In this episode of Your Customer, Your Success, Gary sits down with Jennifer Staats, owner of Staats Solutions and Chief of Staff at Sure Send CRM and ez Home Search. Jennifer has built her career inside the operations of real estate firms, mortgage teams, and service businesses, helping owners turn the systems in their heads into processes their teams can follow.

The conversation opens on one of the most common barriers to small business growth: the founder becoming the bottleneck. Jennifer explains why the habits that work for a solopreneur stop working as the company adds employees, clients, and complexity. Growth requires the owner to evolve alongside the business.

Jennifer’s strongest proof point comes from her own company. Before accepting a full-time Chief of Staff role, she had to redesign Staats Solutions so it could operate with only a few hours of her attention each week. She documented responsibilities, promoted team members into focused leadership roles, and transferred ownership of business development, marketing, and client relationships. Within 90 days, the team had taken the company to a waitlist.

From there, Jennifer walks Gary through the role technology should play in a growing business. Her view is straightforward: the best CRM is the one the team will actually use. When client information remains inside the founder’s phone, inbox, or memory, the business cannot scale. A useful CRM creates visibility across sales, service, billing, follow-up, and the customer journey without turning leadership into micromanagement.

Jennifer also explains how she leads through concise, highly focused meetings. Her leadership team uses segmented 15- to 30-minute conversations to make decisions rather than repeat information everyone should already know. She connects that discipline to respect for employee time, client time, and the operating capacity of the business.

The conversation closes on the personal discipline behind operational leadership. Jennifer discusses learning to give herself more grace, deciding what genuinely needs to happen today, and looking at her own behavior before assuming an employee or system is the problem. She also shares an early leadership failure that continues to influence how she shows up for her team.

This episode reinforces a core principle of the show:

Systems create clarity. Ownership creates capacity. Letting go makes growth possible.

If you are a founder, operator, franchisee, or business leader trying to grow without remaining at the center of every task and decision, this conversation will sharpen how you think about delegation, operating rhythm, technology, and leadership accountability.

Why founders often become the bottleneck as their businesses grow

How the owner’s role must evolve as the company adds employees

What a productive daily operating rhythm looks like

How Jennifer prepared Staats Solutions to operate without her daily involvement

Why focused team members can outperform a founder who is wearing every hat

Why the best CRM is the one employees will consistently use

How shared client information improves leadership and service decisions

Why information stored inside the founder’s phone cannot support scale

How short, focused meetings protect employee and client time

Why leaders should examine their training and behavior before blaming an employee

How Jennifer decides what genuinely needs to be completed today

Why learning to let go is a leadership discipline, not simply a delegation tactic

00:00 Cold Open

00:12 Introduction

01:28 Owning a business while taking on a full-time Chief of Staff role

02:12 The most common operational mistake when growing past five or ten people

03:20 What a strong daily operating rhythm looks like

06:32 How Jennifer built Staats Solutions to operate without her

09:02 What most businesses get wrong about the role of a CRM

12:48 Building a CRM that can work across service industries

13:44 Why new real estate agents struggle and how better systems can help

17:06 What leaders overlook in client tracking and management visibility

18:48 Leading a company without managing every daily activity

21:05 Building a culture of focused, efficient meetings

23:47 What balancing ownership and a full-time role taught Jennifer about priorities

25:42 What leaders should do when the operating rhythm feels wrong

27:40 Why outside coaching and support can still matter

29:07 Does It Hold Water?

31:50 Chip Shots

Traction

Jennifer has read the book three times and applied its lessons from two different perspectives: first as the visionary and owner of her business, and later as an operator and integrator.

Sure Send CRM: https://sure.ai

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

Instagram: Jennifer the Realtor

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-marra/

Website: https://www.schooleymitchell.com/gmarra

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@yourcustomeryoursuccesspodcast

Subscribe and leave a review if you enjoyed the episode.

Follow Your Customer, Your Success for more conversations on customer experience, leadership, and business growth.

Want to be a guest on Your Customer, Your Success? Send Gary Marra a message on PodMatch: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1726154102094403cb5558fc4

Your Customer, Your Success is a leadership and business growth podcast built on the idea that client focus is not just a service philosophy, it is a growth strategy. Hosted by Gary Marra, the show sits at the intersection of customer experience, employee experience, leadership behavior, and operational discipline. With listeners in more than 70 countries, each episode features practical conversations with executives, advisors, and business leaders on how better experiences drive loyalty, trust, retention, and sustainable business growth.

Gary Marra is a Schooley Mitchell Franchise Owner, business advisor, customer experience leader, and host of Your Customer, Your Success. Drawing on more than 25 years in financial services, client management, operations, and cross-functional leadership, Gary helps business leaders think more clearly about how service, trust, and execution shape growth. Through his Schooley Mitchell practice, he works with small and mid-sized businesses on vendor-neutral, performance-based expense optimization across telecom, wireless, merchant services, small package shipping, and waste removal. His perspective combines client-centric strategy with practical operator discipline, making the show especially relevant for founders, operators, fractional executives, and business leaders responsible for long-term growth and margin.

#Leadership #BusinessGrowth #SMBGrowth #FounderLeadership #Delegation #CRM #CustomerExperience #OperationalDiscipline #SmallBusiness #Podcast

In this episode of Your Customer, Your Success, Gary sits down with Kenneth Kollasch, a certified business coach, founder of Kenneth Coaches, and former operator of an Arthur Murray franchise, one of the oldest franchise systems in the country at 114 years. Kenneth is also a certified coach under Will Guidara, author of Unreasonable Hospitality.

