Unscripted Small Business

By Abbey Crane

Our Unscripted Collaborative hosts Keith Bresee, Zaneta Chuniq, Keiron Bailey & 17 year SEO industry expert Jeremy Rivera are having unscripted interviews small business owners, founders and creat... more

Download on the App Store

Download on the App Store

Get it on Google Play

FAQs about Unscripted Small Business:

How many episodes does Unscripted Small Business have?

The podcast currently has 87 episodes available.

Unscripted Small Business episodes:

August 03, 2026Selling a Pool Is Harder Than Selling Mascara | Sherri Langburt
Sherri Langburt bootstrapped BabbleBoxx into an Inc. 500 influencer marketing agency that productizes campaigns for every kind of business — not just the beauty brands everyone pictures. She argues small local brands actually hold the biggest opportunity, and that the first hurdle is fear, not budget: not every creator costs a million dollars, and the real question is whether the influencer you pick can move a sale — because selling a pool is a lot harder than selling mascara.
Sherri walks through the pre-flight checks that decide whether a campaign converts or embarrasses you (inventory, store geos, landing pages, promo consistency), makes the case that AI cannot replace the human in the loop, and names the channels nobody is crowding: Amazon reviewers, Pinterest, Twitch and LinkedIn. Creators can pitch her team through the BabbleBoxx influencer sign-up.
Read the full recap: Selling a Pool Is Harder Than Selling Mascara
In this episode:
Why small local brands have the biggest influencer opportunity — and why fear, not budget, blocks them
Awareness creators vs. creators who actually move product, and asking for trackable sales data
The pre-flight checklist: criteria, inventory, store geos, landing pages, promo consistency
“If it’s happening to the influencer, it’s happening to the consumer”
“The universe is your CRM” — why a SaaS platform became an agency
Can AI replace the influencer? “Isn’t that just an ad unit?”
The channels almost nobody books: Amazon reviewers, Pinterest, Twitch, LinkedIn, Substack
Going past the tent poles — the November 1st promo nobody runs
Bootstrapping, a 20-person lifestyle business, and turning down the wrong client
Remote team culture built on trust rather than monitoring software
Why physical is coming back: mailbox moments, merch, events, community
Connect with Sherri: babbleboxx.com · LinkedIn · case studies and trend reports via [email protected]
More episodes: Unscripted Small Business, hosted by Jeremy Rivera.
...more
33min
July 29, 2026Fix the Workflow First: AI That Sticks in Small Business
Most companies buy AI backwards — they pick a platform before they have named what they are actually trying to fix. James Ernst of Core Order thinks that single inversion explains most of the disappointment small and mid-sized businesses feel about AI.
James spent eighteen years in marketing and public relations at agencies around the country, took a three-year detour running his own restaurant in Buffalo, and has spent the last two years working in AI full time. Core Order isn't an AI agency — he calls it a growth architecture firm, and the distinction is the whole argument.
In this episode
The question that comes before the tool — not which platform to buy, but what you are trying to make structurally better.
Why tools go unused — departments each buy their own, a few people adopt them, and the company's data ends up scattered exactly where AI can't reach it.
Homebrew vs. off-the-shelf — pull data from the CRM you already pay for via API or an MCP server, then build the narrow workflow around it.
Security and hallucination — the only two objections James hears in every room, and how he answers each.
Financial data specifically — locked-down databases, enterprise accounts where your inputs aren't training the model, and locally hosted open-source models.
An agent swarm that researches prospects — feed it a domain and a contact name, get back a company profile and recommended services.
Regulated industries — capturing HIPAA constraints, red lines and approved language in the discovery session instead of after something goes wrong.
Four hours a week to thirty minutes — the concrete win, and why the reclaimed time goes back to your people rather than into a headcount cut.
Chapters
(00:00) Villain origin story — eighteen years in PR, and a restaurant
(03:09) What a “growth architecture firm” actually does
