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Scaling in Public Tip: Replacement Cost

March 26, 2026 by angishields

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Scaling in Public Tip: Replacement Cost

Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton, Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, here again, the Scaling in Public series has just yielded so much for us so quickly. And I’m remembering when we had Coach Maggie Ishak talk with us, and the whole session was fantastic, but I think we both really resonated with this idea of considering and helping a potential client consider replacement cost.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. When she asked us – I remember, in the episode, she asked us specifically, what would it cost a business to get all of those things that you’re offering? And that idea of calculating a replacement cost was really kind of an eye opener, because most businesses think about their value only in terms of price. But the real question is, what would it cost your customer to replace you, not just in dollars, but also in time, in money, and in systems? It’s the whole thing. What would be the cost to replace you? And a lot of folks don’t think in those terms.

Lee Kantor: So, if the customer had to rebuild what you’re providing from scratch, what would it take? How many hours? How many tools would they have to purchase to get what you’re delivering? How many people would it take to deliver what you’re delivering? And not only that, how many mistakes along the way? How much scar tissue are they going to have to get in order to get to where they are with you right now? When you start looking at your product through that lens, you often realize the value you deliver is much larger than any monthly fee.

Lee Kantor: So, here’s the exercise. Ask yourself, if a customer had to recreate this without us, what would it really cost them? That’s your true value.

Scaling in Public Tip: The Sales Conversation

March 25, 2026 by angishields

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Stone Payton: And we’re back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor, Stone Payton here with you. Lee, in our Scaling in Public series, when we had Coach Mike Brunnick on, and he was really helping us think through a lot of things, what do you think you resonated with the most or really stood out for you during that session?

Lee Kantor: Something Mike said that was interesting was that he said that every sales conversation really just has two jobs. First, you have to get the customer to tell you their problem. And second, you have to describe your solution. And that sounds easy. It sounds simple, but most people reverse the order. They jump straight into pitching. This is what my service does. These are the features. These are the benefits. Here’s a demo. Look at it work. But they’re doing this before they truly understand what the customer is dealing with, what they need.

Lee Kantor: So, great sales conversations start with curiosity. Ask questions. Let the prospect explain what’s frustrating to them, what’s slowing them down, what they’ve tried in the past where the pain really is. The more clearly they describe the problem, the easier the second step becomes. Because once the problem is clear, your solution isn’t a pitch anymore. It’s just the answer.

Embracing Change: What We Learned from Our 90-Day Coaching Adventure

March 25, 2026 by angishields

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In this episode of Scaling in Public, Lee Kantor, Stone Payton and Trisha Stetzel reflect on the conclusion of a 90-day coaching experiment. They share key lessons learned, including the value of consistent communication, leveraging AI, and building authentic relationships through interviews rather than traditional networking. The team discusses operational improvements, mindset shifts, and new strategies like the “test drive” approach. The episode celebrates their progress, highlights the power of accountability and community, and sets the stage for continued growth in the next season.

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Trisha Stetzel is a leadership coach, strategist, and trusted conversation partner for founders and leadership teams navigating growth, transition, and complexity.

Her work sits at the intersection of leadership clarity and execution. Trisha helps leaders slow down long enough to ask the right questions, align around what truly matters, and move forward with focus and accountability. She is known for creating space for honest dialogue, challenging assumptions, and guiding leaders from vision to practical action.

With experience across executive coaching, organizational development, and business storytelling, Trisha brings both structure and humanity to her work. She believes sustainable growth comes from clarity, discipline, and a willingness to learn in real time, not from shortcuts or surface-level solutions.

Trisha’s coaching style is direct, thoughtful, and grounded. Leaders often describe her as calm, insightful, and deeply present, someone who helps them see what’s already there and act on it with intention.

Connect with Trisha on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Episode Highlights

  • Reflection on personal growth and changes experienced by the hosts during the experiment
  • Importance of renewed energy, commitment, and communication in business practices
  • Utilization of AI tools for analyzing coaching sessions and improving operational tactics
  • Emphasis on the significance of email marketing and maintaining an email database
  • Discussion on the value of nurturing relationships and consistent follow-up in business
  • Insights on the coaching process and the benefits of diverse perspectives from multiple coaches
  • Introduction of a “test drive” concept to enhance client engagement and relationship building
  • Shift from traditional networking methods to more authentic and direct communication strategies
  • Plans for future growth, including targeted marketing and community building initiatives

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from our flagship studio in Atlanta, Georgia. This is scaling in public. The next 100 Business RadioX markets, featuring founders Lee Kantor and Stone Payton, along with some of America’s top coaches, helping them grow the network with real strategy, real lessons, and real accountability, all shared in public. To learn more about the proven system that turns podcast interviews into a perpetual prospecting pipeline through generosity, not gimmicks, go to Berk’s HQ and download the free Business RadioX playbook. Now here’s your host.

Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of scaling in public. Stone Payton Lee Kantor here with you. Please join us now in welcoming back to the broadcast our quarterback, our mentor, our favorite coach Trisha Stetzel. How are you?

Trisha Stetzel: I’m great. I’m so excited to be back with you guys. It’s been a few weeks and we’re all the way at the end of our 90 days. I’m super excited to circle back and talk about where we started and where we’re at today, and even share some of my own story in using the system. I think that’s going to be important as well. So we’ve been at this for 90 days now. Um, we brought in some incredible coaches, tested some new ideas and made some real changes. Today, I’d really like to pause and look back at what actually happened and more importantly, decide where are you going to go in the next 90 days. Because that is really the key here, right? Is taking action from all of the work that you’ve been doing. So when you think back, um, to where you were 90 days ago, Stone, why don’t you start us off with what feels most different now?

Stone Payton: For me, it’s energy level and commitment to a specific set of actions on any given day or in the course of a week. It’s almost it’s almost like I’ve clocked back in and I’m working the system that I preach so much to the studio partners that I’m supporting. And, um, so that’s the biggest overarching shift. Tactically, I’m just in communication. And if anything, I err on the side of overcommunicating with any of these constituencies I’m trying to serve. And it has produced general benefit, but also very specific success on a number of occasions already in a very short span of time.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh, I love that. Sometimes stone, we have to be reminded of the things we teach every once in a while, don’t we? I love that. Thank you for being so vulnerable around that. Lee, what about you? What feels most different now?

Lee Kantor: I think, um, operationally, I think we are in a better place. I think that we’re keeping score a little better than we had been before. I think a lot of these tactics and ideas that we’d have, we’d kind of start them and then kind of move on to the next shiny object. And these seem, uh, the tactics we’re trying and implementing seem very targeted and were relentlessly pursuing them until we make an assessment whether to continue or not, rather than just haphazardly just trying a new thing and a new thing. So I feel good about that. I feel good about how we’ve been leveraging AI. I know we’re just learning and I feel like a beginner when I’m implementing it, but I just see so much potential there and I’m excited about how we’re also leaning into, um, email marketing. I think that that was something that I shouldn’t have ever stopped doing. And we just kind of stopped doing it and we turned it back on and we were already seeing kind of fruits of that, uh, effort. And, uh, and I think it should be built into the playbook of all of our studio partners moving forward. You have to build an email database. You have to have some means of communicating directly with the people that are important to you, and you have to relentlessly communicate with them. It can’t be something that you just hope will work or you hope they’ll remember you. You have to kind of constantly remind people who you are because they’re busy doing their own thing. They’re not thinking about you until they need to think about you. And when that moment comes, you have to be there for them. So, um, I think email marketing is an important component or some sort of kind of reminder marketing, um, when you’re communicating with the people that are important to you.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. Nurturing and top of mind. And we talk about it, right? We talk about it all the time. I think as people who are in business, we want to make sure that we’re top of mind and we often don’t see the fruit of that labor. And so we stopped doing it to move on to the next thing. I’m very glad that those are big rocks that came out of some of the experiences that you had. What surprised you most about this entire experience?

Lee Kantor: For me, the thing that surprised me was, um, just going through the coaching, uh, just the act of being coached. Um, when I was younger, I had, I’ve seen therapists in my life and, and it reminded me kind of, of that back and forth, the pushing, getting me into uncomfortable spaces. I hadn’t ever had a coach before. So this was the first time I’ve kind of experienced that in that way. And, um, I really enjoyed kind of the fresh eyes that people brought to this and every coach took it seriously. They did their homework. They kind of understood where we were at. So we didn’t really have to kind of recreate the wheel pretty much. Um, at each session. So I thought that was helpful. And then they got us really to the heart of an issue that their, that their specialty kind of, um, allowed them to, and it allowed us to kind of get insight quickly. Um, the only thing from it that I would take is that it was kind of overwhelming because every week we were meeting somebody else and they’d have a different thing and they’d say, oh, this is so obvious. You should be doing more of this. And then the next one would be, oh, this is so obvious. It would be something else. So it was just to kind of contain that, uh, was a little overwhelming for me. But again, that’s where AI was helpful for me, where I was able to kind of, okay, I can take these transcripts, I can put them in, I can help them kind of connect dots that maybe I’m not seeing, or I’m kind of not prioritizing as much as I should. And then that was kind of a, for me, a way to kind of put new fresh eyes on, on the inside. So I was, um, surprised by how much I liked it and how much I was looking forward to each coaching session.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay. Awesome. Stone, what about you?

Stone Payton: So for me, 2 or 3 things. One, it was much more fun than I anticipated. I just, I had a really good time. Second, I learned a great deal more than I thought I would. I’ve always considered myself a pretty good, if not gifted, person in the arena of selling professional services. I have a pretty strong track record in that regard. And, um, I didn’t I don’t guess I felt like I was going to learn that much. That was going to help in the role that I’m primarily playing at this point in our, in our evolution. I learned a ton. I think I probably came into it a little bit jaded toward the coaching profession, and and I’m sure there are some mediocre coaches out there, but boy, we didn’t meet any. Not during this series. Uh, you know, and they, and they, they challenged my thinking. They shared ideas and it was, I learned, but it was also validating. I validated that, yes, Stone, you really are good at this. You really do have a pretty good handle on some really solid sales mechanics that you’ve been exposed to over the years. You are good at communicating with people.

Stone Payton: When you do clock in and actually do the stuff that you’re trying to coach other, other people to, to do. And it had such a tremendous impact tactically because I, I think I kind of coasted for a while in our business because certain aspects of it, you know, could be very lucrative. And, um, I think I kind of backed off of doing the day to day blocking and, and tackling and then, you know, one specific set of disciplines, I guess. I had fallen into a very overly stealthy, high positioning approach to working with people and letting them come to me and all of that. Well, I gotta tell you, I’m anything but stealthy now. I let the people I’m talking to, I let them know how and why we want to serve them. I let them how? Let them know how and why we want to collaborate with them. What I’m trying to get accomplished. And it’s just a very authentic exchange all the way through. And all of that and the, uh, the, the gap and how much I’ve closed the gap. It continues to surprise me.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that I am so excited. And you guys both lived up to your, um, the thing that you said you were going to do at the beginning of this series, you said you were going to be open to coaching and be open to ideas from others, and maybe even shifting the way that you think. And congratulations. It sounds like both of you are there. Okay, so I came back. We circled back about halfway through, and we already talked about, um, the first few sessions, you’ve talked to five coaches and actually had a duo or four coaches and you guys had a reflection, uh, episode as well. But you’ve talked to five coaches all together. I’d love to hear how the back end of this series or the learnings for you have really played out when it comes to things that have moved the needle. So what are 2 or 3 things during the back end of this? I’m going to call it an experiment. We were calling it that as a kind of a kidding in the background, but what are 2 or 3 things that clearly moved the needle for you in the back end of this series? Stone. Do you want to take that first?

Stone Payton: Uh, yeah. Well, I can tell you on the back end of it, like Lee, I have been a little bit overwhelmed. But what we did, Lee and I, you know, came right behind each session. And, and he and I had in-depth conversations about the session. We took some advantage of, of AI. We took the, the Zoom AI summary from those sessions. And even more recently, Lee’s turned around and fed that into his AI to get a really solid practical plan of action. So I feel like the he and I block time every week, like 2 or 3 times a week to have these conversations. The conversations are more tactical than they used to be, and he and I contract to do some very specific things in service to those to those objectives. So that’s a that’s impacted the back end at a very tactical level. I’ve got two very recent examples from yesterday, because again, I was really reluctant to, uh, follow up in any, you know, really strong way. Um, and, and, uh, yesterday I followed up with a couple of people who were doing the test drive that people have heard us talk about on this, uh, on this series.

Stone Payton: By phone. I haven’t followed up with somebody by phone and I don’t know how long. It’s been a really long, long time. And we have this discipline in our sales process where we establish a specific confirmed release date and so on. On one of the things that a project that we were selling confirm release date is tomorrow. But I decided this morning and it happened right behind those calls. I guess I was kind of getting my getting my groove and I sent a little, little two sentence reminder, note. And the lady came back and said, oh, I sent you a note yesterday with the client wants to move forward now, for whatever reason, that that communication got lost in my email system or whatever. Doesn’t matter. She would have gotten a very she would have gotten the traditional confirmed release note tomorrow if I hadn’t reached out and over communicated. So I’m getting like very real and real time evidence that, hey, doing this stuff is a good thing.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that you picked up the phone stone.

