Would Recommend: Real Stories From Businesses Worth Talking About with Nikki McKnight

Some events you attend once while others you reorganize your whole year around. Nikki sits down with Maria Tassi and Kristina Bartold of High Vibe Women and Janette Downie of The Chill Space, three women who design live experiences for ambitious entrepreneurs and obsess over the same thing: how it actually feels to be a person in the room. The conversation gets into the decisions most hosts never think to make, why protecting an experience sometimes means turning down money, and how the part people remember is almost never the thing on the sales page.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• Why Maria and Kristina say no to more tickets, more sponsors, and more money, and the exact point where scaling an experience starts to break it
• The quiet design philosophy behind The Chill Space, and what Janette understands about the people who disappear to the bathroom mid-event
• How the best event hosts use other people's events as research, and the one detail that ruined an eleven-out-of-ten speaker lineup
• What "intimacy" actually means when you're designing for a room, and why it has very little to do with how many people are in it
• The thing that happens when there's no permission to step away, and why building in the exhale keeps people engaged instead of checked out

If you've ever wondered why some rooms feel like they were built for you, and how the people who build them keep that feeling intact as they grow, press play.

About My Guests

Janette Downie is a creative strategist, brand whisperer, and advocate for redefining success as something sustainable and human. As co-founder of Space Creatorz, she helps small to medium-sized businesses transform their marketing strategies into measurable growth. She's also the host of The Chill Space podcast, where she explores the intersection of ambition and well-being, and the creator of The Chill Space: a blend of virtual community calls, in-person gatherings, and physical activations designed to help ambitious, sensitive people find calm inside high-energy environments. Her mission is to help others embrace their humanity, show up authentically, and build success on their own terms.

https://www.spacecreatorz.com/
https://www.instagram.com/heynettybaby/
https://www.thechillspace.com/ 

Maria Tassi & Kristina Bartold are passionate about helping business owners think of their businesses in a bigger way than they could have ever imagined. They are the co-founders of The Social Snippet, a digital marketing agency that helps entrepreneurs grow their communities online using social media and podcasting. They are also the co-founders of High Vibe Women, a community that hosts local events for Canadian female entrepreneurs to connect and network. 

The Social Snippet: https://www.thesocialsnippet.com/

High Vibe Women Full Day Experience: https://www.highvibewomen.ca/october-2026-event 

Connect on Instagram:

@_mariatassi @kristina.bartold

Connect with Nikki on Instagram: instagram.com/iamnikkimck 

The Would Recommend Standard is a free guide to the five principles behind businesses people can't stop talking about. 

Grab it here: theopsshop.biz/wouldrecommend-standard 

A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't. 

Book yours here: theopsshop.biz/sparksession 

Your brain is trying to protect you but it's also, unfortunately, making things up about your customers.

In this solo episode, Nikki takes a therapy homework assignment (yes, really) and turns it into one of the most practical frameworks she's found for explaining why client experience design goes wrong at the thinking level, not the execution level. 

Before you can design a better client experience, you have to notice the stories your brain is generating about your customers. And some of those stories? They are not the truth.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• Why fortune-telling feels like prudence but is actually just a fancy way of avoiding experiments (and the one-star review analogy that will stick with you)
• The moment Nikki's therapist handed her a worksheet and she had a slightly horrifying realization about her business
• Why the loudest complaint in your inbox is almost never the thing that actually needs to change
• What mind-reading looks like in a team meeting, and what happens when you actually go talk to five customers instead
• The replacement behaviour for each trap, because noticing the pattern is not the finish line

If your business keeps wondering why things aren't clicking, this episode is probably the conversation you needed to have.

Connect with Nikki on Instagram: instagram.com/iamnikkimck 

The Would Recommend Standard is a free guide to the five principles behind businesses people can't stop talking about. 

Grab it here: theopsshop.biz/wouldrecommend-standard 

A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't. 

Book yours here: theopsshop.biz/sparksession 

Most founders spend a lot of time thinking about how to attract the right clients but very few spend time thinking about whether the right clients can actually find them. 

Nikki sits down with two brand photographers who have cracked that problem wide open, and what they know about making your personality visible, communicating before anxiety sets in, and designing an experience that filters for fit applies to every service business in this audience, camera or no camera.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• Why Vic's clients kept using the same word in their reviews that wasn't showing up anywhere in her brand, and what that gap was actually costing her
• The pre-shoot process Dana builds for every client and the reason it exists long before anyone picks up a camera
• Why communicating your policies, your timeline, and your process upfront isn't oversharing; it's the most efficient client filter you have
• The thing both Dana and Vic agree is the most important decision a founder makes before a shoot, and why it has nothing to do with outfits

If your best clients found you because they felt like you got them before they ever got on a call, this episode is going to show you exactly how to engineer that.