(04:39) The subscription graveyard every business has
(06:25) Homebrew or off-the-shelf?
(08:09) Making sure AI says the right thing about you
(10:29) Internal workflows first, AI search later
(11:28) The two objections: security and hallucination
(12:41) Where the wins actually show up
(13:50) Is your financial data safe?
(15:38) Case study: an agent swarm that researches prospects
(17:22) Hot take — superpower or distraction
(18:50) Regulated industries and approved language
(21:39) Which verticals are primed
(23:40) The pain point underneath everything is time
(25:14) On being kind to the robots
(26:10) Imposter syndrome at the frontier
(28:45) AI slop and the rising value of human work
(31:11) Where to find James Ernst
Notable quotes
“The first question you should be asking is not which tool should we buy, but what are we trying to make structurally better?” — James Ernst
“AI could either be a superpower or a distraction.” — James Ernst
“I don't leverage AI to write anything for me, because that is such a part of the human process that I want to keep.” — James Ernst
Resources & links
Core Order — James's growth architecture firm
The Core Order blog, including Why Enterprise AI Investments Fail and Intelligence Is a Commodity
James Ernst on LinkedIn — where he's most active, and happy to talk AI with anyone
Full write-up of this episode
AI & Small Business hub — what other founders on the show are actually doing with AI
On keeping the writing human: human-certified, expert-sourced content
About the show
Unscripted Small Business is hosted by Jeremy Rivera. Full episode archive at unscriptedsmallbusiness.com.
...more
32min
July 22, 2026Stop Lighting Marketing Money on Fire: Speed-to-Lead for Property Managers
Cameron Tope runs a several-hundred-door residential property management company in the Greater Houston area — and he operates it 100% remotely from San Diego. In his second visit to Unscripted Small Business, the founder of Emerson Property Management lays out why $20,000 a month in marketing is worthless if nobody answers the phone, how AI became a delegation tool rather than a magic box, and why he gives his entire playbook away on purpose.
Cameron is broker, owner, and founder of Emerson Property Management, serving several hundred owners across Greater Houston while running the whole operation from California. He started the company after he couldn't find a manager for his own rentals — while at risk of losing his oil-and-gas job and carrying a lot of debt — and has done it full-time for six years (and unofficially for over ten). Returning listeners first met him in Episode 1: Building a Property Management Company With Integrity.
In this episode
Why speed-to-lead is the cheapest growth lever there is — and how slow follow-up is "just lighting money on fire"
The two hires that changed the business: a dedicated salesperson for inbound owner calls and a marketing person
How agent referrals and "accidental landlords" drive Emerson's pipeline in a higher-rate, higher-inventory market
Turning on SEO only after operations were solid — and why Cameron was deliberately slow to marketing
Using AI as a delegation tool, not magic: after-action reviews on evictions, screening-criteria checks, and saved-prompt analytics
Why the biggest AI gains go to novices, not veterans — new hires absorbing senior knowledge fast
The "give them the recipe" moat — why publishing everything doesn't hand away the business
RTMs (remote team members) as the first step toward AI, and the delegation-vs-abdication line
Applying the theory of constraints — focus is now the scarce resource
Chapters
(00:00) Meet Cameron Tope: Houston property management, run from San Diego
(01:27) The marketing engine: a salesperson, agent referrals & accidental landlords
(03:48) Speed-to-lead: "you're just lighting money on fire"
(07:50) AI as delegation, not magic: AARs, screening & novices vs. veterans
(13:46) The give-it-all-away moat: "we can give them the recipe"
(16:56) RTMs and the delegation-vs-abdication line
(20:49) Remote ops & offshoring pitfalls: the Raven Tools story
(29:18) Theory of constraints: focus is the scarce resource
(31:23) The roadmap: own Houston, build a life, don't sell
(34:08) Where to find Cameron
Notable quotes
"You spend $20,000 a month on marketing, but you don't have anybody answer the phone, and you get back to them two days later — you're just lighting money on fire." — Cameron Tope"We can give them the recipe, but it's not going to taste the same." — Cameron Tope"RTMs are kind of the first step towards AI. If you have a good process, you can delegate it." — Cameron Tope
