When B2B marketing isn't delivering results, most companies reach for something new — a redesigned website, another campaign, a different platform, a new agency, or more content. But the real problem is often deeper: the company may be targeting the wrong customer, marketing and sales may not agree on what a qualified opportunity even looks like, the technology may not support the process, or the content may be answering questions buyers aren't asking. In this episode of The SmartMAI Consulting Edge Podcast, host Dan Mulberry talks with Winn Maddrey, Founder and CEO of Blue Nine Partners, about how to diagnose what's actually broken in a B2B marketing system — and why the fix is rarely "add more activity."Winn's career has taken him from Capitol Hill speechwriter and government press officer to agency executive and marketing/communications leader for a growing international business. He founded Blue Nine Partners in 2003, where he now works with B2B companies on marketing strategy, go-to-market execution, corporate communications, and interim and fractional marketing leadership — and advises organizations through crises, acquisitions, leadership changes, and other sensitive transitions.In this conversation, Winn and Dan cover:- What a career spanning speechwriting, government, agencies, and corporate leadership teaches about understanding an audience before deciding what to say- Where to look first when a CEO says "our marketing isn't working" — and why more leads isn't always the real issue- What has to fit together for go-to-market to function as one connected system, and where the handoff between marketing and sales most often breaks down- Why B2B companies struggle to define their ideal customer profile clearly, and what should trigger a company to rethink its target customer or message- Why an objective audit of the marketing function should come before hiring someone new or buying another platform- When an experienced fractional or interim marketing leader makes more sense than another agency or a full-time hire — and how to learn a business fast as an outsider- How AI search and tools like ChatGPT are changing the way B2B buyers discover and evaluate companies, and what that means for who you're really writing for now- Why Winn uses AI to support content review rather than to generate everything, and what still makes a business's content credible in an AI-saturated landscape- Which marketing measures actually tell a CEO whether the system is contributing to revenue — versus activity that just looks good in a reportWhether your marketing feels like it's missing one piece or completely disconnected, this conversation offers a practical way to find out what's actually broken before you spend money fixing the wrong thing.Learn more about Winn Maddrey and Blue Nine Partners at BlueNinePartners.com.The SmartMAI Consulting Edge Podcast features real conversations with experienced consultants, advisors, and business leaders about how they solve problems, guide organizations through change, and produce measurable results. Learn more at www.smartmai.ai.Like, subscribe, and share this episode with someone who'd benefit from it.

Most organizations prepare for problems they can predict — but a real crisis rarely follows the plan. Information is incomplete, people are under stress, and leaders face pressure to act before they know the full story. In this episode of The SmartMAI Consulting Edge Podcast, host Dan Mulberry talks with Joseph A. Ruffini, a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and founder of JPR & Associates, about how leaders actually make decisions when the plan breaks.Joe's career spans military leadership — including armored cavalry command in Germany — counterterrorism, FBI-trained crisis negotiation, business continuity, operations, executive coaching, and organizational assessment. He has advised private companies, government agencies, military organizations, law enforcement, and senior leaders on how to lead, and stay level-headed, under pressure.In this conversation, Joe and Dan cover:- Why a leader's first job in a crisis is staying calm and setting the emotional tone for everyone else in the room- The difference between a boss who tells a team "you guys work it out" and one who assigns clear ownership, a timeline, and defined support roles- Why first-time managers and directors often struggle more in a crisis than seasoned executives, and how to coach them through it- How to quickly identify the minimum information, data, and expertise needed to act, instead of waiting for complete certainty- What FBI crisis-negotiation training teaches about listening (roughly 80% listening, 20% talking) and why perception matters as much as truth- Why honesty and speed beat spin when delivering bad news to employees or clients, with real examples of what works and what backfires- How tabletop exercises train managers to handle a crisis before a real one hits, and why they belong in ongoing corporate training- What actually belongs in an after-action review, and why so many organizations write strong after-action reports that nobody reads- Where AI genuinely helps in a crisis (research, generating options, sourcing resources) and where it can't go: AI can produce options, but a leader still has to weigh them against corporate culture, team readiness, and client relationships — and the responsibility for the decision never transfers to the AIWhether you're leading a team through a genuine emergency or just want to make better decisions under pressure, this conversation offers hard-won, practical lessons from a career built on exactly that kind of leadership.Learn more about Joseph Ruffini and JPR & Associates at JPR-Online.com.The SmartMAI Consulting Edge Podcast features real conversations with experienced consultants, advisors, and business leaders about how they solve problems, guide organizations through change, and produce measurable results. Learn more at www.smartmai.ai.Like, subscribe, and share this episode with someone who'd benefit from it.