Stone Payton: I did. I had done that a long time. Not in pursuit of yeah, yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, I love that. And Lee, you mentioned earlier the, uh, email sequence along with that, what are a couple of other things that, uh, clearly moved the needle that you’ve implemented?

Lee Kantor: I think, um, well, one of the biggest things is this, uh, concept of a test drive that we’ve kind of, uh, built while talking to the coaches where now we have a bridge. So, and this is one of the challenges and you went through this yourself when you were implementing the system for yourself as a person comes on, they’re coming on to a show. You, you’re meeting them, you’re doing kind of a mini discovery call with them, whether it’s in the pre-call or in the interview, right? You’re vetting them, seeing if they’re right fit, seeing if there’s opportunity there. While you’re serving them and giving them a good interview. That’s useful and that they can really repurpose and benefit from. So you want to honor that. But at the when the thing’s over and you have your follow up and you want to teach them how to best leverage the content and how to get the most out of it, you want to have some sort of a bridge into a sales conversation for yourself. You know, because we’re not doing this, we’re doing it kind of altruistically. But this is, you know, like I like to say, this is show business. There is a business element to it. And we’re doing this to grow our businesses.

Lee Kantor: Um, so there has to be a bridge. And we came up with an interesting thing, an experiment to test is these test drives where we’re during the call, uh, stones able to bubble up, um, a pain point of whether it’s, I need to meet more people or I want to position myself a little differently or I’m not getting enough top of the pipeline. Um, you know, whatever their kind of issue is when it comes to business development. We have a simple way to test it. And this test drive, which we implemented successfully with one of the coaches, is we just give them, we put it in the chat. Here’s, here’s a note to send to your, um, your LinkedIn and just say, hey, I’m sponsoring a Business RadioX show. I’m looking for guests. Do you know anybody? That would be a good guess. I mean, that’s not the exact word, but that’s kind of the, the spirit of it. And this one coach immediately sent a handful out and was getting responses almost as fast as she was sending them out. And it was like, people have to understand that’s hard to do. Like, that’s not something that normally happens because I know because we’re sending a lot of emails now and we’re sending thousands of emails to get responses.

Lee Kantor: Um, this was something that it was almost, you know, sending a handful and getting responses is an extremely high engagement rate and is unusual. So she was very blown away by that. And then we were able to do we’ve done one of the interviews for her. We, we this test drive is basically allows the coach to be a sponsor of an episode. Um, and we don’t charge her for this test drive. And then she sponsors it by inviting someone. I did the interview for her in this case, and then I interviewed her person and the episode was brought to you by her coaching company. He had a great time, sent her a note. Thank you so much. Um, and that’s, you know, that’s something that can happen in a short period of time that we tested effectively. That was built on ideas that we got through the coaching that went from, hey, this sounds cool, let’s try it to us doing it. And now it’s just part of how we do things. Um, so that to me was one of the biggest actionable benefits from doing this. So we landed on something that is now a working thing that’s part implemented as part of our kind of go to market strategy.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. So with your permission, I want to give a little plug on my experience with your system. I think this is a really good time to bring this in, because we were talking about it a few weeks back, like, what is that system done for me? And I gave you some numbers and I did. I dropped 95 shows last year and I do it as a coach. I do a discovery call, a 15 minute phone call with all of the prospects that I would invite to the show. So I did my 15 minutes. I invited those to the show that it made sense to have them on. I spent 45 minutes with them cutting a 30 minute show for them, and of those 95 I dropped last year, I got two paying clients, which is double what I would get if I was making cold calls to 100 people. Normally it would be one coaching client and I’ve got two. And, and the interesting thing for me is it’s all of the seeds that I’ve planted. It’s I, the client that I landed in the last few weeks that I have been telling you guys about came from someone I had on the show last spring, a year ago.

Trisha Stetzel: She was on the show this spring or really in the winter. In February, she dropped an email in my inbox and said, I want you to meet these people. And I went through their interview process, and now I’m a part of their coaching pool, which is really, really exciting. Uh, the other one is an individual one on one coaching client that I landed through again, another person who was on the show. So for me, it’s not always been about prospecting directly from the show, but indirectly. And I will tell you that I gave up some of the network that I was doing that wasn’t working so that I could use the system, because it makes sense for me to build these networks, to open up networks, to build relationships. And by the way, Lee, continuing to nurture those relationships is really important, just like you talked about in your business. For me as well, staying top of mind and continuing to get those referrals from the people I’ve had on the show. So I want to thank you both for allowing me to be a part of the business that you’re in and helping share this story with everyone who’s listening.

Lee Kantor: And it’s funny, you mentioned how it’s replacing some of your, um, things that you’ve done previously. One of the coaching, um, kind of tidbits we got in the insights we got was from one of the coach who said, if by doing your thing, it allows me to replace for other things. And that’s something, um, stone and I did a, a pro tip about this recently about how when you’re explaining the value of what you do as a service, you have to include the replacement cost because the person isn’t going to connect those dots. It’s like when you’re doing our thing, you don’t have to. Also, unless you want to do three other other things, you don’t maybe have to go to as many kind of networking meetings as you did before. You don’t have to go to as many events as you did before. You don’t have to run as many ads as you did before you can. You can use this thing instead of some other things that are costing you time, money, and resources. Um, that you can do this instead and get kind of at least the same bang for your buck, if not more. And again, the thing that I can’t emphasize enough about our methodology. Every interview you do, that person is going to like you. So that’s going to be a real relationship. You can kind of interact with this person down the road whenever you want, as opposed to an ad you run that every one of those interactions is perishable. They see the ad. They look at it and then they forget about it. It’s perishable. It goes away. Whereas every single one of our relationships are forever. Mhm.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. This method, it it removes the friction of the weirdness of having to introduce yourself to someone and saying, hey, let’s have a conversation. You’re inviting them to something which I think is beautiful. It’s all about them. Isn’t that what sales is all about? I think everyone’s favorite radio station, Wiifm. What’s in it for me? I mean, it really is. And if you invite somebody to something, I wouldn’t turn down a great show if somebody invited me that I knew or that I had been watching. I would love to be on somebody’s show that’s doing a really good job. And then, gosh, could I turn into a client? Maybe. Uh, that’s part of having that conversation and really nurturing what’s happening there. They’re so stone from your perspective. Just hearing, you know what, what I’ve been experiencing just over the last year. And by the way, we’ve, we’ve been working together for almost two years. And it took me a while to figure out my own system. But as you hear, um, you know, my experience with your system was bubbling up for you. Stone, about what I’m experiencing and what you’ve experienced through scaling in public.

Stone Payton: So at the risk of sounding a little bit immodest about our thing, I’m not even a little bit surprised that you’re seeing some positive results. And I think Lee’s right. And I think sometimes, um, I get a little insulated or take for granted just how powerful this thing is forever, not just while you’re doing it. And so it’s, it’s so much a part of me and what I’ve been doing for these 20 years that I think I have fallen very short of effectively articulating that to potential studio partners. I was a lot better when I did more in studio work, day to day, face to face at getting that across to people who had come through a studio. I just and maybe I’m just better in that medium or maybe, you know, I don’t know. But, uh, so for me, I want, I continue to strive to get a lot better at articulating what they can expect, which is what you’re, what you’re experiencing. And I think you’re going to, I think you’re probably going to hit a tipping point where your results and your numbers are even far more impressive than that. We’ll see as as things unfold. So the what I’m translating that to is in my communicating and overcommunicating when the opportunity presents itself and when I listen, like Coach Gabrielle has helped me do, and really get a handle on where they are now. What the. Not our why? As much as their why. And. And then communicate to them how much, how often and how our thing will help them get there. Much more focus on that as opposed to what? I cringe a little bit thinking that I probably went into a lot of conversations expecting them to connect all those dots and, um, and they don’t obviously. Uh, so yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: I have a little secret to tell you guys. I believe that my coaching skills have grown and I’m a better coach for doing the show. Oh, and I appreciate that because on the show, it’s always about the other person as it is in coaching and learning to ask a question and just get out and not problem solve and not be a teller and not try to give the answers and just allow the conversation to happen. I believe that I’ve become a better coach through being a partner with you guys as well. So thank you.

Stone Payton: Oh, great. I love to hear that.

Trisha Stetzel: I know, okay. So, Lea, um, something that comes to mind is you guys created a dashboard based on a conversation that we had a few weeks back on really hardcore tracking your numbers. How is that important? Not only just getting it started and having it, but using that in the future to really track the amount of work that’s going into staying on top of the activity you’re doing.

Lee Kantor: I think it’s important to keep score. And, um, the last coach we had, uh, young Han, he is operationally minded and is just really, um, kind of lives and dies by that. He doesn’t take anything great ideas or he’s like, I’m terrible at ideas, I. The way I do this is brute force. I just power through ideas and I just test them and they are what they are. And I do more of what works and they do less of what doesn’t work. And it’s just not that complicated. You just have to have the stomach to power through. So I’m really trying to kind of live into that more. Um, when it comes to doing a tactic, putting it to a test, assessing how it’s going and then either, you know, doing more of it or getting rid of it and trying another experiment. And so, you know, we’re really kind of leaning into that. And just like this was a 90 day experiment, this scaling in public. I think it’s a, I think moving forward, we should do it again and do another 90 days, probably not immediately after maybe started in May. Um, and not in April. Um, but we should do another 90 days of it. Um, and maybe tweak it a little bit, but we should start recruiting coaches for the next 90 days. Um, and that’s one of the initiatives I think we should do. I think that we should be, um, doing experiments and we have several planned and we should process everything we’ve learned from this experiment, kind of get all of our learnings together, come up with an action plan and then execute relentlessly and without emotion. And, um, so that, I mean, that’s another one of the takeaways from going through this process is just keep going. Go for, you know, little change over time compounds, and then just keep just relentlessly moving forward towards the goal.

Trisha Stetzel: Um, and you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable sometimes.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And you got to take the emotion out of it, you know? Yeah. The ideas aren’t, you know, every idea It’s not a great idea. And that and the results are the results. And then you take them and you move on and you don’t. Failing at an idea or an experiment that goes wrong is not something bad. It’s one less thing to worry about moving forward and just try something else. And you got to have the stomach and the resources to do that for as long as possible. And if you do that relentlessly, I believe then you are going to get to where you’re trying to go.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that, and I’ve heard Jung say more than once, um, he loves use the term failing forward, which means you’re learning from everything that you’re doing, and you just got to put one foot in front of the other. So, Stone, what about you? Why is keeping score important?

Stone Payton: Well, I gotta say, I’m the newest member of the young Han Fan club. I got tremendous value out of that, uh, session. But for example, and again, that’s another thing I always bristled with, with score cards in my mindset was more like, just get out there, serve people and it’ll happen. And part of the challenge is it did happen. You know, particularly at the at the in studio level, working directly with clients, it hasn’t been happening for us in recruiting studio partners. Uh, this scorecard thing I’m still struggling with to even remember to do it. I was supposed to do it by Saturday or Sunday. I didn’t do it. I didn’t, and I didn’t do it yesterday. I did it this morning and I went back, I said, okay, great. I had six pre calls last week. That’s great. That’s more than most people get. I’ve had a machine to do that. I’ve had access to that machine for 20 years. I’ve always been able to turn the dial up turn it down. I had zero uh, what in that scorecard right now says post calls these conversations where we’re leveraging the, uh, helping them with ideas on leveraging their interview. And it’s opening up the opportunity for me to have that test drive conversation with them.

Stone Payton: Now, those were pre calls, those pre calls we history suggests that those will turn into the interviews. History suggests the interviews will turn into the into the post calls, but I had to be realistic last week. You know, just felt like I just was jamming, but I really hadn’t moved the needle that much yet. I just, I did part one of it. And so as in terms of keeping score, didn’t have any of those test drive conversations and to just realize, okay, you know, pay attention to what the score is. You might have got a first down, but you hadn’t scored a touchdown through this yet. So that’s, uh, and then watching Lee, um, really take the information from the sessions and not just rely on our feelings and our, um, in our memory and then analyze what’s been said and, and we have been leaning on AI a lot to lay out the plan and, and, and now I’m getting more and more comfortable with trying the new thing. So keeping score is also kind of a new behavior, uh, for me. And, um, it doesn’t come naturally. Uh, yet.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, we’re still working on it.

Stone Payton: But I will tell you this too, at a at on the other side of the equation. I know like the, one of the things that I wrote on my notepad during our session with, uh, with Jung was I wrote the word emotional and then I scratched it out and then I wrote the word math in great big block letters. So maybe that’s why I finally filled out the scorecard this morning.

Trisha Stetzel: And you don’t have to hang that on your wall so that you keep track of the scorecard, right? Uh, yeah. Well, and you guys have adopted so, so many new things that I think are going to matter to your business moving forward and understanding that we’re planting seeds just like I did. I talked to 95 people on the show last year, and it resulted in two great clients. And one of them is not just a 1 to 1 coaching client. It’s an opportunity to coach many, which is amazing. And I wouldn’t have had that opportunity had I not stuck with it and just kept planting the seeds. And that’s been the beauty of this process with you guys. So just calling out some of the coaches that you guys met with since the last time we rolled around, we already mentioned Gabrielle Beaumier. Uh, James Castleberry was on with you guys talking about emotional intelligence. Adam Walker and Sunjay came on to talk about using video to scale the business. You guys talked about the test drive, uh, and what you have going on. And then young Han was just before this particular episode. So reflecting back on everything, um, is there something you’re intentionally not doing anymore because of what you’ve learned in the last 90 days?

