Abha Bowers has a lot going on. As the CEO of Walk West, a fitness and nutrition coach, and mom to two young kids, she was feeling the pressure of doing all the things. So she made a choice - it was time to step down from Walk West.

She scheduled a meeting with Chairman Donald Thompson and handed him her resignation letter.

But he wouldn't accept it.

Today, Donald and Abha talk about that interaction, lessons learned about empathetic leadership, and the reality of work/life balance.

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(00:00:07) Embracing Challenges for Leadership Growth and Change
(00:06:59) "I assumed that I had to resign one role to do another."

(00:17:02) "Being a high performer is about the skills, the aptitude and attitudes that you take. And those things are mobile with you. So don't let your performance be dictated by your current environment."
(00:24:04) Empathy-Driven Leadership for Team Success

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Today's episode is hosted by Jason Gillikin, and produced by Earfluence.

Nichole Lowe was happy enough at her corporate job, but then a life-threatening event happened where she decided it was time to reprioritize. She realized life was short, and she wanted more.

Long before the coaching boom, she became a nutrition coach, and absolutely loved it. But with coaching, she discovered a huge challenge - while anyone could be a coach, no one was helping these coaches run their businesses.

So she founded Zoee.

Today, Nichole talks about the growth of Zoee and the reasons WHY coaching in entrepreneurship is so valuable to growth.

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(00:02:50) "In that moment, the hospital wanted to do open heart surgery."

(00:08:14) "I'm excited. I've got this great training, but on graduation, I have no idea what to do. I don't know where to start. I've got to figure out billing and scheduling and CRM and et cetera, et cetera. And it's just chaotic out there. So that's when I thought, you know what? There's got to be a better way. I had my shark tank moment."
(00:10:21) Finding the Streamlined Solution for Coach Business Management

(00:29:18) Why the User Base Doubled

(00:36:11) "A coach isn't going to provide advice to you. She's just going to help you find that answer within you."

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Today's episode is hosted by Jason Gillikin, and produced by Earfluence.

5 years ago, Donald Thompson invested in our company Earfluence because he saw an untapped opportunity to leverage podcasting to amplify your expertise. But this isn't about the growth of the business Earfluence - this is about the rise of "Earfluence" as a concept.

Through his work as an executive coach, his leadership with The Diversity Movement, and through hosting his own podcast High Octane Leadership, Don has seen the influence podcasting in overall business strategy.

He sees podcasting as a dual-faceted tool: creating your own podcast to establish your voice and brand, and participating as a guest on others' shows to gain third-party credibility and reach new audiences. With an emphasis on content reuse, Don knows the power of podcasting to offer consistent, impactful communication, making it a low-cost, high-impact platform for building personal brands and business relationships.

In a world where just about everyone doubts the marketing messages they receive - podcasting is viewed as authentic content that can bridge trust gaps and open doors to significant business opportunities, just like it has for Don.

Let's find out how.

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(00:00:35) Authentic Storytelling for Business Growth

(00:06:05) Podcast Repurposing for Marketing Success

(00:09:37) Strategic Brand Building Through Podcast Guesting

(00:15:40) Podcasting: Establishing Trust and Credibility

(00:19:07) Leveraging Individual Customers for Business Growth

(00:23:19) AI's Role in Enhancing Podcast Content

(00:31:24) Transformative Journey: Overcoming Fear in Podcasting

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Today's episode is hosted by Jason Gillikin, and produced by Earfluence.

As a psychotherapist turned entrepreneur coach, Kelly Ruta has seen what holds her clients back in growing their businesses. Oftentimes, that's their Money Mindset.

Today on the show, Kelly talks about:

• How to price your services
• The importance of understanding your own worth
• External judgments and doubts that influence pricing decisions

Through her Invisible Business Saboteur Quiz, Kelly helps uncover subconscious beliefs that can sabotage business success, encouraging self-awareness and understanding to overcome these barriers.

By fostering a team culture that embraces mistakes as learning opportunities and emphasizing the importance of self-care, Kelly provides a holistic approach to achieving entrepreneurial success and preventing burnout.

If you're an entrepreneur, this is a must listen!

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Today's episode is hosted by Jason Gillikin, and produced by Earfluence.

How do you think of conferences as part of your overall marketing strategy? As an agency, we have so many options for marketing - paid ads, social media, podcasting, and yes, conferences. But where should we be spending our time and resources?

Earlier this year, we had the opportunity to sponsor the PrideLife Expo from Harmony, the North Carolina LGBTQ+ Allied Chamber of Commerce. We’ve been a member of the chamber for a couple of years, and when we heard about the expo, we jumped at the chance to be one of the vendors.

But honestly, I wasn’t sure about our strategy at the event. So we brought our microphones and asked some of the attendees what they think about conferences and the best way to leverage them.

Big thank you to Deanna Jones, Brian Castle from Parklife Communications, and Jamie Ousterout from The Diversity Movement. Also, if you're interested in Harmony NC or next year's PrideLife Expo, visit HarmonyNC.org.

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Today's episode is hosted by Cee Cee Huffman, and produced by Earfluence.

Whether we like it or not, we're all in business development, aka sales. But unfortunately, that word - "sales" - might make you cringe because you think of the used car salesman, or scenes from the movie Boiler Room, or all those dang calls you get from numbers that should have been flagged as "Scam Likely"!

But sales doesn't have to be like that at all. In fact, according to Jed Byrne, sales is "helping people you like get what they want."

Today, Jed joins us to share some of his tips for scrappy business development.

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Jed Byrne is the host of the Dirt NC Podcast, editor of The Top Five Newsletter, and Business Development Representative at WithersRavenel.

Today's episode is hosted by Jason Gillikin, and filmed at the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Earfluence⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Podcast Studio in Downtown Raleigh at ⁠The Commons⁠.

Building an audience through social media can be pretty overwhelming for everyone, especially all of us who are busy and didn't exactly grow up with social media.

Many of us just don't want to have to learn and spend time on one more thing. But at the same time, we want to know how to build an audience for our businesses and personal brands.

So how can we do it?

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Chris Leithe and Dr. Aaron Dinin have created Audience Acceleration Labs, where students can Join the Video Course: Social Media Training for Busy Business Professionals, plus Join The 7 Day LinkedIn Accelerator Course.

Today's episode is hosted by Jason Gillikin, and filmed at the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Earfluence⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Podcast Studio in Downtown Raleigh at ⁠The Commons⁠.

The Podcast Ally Podcast is hosted by Dr. Sarah Glova, who's on a mission to find out how to be the best podcast guest. This is episode 1 of season 2! (Subscribe)

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As the Founder and CEO of LawPods, Robert Ingalls has seen thousands of guest pitches - and they're mostly a complete waste of his time. The potential guest or their publicist meant well, but too often the pitches are spray-and-pray, copy-and-paste, and TL;DR.
So how can podcast guests create pitches that get podcast hosts' attention and get them booked?
Let's find out!
Podcast Ally is hosted by Dr. Sarah Glova and is produced by Earfluence.