The conversation opens on the operator lens Kenneth built inside a business designed to last a century. He walks Gary through how a 114-year-old franchise weathers cultural cycles, market crashes, and shifts in relevance by pivoting its offer, its people, and its customer experience. That same operator instinct shapes the framework he uses with small business owners today.

Kenneth's sharpest challenge is that most owners over-index on what they supply and under-invest in what the market actually demands. He argues that a business ready to double in 12 to 24 months has two things going for it: an owner in a real growth phase, and the willingness to bring in someone the owner will trust with the business the way they trust themselves.

From there Kenneth walks Gary through the Customer Advantage Map, his applied version of the Will Guidara customer journey work. He explains why owners cannot read the label from inside the milk carton, how to map every touch point, and how ordinary businesses can create a premium customer experience at a fraction of the cost most owners assume.

Kenneth also breaks down the six suites of his Small Business Flight Plan, leadership, marketing, sales, product, management, and cash flow, and closes with a direct answer for owners who feel stuck: stop being alone. Accountability is half the battle.

This episode reinforces a core principle of the show:

Reinvention is the mechanism. Demand research beats supply thinking. Accountability turns intention into execution.

If you are a founder, operator, franchisee, or advisor thinking about how to build a business that lasts, this conversation will sharpen how you think about customer journeys, growth phases, and the operator discipline that keeps a business relevant across cycles.

What You'll Learn

• How a 114-year-old franchise stays relevant through cultural and economic cycles
• Why most business owners over-invest in supply and under-invest in demand research
• The two conditions that have to be true for a business to double in 12 to 24 months
• Why the biggest cost of hiring a coach is not money, it is exposing what is actually happening in the business
• How the Customer Advantage Map identifies positive, neutral, and negative touch points
• How ordinary businesses can create a premium customer experience without a premium budget
• The six suites inside the Small Business Flight Plan and how they compound
• Why the five-meeting cadence moves owners from reactive to proactive leadership
• Why James Clear was right: owners fall to the level of their systems, not the height of their goals
• The one question Kenneth asks every client that resets their focus

Chapters

00:00 Cold Open

00:59 Introduction

02:22 From a professional soccer contract to ballroom dancing and how it shaped Kenneth's decision framework

05:03 What a 114-year-old franchise reveals about durability, reinvention, and weathering cycles

08:29 Why most new business owners over-invest in supply and under-invest in demand research

11:32 The two conditions that have to be true for a small business to double in 12 to 24 months

15:43 Will Guidara's Unreasonable Hospitality applied to ordinary everyday businesses

19:27 The Customer Advantage Map and finding the touch points owners cannot see

25:27 The Small Business Flight Plan from leadership to cash flow

32:11 The one thing owners can do differently this month when they feel stuck

35:14 Does It Hold Water?

36:52 Chip Shots

Book Recommendation

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell

Also referenced in this episode: Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara and Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Connect with Kenneth Kollasch

Website: https://kennethcoaches.com/free

Generate your first (or next) $100k in your business with these 12+ free resources! Things like: • Courses • Assessments • Softwares • Workbooks • ...and more!

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

Connect with Gary Marra

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-marra/

Website: https://www.schooleymitchell.com/gmarra

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@yourcustomeryoursuccesspodcast

Listen & Subscribe

Subscribe and leave a review if you enjoyed the episode.

Follow Your Customer, Your Success for more conversations on customer experience, leadership, and business growth.

Want to be a guest on Your Customer, Your Success? Send Gary Marra a message on PodMatch: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1726154102094403cb5558fc4

About Your Customer, Your Success

Your Customer, Your Success is a leadership and business growth podcast built on the idea that client focus is not just a service philosophy, it is a growth strategy. Hosted by Gary Marra, the show sits at the intersection of customer experience, employee experience, leadership behavior, and operational discipline. With listeners in more than 70 countries, each episode features practical conversations with executives, advisors, and business leaders on how better experiences drive loyalty, trust, retention, and sustainable business growth.

About Gary Marra

Gary Marra is a Schooley Mitchell Franchise Owner, business advisor, customer experience leader, and host of Your Customer, Your Success. Drawing on more than 25 years in financial services, client management, operations, and cross-functional leadership, Gary helps business leaders think more clearly about how service, trust, and execution shape growth. Through his Schooley Mitchell practice, he works with small and mid-sized businesses on vendor-neutral, performance-based expense optimization across telecom, wireless, merchant services, small package shipping, and waste removal. His perspective combines client-centric strategy with practical operator discipline, making the show especially relevant for founders, operators, fractional executives, and business leaders responsible for long-term growth and margin.

#Leadership #BusinessGrowth #SMBGrowth #CustomerExperience #Franchise #Reinvention #SmallBusiness #Founders #OperationalDiscipline #Podcast

In this special mid-year episode of Your Customer, Your Success, Gary looks back at the first half of 2026 and revisits the ten best moments from two of the show's signature segments: Does It Hold Water and Chip Shots.

Does It Hold Water is the segment where Gary tests a piece of thought leadership against a guest who has never seen it in advance. The setup produces some of the most honest conversations on the show, and it delivered again this year on feedback, structure, empathy, business modeling, and the difference between joy and happiness.

