Episode 3 with Ryan Cecil: Bourbon, Blending, and Building a Brand From a Basement

Episode 4 with Todd Schmiedeler: AI, Intrapreneurs, and Getting More Human at Work

Welcome back to the Energy Exchange with host Alane Paulley. This episode is a conversation Alane has wanted to have for a while, with the person who helped guide her own journey into AI, her friend and fellow entrepreneur Todd Schmiedeler.Todd spent 15 years in healthcare, first as a senior executive in acute care, then as Chief Innovations and Engagement Officer for a large long-term care company, before launching his own businesses about five years ago. In the last two and a half years, AI has been at the center of almost everything he builds. He travels nationally and internationally speaking about it, and his thesis is one that most people don't expect: AI doesn't make us less human. Used right, it makes us more human to each other.The conversation covers a lot of ground. Todd breaks down the difference between using AI as a glorified search engine versus using it as a genuine thought partner, and why that shift changes everything about how a leader operates. He shares how he built Todd.ai, a version of himself trained on three years of his emails, meetings, and writing, so his teams could get answers without always having to wait for him. After running a two-week time study, he found that 70% of the questions people brought to him were ones they already knew the answer to. They just wanted assurance. Now his AI gives them that, and 95% of the time it responds exactly as he would, sometimes better.Todd also walks through his AI dossier system, a tool he built to research everyone he meets with before they sit down together, then shares that dossier with the person it's about. He talks about what it was like to navigate dyslexia as a business leader before AI existed, how he uses NotebookLM to convert research into audio so he can actually absorb it, and why he believes AI has created a new class of people inside companies he calls intrapreneurs.Alane brings her own experience into the conversation too, including how she used Todd's advice to get started, what happened when she let AI interview her one question at a time to learn who she was, and how she has used it to free up her customer support team from reactive one-off chats and move them into looking at the full customer journey instead.They also get into data privacy, AI guardrails, why the people most afraid of AI already have an Alexa in their kitchen, and whether AI might eventually do to social media what social media did to the evening news.

Episode 3 with Ryan Cecil: Bourbon, Blending, and Building a Brand From a Basement

Welcome back to the Energy Exchange with host Alane Paulley. This episode is with Ryan Cecil of Pursuit Spirits. Ryan Cecil is the co-founder and master blender of Pursuit Spirits, a brand he built alongside his podcasting partner Kenny Coleman after a decade of running the world's largest whiskey podcast, Bourbon Pursuit. What started in a basement with two guys who openly admitted they weren't the experts turned into a platform with hundreds of thousands of followers, a lineup of award-winning spirits, and a downtown Louisville tasting room and cocktail bar called Trial and Error. Ryan breaks down how Pursuit became one of the only bourbon brands to source from multiple distilleries across multiple states, blending mash bills from Kentucky, Tennessee, and New York into a single bottle, and why being transparent about that process has set them apart in an industry full of brands that hide it. He explains the ABCs of bourbon, the difference between a single barrel and a small batch, why 60 to 80 percent of flavor comes from the oak, and what he's actually tasting for when he sits down with 50 barrel samples on a Monday morning with nothing but eggs and green tea. Then Alane brings in MagnaWave. While the two were talking, her team was quietly running one of Ryan's bourbons through a PMF session. Ryan, a master blender who has tasted thousands of barrels, did a blind comparison on camera. He found a difference and had a clear preference. What he said about which one he chose and why is worth watching the episode to hear. The conversation also covers the challenges of building a consumer brand inside a three-tier distribution system, what Ryan learned from Napa wine country about going direct to consumer, the work-life balance realities of running a third startup with 10-year-old twins at home, and what he tells people never to say when they want to sound like they know bourbon.

May 8th, 2026: Bourbon, New Tech, and Everything You Need to Know

Welcome to a special live edition of The Energy Exchange with Alane Paulley, COO of MagnaWave and AuraWell. This one starts inside a bourbon distillery, and it only gets better from there. Alane kicks things off by revealing one of the most unexpected experiments MagnaWave has ever run: MagnaWaving an entire barrel of bourbon. After a blind taste test with the master distiller himself confirmed that the MagnaWaved bourbon came out on top, MagnaWave bought the barrel. The whole thing will be at MagnaCon, free with the purchase of a special shirt, and yes, virtual attendees can get in on it too. From there, Alane walks through everything you need to know about MagnaCon 2026, the 10th annual event and the 20th anniversary of MagnaWave as a company, taking place June 10th through 12th in Louisville, Kentucky. She covers the expanded agenda, which has tripled the content from previous years, the seven doctors presenting original research, Pat and Kat Parelli on natural horsemanship, the groundbreaking mitochondrial clinical trial results, hands-on training with horses, livestock, and humans, the Monte Carlo Friday night celebration, and a technology announcement that Alane calls an industry disruption she has spent her entire career working toward. Alane also gets into the AuraWell practitioner map, the new education portal launching at MagnaCon, the referral contest where top ticket sellers win machines, and why she believes buying a virtual ticket is one of the smartest business decisions a practitioner can make right now. The episode closes with a live giveaway of three virtual tickets and one full VIP experience, and a reminder that the hotel room block is sold out. Virtual and in-person tickets are available at magnacon.com.

Episode 2 with Christine Rogers: Sales Training, Inherited Legacies, and Outlasting Yourself

Welcome back to Energy Exchange Live with host Alane Paulley. This episode opens the way the best conversations do: over food, a little nostalgia, and zero small talk. Alane brings a German-American butter cake, Christine brings Italian red sauce energy, and from there the two dive into everything that actually shapes who you become as a leader. Christine Rogers is the owner of M3 Learning, a sales training company built on a methodology that has worked inside some of the biggest companies in the world. But her path to owning it is unlike almost any entrepreneurship story you've heard. Christine didn't start the company. She inherited it, unexpectedly, from her mentor Skip Miller, just ten days before he passed away from cancer. She shares the full story of that phone call, what she said yes to before she had any idea how to pull it off, and what it has meant to carry someone else's life's work forward. From there, Alane and Christine go deep on what it really looks like to sell without pushing people, why your native genius is often the hardest thing to teach, and how to build a team that can execute the work even when the founder is the one who does it best. They also talk about parenting, resilience, raising kids who can handle discomfort, and why small T trauma might actually be doing your children a favor. If you are building a business, leading a sales team, or trying to figure out how to grow something that does not fall apart the moment you step back, this episode is for you.

April 17, 2026: Social Media Marketing for PEMF Practitioners

Welcome back to Energy Exchange Live with host Alane Paulley. In this episode, Alane kicks things off with a candid conversation about what it really takes to market a small PEMF business, from defining your target audience and using AI tools to save time, to why social media is the most powerful and affordable tool a practitioner has right now.Alane also pulls back the curtain on MagnaWave's manufacturing operations, explaining why having facilities in Kentucky, California, and Belgium is not a cause for concern but a sign of a company built to scale and serve customers without interruption.Then Sarah Totis, Community Manager at MagnaWave, joins the conversation to share real, actionable advice for practitioners at every level. Sarah breaks down how to set up a public business page, why posting consistently beats posting perfectly, how to use Canva and Meta Business Suite to plan content in advance, and the 80/20 rule that separates social media accounts that grow from ones that stall. You will also hear a practical walkthrough of the Marketing Message Builder, a free tool listeners can text to get sent directly to their phone.The episode closes with Alane sharing a bigger vision around proactive health and wellness, the case for doing the work before there is a problem, and what is coming at Magcon for both in-person and virtual attendees.This one is packed with practical value for anyone building a business in the wellness space.