Companies are moving fast to adopt AI — building agents, automating processes, testing new models — and many expect it to cut costs almost immediately. Then the pilot stalls: employees don't use it, the data doesn't support it, nobody's clear on ownership, and leadership starts asking why the AI isn't delivering. In this episode of The SmartMAI Consulting Edge Podcast, host Dan Mulberry talks with Stephen Gatchell, Partner and Head of AI Strategy at Ortecha, about why the AI itself is rarely the real problem — and what actually needs to change first.Stephen has spent his career helping large companies turn data and AI strategy into systems that work in the real world, with senior experience at EMC, Dell, Bose, and BigID. He helped shape the EDM Council's Cloud Data Management Capabilities (CDMC) framework and holds a patent related to governance architecture. At Ortecha — whose approach is built around a "human first" philosophy — he now works with mid-sized and large enterprises on data and AI strategy, operating models, governance, architecture, and implementation.In this conversation, Stephen and Dan cover:- Why a client's "AI problem" often turns out to be an organizational one — and the warning signs that tell the difference- What real AI readiness looks like, beyond having enough data to build an agent- Why so much organizational knowledge lives in people's heads instead of usable data and definitions- Why treating AI purely as a cost-cutting tool can cause companies to miss its bigger opportunity: growth, new data products, and faster time to market- Why so many companies have dozens of successful AI pilots but almost nothing running in production- How clear ownership, decision rights, and governance actually help AI move faster instead of slowing it down- Why two departments can use the same business term and mean two completely different things — and what that costs an AI system trying to reason across the data- What "human first" really means for a data-and-AI business, and how change management and job redesign determine whether AI adoption succeeds- What will separate companies that get real value from AI from those that spend heavily and have little to show for itWhether you're leading an AI initiative or trying to figure out why one hasn't delivered yet, this conversation offers a clear-eyed look at what has to be true about your data, people, and operating model before AI can scale.Learn more about Stephen Gatchell and Ortecha at Ortecha.com.The SmartMAI Consulting Edge Podcast features real conversations with experienced consultants, advisors, and business leaders about how they solve problems, guide organizations through change, and produce measurable results. Learn more at www.smartmai.ai.Like, subscribe, and share this episode with someone who'd benefit from it.

Public-health agencies collect more data than ever — but more data doesn't automatically mean faster or better decisions. In this episode of The SmartMAI Consulting Edge Podcast, host Dan Mulberry talks with Dr. Scott J.N. McNabb, Managing Partner of Public Health Practice, LLC, about why effective surveillance is a decision system, not a technology project.

Dr. McNabb's career spans field epidemiology, public-health surveillance, informatics, leadership development, and global health security. He began at the Oklahoma State Department of Health, later joined the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service, and held senior roles in surveillance, informatics, and science and technology at the CDC. He has also served on the faculty at Emory University and worked with public-health organizations around the world. He is the author of Transforming Public Health Surveillance and Modernizing Global Health Security to Prevent, Detect, and Respond.

In this conversation, Scott and Dan cover:

• What field epidemiology teaches about making decisions with incomplete information
• Why surveillance is only valuable when it leads to action — and where that connection usually breaks down
• How leaders separate a real early-warning signal from background noise
• Where surveillance-system modernization should actually begin
• Why local ownership is essential to sustainable public-health programs
• How leaders should communicate uncertainty during a health emergency without losing public trust
• Where artificial intelligence can genuinely strengthen early detection — and which decisions must stay firmly in human hands
• What the next generation of public-health leaders needs that traditional training doesn't provide

Whether you work in public health, business, or any organization that has to make high-stakes decisions on incomplete evidence, this episode offers a practical framework for building systems that detect threats early enough to act.

Learn more about Dr. McNabb and Public Health Practice at publichealthpractice.com.

The SmartMAI Consulting Edge Podcast features real conversations with experienced consultants, advisors, and business leaders about how they solve problems, guide organizations through change, and produce measurable results. Learn more at www.smartmai.ai.

Like, subscribe, and share this episode with someone who'd benefit from it.

