over accumulation

19:00 — Where the balance actually was at Spirithoods: partners, exits, and hard lessons

22:00 — Why you need an opposing perspective, not just a like-minded one

25:00 — Entrepreneurship as a spiritual journey and the necessity of listening

27:00 — Getting in the trenches: festivals, celebrities, and understanding your real customer

31:00 — The perpetual feedback loop: internal and external

36:00 — The creative client who fears systems, and how structure actually protects creativity

40:00 — Aiming your creativity: structure as a compass, not a cage

44:00 — The godmother's wisdom: a human being can get used to anything

45:00 — Identity, attachment theory, and why Latif changed his own name

52:00 — The rollercoaster of entrepreneurship and learning to step off it

55:00 — The six-year autoimmune journey and unlearning the hammer

58:00 — Cycles, seasons, and why the down years are not the enemy

1:01:00 — Alignment, flowing like water, and why business school never teaches this

1:02:00 — De-dollarization, recession signals, and where Latif sees the economy heading

1:04:00 — Market share opportunity: what happens when your biggest competitor goes bankrupt

1:07:00 — Hot Seat Round: results vs. being right, structure vs. creativity, and more

1:09:00 — Closing thoughts and where to find Latif

Connect with Latif Hamilton:

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

Website: spirithoods.com

About The Brand Lab:

The Brand Lab is a thinking room for founders and leaders who are building something real. 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. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation worth having.

Most people think success comes from working harder. Jaclyn Strominger has spent years working with CEOs and founders who prove otherwise. Success, in her framework, is not the result of grinding through more hours. It is the result of persistent alignment: small, consistent, daily actions pointed at a vision that is actually clear.

Jaclyn is the founder of Leap to Your Success, where she works with entrepreneurs and professionals on clarity, leadership, and the practical execution most people skip past on their way to the next strategy session. In this conversation on The Brand Lab, she and Deevo dig into relationship capital, the daily habits that actually move a business forward, why most people lie to themselves about what they are avoiding, and the personal insecurities Jaclyn had to work through before she could build the deep relationships her entire framework now depends on.

What You'll Learn:

1: Why unstoppable success is never random, and what daily consistent actions focused on a clear direction actually look like in practice.

2: The MMA method, measure, monitor, adjust, borrowed directly from direct marketing and applied to personal and business growth.

3: Relationship capital: why your net worth can be defined by your network, and how to build relationships that are not transactional.

4: The LEAP framework, Leverage, Energy, Action, Performance, and how Jaclyn uses it to help clients find the specific levers that are limiting their growth.

5: Why Jaclyn was once terrified to build deep relationships, and the specific, uncomfortable daily practice that got her past it.

6: Why people lie to themselves about fear, discomfort, and the actions they are avoiding, and how to actually catch yourself doing it.

About Jaclyn Strominger:

Jaclyn Strominger is the founder of Leap to Your Success, a certified professional coach and master practitioner in energy leadership. She works with entrepreneurs, CEOs, and professionals on clarity, leadership, and execution, helping them move from stuck and overthinking into focused momentum. Her background spans consumer marketing, magazine publishing, direct sales, and recruiting before she transitioned into coaching. She is based in the United States and is active on LinkedIn.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 — Cold open: success is not about working harder

01:00 — Welcome to The Brand Lab and introducing Jaclyn Strominger

03:00 — Meeting in Tampa: workshops, mastermind rooms, and why smaller rooms build bigger impact

09:00 — 30 seconds or less: who Jaclyn is and what she does

10:00 — Unstoppable success is not random: daily consistent actions and the 90-day sprint

11:00 — The MMA method: measure, monitor, adjust, borrowed from direct marketing

12:00 — Success equals persistent alignment: what clients are actually missing

14:00 — Jaclyn's journey: magazine publishing, direct sales, recruiting, and becoming a coach

17:00 — Why we can't see ourselves clearly, and why everyone needs a coach

19:00 — AI, doctors, and adapting to new tools without losing the human element

22:00 — Strategy vs. daily habits: which one actually drives growth

23:00 — Relationship capital: why your net worth is defined by your network

27:00 — Why people lie to themselves about fear and discomfort

29:00 — What clarity actually means: the life wheel, top five values, and the vision behind the vision