About My Guests

Dana Castro

Dana Castro is a brand photographer who helps entrepreneurs polish their online presence through strategic visual storytelling. She blends her background as a marketing director, her nerdy camera obsession and her passion for authentic human connection to create images that can convert and start conversations. Dana offers a collaborative, personalized approach serving clients across the Greater Toronto Area and beyond.

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

Website: https://www.threecrownsstudio.com/ 

Google My Business: https://share.google/mAIlVxzz33IsAt6zw

Victoria Mae Cassell

Victoria is a brand photographer, marketing strategist, and content creator based in Ontario, helping female founders stop being the best-kept secret in their industry. Through brand photography, UGC, and social strategy, she builds visibility that turns followers into clients and dream brands into actual partners. When she's not behind the camera, she's building her own platform as a female entrepreneur lifestyle creator and hosting the Post High Vibe Dinner, an intimate gathering for women who are done playing small.

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

Website: https://www.victoriamae.ca/ 

Google My Business: https://share.google/3wlGiZPhNfacKfuqw

Connect with Nikki on Instagram: instagram.com/iamnikkimck 

The Would Recommend Standard is a free guide to the five principles behind businesses people can't stop talking about. 

Grab it here: theopsshop.biz/wouldrecommend-standard 

A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't. 

Book yours here: theopsshop.biz/sparksession 

Nikki hates board games. The rulebook comes out, the energy dies, and the fun sits three feet away behind a wall of logistics. Except once: a Pokémon card game showed up at Christmas and broke every rule she thought was inevitable and it quietly changed how she thinks about client experience design.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• Why the Pokémon Battle Academy box is one of the best examples of intuitive experience design Nikki has ever seen (yes, really)
• The specific design decision the game made that most businesses never do: understanding comes from doing, not the other way around
• How guidance can serve the person who needs it without slowing down the person who doesn't
• The gap between "feeling like you've started" and "feeling like you're being prepared to start" -- and why that gap is where clients quietly drift away

If you've ever wondered why clients disengage before you even get to the good part, this episode is going to make something click.

Connect with Nikki on Instagram: instagram.com/iamnikkimck 

The Would Recommend Standard is a free guide to the five principles behind businesses people can't stop talking about. 

Grab it here: theopsshop.biz/wouldrecommend-standard 

A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't. 

Book yours here: theopsshop.biz/sparksession 

Every service business owner has felt it: you do the work, the client is thrilled, and six months later it's like you were never there. Nikki sits down with two professional organizers: Brittnei Gaudio of wellnested living Co. and AnnMarie Zezima of Organized A to Z Inc. The two of them have spent years solving exactly that problem inside people's homes. The principles they've built their businesses around will sound very familiar.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• Why Brittnei says the real reason any system fails after she leaves has nothing to do with the system, and everything to do with what the client does the day after
• How AnnMarie's decade buying home organization products for a major Canadian retailer changed the way she thinks about what clients actually need versus what they think they want
• The consult-first philosophy both guests share, and why neither will walk into a client's home without understanding the emotional weight of what they're being asked to do
• What a neutral third party can accomplish that the client absolutely cannot do for themselves, and why that's the whole value proposition

If you've ever delivered excellent work and watched a client slide back to square one, this episode is going to show you exactly where the gap lives.

About My Guests

Brittnei Gaudio

Brittnei Gaudio is a professional organizer, decluttering coach, and owner of wellnested living Co.

As an award-winning home management company, wellnested helps busy families create easy-to-tidy homes through a refreshingly practical approach to decluttering and organization. Their services focus less on perfection and more on systems that actually work in everyday life.

After working in hundreds of homes, Brittnei knows that sustainable organization isn't about achieving a picture-perfect space - it's about creating thoughtful systems that support the life happening inside the home and lighten the mental load for the families living there.

wellnested living Co. offers in-home organization and decluttering, virtual decluttering support, and home management services such as errands, pantry stocking and returns. 

Instagram: @well.nested.living 
Website: wellnestedliving.ca

AnnMarie Zezima

AnnMarie Zezima is the founder of Organized A to Z Inc., a professional organizing and decluttering company based in Toronto serving busy families and older adults across the GTA. Before launching her business, she spent over a decade as a buyer in corporate retail, sourcing home organization products and developing a real understanding of how Canadians actually live, what they're storing, how their homes work, and what they genuinely need. Add two kids, aging parents, and the experience of navigating her mother-in-law's estate, and her personal and professional worlds came together in the best possible way. She knows that the busy mom and the overwhelmed daughter helping a parent downsize are often the same person, and she built her practice around both. Her systems are practical, sustainable, and rooted in real life because that's exactly where she lives too.

