angishields, Author at Business RadioX ® Page

BRX Pro Tip: Big vs Trusted Network

February 4, 2026 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Big vs Trusted Network

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BRX Pro Tip: Big vs Trusted Network

Stone Payton: And we’re back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor, Stone Payton here with you. Lee, some approaches, some thinking around building that big network.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I think a lot of people think it’s just a matter of I got to get the biggest network possible, and I’m just going to collect business cards. I’m just collecting, you know, followers on social media or LinkedIn and connections on LinkedIn. And that’s fine.

Lee Kantor: But what you really need, especially if you’re in professional services at any level, you need a trusted network. You don’t need the biggest network. You need a network of people that trust you and you trust them – a small circle of people who you know, who believe in your work, who will say your name in the right rooms. That’s going to outperform a giant list of kind of superficial contacts every single time.

Lee Kantor: Measure your network by depth, not with who will answer your call. Who’s going to give you honest feedback? Who’s going to make that thoughtful introduction when it matters most?

Lee Kantor: You know, try this with the network you have. Go deep with a short list. Go through your network and pick a small subset of people and invest heavily in them. Lead with value. Don’t lead with an ask.

Lee Kantor: Trust is going to accelerate when you’re useful, before you are needy. And then follow up like a professional. Most people drop the ball after the first meeting. Trust grows in the follow-up, so just kind of make sure you follow up relentlessly and let people know that you’re available. Provide value and serve before asking.

Lee Kantor: And just try it as an experiment. Just go through your network, find that short list of people, and double down on a handful of them and see where that goes.

From Networking Anxiety to Relationship Mastery: Transforming Your Business Approach

February 4, 2026 by angishields

Scaling in Public

From Networking Anxiety to Relationship Mastery: Transforming Your Business Approach

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In this episode of Scaling in Public, Lee Kantor and Stone Payton are joined by coach Mike Brunnick to discuss strategies for scaling Business RadioX® by partnering with coaching organizations and certifying agencies. They emphasize refining their ideal client profile—service-oriented coaches, consultants, and executives seeking authority and meaningful connections. The conversation explores overcoming traditional networking challenges, leveraging in-studio experiences, and experimenting with hybrid and roadshow models for expansion. The episode highlights the importance of clear messaging, authentic relationship-building, and value alignment in growing a business network.

With over 35 years of leadership experience, Mike Brunnick has led teams in the military, government, nonprofit, and private sectors. In his 25 years in the B2B technology space, Mike led global teams in the fields of training, services, products, sales, and customer success.

As such, he has a unique perspective on how the parts of a go-to-market (GTM) team work together, and how they impact the customer experience.

As a sales trainer and Focal Point certified business coach, Mike helps his clients get themselves, their businesses, and their revenue “unstuck”. He specializes in teaching leaders how to set and achieve goals.

Mike has a BS from Holy Cross and has earned a Bronze Star with Combat “V” for valor as a Platoon Leader in the Marines during Operation Desert Storm.

Connect with Mike on LinkedIn.

Episode Highlights

Strategies for scaling Business RadioX® networks
Building relationships with coaching organizations and certifying agencies
Defining and refining the ideal client profile
Importance of value alignment with clients
Tactical steps for business growth and relationship building
Challenges of traditional networking versus creating a platform for engagement
The significance of emotional connection in business interactions
Exploring hybrid approaches to replicate in-person experiences virtually
Articulating customer problems effectively to attract ideal clients
Continuous learning and collaboration in business growth strategies

This 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 Burks Intercom 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. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast this session’s coach, Mike Brunnick. Good afternoon sir.

Mike Brunnick: Hi Stone. Good afternoon to you. Hi, Lee.

Lee Kantor: Hey. Excited to be talking to you.

Mike Brunnick: I am delighted to be here today. Thank you all for inviting me to participate in this, uh, this exercise that we’re doing. This is, uh, this is going to be fun. All right, you want to just jump right in?

Stone Payton: Absolutely.

Mike Brunnick: Yeah, absolutely. I got the ball here. Um, so, uh, I know that you had a great session with my dear friend Maggie last week, and I think there was a couple of things that you committed to do. One action each, uh, that you were going to take as a result of, uh, of your time with Maggie last week. And I’ll start with you, Stone. Do you remember what it was that you, uh, committed to do after last week’s session?

Stone Payton: Well, I feel like Lee and I both walked away with this idea that we’re going to scale much more powerfully, much more efficiently. If we can work with systems organizations that have our ideal client profile there within their domain, that we can serve with this thing of ours. And so the overarching walk away, um, activity set of actions is around getting very, um, tactical around how do we build those relationships with those systems ourselves? You know, eat a little bit of our own cooking and, and, and then what can we do to persuade them and sent them to take a swing at this thing and team up with us so that we can help them help their people. And so as a as a tactical subset of that, one of the things I’ve been putting a great deal of thought into is what can we do to to lower the perceived risk or fear or whatever the right word is so that they really do want to, you know, they want to take a shot with us. So that’s that’s where my head has, has been. Uh, what about you, Lee?

Lee Kantor: Uh, the main insight I took from the conversation with Maggie was how to to to have Business RadioX be a recommended add on, um, for any new coach in a system, uh, like when they join, like, similar. I think we discussed that on how SiriusXM is included into a purchase of a new car, how they can experience the value that Business RadioX delivers during their launch. Um, you know, when they get started, uh, at a new whatever coaching group they’re with or if it’s a certifying agency, if if it’s one of those platforms, whatever it is, if we can include they get, uh, some Business RadioX at the start as they launch. She said I think the quote she said is, I wish that I knew about this when I started, and that really resonated with us. And we said, okay, how do we make that happen? And I think that to your point, that’s what we’ve been really trying to, um, kind of put into play, like how can we persuade a coaching organization to embed Business RadioX as just part of their launch?

Mike Brunnick: Yeah, that’s that’s great. And so it sounded like you, uh, you left, uh, last session with Maggie with some great things to to think about. Uh, were there any actions that you guys, uh, committed to take or that you feel like you should take? Um, obviously thinking about something is is really important, but, uh, what what comes after that? What’s the what’s do you think the the action is that, uh, manifest that into the world.

Lee Kantor: Um, an action that I took upon leaving that conversation was to put together kind of a strategic action plan in order to execute, to your point. And, um, I gave it a lot of thought and, uh, and Stone and I talked about this a lot on how. Okay, so now what do we have to do to make that happen? So we can identify different coaching organizations? And what our superpower is, is that we, um, have this tool at our disposal that allows us to meet and build relationships with coaches. So we felt that we should deploy that. And then, um, our strategy moving forward is going to be okay. Let’s identify some coaches in organizations and see if we can build a relationship with them. That’s strong enough that they can champion our offering to the coaching organization that they are aligned with. And if we can do that, that we feel gives us the best chance to get buy in from the organization because one of their people that is trusted will have experienced it and got a positive result, and then they would they would be that much more inclined to at least pilot the program. So the action that has been taken so far is to kind of go through that process and identify different organizations, and then we have a plan to start meeting some of the coaches within them, so we can find that champion so that we can move forward and get a pilot going. But we have not done that part yet, but we have the steps leading up to it. Stone.

Stone Payton: Uh, yeah. Except we have sort of kind of done that part. I’m a sales guy, Mike. So the first thing I did was, uh, get on the phone with Maggie and say, let’s talk this through some. You suggested that you wish you had had this when you began. We may have a unique opportunity here in your market to kind of help you get a jump start on exactly what we’re talking about. So the most tactical, practical thing I did before I shot off across the pond for a couple of weeks to play was set up that call. So, so so I made it real real for me.

Mike Brunnick: Yeah. That’s great. Um, and we can make some progress on that today. Um, you know, one of the, uh, one of the first things we do after identifying the ideal customer profile, uh, is sit down and do a brainstorming session on, uh, so now that we know what that person looks like, uh, where do I find them? Uh, if you’re, uh, if you’re looking for something, you’re looking for the, I don’t know, the elusive booby bird or whatever it is you got to say. Where do they go? Well, they live in banana trees. I’m going to go find a banana tree. So, um, you guys worked with Todd a couple of sessions ago to define your ideal customer profile. You started some some work last week with Maggie talking about some different ways that you could meet people that match that profile. Uh, what are some other places or what are some of the organizations that you guys were just talking about, that idea of getting into an organization. What are some of those organizations that you could go to and, uh, try to have it included, like SiriusXM?

Lee Kantor: Um, well, some of them are obviously the coaching organizations, the different coaching franchises that are out there. The others are the certifying agencies that certify coaches in a in a variety of specialties. So those were kind of the low hanging fruit for us was, um, existing coaching organizations that are are already have a pile of coaches within them and certifying agencies that, uh, work on certifying coaches in a variety of specialties.

Mike Brunnick: Right on. What else? What else? Stone. What are some other places we could get to your ideal client? Where do they? Where’s their banana tree? Where do they hang out?

Stone Payton: Well, that is something I really haven’t thought about. As much as it sounds to me like I should have, I think. I think we may have a more expanded, uh, definition of coaches in that anyone who is providing specialized expertise and knowledge in a specific domain. So to me that extends to the, uh, the, the, the outfits that certify and educate the, um, the, the, uh, the fractional exec, the fractional CFO, the fractional VP of sales, the people who certify and educate the, um, what was what was the the other group lead? The, um, well, I’m drawing a blank right now, but the anyone who is actually doing some sort of consulting coaching, maybe in the financial services arena, if they’re if they’re bringing specialized expertise and experience to a specific domain and they feel like they need to get credentialed, or they do need to get credentialed to be successful in the marketplace, we’d like to work with those credentialing organizations so that the challenge so many of those people have, as as I’m sure you can imagine, is just, um, is is access.

Stone Payton: You know, the more we refine our ideal client, I don’t think it’s that person that’s looking for the next, you know, Jim Jamie lead generator thingy or even the next, uh, coffee conversation. I think what they’re looking for is access and authority with, uh, people that are next at the next level, you know, they’re looking to punch a little bit above their weight or, or to at least get to, to fight in a class that they feel like they belong, you know, so a little more of a strategic I think we’re refining our, our picture of this person as someone who’s who has a more strategic yearning, and they don’t want to play down here at this level anymore, and they don’t know how. They can’t get the lunch. They can’t get the meeting. They can’t get the coffee. They can’t get that immediate, that initial substantive conversation with the person that they really want to work with. And so they’re going to networking meetings and all, you know, they’re doing all that jazz. Is that accurate, do you think?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I think that, um, as we go through these different coaching sessions, it’s really helped us refine who that person is. Maybe, um, you know, a few weeks ago, we would have thought that ideal person is someone that just wants a more elegant way to network. And now I think that if we if push came to shove, if we had to choose between somebody who wants an easier time networking versus somebody who wants to, um, get get a meeting with somebody who isn’t returning their call, that person is a better fit for us, rather than just somebody who’s looking for a more transactional. Oh, this is the latest, easiest way to network or, um, you know it. I think that person is looks at what we do to Transactionally and the person who, like Stone says, wants to punch at a higher weight class. They view our solution as more strategic and that is a better fit for us.

Mike Brunnick: Yeah, that and that’s fantastic progress. Uh, and I hope you’ll take a moment and celebrate, uh, that progress, because it really is um, I’ve had the opportunity to, to lead sales organizations, uh, at about six different spots. Uh, in my, in my life, I’ve got experience in government and nonprofit and startups and big companies like Hewlett Packard. And, uh, I’ve been around a little bit, um, and I don’t think I’ve ever been at a place where they felt like they spent too much time thinking about their ideal client. Uh, it is a valuable exercise that when people get done with they say, well, that was worth it. Well, we should have done that earlier. Maybe, but but I don’t I don’t regret how much time I spent on it. So so kudos to you both for, for doing all of that sort of mental work. Um, and there’s always refinement to be done. Uh, and, and I’d love for you to be able to articulate pretty quickly what those, uh, those elements are that really make up your ideal client. You’ve got sort of a, an occupational, uh, set of criteria. Right? Somebody that’s in professional services, they’re a coach or a fractional exec or all those things. It sounded from your conversation with Maggie that you also had a set of, uh, what I’ll call value based criteria. Uh, the people that you want to do business with are the people who think like you do, people who approach the world in a certain way. Uh, did I did I hear that right?

Lee Kantor: Well, it good, sir.

Stone Payton: Well, it’s accurate for me. Maybe even more accurate is that they feel like I do. And maybe the ideal combination is they they feel like I do in terms of they want to genuinely serve. They want to support and celebrate other people doing great work. I would actually enjoy if they think a little differently, like if they feel that way, but they think about it differently and come at it through a different lens. But yeah, this, uh, this looking for people with, uh, what I would consider, what I would characterize as a consistent a value system that is consistent with ours. Absolutely. That that also is an eye opening exercise and realization for me in our time with Maggie.

Mike Brunnick: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I heard that your system, uh, really works, and you guys truly believe the passion just bleeds through when you guys talk about your system. Um, but you’re also really clear that it has to be somebody who’s not transactional, Somebody who’s not saying, hey, you know, I want to interview so that you can become a client of mine, right? I think, um, I think you said last week, Stone that, uh, it, uh, this this process lets you be nice, I think, is the way you described it. Yeah. Um, and, Lee, you talked about somebody with a with a heart of service, um, which is really, uh, just beautiful to say. Um, so when we talk about where do these people hang out, how do I find them? It’s not just a place, right? You could go to a a conference with a bunch of coaches that got certified by the same agency or an industry event, and you could meet 20 of these people. Um, but if you’ve got a clear idea in your mind, not just their occupational situation, but how do I suss out the value? How do I know that these people are truly going to be successful, uh, if they became a Business RadioX partner. So what are some of the ways you think you could suss out whether or not this is going to work for them? Not just because it’s important to you, but because they really need that heart of service to work.

Lee Kantor: Stone, you want to take this?

Stone Payton: Uh, yeah. And I am shooting in the dark a little bit, so this is incredibly valuable for me.

Mike Brunnick: So it’s a hard question.

Stone Payton: Uh, it is a hard question, but it does have my wheels turning a little bit. And I think maybe one of the things to look for. I don’t quite know how to pull it off, but if we could identify people in a community that are already walking, talking, thinking a little bit like what we’re talking like, you can see that. And maybe they’re not the most popular person or in the in the community or the or the most widely recognized, but maybe they are the ones that are clearly over and over investing in other people. Um, first and foremost, working on other people’s problems. Um, if we can find that person and like you. To your point, I guess they could be in any organization just about. If they’re. But if we can see evidence of them leaning in and supporting other people, that’s the right mindset, that’s the right value system. And then and then if you if you layer that on top of and oh, by the way, I’ve got this business and I need to be playing at a higher level.

Lee Kantor: Um, yeah, I think, I mean, we used to call it the, the social mayor of the community, the person who, you know, um, they, they know everybody, but it’s really the person who aspires to be the social mayor. Like, we help a person become the person everybody wants to know, instead of the person who’s out there trying to meet everybody. You know, there’s a difference there. Yeah, yeah. When our when our person goes into, um, a networking or any type of group, they’re not saying, hey, uh, this is what I do. What do you do? They’re saying, hey, I host this show. Do you know anybody that’s interesting I should interview. And when they go and approach those kind of relationships with that kind of statement, people are just more open to wanting to talk to them and to give them names of people and to introduce them to people, because it’s it comes with that heart of service. They’re trying to help promote someone else. They’re not even mentioning what they do.

Mike Brunnick: And I think that’s I think that’s a pretty a pretty solid answer right there. Um, you know, Maggie’s idea of getting with some of these networks or these organizations is a beautiful idea. Um, and now you’ve got to decide. All right, what do I do once I get in the door? Um, who is it I’m looking for and how do I find them. So that’s a that’s an important piece of it that you just named. I also heard something last week, and I was listening to the recording of your session with Maggie, and I wanted to read it back to you and see if you heard it and if I, if I’m perceiving that rightly. Um, but, Lee, you said that, you know, you got into this, this business that you’re in this, this, uh, thing that you do, uh, because you’re an introvert, uh, and because you didn’t want to be out trying to sell, uh, you liked the idea of people coming in in an intimate setting, having a conversation that felt really personal. Uh, and then seeing if that was a good way to to have business develop from there. Did I did I hear that right, that that you sort of got into this because it matched the way that you wanted to approach your business?

Lee Kantor: Right. So I, I did all the stuff that most people do. I joined, like, um, in Atlanta, there was a group called Power Corps that was, um, formed by somebody who was a former BNI person. So they spun off their own BNI type, you know, closed networking. And I was with them for many years, and I worked my way up. I up to a leadership position. I was a coach. I was doing all the stuff that you do when you’re a member of those groups. But as an introvert, I would create a lot of anxiety for me. And it was a lot of stress. You know, doing a seven minute presentation was stressful for me, and I was always like, there has to be another way to do this that is just more suited for the way that I like to do things. So when I created Business RadioX, that allowed me to change my positioning as I was there at the time, I was a copywriter, so I was writing advertising copy. So then I became the host of Atlanta Business Radio And then I partnered with somebody that was more of an extrovert who liked to network, and I convinced her to go to all these things.

Lee Kantor: But instead of saying that she’s Amy with Aflac, she was Amy, the co-host of Atlanta Business Radio. So she would bring in a bunch of people into the studio every week. Three people have three different businesses. Um, and then we would interview them. And at the end, a lot of these business people were like, wow, that was fantastic. How do I get a show like Amy? And then they’d ask me, and then I would sell them a show. And I liked that a lot better because now these people were coming to me. I wasn’t asking anybody for anything. I was just being the producer and co-host of the show. Amy was building her network and meeting people for her that was helping her grow her, um, Aflac business. So it was a win for her. And then some of those people ended up being hosts of shows. I mean, that’s how I met Stone. Stone was a guest because Amy invited her. Him because he had just written a book. I mean, everybody I knew came through the studio. I didn’t have to leave the studio. And I was meeting hundreds of people a year just by doing what I was doing.

Mike Brunnick: So what I love about that is that you found, if I can say it, a solution to a problem. The problem was, was that you knew that you needed to to network. You knew that you needed to meet people. But the traditional way of networking didn’t work for you, didn’t make you happy, or you weren’t successful at it because, uh, you know, you know, just weren’t in the right place. Um, and go ahead, please.

Stone Payton: I’m just going to say, clearly, I’m not an introvert at all. What I discovered, uh, which the interview that I did around the book with Lee and Amy was so different from all the other interview experiences I had. I saw something there, and what I’ve come to realize now is what I what I saw. There was a way to replicate a luxury that I had had almost my entire career leading up to that. I was in the training and consulting arena, but I stepped in at 26 years old into my uncle’s company, and I already had the access and the authority that they had spent the previous 20 years building. So I was already playing in the big leagues without having to do all that other, you know, that networking BNI type stuff. And so I when I met Lee and saw, I couldn’t figure out how he was making money at first, but once he described how he’s helping people and making money, I said, this is it. This is this is how I can, um, enjoy the, the, the same sense and authority and, um, and, um, and the positioning that I want in the marketing place by being the guy who has the show or ultimately the the studio I can serve, I can build those relationships. I can have those substantive conversations far more quickly. And so it’s interesting to me that a that almost an extreme introvert and fairly extroverted guy, uh, found a way both of us to capitalize on this platform and this methodology.

Mike Brunnick: Yeah. And that’s, that’s a that’s a great origin story. And as I said, what’s fun about it is it was the solution to a problem.

Stone Payton: Amen.

Mike Brunnick: So one of the building blocks, uh, and stone, you’ve done sales for a long time. Um, but one of the building blocks for a good sales program or good sales and marketing process is, as you’ve done already, define your ideal customer and then decide where those people hang out. And as Maggie worked with you on, can you articulate the The value of your solution. Uh, but one of the other key building blocks is can you articulate the problem that your product solves? Right. You’re selling calamine lotion, and it says right on the outside of it that it’s good for poison ivy and poison oak and poison sumac, but it’s not for sunburn, right? It it tells you what problem it solves. Uh, if you’re designing, uh, a utility truck, you have an idea that you got people that want to be able to move, you know, trash cans, but not lumber. Uh, they want to be able to move, uh, you know, eight kids home from a soccer practice, but not 15, right? So you’re deciding what problems your product solves. Uh, and so I would love to see if y’all can articulate what problems you’d be solving for someone who we talked about the ideal customer who’s in the right sort of occupation. They had the right aspirations and they had the right values. So I got that person. Now, what problems is that person having? Stone, you want to try that first?

Stone Payton: Yeah. And I’m going to go from what I saw when I was fired from that first dream job in the consulting arena. I share it with you, and rightly so, by the way. Uh, and when I went out on my old on my own, it was a little chilly out there, but I still had the benefit of some of that background and experience. Uh, and then that kind of got into the business of helping other people who were selling training and consulting. And what I found there, they by default or by necessity, they were playing what I call small ball like they were. They were getting like small training, consulting gigs, low fees, speaking engagements, all of that. And um, and they weren’t, they weren’t even they weren’t in the room. They weren’t at the table with people and organizations that could really use their services and could pay them handsomely and would happily do so over and over again. They weren’t even getting to they weren’t getting to swim at that end of the pool. Uh, and just a few of the things that I shared with them back in those days from my days in the big leagues, were was helpful enough that I could make a comfortable living. Uh, so some so more directly, those problems, I think a lot of people who have a great deal to offer in the professional services arena are not having genuinely substantive conversations and real relationships, predictably and fast enough with the vice president of blah, blah blah, or the senior director of the people who can make that decision and who feel a lot of the pain and bear a lot of the responsibility, uh, for for failure to meet objectives in that domain in their organizations.

Stone Payton: They’re never getting they’re never getting the chance. They’re not even getting an at bat. You know, they’re down here in the lower levels. And there are a few things that I was able to share with people years and years ago. But, um, that’s a problem. If that’s a problem, and I believe that it is, without a doubt, 100% incontrovertibly, I will tell you this thing will solve it. Um, so I if I’m right about the problem, this is the solution. Um, I just got to get a lot better at succinctly articulating that problem. But I’ve seen that is a rampant virus in the in the more common core ranks of trainers, consultants, speakers, fractional execs, consultants that most of them are living, you know, a $35,000 a year, just $70,000 a year income work their butt off nightmare thinking that, you know, trying to achieve some escape velocity and getting to, you know, they’re looking for their break, if you will. Yeah, I think maybe still.

Mike Brunnick: I think that’s great. So that’s sort of a problem. Set number one. Um, and in some respects it echoes a little bit of what you the problem you solved, uh, you met with Lee and his, uh, his partner, and you thought, wait a minute. This might be able to solve my problem.

Stone Payton: Yes, yes.

Mike Brunnick: But, Lee. Lee, I’ll turn to you because you started this to solve your problem. Um, can you, um, can you think of your problem in respect to now your ideal client profile?

Lee Kantor: Right. So I was I was trying, um, to meet people. I wanted people to meet me. Let’s put it that way. I didn’t want to meet people. And and that’s a I mean, that’s I don’t know. Maybe it’s obnoxious, but that’s how I felt that, um, I’m worth meeting. And, um, how do I get people to come to me instead of me going to them? And so that’s how I was looking at it. So how do I build a machine that has people entering my office sit around my table thanking me to allow them to come here and talk to me? And that’s what I built. And that and that’s Stone alluded to it earlier. People are fighting for a seat at the table. That’s I mean, in their head. They think that’s all they need. If they can unlock a seat at a table, then it’s game on. Now I’m going to take over the world. In my mind, I’m like, I want to own the table and invite people to it. And I prefer that positioning and I prefer doing it that way. You know, I don’t I want to be the place I’m going to solve the problem. For the person that is frustrated that no one’s returning their call, but they’ll show up on your show. They might not return your call they don’t want. They’re not really right now. Interested in a demo or have a coffee or have lunch. But if you invite them on a show to tell their story, what what makes them special, they’ll come to you and they’ll sit there for half an hour and you’ll talk to them. You’ll meet them, you’ll build a rapport with them. You’ll build a relationship with them. Then I believe if you do that 100 times a year, a bunch of them are going to then have maybe listen to your demo, and then they’ll have coffee with you or lunch or beer with you. So if you do it in my order, I find you. You’re going to have a better success to get to the conversation you wanted to have, but you’re doing it prematurely.

Mike Brunnick: Yeah. So that that’s exactly problem set number two. Right. So what problem might your ideal customer be having? Stone, you’ve talked about the fact that they want to play at a higher level. They want to reach that escape velocity. Uh, Lee, I think, you know, we can get to a place where you can articulate the problem that you solved for yourself is exactly the problem that this, uh, this model that you’re offering to people solves for them. You’re looking in a room of, uh, coaches or consultants and saying, oh, about 75% of these guys love going out and putting their plaid jacket on and slapping people on the back and shaking hands and being the president of their local BNI. But there’s another group of them in here that, uh, want to develop their business. They want to be successful, they want to have great conversations. They want to serve people, but they’re not comfortable trying to get people to call them back. They’re not comfortable doing all this networking. And so your solution may well be solving a problem for them that is identical to the problem that it solved for you. Uh, it would be attractive for them for all the reasons that it was attractive for you. Does that make sense?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, absolutely.

Stone Payton: It does to me. And it makes sense to me that it would be attractive for the organization that sold them the franchise or trained them or credentialed them if they if if they were somehow involved in them accessing this solution to me, that that mothership organization, everybody in the equation wins. It seems like to me, if we can pull this off.

Mike Brunnick: Well, that’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. So, um, uh, when I used to teach sales training classes, uh, and sometimes now when I teach new, new coaches, how to go through the sales process? Um, I, I try to simplify it as much as I can by saying, look, you’ve got two jobs in a sales cycle. The first one is to get the person to tell you their problem, do good discovery, ask good questions, find out what it is they want. Where are they? Where would they like to be? Uh, so you’re identifying problems, and then your next job is to describe the solution. I sell a widget, and the widget fits into this shape hole. Uh, I sell a roof rack that goes on top of a car. So I’m looking for people that don’t have enough space inside the car. Uh, so you describe your solution, and then you and that other person get to decide, is there a match between the problem you’re having and the the solution that, uh, that you’ve got. Right. So they’ve got a problem, you’ve got a solution. And if they match, Uh, it’s a pretty easy conversation. You’re not selling anything. Uh, and if it doesn’t match.

Lee Kantor: That’s that’s exactly how we see things also. And the first part that you described, part one that just happens during the interview.

Mike Brunnick: Right.

Lee Kantor: That what our system is different than what you’re saying is that this isn’t one long, continuous conversation. We’re just breaking it up into chunks. Your part one happens during the interview. Part two might happen a few days later. Later after, you know, immediately after the interview, a week later, whatever. But it’s going to happen again because they’re going to be open to hearing that instead of somebody just forcing all all three of those aspects in one conversation.

Mike Brunnick: Yeah. And I think that’s exactly right. Um, if you think about trying to find your next 90 studio partners, Uh, you know, one of the ways to get there is to get some number of folks in as guests on the platform. Uh, and in addition to that, uh, I guess the question is we talked about going out to some of these groups when you go out to those groups. Uh, are you ready to succinctly articulate the business problem? Um, and it sounds like you are. You guys have described it to me, uh, maybe a bit longer than you’d want to, uh, in, uh, in something that you’ve got a background in, uh, in copywriting. So, you know that, uh, you sit down to write a, an advertising tagline or a slogan or a, you know, is the IRS chasing you for your debt? You know, call me. You know, you got to tell people what problem you’re solving and, uh, and tell them how you can help them. Uh, so, um, does that, does that feel like, um, uh, a worthy exercise to, to really sit down and say, can I say that clearer? Can I say that shorter? Can I say that in a way that everybody I meet knows exactly what problems I solve? Does that sound like a worthy exercise? Does it sound?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, absolutely.

Mike Brunnick: I mean.

Lee Kantor: We have to get our language better and more clear. Number one, that’s so important. We really have to make sure that we’re coming up with something compelling that is going to get a person to say, you know, where have you been all my life? Um, that we have to get better at that. And also I would love because, I mean, we do. Owning a network like this gives us a lot of opportunity to we can interview whoever we want. Like tomorrow, like you mentioned. Like, if we wanted to meet firemen, we can make a firemen show tomorrow and start inviting firemen on the show.

Mike Brunnick: Yeah.

Lee Kantor: And in a short period of time, we would meet dozens of firemen. That that has never been a challenge for us. The challenge has been in our specific situation is how do we turn those people into a sales conversation? So we have to do a better job of once we meet them. Because, I mean, we’ve interviewed coaches for years and we have a database of thousands of coaches. So how do we move some of those coaches and open their mind to the possibility of how they might benefit from our offering? So how do we how do we meet a coach and then, um, incent them to either want to learn more about us specifically and or in, um, introduce us to somebody they might be coaching that might benefit from, from what we offer, you know, how do we make every coaching conversation and a business opportunity for us? We have not done a great job from from that standpoint.

Mike Brunnick: Got it. Stone.

Stone Payton: Amen. We have not we have absolutely not done done a good job with that. It’s um, it’s it’s a little bit of, um, we’re a little bit spoiled because in any given local market, I can sort of like here I have there’s a studio a mile down the road. I’m at the house right now with this fake background thing, but a mile down the road is a real studio, and I can invite people around the community, and I can cast a wide net and have the mayor and the fire chief, but also the fractional exec and the consultant and the coach and everybody. And I can just sort of cherry pick the ones I really want to have a substantive conversation with and then build out that studio to be incredibly successful. We have not, to date translated that well baked, extremely efficient thing that works. It always works. It never doesn’t work in any given local market. Lee and I haven’t translated that into the machine that works as a mothership, trying to get more people to consider doing that around the country that we have. There’s a gap there for sure.

Mike Brunnick: Right? Uh, so does it feel, uh, natural? Right. Because you want this to be part of a natural conversation. You said on a couple of occasions you don’t want this to feel transactional. Um, so I’m genuinely asking if it feels natural within your, your value set and the mood you’re trying to set to ask guests, past guests, current guests, uh, who do you know that is trying to take their business to the next level, but would rather people come to them than having to go out into the world and go to them? Do you know anybody that finds that that is in that situation, that is trying to grow their business or trying to get to the next level, but doesn’t want to spend all of their days out, you know, shaking hands and asking people for business. Uh, would rather have a platform that would come to them. Does that feel like a natural question to ask? Uh, your current and potentially past guests that you have.

Stone Payton: It does to me because, again, all of those people we’ve had some interaction with, they are the people who will take our call if if we got a divorce and I sold office furniture tomorrow, they would all take my call and have a conversation with me about selling office furniture. And even if the ones that couldn’t buy the office furniture because they’re their in-law sells office furniture, they’d still try to help me sell office furniture. So yeah, it feels perfectly organic and natural. It’s one of the luxuries of being in this, in this business I absolutely feels natural.

Mike Brunnick: Yeah. Lee. You agree?

Lee Kantor: Uh, for me, it doesn’t feel as natural. It feels the person that the challenge that I see, especially if we do this virtually in other markets when it happens in the studio. To me, why it works in a studio is it’s a visceral experience where face to face, we’re shaking hands, you know, at the end we take a picture, we’re all together. We have this shared emotional experience when it’s virtual, just the separation, uh, being on camera, it’s easy for the person to just be ready to move on to their next thing. Uh, you know, where they’re there. We don’t have their undivided attention. Right in the studio. We have their undivided attention. Um, so virtually, it’s harder for them to get the feeling that you feel in the studio. It’s hard to replicate that virtually. We haven’t figured out how to replicate that virtually. Um, and because of that, they’re coming in onto onto a zoom call with the expectation of, I’m going to be interviewed and I’m going to be gone. They’re not under the expectation of, oh, this might be an opportunity for me to learn about a business that might help me, like they’re there to do a thing that they’ve been prepared to do, because they do this multiple times a week. Um, so they’re it’s a different emotionally. They’re in a different place, and mentally they’re in a different place. So for me, it’s more clunky to move them from that to, oh, by the way, we have this thing that you might benefit from learning more about.

Mike Brunnick: Yeah. Um, but but you feel it would be more natural to have that conversation if they were, in fact, in the studio.

Lee Kantor: Right. But the thing is, that’s not helping me get somebody in another state to do this. So that’s why we have a, you know, ten people around the studio in different markets, in different suburbs of Atlanta, because they all came through a studio at some point, and they got to experience that firsthand. And that’s why they said, hey, that works in Atlanta. Maybe it’ll work out here in my suburb because they felt it. They they lived it in person. Um, it’s just more difficult to get somebody that is we meet virtually that never really kind of gets that, that feeling that you get, um, when you get the feeling in person, they connect the dots a lot faster. They’re like, wow, if I had this and I can bring people here, that’s I can see how that would be helpful. Where if we’re all virtual, it’s like, what’s that thing you say, Stone? It’s like you’re going out on a rowboat trying to sell outboard motors, you know, like, you know, trust me, this will be better. Um, but I’m not gonna. We’re not doing the thing that I’m telling you that you should do.

Mike Brunnick: Yeah. That’s, um. That’s. First of all, that’s a great analogy. Um, and I’m a I’m a big fan of analogies. Um, but, um, but, uh, second of all, I understand so is is one of the right questions to ask. And I know we’re getting a little long on time here, so maybe as a homework question is one of the right questions to ask. Um, sort of part A, is there a way to replicate that emotional, visceral experience, uh, remotely? Um, is it something that can only happen in person? So that’s sort of point A or question part A, question part B would be if the answer to part A is no, what are the ways that we could Go places and do an in-studio experience. Set up shop in a city and get folks to come in locally. Get them to feel that so that they would say, hey, you guys are only here for, you know, a couple of weeks doing a couple of radio shows in Cincinnati or north of Boston where I live. Um, and you guys are going to pack up your tent and get on the road again after that. Maybe I could, um, I could take over as the satellite here when you guys are gone. Um, so that’s sort of two questions. If there is no way I don’t know the answer. If there’s no way to replicate the emotional, visceral attachment that grows from an in-studio experience. Um, but but give that some thought. Uh, if there is no way, then part B is is there a way to then take that emotional experience on the road?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. I mean, we we’ve kind of struggled with this. So, um, we’ve done kind of road shows in, uh, where we showed up and we call it Radio Day, and we’ll, we’ll partner with, like, a chamber of commerce and they’ll invite ten, you know, business people, and we’ll sit there and just bang out a bunch of interviews. Um, so we’ve done that. We the hard part, for me at least, is that the person we’re looking to partner with is kind of a needle in a haystack, and it just that’s who we’re trying to identify. Um, so it just takes kind of it’s a numbers game, you know, you got to find the right person. And, you know, if we do, uh, one of these road shows and go to a city in another market that’s nearby and we show up and do ten interviews, we’re having to hope that one of those ten are going to be somebody that either is the right person or knows the right person, and we just haven’t had a lot of luck, um, in finding that. Um, but to your point of like, say, somebody like you, if we said, okay, Mike, um, let’s we’ll show you how to do this, you try it for a little bit that, I mean, that probably has a higher probability of success for us.

Mike Brunnick: Okay.

Lee Kantor: Um, I don’t know, Stone. What do you think?

Stone Payton: I don’t either, but I think we’re asking the right questions. Um, because doing the. I mean, if we got the math down and we knew that every time we did radio Day, we’d find somebody or every other time we did Radio Day or Radio Week or whatever.

Lee Kantor: We would travel, that would be a no brainer. We’d be.

Stone Payton: It would be a no brainer, especially at this point in our careers, because we can travel and stuff. Um, so that actually could be fun. So and it may not even be an either or, but also what you’re touching on Lee is if we can get the conversation to a certain point with someone who meets that profile and make it where you know they’re going to win no matter what. Right. If they are kind of coordinating, organizing, largely running Radio Day, you know, under the Business RadioX banner in a Boston, in a San Diego. And then we’re we’re supporting that with all of our technology and methodology and infrastructure and all brand equity and all that. Um, then, you know, maybe we don’t have to, you know, maybe we don’t have to bet on one day, you know, it might be three days. You know, like what? You may have a higher, uh, return, uh, opportunity for return. That’s an interesting.

Lee Kantor: Concept. I mean, we’re up for experimentation, so I mean this to me. I love that you’re doing this, and you’re really challenging us. And then, um, and these are important questions that we have to figure out in order to scale. I mean, these are the things that we have to be doing experiments in the areas that you’ve described. So thank you, um, for kind of pushing us in this direction. Thank you.

Mike Brunnick: Yeah, yeah, I’m happy to. I, um, I love what you guys are doing. I love the model. Um, I love the, the the the values behind it. Um, it’s, uh, it’s really exciting, and I, I, um, I’m I’m dying to help you, uh, succeed here. Um, so, um. Yeah, I was I was pushing in part because, um, the way my brain works as a, as a former, uh, sales guy and sales leader, every time I hear somebody say, got a thing that they’re trying to get more people to take advantage of, especially if it’s a a thing I believe in, like I do with you. Um, my mind’s immediately thinking, ah, how do we solve this problem? Um, or how do I help you guys solve this problem? So I’m excited to have been here today to be, uh, you know, my little part in this, uh, this bucket brigade, um, you know, sales is a big topic, and it goes all the way from, you know, messaging to to marketing to, uh, you know, a numbers game to how do I handle objections and how do I build rapport and how do I ask good questions and all of the things that come along with it? It’s a it’s a big topic. So today we just got a chance to talk about some of those, those building blocks. Um, and the new one today was articulation of the customer’s business problem. So, uh, given all of that, um, you know, Stone, is there anything from today that you’re taking away that you think, ah, here’s my, uh, here’s my action item, here’s what I’m going to commit to do or think about. Uh, as a result of today’s session.

Stone Payton: So about three pages of chicken scratch here. I underlined and circled and starred this this word succinctly under succinctly articulate. I think we’ve got something to chew on, right? Uh, in terms of articulating the problem, that’s a that’s a different lens of view for me is getting really, uh, talking a lot more about the problem at this stage than the, than the solution. And so that was very helpful to me. And then more recently in the conversation, this idea of solving this, you know, rowboat motorboat challenge that we seem to have or that we perceive that that we have. And seeing if we can’t find that, um, that that alternative to just make that a simple, easy, organic. Well, yeah. Here’s how we go about developing a new market. We find we find a person, we give them the infrastructure, we give them the tools, we coach them on what to do. We’re right there with them. And in doing so, either they or someone they they connect us with, uh, or more than one someone is a viable candidate to have a more, um, a more substantive conversation with going forward. So incredibly valuable. So yes, lots of notes.

Mike Brunnick: Great. And Lee, how about you?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I’m with Stone on this. I think that we have to get better and tighten our messaging around the problem and the solution and the value. All of those things need to be super self-explanatory, and that the right person you know does respond with where you’ve been all my life. Um, and it’s less we they just have to kind of understand what we do because it’s not obvious. You know, when you look at what we do and, and how you experience it, it isn’t obvious how you can benefit from it. And maybe we have to make it more obvious, or at least kind of give them a quick way to understand why it could work for them. So that was a big takeaway for me. And to Stone’s point, you know, we just have to get better at giving people in different markets, the tools to do this and give them a way to taste it, you know. Uh, so they can try it on before they commit to anything. And this creates some win win way of making that happen, I think could, um, speed up our growth. But before we wrap up, I want to make sure that people know how to get Ahold of you. Can you share your website or the best way to connect with you?

Mike Brunnick: Yeah, absolutely. Um, so, uh, my website is, is awfully easy because it’s, uh, it just starts with my name. Um, so I am, uh, Mike Brunnock, but my website is Mike brunnock.com. Uh, so, uh, if they’re looking for me, they can find me again at Mike Brunnock. That’s br unique.

Stone Payton: Well, Mike, it has been an absolute delight having you join us, giving us some, some counsel, some things that we are definitely going to take to heart and put some real time and energy in. Thank you so much for joining us, man.

Mike Brunnick: Yeah, it was it was my pleasure. And, uh, I really look forward to to seeing where you guys go next because I’m, uh, I’m now emotionally invested in the journey. So this was this was my pleasure. Pleasure, guys.

Stone Payton: Thank you man.

Speaker1: 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 Birr to download the free Business RadioX playbook.

Navigating Career Transitions: How Franchise Coaching Can Change Your Life

February 3, 2026 by angishields

Franchise Marketing Radio

Navigating Career Transitions: How Franchise Coaching Can Change Your Life

00:00 /

In this episode of Franchise Marketing Radio, Stone Payton interviews Jennifer Jaciw, franchise coach at The Entrepreneur’s Source. Jennifer shares her personal journey through career transitions and explains how her organization helps professionals explore franchise ownership as a new path. She details their complimentary coaching process, which uses assessments to match clients with business opportunities that fit their goals and strengths. Jennifer emphasizes a supportive, non-sales approach, current trends in franchising, and the importance of lifestyle alignment.

Jen Jaciw (sounds like “Jasseff”) is a Career Ownership Coach, Consultant, Connector, and Speaker, dedicated to helping professionals take control of their futures.

With over 25 years of business management experience spanning Sales, Marketing, Operations, and Entrepreneurship, including owning a successful Silicon Valley transportation company — she empowers individuals to transition from traditional careers to fulfilling business ownership.

Beyond coaching, she’s spent the past 10 years mentoring small business owners, leading networking organizations, and advocating for domestic violence resources.

As a speaker, she brings authenticity, insight, and actionable strategies to topics like goal setting, career transitions, branding and marketing, and entrepreneurial success.

Website: https://jjaciw.esourcecoach.com/
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferjaciw/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jaciwconsulting
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenniferjaciw/

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

The role of The Entrepreneur’s Source in supporting career transitions.
Jennifer’s personal journey and experiences leading to her role as a franchise coach.
The complimentary coaching program offered by The Entrepreneur’s Source, including assessments to identify client strengths and goals.
The misconception of franchising as merely buying a job versus building a scalable business.
The ideal client profile for franchise coaching, focusing on corporate executives and senior professionals.
The importance of identifying transferable skills and aligning them with business opportunities.
The coaching process that allows clients to explore different business models without pressure.
Risk mitigation in franchising through established systems and branding.
Current trends in franchising, including recession-resilient business models and the integration of technology.
The emphasis on time freedom, flexibility, and sustainability in choosing a business model.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Coming to you live from the Business RadioX studio. It’s Franchise Marketing Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Franchise Marketing Radio Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with the entrepreneur source, Jennifer Jaciw. How are you?

Jennifer Jaciw: Well, thank you so much for having me back and for pronouncing my last name correctly.

Stone Payton: Well, uh, we are fortunate that we are welcoming you back to the Business RadioX microphone. And I think largely due to that and a little bit of background work, we, uh, we made sure that we pronounced it properly. We are so delighted to have you back with us. Um, but, you know, we we, uh, we had more questions, Jennifer. And and you did such a great job with us. Uh, last time, uh, before we dive into some of those, though, maybe, uh, it would be a good idea to to provide our, our audience with a little bit of an overview, some context. The entrepreneur source. Jennifer, how would you articulate mission purpose? What do you what do you guys out there trying to do for folks?

Jennifer Jaciw: Yeah, that’s a great question. To start with, the entrepreneur Source is an organization that’s actually been around for 40 years, and not a whole lot of people have heard of us. Um, I think we’re gaining some notoriety through things, opportunities like this. But, uh, we have been helping people for a long time, and our mission is to help folks that are in some kind of transition, whether that be something they’re contemplating in the midst of, or have been forced into a career change of some sort, some kind of transition is going on in their lives and their professional lives. And so I work with corporate executives and professionals that have had successful careers, but they’re just not, um, satisfied doing what they’re doing anymore. They want more. And it could be like I said, something that they’ve chosen or something that it’s, you know, there’s a lot of layoffs going on. So that’s kind of how I ended up with the entrepreneur sources. I had experienced a couple layoffs myself.

Stone Payton: Well, yeah. Say more about that, if you would. Your backstory, how you landed here, because I’m operating under the impression that’s probably as much as anything else, really equipped you to truly identify with, empathize with, and be in a position to serve others when they’re in transition, like you describe?

Jennifer Jaciw: Yeah, I think so. I think because I’ve lived it, um, you know, it’s easier for me to coach about it. I mean, I certainly went through a lot of training and continued to do so with this organization. One of the things that I love about them is they’re always innovating and they’re always providing continuing education for us. But, you know, I had owned my own business originally in Silicon Valley, California. I had it for 15 years, but it was something that I built from scratch with my husband. And, you know, that was a totally different experience. So and it was all I knew for business ownership was starting something from scratch and working out the bugs. And, you know, it took a long time for us to figure things out. So when I did reenter the workforce, when I moved from California to New Mexico, I took a year off and I said, okay, what next? I had made enough money in the sale to buy our home and take some time off with my husband, but I knew that I wasn’t ready to stop working. So I reentered the workforce. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be here in New Mexico. There just aren’t a lot of, um, upper management type opportunities here. And I came in very confident, you know, running my own business for 15 years and selling it to a national organization.

Jennifer Jaciw: But it didn’t matter. You know, it’s just that’s I live in a poor economy here. So I landed in a different industry, and I was laid off twice in two years. And I said, never again. So I looked at what else I could do with my transferable skills, and somebody approached me about introducing me to an entrepreneur source coach. And I said, well, I don’t know anything about them, but I’m open. You know, I didn’t really know what I wanted for my next chapter. It was a rather stressful time, as it is for anyone that’s been in that situation where they’ve been laid off. I met with my coach and I absolutely loved the process. I thought, um, you know, when she started mentioning franchises. I said the only thing I ever equated franchising to was French fries, and I knew that I didn’t want to own a McDonald’s. I didn’t, you know, I didn’t really know that there are lots of businesses that we see on our streets that are franchises, and I just didn’t know that. You don’t know what you don’t know. So she took me on this journey and she identified, you know, what kind of skills and strengths I could move into a different type of business and different business models that were available. And that’s kind of how I fell in love with this whole concept and this whole process, this coaching program that we offer.

Jennifer Jaciw: I asked her if she would present this business as an opportunity to me, and she did, along with two other businesses that were not related to coaching. And, you know, I got to meet with all three businesses as part of this experience. And one of the things I love about this coaching program is we create a safe space for people to do that, you know, to try on some new hats and see if something fits them a little bit better than what they’ve been wearing. And so I did I went through this process, and this really was the business that spoke to me the loudest. There were two driving forces that I discovered in my assessment work with her, and one of them was that I truly want to help others. I was put on this planet to help others in some regard, and this really gives me the opportunity to impact people’s lives every day in the work that I do. And the other was, I really needed a flexible business. You know, my folks are still in California. They’re both still alive, thankfully, but they’re both, uh, facing some pretty significant health challenges at this point. So I need to be able to get back and forth whenever it’s needed. And I’m able to do that with this business. So it really fulfilled the two things that I was most, uh, driven by.

Jennifer Jaciw: I am really grateful for that.

Stone Payton: You know, I’ve heard people over the years, uh, in one fashion or another, almost equate buying a franchise to, uh, to buying a job. But I don’t hear that in your tone. I don’t hear that in your description. That’s not the frame you put around it at all, is it?

Jennifer Jaciw: No, it’s not. And there are certainly franchises out there that can be replacing a job. You know, you’re you’re going to work the 9 to 5. You’re going to wear all the hats. Um, but I don’t look at it that way. I wanted something that I could build, I could scale with. While my clients don’t necessarily see it, I have a whole team behind me, not only on, uh, the virtual side. I have a virtual team of people that help me fill my calendar. So they reach out to folks through different platforms like LinkedIn and CareerBuilder and things like that. Um, but I also have a marketing team, and I have a technology team. I have a whole host of people. So I have scaled the business, and I love what I do, and I love that it’s not a job. You know, for me, I it’s really work that I’m truly interested in and I love participating in. But I get the time because I have all these other people in place to work on my business, not just in my business.

Stone Payton: You know, you touched on it earlier in the conversation, but I’d like to dive a little deeper if we could. On on the who. Right. Who is that person that really ought to have a conversation with with you? And who are you finding are, you know, these are the people I know that I can that I can really help that that the marketing people call it like ideal client, I guess, or candidate or something like that. Who is this person?

Jennifer Jaciw: Yeah, I would say the bulk of my clients are corporate executives that have had really successful careers. They have those, uh, skills, you know, that can certainly transfer from running a business, you know, an organization where they’ve been in some kind of senior leadership role and have made those decisions. They’ve just been making them for other people. So those leaders that really shine, those professionals that are smart and capable and driven, but they want more control over their time or their income or their future or all of the above. You know, sometimes, like I said, they’ve been laid off and they’re just trying to figure things out. Um, a lot of people underestimate their transferable skills. They forget that leadership and problem solving and decision making are way more important than industry experience. In a lot of cases. Um, they also can over romanticize passion. A lot of people say they want to leave the corporate world and work on something that they’re super passionate about. Passion matters, but I think profitability systems and scalability matter more. So I think that’s really important. And, you know, thinking that they may have to do this all alone, uh, it can be very daunting. It was for my husband and I in that first business. We had a limo company, and we figured things out, you know, but it took longer. It took a lot longer to get things up and running and cash flow positive, because every dollar we made went back into reinvesting in the business. In the franchise world, you’ve already got a lot of systems in place, so you know you’re going to have that support, that built in support and community that you don’t have from a startup.

Stone Payton: It’s an interesting insight that you are bringing to light for me, and this idea that a great many of us and I’m sure I fall into this same trap, you know, sometimes we we actually underestimate what we could bring to the table, especially in a little different environment, or approaching an environment or situation in a little different way. But now that you say that, it occurs to me that could be a, you know, maybe even the bulk of your work in trying to and trying to serve someone like a stone, really help them identify those strengths and then find the the best place to put them to work. Yeah.

Jennifer Jaciw: That’s exactly what we do in the coaching program. So that’s that’s a great lead in to what that looks like. You know, the coaching program I offer is actually complimentary to the client. So, uh, and we start with a lot of assessment work, some really good deep conversations on what you want this next year to look like. What does that look like for you really take some time to think about that. What are the goals that you want to focus on? You know, is it financial? Is it lifestyle? Is it a is it a blend of both? You know, and what kind of industries interests you? What have you thought about? What do you dream about? So we’re going to talk about that. And we also do a very comprehensive assessment, behavioral assessment that not only pulls your strengths, which most of them do, it also drives into or digs deep into your driving forces, which is what I was talking about earlier with me. My driving forces, you know, we’re really important. Impact was important for me. Flexibility was important for me. So we’re going to talk about that. You know, we’re going to identify what those things are, what motivates somebody like Stone to get out of bed in the morning. You know, what do you want in your day? You know, what do you want more of less of? We’re going to talk about all those things. And as I get to know my client more and, um, to a point where I feel like I have enough information, enough pieces of the puzzle to put together, then I will go to my portfolio of businesses and try to find something that I think will at least interest them to learn more about. And, you know, we’ll have some really good conversations around that too. You know, I want to hear from them why they think I picked that business for them to explore, you know, and that can lead to some really good conversation.

Stone Payton: To have a truly invested yet objective pair of eyes and ears working on on my behalf. I was just thinking as you were talking, I love archery, everything about it. And, uh, I’m probably the last person in the world that should be what we call a bowyer. Someone who runs a bow shop that. Yeah, I’m the. And I’m an entrepreneur, right? I love archery, yeah. And I’m an entrepreneur. I am probably the last guy in the world that needs a retail bow shop where I got to be there. That’s hilarious.

Jennifer Jaciw: And so and and that’s true. And some people think that that’s what it’s about, right? Finding that thing or buying that business or, you know, starting a business on something that you absolutely love. For a lot of people, like I talked to a lot of men, actually, that love to cook, but they have no desire to open a restaurant because they won’t enJaciw it anymore. You know, they that’s you don’t want to take that away. You know, you want to make that something that you actually truly enJaciw. We definitely want to do something that interests you, you know, find something that interests you, but not necessarily replace, you know, your hobby with something that’s going to turn it into something you don’t enJaciw anymore.

Stone Payton: And you’re right that those a lot of those people you’re describing would not enJaciw it, but I’m not sure they would see that initially without the benefit of you in there really challenging their thinking, helping them think it through. And I love, uh, what I think I’m beginning to see as the business model for the entrepreneurs source. It’s not like you’re just coming to market with, you know, the show book, right? Like with this. Okay. You want to buy a business? Great, right? Uh, here’s your list.

Jennifer Jaciw: You know exactly that is. That is so not what we are. Because we are not licensed brokers. I’m not here to sell anything. I make that very clear on our introductory call with any client. I’m not here to sell anything. I am helping you find clarity in what you want to do next. And if I can give you some business ideas that you never would have thought of for yourself, then I’m doing my job, you know, because I want you to start thinking outside the box. And that’s exactly what this does. This program does. And, you know, if nothing, people will always learn something about themselves, something new about themselves, and they’ll learn about some other businesses, like I said, that they probably never would have considered for themselves.

Stone Payton: And you know, I am, you know, red blooded entrepreneur, been one for, you know, 30 plus years. Um, but I wonder, do you do you run into some folks that do want to explore some type of transition, but in their mind, they’re not an entrepreneur or not suited to be an entrepreneur, but through exploration and through serving them, you discover, yes, in a certain way, we really can be an entrepreneur. Do you ever do you have clients that make that mental shift over time in working with you?

Jennifer Jaciw: Oh, absolutely. A lot of people do. You know, some people come into the experience knowing that they want to be a business owner. They just don’t know how or what, you know, makes sense for them. And so those are really fun because they’re curious already, you know, they already have some interest. But I have a lot of clients that say, you know, I’ve never considered business ownership, but this might be a great opportunity for me to explore that in a safe space. Um, because I create a safe space for people. I don’t want anybody to feel pressured to do anything. I do want people to come into this experience and be open and curious and ask questions, and I can help with that, too. You know, if you’re afraid to talk to a business because you don’t know where to get the conversation started, I can help with that. I can, you know, give you some examples of questions that you might want to start with. And once you get the conversation going, it’s going to be a lot easier for you. But, um, I just think it’s, it’s it’s a really cool experience for people that, you know, are just, like I said, the best ones, the most, the ones that get the most value out of it are the ones that are curious and open.

Stone Payton: And going back to this, we’ll take both sides of the coin risk and reward or opportunity. So many of these opportunities that you might be able to help them, not just be aware of, but really dive into and explore some depth. Uh, there’s, there’s repeatable processes and and and and transferable tasks. There’s there’s all this there’s infrastructure and history and brand equity. It really I mean, so much of that can can really shrink the timeline and remove the, the friction and lower that risk profile on, on these things. Can it.

Jennifer Jaciw: Absolutely. And we talk about risk you know, in the coaching program because a lot of people you know it’s it’s it could be that it’s a husband in the program. And he’s maybe more risk averse. The wife or spouse might be more risk, um, you know, open to risk or risk taker. So I work with a lot of couples, actually, um, uh, one of the, you know, I’ll start with one partner. And as they get deeper into the conversation with me, the other partner, the other significant other will get curious. They’re on their own and say, okay, what is this person doing with you? And why are you so excited about this? And and so I welcome them to join the call, because I want them both to be on board with any kind of risk. But yes, you are right when it comes to franchising or any kind of resale opportunity, you know, there is a lot of risk mitigation in that because it can be managed a lot easier for first time business owners, especially because you are stepping into a proven model. These are things that have been replicated.

Jennifer Jaciw: You know, there was one business owner that started it years and years ago typically, and they’ve replicated over and over and over again and they chose to franchise it. So these are validated systems, established branding, known economics and training that shortens your learning curve. So I know that that was a huge difference for me Personally. You know, like I said, it took probably three years before we were cash flow positive in the limo company because we were figuring things out. And when I stepped into this business, it was like a three month ramp up, you know, because there were so many symptom systems already in place. Um, it just made it so much easier. The training, the systems, the community, all of it, you know, and you also have historical financials, uh, with a resale opportunity, you know, you’re going to have the financials already there. Existing customers, often many, uh, positive Google reviews and a trained team already in place. So a resale opportunity can be even less risky feeling, you know, if they have those things already in place for somebody that’s never done this before.

Stone Payton: Well, I’m glad you mentioned that because I didn’t think about resale on the how does the whole because you’re running a business too. You’re helping other people find businesses. But you got to run a business too, to have that opportunity. How does the whole sales and marketing thing work for, for you for, for a for a practice like, like yours, how do you how do you get to have those conversations?

Jennifer Jaciw: Yeah. So resales are part of our portfolio as well. And a lot of people ask me, well, how do you get paid if this is a complimentary program? And it is as simple as this, if I do introduce my client to a, either a, a brand new franchise or a resale opportunity, and they fall in love with it, they’ve done their due diligence. They decide they are going to invest. Then that business will pay me for my services. So I do not get paid with every client that I work with, because not everybody’s ready for business ownership. But I want them to know, you know, up front that, you know, I’m not going to ever ask you for a dollar for my services, because I will be taking care of in enough circumstances that I make a decent living. You know, I wouldn’t do this otherwise, you know, if I couldn’t support myself. But that, you know, again, that goes back to me not being a salesperson. So even though that is the way that I get paid, I’m perfectly fine with giving people the time that they need, the time and the space that they need to make a confident decision. I don’t want anybody to go into business ownership without being fully prepared as much as they can be, and have that understanding that they’re going to have support and systems throughout, you know, the term that they have their business and most, most licenses are about ten years. Some are five, some are 20, but most the average is ten.

Stone Payton: Well, if that’s your mindset and your value system, and I am coming to believe that that it is. It strikes me that if I would err on the side, I think of reaching out to you and wanting to have a conversation with you. I’d rather err on being early than late, right? Like, don’t, don’t wait till I’ve necessarily got to pull the trigger tomorrow. And I got all my funding and everything I want to reach out and and talk to to Jennifer early. Is that is that accurate? Does that make sense?
Jennifer Jaciw: Yeah. That that’s a great I mean, if people already have an idea on the type of business that they want and they have their funding in place, then it makes more sense for them to go directly to a broker, you know, because that is a transaction. They don’t need all the other work. Maybe they’ve done that work on their own. Um, but for somebody who’s never, you know, been through this experience before, they don’t know what type of business they want. They don’t know what they would be good at. I can help with that. You know, that’s what this experience was created for, for those types of people that know they want something more than what they’re doing. They want something different than what they’ve been doing, but they just don’t know the how or where. Or you know, what type of business you know. Do they want something, uh, full time, you know, owner, operator where they’re hands on. Do they want something more semi absentee, where they’re working behind the scenes and not having to be part of the day to day? And we have a few investment only opportunities where they really don’t need to be involved with the business.

Stone Payton: Before we wrap let’s if we could let’s leave our listeners with a a pro tip or two, something to be reading, thinking about, asking themselves, asking other people just uh, and look gang, the number one pro tip is if this conversation is striking a chord with you at all, reach out and have conversation with Jennifer. But to to satiate them between now and then. Jennifer, let’s leave him with an idea or two to to be noodling on.

Jennifer Jaciw: Yeah, I think that, um, I’d like to mention just a couple trends that are going on in franchising because a lot of people like, like me only thought of it in the restaurant world. But what we’re seeing now is a lot of people are looking for a recession resilient business models, you know, because with the economy being what it is up and down, um, you know, it’s not feeling quite as stable as it was, you know, before the pandemic. So a lot of people are looking at recession resilient type brands and those are service based. Typically it could be home services, it could be senior care, health and wellness. It could be children. Those are the types of, um, businesses that are always going to be around. They’re always going to be necessary and people will always spend money on those things. So that’s something to consider. Um, I also think that people the franchises that I work with a lot, most of them, I would say are more set up as a CEO style business where they’re manager led models so that they can, you know, operate as a CEO like they have been in the past, where they’re not doing the day to day functions. It could be something that they scale with their leadership skills, not, you know, that exhaustion from being burnt out.

Jennifer Jaciw: Um, I also think that AI and tech platforms are just, uh, totally. I mean, I can’t believe some of the things that people are creating within the franchise system for their franchisees these days, including mine. Um, we just had an AR AI education call this week, and they have created so many new innovations within our CRM that are going to make our job so much easier, and a lot of franchises are going that direction to make things easier for franchisees, even easier than they already were. Um, and you know what I’ve seen over and over and over again, especially since the pandemic, is people are more focused on time, freedom, flexibility and sustainability than anything else. They want that alignment with their lifestyle. So really, those are the things that I would like people to think about if they don’t have that in their own life. You know, whether they be working or unemployed, how can we do something to help you with that? Make that, you know, we we want to design a life that you love to live. And that’s my whole mission in this work is to help you get there.

Stone Payton: I am so glad I asked. That sounds like marvelous counsel. All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you, maybe have a more substantive conversation and and really seriously consider engaging in, uh, in this kind of activity. What’s what’s let’s get some coordinates.

Jennifer Jaciw: Yeah, probably through my website. I would love for people to just check me out, you know, learn a little bit more about me and the process. So my website is JJ, I dot. Com and on the top right there will be a section there that says schedule a call. So that introductory call is typically 30 minutes. You can find a time on my calendar and we’ll just see if we’re a good fit for each other. It doesn’t cost anything. So, you know, accept some time. And that’s really the only obligation you make in this process with me is scheduling the time and keeping your appointment. That’s really it.

Stone Payton: Well, Jennifer, it has been an absolute delight having you on the program. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, and thank you for the work that you’re doing. Please keep up the good work and we sure appreciate you.

Jennifer Jaciw: Well thank you, Stone, I really appreciate being asked to come back. I, I love, you know, what I do and love to share it with others. And Business RadioX has been a great place for me to be able to do that. I really respect the work that you guys do as well.

Stone Payton: Well, I’m delighted to hear it and it is absolutely my pleasure. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Jennifer Joseph with the Entrepreneur Source and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.

BRX Pro Tip: Celebration is Important

February 3, 2026 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Celebration is Important

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BRX Pro Tip: Celebration is Important

Stone Payton: And we’re back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, I think sometimes, I don’t know, I neglect investing the time and energy in celebrating things that have happened for me positively, things that people around me have achieved. But there’s really quite a bit of value in taking a moment and genuinely celebrating.

Lee Kantor: Absolutely. I think this is a hole in my swing, and I really have to be mindful about it, especially in my family. But definitely in business, celebrations are an important part of building community.

Lee Kantor: Celebrations can be a powerful part of building community because they create those shared moments of joy. It deepens connections, it deepens relationships, and it fosters that sense of belonging and team that you’re trying to achieve within your business.

Lee Kantor: So, whether it’s recognizing a team’s milestone or a cultural tradition or any type of collective achievement, celebrations can build trust and reinforce that positive community culture that every business is striving for. So, whether it’s in business or community settings, use celebrations to recognize progress, big or small, which motivates people and keeps teams together and keeps them bonded.

Lee Kantor: So, celebrate inclusively to bring diverse people together, strengthening social bonds and collaboration. Make celebrations authentic to your community and to your team by focusing on what the community or the team values and what they feel proud of. These types of regular, meaningful celebrations create an environment where people feel seen, appreciated, and part of something bigger, and that’s going to drive ongoing engagement, and it’s going to drive ongoing collective success.

Transform Your Workspace: From Drab to Fab with Jacqui Sabo

February 2, 2026 by angishields

Women in Motion

Transform Your Workspace: From Drab to Fab with Jacqui Sabo

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In this episode of Women in Motion, hosts Lee Kantor and Renita Manley interview Jacqui Sabo, founder of Arizona Interior Resource (AIR). Jacqui shares her expertise in workplace strategy and design, emphasizing how thoughtful office environments—whether at home or in corporate settings—can boost productivity, well-being, and talent retention. She discusses balancing individual energy needs with organizational goals, overcoming design challenges, and aligning workspaces with brand values. Jacqui also offers practical tips for remote workers and highlights the value of WBEC-West certification in growing her business and serving diverse clients.

Jacqui Sabo is the founder and owner of Arizona Interior Resource LLC. Established in 2019, Ms. Sabo has worked in commercial real estate, design, construction, and office furniture for 30+ years. AIR services commercial clients throughout the US and Canada, and specializes in Office, Industrial & Medical.

Previously, Ms. Sabo worked as Vice President of Sales for Goodmans Interior Structures, a Herman Miller Authorized Dealer, and responsible for offices in Phoenix, Tucson, and Albuquerque. She was with Goodmans from 2007 to 2016 and was promoted from Sales Manager to VP in 2010.

She earned her MBA from Wilkes University and her B.S. in Business Management from University of Phoenix as well as an A.A.S. in Computer Science from Purdue University, before eventually becoming a commercial real estate broker and property manager in Phoenix for various firms from 1982-1994. After her twelve-year career as an office specialist and earning a real estate broker’s license and an RPA from Building Owners and Managers International, Jacqui continued to work in Phoenix and then in Dallas, where she worked in B2B sales, sales management, and general management in the contract office furniture industry.

In addition to sales management, Ms. Sabo is a certified sales trainer for AchieveGlobal Professional Selling Skills and CEB Challenger Sales and has delivered numerous sales training workshops to sales professionals and management.

Currently, she is a member of Trustegrity, a professional community of trusted advisors, connecting, confiding, and collaborating. AIR is a certified Women Owned Business (WBENC) and her affiliations include Director for International Interior Designers Association Southwest Chapter, Advisory Board Member for the Women’s Business Center and past Board responsibilities for the Arizona Association of Economic Development working with municipalities, industry partners and tribal communities in economic development, as well as on the Actors Theatre Board for four years from 2008-2012.

Since 2013, Ms. Sabo has served as a docent and museum guide and guide facilitator for the Musical Instrument Museum. She currently resides in Phoenix with her husband Thomas. She can be contacted at jacqui@airinaz.com.

Episode Highlights

Workplace strategy and design
Office furniture solutions
Enhancing quality of life and productivity in various work environments
Balancing individual energy needs with organizational goals
Challenges in attracting and retaining talent
Importance of operational efficiency in workspace design
Creating environments that reflect brand and purpose
Addressing neurodiversity and generational differences in workspace design
Strategies for remote and hybrid workspaces
The role of thoughtful design in employee satisfaction and retention

Music Provided by M PATH MUSIC

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

Amos Schwartzfarb: The Startup Operator Who Built a Playbook for Winning

February 2, 2026 by angishields

Houston Business Radio

Amos Schwartzfarb: The Startup Operator Who Built a Playbook for Winning

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Amos Schwartzfarb—one of the most influential figures in the startup ecosystem, known for his decades of hands-on operating experience, investing expertise, and founder-first mindset.

Amos’s career began unexpectedly in the early days of e-commerce, packing boxes at Shoreline Mountain Project—an experience that led him into a 25+ year journey through seven startups, multiple acquisitions, and some of the most iconic early-stage companies in the U.S., including HotJobs (Yahoo), Work.com, Business.com, and Black Locust (Home Depot).

In 2015, he shifted into investing as Managing Director of Techstars Austin, where he backed more than 70 seed-stage companies and became a central pillar in Texas’s startup growth. He is also the bestselling author of Sell More Faster and Levers, two of the most practical frameworks ever written for founders who want clarity, traction, and repeatable scale.

Now, as CEO and advisor at Retro Cause, Amos continues helping early-stage companies build momentum by combining metrics, mindset, and operational discipline. When he’s not advising founders, you’ll find him outdoors—mountain biking, climbing, or cooking with his family.

Connect with Amos on LinkedIn.

This 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 my guest today, Amos Schwartzfarb, a legendary startup author, operator, author, investor, athlete, and advisor whose career has shaped some of the most successful early stage companies in the country. Amos started his journey packing boxes at Shoreline Mountain Project, helping convert it into one of the earliest e-commerce companies, kicking off a 25 plus year career across seven startups including Hotjobs, acquired by Yahoo! Work.com. Business.com. Black Locust acquired by Home Depot and even more. In 2015, he shifted to the investor side as managing director of Techstars Austin, where he invested in more than 70 seed stage startups across Texas and became one of the region’s most respected early stage investors. He is also the best selling author of Sell More, Faster and Lovers, which we’re going to talk about. Known for giving founders the frameworks, metrics and mindset to build repeatable, scalable businesses. Today, as CEO and advisor at Retro Cause, he continues advising founders while spending his free time mountain biking, rock climbing, and cooking with his family. Amos, welcome to the show.

Amos Schwartzfarb: Thank you so much for having me, Tricia, and what a fantastic introduction.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh, I’m so glad that you said that I spend time on this Because, Amos, the truth is, we don’t do that for ourselves. So I like to give that as my gift to you.

Amos Schwartzfarb: Oh my gosh, it’s so true. If you would have asked me to do that, I would have glossed over all of it and just said, yeah, I worked with startups a couple of times and we did some cool stuff.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, so I avoided a word and we’re going to talk about it before we even talk about you. Okay. Consiglieri as I as I think it’s pronounced.

Amos Schwartzfarb: So yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: Tell us what in the world that word means. Amos, before we get into talking.

Amos Schwartzfarb: Yeah. So maybe maybe the way that I’ll describe, I’m not sure it’s the right word to use. It’s where it comes from. Is actually, I don’t know, maybe all over the world, but at least I’m from North Jersey, from the North Jersey Mafia. And but the reason I use that word is because what I do with my clients, I’m not really a CEO coach. I think when people think of a CEO coach, they think of someone who’s going to help with organizational skills or some soft skills. And that’s not really what I do, and I haven’t figured out the right way to talk about it, even though I’ve been doing this for so many years. So what I do with my clients is I’m really I work directly with CEOs and I am the the person that they come to and talk to and trust more than anyone, more than their co-founder, more than their board. And we and we do everything. I am their trusted source. Whether it’s, um, a problem with an executive managing the board, fundraising, building out an executive team, figuring out the right people, whether it’s problems at home because it affects their business. It’s literally everything. And so I use that word because that is essentially what it is to the Mafia boss. Um, so I hope I’m not insulting anyone out there, but that really is the role that I play with my clients.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, I love that. And I’m I’m glad that we started there because advisor doesn’t do what you that word doesn’t do what you do for your clients justice. And I appreciate that. You have a complicated word.

Amos Schwartzfarb: Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. It’s. If nothing else, it sparks a good conversation.

Trisha Stetzel: It does? Yeah, absolutely.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, so tell us a little bit more about Amos.

Amos Schwartzfarb: Oh, gosh. Uh, here, I’ll do this. I, I have been noodling on this thought for a long time, but a lot lately. And I actually wrote something down yesterday, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with it yet. Um. Which is, I don’t know. I think this goes for all people, but I’m going to just speak of it as if I’m the only person with this challenge in the world, even though I know that I’m not. I don’t know how to speak about just Amos, because there’s the just Amos, the expectation of what have I done professionally? And that’s probably what most people want to talk about here. There’s the Amos that was, um, I mean, I’ll pat myself on the back. An elite athlete for many, many years in multiple sports. There’s the Amos that’s an author. There’s Amos that is a musician and is in the middle of dropping an album and has a new band. There’s the Amos that is a dad, and it is really the thing that is most important to me in the world. Um, there’s the Amos that’s from new Jersey and the people that I grew up with that know me one way. And then there’s the folks here in Austin that have no idea who that dude is. Um, so I don’t know, like, that’s me and a little bit more.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay. No, I love it because it really gives us some insight into the things that make you tick. Yeah, right. It really does. Yeah. Okay.

Amos Schwartzfarb: You know, here’s what I might say as you think. Like, here’s the here’s the Amos. Rather than trying to identify myself in a in a box or several boxes. I think who I am is a person that has been really fortunate that I had an upbringing, that that gave me the opportunity to keep a really open mind and do a lot of cool stuff. And and not that I haven’t been afraid a lot in my life. I’ve been afraid a lot in my life. But fear has never stopped me from doing anything. At a young age till now. And so the Amos that I like to think about is the person who brings to the world, um, hopefully inspiration for other people to do the same, to not let the fears get in the way of their dreams.

Trisha Stetzel: Mhm. Well I love that. That is fantastic.

Amos Schwartzfarb: I stole that, I stole that from the no company no fear. They’re probably out of business 20 years but I. But I did love it.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay I’m glad we noodled around on this because something really profound came out. Thank you for sharing that. Uh, can we talk about mindset, uh, a little bit in the, in the, in the business place. So I think I’ve heard you say business is math mindset is the multiplier. So what do founders get wrong when we’re looking at that equation?

Amos Schwartzfarb: Yeah. Um, maybe a little context here on the business is math part. And this is this is me projecting. I, um, I will start with I’ve always been good at math, and I stopped taking math in 10th grade because I never thought it was important. I think differently now, much differently now. Um, and I was always I’ve always been really creative. I’ve always been a writer. I was a creative writing major in college. Um, and when I, and I was in my early, early years of business, I operated largely on intuition and, and really didn’t put a lot of stock or faith into the importance of understanding metrics and the math of business. And, um, fortunately, I had some good intuition along the way. And also, fortunately, I had a phenomenal mentor and boss at, uh, at a company that, um, Business.com which was acquired, I was acquired into. And then I was an executive there. Um, Who? That not just the CEO, but the CEO and the CEO were so metrics driven. They to me, they are the poster children for what it means to run a really good business. And I and they I will say they beat it out of me to it’s okay to have your intuition, but then how do you back it up with math and that that was back in, you know, almost 20 years ago now.

Amos Schwartzfarb: So I 17, 18 years ago. And so the journey since then, um, and, and maybe the lessons over and over and over again is that. Yeah. Intuition is, is a really important thing to help, like pick up and say what direction should I look at? But knowing whether or not you’re actually heading in that direction is math. And at the end of the day, and as much as like a visionary founder who doesn’t have a financial background does not want to hear this, I being one of them at one point in my life. Um, your business is really nothing more than a than a calculus equation. And and it’s our responsibility as leaders of that organization to figure out, um, what how to make the math work so that your business can work so that you can actually achieve, achieve your vision, and so that, you know, you can step away from the math and change the world in the way that you want, want to change the world.

Trisha Stetzel: All right. So this makes me like, want to talk about mindset because you have experience with more than 70 seed stage startups and probably lots more than, uh, that’s just what I know. Um, people who start businesses, true entrepreneurs want to go open a business doing something that they love. And most of them, at least the ones that I work with, are afraid of the numbers. So how do we shift besides the words that you used, which is your business, is basically a calculus equation. How do we get people to shift the way they think about their businesses from I love underwater basket weaving. I’m afraid of the numbers to this is a business and I need to care about the numbers.

Amos Schwartzfarb: Yeah. Um, I, I feel like there’s a couple of different ways. Like a couple. I have a few different opinions, and some of them are sort of, like, very surfacey like, hey, we can talk about how to, you know, how to look at math as a positive thing versus a negative thing. And, but I actually think it’s it’s much, much, much deeper and probably even outside of my, my, my depth of, uh, teaching, but not outside of my depth of exploring, which is why are you afraid of the numbers? What is it about looking at it as math? Do you feel like you’re going to lose the passion? Do you feel like you don’t understand what the math is supposed to be? And so I think maybe there’s two like like sort of core level things I would think about, which is like under try to understand what it is about the math that you’re reluctant to leaning into, and maybe it’s okay that you don’t lean into it, but understand what that is so you can find someone that can help you do it. Um, and, uh, you know, I think the other thing is which which is this is something that I have, um, I’ve been practicing for the last couple of years with, like, in such intensity.

Amos Schwartzfarb: And it’s it’s it’s amazing. I don’t even know how to explain it to somebody. And it sounds crazy. It will sound crazy to someone who doesn’t believe this. Um, but just the the the there’s an art, I think, to looking at everything and having a different perception. So instead of saying to yourself, the math scares me, or I don’t believe it, or I don’t want to do the math, what if you say, gosh, this math is really fun? And yeah, you’re not going to believe it at first, and you might not believe it for a long time. And not that you’re trying to hypnotize yourself, but you. There’s an opportunity to literally change your perception by trying to find the things in it that could be fun, because guess what? What if you love basket weaving and you love selling baskets, and you get to sell 100,000 baskets instead of 100 baskets because you not only have figured out the greatest basket, but the people who want the greatest basket. And you’re you’re making their lives better. How much more awesome are you going to feel about selling baskets?

Trisha Stetzel: I love that, and and you’re right. You know, the the thoughts that we have, the language that we use eventually become our thoughts and our beliefs. And if we can shift the things that we’re saying to ourselves and we can actually shift the outcome eventually. Yeah, I love that.

Amos Schwartzfarb: I mean, you’re going somewhere like, we can we can take a real left turn here if we want. But like that whole thing of like what we say to ourselves is so important because I do a lot of like mindset work and spiritual work recently too. And the thing that I have come to believe, and this is not my original thought by any stretch, but but I believe this is those thoughts are not actually us. They’re just thoughts. And so when we can learn to detach ourselves from those thoughts and realize, like we can say anything to ourselves, it kind of doesn’t matter. So if we’re going to say something, let’s say the positive thing. Let’s say the thing that gets us what we want, not the thing that doesn’t get us what we want.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, so I’m going to reel it back in because I don’t know about detached thoughts for the rest of the conversation, but it’s it’s it’s very interesting. And I would love to have you come back because I would like to talk about that. I’m very interested in hearing more, but I want to roll us back to the numbers. Um, metrics. Numbers actually matter when and and a lot of companies may not see that those particularly matter with a product market fit. So what are your thoughts around those metrics early in a business?

Amos Schwartzfarb: Yeah, I love the question. And it is one of the things we talk about in the book lovers a lot. And um, you know, maybe like the quick step backwards is a big reason that, um, Trevor and I decided to write the book lovers was because of exactly the thing we’re talking about, the fear of trying to figure out what are the right numbers. And so the thing we talk about a lot is get them wrong, but get but start doing something. Because as soon as you get that, as soon as you start doing something and you see that they’re wrong, you will want to as a problem solver, as an entrepreneur, inherently in your DNA, you will want to figure out what is right and you’ll get there. And sometimes that there might take a month, and sometimes that there might take ten years. And I’m not exaggerating it. Sometimes it takes a really, really long time. It’s that journey and going back to the mindset like, enjoy the journey. That’s why you’re doing this, right? Yes. You want the end result. You know, one gets the end result without the journey. So let’s let’s figure out the math along the way so that that’s that’s what we profess in the book over and over again, which is like, here are some frameworks to help you start to figure out what the math is. And you’re going to get it wrong, period. Just own it and then we’ll figure it out. Start with something.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh, I love that. Take action. Start with something. Okay, uh, before we take a little bit deeper, dive into levers, tell people how they can connect with you because I know they’re already interested in picking your brain.

Amos Schwartzfarb: Yeah. Uh, absolutely. Um, the probably the two best ways you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Um, I do respond to every single message? Um, even maybe not all the ones that are clearly spam, but everyone that is personal I respond to, um, not always super fast. And then my email, which I’m actually probably slower than LinkedIn, I’m embarrassed to say is Amos at Retro Coscom. So it’s almos at retro cause are are you?

Trisha Stetzel: Okay. And I know they’re guessing how to spell your last name, so I’ll do it for you. Let me try. Okay. S c h w a r t z f a r b. How about that? Yeah. Okay.

Amos Schwartzfarb: So it took me like 16 years so that was great.

Trisha Stetzel: There’s not enough room. There’s not enough room for that. I’m just saying especially as a professional athlete, if you ever wore a jersey with your name on the back of it, it was a problem.

Amos Schwartzfarb: Yeah. My my daughter’s jersey. I think it like, curves around and goes.

Trisha Stetzel: It goes down one sleeve. Who knew? Okay, so back to levers. I would love to, if you don’t mind sharing, uh, share a little bit more about the framework that you talked about and something that might really stand out and a reason why people should go and grab your book.

Amos Schwartzfarb: Yeah. Um, I think what I can do and stop me if this is too much, but I think in a minute to a minute and a half, I can describe the whole book. Yeah. Um, so firstly, it’s a book you do, not a book you read. So if you’re interested in checking it out, you’ll read through it. You’ll read through it really fast, but really quickly you’ll figure out like, oh, I need to actually do work. It’s not like, this isn’t, not like, oh, I’m going to philosophize about cool stuff. And you’re like, yeah, it’s a great philosophy. No, we’re actually giving you tangible things to do. So the book has five chapters. There’s actually six frameworks. The sixth one is in the appendix, where when we do a second edition, we’re actually going to move it up front. And it’s really what everything starts with, which is you have to have a vision and a mission. It doesn’t really matter what it is, and it doesn’t have to be articulated well, but you have to know where you’re going. So I want to make baskets. Great, I want to I want to bring baskets to the world. Cool. But you have to have that to start. Um, and then it’s a series of five frameworks that are actually all data oriented. The first one is a framework to help you start to identify not just who you think your customer is or will be or should be, but who your customer actually actually is.

Amos Schwartzfarb: How do you figure out who it actually is, not just who you think it is with data. So the first framework helps you do that. The second framework helps you figure out your business model. So it’s, you know, you have an idea of how you’re going to make money. That’s great. And literally we have you write that out as a math equation. This is how I think I’m going to make money. The important work for this framework is what comes down. And I say underneath, and it’s a visual thing for me. What is all the work that has to go in to prove that your math equation is right? And that could be anything from your your marketing, but like getting very, very granular to your sales, to your finance team to anyone who you might be hiring. What are all the things that have to happen? What do you have to build? What do you have to buy? Do you need money? Can you do it with a pickax? Doesn’t matter. What are all the things? And then the that takes us to the third framework. So if you think about the first two frameworks, we’re basically creating a massive list of things to do and things we need to learn.

Amos Schwartzfarb: The third framework, which is we call validating assumptions. It actually helps you take all of that and anything you may have missed and prioritize it. And what we like to say is you can never do more than 2 or 3 things well at a time. So we the framework gives you ultimately a matrix at the end, which is things that are high priority, low priority, low priority. We don’t even talk about until it becomes high priority someday in the future. And then high priority breaks out into validated and unvalidated validated. You’re going, you’re building. You’re doing it Unvalidated you don’t get the you don’t earn the right to go do it until you learn whether or not you’ve earned the right to do it. So what do you have to learn in order to move it and make it validated so that you can go do it? The fourth framework this gets into like the metrics part of it, which is okay, now that we’re doing things, how do we measure what we’re doing and whether or not we’re heading in the right direction or not. And an important point here is doesn’t matter if you’re going in the right direction or not, it’s a failure if you don’t know why it’s a success. If you do know why you cannot hit your numbers, but you know why you have succeeded. Because now, if you know why, you know what you can do.

Amos Schwartzfarb: If you don’t know why you’re. If you don’t know why you’re crushing your numbers, then when your numbers start to worsen, you won’t know why. So it’s a framework tied into all this. How do I measure what I’m what I’m actually doing and what matters? And then the final framework and this is really like it’s scary for some people. And to me it’s the most exciting has become the most exciting part, which is how do you take all this and how do you build a financial model. And I’ll use a different word and I use these interchangeably. How do you create a plan that’s based off of all the data you have, that tells you what you’re supposed to do on a day to day, week to week, and month to month basis? That is something that you can measure what you’re doing and how you’re doing against it. So if you say, hey, I’m going to do these ten things and it should result in X, Y, and Z. Well, I only did eight of those ten things and it resulted in x and y. I didn’t do the last two things because of time, money, resource, whatever. I learned something cool. I didn’t hit all my goals. I think I understand why, how do I keep going forward? That’s it. That’s the book.

Trisha Stetzel: That’s it. That’s the whole book. Okay. But we still but people still want to buy it. I’m just saying. All right, uh, all the usual places they can find.

Amos Schwartzfarb: Yeah, yeah. Uh, any place. Yeah. I don’t think you can get it in bookstores anymore. Maybe some random ones have it, but. Amazon. Yeah. Amazon. And we’ve done something. This is very intentional. And I like to say this. It may maybe it’s self-soothing, but, um, we’re not trying to make money on this, but you don’t make money on a business book anyway. But if you want the audible copy, it’s like a $0.99 or $1.99, like it was the least that we can charge. And the book is like, again, the paper copy is the least that we were able to charge just to recoup some costs. But like we have kept it super, super inexpensive. Our goal is to just empower as many entrepreneurs as possible to control their own destiny.

Trisha Stetzel: So it sounds like you might be using this tool with the businesses that you decide to maybe invest in or be a part of.

Amos Schwartzfarb: Absolutely.
Trisha Stetzel: Which is amazing. It’s such a great start. Right? Uh, do you know where you’re at? Do you know where you want to go? And how are you going to, you know, get through the, the, uh, the gaps or what are the consequences of not getting where you want to go? So, um, I’m curious because you’ve done this so many times and you’ve built a tool for people who want to start a business. Um, what patterns do you consistently see with founders who win?

Amos Schwartzfarb: Um. The probably the number one pattern I see is that they know their metrics inside and out, period.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay. Comes back to the.

Amos Schwartzfarb: Numbers and the and the and the thing is an interesting thing about win though, because win comes in a lot of forms like you can you might be able to create like a relatively successful business but have no idea what’s going on. So you’re stressed out all the time. Someone might call that a win. I would not, because I don’t want to be stressed out. I I’m doing this because I love it. It should bring me joy, not stress. And I do think that the command of your numbers will allow you to live a less stressful existence.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, so I’m going to go to the whole I don’t even I hate calling it work life balance. Can we just call it integration or whatever language you want to use around that? So not being stressed out in your business and being able to spend time with your family or go rock climbing or cook or whatever it is that you want to do, how do you get there? How do you get to have that work life balance or integration?

Amos Schwartzfarb: Yeah. Um, gosh, if I knew how to really, really answer this, I think I’d probably solve a lot of the world’s problems. It’s something that I continue to work on. I think that it’s driven people and, you know, and entrepreneurs, by definition, are driven people. Um, and, and most really, you know, true entrepreneurs that I know also, they have their own version of focus or tunnel vision or whatever you want to call it. You find yourself in something. Um, it’s really, really hard. And, and so there’s like, you know, sort of like basic things you can do on the surface, like, how do I what how do I identify what my boundaries are and how do I stick to my boundaries. Like, yeah, those are all important tactical things to do. I think there’s a almost always a much deeper root cause of why we are driving ourselves in this way. And this is the work that I like, the exploration I’m doing on myself. Like what allows me to say, how do I define what’s most important to me? 2 or 3 things, right? This is. I’m not talking about me and my life. What are the 2 or 3 most important things in my life? And I can tell you what they are. And any time that I start to feel myself get stressed or tensed up because it will happen, because I’m driven and I find myself focused and in tunnel vision, I step back and say, what am I doing that doesn’t support those three things? What can I take off my plate or what? Or is there an imbalance in how this is happening? And how can I look at that over a longer period of time? And how can I create something that is going to intuitively feel more balanced?

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. So we often talk about this idea of moving somewhat away from the business so that we can do the things that we love in life. But what if we flipped it and we talked about the things that we do in life that actually have shaped your leadership style? So you’re really into, um, Sports, adventure racing, rock climbing, probably a few other things that I don’t even know about. How have those extreme sports shaped your leadership style?

Amos Schwartzfarb: Um, I think it’s done a couple of things. One, particularly at times when I’m doing more than one thing that requires a tremendous amount of focus and attention. It has. It has taught me how to really, like, say no. How to not do the things that don’t support those things and and lead by example. Right. So being comfortable when you have an employee who is prioritizing the most important things and and and modeling for them, let’s focus on the most important things. Don’t just do busywork. Don’t just keep yourself reading emails because you’ve got a full inbox. Like, if that’s not serving what you’re actually supposed to do to move your business forward, let’s find our time to do that. So I think the modeling of that behavior is that of understanding where to focus and where to not spend your time is one. Um, and I think, uh, you know, I think it probably goes back to modeling also, which is, um, making sure that, um, how do I say this? Like. I think that I’ll say it like this. I don’t agree anymore. And there was a time that I fell into this culture, but I do not agree with the culture that we should be working 15 to 20 hours a day, seven days a week to run our business. I don’t think if you look at any other system in the world, engines like it doesn’t matter. You will see that everything has a point where it will max out and break because everything has a a shelf life of some amount. And so if I think about what it takes to build a business, and maybe this is like a thing that as a society we’ve kind of ruined a little bit, it really takes ten plus years to build a meaningful business.

Amos Schwartzfarb: And I believe lots of people think that, um, well, if I’m not, if this isn’t up and running in 18 months or two years, like I’m a failure or like I can’t, I can’t make it work because I don’t have the the, you know, the money or the resources or whatever it might be. Maybe that’s true. Um, but I think that the idea that something meaningful takes a long time. And if I want to be able to stay excited about it for a long time, I have to find the right. I’ll use the word balance, the right balance, the right amount of effort. Like think of it like a marathon runner or ultramarathon runner. They’re not running a five minute mile pace, right? And like, this is a cliche, but they’re finding the pace right below their threshold, their heart rate threshold where they can go for the longest amount of time. And I think that’s what it takes to build a business. And, and and it’s okay if you redline a little bit like and actually I would say I learned that way. Like I have to cross a barrier and then say, oops, that was too much and pull back so I know where the barrier is. That’s okay. Like it’s going to happen for all of us, but like but but but recognize that you can’t actually nobody no matter how you might be able to go for 2 or 3 years really really hard. Everyone is going to burn out at some point if they don’t have the right support around them, and they’re throttling too high.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, so we’re at the back end of our time. And I have one last question and it has to do with support. Thanks for bringing that up. How important is it to surround yourself with the right people as you’re going through this journey?

Amos Schwartzfarb: Oh it’s everything. It’s absolutely everything. I, I have known a very, very small amount of entrepreneurs. And when I and when I say this, I don’t mean tech entrepreneurs. I mean people that, you know, they own a store on Main Street or something that have done it themselves and had a bunch of people that they tell what to do versus. Help them be better. And my judgment of them is always the same. You’re not seeing your potential because you can’t get out of your own way. So I am making a judgment there, but it’s just the pattern recognition that I’ve seen over and over again. I think having the right people around you is is the most important thing. And you know what I tell all the CEOs that I work with. So, so the work that I do with my CEOs, one of the things that I do with all of them is I help them mature alongside their businesses. So if they if I come in when they’re in a stage company and they’re, you know, three, four years later, they’re, you know, seed stage company and they’re making, you know, tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, like the business changes and their role changes. When you start a business, you are doing everything, and little by little you’re doing less and less. The, the, the CEO’s job is not to actually do the work anymore. It’s to understand the work and have people that are way better than you, helping you strategize and helping you execute and helping guide you. Right? So I think like finding the right people around you to help guide you is so, so and I don’t none of the most successful people that I know in the world, every one of them and myself included, have coaches, all of them. And this whole stigma that you have to do it alone. I mean, from, you know, I’m a Gen Xer, so I like I get it, I was there at one point like, yeah, like get a coach, get great people around you. Um, yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay. This has been so much fun. I definitely you definitely have to come back because there’s so many other things that I want to dig deeper on. This was absolutely amazing. Thank you for taking the time. I really appreciate it. Amos. So tell us one more time how folks can connect with you.

Amos Schwartzfarb: Yeah. Um, so LinkedIn, Amos Schwartz but LinkedIn, or you can email me at Amos at com at C a.com.

Trisha Stetzel: Perfect. Uh, as always, you guys, I will put those links in the show notes. So if you happen to be sitting in front of your computer and you just want to point and click, you can do that. Please do not do that from your car. I beg of you, Amos. Thank you again. I appreciate your time today. I look forward to our next conversation.

Amos Schwartzfarb: Likewise. Me too. Thanks for having me.

Trisha Stetzel: All right, guys, that’s all the time we have for today. If you found value in this conversation that Amos and I had, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, a veteran or a Houston leader ready to grow. And 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.

Dr. Kevin Dyson: From NFL Legend to Transformational Educator

February 2, 2026 by angishields

Houston Business Radio

Dr. Kevin Dyson: From NFL Legend to Transformational Educator

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Dr. Kevin Dyson is the Founder of the Music City Academy and a former NFL wide receiver best known for the iconic “Music City Miracle” and being “One Yard Short” in Super Bowl XXXIV.

After his football career, he transitioned into education, serving nearly 20 years in public education, including as Principal of Centennial High School and Grassland Middle School in Tennessee.

Dr. Dyson holds multiple advanced degrees, including a Doctorate in Educational Leadership, and is passionate about mentoring youth and developing future leaders. He is also the author of Qualified, So I Am Justified: Redefining Success, and continues to impact communities as a speaker, leadership consultant, and advocate for student success.

Today, he blends his experiences as an athlete, educator, and executive to inspire individuals to overcome challenges, lead with purpose, and pursue their own definitions of success.

Connect with Dr. Dyson on LinkedIn.

This 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. So excited to introduce my next guest. Today’s guest is Dr. Kevin Dyson, a former first round NFL draft pick, educator, author, and now CEO of Music City Academy in Franklin, Tennessee. You may know Kevin from some of his most iconic moments in NFL history the Music City Miracle and the famous one yard shot play in Super Bowl 34. But what many don’t know is after the NFL, Kevin spent nearly two decades transforming schools as a teacher, a coach, and later as a principal at both Grassland Middle School and Centennial High School. Guided by his values instilled by his single mother, Kevin earned two master’s degrees and a Dr.ate in educational leadership, and today he leads Music City Academy with a mission to grow strong students and even stronger leaders. He is also the author of Qualified So I Am Justified, a leadership consultant and an in-demand keynote speaker known for turning his life experiences into lessons on resilience, purpose and character. Please welcome Dr. Kevin Dyson, educator, leader, and a man redefining what it means to succeed on and off the field. Dr. K.D., welcome to the show.

Dr. Kevin Dyson: Well thank you. You know, I gotta have you do all my intros, I appreciate that.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that I spend a lot of time on these to make, you know, make it feel good, because we don’t often introduce ourselves with that kind of, um, umph, if you will. Right. So you’re welcome. And I’m so glad you’re on the show today. Um, how about you start with just telling us a little bit more about you, Kevin?

Dr. Kevin Dyson: Well, I’ll start with, as you mentioned, someone in the intro, um, I’m the oldest of of a single mother. Um, and part of that, her trying to keep us in line was, uh, sports. So sports had always been an important part of my life. But she had one rule, and it was to maintain a 3.0 or be average or better. And, you know, like most kids and I’m the oldest, I challenge that. And she took sport away from me. It was basketball, which was my first love was basketball. And those are the kind of values that my mom was trying to instill. I think she wanted us to understand that yes, it’s okay to have dreams, but you can’t skip steps to attain those dreams. And I jokingly talk about, you know, this is in the 80s when this conversation was happening and this was pre-Internet, and my mom literally came home one day after the almost like day after two days after I professed that I was going to the NBA to buy her house, she came home with the statistical probability of me making it in all the major professional sports in the US. And you know those numbers like one and 2,000,001. It’s crazy, right? It’s like less than 1%. And I look back on that now and I recognize it wasn’t to, you know, destroy my dreams of making the professional NBA make the professional basketball. It was more to give me a sense of priority and something to attain without skipping the necessary steps.

Dr. Kevin Dyson: And so that’s always kind of been in me. Uh, like you said, I played in NFL. I moved to education, um, kind of really like a lot of players have retired from the NFL trying to figure out what your next identity. What’s that transition for so much of your life? Sport dictated your next move, and I just happened to fall in love with learning, which I never had before as a kid. I loved how I was able to have an impact on kids, even if it was a short term, but some I found it’s been long term from now. I’ve been in education a little over 20 years that you talked about, and so that impact is far greater than anything you can really do in life when you have those intimate conversations that you have with with young people along the way and you hope they listen. Uh, even your own kids. Right. And so that is, you know, why I have lasted as long as I have in education and moved up the ranks that way. It just became somewhat of my calling, if you will. And now I’m embarking on a new challenge where I want to expand that that that brand, if you will, that influence that inspiration. By starting my own charter school out in the greater Nashville area.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, I love that. So it started with mom pushing you in the right direction and telling you that you had to have good grades, and it really I see that throughout all of the all of the things that I talked about in introducing you, but even through the conversations that we’ve had. So thank you for learning those lessons. Thank you, mom, for teaching those lessons and then bringing those back to the students. So, um, what do you think is one leadership lesson from football that translates perfectly to the classroom or even the boardroom?

Dr. Kevin Dyson: Wow, that’s pretty profound. I love that one. You know, what’s interesting is a lot of principals, especially in the county I was at or former athletes, and I think that’s not by chance. I think there’s a deliberate, um, action for that. I think because of sport, the ability to collaborate, the ability to stick through the ability to meet goals. But I also think there’s a toughness that comes through being in hard times of sports, a resilience. And I think you have to have a set of resilience. You have to have a sense of resiliency. Um, in education and I mean, uh, in my time that I have been in education, I’ve been through, what, two pandemics, um, been through multiple not me physically been through a school shooting, but across the country and that climate in the world and how that is and that. And when you see those things, that trickles on down to everybody, not just the people that are affected by it. And we were affected by it here, like 15, 20 minutes from the school I was working at, at a at a school that was affected by that a year or two ago. And so all those things, when you’re having to rally people around, calm people down, be a shoulder, be a support, but also lead through those. I think there’s a level that you learn from sport, not how to not to get rattled, not to waver, to be a steady presence and lead.

Dr. Kevin Dyson: I think that’s why a lot of a lot of leaders or a lot of superintendents, like for their leaders and buildings to be at former athletes. Um, and I think that’s one of the things I’ve been most appreciative of is opportunity to express some of that leadership skills that, you know, you used as the captain of the football team, the captain of the soccer team, basketball, whatever it might have been. And, you know, there’s a level of responsibility comes to that because the guys that are not captains are watching you and it’s similar. You know, you know, when you’re leading a school or leading a corporation, the people that are you’re in care of are responsible for your subordinates, whatever. They’re watching you. And um, and I’ve, I’ve always kind of kept that in mind and taken it to heart. And if they’re watching me, I want to be able to say I’m willing to do whatever you’re doing. I’ll get my my hands just as dirty as you if I have to. So that’s what I think. I have learned the most from my time as an athlete to my time as an educator, and more specifically as a as a leader of a school, just just having a sense of resiliency and stick to itiveness and just keep pushing through.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, I love that. So tell me what your students have taught you about leadership?

Dr. Kevin Dyson: Patience. No, seriously. You know, um, you have your own kids and there’s a level of patience that you, you almost have with them because they’re yours, right? Um, but there’s a different level of patience when people are raised in different homes and they come collectively together and you’re trying to come to a common goal or common goals, whether it be academic achievement, test scores, attendance, whatever those goals are. And you’re trying to mold young minds and things of that nature. Uh, you have to be patient, I think. You have to understand and get a level of understanding from, uh, just how people are. Uh, not everybody sees the world as you see it. You gotta recognize that and try to see the world from other people’s lenses. And I think that’s been one of my greatest assets as a leader, is being able to be compassionate to all people. Um, and appreciate all walks of life and just being able to be a soundboard, listen and just pay attention. And when you pay attention, you be able to have a sense of patience to work through some things. You can change the narrative of whatever that is bad, good or indifferent. You can kind of change that narrative if you just listen and be patient sometimes. Uh, sometimes I can be too patient. Sometimes I can be too laid back, and I understand that about myself. Um, but I am a I try to see things from all angles and not rush to Two decisions. Not rush to making a move. Drastic move just to make it. Um, and I sometimes be perceived as, um, laid back, but, um, man, just dealing when you’re dealing with teenagers because hormones changing, girlfriend changing, social media changing, you just got to learn to be patient and work through those things.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. So much has changed since the 80s, hasn’t it?

Dr. Kevin Dyson: Just a little bit.

Trisha Stetzel: So much. So much. Well, and this this conversation we’re having really speaks to not just your leadership, but also your purpose and your character. And I think it, uh, really rounds out who you are as a leader. So can we talk a little bit about your book qualified? So I am justified. You redefine success. Um, how has your own definition of success changed across your life? Chapters.

Dr. Kevin Dyson: Man, that’s that’s kind of what the book was alluding to. Um, when I first retired from the NFL. I knew doors would open for me. Of course I wanted to coach, but when I settled in on secondary education and I was coaching from a high school perspective, I knew doors would open for me. But I also knew I wanted them to remain open. So I wanted to go back to school and get qualified because I didn’t know what I was doing other than I knew football. I didn’t know education. And so I was justified for the opportunities that came. And that’s kind of how the book kind of started. And within that, though, I’ve learned a lot of things about myself from an emotional standpoint. I, you know, I think I cared a lot about a lot more about what people, how they viewed me. Um, if I was disappointing people, you know, I was the first receiver taken in the 98 NFL draft ahead of one of the greatest to ever do it, Randy Moss. And so much of my identity was from myself, other people. I believe people thought this. And whether they did or didn’t, I believe to be true. Um, that I was always chasing his shadows. And then I have injuries and I could never play catch up. I could never catch his shadow because I’d have a setback after setback after setback that eventually led to me retiring early, and I had a hard time dealing with that internally.

Dr. Kevin Dyson: Externally, people didn’t know, but internally I felt like I’ve let a lot of people down. I let my teammates down, let my family down, even myself, because I didn’t amass the career that I had envisioned for myself. And I had some moments, as you mentioned, with the miracle and the one yard short and and things of that nature. But I also wanted that extensive career to, to validate me being picked 16th overall. And so through that in the book, it just kind of transformed to I had to reinvent myself. I had to humble myself and start, start fresh, find a new passion and then delve into that and get better at whatever that is. And that’s what I hope I’ve been able to do. I think I still got lots to learn about leadership, and sometimes I have the crutch of good people around me to support me, and I leverage that. And I can do better with being more assertive on my end. But, um, but I’ve I’ve learned through this process, though, man, reinvention is hard. There’s a process. And if you’re not willing, if you don’t take the time to allow it to, to develop and and transpire like it’s supposed to, a lot of guys lose that sense of purpose real, real fast.

Dr. Kevin Dyson: And that’s when a lot of things happen. And I’ve been pretty fortunate that I found a new passion. I found a new purpose. And and, um, it’s continued to grow and it’s leading me down this journey of starting my own school, um, 50 years old. And if you told my 30 year old self when I retired from NFL that when I turned 50, I’d be here starting my own school, I’d have thought she was crazy. I really thought I was just going to teach and coach and maybe be an athletic director for for 20 years and retire and and just go golf or and do random things here and there like I do. You know, I do radio, I do TV, I’ve done a lot of different things, uh, speak and all that stuff. And, uh, but now I’m here and I’ve had the opportunity to lead some schools and, and of course, with the people around me, I’ve had some success doing so. And now I’m here and I’m taking this new challenge. And I’m hoping the lessons that I’ve learned over the last 20 years longer than that, really in the last 50 years of life, um, and being able to and implement some of that into school and hopefully this school lasts for years even beyond me. So we’ll see.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. Okay, so before we dive into I want to talk about Music City Academy. Uh, but I know people are already interested in connecting with you, Kevin. So what is the best way for folks to find you?

Dr. Kevin Dyson: Oh, well, so social media wise, Katie Dyson 87. That’s usually my tagline on everything. Um, of course I’m on LinkedIn. You can just search for my name there. And, um, as far as, like, this website’s, of course, Kevin Dyson. Com, that’s my personal website. Um, got the book and things like that and a little bit bio, a little bit more about me. And then, um, Music City Academy, and that’s the course. I love people to kind of go in there and see what we have going on. We’re still building it up a little better, but because we’re still new, um, and we haven’t even started yet, but, uh, people want to go there and find ways to support the school, be a part of the process. Reach out to me that you can go to either my website, Kevin Dyson. Com, or Music City Academy.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. Okay, so what vision drove you to build the Academy and what makes the model of Music City Academy different?

Dr. Kevin Dyson: Wow. Uh, well, what drove me, um, was some stuff we’ve been talking about. You know, I’ve been a principal. I’ve been in education 20 years. And what I’ve seen in education is a lot of good people that want to do right by kids want to teach kids and they have passions for the content and the things that they are teaching. But a lot of times we are set by a set of rules or bylaws. Be in public settings, right that you have to do. You have to pass by. So you you almost become almost become cookie cutter in a way, because there’s certain things that you have to do every year. So the inspiration was, I wanted to do something, have an opportunity to do something a little different. And I wanted to take what I, for me, my personality would would have been the type of school that would engage me. You know, I did decent enough in school. I had like I said, my mom made sure we maintained a three or better. I, I was just just under 3.4 GPA and I and I say that because I was pretty good. Yeah. But really I didn’t I didn’t extend myself, you know, I played the, the game where if I had chemistry, I made sure I had home EQ or or art or something to balance it out, you know, to make sure I was going to get my B average. And I didn’t do any advanced classes because I just didn’t I didn’t think I was smart.

Dr. Kevin Dyson: And I just when I realized when you talk about intelligence, a lot of it is just stick to itiveness and motivation. And I learned that, of course, in my 40s. But so that was kind of what led to this journey of this school. And I’m taking a unifying power of sports and helping young student athletes find their academic passions to the lens of sports and turn that to excellence. And aside for that, I love competition. You want to build sports teams, and you want to build schools that kids want to come play ball with, but also get an academic experience that that’s a little bit different. And within the school, we’re going to emphasize the the totality of a person, the holistic view of a kid, the mind, body and soul if you will, and have resources within the school to make sure we’re matching that. Start today with some intentional time for kids to to really, uh, get ready for school, whether it be exercise, their advisory, their team, period, um, things of that nature to really just set them up for success in the day. You know, research says if you either meditate, exercise or take time like read or something to yourself before starting your day, you’re more likely to be productive. And I’ve kind of taken that sense and that model. And it’s true. If you if you probably do it yourself, you get up, you go for your run, you read your book, you have your morning coffee, you go to the gym.

Dr. Kevin Dyson: It sets you up for success for the rest of your day. And if you don’t do those things you recognize, you’re like, why am I sluggish today? What’s going on? It’s because your your routine is off. You didn’t get up and get your your blood flowing. Get your mind right. And so I’m just taking that that research and turning it into a purpose in education, um, and trying to do something a little bit different, encouraging teachers to use movement, um, to not just sit desk you encouraging them to use movement as part of their instruction. Uh, so kids are not just sitting and getting, I think, kinesthetically and and things of that nature. Uh, we all learn a little bit different. Um, I have learned this over the years of myself. I if I’d have known this when I was younger, I might have helped me out. But I’m not necessarily a sit and get guy. I could do it more now that I’m older and I recognize it. Um, but as a kid, I probably would have done a lot better had they incorporate movement. That’s football, basketball, soccer, baseball. What other sports have I done in my life? When you learn plays or things like what are you doing? You’re moving and and it’s easy for me even now, I can learn plays instantly because I know the movement of it.

Dr. Kevin Dyson: And so that’s the gist of it. It’s just you just really taking the holistic view of a kid using unified power of sports and turn it into a purpose in it. And oh, and I guess I should mention failed to mention we’re talking about our career pathways. Career technical education will make some partnerships and maybe do some dual enrollment, some internships, some job shouting, job shadowing in the world of sports with Nashville has become kind of a Mecca for some professional sports teams. Plenty of colleges and universities, let alone the the rec leagues, opportunities for kids to delve into different professions within the world of sports. As a kid, the only thing I knew was professional basketball or professional sports. But professional basketball was the dream. I didn’t know the the wide variety of opportunities in the world of sports that I delve into now do sports talk radio. I’ve done TV analysis. I understand some of the things behind the scenes from camera work, journalism, uh, sports marketing, uh, sports, uh. Uh. Uh, what’s it called? Uh, social media marketing. There’s so many opportunities for kids to be in the world of sports. If you have a passion for sports, uh, that you can leverage that into a life post-secondary. And that’s kind of why I chose to go this path. It’s just, I think, to do something different from the typical, um, educational sense and provide what I’m passionate about, which is now learning and, of course, sports.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. Oh my gosh, you’re like turning the world of education upside down. I love this I think it’s fantastic what you’re bringing. Um, you mentioned that you’d been on a trip and you’re building relationships before we started our conversation today. And I’d love to know what relationships are you trying to build? Are there people out there listening right now, or people that they know that you need to connect with? Who are they?

Dr. Kevin Dyson: Uh, anybody that has a heart for kids, that’s on the broad sense, right? I think if you want to narrow it down, um, just if you very hard for kids. And you want to see them succeed. Um, in in the world of and I’m gonna say sports, but just in the world in general, I think I would love to connect with you, uh, we, you know, to do with your vision, it obviously it costs money. And and there’s going to be a time and place once we get the, the, the land or the building and things like that, you want to build it out, provide, uh, an awesome experience for kids from hopefully be open August 2027 and beyond. Um, and I would love to connect with people. If you have a heart for kids, if your heart for sports and or a combination of both or, you know, and what I found just talking to families is, uh, I had a young I had a lady tell me she’s, um, probably in her 50s. And she said, man, sports saved her son’s life. And and I can say something similar, you know, being, like I said, raised in a home, just my mother and seeing her grind and doing all those things. Sport was what kept me around. My motivation was to be able to provide for her, provide a home for her, and lessen her burden. And sport has always been a catalyst, and there’s so many lessons that you get from the world of sports and competition that that can be used later in life. And so anybody that just has a heart for kids, heart for sport, and want to see something come together between the two and look, reach out to me, like you said, for my websites and and things of that nature. I’d love to talk and connect so much.

Trisha Stetzel: Reinvention. I think we’ve we’ve had so much shift and change from the beginning of the story to where you are today. Today, um, how do you and I know you’ve written about that, right? The reinvention. You talked a little bit about it earlier, but how are you personally navigating all of this reinvention for yourself? And what would you suggest to others who feel like they’re ready for that?

Dr. Kevin Dyson: Wow. So I did a keynote, um, a year ago. And I was just talking about not being afraid to chase your dreams or chase whatever’s aching at you and letting go of. And it was, you know, acronym. And it was lead with grit. And the L is letting go of those things that that stop you from progressing to your destiny. And so many of us, we are scared to make that move because we’re comfortable or we don’t know what the what ifs are, the challenges along the way. And some of us are getting older. We don’t want to embark on those new challenges, even though our passion leads us in different ways. And so I think one of the whole things is one, you humbling yourself. And I think that’s first you gotta if you want to start over, you gotta hump yourself and say, I’m gonna start over and it’s not going to be easy. Two is let go of those things that stop you from even trying to, which is like letting go of the fear, letting go of the the naysayers, the the negative talk, the the the fear you have on yourself to go ahead and pursue your your purpose. You know, one of the things taglines I have on some of the shirts that I have on my website is you have you have the power to pursue your purpose.

Dr. Kevin Dyson: And I think we forget that sometimes because we let outside influences, you know, distract us. They, they, they give us alternate routes and, and things like that. And we forget. We we control our own destiny. We control our own, our own purpose. And you just have to go out there and realize you have the power to change it and and do it. And it starts with humbling yourself and realize you got a long ways to learn. And, you know, I go back to my first time in a classroom, my first time teaching I would have never thought I’d be in at this point, would have two master’s degrees or Dr.ate, and let alone starting my own school. And I had to reinvent myself. And I’ve had former teammates and friends that wanted to get something a little more substantial or getting the coaching. And one of the things that they asked me, what did I do? You know, how did I get where I was at? And simply put, man, I humble myself and started over. I had to start somewhere. I mean, and I didn’t know necessarily what my passions were back then, you know, I made it into fail and that was my passion, was sport. I wanted to play in the professional league was basketball, but football. And when you’re done. I was 30 years old and it’s like, okay, now what? And traditionally most guys, because you’ve been playing ball, you go into coaching.

Dr. Kevin Dyson: And I like most I sort that out. But it wasn’t in the plans for me. And when I got in, I started teaching kids and coaching kids. I was like, I kind of like this now there are some things I wish I would have done as a player set myself up for when I did retire from an entrepreneurial standpoint. But even still, those are not necessarily my passions. Those are kind of hobbies that help you create passive income and all the different things that come with that. It’s not necessarily my passion, though. Um, so having something that gives you a purpose and passion that’s crucial for anybody with reinvention. We all want to have a sense of purpose. And I think that is your ultimate answer is yeah. Humbling yourself. But does it give you a sense of purpose? Is what you’re doing give you a sense of purpose? If it doesn’t, then you’re not doing what you’re called to do. And I think that’s the ultimate dream is why we’re here on earth, to have our sense of purpose. And I know a lot of times money rules the world. And we we equate our purpose with how much we make. But that’s not always the case.

Speaker4: Mhm. That’s beautiful.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you. Passion and purpose and I, I well I have one more question for you. Absolutely. Finish up today. How important is it for all of us to surround ourselves with the right people, as students, as leaders, as grown ups? How important is that man?

Dr. Kevin Dyson: You you you’re speaking my brain lesson. I one thing I have learned on this side of my journey is I and I mentioned it earlier, I didn’t leverage those that network those relationships as a as a college kid, meeting up boosters and people that shook and made the world go round. Right? Um, from a college perspective, all the alumni, things like that. And I think one thing I’ve learned as an educator is building on relationships inside the building and outside the building are crucial. You need you need partners. You know, um, one thing about me, I’ve been humble enough to know I’m not the smartest man in the room, and I never profess to be. And I’ve been fortunate enough to surround myself with people that are intelligent in other ways. You know, I have my skill sets, right? But I always compliment my my skill deficit with those that have those skills. And I think sometimes, again, it goes back to being humbled and knowing yourself. I think a lot of times people feel like I have to have all the answers as opposed to leveraging the network, leveraging your relationships with people, and utilizing their skill sets to compliment yours or your weaknesses or your your shortcomings and and working on those to become strengths, but leveraging those that are good at those sort of things. Like, I know people that are really good in organization and communication, like leverage that there’s people that are that are really smart in, in budgeting and finance and operations leverage that, you know, and just, you know, your skill sets and what your value is and bring that to the table.

Dr. Kevin Dyson: And, you know, if I can tell my younger self and what I try to tell my own kids and the kids that come in contact with man is if you make a contact, leverage that. And I still struggle with it. I need to get better at it, but send somebody a kind email, send them a Christmas card or a note. Um, make sure you stay in contact people. You just never know where that conversation is going to lead you to. And I’ve had people before come to me say, coach, and this is when I was coach. And so, you know, I’m Dr. Dyson, but, uh, coach, I did what you said. I sent an email that man, and they. The guy remembered that when I when I came in for internship. And now he’s working for this company. And so it’s just that simple because he remembered this kid reach back out to him with a purpose. And he was like, I appreciate that because so many kids come and go and don’t even appreciate the time they had. Now he leveraged it and he has a job now. So that’s that’s the ultimate thing, man. It’s just leverage your relationships and and network and just be genuinely kind to people.

Trisha Stetzel: Beautiful. Thank you so much for your time today Kevin. This has been such a wonderful conversation. Uh, throw out your contact information one more time where people can connect with you.

Dr. Kevin Dyson: Absolutely. Um, Katie Dyson, 87. That’s my tag on social media. And you can find me at Kevin Dyson. Com simply put. And then music city. Music city miracle. Music city academy. I’m so used to call it Mister Miracle. That’s it. Music City Academy plays off of that, of course, but it’s actually Music City Academy, so you can catch. You can find me there. Got it.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you so much, Dr.. Kevin Dyson, CEO of Music City Academy. It’s been my pleasure to host you today.

Dr. Kevin Dyson: Thank you so much. I appreciate your time.

Trisha Stetzel: All right, guys, that’s all the time we have for today. If you found value in this conversation that Kevin and I had, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, veteran or Houston leader ready to grow. And as always, please rate, review and follow the show. 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.

BRX Pro Tip: Creating Urgency

February 2, 2026 by angishields

BRX Pro Tip: Evening or Morning Person

January 30, 2026 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Evening or Morning Person

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BRX Pro Tip: Evening or Morning Person

Stone Payton: And we’re back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, being an evening person, a morning person, talk about that a little bit.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. A lot of people, especially in the New Year, they’re like, “Okay, I’m going to set my alarm super early and be more productive in the morning.” But a lot of times these people are evening people, and they just are more productive in the evening. And it’s not that simple to just turn yourself into a morning person.

Lee Kantor: But a way to become more of a morning person if you are an evening person is to kind of use the energy you have as an evening person to make your mornings just work better. And a way to do that is to kind of preload tomorrow’s momentum tonight. So use your natural late-day energy to prep for the morning. Maybe set out your workout clothes or pre-make your coffee, or outline what your first task that you want to accomplish in the morning. And decide what that one thing is you’re going to knock out right when you wake up so the morning version of you just has to press play and begin, and they don’t have to kind of make any new decisions, that you’ve already set your morning person up for success by prepping the night before.

Lee Kantor: So, the key is to get as much done while you’re at your peak energy, so that you just have to kind of follow the plan when you have less energy if you’re not really a morning person. And this is going to kick off your mornings as productively as possible, and it works because you set yourself up for success the night before.