『Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom』のカバーアート

Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom

Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom

著者： Kim Miller - Hershon
無料で聴く

Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom: Where clichés come to retire and fresh thinking we inspire. Smart minds don’t think alike—and that’s the point. Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom takes you inside the messy, brilliant, and bold thought processes of high-achieving leaders, entrepreneurs, and out-of-the-box thinkers. We skip the clichés and spotlight the real talk: the strange decisions that worked, the brilliant ideas that bombed, and the thought patterns that defy the rulebook—but still lead to growth, impact, and the occasional mic drop. If you’re tired of surface-level advice and crave the kind of wisdom that makes you pause, laugh, and level up—this is your new favorite listen. Because let’s face it: playing it safe never built anything worth bragging about.Copyright 2025 All rights reserved. マネジメント・リーダーシップ リーダーシップ 経済学
エピソード
  • How AI Is Blurring Every Job Description — and What Smart Leaders Do About It | Scott Wintheiser

    How AI Is Blurring Every Job Description — and What Smart Leaders Do About It | Scott Wintheiser
    2026/08/18

    In this episode of Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom, Kim Miller-Hershon sits down with Scott Wintheiser, CEO and founding partner of Lightburn, a Milwaukee-based digital CX agency he co-founded in 1998. With over 28 years in digital and ecommerce, Scott has founded and sold multiple ecommerce businesses and even had a documentary screened at Sundance. In Lightburn's early days, he built a custom CMS and ecommerce platform from scratch because the tools he needed didn't exist yet. Today his 20-plus-person team helps mid-size organizations, especially manufacturers, with web design, development, CMS strategy, digital marketing, and ecommerce, and his approach is refreshingly straightforward: find the right-size solution, not the most expensive one.

    In this conversation, Scott challenges the conventional wisdom he heard most in the early days: that you should contract everything out and never carry the cost of employees. On paper it sounded smart, hire freelancers, pay only when you're busy, but it never felt right, and he trusted that instinct over the advice. The same went for the constant pressure to assemble an advisory board or join a CEO roundtable. Those rooms understood business in a general sense, but in the 1990s nobody in them understood the internet or an agency that only built websites, and it took the confidence of a couple of 20-somethings to realize that no outside expert understood their business better than they did.

    A candid thread is what Scott still wrestles with underneath the 28-year track record. Outsiders assume a company that's lasted this long is automatically, effortlessly profitable, and anyone who's actually run a business knows that isn't how it works. Internally, the honest gap is forecasting: he doesn't pretend to know where the company will be ten years out, and doesn't bother trying, focusing instead on the next two or three years and trusting the rest to take care of itself. His answer to the classic small-agency threat ("my nephew can build a website") is the same one he'd give about AI: it can help, but you wouldn't ignore your lawyer just because Claude can review a contract.

    This episode explores:

    • Why "contract everything out" was the wrong advice for his business
    • Trusting your own read over the advisory board and CEO roundtable
    • Why 28 years in business doesn't mean automatic profit
    • Focusing on the next two or three years instead of faking a ten-year forecast
    • How AI speeds the tedious work while demanding more understanding, not less
    • "Job-description creep" and getting comfortable being uncomfortable
    • The "AI open skate" and setting clear guardrails for safe experimentation
    • Paying your team as much as possible, even against margin benchmarks
    • Moving from one-and-done builds to a continual-improvement model
    • Why recurring revenue lets you sleep at night

    If you're a founder, agency owner, or leader figuring out where AI actually fits, this conversation offers practical insight, honest talk about profit and imposter syndrome, and a refreshing case that you don't need to clear anyone else's bar to be exactly who your business needs.