Resources & links
Emerson Property Management — everything's there, including Cameron's free accidental landlord guide for owners deciding whether to rent or sell
Cameron's first appearance: Building a Property Management Company With Integrity
On turning process friction into content: human-certified, expert-sourced content
For service businesses tightening their SEO and fulfillment: SEO advisory
Getting your name out through interviews: podcast-powered link building
About the show
Unscripted Small Business is hosted by Jeremy Rivera. Find more episodes at unscriptedsmallbusiness.com.
...more
36min
July 20, 2026Build Your Website for the AI, Not the Human — Richard Hickman, Piqued Consulting
Richard Hickman spent his first career hunting Russian hackers as a digital-forensics consultant. Then he became a stepdad to five kids overnight, walked away from the on-call life, and started helping his wife build her coaching business — which accidentally turned into Piqued Consulting, a marketing agency built entirely for high-ticket coaches. In this episode he hands Jeremy Rivera the exact playbook: the CRM foundation that comes before ads, the pricing math that decides who he'll even work with, and why you should be writing your website for the AI that's reading it, not just the human.
Richard's ideal client is an established coach making around $20k/month who's stuck under a "referral ceiling" — great at the work, no predictable sales system. His agency's job is to install the foundation, dial in the offer, and only then turn on paid acquisition. Along the way he makes a sharp case for answer engine optimization (AEO), email marketing, and never betting your whole livelihood on a single platform.
In this episode
The CRM foundation comes first — centralize communications in GoHighLevel, get a company phone number off your personal cell, and build speed-to-lead before you ever run ads.
Don't turn on ads until the offer is dialed in — and why he won't work with a coach whose offer is under $4,000–$5,000.
Price to cover your cost of acquisition — collect enough cash upfront to pay CAC twice over, charge upfront (or half now/half in 30), and stay far away from pay-on-results.
The coach-to-advisor shift — reposition so a successful client keeps you for the next milestone instead of graduating away from you.
AEO/GEO in practice — "build your website so an AI cites you," and title blog posts as the exact questions prospects type into ChatGPT.
Email is the most underutilized channel — value-add sends weekly, the jab-jab-jab-hook rhythm, and why he's never unsubscribed from Grant Cardone.
Never rely on one platform — the creator with millions of followers and zero emails who nearly lost everything in the TikTok outage.
The authenticity paradox — how to market credibly for profit without becoming the person prospects "can smell."
Notable quotes
"You need to be building your website to where it's not necessarily geared towards a human being visiting it, but an AI visiting it." — Richard Hickman"Who reads blogs anymore? AIs do. Perplexity reads your blog. ChatGPT reads your blog." — Richard Hickman"Social media is great, but don't rely on it, because it could go away in an instant and we've seen it happen." — Richard Hickman
Resources & links
Free AI visibility audit for coaches: coachingaiaudit.com — checks whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude cite you, then gives pointers to fix it.
Piqued Consulting — Richard's marketing agency for high-ticket coaches.
Richard on Instagram: @piquedconsulting
Richard's new podcast, The Business of High Ticket Coaching — launching soon.
Go deeper on AI visibility & answer engine optimization.
Unscripted Small Business is hosted by Jeremy Rivera. Every episode at unscriptedsmallbusiness.com.
...more
45min
July 20, 2026The $100/Hour Rule That Ends $10 Busywork | Louis Swart (benefit / outcome)
A broker once told a cocky 25-year-old plumbing-company owner five words that gutted him: "Louis, your business is worth nothing." Five years later Louis Swart sold his next business for $5M — and the only thing that changed was delegation. In this episode of Unscripted Small Business, Louis (founder of Iron Brij) unpacks the systems that turn a business you own a job in into one that's actually worth something.