Chip Shots is the shorter form segment, a rotating set of professional questions with a personal edge. The answers this year covered the book that changed how one guest communicates, the line between a real risk and a terrible idea, an underrated travel destination, the risk of putting your ideas into the world, and the one question that changes the tone of any meeting.

Nine guests. Ten clips. One question running through all of it:

What actually holds up when leaders make decisions about their people, their clients, and their businesses?

This episode reinforces the core principles of the show:

Client focus is a growth strategy.

Leadership behavior drives revenue.

Operational clarity drives scale.

If you have been listening this year, this is a compressed dose of what the best guests have said. If you are new to the show, this is the best possible entry point.

What You'll Learn

• Whether leaders really want honest feedback, and what that means for culture
• Why structure and documentation create the freedom to deliver great experiences
• Where empathy gets misused, and how it connects to accountability
• What business lessons hide inside how a global artist runs her enterprise
• The difference between joy and happiness, and why it matters for leaders
• Why saying less is often the harder discipline
• How to tell a real risk apart from a terrible idea
• An underrated travel destination worth putting on the list
• Why putting your ideas into the world is a professional risk worth taking
• The one question that changes the tone of any meeting

Segments

Introduction

Does It Hold Water, 5th Place

Does It Hold Water, 4th Place

Does It Hold Water, 3rd Place

Does It Hold Water, 2nd Place

Does It Hold Water, 1st Place

Chip Shots, 5th Place

Chip Shots, 4th Place

Chip Shots, 3rd Place

Chip Shots, 2nd Place

Chip Shots, 1st Place

Closing Thoughts

Featured Guests (alphabetical)

Laurie Fainer, Alex Grant, Sid Meadows, Jessica Millhiser, Ali Ramer, John Sampogna, Katie Stabler, Dannah Vaughan, Kris Wauters

🔗 Connect with Gary Marra

· LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-marra/

· Schooley Mitchell: https://www.schooleymitchell.com/gmarra

· YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@yourcustomeryoursuccesspodcast

📣 🎧 Please Listen & Subscribe

💡 Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review if you enjoyed the episode!

👉 Follow Your Customer, Your Success for more insights on customer experience, leadership, and business strategy.

Want to be a guest on Your Customer, Your Success?

Send Gary Marra a message on PodMatch here:

https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1726154102094403cb5558fc4

ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMER, YOUR SUCCESS

Your Customer, Your Success is a leadership and business growth podcast focused on the idea that client focus is not just a service philosophy, it is a growth strategy. Hosted by Gary Marra, the show sits at the intersection of customer experience, employee experience, leadership, and operational discipline. Each episode features practical conversations with executives, advisors, and business leaders on how better experiences drive loyalty, trust, retention, and sustainable business growth. Now heard in 70 countries.

ABOUT GARY MARRA

Gary Marra is a Schooley Mitchell Franchise Owner and the host of Your Customer, Your Success. Drawing on deep experience in financial services, client management, operations, and cross-functional leadership, Gary helps organizations think more clearly about how service, trust, and execution shape growth. His perspective combines customer-centric strategy with practical business discipline, making the show especially relevant for founders, operators, and leaders responsible for long-term client relationships.

#MidYearReview #Leadership #CustomerExperience #BusinessGrowth #SMBGrowth #Feedback #Risk #Empathy #Gratitude #PodMatch

Leadership Alignment, the Right Seat, and Customer Trust with Bryant Richardson

In this episode of Your Customer, Your Success, Gary sits down with Bryant Richardson, founder of Real Blue Sky and author of the forthcoming book The Next CX Economy, a customer experience advisor who helps leaders turn client focus into a growth strategy.

This conversation explores a claim most operators feel but rarely name: customer experience is rarely broken at the front line. What breaks is leadership alignment, and the front line only reveals it first.

Bryant walks through his CRAFT Agilities Framework, a diagnostic for the organizational conditions that build customer trust, then focuses on the F. Fitment, a term he borrowed from shipbuilding, asks whether the right people are aligned to the right purpose in the right roles for the stage the business is in now. He shows why a skilled but misaligned person can look like competence while quietly creating drag that customers eventually feel.

Gary and Bryant spend real time on the difference between someone in the wrong seat and someone who is the wrong fit, why the fit that carried a company to one stage may not carry it to the next, and why hiring in a hurry costs more on the back end than it saves. They get into hiring discipline, employee development, and telling yourself the truth about a mismatch you have been avoiding.

The conversation also covers a wealth management turnaround, where aligning a front line team to the organization's deeper purpose produced a sixfold improvement in prospective client meetings, and closes with a ninety day plan any leader can run.

This episode reinforces a core principle of the show: client focus is a growth strategy, leadership alignment drives customer trust, and the right people in the right seats are what let a business scale.

If you are a founder, operator, or growth-stage leader who senses that capable people are still creating drag, this conversation will sharpen how you think about alignment, hiring, and the trust that drives growth.

