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PODCAST

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind Business Growth & Business Development

Behind every business & its growth is a human in the trenches. On Humans of Growth, host Aly Hathcock interviews CEOs, CMOs, and marketing executives driving business development, demand generation, and brand strategy. These aren’t surface-level chats about lead funnels and KPIs. They’re raw, insightful conversations that reveal how real leaders build marketing engines, scale revenue, and create lasting customer relationships. Expect candid stories about leadership, growth marketing, sales

business marketing

All Episodes

59:59

Why the Founder Is Usually the Reason the Business...

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/10/01

Most founders hit a revenue plateau and immediately think they need more leads.No, they need to get out of the way. When a founder is the linchpin to every decision, the business can only grow as fast as one person can move. It doesn't matter how good the marketing is or how strong the sales process is. If the CEO is still approving every hire, getting on every difficult client call, and doing in two minutes what they won't let anyone else learn to do in thirty, the ceiling is them. In this

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37:54

Crisis Communications Plan: What to Do Before, During...

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/09/17

Most companies don't have a crisis communications plan. They have a hope that nothing goes wrong.And when something does go wrong, the instinct is to say nothing, wait it out, and let the lawyers run the room. That instinct is wrong. In the court of public opinion, silence reads as guilt. "No comment" is not a strategy. It is a confession. In this episode of Humans of Growth, Aly Hathcock sits down with Ron Sachs, founder of Sachs Media, a PR and communications firm with thirty years of

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44:14

The Agency Trust Problem: What Bad Firms Don't Want...

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/09/10

Most businesses have been burned by at least one agency. And usually, it wasn't fraud. It was selective storytelling.Marketing agency transparency is the real gap between agencies that earn long-term trust and the ones that show up to monthly meetings waving impression counts while revenue sits flat. When clients can't access their own ad platforms, when reports are curated instead of complete, and when agencies say yes to every client idea just to protect the retainer, everyone loses. In this

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38:03

The One Ad Channel That Doesn't Annoy People (And How...

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/09/03

Marketers have been obsessed with digital channels for a decade.But one of the oldest advertising mediums has quietly become one of the most measurable. Today's billboards are not static signs on the highway. They are digital, data-driven, and capable of changing in real time based on the weather, a live sports score, or a stock market trigger. And most marketers have no idea how to buy them. In this episode of Humans of Growth, Aly Hathcock sits down with Sarah Carney, VP of Programmatic Media

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32:50

Confused People Don't Buy: Fixing the Friction in...

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/08/27

You can have great ads, a full pipeline, and a sales team that closes.But if your buying process is confusing, your onboarding is messy, or marketing and sales are telling different stories, your growth is going to flatline. Because customers don't care where marketing ends and sales begins. They only experience one company. In this episode of Humans of Growth, Aly Hathcock sits down with Nikki Leonardi, marketing strategy consultant at ClearEdge, who has spent nearly two decades sitting at the

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34:05

Brand Creativity vs Performance Marketing: How to...

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/08/20

Everyone is following the same playbook.Post more. Run better ads. Optimize the funnel. And so every brand ends up looking, sounding, and feeling exactly alike. Performance marketing got incredibly efficient. It also got incredibly forgettable. In this episode of Humans of Growth, Aly Hathcock sits down with Will Burns, founder of IdeaSicle X, a creative strategy firm that builds brand ideas for companies trying to get their soul back after years of chasing ROAS. Will spent decades at agencies

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35:09

Sales Follow-Up Process: How to Close Without the...

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/08/13

Most companies think they have a lead problem.They don't. They have a follow-up problem. And even the ones with a follow-up process lose deals the moment a rep opens their mouth and sounds like they're reading from a compliance document instead of talking to a real person. In this episode of Humans of Growth, Aly Hathcock sits down with Bryan Wong, Head of Inside Sales at L2T Media, a digital advertising agency focused on the automotive space. Bryan has spent years doing cold calling and

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36:02

Why Your PR Metrics Are Lying (And What Soft...

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/08/06

Most marketing teams are measuring PR wrong.They're counting impressions, tallying article placements, and reporting publication names. But none of those hard metrics can tell you whether anyone actually trusted you more, considered you more seriously, or moved closer to a decision. Earned media strategy lives in a different category, and if you're judging it by the same scorecard as paid ads, you're going to keep undervaluing the channel that compounds. In this episode of Humans of Growth, Aly

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36:55

Amazon Product Photography: How to Increase...

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/07/30

Most shoppers never read your product page. They judge your photos first, especially on Amazon.Amazon product photography does more selling than your copy, your features, and sometimes even your ads. If a customer can't quickly see what the product is, how it works, and whether it fits their life, they move on. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Liz Giorgi, CEO of Soona, a content creation platform that has matched e-commerce brands with over 1,500 photographers, stylists, and

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38:04

E-commerce Growth Strategy: Why "Best Quality" Won't...

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/07/23

Most e-commerce brands don't have a product problem. They have a focus problem.They try to sell to everyone, list every variation, chase every platform at once, and lead with "we have the best quality." That's the most boring pitch in the world, and it's usually the reason growth stalls. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Michael Jordan, founding partner at BAD Marketing, to break down what actually separates e-commerce brands that scale to eight figures from the ones that flop

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51:37

The Biggest AI Mistakes Businesses Are Making Right Now

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/07/16

Everyone is talking about whether AI will replace jobs. The better question is: what happens if you refuse to learn it? In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Jason Neman, CEO of Good Brand, to discuss how AI is changing marketing, branding, business growth, and the future of work. We break down how successful companies are actually using ChatGPT, Claude AI, and other AI tools to become more productive, without replacing human creativity. In this episode, we cover: ✔ AI marketing vs

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31:05

Influencer Marketing: How to Make Paid Creator...

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/07/02

Influencer marketing is not “send free product and pray they post” anymore. Creators know their worth. Consumers know when they are being sold to. And brands that still treat creator marketing like a one-off transaction are usually the ones wondering why the campaign looked good on paper but did not actually move the business. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Tommy Johnson, Senior Director of Partnerships at Open Influence, to unpack what modern influencer marketing actually

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28:45

Pet Influencer Partnerships: A Marketing Crash Course

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/06/25

Pet influencers are adorable but not always profitable. A lot of brands see a cute dog with a big following and assume they’ve found the perfect influencer. But just like with humans, follower count is one of the least useful numbers on its own. The real value comes from audience demographics, engagement, platform fit, usage rights, content quality, and the person behind the pet. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Colleen, founder of Pets on Q, to break down what brands need to

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28:51

Personal Branding & Founder-Led Marketing in an AI...

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/06/18

Most founders are wrong about personal branding.They think it’s about ego, selfies, and posting your life story online. But according to Rachel Gogos, CEO of The Brand ID, your personal brand is not about being louder. It’s about making your business feel more human, more trustworthy, and more real. In this episode of Humans of Growth, Aly Hathcock sits down with Rachel Gogos to talk about the role of personal branding in modern business growth, why every company brand starts with the founder,

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27:31

The ROAS Trap: Why Better Numbers Don’t Always Mean...

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/06/11

Your best-looking marketing campaign might be the one quietly killing your growth.Most businesses look at ROAS, cost per lead, and in-platform ad reports and assume they know what’s working. But those dashboards are often rewarding the easiest conversions, repeat buyers, retargeting, brand search, while the campaigns actually creating new demand get ignored or killed too soon. And that’s how companies end up recycling the same customers instead of growing. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I

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26:33

Why Your CRM Follow-Up System Matters More Than More...

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/06/04

Most business owners think they have a lead problem.They don’t. They have a follow-up problem. Because you can spend thousands on ads, SEO, website traffic, Google Business Profile optimization, and lead generation, but if no one responds quickly, if the sales process is messy, or if leads disappear into a broken CRM, that marketing spend is wasted. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with James LaJoie, co-founder of PSP Compass, to break down why “more leads” is not always the

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33:52

How to Build a PR Strategy That Actually Drives...

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/05/28

Most companies confuse visibility with credibility. Getting featured feels like the win — but the headline is just the start.Real PR is what happens after the article runs. The investor who finally takes the call. The $30K speaking spot that costs nothing to earn. The partnership that lands because you've been showing up in the right rooms for years. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Rachel Ford-Hutman, CEO of Ford-Hutman Media, a PR agency helping life science companies get

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34:07

Why Your Expertise Is Killing Your Brand Messaging

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/05/26

Your expertise is killing your messaging. The more you know about your product, the harder it gets to explain it in a way customers actually understand. And this is why most companies lose buyers in the first five seconds someone lands on their website. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Roy Abdo, CEO of Digital Revamp, to break down how to fix your brand messaging, why your CEO needs to be the top of your marketing funnel in 2026, and how the executives growing fastest right now

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45:03

How to Optimize Google Business Profile & Local...

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/05/21

During COVID, a lot of home service businesses got fat and happy. The phones were ringing, the leads were rolling in, and marketing budgets quietly disappeared into other line items.Now those same companies are watching their leads dry up and wondering what changed. Their competitors didn't get lazy. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Megan Bedford, co-founder of Home Services Marketing Hub, to break down what actually works for home service marketing in 2026 — Google Business

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36:42

Why Selling Harder Is Killing Your Client Relationships

Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind... ·

2026/05/19

Scott Armstrong lost a major AT&T deal by selling the big idea while his client was trying to ask about the budget. Her CEO had cut her budget 30 minutes earlier. She asked three times to see the numbers. Scott kept pitching — and walked out down 60% of his agency fees. That meeting reshaped how he runs an agency 30 years later. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Scott Armstrong, CEO of BrainRider, to unpack his "win the question, not the answer" philosophy, why being an

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