#46 | Why Your Marketing Strategy Isn't Working — and What Behavioural Science Says to Do Instead

#46 | Why Your Marketing Strategy Isn't Working — and What Behavioural Science Says to Do Instead

Rich Smith has spent 30 years as a CMO inside financial services, healthcare, and mortgage — managing $100M+ budgets and leading companies through crisis, hyper-growth, and turnaround. He is the founder of Rich M. Smith Growth Studio and host of The Revenue Science Podcast. In this episode, Rich and Pete pull apart why most companies jump straight to tactics without a strategy behind them, what behavioural science actually means in practice, and how marketing leaders consistently lose the boardroom by speaking the wrong language. They also cover the AIG Bank crisis playbook, the future of AI search, and why distribution is the most underrated factor in sustainable growth. Key Learnings Tactics without strategy is just noise. Most CEOs are asking "should we do more on social media?" before they have a repeatable strategy. Without intentional architecture, even a win can't be scaled — because you don't know why it worked. If you can't use a superlative, go back to the drawing board. First, fastest, only, cheapest, proprietary — if you can't describe what you do with a word like that, you are part of the sea of sameness. Customers cannot tell who is telling the truth until they buy. Capture the heart before the mind. People make decisions emotionally and rationalise them later. Leading with ROI charts and features at the top of the funnel is a guaranteed way to lose attention before you've earned it. The boardroom disconnect is a marketing leadership failure. Talking about MQLs and engagement metrics in front of a CEO is speaking the wrong language. Reframe website traffic as "demand capture potential" and watch the conversation change. You never fail your way out of a crisis — you succeed your way through it. During the 2008 AIG crisis, Rich proposed launching a direct-to-consumer online bank and kept the AIG brand. The logic: a sophisticated depositor understands FDIC insurance. An unknown brand would have taken years to build trust they simply didn't have. Intent data has a longer lead time than most marketers expect. At Jornaya, Rich found that consumers begin active shopping behaviour far earlier than credit triggers or late-stage signals suggest. Most businesses are reacting far too late. Alignment decays — you have to apply energy to maintain it. Ask a CEO what the company's top priorities are, then ask a leadership team member the same question. The answers will not match. The further from the original plan, the worse the matching gets. Connect with Rich on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/smithlink/] 🌐 http://www.richmsmith.com [http://www.richmsmith.com/]

#45 | From Luxury Watches to Agentic AI: The Future of Sales

Episode Overview Michael Kalinichenko has earned six promotions across a decade in SaaS, leading high-performing sales teams atIntercom, Zendesk, and Rieke — all while maintaining under 10% voluntary attrition across seven years of management. Before tech, he was selling Swiss-made luxury watches in one of the most relationship-driven, paper-based industries imaginable.   In this conversation, Michael and Pete trace the arc from manual relationship selling to the age of agentic AI — and find that the most durable competitive edge in sales has nothing to do withsoftware. They cover the hidden spectrum of AI adoption across European markets, why the world's most advanced LLMs carry a Western cultural bias that EMEA sellers must account for, and how to lead a team through constant disruption without letting uncertainty become anxiety. Connect with Michael on LinkedIn [linkedin.com/in/michaelkalinichenko]Book mentioned — The Choice: by Dr Edith Eger

#44 | Why ERP Implementations Fail (And It's Not the Software) | Kevin Patrick

EPISODE OVERVIEW Kevin Patrick has spent over 30 years in operations, manufacturing and enterprise technology. He has led more than 120 SAP Business One deployments, launched a brand new Acumatica practice that generated $2 million in revenue within 17 months, and earned Softengine the Acumatica Rookie of the Year award at the 2025 Summit. Today, through his company Trinity One Consulting, he works as a fractional CEO, EOS integrator and certified Dream Manager, blending operational rigour with a deeply human approach to workplace performance. This conversation explores the pattern Kevin noticed across hundreds of ERP projects: the system is almost never what breaks. It is the people asked to use it who were never consulted, never brought in and never cared for. From that insight, Kevin found the Dream Manager methodology, developed by Matthew Kelly and delivered through Floyd Consulting, a programme that helps employees define and pursue personal goals across 12 life categories, with the aim of reigniting engagement, reducing turnover and driving business results from the inside out. Pete and Kevin also go deep on AI adoption, the EOS framework, the cost of employee disengagement and what it really takes to build a podcast audience worth having. KEY LEARNINGS 1. The four red flags that signal an ERP implementation is heading sideways Kevin identifies the warning signs he looks for from day one: only managers in the room with no frontline workers, bad or incomplete data, no testing plan and no genuine employee buy-in. Any one of these is a problem. More than one and the project is in trouble before it starts. 2. Frontline workers are stakeholders, not afterthoughts When management runs an implementation and then arrives on the floor six months later to say "here's your new system," they communicate something powerful without saying a word: your opinion does not matter. Kevin builds subject matter experts from the floor into every project from the outset. 3. Employee disengagement is measurable and expensive The cost of replacing a consultant or manager typically runs to 20,000 to 30,000 euros in recruitment fees alone, before you factor in ramp-up time, lost tribal knowledge and the customers who follow the departing consultant to their next employer. The Dream Manager programme addresses the root cause, not the symptom. 4. The Dream Manager works across 12 life categories Developed by Matthew Kelly, the programme structures monthly one-to-one meetings across areas including physical wellbeing, financial health, legacy and relationships. Participants often report coming to work in noticeably better spirits within three to six months, with downstream improvements in customer satisfaction, output and retention. 5. AI is a force multiplier for the operational consultant Kevin was sceptical of AI until about 18 months ago. Now his entire practice runs on it. He has built a custom Dream Manager tracking application, an EOS management tool and automated his outbound sales pipeline, all without being a technical developer. His view: the fear of AI taking jobs is holding back the people it could help most. 6. Authenticity wins audiences faster than polish Kevin's two biggest podcast episodes by a wide margin are his addiction recovery story and a raw episode he calls The Reckoning, in which he admitted to his audience that he was still in the middle of the journey, not beyond it. Audiences can hear when someone is performing. They stay when someone is telling the truth.