Lee Kantor: Uh, like, are you asking a tactic or just anything?

Trisha Stetzel: Is it? Yeah, sure. Either or.

Lee Kantor: Um. Oh, let’s see. Something we’re not doing anymore is waiting. Oh, we’re not waiting.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, this is good. Tell me more.

Lee Kantor: We’re not. Um. Just saying, hey, this is a good product. It’s interesting because we have validation from every coach that this is a good product and a good service. Nobody is really debating that. And, um, and so I feel good about that, that we’re not. And it’s something that’s done. And I, because of our level of confidence and self-confidence, we never were really doubting it, but it’s nice to hear from a handful of people that say, hey, you know, you really do have something here. So I appreciate that. And a lot, I think, I don’t know if it’s our age, if we’re we’re our stage of our life that we’re at right now, that we just, I think, took our foot off the gas and said, okay, this is a good thing. It’s going to, you know, build it and they will come kind of mentality. And I’ll just, you know, people will figure it out. And now we’re moving with more urgency and we’re moving, you know, with our pants on fire to get this thing moving and get this thing done. And, um, so the waiting part, I think in our minds, um, has kind of stopped and now we are taking action relentlessly. Uh, pretty much every single day now.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that stone. How about you?

Stone Payton: So I’m not waiting. Covers it really well for me as well. Um, so that’s a specific thing that, that I’m not doing, but I’m also not cringing when emails go out from mission at Business RadioX dot com under stone at Business RadioX dot com, and maybe sometimes it’s not the way I would say that I’m not cringing because, you know, quite a few people are getting that message. And I’m seeing that the people that, uh, you know that respond really do want to have a conversation. There’s going to be a whole bunch of people that don’t respond to that specific message. But I, I mean, when Lee started jumping back into that and doing that, I mean, I was cringing because again, I was always like, I’ve been spoiled. We’ve made a very comfortable living. And it’s, it’s like falling off a log for me personally and for lead to run a studio. I mean, believe me, if I would work five days a week, three days a week down here at the studio, I’d make a ton more money. And that’s part of the problem, too. We’re already financially pretty comfortable, both of us. And so but anyway, I’m not cringing and I’m not waiting.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that, not cringing and not waiting, but ready to help other people who can use the system to grow their businesses, which is so important. One of the reasons I engaged with you guys almost two years ago is because of the whole pebble on the pond effect, and it was less about selling something to someone, and more about growing the community of people that I have in my reach. And I loved that. And I think that comes across for everyone. I’ve heard all of the coaches that I’ve had follow up conversations with that have been a part of this experiment, say the same thing, that you guys are genuinely in it for all the right reasons, which is to help people grow their communities. And I think that that’s beautiful and I really appreciate it. All right. So we’re at the back end of our conversation. I want to we’ve done a lot of reflecting, a lot of action looking. We know you have a dashboard. What is the next 90 days entail for you? So specifically, what are you going to double down on in the next 90 days?

Lee Kantor: Um, specifically, tactically, uh, we’re going to take Young’s advice and we’re going to run ads, um, in the next 90 days, uh, to just see if we can get direct, um, people into our pipeline through that platform. We’re going to ask, um, our coaches that we’ve had for referrals for next season’s coaches. Um, that’s, that’s a tactic that we’re doing to kind of build the top of our pipeline and to, um, we’re going to continue doing this show one more season at least. And, um, and we’re going to kind of, that’s going to launch probably in May, but it won’t, we’re going to kind of process everything we’ve learned and come up with a plan to maybe tweak some of the things that we think we could kind of do better. Uh, so those are some things that we’re going to do. We’re going to capture some of the testimonials from, from partners like you that have gotten, uh, good results and, um, capture that in a variety of ways so that we can share those stories with potential partners moving forward. And we’re just going to kind of double down on building this community. We want to identify more people that you know want to come along for the ride and, and feel like they have something to add to the community. So we’re looking for other people out there, other coaches especially that want to be part of a community that’s doing this kind of work, that they want to be the voice of business in their community, and we can show them how being that persona can really help their business grow. It can help them personally. They’ll feel good about themselves. They’re not going to feel icky. There’s not going to be any of that awkward, icky networking feeling you sometimes get. And, um, and it’s effective. I mean, this kind of work just really is effective if you’re doing it relentlessly over time and you will position yourself as that authority, it will improve your reputation. You will become a go to connector in your community if you do this kind of work. Um, so that’s the next 90 days about that.

Trisha Stetzel: Thanks. Lee Stone, what do you have to add?

Stone Payton: So listen to Stone get tactical here instead.

Speaker 5: Of just, you know, big picture.

Stone Payton: Uh, we’re going to market directly to affinity groups and professional services franchise organizations and see if we can’t get a lever. So yes, we’re going to do that 1 to 1 marketing that we’ve built this system out for. But we’re also going to, to build a system for going to a system and have some type of more, possibly more productized at least the frame of it may look a little more productized for your coaching franchise or your, um, your cohort, you know, maybe there’s a coach who’s coaching a dozen. Well, maybe we can do a test drive thing as part of that service and give those people an opportunity to be the voice of business in their community, because we know it’s going to amplify substantially any of the things that they’re doing as a product of the coaching they’re getting. And so we’re going to we’re going to pull that lever too.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that, okay. Uh, I need to know if this was a success for you. So, do you feel like this experiment, this first 90 days? I’m hoping that you say yes and invite me back for season two in May. Um, has this been a success for you?

Stone Payton: Absolutely. Unequivocally, yes. For me.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Me too. I mean, this was, um, I loved it. I mean, I can’t wait for next season. I can’t wait to build the cohort of coaches for next season and to, to see where we go and what we learn and what we can execute next season. It’s, it’s something that has been really an energy boost for me. And I’m very appreciative of you and all the effort you put into this. And, um, all the coaches we met that we wouldn’t have met without your help. So thank you for making this happen. This to me was a 100% success.

Trisha Stetzel: It’s been my pleasure. And it was a little messy, but that’s okay, right? It was our it was our first season. Stone, I heard you say yes. What would you like to add to? This has been a success.

Stone Payton: I you know what less is more. I learned that from one of our coaches. That’s the best way I know to describe it. It’s a success for all the reasons that we’ve been been talking about. And I like Lea, I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I cannot wait for season two, and I can’t thank you enough for quarterbacking this entire effort and the direct counsel and perspective that we’ve received from you. It has absolutely been invaluable. Tricia.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you. You know, Stone, we should have had everything that we’ve done recorded because we could have had so many more clips. I’m just saying. I’m kidding. Uh, you guys, thank you so much for the opportunity. I love working with you. I love being a partner. I love being a part of Business RadioX. And I love the show that I’m doing and building my own community selfishly opening up networks and talking to people that I would never, ever have the opportunity to talk to. So thank you both for allowing me to be a partner as well as quarterback this experiment. I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I got to meet some new people too. We brought in some amazing coaches and I am very much looking forward to next season, my friends.

Stone Payton: It’s been our pleasure. Thank you again, Tricia.

Outro: Thanks for listening to Scaling in Public. The next Business RadioX 100 markets. Are you ready to enjoy a steady stream of discovery calls and finally stop being a best kept secret? It’s time to step out of the shadows and watch your coaching business grow. Let’s fill your calendar ten discovery calls in a month, guaranteed. Go to Brc’s HQ to download the free Business RadioX playbook.

Joshua Berry: How Open Curiosity Creates Better Leaders Than Control Ever Will

March 24, 2026 by angishields

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Houston Business Radio
Joshua Berry: How Open Curiosity Creates Better Leaders Than Control Ever Will
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Joshua-BerryJoshua Berry is a world-class facilitator of change. As an author, speaker, entrepreneur, and CEO of Econic, Joshua has spent the last two decades evolving the what, who, and why of Fortune 500 companies and venture-backed startups.

Along with his team, Joshua has sparked change in organizations like US Bank, John Deere, Procter & Gamble, Nelnet, Ameritas, Omaha Public Power District, Farm Credit Services of America, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska, among others.

For employees and leaders looking to grow themselves and their organizations, Joshua speaks on overcoming limiting beliefs, adaptive leadership, and the innovation systems and mindsets that create engines for growth. Learn more at econic.co and joshuaberry.com.

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

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. It’s my pleasure to introduce you to today’s guest, Joshua Berry, CEO and co-founder of Econic and a nationally recognized author, speaker, and facilitator of change. For more than two decades, Joshua has worked with fortune 500 companies and high growth startups to help leaders rethink how performance actually happens, shifting from command and control leadership to team led results through Econic. He’s helped organizations like John Deere, Procter and Gamble, U.S. Bank, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, and others build culture. Cultures rooted in learning, experimentation, and shared ownership. Joshua is also known for his dare to be naive philosophy, challenging leaders to test bold, counterintuitive ideas that unlock innovation and momentum in uncertain environments. Joshua, welcome to the show.

Joshua Berry: Thank you. Trisha.

Trisha Stetzel: Super. Yeah, I’m super excited to have you on. I think that there’s a lot in what I just said about you that we’re going to talk about today, which is going to be fun. So before we get started, Joshua, tell us a little bit more about you.

Joshua Berry: Sure. I think it all starts with the fact that I’m a father of four. Uh, it’s birthday season, so they will soon be 12, 14, 16 and 18. Married to my high school sweetheart, also named Trisha and spelling it the right way of T r I s h a. I live in Lincoln, Nebraska. That has been a great home base for over 25 years, but has allowed me to do work in over 40 different countries while still having a great place to raise a family.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that, thanks for being a great dad. I have the opportunity to be on a podcast called Girldad. I’m really excited about that, so you should take a listen to it.

Joshua Berry: I will.

Trisha Stetzel: It’s going to be fun.

Joshua Berry: I love two of mine are girls, so I will check it out. Thank you.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that you’re welcome. Okay, so Joshua, I think I’d just like to dive right into, um, the way there’s there’s so much happening in the world right now. Lots of change, a lot of, um, uncertainty, things that are happening around us that we can’t control. And I know you have some thoughts around how we view work and ways that we can use our work to You shift the way we’re doing things, whether it’s inside of the work or outside. So tell me a little bit about I’m going to call it the sandbox. So tell me more.

Joshua Berry: Yeah, I love to think of work as a sandbox. If any of the listeners are probably like you and me, we still have to work for a living and therefore we’re required to show up and, and do work, and we get a choice of how we want to use that time. And I view work as a phenomenal sandbox for us to be able to practice more of the behaviors that we need in society, right? So it’s like a bonus, like we have to go do it. Many times we’re put into situations with people we wouldn’t normally hang out with or talk to, and we have to figure out how to make something better together. And so when I think again about all that we need in society in terms of, of better discourse, more trust, more resilience, uh, Ease your ability to to change our mind when new thinking and new facts come about. Um, these are all things we get to practice at work and get paid for it. And so I just love again, the work that I’ve done for the last couple of decades has always been at the intersection of business performance and people and trying to create these spaces for people to practice those types of behaviors.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. So, Joshua, can you give us an example of something where you’ve been able to use that sandbox?

Joshua Berry: Absolutely. Uh, some of our early work at Econic was helping build innovation labs and incubator programs within large companies. And oftentimes, uh, the issues that some of those innovators or entrepreneurs would run into were their own limiting beliefs about, I can’t try this thing because if I do and I fail, uh, then traditionally I’m not going to be seen as a high performer. And yet that’s exactly the type of behavior that we needed to instill in them and coach. And so a lot of our programing and workshops weren’t just teaching them. For instance, how to experiment or how to build rapid prototypes of new ideas. It was working on their own inner work, what I call groundwork, in terms of what voice is telling you about your worth when you fail at something. Now that’s a phenomenal sandbox, because just imagine if we had more people who are a little bit more thoughtful about saying, I really want to try something new in work or in life or at home or whatever it might be. But what will people think if I fail? Well, these incubator programs and innovation programs we got to build gave people routine practice on exactly those types of behaviors. And what they began to see is that when they embraced some of those things and they started to realize, oh, I tried this, it failed. I’m still okay. Um, they actually were a little bit braver in other aspects of our lives, too.

Trisha Stetzel: Mhm. Yeah. Wow. I love that I picked up on a word that you used that I really like, which is, which is entrepreneur. Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Joshua Berry: Sure. It’s it’s a $2 word that we use when we’re talking about people who have been designated for more innovative or entrepreneurial work within an organization. And so we typically refer to them as entrepreneurs. Um, and there’s a lot of, we can fill a whole episode on what you need to do to be a successful entrepreneur. Set the system up for it. But that’s what I mean.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. I love that you talk about embracing bold and, and, and counterintuitive ideas in your dare to be naive work. So what a powerful, naive hypothesis you’ve tested that actually accelerated outcomes.