What You'll Learn

Why customer experience usually breaks downstream from leadership decisions

Where misalignment shows up first, and why the front line reveals it rather than causes it

The CRAFT Agilities Framework, from Culture through Tactic

What Fitment means, and why Bryant borrowed it from shipbuilding

Why a skilled but misaligned person can look like competence while creating drag

How to tell the difference between someone in the wrong seat and the wrong fit

Why the fit that got a company here may not be the fit that gets it to the next stage

Why hiring in a hurry costs more to fix later than it saves

How self-awareness and bias shape people decisions, and how loyalty gets confused with fit

A ninety day plan to strengthen fitment, starting with the customer promise

Chapters

0:00 Cold Open

1:00 Introduction

2:45 Where misalignment shows up first

4:00 The CRAFT Agilities Framework, start to finish

5:15 Fitment, and why it comes from shipbuilding

7:00 When a skilled hire quietly creates drag

8:45 Wrong seat or wrong fit

15:45 Fit, development, and smaller firms

17:00 A wealth management turnaround

22:15 Self-awareness and telling yourself the truth

27:30 A ninety day fitment plan

29:20 Does It Hold Water?

32:37 Chip Shots

Book Recommendation

The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey

Connect with Bryant

Website: https://thenextcxeconomy.com

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

Connect with Gary Marra

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-marra/

Marra CX Hub: https://marracxhub.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@yourcustomeryoursuccesspodcast

Please Listen & Subscribe

Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review if you enjoyed the episode!

Follow Your Customer, Your Success for more insights on customer experience, leadership, and business strategy.

Want to be a guest on Your Customer, Your Success? Send Gary Marra a message on PodMatch here:

https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1726154102094403cb5558fc4

Looking for Fractional Support? Go Fractional!

https://www.gofractional.com/r/gary-marra

ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMER, YOUR SUCCESS

Your Customer, Your Success is a leadership and business growth podcast focused on the idea that client focus is not just a service philosophy, it is a growth strategy. Hosted by Gary Marra, the show sits at the intersection of customer experience, employee experience, leadership, and operational discipline. Each episode features practical conversations with executives, advisors, and business leaders on how better experiences drive loyalty, trust, retention, and sustainable business growth.

ABOUT GARY MARRA

Gary Marra is a small business owner and the award-winning host of Your Customer, Your Success. Through his Schooley Mitchell of Weymouth practice, he helps organizations cut costs and improve profitability across telecom, merchant services, shipping, and other operating expenses, a vendor-neutral model built entirely on client results. Drawing on deep experience in financial services, client management, operations, and cross-functional leadership, Gary helps leaders think more clearly about how service, trust, and execution shape growth. His perspective combines customer-centric strategy with practical business discipline, making the show especially relevant for founders, operators, and leaders responsible for long-term client relationships.

#LeadershipAlignment #CustomerExperience #CustomerTrust #SMBGrowth #CX #Leadership #CostReduction #Profitability #OperationalEfficiency #podmatch

In this episode of Your Customer, Your Success, Gary sits down with Jessica Millhiser, founder of JMills Consulting and a business operations consultant who helps service-based business owners build the internal structure their business needs to grow.

This conversation explores a simple but often overlooked idea: structure creates freedom.

Jessica explains why so many owners look successful from the outside while the back end runs entirely on them, and how an intentional client journey changes that. She walks through the full journey she maps for clients, from entry points and the consultation to onboarding, deliverables, and offboarding, and shows how the operational back end and the client-facing experience move in parallel.

Gary and Jessica spend real time on the stage most owners skip, offboarding, and why a strong finish protects referrals, reviews, and the boomerang clients who come back. They get into finding the gaps and redundancies in a process, getting the work out of the owner's head and into documentation, and creating the memorable moments that turn satisfied clients into referrals.

The conversation also covers why owners resist structure until the chaos forces their hand, how staying the bottleneck limits both growth and the employee experience, and what an ongoing rhythm of review and adjustment looks like for a small team.

This episode reinforces a core principle of the show: client focus is a growth strategy, operational structure creates capacity, and a business that can run without its owner is one that can grow.

If you are a founder, operator, or service-based business owner who knows the back end is held together by you alone, this conversation will sharpen how you think about structure, the client journey, and building something that runs without you.

What You'll Learn

• Why structure creates freedom instead of confining you
• Why owners focus on the deliverable and miss the experience around it
• The full client journey, from entry points and consultation to onboarding, deliverables, and offboarding
• Why offboarding matters and what most owners get wrong about it
• How to find the gaps and redundancies in your client process
• Why getting your processes out of your head and into documentation is what lets you scale
• How to build memorable moments that lead to referrals and repeat business
• Why owners resist structure, and how to know you have outgrown your current setup
• How staying the bottleneck limits growth and the employee experience
• What a healthy rhythm of review and adjustment looks like for a small team

Chapters

0:00 Cold Open

0:59 Introduction

2:34 What founders misunderstand about structure and growth

4:05 Why owners focus on the deliverable and not the experience

5:05 Walking through the client journey, back end and client facing

6:45 The stages: entry points, consultation, onboarding, deliverables, offboarding

8:23 Offboarding and why most owners skip it

10:45 How to find the gaps and redundancies in your process

12:19 Getting your processes out of your head and documented

14:49 Creating memorable moments that lead to referrals

18:34 Why owners resist structure and how to break through

21:41 Employee experience and removing yourself as the bottleneck

24:30 The rhythm of review and adjustment

27:26 Where to start this week

29:41 Does It Hold Water?

