『Small Business Stories』のカバーアート

Small Business Stories

Small Business Stories

著者： Loralyn Mears PhD
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10月19日まで。※適用条件あり
Welcome to Small Business Stories, the podcast where we celebrate the real-life journeys of small business owners. We dig into inspiring tales of triumphs, challenges, and the tough lessons we learned along the way. Each episode is packed with relatable anecdotes and practical tips that you can use to fuel your own entrepreneurial dreams. Whether you're just starting out or looking to grow your business, you'll find motivation and insight in every story. Tune in and get ready to be inspired by the heart and hustle of small business owners just like you! We say it like it is - no filters. Being an SMB owner isn't easy, but we're compelled to do it.(C) STEERus 2026 マネジメント・リーダーシップ リーダーシップ 経済学
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  • Why Your Small Business Isn't Scaling with Joseph Shalaby

    Why Your Small Business Isn't Scaling with Joseph Shalaby
    2026/09/23
    S6:E83 How do you know when persistence is serving the business? Or at what point does attachment to what you've built prevent you from seeing it clearly? Joseph Shalaby knows something about operating through uncertainty. As founder of eMortgage Capital, he has built within an industry shaped by economic cycles, regulation, changing consumer expectations, and a persistent trust problem. But this conversation goes well beyond mortgages. Joseph and Dr. LL explore what ownership means from buying a home to building a company and the responsibility that comes with both. They discuss financial literacy, entrepreneurship, faith, service, consistency, and one of the most uncomfortable questions an owner can confront: Is what I've built actually working? If people don't trust your industry, credentials alone may not change their perception. If owners don't trust—or confront—the evidence inside their own businesses, they can mistake persistence for progress. And when what we believe becomes stronger than what the evidence shows, misinterpretation can begin with us. Loralyn Mears, PhD, aka "Dr. LL," brings you thoughtful conversations with entrepreneurs and small business leaders navigating visibility, leadership, and growth. Thank you for being here. 👤 Guest Joseph Shalaby Founder, eMortgage Capital Mortgage lending, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and business growth ⚠️ Core Problems Discussed • Homeownership feeling increasingly out of reach for many consumers • The long-standing trust and perception problem surrounding the mortgage industry • Entrepreneurs becoming emotionally attached to companies that may no longer support their goals • Scaling while facing regulatory, operational, and financial complexity • Building consistency when results and market conditions aren't predictable • Separating personal identity from objective business performance • Using faith and service as guiding principles through uncertainty 🥡 Practical Takeaways • Financial literacy can reveal options that assumptions hide. • Growth requires more than determination; infrastructure, resources, and repeatable systems matter. • Ask measurable questions: Are you profitable? Growing? Retaining talent? Creating value? • Past investment doesn't automatically justify continuing the same model. • Trust has to be rebuilt through evidence, particularly in industries carrying historical skepticism. • Consistency and adaptation aren't opposites. • Service can provide a durable organizing principle beyond short-term revenue. ⏱️ Timestamps 04:39 Financial literacy and the possibility of homeownership 06:11 Why Joseph sees ownership as more than an asset 10:52 Innovation and building for growth 13:14 Why the mortgage industry has a perception problem 15:39 Faith as Joseph's foundation through volatility 17:11 "I'm just a servant": Joseph's philosophy of service 18:35 The questions struggling owners need to confront 20:09 What Joseph wants his legacy to mean 21:41 Education as the first step toward changing financial trajectory 🔖 Who This Episode Is For Entrepreneurs navigating uncertainty, founders struggling to separate their identity from the company they've built, and business owners thinking seriously about what sustainable growth requires. At STEERus, we see Ownership Blind Spot as one way misinterpretation risk begins inside the business. When identity, history, and investment overpower contradictory evidence, the signals owners send outward can stop matching the reality customers, employees, partners, and increasingly AI encounter. Subscribe and share Small Business Stories for grounded conversations about entrepreneurship, visibility, leadership, AI, and the realities behind building something that lasts. ✅ Subscribe for weekly conversations on entrepreneurship 🔁 Share this episode with someone who needs to be heard Follow STEERus on social media: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrLLSmallBusiness Instagram: https://instagram.com/steerus LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/steerus Twitter: https://x.com/steerus_io #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #podcast #businessgrowth #scaling #finance
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    26 分
  • Why You're Wasting Money on Google Ads with Andy Janaitis

    Why You're Wasting Money on Google Ads with Andy Janaitis
    2026/09/18
    S6:E82 Better Data, Better Decisions with Andy Janaitis What if your advertising dashboard says you're succeeding but your bank account says otherwise? That's not necessarily a marketing problem. It may be an interpretation problem. Queue up this episode of Small Business Stories with Andy Janaitis, founder of PPC Pitbulls, for a grounded look at what increasingly automated advertising requires from small businesses: better data, clearer objectives, and enough human judgment to know whether the algorithm is optimizing the right thing. Andy began his career in data science, where he learned an enduring lesson: sophisticated models cannot rescue bad inputs. Today, he sees the same problem playing out inside Google Ads, Meta, CRMs, e-commerce platforms, and increasingly AI. A platform can report a conversion without that conversion becoming meaningful revenue. A business can optimize for cheap clicks and attract the lowest-quality traffic. Two systems can report different versions of the same result. And a founder can spend tens of thousands of dollars before realizing the metric everyone celebrated wasn't measuring what mattered. If people don't trust the numbers, they can't confidently act on them. If leadership misunderstands what a metric actually represents, better technology can accelerate the wrong decision. And if AI interprets an incomplete picture of the business, "mostly right" may still be wrong enough to make the right customer effectively invisible. Loralyn Mears, PhD, aka "Dr. LL," brings you thoughtful conversations with entrepreneurs and small business leaders navigating visibility, leadership, and growth. Thank you for being here. 👤 Guest Andy Janaitis Founder, PPC Pitbulls Data scientist turned PPC strategist specializing in paid advertising performance ⚠️ Core Problems • Starting with an advertising tactic instead of a business objective • Optimizing for cheap traffic rather than valuable customers • Feeding automated systems incomplete or incorrect conversion signals • Trusting platform dashboards without examining what the numbers actually represent • Different systems producing conflicting versions of performance • Attribution becoming more complicated across AI search, organic search, social, and paid channels • DIY AI advertising removing too much human judgment from the process 🥡 Practical Takeaways • Start with the outcome: what does the business actually need the advertising to accomplish? • Cheap clicks aren't necessarily good clicks; algorithms optimize for what you ask them to optimize. • Validate what a "conversion" actually represents before treating it as success. • Establish one source of truth for the business outcome that matters. • Revenue and profit are not interchangeable measures of advertising success. • Omnichannel attribution is complicated, but small businesses don't need perfect modeling before they begin measuring. • Automation works best when strong data signals are paired with human oversight. • AI-generated understanding that is mostly correct can still miss the nuance that differentiates the right customer from the wrong one. ⏱️ Timestamps 01:10 Why "we need ads" is the wrong starting point 03:12 How PPC shifted from manual targeting to automation 04:51 When to trust the algorithm and when not to 07:13 Why advertising automation lives or dies on data 09:38 Rebuilding trust after businesses have been burned by agencies 13:24 Garbage in, garbage out: Andy's data-science lesson 16:07 Amplifying weak signals with more marketing 17:24 The metrics that actually matter 20:36 What's a realistic return on ad spend? 23:33 AI search, omnichannel discovery, and attribution 26:17 Why DIY AI still needs business strategy 29:09 The 20% AI gets wrong 🔖 Who This Episode Is For Founders and small business owners who want to understand whether their advertising is producing real business value rather than simply producing attractive dashboard metrics. At STEERus, we see False Signal Confidence as an increasingly consequential form of misinterpretation risk. A signal doesn't become trustworthy simply because it is measurable and once AI begins acting on a misunderstood signal, the error can become faster, cheaper, and easier to scale. Subscribe and share Small Business Stories for grounded conversations about entrepreneurship, visibility, leadership, AI, and making better business decisions. ✅ Subscribe for weekly conversations on entrepreneurship 🔁 Share this episode with someone who needs to be heard Follow STEERus on social media: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrLLSmallBusiness Instagram: https://instagram.com/steerus LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/steerus Twitter: https://x.com/steerus_io #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #podcast #advertising #ppc #Googleads
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    33 分
  • Why Your Marketing Isn't Working with John Elbing