    Connect with me here:

    • Website: https://www.kimmillerhershon.com
    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmillerhershon
    • Newsletter: https://link.kimmillerhershon.com/widget/form/aEdmdA1W5MhoMCMfy5O8
    • Webinar: https://webinar.kimmillerhershon.com/?utm_source=Podcast

    Guest Details:

    • Guest: Scott Wintheiser, CEO & Founding Partner, Lightburn
    • Focus: Milwaukee-based digital CX agency (co-founded 1998); web design, development, CMS strategy, digital marketing, and ecommerce for mid-size organizations, especially manufacturers; serial ecommerce entrepreneur with a Sundance-screened documentary
    • Website: http://lightburn.co

    Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
    続きを読む 一部表示
    37 分
  • From Venezuela to CEO: How Coming to America Alone at 13 Shaped Her Success | Marivi Bryant

    From Venezuela to CEO: How Coming to America Alone at 13 Shaped Her Success | Marivi Bryant
    2026/08/14
    In this episode of Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom, Kim Miller-Hershon sits down with Mari V. Bryant, founder and president of HOME Agency, a people-first marketing and branding firm that partners with mission-driven organizations and national brands. With nearly 25 years of experience working with the likes of the Phoenix Suns, the NASCAR Foundation, State Farm, and Blue Cross Blue Shield, Mari is passionate about using marketing to create meaningful impact. She's also a dedicated community advocate and the founder of the Mission Meets Action Award, a $100,000 pro bono initiative supporting nonprofits through strategic marketing and storytelling, now in its second year. Her origin story starts long before any of that: she came to the US from Venezuela at thirteen, alone, to chase a tennis scholarship, living in a house with fifteen-plus other teenagers and calling her mom collect from payphones across two continents. In this conversation, Mari challenges a piece of conventional wisdom she absorbed straight from a lifetime of competition: that success means always chasing the next big thing. Fresh out of a D1 tennis career and into her working life, she treated every job as a stepping stone to the next one, obsessively hunting the following title before she'd fully lived in the one she had. It took years of maturity to see it as the wrong approach. The job you have right now is the right job for right now, and the better move is to be present in it, cultivate the relationships, and do the best work you can rather than always straining toward the horizon. She's clear it's a both/and: two things can be true, that she's never satisfied and that she's genuinely grateful for what's in front of her. Mari and Kim also dig into the nuance underneath outsourcing. You don't need to become a finance expert, but you do need enough knowledge to ask the right questions and keep real accountability in place. Kim sharpens it with a cautionary tale of a client who never asked and got stolen from by a trusted employee, and Mari's takeaway is that asking better questions is one of a founder's primary tools, not just for status updates but for prompts that make the whole team rethink its own approach. She's candid, too, that no one else will ever carry the business the way a founder does at 24/7, which is exactly why the right questions and reminders have to become a regular leadership routine. This episode explores: Why always chasing the next big thing is the wrong way to growBeing present in the job you have instead of straining toward the next oneHolding ambition and gratitude as two things that can both be trueFocusing on the "who," not the "what": resourcefulness over doing it allBuilding on your strengths instead of grinding to fix every weaknessWhy confidence comes from proof, and asking for help isn't failureOutsourcing finance while keeping enough knowledge to ask the right questionsWhy better questions are a founder's primary toolProtecting an intentional culture as a remote company growsChasing relationships and the right engagements instead of the moneyThe Mission Meets Action Award and matching nonprofits' exterior to their missionNaming imposter syndrome out loud to release itWanting validation and the reminder to look at the proof, without dismissal"You always win the game you're playing in your head," so choose it Mari's perspective is a powerful reminder that the strongest founders aren't the ones doing everything themselves, they're the ones who know their strengths, surround themselves with the right people, and ask the questions that move everyone forward. Her journey from a thirteen-year-old calling home collect from a French payphone to the head of a mission-driven agency shows that being resourceful, present, and honest about your gaps isn't a weakness in leadership. It's the whole foundation. If you're a founder, marketer, or leader trying to grow something without losing what makes it yours, this conversation offers practical insight, honest talk about imposter syndrome, and a refreshing case that the right relationships are worth more than the next quick win. Connect with me here: Website: https://www.kimmillerhershon.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmillerhershonNewsletter: https://link.kimmillerhershon.com/widget/form/aEdmdA1W5MhoMCMfy5O8Webinar: https://webinar.kimmillerhershon.com/?utm_source=Podcast Guest Details: Guest: Mari V. Bryant, Founder & President, HOME AgencyFocus: People-first marketing and branding for mission-driven organizations and national brands; founder of the Mission Meets Action Award ($100,000 pro bono initiative, applications open August 17)Website: https://www.wearehomeagency.comInstagram: @wearehomeagencyLinkedIn (personal): https://www.linkedin.com/in/marivibryant/LinkedIn (company): https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearehomeagency/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    37 分
  • The Invisible Tax of Leadership and success: On Masking, Mental Health, and Showing Up Anyway | Chelsea Byers