32:40 Chip Shots

Book Recommendations

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

The Code of the Extraordinary Mind by Vishen Lakhiani

Connect with Jessica

Website: https://jmillsconsulting.com

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

Connect with Gary Marra

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-marra/

Marra CX Hub: https://marracxhub.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@yourcustomeryoursuccesspodcast

Please Listen & Subscribe

Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review if you enjoyed the episode!

Follow Your Customer, Your Success for more insights on customer experience, leadership, and business strategy.

Want to be a guest on Your Customer, Your Success? Send Gary Marra a message on PodMatch here:

https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1726154102094403cb5558fc4

Looking for Fractional Support? Go Fractional!

https://www.gofractional.com/r/gary-marra

ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMER, YOUR SUCCESS

Your Customer, Your Success is a leadership and business growth podcast focused on the idea that client focus is not just a service philosophy, it is a growth strategy. Hosted by Gary Marra, the show sits at the intersection of customer experience, employee experience, leadership, and operational discipline. Each episode features practical conversations with executives, advisors, and business leaders on how better experiences drive loyalty, trust, retention, and sustainable business growth.

ABOUT GARY MARRA

Gary Marra is a business advisor, customer experience leader, and host of Your Customer, Your Success. Drawing on deep experience in financial services, client management, operations, and cross-functional leadership, Gary helps organizations think more clearly about how service, trust, and execution shape growth. His perspective combines customer-centric strategy with practical business discipline, making the show especially relevant for founders, operators, and leaders responsible for long-term client relationships.

#ClientJourney #ClientExperience #ClientOnboarding #SMBGrowth #BusinessSystems #Delegation #OperationalDiscipline #ServiceBusiness #Founders #Podcast

In this episode of Your Customer, Your Success, Gary Marra talks with Ashley Smith, a digital authority strategist and the creator of the Proof Gap. Ashley spent nearly two decades in real estate, including serving as board chair and media spokesperson for Greater Vancouver Realtors, before turning her focus to a problem she watched play out across that industry and well beyond it.

Her core argument is simple and uncomfortable: most experienced professionals do not have an expertise problem. They have a visibility problem.

As consumers vet everyone online and AI search reshapes how people find and choose specialists, real-world reputation no longer travels the way it used to. The depth a professional has built over years often fails to show up where decisions now get made. Ashley calls that disconnect the Proof Gap, the distance between how good someone is and how visible that quality is online.

Ashley explains how to tell whether you have a gap, starting with a simple exercise: search your own name, title, and market in Google and in an AI tool, then look honestly at what comes back and whether it reflects the work you do today. From there she lays out a practical path that does not require chasing a large audience or adopting a content-creator identity. The work is making real expertise discoverable. That means clarifying the few things you want to be known for, publishing your thinking in public and searchable places, and using recorded conversations, articles, and an RSS-distributed podcast to put your judgment on the record.

Gary and Ashley also get into why being cited by an AI tool is only part of the chain, why human judgment and trust still decide who actually gets hired, and how Google's shift toward AI overviews and search agents changes what professionals need to do to stay findable.

This episode reinforces a core principle of the show:

Visibility is now part of how trust gets built. Real expertise still wins, but only when it can be found.Discoverability is a growth strategy, not a marketing afterthought.

If you are a founder, operator, or advisor whose reputation is stronger in the real world than it is online, this conversation will sharpen how you think about getting found, trusted, and chosen.

What You'll Learn

• What the Proof Gap is, and why experienced professionals are the most exposed to it
• A simple way to test your own visibility in both Google and AI search
• Why referrals and real-world reputation no longer carry the weight they once did
• How to clarify the few things you actually want to be known for
• How to make expertise discoverable without building a large audience
• Why recorded conversations, articles, and an unpodcast put your judgment on the record
• How getting cited by AI tools works, and why a citation is only part of the decision
• What Google's move to AI overviews and search agents means for professionals
• Where polish and aesthetics earn their keep, and where they do not

Chapters

00:00 Cold Open

01:09 Introduction

02:39 Why experienced professionals are becoming invisible online

06:08 How to know whether you have a Proof Gap

10:22 What to do when you are not showing up in search

14:37 Building visibility without chasing an audience

19:45 The unpodcast: putting expertise on the record

24:53 Getting cited by AI: what separates being surfaced from being skipped

29:18 Where professionals waste time and where to focus

33:36 The 30-day starting point

37:54 Does It Hold Water?

44:18 Chip Shots

Book Recommendation

Fast Like a Girl by Dr. Mindy Pelz

Connect with Ashley

Website: https://ashleysmith.now

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

Show Your Proof (newsletter): https://showyourproof.beehiiv.com

Connect with Gary Marra

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-marra/

Marra CX Hub: https://marracxhub.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@yourcustomeryoursuccesspodcast

Please Listen and Subscribe. Don't forget to leave a review if you enjoyed the episode. Follow Your Customer, Your Success for more insights on customer experience, leadership, and business strategy.

Want to be a guest on Your Customer, Your Success? Send Gary Marra a message on PodMatch here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1726154102094403cb5558fc4

ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMER, YOUR SUCCESS

Your Customer, Your Success is a leadership and business growth podcast focused on the idea that client focus is not just a service philosophy, it is a growth strategy. Hosted by Gary Marra, the show sits at the intersection of customer experience, employee experience, leadership, and operational discipline. Each episode features practical conversations with executives, advisors, and business leaders on how better experiences drive loyalty, trust, retention, and sustainable business growth.