32:00 — Finding your levers: what they are and how to activate them

37:00 — The LEAP framework: Leverage, Energy, Action, Performance

40:00 — Who Jaclyn is deep down: overcoming insecurities about deep relationships

45:00 — The Dale Carnegie course and the daily discomfort practice that changed everything

47:00 — Jaclyn's ideal client: the plateau, the hamster wheel, and forgetting your own vision

50:00 — What actually changes for clients: altering the trajectory

51:00 — Hot Seat Round: results vs. being right, clarity vs. momentum, control vs. trust

52:00 — Closing thoughts and where to find Jaclyn

Connect with Jaclyn Strominger:

Website: https://leaptoyoursuccess.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jstrominger/

About The Brand Lab:

The Brand Lab is a thinking room for founders and leaders who are building something real. 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.Subscribe so you never miss a conversation worth having.

Anthony Moreno built his personal training business around a simple and unflattering label: the undesirables. The aging population. The people with chronic illness, old injuries, and no interest in the gym culture that was built for someone half their age. While every other trainer chased the young, the fit, and the photogenic, Anthony chased the overlooked. And in doing so, he built one of the most loyal, financially stable client bases in his market.

In this conversation on The Brand Lab, Anthony and Deevo go deep on the philosophy underneath the business: why personal training is really about buying a friend, why the fitness industry is built around the wrong demographic, what it actually takes to step into entrepreneurship for real, and how Anthony is now transitioning from gym owner to personal brand and consultant for trainers who want to build businesses around people rather than metrics.

What You'll Learn:

1: Why Anthony calls his clients the undesirables, and why that demographic has more loyalty, more money, and more longevity than the clients every other trainer is chasing.

2: The friendship theory of personal training: why the emotional and psychological component of fitness is 90% of the work, and what that means for how you run sessions.

3: The get slapped in the mouth test for entrepreneurship, and why Anthony thinks most people want to be an entrepreneur in theory but have never actually tasted the blood.

4: How Anthony went from British Army and Air Force to personal trainer to gym owner, and the specific moment he realized he was making money for everyone but himself.

5: Why find your why is only half the equation, and what comes before it that most people skip entirely.

6: What Anthony is building next: a personal brand and consulting platform that teaches trainers how to build businesses around people, not egos.

About Anthony Moreno:

Anthony Moreno is the founder of Boutique Personal Training and operator of the Fusion House, a boutique fitness facility in Westchester, New York. He served four years in the British Army Reserve and four years in the US Air Force as a firefighter before building a career in fitness. His clientele skews 50-plus, with a 2000 square foot facility designed for openness, safety, and the kind of culture where everybody knows your name. He is currently transitioning into a personal brand and coaching platform for fitness professionals. He also has a book in progress and businesses in apparel and vending.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 — Cold open: personal training is really about buying a friend

01:00 — How do you build bigger without losing what made it work

03:30 — Introducing Anthony Moreno and his approach to the undesirables

06:00 — Why Anthony chose the aging and injured population nobody else wanted

08:00 — The business case: who actually has the money, the time, and the longevity

09:00 — Why boutique personal training still says boutique instead of 50-plus

12:00 — What the gym looks like: open floor plan, no intimidation, Cheers culture

15:00 — The inflection point: from gym owner and trainer to owner only

17:00 — Apparel, vending, coaching: Anthony's other businesses

18:00 — British Army, Air Force firefighter, and the two-choice moment coming to the US

20:00 — How Anthony made the leap without going cold turkey

21:00 — Advice to any entrepreneur: get slapped in the mouth first

23:00 — Why instead of find your why, find out what you are willing to keep doing anyway

26:00 — Henry, Julie, and the Christmas party moment that changed everything

30:00 — Why the fitness industry ignores the elderly and what that costs everyone

31:00 — Personal training is buying a friend: the emotional truth behind the business

36:00 — Validation, visibility, and why most aging clients just need to be seen

40:00 — Advice to trainers who are struggling right now

44:00 — What Anthony is building next: from gym to personal brand and consulting

47:00 — What Anthony wants to be known for in two years: author first

49:00 — The market shift: what 50 looks like now vs the Golden Girls era

54:00 — Final thoughts and where to find Anthony

Connect with Anthony Moreno:

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

Website: https://www.boutiquepersonaltraining.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-moreno-707a288b/

About The Brand Lab:

The Brand Lab is a thinking room for founders and leaders who are building something real. 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. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation worth having.