    The Invisible Tax of Leadership and success: On Masking, Mental Health, and Showing Up Anyway | Chelsea Byers
    2026/08/11
    In this episode of Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom, Kim Miller-Hershon sits down with Chelsea Byers, a high-growth operator and C-suite leader who spent years navigating the high-stakes world of education startups, including a growth phase that saw revenues climb to $100 million. But her career wasn't just a series of wins. In her memoir, Course Correct, she pulls back the curtain on what she calls the invisible tax of leadership, from managing clinical depression in the boardroom to navigating infertility and the Me Too era while scaling a company. She describes herself as a human infrastructure builder, focused on how to grow a business without letting the human fabric of the team rip under pressure. Her walk-in song, for the record, would be "Thunder" by Imagine Dragons, for the slow, unmistakable build. In this conversation, Chelsea challenges one of the most limiting pieces of conventional wisdom in business: that a leader has to look a very particular way. Early in her career, watching the tech boom across the water from her Teach For America classroom in Oakland, she counted herself out entirely, because she didn't see herself in the money-first, command-presence, talk-about-yourself archetype she assumed leadership required. Kim connects it to her work with DiSC assessments and the persistent myth that only the demanding, go-go-go style succeeds, when the evidence says every style can lead well. The conventional picture is just that, a picture, not a requirement. On growth and imposter syndrome, Chelsea's advice is refreshingly practical. She's grown most by chasing roles that genuinely interested her instead of climbing toward whatever the next promotion was, because people shine when they follow real enthusiasm. And she treats imposter syndrome not as something to defeat but as a companion to let ride along without letting it hold you back, whether that means picking up work you're curious about or simply asking a senior colleague for fifteen minutes about their career, which almost no one refuses. Being open, she's found, is the very thing that builds trust, because nobody quite trusts the person whose life is always shiny. This episode explores: Why leadership doesn't have to look like the conventional archetypeHow ruthless middle schoolers teach you that authenticity is table stakesLeading from your real temperament instead of a borrowed personaThe invisible tax of masking, and the self-blame that compounds itWhy mental health is brain chemistry, not a willpower or circumstance problemTreating health as best effort rather than a skill you can masterDe-stigmatizing infertility, miscarriage, and the silent grief around them"You're a person too": permission to feel what you feelWhy success and struggle are not a binary, and one doesn't cancel the otherLetting imposter syndrome ride along without letting it driveWhy openness builds more trust than a always-shiny front Chelsea's perspective is a powerful reminder that success and struggle are not opposites, and that the leaders people actually trust are the ones willing to be real about what showing up costs them. Her journey from an Oakland classroom to a $100 million growth story, carried through depression, infertility, and loss, shows that you don't have to have it all figured out to build something meaningful. You just have to stop pretending you do. If you're a leader, operator, or anyone quietly carrying more than you let on at work, this conversation offers practical insight, honest talk about mental health and imposter syndrome, and a refreshing case that being valued for all of you, not just the facade, is worth building a career around. Connect with me here: Website: https://www.kimmillerhershon.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmillerhershonNewsletter: https://link.kimmillerhershon.com/widget/form/aEdmdA1W5MhoMCMfy5O8Webinar: https://webinar.kimmillerhershon.com/?utm_source=Podcast Guest Details: Guest: Chelsea ByersBook: Course Correct (memoir)Focus: High-growth operator and C-suite leader in education startups; "human infrastructure" and sustainable team-buildingLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelseabyers/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
    続きを読む 一部表示
    39 分
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
まだレビューはありません