ABOUT GARY MARRA

Gary Marra is a business advisor, customer experience leader, and host of Your Customer, Your Success. Drawing on deep experience in financial services, client management, operations, and cross-functional leadership, Gary helps organizations think more clearly about how service, trust, and execution shape growth. His perspective combines customer-centric strategy with practical business discipline, making the show especially relevant for founders, operators, and leaders responsible for long-term client relationships.

#DigitalAuthority #AISearch #Discoverability #ProofGap #Leadership #BusinessGrowth #SMBGrowth #Founders #CustomerExperience #Podcast

In this episode of Your Customer, Your Success, Gary sits down with Dr. Patrick Lynch, AI faculty lead at Hult International Business School, a Thinkers50 Radar 2026 honoree, and author of How to Outsmart AI and Thrive(Routledge, July). An industrial organizational psychologist and former Accenture Research Fellow, Patrick has trained leaders at companies including American Express, Boeing, and ExxonMobil.

The conversation centers on a single reframe:

AI is not a project. It is a practice.

Patrick places AI in the long arc of foundational technologies, from the industrial revolutions through the computer and the internet, and explains why this shift is different. Earlier waves took aim at physical labor. This one takes aim at cognitive work, the way we think and make decisions. That changes what leaders should actually be doing about it.

He draws a line between Vanity AI, adopting a tool to replicate something you already do, and Viable AI, using it to add value you could not deliver before. The math on pure replacement does not pencil out, because the workers being automated hold specialized knowledge that does not disappear with the routine tasks. The real work sits with people and process, not the technology, and Patrick uses the BCG 70/20/10 split to make the point.

Gary and Patrick also get into why data quality decides whether AI works at all, the AI wall that keeps a tool from bridging gaps in real expertise, and the AI Quartet, four ways people come to relate to these tools once they start treating them like teammates. They close on the layoffs narrative, what it means for a small to mid-sized business without a chief AI officer or a six-figure budget, and the one move a leader can make Monday morning.

This episode reinforces a core principle of the show:

Leadership behavior drives how technology lands.

People and process come before the tool.

New value, not replacement, is where the return lives.

If you are a founder, operator, or leader trying to think clearly about AI without the hype or the fear, this conversation will sharpen how you decide where the tool belongs and where your own expertise still has to carry the work.

What You'll Learn

• Why Patrick frames AI as a practice rather than a project, and what that changes for leaders
• How earlier technology shifts targeted physical labor, and why this one targets cognitive work
• The difference between Vanity AI and Viable AI
• Why replacing workers with automation rarely pencils out
• The 70/20/10 split, and why most of the work is people and process
• How data quality determines whether AI delivers or fails
• The AI wall, and why foundational expertise still decides the outcome
• The AI Quartet: Champion, Castaway, Cog, and Charmer
• What is really behind the AI and layoffs headlines
• Where the small to mid-sized business advantage actually sits
• The first move a leader should make Monday morning

Chapters

• 0:58 Introduction
• 2:28 The arc of technology from the industrial revolution to AI
• 3:47 What makes this shift different
• 6:15 Why AI becomes the problem when you treat it as the only solution
• 11:26 What an effective AI strategy looks like, and the biggest mistake companies make
• 14:57 Why data quality decides the outcome
• 17:50 The AI wall and why expertise still matters
• 19:18 The THRIVE model
• 21:58 The AI Quartet
• 27:58 The AI and layoffs narrative
• 32:09 What this means for a small to mid-sized business
• 35:29 The first move a leader should make Monday morning
• 37:33 Does It Hold Water?
• 41:27 Chip Shots

Book Recommendation

Influence by Robert Cialdini

Connect with Patrick

Website: Patrick Lynch

Book: How to Outsmart AI and Thrive (Routledge, July), available for pre-order on Amazon

🔗 Connect with Gary Marra

· LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-marra/ · Marra CX Hub: https://marracxhub.com/ · YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@yourcustomeryoursuccesspodcast

📣 🎧 Please Listen & Subscribe 👉 Follow Your Customer, Your Success for more on customer experience, leadership, and business growth.

Want to be a guest? Message Gary on PodMatch: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1726154102094403cb5558fc4

#AILeadership #ChangeManagement #BusinessGrowth #Leadership #SMBGrowth #FutureOfWork #CustomerExperience #OperationalDiscipline #Founders

Most founders don't scale because they refuse to hand off the work that's holding them back.

Anna Brambilla spent nearly 25 years in career transition, recruiting, coaching, and franchise leadership before facing the exact transition she helped others navigate, learning to get out of the way of her own growth. As founder and CEO of Virtually Aligned, she works with founders who keep doing the work they should have handed off long ago.

In this conversation, Anna and Gary work through why capable founders hold on too long, how the Zone of Genius reframes what to keep and what to release, and what actually changes for a business once a leader clears that space. The discussion moves past productivity tactics into the leadership behavior that drives growth: knowing where your strengths live, building a team you can trust, and refusing to stunt your own company by doing work that someone else should own.

If you're a founder, operator, or fractional leader who senses you're the bottleneck in your own business, this episode sharpens how you think about delegation, self-awareness, and sustainable growth.