Most business owners can tell you their sales numbers instantly — but ask whether a recurring vendor expense is still competitively priced, and the answer gets a lot fuzzier. In this episode, host Dan Mulberry talks with Alec Armbrecht, founder of Armbrecht Business Consultants, about the profit hiding in plain sight: the merchant fees, banking charges, utilities, telecom, insurance, freight, and other recurring costs that quietly increase every year without the same scrutiny businesses apply to revenue.

Alec spent 16 years in healthcare, including several roles as a hospital administrator, and another 14 years in financial services before founding his firm — built on a simple philosophy: a dollar saved is greater than a dollar earned. Working on a contingency model (no savings, no fee), Armbrecht Business Consultants says it has helped clients recover or save more than $15 million in excess fees and costs, generally without needing to replace existing vendors.

In this conversation, Alec and Dan cover:

• Why businesses manage revenue far more actively than expenses
• The economics behind "a dollar saved is greater than a dollar earned" — and why it can be one of the fastest ways to improve EBITDA
• The expense categories most likely to be hiding unnecessary costs (merchant processing, banking and treasury fees, utilities, telecom, insurance, freight, and more)
• Why keeping your existing vendor — and renegotiating instead of replacing — can be the more powerful move
• How ongoing auditing catches billing errors that a one-time negotiation misses
• Why a contingency-fee model changes the trust conversation with clients
• How AI is starting to reshape expense management, and why the explosion of SaaS and AI subscriptions may be creating a whole new category of expense leakage
• What Alec's own health journey taught him about perspective, resilience, and using his expertise to help others

If your business hasn't taken a hard look at recurring costs in a while, this episode will change how you think about where your next dollar of profit is actually hiding.

Learn more about Alec Armbrecht and Armbrecht Business Consultants at ArmbrechtBC.com.

The SmartMAI Consulting Edge Podcast features real conversations with experienced consultants, advisors, and business leaders about how they solve problems, guide organizations through change, and produce measurable results. Learn more at www.smartmai.ai.

Like, subscribe, and share this episode with someone who'd benefit from it.

Small nonprofits don't need more fundraising activity — they need a better system.

Sarah Barton is the founder of Nonprofit411, a fundraising growth strategist who has spent more than 25 years helping nonprofit teams build reliable donor revenue through practical, sustainable fundraising systems. Over her career, Sarah has helped organizations secure and manage more than $17 million in gifts and grants, working across fundraising strategy, donor engagement, grant writing, resource development, strategic planning, training, and executive coaching. Her Generosity Engine Roadmap is a nine-step framework designed to move organizations away from scattered grants, events, and appeals toward reliable, recurring donor revenue.

In this episode, Sarah and host Dan Mulberry cover:

• Why capable nonprofits keep reacting to the next grant deadline or event instead of building a predictable fundraising system

• Why fundraising is a relationship, not a transaction — and what that means for donor communication

• Why fundraising shouldn't rest on one person's shoulders, and how small teams can share the responsibility

• Why donors give to outcomes they can understand, not just to lists of organizational activities

• Donor retention versus constant new-donor acquisition

• How small nonprofit teams can use technology and AI without losing the human connection

Learn more about Sarah Barton and Nonprofit411: https://nonprofit411.org

The SmartMAI Consulting Edge Podcast features conversations with experienced advisors, consultants, and business leaders about how they solve problems, guide organizations through change, and drive sustainable growth and results. Hosted by Dan Mulberry.

What if service isn't a cost center — it's your most overlooked growth engine?

Don Farrell has spent more than four decades proving that connection. He started as a pot scrubber at Marriott Hotels and worked his way through front-desk operations, sales management, and ultimately vice president of sales and marketing. In 1986 he founded a hospitality training company that grew to 285 employees and licensees across 44 countries and served more than 10,000 hospitality clients. Today, as Founder and Chief Cultivating Officer of Fresh Revenues, Don helps organizations turn service, culture, and leadership into a single revenue system — and he guarantees the results.

In this episode, Don and host Dan Mulberry cover:

• Why frontline employees can move revenue as much as the sales department
• Why most training fails to change behavior — and what reinforcement actually looks like
• The CARE leadership model: Cast vision, drive Accountability, Recognize potential, Empower
• How to sell without making people feel sold to
• What distinctly human service skills become more valuable as AI takes over routine tasks
• How Fresh Revenues creates measurable culture change in 90 days

Learn more about Don Farrell and Fresh Revenues: https://freshrevenues.com

The SmartMAI Consulting Edge Podcast features conversations with experienced advisors, consultants, and business leaders about how they solve problems, guide organizations through change, and drive sustainable growth and results. Hosted by Dan Mulberry.