Website: www.getorganizedatoz.com
Instagram: @getorganizedatoz
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annmariezezima/

Connect with Nikki on Instagram: instagram.com/iamnikkimck 

The Would Recommend Standard is a free guide to the five principles behind businesses people can't stop talking about. 

Grab it here: theopsshop.biz/wouldrecommend-standard 

A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't. 

Book yours here: theopsshop.biz/sparksession 

Two years ago I walked into a steakhouse for my birthday and walked out with a story I apparently cannot stop telling. 

This episode is that story, and more importantly, it's layers of surprise and delight that we can take into our own businesses.  None of this costs a lot. All of it requires a decision.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• The specific moment at Fleming's Prime Steakhouse that made me realize most businesses are delivering a service when they could be designing an experience.
• Why the espresso martini my dad cried over wasn't in any SOP, and what that means for how you build your team culture.
• The one question your intake or booking flow is probably not asking, and why that missing question is costing you referrals.

If you've ever wondered why your satisfied clients aren't becoming your raving ones, press play.

Connect with Nikki on Instagram: instagram.com/iamnikkimck 

The Would Recommend Standard is a free guide to the five principles behind businesses people can't stop talking about. 

Grab it here: theopsshop.biz/wouldrecommend-standard 

A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't. 

Book yours here: theopsshop.biz/sparksession 

Scope creep. Client reliance. The quiet chaos of selling a service to a human being who doesn't always know what they want. Call them agency problems if you want, but if you've ever said yes to something and spent three weeks wondering why, this conversation is for you. 

Andréa Jones and Natalia Kaplan have both built agencies from the ground up, blown past their own limits, and come out the other side with very different businesses and a lot of earned wisdom.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• Natalia's $50 campaign that got the Minister of Defence's attention (the location is not for the faint of heart, but the ROI absolutely is)
• Why Andréa won't quote a number on a sales call anymore, and the business partnership agreement that got her there
• The honest answer to whether any agency has actually locked down scope creep (spoiler: they haven't, and neither has anyone else)

About My Guests

Meet Andréa Jones — your marketing shortcut in human form. As the founder of OnlineDrea and Creative Director at Uncommon Marketing Agency, she’s on a mission to help entrepreneurs do less, market smarter, and grow without the guilt trip of hustle culture. Her approach blends savvy strategy with playful creativity, helping business owners turn overwhelm into ease and chaos into clarity.

With more than a decade of experience, Andréa has guided over 5,000 students through her courses, programs, and resources, helping them build systems that actually fit their lives so marketing feels doable and even fun.

She’s also the host of the award-winning Mindful Marketing Podcast, where she breaks down timely trends and timeless strategies into bite-sized, actionable insights.

Based in Niagara Falls, Canada, Andréa brings a grounded, refreshing perspective to modern marketing. Her mantra? Growth should feel good.

https://onlinedrea.com

uncommon.ca 

Natalia Kaplan is the founder and Managing Director of On Point Agency Inc., an award-winning Montréal-based creative marketing agency that helps brands become harder to ignore.

Her path into marketing was not exactly traditional. With a background in psychology, a master’s in accounting, and an early career at L’Oréal Canada, Natalia built her approach around understanding both what makes people care and what makes a business actually work. Over the past decade, she has worked across beauty, tech, defence, wellness, digital platforms, and other industries where the message is not always easy to explain.

Through On Point Agency, Natalia helps clients sharpen their positioning, build memorable campaigns, create content with a real point of view, and bring bold ideas into the real world. She is especially interested in the space between business strategy and creative risk, where brands stop sounding like everyone else and start becoming something people actually care about.

You can see the agency's work at www.onpointagency.ca and find Natalia at https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalia-kaplan/

Connect with Nikki on Instagram: instagram.com/iamnikkimck 

The Would Recommend Standard is a free guide to the five principles behind businesses people can't stop talking about. 

Grab it here: theopsshop.biz/wouldrecommend-standard 

A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't. 

Book yours here: theopsshop.biz/sparksession 

There is a 1970s children's television show that had a more rigorous empathy standard than most businesses apply to their client communication. And the test its head writer used on every single sentence before it could air is one of the most useful frameworks Nikki has ever brought into a client engagement.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• How the Mr. Rogers' writing team stress-tested every sentence before it aired, and the three questions that changed what made the final cut
• The real revenue problem hiding inside your most reasonable-sounding policies, and why "it makes sense to me" is the wrong question to be asking
• Three real business examples run through the Mr. Rogers’ test
• The mindset shift that separates technically correct from actually remembered

If you've ever sent a policy, an email, or an out-of-office and wondered why it landed wrong, this episode is going to show you exactly why.