What You'll Learn

• Why founders keep doing work they should have handed off long ago
• How the Zone of Genius reframes what to keep and what to release
• What reclaiming 10 to 15 hours a week did for Anna's revenue and her relationship with her business
• Where the real resistance to delegation comes from
• How personality and self-awareness change what you should and shouldn't own
• Why "get out of your comfort zone" is incomplete advice
• What changes for a team and its clients when a founder steps into their strengths
• The warning signs of a delegation hire that won't work
• The first real step for a founder ready to let go

Chapters

00:00 Cold open

00:56 Introduction

02:14 Why founders hold onto work they should delegate

03:53 How delegation reclaimed 10 to 15 hours a week

05:16 Zone of Genius: what to keep and what to hand off

07:35 Why founders resist delegating

10:12 Self-awareness and knowing what to delegate

13:44 The Zone of Genius lesson from an MBA project

16:10 Delegation lessons for employees and managers

17:40 What changes for your team when founders delegate

20:26 Why delegation fails and how to avoid it

25:22 The first step to delegating as a founder

28:10 Does It Hold Water?

33:00 Chip Shots

Book Recommendation

You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero

Connect with Anna

Website: https://virtuallyaligned.com/podcast

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

Your Franchise Pros: https://yourfranchisepros.com

🔗 Connect with Gary Marra

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-marra/ ·

Marra CX Hub: https://marracxhub.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@yourcustomeryoursuccesspodcast

📣 🎧 Please Listen & Subscribe

💡 Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review if you enjoyed the episode!

👉 Follow Your Customer, Your Success for more insights on customer experience, leadership, and business strategy.

In this episode of Your Customer, Your Success, Gary sits down with Will Leach, founder of Mindstate Group, bestselling author of Marketing to Mindstates, and a behavioral designer who has shaped strategy for some of the most recognized brands in the country. Before founding Mindstate, Will led strategic insights at PepsiCo and spent nearly two decades inside behavioral research. He teaches behavioral design at SMU's Cox School of Business and at the Texas A&M Human Behavior Lab.

This conversation explores a reality most leaders underestimate:

Customers do not decide the way they say they decide.

Will explains why all behavior is emotionally based, why the most common decision a customer makes is to not decide at all, and how leaders can build real psychological empathy with the people they serve.

He walks through the four factors behind every customer decision: goals, motivations, regulatory approach, and bias triggers. He shows how the same product can be positioned differently for an optimistic buyer than for a cautious one, why consistency builds the habits that protect a brand, and how aspirational goals quietly shape choices a customer would never explain on a survey.

Gary and Will then turn the lens on customer experience and data. They examine the limits of NPS, satisfaction scores, and health metrics, and why the gap between what customers say and what they do undermines decisions built on numbers alone. Will closes with how his team applies this thinking through behavioral research and an AI platform built to represent the customer's subconscious.

This episode reinforces a core principle of the show:

Client focus is a growth strategy.

Leadership behavior drives revenue.

The why behind a decision matters more than the metric that measures it.

If you are a founder, operator, or customer-focused leader trying to understand why your data keeps misleading you, this conversation will sharpen how you think about customer decisions, motivation, and behavioral design.

What You'll Learn

• Why all behavior is emotionally based, and what that means for marketing and sales
• The four factors behind every customer decision: goals, motivations, regulatory approach, and triggers
• Why aspirational goals influence choices customers cannot articulate
• How the same product can be positioned for an optimistic buyer or a cautious one
• Why consistency builds the habits that protect a brand
• The limits of NPS and satisfaction data, and the say-do gap
• How to ask the customer questions that move from what they want to why they want it
• How behavioral science applies in a smaller business without a Fortune 100 budget

Chapters (provisional, pending final edit anchor)

00:00 Cold open

01:02 Introduction

03:04 Building psychological empathy with customers

04:36 The four factors behind every customer decision

09:55 How a brand like PepsiCo applies behavioral thinking

13:57 Why consistency builds brand habits

16:35 Why two identical customers respond differently

22:37 What changes when a brand sees its customer this way

29:37 The limits of NPS and customer metrics

32:50 A simple first move for a smaller business

35:57 How Mindstate applies behavioral AI

39:31 Does It Hold Water?

42:10 Chip Shots

Book Recommendation

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

Connect with Will

Website: https://mindstategroup.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-leach/

🔗 Connect with Gary Marra

· LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-marra/

· Marra CX Hub: https://marracxhub.com/

· YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@yourcustomeryoursuccesspodcast

📣 🎧 Please Listen & Subscribe

💡 Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review if you enjoyed the episode!

👉 Follow Your Customer, Your Success for more insights on customer experience, leadership, and business strategy.

Want to be a guest on Your Customer, Your Success?

Send Gary Marra a message on PodMatch here:

https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1726154102094403cb5558fc4

Looking for Fractional Support? Go Fractional!

https://www.gofractional.com/r/gary-marra

ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMER, YOUR SUCCESS

Your Customer, Your Success is a leadership and business growth podcast focused on the idea that client focus is not just a service philosophy, it is a growth strategy. Hosted by Gary Marra, the show sits at the intersection of customer experience, employee experience, leadership, and operational discipline. Each episode features practical conversations with executives, advisors, and business leaders on how better experiences drive loyalty, trust, retention, and sustainable business growth.

ABOUT GARY MARRA

Gary Marra is a business advisor, customer experience leader, and host of Your Customer, Your Success. Drawing on deep experience in financial services, client management, operations, and cross-functional leadership, Gary helps organizations think more clearly about how service, trust, and execution shape growth. His perspective combines customer-centric strategy with practical business discipline, making the show especially relevant for founders, operators, and leaders responsible for long-term client relationships.