Most founders treat stress as something to endure. Doug Bertram treats it as the primary mechanism through which the body and the business grow. The question is never whether to take on stress. The question is whether you are integrating it in real time or letting it accumulate until something breaks.

Doug is the founder of Structural Elements®, a company building a national franchise network of orthopedic wellness centers focused on preventative orthopedics and movement-based therapy. He has been working with the body for 32 years. He attended a Buddhist college, studied Chinese medicine, has run Ironmans and 100-mile races, and is simultaneously working on three books. In this conversation on The Brand Lab, he applies everything he knows about the nervous system to the specific challenges of building a company: the bottleneck problem, the threat versus non-threat misdiagnosis, and why your growth potential is limited by exactly one thing.

What You'll Learn:

1: Why the body is constantly asking one primary question, and how the answer to that question determines whether you are building capacity or breaking down.

2: The difference between calibrated stress and accumulated stress, and what that distinction means for founders who treat grinding as a virtue.

3: Somatic literacy: what it is, why most people have never developed it, and how it becomes the foundation for every other performance practice.

4: The Extreme Center: Doug's framework for real-time integration as a strategy, and why the middle path is a strategy of avoidance that fails in today's world.

5: Why your nervous system is the actual ceiling on your company's growth, and what distributing load looks like in practice before you hit the bottleneck.

6: The story of Harvey Sweetland Lewis III, a schoolteacher who ran close to 500 miles straight, and what his body demonstrates about how little we have actually tested our own capacity.

About Doug Bertram:

Doug Bertram is the founder and CEO of Structural Elements®, a national franchise network of orthopaedic wellness centers built around preventative orthopaedics, movement-based therapy, and nervous system regulation. He has 32 years of hands-on clinical experience, a background in Chinese medicine and Eastern philosophy, and a book project called Living at the Extreme Center currently in development. He is based in the United States and can be reached directly at https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglas-bertram-3bb35312/

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 — Cold open: stress is how the body forces adaptation

01:30 — Welcome to The Brand Lab and introducing Doug Bertram

03:00 — What is Structural Elements and why preventative orthopedics matters

05:00 — Somatic literacy: what it is and why most people have never developed it

07:00 — The autonomic nervous system: sympathetic vs. parasympathetic explained

09:00 — The body's primary question: am I safe?

11:00 — How posture and alignment affect nervous system regulation

13:00 — Establishing a baseline: Doug's 12-year-old daughter and the alignment test

15:00 — Connective tissue, stress, and what happens when you stay in sympathetic too long

17:00 — Calibrated stress vs. accumulated stress for entrepreneurs

19:00 — Your nervous system is the ceiling on your company growth

20:00 — The Extreme Center: real-time integration as a business strategy

22:00 — Wu Wei, the middle path, and why avoidance fails in modern life

24:00 — The skiing analogy: absorbing force vs. fighting it

25:00 — Doug's origin story: broken wrist at 14, physical therapy, 32 years at the table

26:00 — What happened when Doug became a CEO: stress accumulated despite the expertise

28:00 — Modeling a healthy lifestyle as the face of a wellness brand

30:00 — Deevo's daughter and misinterpreting threat: practical tools for triage

32:00 — How to stop projecting a story that is not true

34:00 — The breath as the always-available intervention

35:00 — The Structural Elements franchise model and solving access to quality care

39:00 — Undercapitalised and scrappy: what limited capital forces you to learn

42:00 — The challenges of building a new model in a traditional industry

45:00 — The longevity conversation and why orthopedics belongs at the center of it

48:00 — Harvey Sweetland Lewis III: 500 miles straight and what the body is actually capable of

50:00 — Closing thoughts: we have not even scratched the surface of our capacity

Connect with Doug Bertram:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglas-bertram-3bb35312/

Website: https://structuralelements.com/

About The Branding Laboratory:

The Branding Laboratory is a thinking room for founders and leaders who are building something real. 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. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation worth having.