Louis has built and sold companies the hard way — a plumbing business a broker valued at nothing, a later business sold for $5M, and another scaled to $35M and 450 staff. He's also the author of The B Myth (The Busyness Myth). Across the hour he trades practical, hard-won tools with host Jeremy Rivera on delegation, SOPs, creativity inside parameters, using AI without producing slop, and beating the "badge of honor" trap of being busy.
In this episode
Why a broker said Louis's plumbing business was worth nothing — because he did the accounts, hiring, and quality control himself
The delegation shift that let him sell his next business for $5M (and later scale one to $35M and 450 staff)
Why every stage of growth brings "different levels, different devils" — and how to borrow someone who's already been there
Building SOPs and checklists that survive "Chinese whispers" (a.k.a. telephone) as teams go remote and offshore
Where to enforce parameters and where to deliberately leave room for creativity
The Friday AI stand-up where every team member brings one new AI tool they've learned
Treating AI as an "Iron Man suit" — "creativity in, creativity out" — instead of drowning people in AI slop and "clod hopping"
The $100/hour post-it rule, the post-time planner, and "eat the frog" to beat productive procrastination
Chapters
(00:00) Intro — why should you trust this guest?
(00:38) "Your business is worth nothing" — the $5M delegation lesson
(03:56) Owning a job vs. owning a business
(06:29) Different levels, different devils
(10:01) Systems for remote and offshore teams
(12:00) SOPs and checklists (the 100-points-of-ID example)
(18:56) Surviving "Chinese whispers" as you scale
(22:56) Creativity within parameters + the Friday AI stand-up
(25:00) "Creativity in, creativity out" — killing AI slop
(28:56) AI as an "Iron Man suit" (and the blend humans still need)
(38:48) The Busyness Myth: busy as a badge of honor
(40:44) The $100/hour post-it rule
(44:29) The post-time planner + eat the frog
(51:06) Where to find Louis and the book
Notable quotes
"Louis, your business is worth nothing."— Louis Swart (quoting the broker)"Would I pay somebody a hundred dollars an hour to do this task?"— Louis Swart"Creativity in, creativity out."— Louis Swart
Resources & links
Louis's book — The B Myth (The Busyness Myth)
Louis Swart's site (free post-time planner & tools) — louisswart.com
Iron Brij — ironbrij.com.au
Connect with Louis on LinkedIn and Instagram
On avoiding AI slop, Louis and Jeremy get into why founders still need human-certified, expert-sourced content rather than volume for volume's sake
Louis's "hire the pro instead of DIY-ing it for six months" point is exactly the case for fractional SEO advisory
About the show
Unscripted Small Business is hosted by Jeremy Rivera. Find every episode and recap at unscriptedsmallbusiness.com, and browse past guests by topic at unscriptedseo.com.
...more
51min
July 19, 2026 Ali Raymer - Unscripted Small Business Interview
...more
39min
July 08, 2026 Your Marketing Metrics Are Lying to You — Do This Instead | Joshua Altman, Beltway Media
Every purchase is a trust purchase. So why do we obsess over clicks?
Joshua Altman, Managing Director of Beltway Media and a fractional Chief Communications Officer (CCO), joins host Jeremy Rivera on the Unscripted Small Business Podcast to explain why the metrics most small businesses chase are quietly misleading them — and what to build instead.
We get into the "Four Languages" model (what people READ, SEE, HEAR, and EXPERIENCE), why a solopreneur can benefit from fractional comms just like a 250-person company, how Reddit backfires when you fake it, why buyer journeys now take 30+ touchpoints you'll never track, and how to use AI as a genuine tool for research and machine-readable pages — without letting it write your brand.
If you've ever felt duped by your analytics dashboard, this one's for you.
⏱️ CHAPTERS
00:00 Meet Joshua Altman & Beltway Media
00:55 What "fractional" + Chief Communications Officer actually means
02:08 Aligning internal and external communications
03:51 What size business needs comms? (solopreneur → 250 people)
07:02 The first weeks of an engagement: "Why isn't it working yet?"
08:58 The Four Languages model: read, see, hear, experience
11:43 There are no "content police" — cadence & repurposing
12:29 The red lines: what a CCO won't do
13:46 An unexpected win: Reddit (and how it backfires)
16:06 Build your own community vs. join where they already are