#43 | Why Frontline Leadership Fails — and the System Built to Fix It

EPISODE OVERVIEW Most leadership frameworks were built for a world that no longer exists. Jon Dario has spent over three decades operating at the sharpest end of retail — from managing the flagship Gap store on 34th Street in Manhattan to overseeing $1.7 billion in operations across North America for Travelex, to sitting in the CEO chair of a 60-property real estate portfolio. Along the way, he kept running into the same problem: good managers with good intentions who still couldn't execute consistently. His answer was AIM — Action Item Management — a practical framework built not for the theory of leadership, but for the reality of the frontline. In this episode, Jon breaks down exactly how AIM works, why most digital transformation efforts fail at the human layer, and where AI genuinely enhances structured leadership systems rather than replacing them. This is a conversation for anyone who has ever been frustrated by the gap between what a team should deliver and what it actually does. What you'l get in this episode 1. Structure isn't a crutch — it's the foundation for good judgment. The AIM framework doesn't remove decision-making from managers; it gives them guardrails within which to exercise it. Jon's GPS metaphor is worth holding on to: a GPS defines the destination and recalibrates when roads are closed. The manager's job is the same.  2. The equation that explains every result. Jon teaches: actions + external influences = results. Managers who ignore external influences and follow the system blindly will always underperform. Monitoring what's happening around the plan and adjusting accordingly is the actual job.  3. Accountability flows upward before it flows downward. When someone is underperforming, Jon's default assumption is that the leader failed to explain, train, or remove obstacles effectively. That reframe changes how every difficult conversation goes — and dramatically reduces the frequency with which those conversations are needed at all.  4. AI's best role in leadership is buying back human time. Jon is direct: AI should not replace face-to-face management. But it can handle the administrative load that prevents managers from doing it. Tools like Microsoft Copilot extracting action items from a Teams call is a concrete, practical example of AI serving a structured system rather than substituting for it.  5. The management pyramid solves the multi-location consistency problem. Across 240+ Travelex locations, the challenge wasn't what the standards were — it was what happened when standards came into conflict. The pyramid of priorities gives every manager a shared hierarchy so decisions made independently still land in the same direction.  6. The hiring process is quietly breaking down. Since ChatGPT, Jon has seen assignment results at Seton Hall flip: 90% of students now get the hardest questions right, but through AI rather than understanding. His point — that people can feign knowledge in interviews without a real human conversation exposing it — is one every hiring manager should hear.  7. Leadership is ultimately about character, not competence. Jon's closing answer is the one to remember: influence comes from character, and character is how you treat people. You can be a tremendous leader without superior knowledge or technological fluency. You cannot be one without genuine human connection.

#42 | From Sales Director to Financial Freedom Coach — with Sjoerd Bak

Sjoerd Bak spent 18 years in SaaS sales, including a successful run at Salesforce in the Benelux region — earning well above the national average and yet constantly feeling broke. That frustration became the catalyst for a complete career transformation. Now a qualified financial advisor (and studying to become a certified financial planner), Sjoerd helps tech professionals — zero commissions, zero conflict of interest — stop the wealth leak and start building genuine financial freedom. In this episode, Peter and Sjoerd dig into why high earners in tech are often the worst at managing money, what actually blocks wealth building, and the step-by-step process Sjoerd uses to help over 300 clients take control. Books & References Mentioned * Rich Dad Poor Dad and The Cashflow Quadrant — Robert Kiyosaki * The Simple Path to Wealth — J.L. Collins * Dave Ramsey (referenced for comparison to Sjoerd's approach) * Alex Hormozi (referenced on client psychology and fast results) Connect with Sjoerd Bak * 📱 LinkedIn: Sjoerd Bak [www.linkedin.com/in/sjoerdbak/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_feed%3BqG7Q4sDZStyhgcmybUeoTA%3D%3D] * 🌐 Website: https://www.bamillionaire.com [https://www.bamillionaire.com]