It is up to 60% more expensive to find a new client than it is to nurture an existing one. Garima Shah has built her entire approach to growth, culture, and leadership around that one number, and in this conversation she explains exactly what that looks like in practice.

Garima is the co-founder and president of Biller Genie, a SaaS platform that helps businesses automate accounts receivable and get paid faster. But the real subject of this conversation is what happens inside a company once you decide that relationships, not funnels, are the actual growth engine.

From the five core values that run Biller Genie day to day, to why every new hire has to be able to explain their job to a ten-year-old, to the boundary-setting that makes saying no the most empowering word in business, this episode covers a lot of ground without ever losing the thread.

What You'll Learn:

1: Why activating your existing network costs a fraction of acquiring new clients, and how to actually do it without it feeling transactional.

2: Biller Genie's five core values, including Get Shit Done, Catch Up, and Own It, and how a company makes values operational instead of decorative.

3: The ten-year-old test: why if you cannot explain your job clearly enough for a kid to repeat it back, you have a messaging problem.

4: Why Garima believes no is the most empowering word in business, and how a clear ICP protects both your culture and your growth.

5: The romance-and-business analogy, why courting a client is no different from courting a partner, and what that means for how you sell.

6: How Garima built a culture of boomerang employees, people who left and came back, and why that is one of the strongest signals of a healthy company.

About Garima Shah:

Garima Shah is the co-founder and president of Biller Genie, a SaaS platform that automates accounts receivable processes so businesses get paid faster. She leads a team of over 90 employees and has spent years developing a culture built on authenticity, clear core values, and relationship-first growth. She started her career in outside, commission-only sales and has carried the lessons from that experience into everything she has built since.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 — Introduction: relationship capital and the cost of cold outreach

02:00 — Welcome to The Brand Lab and introducing Garima Shah

03:00 — Activating the relationships you already have

07:00 — Why no like trust is dead, and why Garima disagrees

08:30 — The elevator pitch is dead: explain it to a ten-year-old instead

11:00 — The ten-year relationship and the iterative customer journey

12:00 — Boomerang employees and building culture internally

15:00 — Biller Genie five core values: Get Shit Done, Catch Up, Own It, and more

18:00 — Hiring for the right bus, not just the right seat

22:00 — Cross-pollination and opening the kimono on every department

23:00 — You can never say the wrong thing to the right person

26:00 — Boundaries, ICP, and why no is the most empowering word in business

29:00 — From advertising school to door-to-door sales: Garima's origin story

34:00 — What relationship capital really means: trust first

35:00 — Hot Seat Round: relationships vs. strategy, hustle vs. alignment, and more

38:00 — Closing thoughts and where to find Biller Genie

Connect with Garima Shah:

Website: https://billergenie.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garimashah/

About The Branding Laboratory:

The Branding Laboratory is a thinking room for founders and leaders who are building something real. 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.Subscribe so you never miss a conversation worth having.

Most leaders hired JM Ryerson to double their revenue. He started by asking them what they did for themselves that morning. The answers told him everything he needed to know about why the revenue problem existed in the first place.

JM is the founder of Let's Go Win, a performance and mindset ecosystem that works with growth-oriented companies on leadership alignment, sales execution, and culture. In this conversation on The Brand Lab, he goes deep on the identity work that sits underneath every organizational problem people mislabel as a strategy or messaging issue. If you have ever hired for culture fit and gotten it wrong, lost a client you should have kept, or found yourself making good money while quietly dreading your own life, this episode lands in a specific and useful place.

What You'll Learn:

1: The three questions JM uses to dismantle any self-limiting belief, including the money belief that held him back even after his first seven-figure year.

2: Why culture is motor oil and not gasoline, and what that distinction means for how you build a team that doesn't grind itself apart.

3: How to give feedback that people can actually receive, and the one question you must ask before you open your mouth.

4: What JM learned about alignment by almost losing his family while financially succeeding at everything around him.