Joshua Berry: Yeah, yeah, I’m I’m known, uh, in the speaking world and others is that naive guy. Uh, and it is, it’s, it’s, I’m not completely, willfully ignorant about the world, but I do believe that so much more is created if we believe in what can happen and the optimism and the beliefs that are driven from that. And so a concrete example of it is, you know, most organizations say, uh, our people matter and the growth of our people matter. But a naive belief that I have is the growth of the people matter even more than the business growth. Um, both are important. We need both of them. But at the end of the day, uh, people growth, even over business growth is kind of a naive hypothesis. And a story I like to tell about it is there was a manager named Michael, uh, who we were working with, who gave me a call and he was looking for a mentor for one of his teammates high potential, high potential person. And he asked if I knew someone who could mentor him. I racked my brain a bit and realized that there was somebody I could refer. But this person worked for their competitor down the street and I said, uh, I’ve got someone I could introduce you to have that person meet with the competitor.

Joshua Berry: And he paused for a bit, and Michael eventually said, okay, let’s set that up. Now, what was fascinating was like traditional management logic would say, why would you ever send one of your star performers over to meet with a competitor? But Michael, when I asked him later why he did it, and I had a hunch right as he said, I win either way, right? If I care so much about his growth and development that I’m willing to do something that might be perceived as risky. He’s going to know that I cared that much about him, and his growth was more important. And the counterintuitive thing that happened is the loyalty of that high performer actually grew because there was there was factual evidence, right, that Michael cared so much about his growth and development. And so that person went, he learned from this other mentor and continued to be a high performer at that business. But it was kind of the when push comes to shove, like actually showing your actions back up your words in terms of your belief and your employees development.

Trisha Stetzel: Wow. That’s amazing. And just thinking about the culture that you can build with this, um, we’ll call it, these are your words, strategic experimentation and learning, right? Strategic experimentation, even being naive and trying things, right. Uh, even some counterintuitive ideas. How, how do you build that kind of culture in a business?

Joshua Berry: Uh, yeah, you have to, you do have to have great leadership who have done their own groundwork, their own inner work to be able to understand that there might be other ways. And you mentioned this during the intro. That’s hard. If the culture is is stuck in this idea that you need to command and control everything. I think the best organizations and the best leaders have understood that change is happening too quickly for everything to be prescribed and controlled. And and nobody wants just their team members sitting around waiting to be told like, hey, what do I do next? Uh, so the future from our research and our understanding is what we call team led results. And to build a culture that is focused on team led results, you can’t just jump into that experimentation that you mentioned. You actually have to do a couple of steps before it. And it’s what we call groundwork and we call alignment. The groundwork is, again, what’s the inner work for the team, helping them change their relationship to change? And, uh, specifically how you can do that is create space for teams and individuals to be able to work through where maybe some of their limiting beliefs are related to the work or what’s needed. Once some of that work is done, then you can do alignment. Alignment is about just getting clear on things like what are the expectations for my role? What are our expectations for growth? What are what are the unwritten rules that I see people, uh, behaving as if they were truth that we need to call out. And, uh, once teams have the trust and are able to work through some of those things, then all that experimentation, then all of the progress and the things people used to hire us for right away, like start to fall into place.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. So I want to you brought in something from your bio, uh, around the command and control to team lead. We’re right now in our workforce, um, generationally, we have lots of, lots of ages still in the workforce, Absolutely right. Where when I was growing up in these bigger brands, it was very much command and control. And what you said is what needed to get done and the team executed. And we did that over and over again, where the culture and business has shifted a lot to team led. So what are your thoughts around this very broad age range of people in the workforce and everybody, you know, kind of shifting their mindset?

Joshua Berry: Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: Together.

Joshua Berry: Yeah. To your point, generational differences are real. Um, there’s a reason why stereotypes exist because there is some truth to those things. But what I invite for organizations and we just did, um, we’re about eight months into a 12 month leadership program with about 180 leaders. And they specifically wanted to focus some of the content on the communication styles of five generations in the workforce. So this is near and dear to my heart. And one of the first things that we said is we need to help all people in the workforce, regardless of age, get to a space where they understand that they have agency to either be defensive or open and curious. Yeah, we’re not going to change the history and experience in the decades of experience that brought you to here and some of that preprograming. But we all have agency. Diana Chapman and a couple of others wrote a book called the 15 Commitments to Conscious Leadership and Commitment. Number one. I see you nodding your head is that there’s a line and we have a choice every single day. Do we want to stay below the line where we’re defensive and we’re committed to being right? Or can we flip above the line and be open to learning and committed to learning, even if it proves that we’re wrong. And so the first step, regardless of age, experience, whatever it might be, is can we own that we have agency to be able to make that, that that shift back up because we’ll always drift down like we’re too busy. We make assumptions, all these things. We’re always going to be defensive first, but can we start to create space where we can pause for a moment and get back above that line?

Trisha Stetzel: Oh my goodness. Yes, I have so many more questions for you. But before we go there, I know that there are some folks who are listening today who already want to connect with you to have a conversation or learn more. Where is the best place or how is the best way to connect with you?

Joshua Berry: Yep. Best places. I put out new content on LinkedIn. That’s the best place to find me. You can search for Joshua Berry and Econic there, or we’ll put that in the show notes. My email address, I love to respond to personal emails from people. So that would be Joshua at Econic e c o n I c.co. And then for more information either on our work. It’s Econic or my personal speaking. And, and oftentimes the topics that I’m most interested in, uh, that’s at joshua.com.

Trisha Stetzel: Love it. Okay. Joshua, I’d like for you to tell me a little bit more about the work that Econic is doing. I know that we’ve, we’ve put some of that in a little bit here and a little bit there, but who are you working with and what kind of work are you doing?

Joshua Berry: Yep. It’s across all sorts of industries. We have some higher education clients now, some insurance, financial services, retail, manufacturing. The only common thread is that they are leaders going through some sort of change, uh, or organizational initiatives. And they’re curious and open. Like that’s the common thread. We also rarely work with people who are completely failing and and they need some sort of silver bullet approach, right? But those organizations who are good trying to get even better, and the type of work that we’re doing with them is everything from custom training and development programs to help them practice more of the behaviors that they need within their organization to executive facilitation work, which might be strategic planning or other initiatives. Um, and then more and more of it is around what we talked about previously, which is the idea of team led results. So more, more talks and workshops and virtual programs, specifically helping team leaders, managers. Move past the stage of burnout where they’re feeling like they have to carry everything themselves. And what we help them do is shift mindset and get some new tools to be able to help their teams lead the results. So it doesn’t feel like you’re constantly like pulling and pushing and, and coercing people to get buy in, to get stuff done. But you’ve, you’ve created the steps and the environment so that the teams actually want to almost like pick you up and carry you forward.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay. So just thinking about that particular scenario and a leader saying, well, my, my team is not getting the results they need. So I do have to carry all of the weight of the team and do everything that, uh, everything myself, right? Um, and some of those leaders are even saying that they empower their teams to do the things that need to get done, but the behavior doesn’t always match. What are your thoughts there?

Joshua Berry: Yeah, one of my first thoughts is, um, it’s the reason why we start oftentimes with senior leadership teams is, is they say the words empowerment, but then they, their actions don’t actually represent that they’re empowering people. The classic example someone comes in for a one on one and they’re bringing you a problem or an issue and, um, and you adopt a problem solving type of mindset instead of a coaching mindset, right? Well, and what would you do in this situation and what else? And, you know, there’s, ah, I’m not a pro in this. You are a master leadership coach. I see. Um, but there are a lot of great books out there and great resources that help leaders become better coaches. And I already established we have four kids. Oftentimes it’s the same thing as as in parenting. Like if I did everything for my kids, I can’t, I shouldn’t be surprised if they become teenagers and they still want me to do everything for them, right?

Trisha Stetzel: Then you have a bunch of 30 year olds living at home, right? Absolutely.

Joshua Berry: No judgment.

Trisha Stetzel: No judgment.

Joshua Berry: There’s there’s bad luck in life, right? But we have agency. We have control over those things. And so if you feel like you are carrying everything for people, the first thing you need to do is to look at some of your practices and understand this is back to groundwork again. Um, is there something that is causing some sort of immunity in you of giving up that control? And oftentimes these leaders have built their success on being the one with the answers and being the one who their value was based upon solving things. And unfortunately, they then get stuck into these repeating cycles and loops where they just keep reinforcing those things. I was, I was working with an engineering group, um, yesterday speaking at their event, and we got into this conversation around heroic efforts. And I said, heroic efforts in your organization should be the exception. The moment we start to celebrate always these heroic efforts, what you’re doing is you, you’re celebrating the wrong thing. Because now you’re rewarding a behavior and not always rewarding the fixing of those systems or processes or other things that make it so that you shouldn’t have to rely on heroic efforts. And it’s a counterintuitive idea, but if you have too many heroic efforts, you probably have some systems and process problems that you need to step back and be able to address. And so again, that comes back, though, from leaders having to be honest and serious about what type of culture that they want. And if they truly want to empower people, like what does that mean for them?

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. I want to ask you a little deeper question, if that’s okay. What what drives you or what drove you to this work? Why is this work important to you?

Joshua Berry: I believe people have so much squandered potential. Trisha. I believe there are people within organizations that are just going about life and work and everything, and either they don’t have or they’ve given up maybe some of the dreams that they have for the type of life that they could create. And then we’ve created work systems that further drain that from them. And, um, that’s why I’m passionate about this shift that we get to make now, to be able to fully unleash people, quite honestly, into the work that they were made to do and use work as that sandbox to be able to help them practice more of those things to get better. Um, yeah, that’s what drives me.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay. Yeah. You circled us right back around where I wanted to take us, right, was to sandbox and really thinking about it. Like, I know that some of what we have talked about today resonates with someone out there who’s listening around. How can I create or have this sandbox to really help my people who I know have potential?

Joshua Berry: Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: Get where they want to go, right? Yeah.

Joshua Berry: So what’s what are some things they can do?

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah.

Joshua Berry: Yeah. The first is, is you, especially if you, you phrased it in a way of a team leader, like you need to be able to know where each of those people want to go and be able to have the type of relationship with them, like Michael mentioned, where you’re okay, even if that’s not in your team, right? Like, and that sounds so crazy. Half of half the people just shut this off. But, but you have to have people who care enough about you and, and they know you care enough about them that they’re willing to have that conversation around. What do you want to learn next? What do you want to do next? Obviously, you need a successful business to create opportunities for people to grow. But if your story is a little bit wider And they could grow over there. They could grow over there, whatever it might be. And all of a sudden, you have a lot more abundance and a bigger sandbox to play in. So I think the first one is the relationship. The second piece of it is are you setting the example for yourself? Right. Um, there are a lot of leaders who say these things for their team members, but they don’t actually talk about it or live it themselves. There’s this one sales leader I was working with, who in private, he would tell me that he couldn’t wait until he reached a certain age.

Joshua Berry: So he finally had enough saves so he could actually go do what he wanted to do. And, uh, and I said, have you ever shared that with your team? He’s like, no, why would I ever do that? There might be some of them that would have that same thought. And what I challenged him on was they probably already have those thoughts. You just don’t know it. Just like you already have this thought. And so, uh, you have to start to model some of those things for yourself and being honest. You know, people you mentioned about generational differences, I know there’s differing levels of what people feel is appropriate to share and disclose within the work environment, but I found very few people who don’t value authenticity and value people just being real and sharing those things, even if it doesn’t align with their normal way, you know? Full circle on the naive naivete thing and being naive. Part of my research in that book showed that we we got the word naive kind of wrong a few hundred years ago. Naive actually just means natural or innate or that thing which you’ve had from the start. And so sometimes when you have a naive belief or naive thing that comes up within you, it might actually be something that is worth listening to because maybe it was coming from a deeper source than you’re giving credit to it.

Trisha Stetzel: I wish we had so much more time together. I’m really enjoying this conversation. So, um, as we get to the end of our conversation, just one, one more thing and I’d like to get your thoughts on someone who’s listening today who doesn’t have that relationship with the people that they work with or who report to them, whatever hierarchy you want to look at or level playing field, how do they, how do they get started when it’s it feels so uncomfortable to get to know their team members at that level so that they can start to work together in this sandbox.

Joshua Berry: Yep. A couple quick ones. Um, one would be just being able to have open conversations about what’s working and what’s not working in the role and then doing something about it. Um, another is, uh, if you use an employee engagement survey, actually do something with the results because oftentimes people are sharing some of these things and then the organization takes way too long or they don’t ever act on those results. So you may already have some of this content there. You’re just not doing anything with it. And then I think the third thing is, is, again, if you are the individual who, let’s say it’s completely blocked and you’re not getting this at work at all, great. Find some other part of life where you can do it, whether it’s at a nonprofit or volunteering for a board or some other places where you can continue to explore and try out things that you might normally not have a chance to do at work.

Trisha Stetzel: Wow. Thank you so much for your time today. This is, um, this is the best conversation I’ve had all week.

Joshua Berry: Thank you. Thank you. Trisha. I’m flu. I’m flu.

Trisha Stetzel: I, I love this. I took so many notes and I love when you talked about the two agencies of being defensive or open and curious. I love that that’s so simple. It’s so simple. Just write it on your wall. Right?

Joshua Berry: Absolutely. And it’s again, not mine. 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. Great book. Go check it out.

Trisha Stetzel: I love it. All right. Joshua, thank you again for your time today. This has been wonderful.

Joshua Berry: Thank you Trisha.

Trisha Stetzel: All right, you guys. That’s all the time we have for today. If you found value in this conversation that Joshua and I had, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, veteran or Houston leader ready to grow. Be sure to follow, rate, and review the show. Of course, it helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours and your business. Your leadership and your legacy are built one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.

Scaling in Public Tip: Virtual Relationships

March 24, 2026 by angishields

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Scaling in Public Tip: Virtual Relationships
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Scaling in Public Tip: Virtual Relationships

Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor, Stone Payton here with you. Lee, in our Scaling in Public series, we had Sanjay Parekh and Adam Walker guiding us through – a lot of it was centered around leveraging video. A great deal of the conversation talked about virtual relationships, which is a little different than the way our company was founded, with so much of the in-person work in studios. What do you think about what Adam specifically had to say about virtual relationships?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, this is something that was really – it caused me to kind of rethink how we do things and where there’s opportunities within our model on how to implement adding video or adding these kinds of non-in-person ways to build relationships.

Lee Kantor: And what he said was that virtual relationships don’t build themselves. And when teams work remotely or relationships happen through video, you’re obviously going to lose some of these natural water cooler moments, that serendipity that happens, that kind of magic that happens when you’re inside the bubble of a studio and everybody’s got headphones, and everybody’s looking at each other face to face. You lose that. I mean, that’s just a fact. It’s not as prevalent when you’re dealing with somebody virtually.

Stone Payton: So, in order to kind of create those moments, you can’t happen by accident. So, if you’re working virtually, you have to create those moments intentionally. And some of the ways to do that are you leave a few minutes at the start of the call to talk about things just casually. You give space for that kind of human-to-human interaction.

Lee Kantor: You have to kind of schedule these kinds of informal check-ins if you’re dealing with a team remotely. And if you’re dealing with doing what we do, which is kind of doing interviews, you have to kind of create space at the front end, and you have to create space at the back end because you need to get that human-to-human interaction happening. It has to be injected into this process. It’s not going to happen if you’re just kind of get the person on, do the interview, get the person off, move on to the next interview.

Lee Kantor: You need to create space for these informal conversations to occur, because strong business relationships don’t just come from a super structured interaction. They come from the human elements and the human moments in between that. So, create space for human-to-human interaction before and after your interviews if you’re trying to build relationships during this kind of interview process.

From Pain to Performance: How Brain-Based Chiropractic Can Change Your Life

March 23, 2026 by angishields

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From Pain to Performance: How Brain-Based Chiropractic Can Change Your Life
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Brought to you by Diesel David and Main Street Warriors

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In this episode of Cherokee Business Radio, Joshua Kornitsky interviews Dr. Zach Walker, founder of BrainSpine Chiropractic in Marietta, Georgia. Dr. Walker discusses his unique brain-based chiropractic approach, which focuses on the connection between the brain, balance, and movement—going beyond traditional spinal adjustments. He explains how dysfunctions in sensory processing, eye movement, and balance can cause pain and movement issues, and highlights the importance of updating the brain’s body map for optimal health.

Zach-WalkerDr. Zach Walker graduated from Life University in 2017. Since then, he has seen patients dealing with chronic pain, dizziness/balance issues, concussions, migraines, and athletes of all ages. He believes in bringing out the athlete in YOU. You are the athlete of your life, be the best at your sport.

Dr. Walker is constantly striving to get his patients better, as well as himself. To combine chiropractic and functional neurology, he pursued further studies to earn his Diplomate of the American Chiropractic Neurology Board. These studies have given him skill sets in Traumatic Brain Injuries, Vestibular Disorders, Chronic Pain Conditions, and Sports/Athletic Performance. BSC-Logo

His unique approach looks beyond simply treating symptoms; rather, he addresses the way the brain and nervous system control the body—helping athletes achieve long-term, life-changing results.

Dr. Walker founded BrainSpine Chiropractic with a passion for bringing advanced, brain-based chiropractic and functional neurology care to Marietta, Atlanta, Kennesaw, and the surrounding communities.

At BrainSpine Chiropractic, our mission is to create a safe, supportive, and empowering space where every patient — in pursuit of their inner athlete — can heal, grow, and thrive. We believe that care should not only restore function, but also inspire confidence, energy, and excitement as you return to the life you love.

Follow BrainSpine Chiropractic on Instagram.

Episode Highlights

  • Brain-based chiropractic care and its distinction from traditional chiropractic methods.
  • The connection between the brain, balance, and movement in addressing pain and dysfunction.
  • Dr. Walker’s background and journey into chiropractic and functional neurology.
  • The role of proprioception, eye movement, and the vestibular system in body awareness and coordination.
  • The concept of the brain homunculus and its implications for spinal health and pain perception.
  • The importance of updating the brain’s body maps through movement and sensory input.
  • Common conditions treated, including chronic pain, dizziness, and balance issues.
  • Misconceptions about chiropractic care, including the necessity of pain for treatment and cost concerns.
  • The holistic approach to optimizing health and performance for individuals of all activity levels.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Joshua Kornitsky: Welcome back to Cherokee Business Radio. I’m your host, Joshua Kornitsky professional EOS implementer. And today we’ve got a great show that I can’t wait to get to. But before we get started, I want to tell you that today’s episode is brought to you in part by our community partner program, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors defending capitalism, promoting small business, and supporting our local community. For more information, please go to Main Street warriors.org. And a special note of thanks to our title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors diesel. David Ink, please go check them out at diesel david.com. My guest today is Zach Walker, a chiropractor and functional neurologist. He is the founder of BrainSpine Chiropractic based in Marietta, where he works to improve performance and address the root causes of pain and dysfunction. His approach goes beyond traditional chiropractic care, focusing on the connection between the brain balance and movement to uncover what’s really driving symptoms. Welcome, Dr. Walker. Thank you for being here.

Dr. Zach Walker: Thank you. Joshua. I need you on my. Every time I’m meeting someone, I need just. I need you to be with me every time. That was awesome.

Joshua Kornitsky: I’ll just. I’ll be your herald. I’ll announce you. I’m happy to have you here. Um, before we get into the the BrainSpine chiropractic and all that you’re doing there, will you tell us a little about yourself? Kind of your origin story. Where where you started from to get to here.

Dr. Zach Walker: Yeah. Um, so, you know, most chiros and anyone you talk talked to? They had like a big. I was adjusted once and it changed my life. Mine’s not that drastic. Right? Um, but the big thing that comes to mind. My senior year of high school, we’re filling out r a c t s a t. I’m not even sure if that’s a thing anymore. It is. And before you do that, right, um, it asks, what are your interests outside of school? What do you like doing? So once you got your results back, um, it would give you, hey, maybe you should look into blah, blah, blah. And my first 3 or 4 was like physical therapist, athletic trainer massage therapy. But the last one, uh, was chiropractic. I had never heard of chiropractic. This was, I’m not gonna date myself. This was a while ago. Right? Um, this was about 0405. Um, but luckily I was able to do a senior project and kind of mentor a local chiro. And it was just, it was really cool being able to see even traditional neck pain, back pain patients get to come in feeling a lot better or at least feeling better without, um, a lot of medications. And these things, once they left, that really piqued me of the, the anatomy and physiology and just the human body in general. Um, and then ever since then, I’ve did my bachelor’s, um, and exercise science master’s in positive psychology, and then my Dr.ate in chiropractic. Um, the human body is, I love it. Um, I think it’s so, so fascinating and even more so the brain. Um, and then, you know, since Dr. chiropractic getting my what’s called the Dach-dnb diplomate accredited chiropractic neurology board, just a fancy word for being able to look at the brain a little bit more. Okay. This fascinates me. Um, and just since then, just delving into it and helping as many people and patients as I can.

Joshua Kornitsky: All right, so then let’s jump in. Um, I’ve been to a chiropractor a number of times throughout my life. I’ve always had positive results. But what’s brain based chiropractic mean?

Dr. Zach Walker: Yeah, it’s, it’s a really good question. Um, so most chiros and if you’re going to a chiropractor, massage therapist, acupuncturist, um, they’re very good at looking at what’s called the musculoskeletal system, your muscles, joints, tendons, ligaments, all that fun stuff, right? The super, super important system, right? But there’s three systems that our bodies always using to navigate the world. One being. Reception. What’s that?

Joshua Kornitsky: I was saying, what are those?

Dr. Zach Walker: Yeah. Well, uh, so one being what we call proprioception or I call it your spidey sense, right? Spider-man. There’s actually a new Spider-Man, you know, coming out, right? Um, and you have those alert signals, right? We could be having conversations like this, and you kind of always know what’s going on in the background, even though you’re not, you know, we’re not owls, right? Kind of. You’re right.

Joshua Kornitsky: But that pain in my lower back from sitting up straight, that type of thing.

Dr. Zach Walker: Uh, yeah, in a way, I mean, that’s that’s your muscles and joints kind of fire and the brain’s like, I’m having a hard time communicating. Um, that’s, that’s system one. System two is eye movements. You should be able to follow this and go here, follow this and go here. We’re doing those almost 300,000 times a day, quite a bit, almost like you’re reading a book. That’s a lot, right? Um, and the other one’s going to be, I should be able to look at you and turn my head with my eyes shooting off or feeling like I’m going to that side. Right. So I’m saying all this to say brain based chiropractic takes all three of those, right? And sees which one is dysfunction, which one is the communicating right. And how can we allow those systems to work better to allow you to be the best athlete in you?

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. That’s, uh, that seems much more comprehensive. And because it’s looking at all of the systems, not just one.

Dr. Zach Walker: Right? Um, and it is, it is another specialty. And it’s these three systems that feed into other systems. They feed into the pain to balance for posture, uh, concentration to, um, many different aspects of life that you wouldn’t think they would feed into. Right. But at the end of the day, if your brain and body can communicate, right, that’s huge because most chiros look at the spine, which is super, super important. We do that each and every day, even twice on Sunday, right? Right on Sundays. Right. Um, but again, we’re saying, as most chiros, all the nerves originate from the spine. They don’t originate from the spine. They actually originate from the brain. Right? We have what we call different nuclei in the brain or fancy word for kind of like hubs or that’s where everything starts, right? Okay. Starts hearing kind of fires down. So if we’re not looking at the brain, we’re missing a big piece.

Joshua Kornitsky: So in the world of chiropractic, are you a super specialist that people get referred to or do you see all sorts of patients? Who do you see in your clinic?

Dr. Zach Walker: Yeah. I mean, it’s, um, it’s a good question too. I mean, it is a subspecialty. I mean, chiropractic has a lot of specialties, if you will, from geriatrics, older people to pediatrics to, um, more. I just want to look at X-rays all day, but the neuro is kind of its own thing, right? We do see a lot of neck pain. Back pain, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s okay. So you do traditional chiropractic care as well.

Dr. Zach Walker: Yeah. Um, but a lot of times with neck pain and back pain, if I were to tell you that the pain you’ve had in the last six days, six months, six years, right, isn’t from your neck. You’re like, I don’t what? Yeah. It is. It hurts right here. Right? Um, but again, unless you just had a big accident and even with that, there’s exceptions. But unless you’ve had a big accident, your muscles and joints, tendons are only going to respond to what the brain tells it to do. Right? Um, so kind of go with that. Yeah. So kind of going back to the eye movement, right? If it’s hard for you to look from this target to this target with just a quick eye movement that brings, I don’t like that I get dizzy every time you do that. So I’m going to kick in a neck mechanism to look over here, which is fine to an extent.

Joshua Kornitsky: So that’s a compensation when compensation exactly.

Dr. Zach Walker: Um, this is where compensations aren’t necessarily good or bad. It’s allowing you to get throughout your day, right.

Joshua Kornitsky: But it’s typically not how, how the system was designed to function, right?

Dr. Zach Walker: You, you nailed it, right? Because again, we just said these eye movements, we’re using those with say 250,000 times a day, right? Your neck isn’t designed to move that many times. If you do that even remotely, you’re going to have neck pain, right? We could adjust you. We could give you all the best manual therapies, which is important, right? But again, once you go out in the real world, you’re going to keep doing this. We keep doing something over and expecting a different result. Insanity, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: Fair enough. And that makes sense to me though. But I’d never considered it from a perspective of my body compensating for a challenge, right? It’s just because I gather that it’s almost autonomous, that it’s kind of like when you twist your ankle and your body starts to limp, you don’t consciously decide to limp. You just limp.

Dr. Zach Walker: Yep. No, I mean, that’s a perfect example because you’re your body and brain doesn’t like being tired, doesn’t like being in pain, doesn’t like being dizzy, right? No one does. So it’s going to try to do everything it can compensate, right, to allow you to get throughout your day. But eventually this compensation is another compensation. And it just it spirals, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: Different level of clarity for me than I’ve had before. So I want to talk a little bit more about the brain because you said that all the nerve endings start there. Not in the spine. So is the spine in some cases. I’m going to use my terminology, not yours. Is it where the nerve ends or it just winds through? And tell us more about the brain side of this.

Dr. Zach Walker: Yeah. Uh, so with the spine, right, the spine is super, super important. It’s, you can think of it as a conduit or like we’re in Atlanta here. It’s, it’s 75. It’s 285, right? Everyone’s using it, right? Do you want to or not? Right.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sometimes it’s real slow.

Dr. Zach Walker: Oh you’re. Yeah. Right. Um, you can think of the brain as kind of your house, right? That’s where you where you live. That’s where you reside, right? Um, with the spine, right? In chiropractic and really in neuroscience, before you do any movement, before you pick a coffee cup up or you go to the gym and do squats and deadlifts, your spine has to be the first thing that is stable and fires. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter what you do. We’re going to have injuries, right? We all know someone that can squat to him or not even two. They can squat 600 pounds of deadlift 800 or a bench. All this. But yeah, they go to Costco, Walmart and pick up groceries and I think I slipped a disc.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay, that’s not funny, but it’s true.

Dr. Zach Walker: Well, we hear it a lot. And if you don’t know that person, you probably are that person, right? Um, but I’m mentioning that to say the spine, when we’re working out, we’re embracing core stability. We’re, we’re getting organized, right? But if we’re not having that same mentality each and every day, we’re being the best athlete and you comes into play, we’re going to have issues, right? So that’s that’s the spine, right? The brain though is the CEO. It processes everything right. It’s the one that’s processing the eye movements, the head movement that proprioception or spidey sense, right? The the spine isn’t processing it. It’s just taking in information, right? It’s gathering information and then sending it to the brain basically.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. Fair enough. So it’s, it’s, it is more the even though we think of it as, oh, I hurt my back. It’s sort of the forgive the expression, sort of the tail end of of the loop because your brain sent the if I’m following correctly, your brain has sent the command and you’re feeling it in your spine. That’s not it doesn’t go the other way around.

Dr. Zach Walker: I would say you’re actually filling it in the brain. The brain? Yeah. The brain itself, um, doesn’t have pain receptors, but let’s say you, you, you have low back pain, right? It’s just that area, that receptor that, that area is firing, right? But it’s the brain’s job to know where the pain is, what type of pain is, how long has it been there? How are we going to compensate? Right. Um, then it fires down to, hey, I’m going to make that area a little tighter, right? Because I don’t know when you’re going to injure it.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. So that’s, it’s, it triggers the response of the tightening up of the muscles.

Dr. Zach Walker: Right? Yep.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. So now take me deeper into the brain because we talked about different parts of it and I don’t want to mispronounce them.

Dr. Zach Walker: So, um oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Joshua Kornitsky: No, no, no. You had. There was one particular part that you had shared with me is particularly crucial to this. The homunculus.

Dr. Zach Walker: Ah. So yeah, so the homunculus, um, is not necessarily part of the brain, but there are parts of the brain that require that homonculus. So what I mean by that.

Joshua Kornitsky: So yeah, back it up and explain it because I sort of understood it and now you can help me understand it.

Dr. Zach Walker: No, it’s another really good question. So your brain has maps of the entire body. It knows where your nose is. Your ear is your big toe, right? This allows you so you’re not bumping into stuff, right? You can have coordination of movement, right? We, we have this, what we call frontal lobe that allows us to ski, to jump gymnastics, play soccer, whatever it is. Right? But this homunculus is allowing us to move better. Um, I mentioned this because if you look up brain homunculus, right, um, you might get nightmares, but what the brain homunculus, um, looks like it’s essentially what your brain thinks your body looks like. So when you look at this, you’re going to have big lips, big eyes, big nose, big hands, big feet. Because we’re always grasping stuff. We’re always typing. We’re always we should be always moving. So, you know, uh, talking, eating. So these areas need to be super, super, uh, specialized because we’re always using those, right? They need to be super, super quick.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right?

Dr. Zach Walker: At the same time, if you look at the homunculus, you’ll see the spine. It’s a lot smaller and essentially skinnier than everything else. But yet we just said the spine and core is the first thing that has to fire before you fire anything else. So we’re already as amazing as the brain and body is. We’re already at a deficit of not knowing where our spine is compared to everything else.

Joshua Kornitsky: Because unless it’s hurting, I don’t really feel it.

Dr. Zach Walker: That, and also we don’t have just as good of a representation as everything else.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Dr. Zach Walker: Um, but yet this is where a lot of neck pain, back pain. This is where chiropractic really comes into play, especially adjusts in these areas because the adjustment, right, the, the cracking and popping um allows better ranges of motion to occur, but it sends better signals. It updates that homunculus, right? Um, so we can move better. If we can move better, we have decreases in pain. We trust movement more. So at least here in the office when we’re adjusting, I, I care about your pain, but I don’t care about your pain. You having pain tells me nothing. It’s just another sign and symptom, right? I’m more focused on the making sure your maps are updated, making sure eye movements are good, making sure balance is good because these are the systems that feed in so you don’t have pain, tightness, discomfort, dizziness, all the above.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay, I’m following it so far. Um, so just because I want to, I want to better understand is the humongously the homunculus. That’s a great word for Scrabble, right? Uh, is, is that part of your. It’s part of your sense of not self, but self. Your. It’s sort of the. The inventory of the anatomy is that.

Dr. Zach Walker: And yeah, I mean, so in order to know.

Joshua Kornitsky: The impact that. How how does it tie into the the brain based chiropractic.

Dr. Zach Walker: Yeah. So in order this homunculus needs to be updated every millisecond of the day, right? If not, then that’s going to create pain, tiredness, discomfort, vertigo and all this, right. So the there’s three other aspects that the, the brain and body need each and every day, one being oxygen breathing kind of why it’s important.

Joshua Kornitsky: It is important.

Dr. Zach Walker: Yes, a little bit. Right. The other one being glucose, glucose essentially, um, why we should be eating healthy, right? Um, glucose being like sugar, right. Uh, but it’s one of those where if you’re at 100% of the glucose a day, then just the brain itself, nothing else, just the brain itself uses about 40% of that.

Joshua Kornitsky: Just as fuel to.

Dr. Zach Walker: Fuel, just to just to not even do its job, but to just be alive. Just basic level, right? The other one, and alluding to what your question was, the other one is, uh, stimuli. This is why movement is key. We need to, we keep talking about updating these maps, right? If these maps aren’t updated, the brain’s not going to know where you’re at. They can lead to tightness, stiffness, bumping into stuff if these maps aren’t updated. Um, then the brain’s not getting good feedback. You have a homunculus for the entire body. You also have a munculus for eye movements. Super important. If you can’t use proper eyes, if you can’t go from one target to another. And so the eye is going from here to here and we see these beats. It’s letting us know you don’t really know where your body is in space, and or you don’t know where different objects are in space. Super important because you can’t communicate to your surroundings, right? Um, One example I would quickly give people listening, or just in general, if you put your fingers right here, your skull, and do these quick eye movements, you’ll feel muscles contract. Those aren’t your muscles of the eye muscle. The eyes are here. So how could I movements cause the spine to fire? It’s the same system.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay?

Dr. Zach Walker: If you have eye issues in some form or fashion, you’re going to have a spine issue. Especially in the neck.

Joshua Kornitsky: Something I definitely would not have connected. So that that makes sense to me. So for the folks that come in for treatment with you. Is it clearing the pathway for better communication that that I’m oversimplifying obviously, because everybody’s going to be different, but clearing that communication pathway is what leads to better updating.

Dr. Zach Walker: Yeah. I mean, there’s yeah, to make it as simple as possible. There’s three things that the brain and body is doing. One being it’s taking, It’s getting information from light, sound, pain, things you’re touching. Okay. The brain has to make sense of it. Oh, what are you doing? How are you doing? Or what’s going on? And then some type of output. So what we’re doing in the office is like you just alluded to and mentioned, the better that communication can be. Homunculus is being updated. Eye movements are better. Spine is better. Balance is better. So whatever you’re doing outside of the office, not only can you do better, but you can trust the movements. Um, and even if when you do have injuries, it’s not as severe because again, everything is more there.

Joshua Kornitsky: They’re talking it’s an optimized system. It’s going to be performing at a higher at a higher level. So that brings me to the question. Is this something for an elite athlete? Is this for my mom? I mean, is this everybody that can benefit from this? Or where does where does this type of treatment, uh, how is it most effective? For whom is it most effective?

Dr. Zach Walker: The short answer is to answer your question. Yes. So what I mean by that is quickly go back to what is being an athlete, right. So our big thing, our motto in here is being the best athlete in. You have to.

Joshua Kornitsky: Explain that so that I know that I follow.

Dr. Zach Walker: Perfect. So we have to break down what an athlete is, right? The most simplest form an athlete is being optimized at whatever your sport is. So we can see high end D1 athletes, the NCAA athletes on the field for injury performance prevention, helping with concussions on the field, but also off the field. If there’s I’m going to want to ask you a question, Joshua. So what is one sport, no matter who you are, if you’re eight years old or 80 years old, right? There’s one sport that we’re always coming in contact with each and every day. It has the highest highs and the lowest lows. What sport would that be?

Joshua Kornitsky: Running?

Dr. Zach Walker: I would say the sport of life.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Dr. Zach Walker: Right. As kind of out there and as silly as it sounds.

Joshua Kornitsky: No, I mean, it’s. Unless you don’t have the ability to have movement, which sadly some don’t. But if you’re able to move around, it is lovely.

Dr. Zach Walker: If you can move around for sure. Right. But even if you can’t move around, um, we’re still doing something with eye movements. You’re still taking in information in some form or fashion, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: So what’s the best athlete in you?

Dr. Zach Walker: So the best athlete in you is no matter what you’re trying to do on or off the field, can you do whatever it is you’re doing optimized? Going back to those three systems, right? Can we have proper eye movements? Can we have proper head movement for balance? Can we update that homunculus? Right. If we can, no matter what you’re doing, um, you’re doing it to your best ability. It doesn’t mean you’re never going to have pain, tightness and discomfort, right? But if you do have those, that doesn’t last as long. It’s not as severe because your brain is more optimized.

Joshua Kornitsky: So if I’m hearing this as, as just someone listening to the. To the broadcast and I’m thinking, well, you’re saying it’s your for. Everybody. But is there. What are the things that should make someone. Think, hey, maybe I need to look into more brain based chiropractic or. Are there specific things outside of, of, you know, rapid eye movement concerns or neck concerns, the things that normally bring someone to see a chiropractor. What would make somebody seek out brain based chiropractic?

Dr. Zach Walker: Yeah. Uh, so like we said at the beginning, a lot of patients that we do see are still have chronic neck pain and back pain, right? But again, why do we have neck pain and back pain? That’s, that’s kind of what we’re delving more into. But it could be neck pain, back pain. It could be a lot of headaches. Migraines is a big one. Uh, dizziness, balance issues, uh, some vertigo. Right? Um, concussions. Now, this concussion could have been two days, two weeks, two months are well over two years ago.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Dr. Zach Walker: Because it’s going back to those conversations, we can compensate, keep compensating until we can’t. Right? Um, and the other one would be again, just, I don’t have a lot of pain, tightness and discomfort, but I want to be able to trust movements more. I want to be able to, um, you know, a lot of us are on a computer screen for six, seven, eight hours. Then we want to go and work out. Those are two different things, right? Right. We got to make sure your body and brain can communicate no matter what you’re doing.

Joshua Kornitsky: That that gives some clarity there. And I want to ask you, because you mentioned it specifically, and it’s something that’s, uh, occurred in my family about vertigo. I thought vertigo was just an inner ear thing.

Dr. Zach Walker: Um, do you want the short answer or long answer? So short answer. Right.

Joshua Kornitsky: The one that makes the greatest clarity.

Dr. Zach Walker: Um, so we see this a lot where things like vertigo or my sciatica is acting up, right? We hear that a lot. Well, again, sciatica, right? Sciatica is a huge, huge nerve. It’s actually the longest nerve in the body for you to have true sciatica. It kind of starts in the low back hip, but it has to run all the way down to the foot.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Dr. Zach Walker: And the same concept for Vertigo, right? Vertigo is almost like a catch all term. I would say almost 80% of people that have vertigo. It’s okay. What is what does that mean to you? Well, I just stand up real quick and I kind of get lightheaded. Okay, well, that’s different than vertigo. Vertigo actually has a spinning component to it. Either you are spinning or you’re staying still. But the world is spinning.

Joshua Kornitsky: Many years ago, I experienced it. No alcohol was involved, but I sure felt like it had been.

Dr. Zach Walker: No. And that’s what it kind of feels like, right? So yes, you can have it from your inner ear, right? So if I’m looking at you and I do this, it’s almost as if my eyes go to the left. Okay.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right.

Dr. Zach Walker: Since what can happen though is there’s in the inner ear, there’s different stones or crystals that can get dislodged. And they go into these different canals that allow you to do different head movements. But if they get dislodged in there, it’s like you’re doing this over and over, but yet you’re just staying still. So the brain again, homunculus is like, wait a minute, I’m getting information as if you’re doing this. But the neck is saying, no, I’m chilling out. I’m doing nothing. There’s a disconnect. Right?

Joshua Kornitsky: That and the fact that you said that 80% of that of rough number, a large percentage of them may not be that inner ear imbalance, but in fact, something else that’s very telling. And that’s, uh, I enjoy when I learn new things, I learn something new just there.

Dr. Zach Walker: Yeah. Um, and vertigo, I mean, that’s largely in the air, but you can have vertigo even from like eye movements as well. Uh, a lot of times if we’re seeing eye movements in your slowly going, we’re seeing these beats. Every time you do a beat, it’s almost as if the world is like going past you. You do that over and over. Wait a minute, I don’t my eyes aren’t moving, but yet they. I’m getting signals that they are.

Joshua Kornitsky: But I’m feeling like there’s motion, Right?

Dr. Zach Walker: Exactly.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. Well, then I’ve got a few folks with, uh, in my immediate proximity that’ll be coming to see you. Um, what’s it look like to come in for, uh, an evaluation? Is it. Do you have big, scary machines that, you know, scan the brain? How does it how what does it look like to to come for a visit?

Dr. Zach Walker: Yeah. So this is where being a functional neurologist comes into play. None of what we do is invasive or not taking the brain out and looking at it and dissecting it.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, thank goodness for that.

Dr. Zach Walker: I know right. Um, so each visit, the first visit, right? Can go anywhere from 4 to 5 minutes to almost an hour and a half long. The big reason for that is the first visit is where we’re getting all your information. You’re coming in. I’m not going to assume anything. You could be coming in with. I’ve had three concussions in the last two days. I’m getting super, super dizzy. I’m nausea throwing up or. Hey, I just have some pain here. Okay, I’m not going to assume anything. Again, we have to break those three systems down. We have to look at balance reaction time, eye movements, and definitely with the chiropractic part. Looking at the spine, looking at differences from left and right range of motion. Again, it all gives me and it gives us a bigger window in picture into what’s going on, right? Because you can have these signs and symptoms, but you have these signs and symptoms aren’t telling me anything. It’s just letting us know that there’s something wrong but not what’s wrong.

Joshua Kornitsky: So you’ve got to work to kind of get a deeper understanding.

Dr. Zach Walker: Correct. Yep. So once we have that information, then we have kind of our care plan of X, Y, and Z, which should always be getting better. I’m a big proponent in not just patient education, but also giving you at home exercises.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Dr. Zach Walker: Because we could see you for 45 minutes each visit or 20 minutes or 30 minutes, whatever it is. But what are you doing the next week, week and a half, two days or whatever it is between now and our next visit. If you’re not, we’ve all played sports, right? So we’ve all heard practice makes perfect, right? Should we practice makes permanent. It’s March Madness right now. Right. If I’m shooting a free throw and I do that 99 times wrong and I don’t change anything, but yet I’m expecting that 100th time to be perfect, right? That doesn’t make sense at all. It’s the same thing in the body and brain, right? If we’re not us, the stuff we do in the office, if we’re not in some form or fashion, giving you that same thing outside of here to keep working on. Right? Practice, right. We’re not going to get better.

Joshua Kornitsky: So let me ask this because I think specifically the the field of medicine that you’re in, there’s a lot of this. And I want to ask, what are what are 1 or 2 of the biggest misconceptions people have about the work that you do?

Dr. Zach Walker: Um, well, that’s a really good question. Um, I would say one is I have to have some form of pain, tightness and discomfort to come in.

Joshua Kornitsky: Ah. So if it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it.

Dr. Zach Walker: Right? Now I will say we just said pain, tightness and discomfort is It’s just another sign and symptom. Interesting with pain is pain is the last thing to come on. So before you have pain we got to look at dizziness balance issues again, everything we’ve been talking about, right? Because once you have pain, it’s letting us know you probably had whatever this is for a while. And the pain is just that alarm signal. Okay. I need you to help me, please.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right. Okay. And that’s a really good way to illustrate it, that it’s sort of the last flag up, right? That. Right. I’m trying to compensate for this every which way. It’s time for you to do something about it.

Dr. Zach Walker: Exactly. Um, so that’d be probably one, uh, two would be, um, again, money is money, right? It probably costs arm and a leg. That’s all relative, right? Um, sure. Trying to again, this is where we blend the Cairo and the neuro right. No matter who you are. Um, the biggest thing is I tried to attack it as hard as we can first, as long as it makes sense for your body. Um, I’m a big proponent in everyone being a lifelong patient, but again, a lifelong patient doesn’t mean it’s two times a week for the next three years. For doing that, we’re probably doing something wrong.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and you used a term that I wanted to ask you to clarify, and I’ve heard it in in the distant past, you used the term care plan. So what’s a what is a care plan as opposed to just a regular visit?

Dr. Zach Walker: So a regular visit is what we’re doing that day. Okay. So every time, once I get done seeing a patient, always email them what we did today, what we’re doing next, next week, right? And kind of what our, what’s our first big or two goals, right? Um, because we need to have goals in some form or fashion, and that goal needs to be more than just, I want to get out of pain. Everyone does. That’s going to be, we’re always going to get that better. Right. And look at it. Right. Other than that. Right. Is it um, allow you to ski more? Is it allow you to just pick up your little one on your right without pain coming on? It’s, that’s where these functional goals come into play. But we can’t do that if we don’t have a care plan, right? If we’re just trying to see, oh, let’s just see when you have pain. Now we’re just chasing pain, right? We’ll get you better. We’ll get you out of pain. But we just said pain’s the last thing to come on.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right. Well, you don’t bring your car in for an oil change once and say, that’s it. I never have to do this again.

Dr. Zach Walker: Right. And that’s what I mean. Exactly with that, right? That’s where maintenance comes into play. My goal is maybe once or twice a month, once we get you to where we need to be, because in a month span, we’re doing a lot, right. We’re if it’s work, working out stress and anxiety, so can we at least maintain that? But always try to get to optimization?

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and that makes sense to me. So if I come to see you because my neck hurts and we work through however long it takes to work through whatever the issue is, chances are unless it was a once in a lifetime occurrence, it’s probably the way that I live my life that led to my neck pain. Yeah. And, and if I don’t have some type of ongoing maintenance planned for it, I’m likely to be back there. I imagine, in some period of time when it starts to hurt again.

Dr. Zach Walker: Right. And we’re going to keep doing the same thing over and over, right? Just like you’re working out, you have a workout. If I want to squat 300 pounds, you get to it. Are you just going to stop working out for the rest of your life?

Joshua Kornitsky: I’m done.

Dr. Zach Walker: I did it. Done. Right.

Joshua Kornitsky: Yeah, that that makes sense to me. It does. Um, I can’t thank you enough because as I said, I enjoy learning new things. And I feel like I learned quite a bit here today. Um, any words of guidance to leave people with that, that they should think about just as they’re going about their daily life? As someone who’s an expert in all three of the systems that they should be aware of.

Dr. Zach Walker: Um, and last thing I’ll say is not even talking about the systems, but I, I live kind of by a motto, if you will, and I actually have this on if you can see it here.

Joshua Kornitsky: I can see that there are words.

Dr. Zach Walker: Right? So it’s, it’s a phrase. Um, I think Mark Twain said this, or at least it’s credited with saying this is there are two important events in your life the day you were born and the day you find out why. That’s pretty. My last thing would be find your why, no matter what that is.

Joshua Kornitsky: I like that that’s that’s a great way to end it. Uh, Dr. Walker, what’s the best way for folks to get Ahold of you and BrainSpine chiropractic?

Dr. Zach Walker: Yeah. So we, I mean, Instagram, there’s BrainSpine underscore chiro. Uh, you can give us a call or even text actually better at texting, honestly. A4704079752 or our website at BrainSpine chiropractic.com.

Joshua Kornitsky: And we’ll publish all of those links just so that if somebody didn’t hear it or didn’t grab a pen in time, so that everybody will be able to find that. I can’t thank you enough. As I said, it’s always a joy for me when I get to learn something new. Um, and you really, really opened my eyes on a number of different subjects. Thank you.

Dr. Zach Walker: Thank you. Joshua.

Joshua Kornitsky: My guest today has been the incredible Dr. Zach Walker, a chiropractor and functional neurologist. He’s the find excuse me, he’s the founder of the BrainSpine of BrainSpine Chiropractic in Marietta, Georgia, where he works to improve performance and address root causes of pain and dysfunction. His approach goes beyond traditional chiropractic care, focusing on the connection between brain balance and the movement and movement to uncover what’s really driving the symptoms. Thank you again, Dr.. And also, I do have to remind everybody that today’s episode is brought to you in part by the Community Partner program, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors defending capitalism, promoting small business, and supporting our local community. For more information, go to Main Street Warriors dot. And a special note of thanks to our title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors Diesel David Ink. Please go check them out at diesel Davidclark.com. My name is Joshua Kornitsky. I am a professional implementer of the entrepreneurial operating system and we just can’t thank you enough for listening. Please join us again next time.

BRX Pro Tip: Aim Higher Than You Think

March 23, 2026 by angishields

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BRX Pro Tip: Aim Higher Than You Think

Stone Payton: And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor, Stone Payton here with you. Lee, today’s topic, aim higher.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I think a lot of entrepreneurs are not dreaming big enough. They’re selling themselves short. And a lot of it is when it comes to pricing, number one. You know a lot of entrepreneurs aren’t charging enough, in my opinion. And in order to really think you’re worth the value, you’ve got to really believe that you are and can deliver the value to your clients.

Lee Kantor: So, I think it’s so important to periodically assess where you’re at and to understand that there’s much more to life than maybe you’re seeing right now. And maybe you’re taking a lot of what you’re doing for granted. And sometimes you have to think instead of making little teeny 10% incremental improvements, think about what a ten x improvement would look like, what a ten x dream would look like. What do you have to change in order to make that ten x life? What behaviors do you have to change? What things should you be pursuing? What connections or network do you have to expand to in order to live that ten x life rather than this 10% incremental growth life?

Lee Kantor: Don’t have that scarcity mindset, zero sum game where someone else’s win is your loss. Have that abundance life mindset and instead of focusing just on survival, think about abundance and all the opportunities that are around you right now.

The Procurement Puzzle: Solving Communication Challenges for Small Businesses

March 20, 2026 by angishields

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In this episode of Greater Perimeter Business Radio, host Erik Boemanns interviews Anvith Anand, founder and CEO of Abundance Intelligence Corp. Anvith shares how his experiences at Tesla and Figure AI inspired him to tackle inefficiencies in procurement, especially for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) seeking government contracts. The discussion covers the challenges SMBs face in accessing government opportunities, the importance of mental alignment in procurement, and how Abundance Intelligence streamlines proposal processes to help SMBs compete more effectively. 

Anvith AnandAnvith Anand is CEO of Abundance Intelligence Corp. He is a recent graduate from Georgia Tech.

While Anvith was studying, he did a couple of internships and spent nearly a year at Tesla and another five months at Figure AI.

Connect with Anvith on LinkedIn.

Episode Highlights

  • Anvith’s background, including his education and internships at Tesla and Figure AI.
  • Origin of Abundance Intelligence Corp. from a problem encountered during Tesla’s production ramp-up.
  • Focus on improving procurement processes, particularly in government contracting.
  • Challenges faced by small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) in accessing government contracts.
  • Importance of communication and mental alignment in procurement.
  • Government spending on SMBs and the mandates for budget allocation.
  • Pain points for SMBs in preparing government contract proposals.
  • The significance of mentorship and learning from failure in entrepreneurship.
  • Insights on the startup ecosystem and the reality of startup success rates.
  • The evolution of ideas into successful businesses through testing and adaptation.

About Your Host

Erik-BoemannsErik Boemanns is a technology executive and lawyer. His background covers many aspects of technology, from infrastructure to software development.

He combines this with a “second career” as a lawyer into a world of cybersecurity, governance, risk, compliance, and privacy (GRC-P).

His time in a variety of companies, industries, and careers brings a unique perspective on leadership, helping, technology problem solving and implementing compliance.

Connect with Erik on LinkedIn, Substack and Medium.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Greater Perimeter. It’s time for Greater Perimeter Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: This episode of Greater Perimeter Business Radio is brought to you by Mirability with their new compliance XO service taking you from it risk to it reward. Now, here’s your host Erik Boemanns.

Erik Boemanns : So, Happy March. I would say it’s a nice spring day, but it’s actually a very cold today as we’re recording this. But, um, today I have with me, I appreciate you braving the cold to come out. Anvith, the founder of Abundance Intelligence. So I’d love to maybe just get a quick background about who you are and then your startup, and then we’re going to dive into the conversation. Sure.

Anvith Anand: Thank you so much for inviting me, Erik. Hi everyone. All the listeners out there. My name is Anvith Anand. I am the founder and CEO of Abundance Intelligence Corp. I am a recent graduate from Georgia Tech. So class of 2025 did computer science there. And a little bit more about me is that, uh, while I was studying, I also did a couple of internships and I spent nearly a year at Tesla and another five months at figure AI.

Erik Boemanns : Awesome. And I think one of those involved a robot, right?

Anvith Anand: Well, depending on whom you ask, all of them involve robots. But yes, AI is currently on the path to build humanoid robots, general purpose humanoid robots. So like the our ever goal of having some a robot vacuum our house, right? Do our chores for the house, fold our laundry, cook for us. That’s the path that AI is trying to solve.

Erik Boemanns : Interesting. However. So Tesla figure AI and then you have abundance intelligence. Tell us a little bit about that because that’s not about robotics.

