Lisl Macdonald spent a decade inside BT, Ogilvy, and Virgin's biggest brand machines, sat on the management team through a London Stock Exchange IPO, and just walked a graduation stage at 58 to collect an LLM, with Distinction. So when she talks about where the real insight in an ecosystem actually lives, she's speaking from decades inside the room, not a theory about it.

She calls herself a "perspective collector," someone who deliberately lives at what she calls the "crinkly edges" of communities instead of the center. It's a phrase she uses to describe everything from why disability gets left out of access conversations, to why founders mistake customer interviews for recruiting supporters, to how a "priest class" has quietly formed between startup founders and their investors.

Perspective collecting is only half the episode, though. Lisl's also currently researching conflict for a PhD, with a working theory that founder fallouts, not bad products, are what actually kill startups.

Bonus material: a poem from grade school that became her lifelong mission to age disgracefully, and a hard-won case for why curiosity travels better than confidence.

Give a watch, and let's go build something worth remembering.

Short on time? Here are my favorite nuggets from my conversation with Mark Hadfield, founder of Meet the 85%, co-founder of Dose of Reality, and the guy who quit a secure agency job to start knocking on strangers' doors across Britain instead.

In less than 15 minutes, Mark makes the case for "reality first, brand second," his rule for never letting a client's brand into the room until real life brings it up on its own. The actual moment a man got up and shut a door before answering a question about his pension, and why that told Mark more than his answer did. Why a photo inside someone's fridge can undercut a dashboard, and did, on one project. And the lesson behind "1.4 slices of pizza," why Mark still can't let go of the pizza brand that tried to average its own customers into nonsense.

Want the full story, like Mark's path from a working-class kid mocked for his accent in agency land to running planning across Asia, to quitting his job a week before his second child was born?

Check out The Brand Builder version of this episode on your favorite podcast platform.

Give a listen. And let's go build something worth remembering.

Mark Hadfield's proof that the truth about a brand's customers lives in their kitchen, not their spreadsheet, and the fridge won't lie, even when the person does.

Mark spent 25 years in agency planning before he walked away to go sit in living rooms across Britain and watch what people actually do, not what they say they do in a focus group, and his conversation is a gut-punch for anyone who's traded real people for a dashboard.

You can't feel data. Unless that data is time spent with real people. No matter what part of the planet you live and work on.

Short on time? Here are my favorite nuggets from my conversation with Jake Sanders – Grammy-nominated composer, sonic branding expert, and creative director at Audio Content Lab, the team behind our own theme music.

In about 10 minutes, Jake makes the case for "Cheap Genius," his theory for why nobody wants to pay for the exact creative they keep asking for. The actual physics of why a sound cuts through your brain in a way a logo never could. Why resilience beats brilliance when it comes to pitching ideas. And the lesson behind "Give Yourself Work," why Jake once wrote a full Christmas Carol musical for a law firm that nobody asked for.

Want the full story, like Jake's path from museum educator to law firm marketer to touring with hip-hop legend Big Daddy Kane?

Check out The Brand Builder version of this episode on your favorite podcast platform.

Give a listen, and let's go build something worth remembering.

Jake Sanders wrote the theme music for this very show, scored a documentary on a shoestring budget, and once turned a law firm's marketing department into a full stage musical. So when he talks about the gap between what businesses ask creative people for and what they're actually willing to pay for, he's speaking from the trenches, not a keynote deck.

The theory he's built around it is called Cheap Genius, the idea that when a client says "let's get creative," what they usually mean is "let's get it for free." It's a phrase Jake picked up mid-negotiation on a real scoring gig, and it's become his lens for everything from client pitches to why so much modern advertising feels hollowed out.

Cheap Genius is only half the episode, though. Jake's also an audio illustrator who gets into the actual physics of why a sound cuts through a room of a thousand voices in a way a logo never could.

Bonus material: a hip-hop verse broken down bar by bar, and a scapegoat god named Blamo.

Short on time? Here are my favorite nuggets from my conversation with Rob Meyerson – brand naming expert, founder of Heirloom, and co-author of Designing Brand Identity.

In about 10 minutes, Rob teaches us why the naming process is really about risk mitigation, not inspiration. Why "anyone can sue anyone for anything." The kiki/bouba effect, and why some words just sound sharper than others. And Rob's honest verdict on whether AI can actually name your company.

Want the full story, like Rob's path from an accidental gig at Interbrand to co-authoring one of the industry's defining books, and the moment Alina Wheeler passed him the baton?

Check out The Brand Builder version of this episode on your favorite pocast platform.

Let's Go!

Rob Meyerson wrote the book on brand naming, literally, and he's here to remind us that picking the perfect name has a lot less to do with inspiration than it does with knowing exactly who might sue you for it.

Rob teaches us that what looks like a small, obvious task (to pick a good name) is actually the tip of an enormous amount of unglamorous, disciplined work, and that work only gets learned by doing it and by people who were generous enough to teach you

Short on time? Mel Barfield's whole philosophy fits in three words: Shorten the Gap. Not to mention a few more "Mel-osophies" that should probably be on a t-shirt: "Nepotism is your Friend," and "Don't be the best, be the favorite."

Here are the PO Notes nuggets, straight up, in under fifteen minutes.

Mel Barfield turned "just a career advisor with a knack for words" into a Women in Marketing Award, a copywriting agency, and a LinkedIn following that recognizes her in the wild. Her whole playbook fits in three words, and it's the reason people hire her before they've even met her.

This episode is the full story: the career-advisor years, the freelance leap, and the week everything got put in perspective when her daughter landed in the hospital. It's the one that explains why the playbook works, not just what it is.

Before the guests show up, the host Phillip Oakley makes the case for the show itself: the name, the theme song, and why every episode comes in two lengths.

Welcome to The PO Show, a podcast for business owners and marketers who are tired of jargon, hype, the confusing martech landscape, and just want to know what actually builds a brand.

In this pilot, host Phillip "PO" Oakley lays out why he started the show, where the nickname (and that theme song) actually came from, and why every episode from here on comes in two lengths: PO Notes, for when you want the takeaways fast, and The Brand Builder, for the whole story.

PO also breaks down the idea the whole show is built on, Les Binet and Peter Field's "Long and Short of It," and why brands need both short-term activation and long-term brand building to actually grow.