#CustomerPsychology #BehavioralDesign #Leadership #CustomerExperience #BusinessGrowth #SMBGrowth #ClientRetention #Founders #Podcast #PodMatch

Summary

In this episode of Your Customer, Your Success, Gary sits down with Laurie Fainer, Founder and CEO of Dynamic Alchemy Advisors and host of The Impact List Podcast. Laurie spent two decades inside boardrooms and executive teams, including roles as Chief People Officer at Peerage Realty and Head of HR at a Brookfield subsidiary. She now works with boards, executive teams, and leaders on the systems that make strategy stick.

This conversation challenges how most organizations think about leadership development. Laurie argues that the standard playbook trains only half of what a leader actually needs. Frameworks, strategy, and structured communication get the attention. The emotional layer underneath, the part that determines how a leader actually shows up in a hard moment, gets almost no time.

Laurie introduces the Elephant and the Rider framework, drawn from Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis. The rider represents rational, structured leadership. The elephant represents instinct and emotion. Most leadership programs train the rider relentlessly. The elephant goes untrained. And the tools built for the rider fail in the exact moments they are supposed to work.

That gap leads to Laurie's three-part leadership model: leadership, management, and self-management. Self-management, she argues, is the unglamorous foundation underneath the other two. It is the ability to notice your feelings before acting on them. Without it, leaders manage around their discomfort rather than through it, and the team pays the tax.

The conversation also takes a hard look at engagement metrics. Laurie makes the case that the ENPS can mislead. A seven average is not always a seven average. A room full of sevens is a different organization than one where half score nine and half score four. Trend matters more than snapshot. And by the time a declining metric shows up on a dashboard, the people closest to the work are usually already feeling it.

The episode closes with a success story from Laurie's time in talent development. A pandemic-era initiative that aligned the employee onboarding experience directly with the client onboarding experience. Two systems originally designed separately, redesigned together, with measurable improvement in time to productivity.

This episode reinforces a core principle of the show:

Self-management is the foundation of real leadership.

Internal leadership behavior is the upstream input to every client-facing outcome.

Employee experience and client experience are not separate systems. They are the same system.

If you lead a team, advise founders, or build organizations, this conversation will sharpen how you think about the connection between internal leadership behavior and the results that show up on the outside.

What You'll Learn

• Why most leadership development programs train only half of what a leader actually needs
• The Elephant and the Rider framework and what it reveals about why leadership tools fail under pressure
• The three-part model of leadership, management, and self-management, and why the third makes the other two possible
• What unconditional positive regard is and how it changes the quality of client conversations
• Why ENPS scores can mislead and what to look for in the trend and shape of the data
• What Laurie had to unlearn when she left corporate to build her own advisory practice
• How aligning employee onboarding and client onboarding during pandemic produced measurable results
• The one question Laurie asks at the end of every first conversation, and why it surfaces what clients otherwise will not say

Chapters

1:10 Introduction

3:14 What employee experience really is, and where most companies get it wrong

5:15 The Elephant and the Rider framework

10:24 Leadership, management, and self-management

14:49 Personality profiles and the limits of behavioral tools

18:27 How to think about engagement metrics, what works and what does not

24:04 What Laurie had to unlearn leaving corporate to build her own practice

27:43 Success story: aligning employee and client onboarding

33:17 Does It Hold Water?

35:41 Chip Shots

Book Recommendation

Cher: The Memoir, Part One by Cher

Connect with Laurie

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriefainer
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dynamicalchemyadvisors
• Website: https://amplified-authenticity.com/

The Impact List Podcast: Available on all major podcast platforms and YouTube

🔗 Connect with Gary Marra

· LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-marra/

· Marra CX Hub: https://marracxhub.com/

· YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@yourcustomeryoursuccesspodcast

📣 🎧 Please Listen & Subscribe

💡 Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review if you enjoyed the episode!

👉 Follow Your Customer, Your Success for more insights on customer experience, leadership, and business strategy.

Want to be a guest on Your Customer, Your Success?

Send Gary Marra a message on PodMatch here:

https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1726154102094403cb5558fc4

Looking for Fractional Support? Go Fractional!

https://www.gofractional.com/r/gary-marra

ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMER, YOUR SUCCESS

Your Customer, Your Success is a leadership and business growth podcast focused on the idea that client focus is not just a service philosophy, it is a growth strategy. Hosted by Gary Marra, the show sits at the intersection of customer experience, employee experience, leadership, and operational discipline. Each episode features practical conversations with executives, advisors, and business leaders on how better experiences drive loyalty, trust, retention, and sustainable business growth.

ABOUT GARY MARRA

Gary Marra is a business advisor, customer experience leader, and host of Your Customer, Your Success. Drawing on deep experience in financial services, client management, operations, and cross-functional leadership, Gary helps organizations think more clearly about how service, trust, and execution shape growth. His perspective combines customer-centric strategy with practical business discipline, making the show especially relevant for founders, operators, and leaders responsible for long-term client relationships.

#LeadershipDevelopment #EmotionalIntelligence #SelfManagement #EmployeeExperience #CustomerExperience #ClientCentricGrowth #BusinessGrowth #SMBGrowth #Founders #Podcast #PodMatch