Anvith Anand: No it’s not. So abundance intelligence actually came up, came out of an experience that me and my close friend at Tesla had. So both of us together. So me as the software engineering intern and him as the technical project manager, in turn, started ramping up the Tesla Gateway production line. So for those of you who do not know, gateway is this box that sits in your house that allows you to connect your solar panel and your Powerwall to your to the grid and your house, and allows you to manage all of that and allows it to stay all of that in sync. And while we were ramping up the production line, like he was just going through back and forth email to procure various different parts to, to ramp up the production line. And we thought to ourselves, there has to be a better way. So Abundance Intelligence came out of the idea, okay, let’s try to solve that problem. Let’s try digging deep and figuring out why is it that in 2026 it’s or I guess back then in 2024, was it so, so much easier to just ship the parts than to send back and forth emails and communicate things that we wanted?

Erik Boemanns : Interesting. And so how has. So from that idea that you had in 2024 to today, how has abundance Intelligence involved evolved? I’m sorry.

Anvith Anand: So first things first. It wasn’t even called abundance intelligence back then, right? So back then, it was just two of our friends working on this project. Lily. For me, that was my senior design project. So the one good thing about Georgia Tech is instead of taking a senior design, what you might have in other universities, Georgia Tech allows you to do pursue your own entrepreneurial path. And my friend and I decided, okay, let’s try and see where this thing goes, right? Because this seems like a problem that needs to be solved. And the best part is we also got $500 to see how we could spend to learn more about the problem. And that’s where it started. So initially we were just probing on both of us coming from a manufacturing background, were like just going around talking with various different people in various different manufacturing fields to understand, okay, what is the problem with procurement? Why is it that everybody in procurement is in communication hell? So that is where we started. And as we realized that we as we started narrowing down our ICP from going from, okay, everybody who’s manufacturing anything to then say, okay, maybe automotive manufacturers or like textile manufacturers and then further refining our ICP down to say, okay, it is not just these manufacturers, but it’s also consultants. Because at the end of the day, what is a consulting company doing? All they’re helping you do is what I like to call communicate mental alignment.

Anvith Anand: Okay, so this we’ve spoken extensively about this off the podcast, but for new listeners here. So what this means is that let’s take a step back and see what all this charade call procurement is about. Every business wants to achieve some goals. And for us, as we humans, as social species, have realized that it is not possible for us to do it alone. So what what procurement tries to solve is to say, okay, how can we bring humans together, collaborate together to solve this big hairy problem? I think back in the Middle Ages or even earlier than that, for early humans, it was, okay, how do we get our next meal right? How do we kill this giant mammoth? So like all of us can eat. But now in 2026, it is more like, okay, how can we solve this ERP problem for our business? And what procurement tries to solve is, from my understanding, is that rather than going out and searching for the best vendor, they’re trying to figure out, okay, who is this vendor who understands the jigsaw puzzle? That is, each company understands what pieces are missing, what pieces are good, where the company wants to go in five years and can come and put that one magic puzzle, one magic last piece to solve the entire puzzle. And all of this is just mental alignment if you take a step back.

Erik Boemanns : I don’t know if you do. You remember the cartoon The Far Side, that comic strip? It was.

Anvith Anand: I might be too.

Erik Boemanns : Young for.

Anvith Anand: The reference.

Erik Boemanns : So when you talked about hunting mammoths, I’m like the mammoth procurement department made me.

Anvith Anand: Think.

Erik Boemanns : There’s lots of, um, if you look it up, you’ll see lots of mammoth hunters in that comic strip. And so yes, the mammoth procurement department all the way. Fast forward now to I think you have your focus is more on government contracting though. So how did you get to that?

Anvith Anand: So that is a really good question. So I would actually like to shout out Miss Montana. She was the one who put me on this path. So initially. So when I started looking at this problem seriously in end of 20 in August of 2025 when I went full time on this idea after graduation is initially I just started saying, okay, where is it that the problem is the biggest, the headiest. And obviously it was in vogue in 2025 with the Department of Government Efficiency to say, okay, how can we make our governments more efficient? How can we bring back trust into our government? So that was always in my psyche, but it was like speaking with Miss Montana earlier this year is what truly shown the light on this space to say, okay, you should be focusing on government because one, it is obviously a big industry, right? It’ll always be. And number two, more importantly, think more local because like, everybody sees a $700 billion budget for the federal government and says, oh my God, like the United States government, biggest purchases are out there. If I could just sell it to them, I’m guaranteed to always sell. But in my mind, like, let’s start thinking more state and local, right? So I believe like last year, the 50 states combined put $3 trillion towards procurement alone. So which if you think about it, that’s a huge, huge number. And all of these are and the best part about these investments is that if they’re focused on small and midsize businesses, they go back right into the community where they serve. So it is not money that is moving out of the state to one other state or moving out of the country to another entity. It is all coming back to our community, where it’s all being spent again and raising the collective GDP of the community.

Erik Boemanns : Yeah. So you mentioned mental alignment before. You mentioned helping procurement be better, right? Whatever the procurement means. And then we talked about government contracting. So the products slash service that you’re working on today, how does that solve this space?

Anvith Anand: Okay, so really good question. Uh, so, so far from my discovery, I have realized that the governments out there want to spend money with small businesses, right? I think, yeah, the federal government has a 23% mandate to be spent on small businesses. And various other states also have different mandates. I think like the state of New York achieved a historic 31% expenditure on government, on small businesses and even the state of Texas. It was a big number, if I can remember it, off the top of my head. I’m sorry for the listeners. Like, I’m totally sorry. Yeah. And even here in the state of Georgia, right. So there was initially a bill that was, that was trying to mandate a 20% or guaranteed spent on small businesses, but that has since been refined to say, okay, rather than outright put that or put that 20% cap or put that 20% goal, why don’t we make it more, uh, interest based to say, okay, where we, where they actually align prime contractors or like these large contractors that you can think of, like think Raytheon or that’s the obviously canonical large contractor to say, okay, anytime you work with a SMB on your, on these projects, we’ll give you a 10% reduction in your taxes.

Erik Boemanns : Okay.

Anvith Anand: So these governments want to spend this money out here with SMEs because they realize the importance of the money flowing within the economy and enriching the local community and. But there are these, but likely like, I think like it was last Saturday, but I was in this meetup for a small businesses around northern Atlanta, and most of them did not even know about these programs. So that is where that is where this, that is the puzzle that Scriber is now trying to solve for abundance. Intelligence Corp is now trying to solve its Scriber. It’s to say, how can I connect these businesses that can, that are able to produce right, that are able to produce goods in a relatively timely fashion? They are they have the skills. How can I be? How can I instill the spirit in them and allow them to meet the opportunity that exists?

Erik Boemanns : Okay. And so small midsize business SMEs, obviously, lots of challenges in that space, right? That’s just nature of, of being an SMB. Which particular pain are you focused on and how are you helping them go after these government contracts that they may not even know about today?

Anvith Anand: Really good question. So right now, the average proposal that is written to to submit for government contract like this even before you awarded. It takes 32 hours to write. Okay, two of those hours are literally just spent in manually searching for documents. Like think about scavenging your old emails, right? Looking at OneDrive, looking at your various different files, pinging your team.

Erik Boemanns : Journey, how can they find you? Where do they reach out?

Anvith Anand: Oh, I am most active on LinkedIn. Just search for LinkedIn with Anand. That’s A n v I t like technology H like Hadi. On with Anand, a n a n d like Delta. And you can reach out to me there. My DMs are always open. Yeah.

Erik Boemanns : It’s okay if you don’t, but did you want to share the website too?

Anvith Anand: For sure. Yeah. And you can find out a little bit more about Scriber on get Scribd.com, that’s G e t s c r I b like beverage R like romeo.com.

Erik Boemanns : Awesome. So I think you shared a few of the surprises, but obviously, is this your first startup or have you done this in the past?

Anvith Anand: This is my first.

Erik Boemanns : Okay, so first startup to two years in a lot of revolution evolution for the the way you’ve been thinking about it and even the way you thought about the ecosystem. But what are some surprises that you’ve had that you’d like to share with other founders out there? Just the things to be aware of that maybe you didn’t, you didn’t know until you knew.

Anvith Anand: Okay, so the classic example that comes to my mind is most companies die within the first 90% of the companies die within the first three years. And every entrepreneur thinks, no, like the 90% stat. Don’t worry, I’m part of the I’m part of the last 10%. And while that mentality, that naivety is what makes a good entrepreneur, you also have to come to terms with saying yes. And like, I’m more likely to be part of the 90% than the last 10%. I’m not saying do not. I’m not saying like, oh, that means like doom and gloom to say, oh my God, I should stop it immediately and go work 9 to 5. I’m just saying, just keep that in the back of your head, right? Just like that is a true fact. Just pay attention to it. Remember that. And the more important part is that it’s okay if you fail once. Like that is something that I never understood. But only now am I understanding this to say, how is it that failure is viewed as a success in the entrepreneur entrepreneurial path? And it sounds so counterintuitive to what you might think, but the only way to experience that, the only way to truly understand it is to experience it.

Erik Boemanns : Yeah, absolutely. People who haven’t actually failed before probably haven’t learned something. Right.

Anvith Anand: So yeah, I was actually going to ask your take on this. What do you think about what I just said and this learning about failure?

Erik Boemanns : Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s a trope now, right? The fail fast and fail often. And as long as you’re not breaking laws or hurting people, that is a genuine way to approach this because you have to, especially in the startup space, you’re going to get, you said 90%, 10%, right? Most of most ideas are in that 90% not they might be a great idea, but they may not have market fit. They may not have customers. No one else may think it’s a great idea. So all of those ideas when you have them, if you don’t find a way to test them, then they’re just going to say. You’re not going to find out if they’re the 10%. But more importantly, you’re not going to refine them to become the 10%. So you yeah, I even my own business journey has been a lot of refining and re-adapting and refitting because yeah, we all have ideas, but ideas aren’t businesses.

Anvith Anand: I think that’s great. You brought that up. But the other point that I wanted to realize is that every, every entrepreneur has skeletons in their closet. You might think about like Zuckerberg saying, oh my God, like beautiful first idea Facebook initial like easily, like, oh, easily the best minds out there. That’s not true at all. Like Zuckerberg has been building since had been building at least since he was 12 years old. Like even now, Sam Altman all the work, right? Like the essentially the visionary of the future. But he has been in the startup ecosystem since 2008. So I just want to say that it is it’s okay. Like into any to all the new entrepreneurs listening out there and to all of those who have who have had multiple failures or are now successful, I’m sure they will all empathize with the idea to say, your first one is never rarely this success, right? It’s never like I have not heard a single entrepreneur whose first idea became $1 billion unicorn. Everybody has skeletons in the closet.

Erik Boemanns : Yeah. And if they are they such an exception or they they failed elsewhere and just don’t count that. Right. So, um, now this is great. And I just want to say thank you again for coming out. And I don’t know if there’s anything else you did want to share before we wrap up today.

Anvith Anand: Uh, I just want to say thank you so much. Like, uh, being part of this type program and having the opportunity to be your mentee has taught me a great deal. And I just want to put it out there to say, I’m really grateful for the time that we have spent together.

Erik Boemanns : Awesome. Yeah. Likewise, it’s been a great experience. And again, thank you. And, um, here’s to more success. Here’s to more failures and some successes after that.

Anvith Anand: Thank you.

BRX Pro Tip: Identifying and Converting Ideal Clients

March 20, 2026 by angishields

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BRX Pro Tips
BRX Pro Tip: Identifying and Converting Ideal Clients
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BRX Pro Tip: Identifying and Converting Ideal Clients

Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, today let’s dive into identifying and converting our ideal clients.

Lee Kantor: This is an important exercise that I think every business leader should be doing. It’s so critical when it comes to your marketing or to how you’re going to market. You have to have a clear picture of who that ideal client is, and have a method or process to help convert them into actual clients. So, you have to get good at this, once you have identified them and then convert them into ideal clients, that is kind of table stakes if you want to grow any type of organization.

Lee Kantor: A great way to start this process is to start with your existing clients. You know, if you were to clone one or two of your clients right now, who would they be? Who are the most profitable clients? Who are the most easy to work with clients? And then, just figure out what they all have in common. What are the common characteristics and traits? Don’t just focus in on, you know, what business they’re in. Try to understand what their pain points are, what challenges they face, kind of really dig in there to really understand where they overlap.

Lee Kantor: And, also, when you’re kind of building this Venn Diagram, also focus in on your superpowers. Which ones of these clients would most benefit from whatever it is your superpowers are and what services you provide in that area. So, if you kind of build this Venn Diagram out and you’ll get to that ideal client, and then once you’ve identified who that ideal client is, you can then figure out where they hang out so you can market to them effectively.

Lee Kantor: And then, your marketing should include a combination of thought leadership that’s going to attract the right people to you because they want to learn more about what your expertise is, and how you’re great at what you do, and how they might benefit from them. And you also have to include some direct communication marketing that introduces you to the right people that you need to meet and who needs to meet you.

Lee Kantor: So, identifying the right ideal client is the first step, because if you start marketing without really understanding who your ideal client is, you’re going to waste a lot of resource, a lot of money, a lot of time.

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