Connect with Nikki on Instagram: instagram.com/iamnikkimck 

The Would Recommend Standard is a free guide to the five principles behind businesses people can't stop talking about. 

Grab it here: theopsshop.biz/wouldrecommend-standard 

A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't. 

Book yours here: theopsshop.biz/sparksession 

What does it mean to design something a customer will hold in their hands every single day? 

Nikki sits down with two founders who built physical products rooted in confidence, clarity, and self-belief, and who both obsess over the experience long after the order ships.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• The story behind the pink metallic envelope, and why Lisa gets unboxing videos from customers who weren't expecting to feel that moved by a mailer.
• Why Cheryl spent years trying to make PleaseNotes a faceless brand, what changed her mind, and how that shift rewired her entire approach to packaging and growth.
• The belly band conversation nobody has in product development; and why what works beautifully in D2C can completely fail when your product hits a retail shelf.
• What Lisa's QR code nudge is actually doing for her customer relationships (hint: it's not a marketing tactic, it's a continuity experience).
• Why Cheryl says your product has to work as an ecosystem, and what that means for founders who are just starting to think beyond their hero product.

If you've ever wondered what separates a product people buy from a product people recommend, press play.

About My Guests:

Cheryl Sutherland is a transformational Confidence and Mindset Speaker, Entrepreneur, and Founder of PleaseNotes, a personal growth brand that creates affirmation-filled goods to inspire clarity, confidence, and creativity. Known as The Confidence Creator, Cheryl helps individuals and organizations unlock bold leadership, resilience, and personal power through the art of mindset mastery. After spending over 10,000 hours studying personal development, coaching, and mindset psychology, she discovered that true leadership begins within. Her work has been featured in Forbes, InStyle, Huffington Post, Fast Company, Thrive Global, and FOX LA. She has partnered with organizations like Salesforce, Freshbooks, CPA Canada, and Quicken Loans to deliver keynotes, panels, and workshops that challenge traditional ideas around leadership, confidence, and self-trust. Cheryl travels internationally from her home base in Toronto, Ontario.

pleasenotes.com
instagram.com/pleasenotesgoods   
Clear and Confident Course: cherylsutherland.thrivecart.com/clear-and-confident-course-pleasenotes/ 

Lisa Simone Richards is the co-founder and CEO of Pearl Spark Pages, a self-belief fueled stationery brand that gives women entrepreneurs a daily dose of self-confidence so they can push past imposter syndrome. After two decades as a publicist helping women-led startups gain visibility, Lisa realized she was facing the very challenge she had coached so many founders through: imposter syndrome. Even with years of experience, she saw how inner dialogue shapes the way we show up in business and in life. Determined to change that narrative, Lisa created the Female Founders Journal to help women entrepreneurs turn self-doubt into bold self-belief. Through beautifully designed paper products, her mission is to help women see themselves the way the world already does: capable and confident.

pearlsparkpages.com
instagram.com/pearlsparkpages 
Free 7-day digital preview of the Female Founders Journal: https://pearlsparkpages.lpages.co/free7dayjournal/ 

Connect with Nikki on Instagram: instagram.com/iamnikkimck 

The Would Recommend Standard is a free guide to the five principles behind businesses people can't stop talking about. 

Grab it here: theopsshop.biz/wouldrecommend-standard 

A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't. 

Book yours here: theopsshop.biz/sparksession 

This is the first episode of Would Recommend, and Nikki is starting here on purpose: because customer experience is one of the most used and least understood terms in business, and getting it wrong is quietly costing founders more than they realize.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• Why customer experience and customer service are not the same thing, and why that confusion is where most founders start building defensively instead of intentionally.
• The three-part equation that runs every client relationship: brand promise, brand experience, and the one in the middle you can't actually control.
• Why CX runs on emotion and not logic, and the documented research that explains why a satisfied client is not the same as a loyal one.
• The three-level pyramid that separates businesses people retain from businesses people rave about, and which level most founder-led businesses are stuck on.
• The financial case for investing in client experience, with real numbers, because "it feels good to do things well" is not a business strategy.

If you've ever wondered why referrals aren't coming in the way you expected, this is where to start.

Resources & Research Referenced in This Episode

The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty — Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman, and Rick DeLisi (Portfolio/Penguin, 2013)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591845815

The Ultimate Question 2.0: How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World — Fred Reichheld and Rob Markey (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011)
https://www.bain.com/insights/the-ultimate-question-2/

Connect with Nikki on Instagram: instagram.com/iamnikkimck 

The Would Recommend Standard is a free guide to the five principles behind businesses people can't stop talking about. 

Grab it here: theopsshop.biz/wouldrecommend-standard 

A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't. 

Book yours here: theopsshop.biz/sparksession