17:24 Fractional CCO vs. CMO — the trust difference
19:02 The biggest communications missteps
19:15 Why attribution is broken: 7 → 30+ touchpoints
21:55 What replaces cause-and-effect? Correlation + judgment
27:22 The Sears catalog lesson
28:28 AI: the worst support rep we have (but the one we've got)
29:15 Agentic AI, bots with wallets & optimizing for machines
32:20 AI research at scale — done right (government sources only)
35:11 Building an SEO Tactics Library with AI in an afternoon
37:47 What you can and can't control in discoverability
38:58 The one rule: everything you produce should be USEFUL
39:27 Where to find Joshua
GUEST — Joshua Altman, Beltway Media
Website: https://beltway.media/
Free tools & quizzes: https://beltway.media/our-free-tools/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuaialtman/
✉️ Email: [email protected]
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
• SEO Teric (Matt Brooks): https://seoteric.com
• Open Source SEO: https://openseo.so/
• Permacast Walls — precast concrete walls in Florida: https://permacastwalls.com/
️ THE SHOW
Unscripted Small Business Podcast — real conversations with the people building and marketing small businesses.
Hosted by Jeremy Rivera.
#SmallBusiness #Marketing #FractionalCCO #Communications #BrandStrategy #ContentMarketing #AImarketing #Reddit #TrustMarketing #Podcast
...more
41min
July 02, 2026 The Status Quo Is Your Biggest Competitor — Jorge Chavez on Selling Without "Selling"
Jeremy Rivera sits down with Jorge Chavez, president and co-founder of Topaz Sales Consulting, on the human side of selling in an AI-saturated world. AI can research the prospect and draft your questions — but it can't read tone, listen in real time, or find the next question on the fly. Jorge makes the case that trust is still built person-to-person, and lays out a refreshingly counterintuitive philosophy: stop trying to close. When you detach from the outcome, listen empathetically, and help people make an informed decision, buyers ask to buy.
▎
▎ Along the way: why he "hates email" for anything but scheduling, why the process is identical in B2B and B2C (only the questions change), the psychology of the middle option, closing the gap between sales and marketing (with Jeremy's own "300% more leads, worst month ever" story), and the sales-hiring problem almost no company screens for.
▎
▎ ⏱️ Chapters
▎ 00:00 Meet Jorge Chavez & Topaz Sales Consulting
▎ 01:30 AI can prep you — but it can't have the conversation
▎ 03:37 "I hate email": why relationships need real dialogue
▎ 10:04 What all those workflow tools are really trying to solve
▎ 13:06 DISC, trust, and connecting t
▎ 21:48 B2B vs. B2C: same process, different questions
▎ 27:56 You don't have to ask for the
▎ 30:23 "The status quo is your biggest competitor"
▎ 31:29 Empathetic listening & why yo
▎ 34:57 Can you be authentic when you're paid to care?
▎ 46:40 Closing the gap between sales
▎ 51:54 The "300% more leads, worst month ever" story
▎ 59:05 The question he wishes people
▎ 01:02:18 Where to find Topaz Sales Consulting
▎
▎ Connect with Jorge Chavez
▎ Topaz Sales Consulting: https://www
▎ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrchavez/
▎ X: https://x.com/topazsales
▎
▎ ️ Unscripted Small Business — httpom
▎
▎ #Sales #SalesConsulting #B2BSales #g #SmallBusiness#UnscriptedSmallBusiness
...more
1h 3min
July 02, 2026 Design Your Life on Purpose — Ameera Virani on Habits, Visibility & Wealth
Jeremy Rivera sits down with Ameera Virani of The Designed Life — a coach with two decades in personal and professional development who grew up producing the stages for icons like Wayne Dyer, Bob Proctor, Tony Robbins, and Robin Sharma. Ameera helps women (especially in midlife and seasons of change) get exceptionally clear on what they truly desire and build a blueprint to live it intentionally across health, business, wealth, relationships, and joy.
▎
▎ We get into why we repeat the same subconscious patterns, how habit stacking rewires your day, why success can suddenly feel "unsafe" (the internal thermostat), the myth of work-life balance vs. real work-life harmony, a time-audit exercise to reclaim your hours, and the deepest struggle she sees again and again: the fear of being fully seen.
▎
▎ ⏱️ Chapters
▎ 00:00 Meet Ameera Virani & The Designed Life
▎ 01:40 Learning from the icons: Dyer, Proctor, Robbins & Sharma
▎ 03:04 The #1 pitfall: running old subconscious patterns
▎ 04:53 Habit stacking & the morning-phone trap
▎ 07:18 "Are we dogs?" — pain vs. pleasure & how we really learn
▎ 07:49 Why success can feel unsafe: the internal thermostat
▎ 11:04 Neurodivergence & how personal-development advice evolved
▎ 15:33 Is work-life balance a myth? Harmony over balance
▎ 17:34 Don't miss the moments that won't come again
▎ 18:47 The time-audit exercise
▎ 22:27 It all comes back to intention
▎ 22:51 The deepest struggle: the fear of being fully seen
▎ 26:59 Immigrant conditioning & subconscious beliefs
▎ 30:16 Why Ameera works mainly with women
▎ 31:48 The question she wishes people would ask
▎ 34:46 Why designing your life is your responsibility
▎ 35:02 Where to connect with Ameera
▎
▎ Connect with Ameera Virani
▎ Website: https://ameeravirani.com
▎ Substack: https://ameeravirani.substack.com/
▎ The Designed Life (podcast): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-designed-life/id1832982040
▎ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ameera.virani/
▎ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ameeravirani/
▎ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ameera.virani.5
▎
▎ ️ Unscripted Small Business — https://unscriptedsmallbusiness.com
▎
▎ #IntentionalLiving #LifeDesign #WomenInBusiness #PersonalDevelopment #HabitStacking #WorkLifeHarmony #UnscriptedSmallBusiness
...more
37min
June 23, 2026Get Found, Get Paid: How AI Agents Are Becoming Your Newest Customers with Mark Pearson
After a stretch of major life changes about five years ago, Mark Pearson trained as a life coach through Tony Robbins, then narrowed into business coaching and, ultimately, AI consulting for small and mid-sized businesses. Today he's the founder of Agent Buyable, where he helps companies do two things: get found by AI and get paid by AI agents.
What We Cover
Why search has split into two layers — getting found (AEO) and getting paid (agentic commerce)
Where agent-to-agent transactions are already happening, from big retailers to Shopify storefronts
How a service business can “productize” its offers so an agent can read and buy them
Why the biggest volume will be quiet, recurring B2B reorders
Building your entity, getting cited everywhere, and writing for humans and bots at the same time
Episode Highlights
Mark's core framing is that SEO has graduated into the agentic world. First you have to be found — that's answer-engine optimization, making sure ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and the agents built on them can discover and accurately describe your business. Then you have to be able to get paid by AI agents when they act on a customer's behalf. One layer is table stakes; the other is a brand-new revenue channel.
This isn't theoretical. Mark walks through where agentic commerce is live today — Home Depot, Lowe's, Etsy, Wayfair, and Shopify storefronts transacting through the new Stripe/OpenAI and Google protocols — and notes the US is actually trailing China, where you can tell an AI to plan and book an entire vacation. For a local business that isn't e-commerce, the bridge is making your calendar and catalog agent-readable so an agent can book and pay on a protected rail.
The practical heart of the conversation is productizing services. Mark's example — a chiropractor turning a “10-pack of visits” into a purchasable, schema-tagged item — shows how to define top services as discrete products an agent can read cleanly. Jeremy connects this to entity work: the “Save Fry Oil” brand Google only understood as a verb until it added an About page. If you don't tell the machines who you are, they can't recommend you.
They close on a caution worth keeping: use AI to create, not to offload. It's a powerful tool, but it hallucinates and it has only borrowed anecdotes — the real value still comes from two humans actually talking. Verify the sources, keep your own agency, and let the machine amplify the conversation rather than replace it.
Connect with Mark Pearson
Website: AgentBuyable.ai
LinkedIn: Mark D. Pearson
About the Show
The Unscripted Small Business Podcast is hosted by Jeremy Rivera and features candid, unscripted conversations with founders, operators, and experts on what actually works in running and growing a small business. It's part of the Unscripted Podcast Network. New episodes at unscriptedsmallbusiness.com.
...more
53min

FAQs about Unscripted Small Business:

How many episodes does Unscripted Small Business have?

The podcast currently has 87 episodes available.