Most small businesses don’t have a big internship program or a college down the street sending them talent. When they do bring in an intern or an entry-level hire, it’s easy to hand off busywork and hope it works out.

It usually doesn’t. In this episode of the NextGen Strategies Podcast, Grant Covault and Tyler Davis are joined by Samantha Zeleznik, Account Manager at AR Marketing, and Samuel Yates, Aviation Fuels Trader at Marathon Petroleum and adjunct professor at the University of Findlay.

All four of them started as interns, moved into entry-level jobs, and now hire and train interns and new employees in their own roles. They share what they learned on both sides of the desk and what employers can do to turn interns into full-time hires.

In this episode:

Why interns need structure and a plan for day one

Hiring for people skills and teachability over the resume

Why interns need to build real fundamentals, not just lean on AI

How a bad internship experience can hurt your brand

We're back for Season 3! In this episode, Grant Covault (Fractional CMO, GC Strategies) and Tyler Davis (CPA, DAT Finance) look back at 2026 from both sides of the table.

Grant covers marketing and sales. Tyler covers finance. On the marketing side, Grant explains why real, authentic content keeps beating "AI slop." He walks through how interest-based feeds on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn now show your content to people who don't follow you.

He also covers what zero-click AI search means for your website, and why one client now gets more than half of its best leads from ChatGPT.

On the finance side, Tyler breaks down the problem he saw in almost every client this year: cash flow. Businesses are profitable on paper but squeezed by 90–180 day B2B payment terms. He covers how to get paid faster, the real cost of lines of credit, and when a local bank beats the instant offer inside your accounting software.

In this episode:

- Why authentic, human content outperforms polished AI-generated marketing

- How interest-based social feeds work, and why each post now stands on its own

- Why personal and employee accounts are outperforming company pages on LinkedIn

- Zero-click search, Google Gemini answers and ads coming to ChatGPT Why AI is pushing businesses to put pricing, process and case studies on their website

- "Paper profit" vs. cash in the bank, and how to manage long payment terms

- Buy now, pay later tools, card payments and making it effortless to get paid - Lines of credit: local bank vs. big lender vs. instant offers, and the true cost

- Why going back to basics (handwritten notes, direct mail, in-person events) is working again New episodes every other Thursday.

Season 3 brings more real stories from family-owned and scaling businesses, many recorded on location.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere you get podcasts

🌐 https://nextgenstrategiesltd.com

📩 Be a guest or suggest a topic: connect@nextgenstrategiesltd.com

What started as a season of individual conversations turned into a clear pattern, and in this finale, Grant and Tyler pull it all together to name the themes that decided which businesses thrived and which ones struggled.

In the Season 2 wrap-up of the NextGen Strategies Podcast, hosts Grant and Tyler Davis recap a full season of guest interviews with family-owned, multi-generational, and scaling businesses.

They revisit standout moments from key guests and connect the dots on what separates the companies that last from the ones that don't.

Plus, a candid look at why less-polished, authentic content is suddenly outperforming the highly produced stuff, and what that shift means for small and mid-sized businesses competing against national players.

In this episode:

- Why multi-generational businesses are harder to run than they look, and how each generation has to earn trust all over again

- How relationships and referrals consistently beat price and scale for small to mid-sized companies

- Why sustainable growth tends to outlast fast growth, and the danger of chasing vanity metrics

- How authenticity has become a real competitive advantage in marketing, sales, and culture