Elizabeth explores the essential question "Are you a personality?” Walker shares behind-the-scenes insights from her recent interviews, including her conversation with creative professional Tiffany Smith who "quit my design career for film and here's what I learned," and discusses how authentic personality emerges through voice, vocabulary, and storytelling rather than manufactured content. She emphasizes that "you don't have to have a particular executive title to be on the Dear Business Coach podcast" and reveals her interview technique of creating intimate conversations where guests share personal stories, noting how one guest told her "that was much different than what we usually do in a podcast interview." Walker advocates for organic personality development over forced entertainment, explaining "I don't want to actually reinterpret or rehash what I think the guest meant by their words, I want to provide those quotes to you," while encouraging content creators to focus on genuine connection and remember that "all it takes sometimes is one little thing to move your business forward today."

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Kirsten Graham, joint CEO of Six Figure Business Coaching, helps entrepreneurs overcome content creation burnout by combining AI tools with trained virtual assistants. "Back in the day you could hire an agency and they could write all your Facebook posts and they could take care of your email marketing and your blogging. But in this day and age, especially now with AI, it's even more important for us to show up and be a part of our content," Graham explains. With a background spanning real estate, mortgage, and title companies since the late 1980s, she now coaches business owners on leveraging technology while maintaining authenticity. "You have to give people an opportunity to connect with you," she emphasizes, noting that her approach has helped clients generate significant returns, including over $30,000 from a single podcast interview. Graham's company pairs strategic coaching with vetted virtual assistants who complete paid internships in video editing, social media marketing, and content creation, allowing business owners to maintain consistent online presence without the typical stress and time investment.

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I Quit My Design Career for Film - Here's What I Learned with Tiffany Smith

Multidisciplinary creative professional Tiffany Smith shares her journey from graphic design and photography into filmmaking, sparked by David Lynch's passing. She discusses navigating career transitions in the creative industry, the evolving landscape of networking events, and why independent filmmaking offers unique opportunities for authentic storytelling. Tiffany explores how short-form content creation skills translate to film, the challenges of breaking into new creative fields, and practical advice for aspiring filmmakers working with limited budgets.

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Elizabeth Walker, producer and host of the Dear Business Coach podcast, shared several exciting updates during her exclusive Substack live session, including a major new partnership announcement: "The Dear Business Coach podcast is now officially partnered with NordVPN." She explained how affiliate partnerships work for podcast monetization, noting that "when you buy the service through my deals page, you actually are giving a percentage a percentage of your purchase is paid directly to me for the Dear Business Coach podcast show." Walker also discussed her use of AI tools for podcast production, revealing "I actually use a couple of different AI tools to get summaries and to pull quotes and to do things like that for the technical things" and specifically mentioned her preference: "So, I actually right now prefer Claude." She emphasized her commitment to authenticity in representing her guests, explaining "I don't want to reinterpret. It's really hard not to do that even when I even when I go to my AI tool. Um, I don't want to get involved in reinterpreting what the guest said or meant in their interview. I just want to provide to you the actual quotes and phrases that they used." The session covered recent episodes including Chris Fawrop's "The Pine Cone Principle" and the current streaming episode "What is Page Health?" featuring social media expert Minakshi Dogra Bansaw, while encouraging listeners to "find one thing today to move your business forward."

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Jim Carlough, Chief Sales Officer for a healthcare digital engagement company, author, leadership coach, and keynote speaker, emphasizes that effective leadership is fundamentally about human connection and development rather than just managing numbers. During the interview, he explains his core philosophy: "A leader doesn't have to have the answers, but they have to be able to work with people and teams to be able to get to the answer, get the emotion out of it, and figure out what do we need to know in order to make the right decision." Carlough strongly believes that "leaders are built there and developed. They're not born that way," citing his own background where his "dad was a carpenter" and "his dad was a mason" with no CEO boardroom experience in his family lineage. His approach to leadership centers on what he calls the non-negotiable foundation: "To me, a leader has to be transparent and operate with absolute integrity. Without that, everything else falls apart." This philosophy has been guided by a nightly question he's asked himself since 1983: "did I do anything today for my own personal self-benefit that was at the expense of another individual group of individuals or organization?" Through this approach, he's achieved remarkably low voluntary attrition rates and has dedicated himself to mentoring the next generation of leaders for over 25 years.

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Social media expert Meenakshi Bansal emphasizes that effective digital marketing isn't about magic formulas but strategic planning. "There is no such magical term introduced for social media. It's a very logical and strategical part for your digital presence," she explains. Bansal advocates for a structured approach to content creation, recommending that business owners "pen down things which you're supposed to do in a month" and maintain consistent posting schedules. She suggests "ideally three to four posts in a week for better engagement" to maintain what she calls "page health."

Her philosophy centers on understanding platform differences and audience needs: "LinkedIn is more like to get engagement in sort of making more business opportunities," while "Instagram and Facebook are never meant for business. These two platforms are only meant for engagement." For content creation, Bansal maintains strict quality control, stating "the content should be under me only" while delegating technical tasks to her team. Her approach balances personal authenticity with professional strategy, ensuring businesses can "stand out your own voice, your own presence" in the crowded digital landscape.

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"An assumption is a belief or a way of looking at things that you think is true. But you do that without proof, without checking it, and without contextualizing it," Fawthrop explains, emphasizing how these mental shortcuts can limit our leadership potential. His philosophy centers on the belief that "everybody deserves good leadership," which he defines as leadership that makes growth feel attainable and understands the full context of team members' lives. Drawing from his diverse background across multiple industries, Fawthrop has developed an approach he calls "cultivar leadership"—inspired by the botanical term for plants intentionally selected and cultivated for specific qualities. "You can draw from [leadership examples], you know, look at all the self-management gurus, the people in your life that have been inspirations, you can draw from them, right?

Fawthrop offers workshops and ongoing guidance through his Substack newsletter, where readers can connect with his leadership insights, or reach out directly via LinkedIn or email at cultivarleadership.com.

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Andrew Frazier, CFA and author of "Running Your Small Business Like a Pro," recently shared his insights on the Dear Business Coach podcast about the critical elements that separate struggling entrepreneurs from successful business owners. With over 15 years of experience working one-on-one with more than a thousand business owners, Frazier emphasized three fundamental areas where most businesses fail: understanding their most important job, managing numbers effectively, and positioning for growth financing. "Many business owners don't know their most important job," Frazier explained, stressing that "their most important job is sales and marketing" and recommending "at least two hours a day you need to spend doing sales and marketing."

He noted that fear of numbers often becomes an entrepreneur's "Achilles heel," stating, "If you don't have numbers, how are you going to measure how you're doing? How are you going to improve?"

Through his "masterpreneur playbook," Frazier guides business owners through five critical steps from startup to scale, addressing the sobering reality that "one out of a thousand businesses ever does that successfully" and "maybe 5% of businesses ever work on their business successfully." His approach goes beyond traditional bookkeeping services, offering what he describes as a "coach-sultant" relationship that helps entrepreneurs develop "the knowledge or the leadership skills" necessary to create businesses "that can run without you and that can be scalable."

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