    Why Your Marketing Isn't Working with John Elbing
    2026/09/16

    S6:E81

    Businesses usually think about marketing from the inside out.

    Here's what we do. Here's why we're good. Here are our features. Here are our credentials.

    John Elbing thinks we should turn the entire thing around.

    As founder of Standpoint and creator of the Storybuilding approach, John helps businesses see themselves through the customer's eyes. His starting point is deceptively simple: before customers care about your company, they need to recognize that your company understands them.

    That conversation takes an especially interesting turn when John and Dr. LL explore what happens when AI becomes another interpreter standing between a business and its customer.

    John shares the example of a company that surfaced correctly when queried through ChatGPT but was then described as expensive, despite having no pricing information on its website. After they changed the company's digital messaging, the characterization changed.

    That is misinterpretation risk happening in the wild.

    If people don't trust you, more promotion doesn't necessarily solve the problem.

    If people don't understand you, more content may simply amplify the confusion.

    And if AI doesn't interpret your signals correctly, your business may never reach the customer who was looking for exactly what you provide.

    👤 Guest

    John Elbing
    Founder, Standpoint
    Creator of Storybuilding
    Marketing strategist focused on customer-centered communication

    ⚠️ Core Problems
    • Founder-centric rather than customer-centric messaging
    • Trying to appeal to everyone
    • Explaining features before establishing relevance
    • Confusing differentiation with cleverness
    • AI-generated content that strips away authentic voice
    • Spending more on promotion before diagnosing an interpretation problem
    🥡 Practical Takeaways
    • Recognition comes before persuasion: customers first need to see themselves in your message.
    • Niching enables self-selection and can reduce wasted sales and marketing effort.
    • Customers need to understand what you do quickly.
    • Differentiation can come from understanding what customers actually care about—not simply claiming superior quality.
    • AI can help refine thinking, but it cannot substitute for understanding the customer.
    • Customer interpretation ultimately matters more than the message the company believes it delivered.
    ⏱️ Timestamps

    03:16 Why businesses resist narrowing their audience
    04:25 Recognition: getting customers to say "that's me"
    08:09 The curse of proximity
    10:32 Clarity versus cleverness
    12:24 AI search and business interpretation
    14:42 Recognition, perception and projection
    16:55 Storybuilding versus storytelling
    19:46 The consequences of marketing misinterpretation
    21:41 AI slop and disappearing authenticity
    25:04 Interpretation versus promotion
    26:28 Dr. LL's interpretation-promotion-connection triangle

    🔖 Who This Episode Is For

    Business owners, founders, marketers and consultants who suspect that their problem isn't simply reaching more people—it's helping the right people understand them.

    At STEERus, this is the heart of misinterpretation risk: what a business intends to communicate and what humans or AI systems actually understand are not necessarily the same thing. Closing that gap creates signal clarity.

    Subscribe and share Small Business Stories for grounded conversations about entrepreneurship, visibility, leadership, AI and the realities of building a business people can understand and trust.

    ✅ Subscribe for weekly conversations on entrepreneurship

    🔁 Share this episode with someone who needs to be heard

    Follow STEERus on social media:

    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrLLSmallBusiness

    Instagram: https://instagram.com/steerus

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/steerus

    Twitter: https://x.com/steerus_io

    #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #podcast #marketing #digitalmarketing
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    33 分
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