5: Why leadership development and revenue growth are the same conversation, and why separating them is where most coaching engagements quietly fail.

About JM Ryerson:

JM Ryerson is a performance coach, author, and founder of Let's Go Win, a holistic performance platform built around leadership alignment, mindset, and culture. His clients' lowest revenue increase on record last year was 47%. He is based in Boca Raton, Florida, and hosts his own podcast. He ran two and a half miles every day in college before he found out his coach was running five. He has been chasing that standard ever since.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 — Introduction and five years of The Brand Lab

02:00 — What people miss when they Google JM Ryerson

05:30 — Authenticity, the Midwest, and the cost of curation

10:00 — How JM defines leadership and the coach who ran twice as far

14:00 — Diagnosing leadership gaps: how JM assesses an organization

17:00 — Core values, three per company, and why alignment starts there

19:00 — How to give feedback without blowing up the relationship

23:00 — Ego, meditation, and the practice of responding instead of reacting

26:00 — JM's four daily non-negotiables and why they are not optional

31:00 — The identity work behind the revenue: what happens when you're not aligned

38:00 — Rejection, ICP clarity, and learning from the proposals that said no

42:00 — Three questions that break self-limiting beliefs and generational patterns

48:00 — The Win Performance Platform: philanthropy, business, and winning from within

52:00 — How JM decides who he works with and why fixed mindsets are a hard stop

55:00 — Where to find JM and how to connect

Connect with JM Ryerson:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jm-ryerson/

Instagram: @letsgowinofficial

About The Brand Lab: The Brand Lab is a thinking room for founders and leaders who are building something real. 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. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation worth having.

Thirty percent of the food you buy this week will end up in the trash. Not because you're careless — because your home is the only place in the entire food supply chain with zero inventory system. Jay Lee, founder of Spring House, is fixing that with an AI-powered food intelligence platform that tracks what you have, reduces waste, and tells you exactly what to cook tonight based on what's already in your fridge.

This conversation goes deep on the behavioral design challenge behind building a consumer habit product, how Jay went from a career in defense technology to founding a company in food tech, and what it actually takes to solve a problem that every household on the planet deals with every single day.

What You'll Learn:

1: Why 30% of household food gets thrown away — and the behavioral gap Jay identified at the root of the problem

2: How Spring House tracks pantry and fridge inventory through photos, voice, and receipt capture to create a real-time food intelligence layer for your home

3: The difference between static recipes (which create more stress) and adaptive recipes (which cook with what you actually have)

4: Why Jay says building a startup is more about stamina than speed, and how that mindset changed from his first company to his second

5: How culture functions in a startup — and why Jay describes it as the motor oil of a company rather than the gasoline

About Jay Lee:

Jay Lee is a second-time founder and entrepreneur with a background spanning defense technology and consumer product development. He is the founder of Spring House, an AI-powered food intelligence system designed to help households understand what food they have, reduce waste, and cook smarter. Spring House is currently in development with a beta waitlist open at springhouse.co.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 — Introduction: Jay Lee and the Spring House concept

03:00 — The behavior Spring House is trying to change: awareness as the foundation

06:20 — The sour cream moment: the eureka origin story

09:00 — Why recipe apps make food waste worse, not better

11:00 — How Spring House tracks inventory: photos, voice, and receipt capture

14:30 — Why Spring House is focused on consumers, not restaurants

17:30 — Stamina over speed: lessons from building two companies

22:00 — Adaptive recipes and the food science taxonomy behind them

26:00 — Where Spring House is right now and how to join the beta waitlist

28:00 — What building companies has taught Jay about himself

33:00 — Culture as motor oil: Jay's philosophy on building great teams

36:00 — Getting the Spring House story aligned: perception vs. intent

40:00 — Technology vs. psychology: what this product is really about

44:00 — What Jay hopes people say about Spring House in three years

47:00 — Building in public and the power of transparent storytelling

Connect with Jay Lee:

Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaylee00/

Spring House: https://springhouse.co/

About the Show: The Brand Laboratory is a thinking room, not a traditional interview show. Host Devo explores the intersection of identity, strategy, and psychology behind what founders and entrepreneurs are actually building — and the friction they navigate to build it. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation.