Consulting Rainmakers Podcast

Agentee Digital

Featuring successful B2B consulting and advisory firms. Every episode is their story and what they picked up building it.

Guests come from across the advisory world: strategy and operations consulting, sales and leadership development, finance and accounting, fractional CFO and tax advisory, IT and security, HR and people.

My hope is that a founder a few years behind listens and takes something from it. Not so they avoid the same mistakes. Mistakes are fine if you learn from them. So they get there faster.

If you run a firm like that, this show is for you.

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Yesterday · 24 min
The Wrong Message Wastes 100% Of Your Budget (Kristin Zhivago)
❯ Kristin Zhivago is the CEO of Zhivago Partners and the author of Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy. Kristin started in Silicon Valley at the beginning of tech and ran an ad agency with her husband until 1991, when the Mac arrived and she told him the work was all going in house. She reinvented herself as a revenue coach, doing marketing and sales turnarounds for companies of every size, from startups to IBM, and wrote Roadmap to Revenue to give the method away. She founded Zhivago Partners in 2017 after watching company after company get beaten by more digitally savvy competitors. The firm does two things: in-depth interviews with the customers who have already bought, and rebuilding the revenue growth engine around what those interviews turn up. She has run thousands of those interviews herself. Expect to learn why the wrong message wastes not eighty or ninety percent of a marketing budget but all of it, why five to seven interviews tell you more than the forty Siemens insisted on, her definition of branding as the promises you keep or break, why processes are where companies fall apart and almost never the people, why fear of embarrassment is the biggest sales stopper in B2B, the invisible whiteboard that decides whether anyone listens to you in a meeting, why nobody in the room would ever have written finger lickin' good, and much more… - 0:00 Intro 0:30 Silicon Valley, the agency, and the revenue coach years 1:28 Roadmap to Revenue, and why she gave it away 2:31 The buyer's mindset customers ne
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Yesterday · 13 min
We Built The First AI CFO And Nobody Wanted It (Jim Miller)
Jim Miller is the founder and CEO of Astero Group, a fractional CFO firm in El Segundo, California. Jim has spent twenty-five years leading accounting teams, including nearly a decade as CFO at Choura and seven years as controller at Solver, with consulting stints at Dollar Shave Club and CrowdTorch along the way. In Los Angeles he became the person founders called when a business had grown faster than its infrastructure. He started Astero Group in January 2021 doing CFO work plus bookkeeping, senior accounting and some tax, and then learned that niching down did not mean picking an industry. It meant dropping the services. Astero now does CFO advisory only, month to month, with no timesheets and no long agreements, on the theory that a client who can leave at any time forces the firm to keep delivering value. He and a developer in Germany also built one of the first AI CFOs, which flopped, and then rebuilt it somewhere nobody expected. Expect to learn why one of the world's first AI CFOs flopped and what it taught him about what founders will actually pay for, why the gap between a twenty dollar LLM and the truth is not big enough to sell a separate app, how the same training now lives inside a client Slack channel next to a human CFO, why niching down meant cutting services rather than picking an industry, why he runs month to month with no timesheets, why he is happy to lose clients who graduate, what Henry Ford said about faster horses, and much more… - 0:00 Intro 0:22 Twenty-five years, and why founders call him 1:13 Why Astero runs month to month 1:40 What niching down actually meant 3:01 No timesheets, no lock-in 4:12 Building one of the first AI CFOs 4:36 Why it flopped 5:02 Putting the AI CFO into Slack 6:22 Losing clients on purpose 7:30 What's next for the product 8:30 Where AI sits in the rest of the firm 9:27 Trust is the part that isn't changing 9:59 Advice to a younger Jim 10:38 Faster horses 11:04 Knowing when to retire an idea 12:24 Where to find Jim - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Jim Miller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamjimmiller Website: https://asterogroup.com - Get in touch: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Yesterday · 27 min
AI Made Recruiting Harder Not Easier (Chris Berta)
Chris Berta is a partner at Laurel Group, a retained executive search firm on the US West Coast. Chris started out at aQuantive in Seattle, the digital marketing firm Microsoft bought for roughly twice what Google paid for DoubleClick, then moved to Amazon as a product manager to stand up its online marketing capabilities, and then to Washington Mutual to run digital marketing for the bank. Twenty-two years ago people in his own network recruited him into Laurel Group, which he resisted for the better part of a year because his experience of recruiters was closer to used car salespeople. He took the flyer anyway, and has spent the two decades since placing CEOs, CFOs and VPs at companies including DuckDuckGo, F5 Networks, Bloom Energy, Expedia and AWS, and writing papers on what AI is doing to hiring and to the way anyone learns a craft. Expect to learn why recruiting got harder rather than easier once everyone had AI, what happens when AI-written resumes get screened by AI against AI-written job descriptions, why he tells people to stop applying online, what Klarna found out when it replaced its customer service function, where anyone will learn their craft if the entry-level roles disappear, what deliberate apprenticeship looks like in practice, why AI output is the average of everything that came before it, the candidate who wrote to a CEO about a product and got hired into a role that was not open, and much more… - 0:00 Intro 0:43 From aQuantive to Amazon to executive search 2:08 Why he took the recruiting flyer 4:48 Dystopian or accelerate: where AI actually stands 6:07 What AI has really done for recruiting 7:06 180 of a recruiter's 240 tasks 9:16 The entry-level roles are disappearing 10:13 Where will anyone learn their craft 11:10 What Klarna found out 12:08 Deliberate apprenticeship 13:33 The part AI cannot touch 16:10 Why AI made recruiting harder 17:09 Bots talking to bots 18:34 Slop, and the average of everything 22:14 The candidate who wrote to a CEO 25:14 Why companies still hire a search firm 26:44 Where to find Chris - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Chris Berta: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisberta Website: https://www.laurel-group.com - Get in touch: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Yesterday · 19 min
AI Will Never Get The Doctor Off The Hook (Eric Zudak)
Eric Zudak is the founder and CEO of Thalocan Research Innovations. Eric spent nineteen years in clinical research before starting anything of his own, almost fifteen of them at Trifecta Clinical, where he rose to Senior Director of Enterprise Accounts, followed by two years as VP of Strategic Partnerships at WCG Trifecta. He came to it sideways: a BFA in fine arts, four years lighting theme park attractions at Walt Disney Imagineering, a stint as a stand-in on Desperate Housewives, then producing at Trifecta Multimedia. He founded Thalocan four years ago in Indianapolis to fix a problem he kept running into as a vendor and could not fix from inside a large company: the endpoint assessments used to prove a drug works are far more subjective than anyone admits. Thalocan builds expert training for the physicians who grade skin disease in trials, and turns that training into software, including LAMA, a lesion area mapping assistant built for hidradenitis suppurativa that has no equivalent on the market. Expect to learn why the gap between an AI counting seven hundred moles and an AI diagnosing anything is vast, why the doctor stays legally responsible no matter what tool made the call, why he calls what his company builds dumb tech on purpose, why one-size-fits-all B2B software breaks in clinical endpoints, how skin tone changes what a disease looks like and what an AI atlas of that would take, why diseases studied for decades have resources that newer indications simply do not, and much more… - 0:00 Intro 0:51 Why he left fifteen years to build it 2:24 What Thalocan actually does 3:45 Where imprecision creeps into trials 4:50 What they do differently 5:46 Why one-size-fits-all breaks here 7:25 Decades of research versus newer indications 8:35 Where AI comes in 9:48 The vast gap between imaging and diagnosing 11:39 Dumb tech, on purpose 12:19 Skin tone and an AI atlas 14:05 Advice to a younger Eric 16:14 Fall in love with a problem 17:38 Where to find Eric - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Eric Zudak: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-zudak-617a944 Website: https://www.thalocan.com - Get in touch: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Friday · 22 min
40% Of Growth Comes From This One Thing (Anton Dudarenko)
Anton Dudarenko is the founding director of Lift-Off Consulting, a London growth consultancy that helps companies decide where to play and how to win, then builds the technology to execute on it. Anton spent his career in brand strategy and analytics, starting as a junior business analyst at Millward Brown Optimor and rising through Kantar to Consulting Director of Analytics, working on brand strategy, marketing ROI and market sizing for clients including HSBC, Unilever, Virgin Media O2, LEGO and Mondelez. He founded Lift-Off Consulting in 2024 and built AI into the firm from day one, codifying his and his partner's experience into software products their clients keep using long after the strategy is delivered. Expect to learn why a strategy deck on its own no longer cuts it, why so many of Lift-Off's clients turned out to be agencies, how AI turned a six-week strategy project into something that can be done overnight, why he now works from the terminal instead of PowerPoint, why being top of mind accounts for 40% of growth, why going viral is not a marketing strategy, why you have to be a little delusional to start a business and much more… - 0:00 Where to play and how to win 2:26 Why the deck no longer cuts it 4:16 Why agencies became key clients 5:56 AI as the catalyst for Lift-Off 7:22 Working from the terminal 9:01 Marketing a firm built on referrals 10:58 40% of growth is being top of mind 12:53 From discovery to strategy 14:32 Why going viral is not a strategy 16:01 The overnight success myth 17:57 Why founders need some delusion 19:30 From strategy firm to tech partner 21:20 Where to find Anton - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Anton Dudarenko: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anton-dudarenko Website: https://lift-off.co.uk - Get in touch: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Friday · 31 min
The $2 Million Change Order Nobody Plans For (Robert Carmona)
Robert Carmona is the CEO and founder of Carmona Collective, which helps local governments, developers, businesses and nonprofits with strategic planning, public-private partnerships, leadership development and bold new ventures. Robert started out as an assistant recreation manager in Oro Valley, Arizona, running summer camps and inclusive programming, and knew within a week that he wanted to be a director. He went on to lead parks, recreation and facilities in Wickenburg and then Gilbert, Arizona, helping deliver nearly $1 billion in capital projects and public-private partnerships along the way. He left Gilbert at the top of his game to build Carmona Collective, and he and his wife, foster parents for the last eight years, also started the Carmona Foundation to support foster families. Expect to learn why construction is often the easy part of a big project, what outside consultants miss when they advise public agencies, how skipping one stakeholder conversation turns into a $2 million change order, why you never want to be seen as a threat in the room, why a note-taker app can be a problem in a government meeting, why AI should never write the voice of a project, how an off-road mobility device is opening trails to people with disabilities and much more… - 0:00 Leaving at the top of his game 2:52 The four divisions of Carmona Collective 6:05 The Carmona Foundation and foster care 8:04 What builds a strong community 9:14 What consultants miss with public agencies 13:21 Speaking the language of every stakeholder 14:33 How a $2 million change order happens 17:29 Never be a threat in the room 18:42 AI in government and the private sector 21:29 What note-takers reveal about you 24:13 Marketing when you are not a natural salesman 26:48 Terrain Hopper pilot programs 29:48 Where to find Robert - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Robert Carmona: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-carmona Website: https://www.carmonacollective.com - Get in touch: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Thursday · 27 min
Why Nobody Tells The Truth On Your Engagement Survey (Steve Rix)
Steve Rix is the CEO of PlayLab, which brings play into the workplace to reduce attrition and raise productivity and engagement. Steve has spent more than three decades starting and running businesses, including six companies before PlayLab. Thirteen years ago, after losing more than $100 million in business opportunities and the end of his second marriage, he was sitting on a beach in Hawaii when two kids asked him if he wanted to play. He started experimenting with play every day, went on to coach more than a thousand people with it, and over the last three years has built PlayLab with the help of investors to take that work into companies. Expect to learn why the future of work looks nothing like the past, why PlayLab is not advocating for recess at work, how a storytelling exercise kept a team aligned after it lost its leader, why he would turn down a business owner whose employees are afraid of them, why fewer and fewer people fill out employee engagement surveys, how a one-hour murder mystery gets 70 to 80% of a company to take part, why the younger generation is in revolt against the way work is done and much more… - 0:00 Two kids on a beach and the start of PlayLab 4:12 Bringing play into the business world 7:01 Storytelling instead of the strategy whiteboard 9:16 What a thousand coaching clients taught him 11:18 The companies play works for 14:49 Curiosity and experiments at work 16:34 Replacing the employee engagement survey 21:22 Work is going to change either way 23:09 The one thing he would change 26:09 Where to find Steve - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Steve Rix: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steverix Website: https://experimentwithplay.com - Get in touch: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Thursday · 22 min
Why Treating Recruiting As A Task Keeps You Losing Candidates (Nick Mastrovito)
Nick Mastrovito is the owner of Mastrovito Associates, a recruiting firm serving architecture, engineering and construction, manufacturing, defense and government. Nick came to recruiting from operations. After a military career he led an engineering company, and kept running into outside recruiters who did not understand what the business was actually looking for. He learned to recruit as a Patrice & Associates franchisee, a franchise he still owns, but his very first client was a defense company, so he built Mastrovito Associates around the sectors he knew from the inside. He also hosts The Aligned Leader podcast. Expect to learn why treating recruiting as a task instead of a strategic imperative holds companies back, why your job posting should market the company before the job, how an interview fast lane stops you losing candidates to faster offers, why posting and praying is not enough, where AI helps with sourcing and where it still falls short, why he would not interview with a company whose first contact is an AI bot, the three parts of a real talent strategy and much more… - 0:00 Who Nick is and why he built his own firm 1:56 The war on talent 5:22 Building a predictable recruiting machine 9:52 Where AI fits in recruiting 14:07 Talent strategy and the future of recruiting 18:37 The one thing to take away 21:21 Where to find Nick - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Nick Mastrovito: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-mastrovito-jr-mba-56016243 Website: https://mastrovitoassociates.com - Get in touch: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Thursday · 19 min
This Is Why AI Told Them To Delete Every Row (Jeff Garbus)
Jeff Garbus is the co-founder and owner of Soaring Eagle Consulting. Jeff started programming at 12, more than fifty years ago, earned a computer science degree in the early 80s and took a concentration in writing along the way, because he did not want to fit the stereotype of the engineer who cannot communicate. He and his wife built their first consulting company into a public company during the internet startup boom, then left to start Soaring Eagle. It began with training, consulting and some software, and moved into database managed services for the recurring revenue. Along the way Jeff wrote the DBA Survival Guide and many more books on database management, has trained thousands of DBAs, and has spoken at conferences for about thirty years. Expect to learn why a database that handles 30,000 rows does not tune the same way at 30 million, what an insurance company with six months of bad backups had to go through before calling for help, why database work cannot be handed to a network administrator, the AI answer that told a client to delete every row in a 10 billion row table, why AI is a tool and not a solution, how a message board post turned into a book contract within a week, why he would have found good sales and marketing much earlier and much more… - 0:00 Who Jeff is and how Soaring Eagle started 2:21 Why they moved into managed services 3:39 The SQL mistakes companies make before they call for help 6:17 Where AI actually helps, and where it does not 9:52 Twenty books and what they did for the business 14:34 Starting from scratch today 17:45 Advice on marketing 18:29 Where Soaring Eagle goes next 18:45 Where to find Jeff - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Jeff Garbus: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffgarbus/ Website: https://www.sedatasolutions.io - Get in touch: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Thursday · 22 min
This Is Why Your Margins Look Better Than They Are (Seth Kimble)
Seth Kimble is the owner of Irongate Financial Partners and a fractional controller. Seth graduated with a finance degree from Clemson in 2013 and spent the first half of his career in sales, financial planning and employee benefits. Around 2017, about to get married, he moved into accounting, the field he had actively avoided in college despite coming from a long line of accountants going back to a great-grandparent. He built a freelance bookkeeping practice on the side for about five years before Irongate became a full-time business in 2022. Today the firm works with owners roughly between one and twenty million in revenue, and has grown 15 to 25 percent a year since going full time. Expect to learn why a service business can think its margin is 80 percent when it is not, the SBA loan booking mistake he sees surprisingly often, why good bookkeepers are worth their weight in gold and when you need more than one, why you should stop trying to wear every hat in the business, where AI actually sits in accounting today, why AI is only as useful as your ability to read what it gives you, how he is growing through acquisitions and much more… - 0:00 Who Seth is and how Irongate started 1:39 From sales into accounting 3:20 The hardest part of the first years 6:25 Who Irongate serves best 9:14 Why your margins look better than they are 11:10 The accounting mistakes small businesses make 13:19 Payroll and benefits pitfalls 15:14 Where AI fits in accounting 19:33 Growth and acquisitions 20:59 Where to find Seth - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Seth Kimble: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethkimble Website: https://irongatefinancialpartners.com - Get in touch: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Wednesday · 24 min
Why Delivering The Work Was Never The Hard Part (Dan Gallagher)
Dan Gallagher is the managing partner of 13point1 Advisors, a consulting firm focused on healthcare payment integrity. Dan spent more than 20 years in payment integrity and strategy roles at Anthem, Change Healthcare and Optum. The work kept putting him on the same cycle: initiatives would succeed, investment would stall, and he would find himself defending his job. With a mentor pushing him and an investor putting up the startup capital, he launched 13point1 in August 2025, sized from day one to chase the clients a five to ten person firm can realistically win. Expect to learn why 13point1 profiled 215 payment integrity companies before anything else, how defining a common language for the industry became a four-hour workshop, why incentives inside health plans quietly work against each other, why identifying fraud does not mean getting the money back, where the industry will and will not let AI decide a claim, how better prompts cut a vendor profile from 20 hours to three, the lull that hit after the first wave of client work, why his first engagement comes with a guaranteed ROI and much more… - 0:00 Who Dan is and why he left corporate 2:32 Building a firm to scale from day one 7:00 What health plans get wrong about payment integrity 10:58 Where AI fits in payment integrity 13:26 How 13point1 uses AI 15:32 The hardest stretch of year one 19:34 From first call to signed engagement 22:56 Where to find Dan - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Dan Gallagher: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpatrickgallagher Website: https://www.13point1advisors.com - Get in touch: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Wednesday · 22 min
Nobody Taught You The Game You're Actually Playing (David Richter)
David Richter is the founder of Simple CFO Solutions. David was studying to teach when someone handed him Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and he ended up in a residential real estate company that grew from five deals a month to around twenty five. Sitting in the finance seat, he realised they were doing twenty five deals a month and spending twenty six worth out the door. When a one deal a month investor he helped told him it had been life changing to finally know where his money was, Simple CFO was born. He later wrote Profit First for Real Estate Investing, and the firm now works with more than a hundred owners every month. Expect to learn why so many owners make money and still feel broke, why finance is the neglected stepchild of the four areas every owner has to manage, the idea that the game every entrepreneur is really playing is money, the 20 percent that gives you the fastest return, the one bank account he would open today, how he uses AI to protect his time, how a book opened doors for five years, what he would tell himself in year one, how to write a first book without sounding like an idiot and much more… - 0:00 Who David is and how Simple CFO started 4:49 The mistakes owners make before a CFO steps in 7:47 The 20 percent: a simple cash flow system 11:08 How he uses AI day to day 12:49 Who Simple CFO works with 13:49 What's working in marketing 14:35 Where Simple CFO goes next 16:24 What he would do differently 18:29 Advice for a first time author 21:30 Where to find David - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with David Richter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-simple-cfo Website: https://simplecfo.com - Get in touch: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Wednesday · 19 min
The Headline Number Is Lying To You (Nirvikar Jain)
Nirvikar Jain is the founder and managing partner of BayTech Capital Partners. Nirvikar spent the early part of his career at global institutions including Citibank, Bank of America and First Abu Dhabi Bank, then moved to the US as a Stanford GSB Sloan Fellow to follow his interest in technology and startups. He spent seven years as an operator inside tech startups, including as CFO, before combining banking and technology to advise founders on M&A, capital raises and strategic finance. He describes himself as a founder friendly banker, and says plainly that he would advise a founder to walk away if a deal was not in their interest. Expect to learn why valuation is a much fuzzier word than founders think, how the same company is worth different amounts to different buyers, why a deal headlined at X can put only 0.3X in the founder's hand, the four months a client lost chasing a bigger offer, what big bank experience teaches you about buyer and seller dynamics, why AI is fragmenting boutique investment banking, the one thing AI cannot deliver, what he would tell his younger self about fear and uncertainty and much more… - 0:00 Who Nirvikar is 2:25 Where founders misprice their company 4:56 The biggest mistake when selling a business 7:33 What big banks teach you about deals 9:46 AI and fintech deals 12:13 Who BayTech helps most 13:25 The hardest part of entrepreneurship 14:42 Advice to his younger self 16:02 What's next for BayTech 18:13 Where to find Nirvikar - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Nirvikar Jain: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nirvikarjain Website: https://baytechcapital.com - Get in touch: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Wednesday · 25 min
Nobody Tells You AI Is Mostly Plumbing (Kevin Williams)
Kevin Williams is the founder and CEO of Ascend AI Labs. Kevin started his first company in business school, then spent years as the executive venture capitalists brought in to decide whether a struggling portfolio company could be turned around or had to be shut down. He went on to build product businesses by testing ideas with digital marketing, licensing patents and selling through Amazon, Walmart and Costco, and when Apple's tracking changes took away his visibility into eight figures of ad spend, he leaned into machine learning out of necessity. He exited those companies shortly before ChatGPT arrived and founded Ascend two days after it launched. Expect to learn the third piece of AI work that neither strategists nor implementers cover, why organisations without a strong tech function are the sweet spot for an external AI office, the first thing any consultant should build with AI, why a working stack costs about twenty dollars a month, what an enterprise context graph is and why it is the opportunity nobody has cracked, the mistakes companies make before he steps in, why so much of his work is now AI plumbing, what he would do differently if he started today and much more… - 0:00 Who Kevin is and what Ascend does 0:24 Turning around venture backed companies 1:51 Testing ideas with digital marketing 3:33 When Apple broke ad tracking 5:02 The missing piece between strategy and implementation 7:59 Who benefits most from an AI office 9:55 A consultant's first steps into AI 14:33 The enterprise context graph 17:28 The mistakes companies make first 20:24 AI plumbing 21:23 What he would do differently 24:26 Where to find Kevin - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Kevin Williams: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinguywilliams Website: https://ascendlabs.ai - Get in touch: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Tuesday · 26 min
This Is Why One Training Session Never Works (Paul Walsh)
Paul Walsh is the managing director of commercial services at Enolla Consulting. Enolla is a family business Paul's father co-founded and still runs as CEO, built around helping organisations create the conditions for their people to thrive. Paul came to it after a semi professional football career and about ten years in customer services, joined thinking it would only be a couple of months, and now runs the commercial side: the pipeline, the social team and the webinars that bring the work in. Around eighty percent of that work arrives through referrals. Expect to learn why your next client is probably already in your contact book, the signals that tell him an engagement will actually work, why a single training session changes nothing, what tick box inclusivity looks like from the inside, why AI simply replicates human bias at a bigger scale, how to run webinars that people actually show up for, why TikTok became one of their biggest lead generators despite everything he assumed about it and much more… - 0:00 Who Paul is and what Enolla does 3:50 Webinars, social and the pipeline 5:31 Why new business comes from people who know you 8:18 The signs an engagement will work 12:17 Tick box inclusivity 14:27 Where AI fits in consulting 19:22 How to run webinars that work 21:49 What he would do differently 24:45 Where to find Paul - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Paul Walsh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-walsh5 Website: https://enollaconsulting.com - Get in touch: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Tuesday · 28 min
This Is Why Your Team Is Draining You (Greg Stephens)
Greg Stephens is the founder of Alignment Resources. Greg is an executive coach and professional mediator, and the author of Build New Bridges: The Art of Restoring Impossible Relationships. He went out on his own at seventeen, spent years in sales at Roche before starting his own business, and turned a habit of lifelong learning into more than twenty years of teaching the conversations most people put off. Today he sits with executive teams and business owners when the relationships that drive the bottom line have quietly broken down, and runs closed door team mediations where everyone finally says what they have been carrying. Expect to learn why the real energy drain for leaders is the people rather than the problems, the 20 percent of communication that does most of the work, the most common mistake leaders make with a hard conversation, how his team mediation process gets a room to tell the truth, why a CEO told him he had moved the company forward more than a year in a day, why an impossible relationship is a limiting belief, the new book he is writing about healing before goodbye, why what you bury always comes back stronger and much more… - 0:00 Who Greg is and what he does 2:23 The road to Alignment Resources 6:58 The 20 percent of hard conversations 10:26 The most common mistake leaders make 13:17 Inside a team mediation 19:36 The new book: Building Final Bridges 22:18 What's next for Alignment Resources 25:30 Deal with it immediately - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Greg Stephens: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregstephens2 Website: https://alignment-resources.com - Get in touch: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Tuesday · 20 min
This Is The Conversation Your Team Is Avoiding (Martin Egan)
Martin Egan is the co-founder of Culture Impact. Martin has a PhD in analytical chemistry and a background in pharma and drug discovery, and kept being recruited for something that was not on his CV - his ability to work with teams that had stopped functioning. Somewhere in there he noticed the technical skills were never the thing that made the difference, retrained part time as a psychotherapist, and in 2004 walked away from science entirely to join a mental health team in South West London. Culture Impact started in 2014 because he wanted to run whichever diagnostic actually suited the client rather than the one his employer happened to sell. The line that stays with you is not his own - it is what a client of fifteen years told him: I don't know why we always get more out of it when you're here, even though you don't do anything. Expect to learn why the work clients value most is the part they cannot see you doing, the three fears behind the quiet dehumanising of organisations, what actually changes when your firm's brand stops being you and the single metric that proves it happened, why the cows that reliably give milk are rarely your favourite clients, how he decides what to carry as a permanent cost and what to keep variable, why a client who tells you exactly what they want is like a patient telling the doctor which prescription to write, the conversations every leadership team is avoiding and what happens when someone finally holds the room for them, what he would tell his younger self about chasing validation from every higher authority he could find and much more… - 0:00 Who Martin is and what Culture Impact does 0:08 From scientist to psychotherapist, a full career change 1:41 Why he started Culture Impact in 2014 2:22 What a scientist and a psychotherapist have in common 4:22 The dehumanising of organisations 4:58 Why it is happening now 6:04 What he does first with a leadership team 8:19 "Even though you don't do anything" 9:35 The signals that predict a transformation will work 11:17 The hardest part of running your own firm 11:37 Going from the brand being you to the brand being the firm 13:03 Advice for a founder in the same shoes 15:48 The change readiness assessment 17:06 What he would tell his younger self 17:53 Where Culture Impact goes next 19:24 Where to find Martin - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Martin Egan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinegan Website: https://www.cultureimpact.co.uk - Get in touch: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Tuesday · 30 min
Nobody Wants Death By Mouse Click (Richard Harris)
Richard Harris is the founder of The Harris Consulting Group and the creator of the N.E.A.T. Selling methodology. Richard did not set out to run anything. He was line 432 on a 75-line spreadsheet of employees Intel wanted to keep when it acquired Mashery, so he was hugged out the door with a respectable severance and no idea what came next. Interviews stalled at the fourth and fifth round. To feel useful he started answering other people's posts on LinkedIn, found out strangers valued opinions he assumed everybody already held, and the consulting work arrived on its own - people asking what he charged for advice he had been giving away. Thirteen years later the firm trains sales teams on earning the right to ask a question before you ask it, and he is blunt about what founders get wrong on the way there: they demo every feature, they polish past the point of an MVP, they build for twelve months without talking to enough prospects, and they hire a salesperson to fix a sales problem that is really a founder problem. Expect to learn why the first 15 to 20 customers are buying you and not your product - and why handing that to a rep slows everything down, why nobody wants death by mouse click in a demo and what buyers are actually there to see, why the skeptic is worth more to you than the decision maker, what N.E.A.T. stands for and why it works like a compass rather than a checklist, why he posted his entire book word for word on the web so the LLMs would find it, where AI genuinely helps you earn trust and which buyers will happily let it replace a human first, the golf block that has been on his calendar for years that he almost never uses, and the one thing he would go back and do sooner and much more… - 0:00 Richard Harris, The Harris Consulting Group 0:23 "I got fired" - how the firm actually started 2:53 What changes when everything falls on you 5:03 The twelve-hour days, and the ones that aren't 6:18 The golf block that is never golf 7:46 The paid acquisition channel he never had 10:27 Fish where the fish are 11:22 Putting his whole book into the LLMs 11:59 The main takeaway: sales is personal 12:38 Why the skeptic outranks the decision maker 14:24 The N.E.A.T. framework 16:01 Where AI fits into earning trust 18:06 Who AI replaces first 18:32 Pitfalls: mental health and the lunch you don't take 20:45 Colour-coding the calendar 22:08 Death by mouse click 23:04 MVP means minimal, not maximum 23:41 Twelve months building, nobody to sell to 24:02 Sell the first 15 to 20 customers yourself 25:31 Surf and Sales 27:36 What he would do differently 28:22 What's next 29:01 Where to find Richard - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Richard Harris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rharris415 Website: https://theharrisconsultinggroup.com Surf and Sales: https://surfandsales.com - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Monday · 24 min
This AI Found a Leak in a Bill Nobody Opens (Sheetal Guttigoli)