#Leadership #CustomerService #Hospitality #BusinessGrowth #Culture

On this episode of The SmartMAI Consulting Edge Podcast, I sit down with Marty Herbert, President and CEO of Herbert Insights & Innovations, to explore why organizations should never automate a broken process — and how to build workflows that are efficient, compliant, and still human.Marty's background spans accounting, government-contract compliance, auditing, operations, process improvement, and technology. His company helps organizations improve and automate workflows, strengthen compliance, manage data, and guide employees through change. His philosophy is simple: no business process is worth perfecting if it leaves the humans behind.Most organizations don't design bad processes on purpose — they grow that way over time, one approval, one workaround, one spreadsheet at a time. Marty explains why technology should never make a broken process move faster, and how leaders can fix the process first, automate only where it adds real value, and avoid the kind of "AI regret" that comes from moving too fast.We cover:Why reasonable processes quietly become slow, confusing, or unreliable over timeWhy organizations should improve a process before they automate itHow compliance can be built into daily work instead of checked after the factWhy reports from different systems often disagree — and what it takes to trust a dashboardWhat causes "AI regret" and how leaders can avoid itHow to decide whether AI should do the work, assist a person, or stay out of the process entirelyWhy removing too much entry-level work could cost organizations their future leadersLearn more about Marty Herbert and Herbert Insights & Innovations at HerbertInsights.com.#ProcessImprovement #Automation #Compliance #ChangeManagement #Podcast

On this episode of The SmartMAI Consulting Edge Podcast, I sit down with COL Paul A. Raggio (Ret.), Owner of Five Star Leader Development and an executive business coach, to explore how leaders scale themselves before they become the bottleneck holding their organization back.Paul served 26 years in the United States Army, retiring at the rank of Colonel, where he commanded military-police organizations at the company, battalion, and brigade levels, including the 16th Military Police Brigade Airborne at Fort Bragg. After the Army, Paul spent another 14 years in senior corporate leadership, including as President of Chenega Corporation's Security Strategic Business Unit, overseeing multiple companies and roughly 2,000 employees. Today his work through Five Star Leader Development focuses on executive coaching, strategic planning, organizational design, financial discipline, succession, and crisis management.The leadership style that helps an entrepreneur build a company can eventually become the very thing preventing it from scaling. Paul explains what decades of military command and business leadership taught him about character, delegation, communication, financial discipline, succession planning, and the changing role of the CEO in the age of AI.We cover:What military command teaches about trust, delegation, and developing people who can decide without youWhy character has to come before strategy, communication, and executionHow a CEO's greatest strength can quietly become the organization's biggest constraintWhy purpose and vision have to function as operational tools, not slogans on a wallThe "So What?" test Paul uses to judge whether communication has actually landedWhy companies need to develop leaders before they need themWhere AI helps executives, and where it risks reinforcing founder dependenceLearn more about Paul Raggio and Five Star Leader Development at FiveStarLeaderDevelopment.com.#Leadership #ExecutiveCoaching #BusinessGrowth #Delegation #Podcast

On this episode of The SmartMAI Consulting Edge Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Brett Horton, CEO and Lead Consultant of b3 Remarkable, to talk about why organizations so often promote capable employees into leadership roles without ever teaching them how to lead people.Brett brings more than 20 years in higher education, a decade in luxury hospitality, and deep experience in executive coaching and leadership development. His career includes directing Chick-fil-A's WinShape Retreat and consulting with organizations like Sporting Kansas City and The Cordish Companies, all built around one mission: developing remarkable leaders so people prosper, the planet thrives, and profits are responsibly maximized.We cover:🔹 What separates a good leader from a remarkable one🔹 Why trust is the foundation for performance, not just a nice-to-have🔹 How to balance empathy with accountability, even in hard conversations🔹 What actually makes a one-on-one meeting valuable🔹 Why so much leadership training fails to create lasting change🔹 Where AI can help leaders prepare, and where it can't replace human judgmentIf you've ever wondered why capable people struggle once they're put in charge, this conversation is for you.Learn more about Dr. Brett Horton and b3 Remarkable at b3Remarkable.com.#Leadership #ExecutiveCoaching #LeadershipDevelopment #b3Remarkable #SmartMAI #Podcast