Booking a movie ticket used to mean opening a browser, clicking through tabs, and hoping checkout didn’t break. Now a voice agent can do it while you grab your coat. We explore what that shift means for design, marketing, and growth: when customers are people and robots, how do we build flows that serve both without losing our human edge? Nick Cawthon joins to map the journey from drafting tables to 640x480 “new media,” then to today’s LLM-driven search and autonomous browsers. We unpack why...
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Booking a movie ticket used to mean opening a browser, clicking through tabs, and hoping checkout didn’t break. Now a voice agent can do it while you grab your coat. We explore what that shift means for design, marketing, and growth: when customers are people and robots, how do we build flows that serve both without losing our human edge? Nick Cawthon joins to map the journey from drafting tables to 640x480 “new media,” then to today’s LLM-driven search and autonomous browsers. We unpack why...
Booking a movie ticket used to mean opening a browser, clicking through tabs, and hoping checkout didn’t break. Now a voice agent can do it while you grab your coat. We explore what that shift means for design, marketing, and growth: when customers are people and robots, how do we build flows that serve both without losing our human edge? Nick Cawthon joins to map the journey from drafting tables to 640x480 “new media,” then to today’s LLM-driven search and autonomous browsers. We unpack why...
Start with a guitar, pass through psychology, and land inside enterprise cloud and AI—our conversation with Andy Sitison maps a creative life that never had to choose between art and engineering. We dig into how narrative data and human-centered design can uncover what dashboards miss, and why empathy is not a “nice to have” but a strategic advantage when you need to make decisions that actually work for people. Andy breaks down how his team collects long-form stories from employees, custome...
Growth doesn’t come from another hack; it comes from doing the right work in the right order. We sit down with Matthew Stafford of Build Grow Scale to explore the deceptively simple idea that changes everything: information is everywhere, but focus is scarce. Matthew takes us from his 23-year run in commercial concrete to a breakout Teespring campaign and into the data-driven system that helped brands in supplements, apparel, kitchen goods, and digital products add millions in revenue by fixi...
Stop waiting for the “right time.” Raj Singh—longtime builder, repeat founder, and now VP of Product at Mozilla—joins us to unpack how real momentum starts when you ship something imperfect and let the market reshape it. We dig into his path from early consumer apps to an acquisition by Mozilla and the creation of Solo, an AI-powered website builder designed specifically for service providers like tutors, therapists, coaches, and contractors. Raj explains his “jello in motion” approach to pr...
Want to win premium customers and sleep better at night? We dig into how going an inch wide and a mile deep beats boiling the ocean—especially when you pair focused strategy with agentic AI that does real work. Our guest, John Long of thynk.ai, traces an unexpected journey from real estate and HVAC to machine learning and sales orchestration, showing how clarity of purpose turns scattered efforts into compounding momentum. Along the way, we break down the anatomy of a working AI agent: natura...
The digital marketing landscape is shifting dramatically, and Ethan Monkhouse is at the forefront of this revolution. As co-founder of Naviro, he's democratizing access to sophisticated marketing strategies that were once the exclusive domain of those who could afford $5,000+ monthly agency retainers. During our conversation, Ethan reveals his journey from a computer science background to marketing innovator. His entrepreneurial spark ignited when, as a teenager, he built websites for local ...
Trevor Nolan takes us behind the scenes of the digital infrastructure powering our connected world. Drawing from his 11-year career at Amazon and recent transition to Axon, he reveals the complex systems enabling everything from same-day package delivery to voice assistants that transform our homes. The conversation explores how Amazon approaches hardware development not as a primary goal but as a necessary tool for delivering exceptional services. Kindle emerged from the desire to deliver b...
What if AI could be more than just a tool—what if it could become your thought companion, helping to extract and refine the ideas already in your head? In this fascinating conversation, Brad Moss, founder of Enhanced AI, reveals how his journey from video game development led to creating a platform that empowers anyone to build sophisticated AI agents without coding skills. Moss introduces a powerful concept: AI as "the right brain of technology." While traditional technology demands precisi...
What happens when your career path takes unexpected turns? For Jason Brigham, founder of a successful digital marketing agency, the journey from computer science to hospitality to digital leadership reveals powerful lessons about adaptability in an ever-changing landscape. Brigham candidly shares the pivotal moments that shaped his professional evolution—from abandoning his initial computer science career track to pursue the more social, creative environment of hospitality, to eventually fin...
Discover the fascinating intersection of tech marketing and sustainable travel with Patrika Elise Cheston, founder of a marketing agency focused on guiding startups through various funding stages. Patrika's unconventional career journey—beginning with aspirations to become a news anchor before finding her place in the startup ecosystem—offers valuable insights for anyone feeling constrained by traditional corporate structures. Patrika reveals her distinctive approach to marketing startups at...
"We're in the between times – not fully in the future, but no longer in the past." These words from Ben Tasker, Dean of AI at a leading university, capture the transformative moment we're experiencing as artificial intelligence reshapes education and work. In this eye-opening conversation with host Anika, Ben shares his remarkable journey from healthcare administration to data science to educational leadership. Through compelling stories about using data to improve cancer screening in rural ...
Catherine Connelly's remarkable journey began at age 15 when she and her siblings created a digital yearbook website to make friends at their new high school. What started as a simple solution to a teenage problem evolved into a social platform that would eventually sell for $500 million. During our conversation, Catherine shares how despite having no coding background, she and her siblings built their platform by using Google to answer every question they had about website development—from ...
From text-based browsers to generative AI, the digital marketing landscape has transformed dramatically since the 1990s. Eric Layland, Chief Executive of the Matters Group, takes us on a journey through this evolution while revealing timeless principles that still guide effective marketing today. Leyland's career began in 1996 when he purchased "Internet in a Box" from CompUSA and discovered the power of electronic communication across vast distances. His fascination with data began even ear...
The technological landscape is shifting beneath our feet, and Dan Baird stands confidently at the intersection of entrepreneurship and artificial intelligence. In this riveting conversation, the co-founder and product lead at Wrench.ai delivers both a wake-up call and an invitation to the AI revolution that's already transforming business. Baird's journey from selling beanbag chairs at Lovesac (which began as a joke and later went public) to developing patented AI-driven segmentation process...
Monetization remains the great unsolved puzzle for most podcasters, with traditional advertising models serving only the top 5% of shows. But what if the problem isn't your audience size, but rather the broken business model itself? Jeffrey Specter, founder of CodeADX and former radio executive, pulls back the curtain on why the podcast industry's CPM (cost per thousand) approach fundamentally fails smaller creators. "The overwhelming majority of shows really can't make money because the bus...
What if the secret to massive e-commerce growth wasn't a marketing gimmick, but something as simple as improving by just 1% every day? Meet Sabir Semerkant, the accidental marketing genius whose systematic approach has generated over $1 billion in incremental revenue for more than 200 brands worldwide. Sabir's journey began as a programming prodigy at age six, eventually leading to a pivotal moment when he was tasked with rebuilding VitaminShop.com after bankruptcy. What started as an engine...
Every business owner dreams of growth systems that work automatically while they focus on what they love. Reed Hansen, founder of Market Surge, has turned this dream into reality for service-based businesses across multiple industries by combining powerful CRM systems with cutting-edge AI. The journey began with his wife's photography business. Unlike most creatives, she was incredibly process-oriented, allowing her to maintain a full calendar while other photographers experienced feast-or-f...
Katie Gray's journey from traditional agency work to founding her own marketing collective reveals a refreshing new model for the industry. After experiencing the limitations of conventional agency structures—where junior marketers get thrust into high-stakes roles prematurely and burnout leads to high turnover—she built Kinetic Marketing Communications as a solution. The secret? A nationwide network of senior-level specialists who collaborate as independent contractors. This approach elimin...
What does it truly mean to be human in an age of artificial intelligence? David DeWolf, founder of KnownWell, offers a refreshingly nuanced perspective on how AI should enhance our humanity rather than diminish it. Having built and sold a 2,500-person digital products company before founding KnownWell in 2023, DeWolf observed a critical gap in how businesses were approaching AI. While many focused solely on advancing the technology or boosting personal productivity, few were addressing how A...
When you ask "Mexican food for dinner?" you're engaging in the most basic form of survey methodology—but as Dr. Philip Garland reveals, there's a profound science to questioning that shapes everything from presidential elections to product development. Dr. Garland's remarkable journey began with a personal mission. As a freshman experiencing racism at University of Washington, he abandoned engineering aspirations to study political science and communications, determined to understand how med...
Booking a movie ticket used to mean opening a browser, clicking through tabs, and hoping checkout didn’t break. Now a voice agent can do it while you grab your coat. We explore what that shift means for design, marketing, and growth: when customers are people and robots, how do we build flows that serve both without losing our human edge? Nick Cawthon joins to map the journey from drafting tables to 640x480 “new media,” then to today’s LLM-driven search and autonomous browsers. We unpack why...