Sheetal Guttigoli is the founder and CEO of Seamless Assist. Sheetal spent twenty-five years in software and product management, bought a set of gyms as a side gig, sold them at a profit, and then built a recruiting company placing talent from around the world into US businesses. Then he did something most agency owners would flinch at: he looked hard at AI, concluded his clients were about to need fewer people, and went back to his software roots to build the automation himself rather than wait for it to arrive. The moment that captures what that actually buys you is small and domestic. His daily brief flagged unusual water usage on a rental property, pulled from a utility bill he never opens because everything is on auto-pay - and it was a leak, exactly as it had been on another property the year before. Expect to learn why a recruiting firm decided to build the thing that reduces demand for its own placements, how a daily brief reading your email caught a leak in a bill he never opens, how his team went from one blog at a time to thirty marketing posts a month with a single human approving them, why he deliberately keeps a human in the loop at two separate approval points, how he runs two AIs against each other reading and writing the same project memory, why he dates his chats and refreshes context every single day, why nobody spends enough time on edge cases and error conditions, and why he writes a full product spec and approves a design before a single line of code gets written and much more… - 0:00 Who Sheetal is and how Seamless Assist began 0:28 Software developer to product manager 0:58 Buying gyms as a side gig, then selling them 1:28 Starting the recruiting company 2:25 Why AI meant clients would need fewer people 2:52 A dashboard you can ask questions 5:21 Matching candidates against 850 businesses 8:39 How to actually get started with AI 9:35 Build yourself a daily brief 10:02 The leak the AI found in a utility bill 12:42 AI that reads your browser directly 13:33 Thirty posts a month with one human 14:33 Step by step, with a human in the loop 19:05 Hallucinations and the context window 19:34 Project memory, and two AIs reviewing each other 21:28 The edge cases nobody thinks about 22:26 Write the spec before a line of code 23:39 Where to find Sheetal - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Sheetal Guttigoli: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheetalguttigoli Website: https://seamlessassist.com - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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Monday · 26 min
This One Word Loses You the Nonprofit Client (Sean Hale)
Sean Hale is the founder of Nonprofit CFOs. Sean's first job was in his mother's nonprofit, pushing a broom and cleaning toilets for four dollars twenty-five an hour, and twenty-five years later he is still in the sector - now with a team of fractional finance people serving several dozen organisations a year. His observation after all that time is blunt: when a nonprofit is struggling to deliver on its mission, the finance and accounting function is almost always struggling too, and you cannot fix one without the other. He also has the most economical piece of positioning advice in the sector. No nonprofit calls itself a business. No nonprofit calls itself a company. Use either word about a dog rescue and they immediately conclude you do not understand what makes them different from a grocery store. Expect to learn why the single word you use in the first meeting decides whether a nonprofit will hire you, why struggling programmes and struggling books almost always travel together, how long to budget before consulting replaces your salary and why negotiating down to thirty hours beats quitting outright, why a CEO with no finance background can get the right interview questions from AI but still cannot judge the answers, what changes when your team gets big enough that someone actually wants the job everybody else hates, why half of all nonprofit consultants claim to do strategic planning and what that does to your chances, why a narrow niche beats fancy words in a crowded market, and why a first-draft contract plus a lawyer's review beats a ten thousand dollar engagement and much more… - 0:00 Who Sean is and how Nonprofit CFOs started 0:27 Pushing a broom for $4.25 an hour 1:30 Why he bet on fractional over full-time 2:50 Struggling programmes mean struggling finances 4:01 Budget twelve months to replace your salary 4:31 Negotiate down to thirty hours instead of quitting 5:41 Why he stayed in the nonprofit sector 7:09 The word that tells them you don't understand 8:53 What leaders get wrong before writing the job posting 9:56 AI gives you the questions, not the judgement 12:37 The person who loves bank reconciliations 14:32 Lessons from a 500-member consultant community 15:46 Half of them all do strategic planning 17:13 Why a narrow niche is the only way to stand out 20:33 A $10,000 contract versus $500 to check it 24:51 Where Nonprofit CFOs goes next 25:45 Where to find Sean - 🔗 Guest & Resources Connect with Sean Hale: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanphale Website: https://nonprofitcfos.com - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/ Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/ Email: mikulas.zach@agenteedigital.com
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