Ever feel overwhelmed by all the data and metrics coming your way? You’re not alone. In this episode of Leader Generation from Mod Op, Tessa Burg talks with Scott Sutton about one of marketing’s biggest challenges: figuring out what’s actually worth measuring. Scott shares real-world insights from his experience managing media for major restaurant brands like Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. You’ll discover why measuring everything can actually hurt your marketing efforts, how to identify the metrics that truly matter to your business, and practical strategies for getting leadership buy-in on your measurement approach. This conversation is packed with actionable advice for anyone trying to cut through the noise and focus on outcomes that drive real business growth.
Kevin Stevick, CEO of RH Shepard, shares hard-won wisdom from 40 years in manufacturing: your people aren’t a cost center—they’re your competitive advantage. In this conversation with Deborah Fell, Kevin breaks down why the most successful private equity leaders treat workforce investment exactly like capital equipment purchases. Clean up the shop floor. Improve benefits. Increase wages. These aren’t feel-good initiatives—they’re strategic moves that lower turnover, boost productivity, and create a pipeline of candidates eager to work for you. The challenge? Most MBA programs don’t teach this. Most leaders still view people through a purely financial lens. And the skilled labor shortage isn’t going away. Kevin’s approach is refreshingly direct: listen first, provide guardrails not micromanagement, and give people room to succeed and fail. He challenges the myth that younger generations don’t want to get their hands dirty and explains how AI and robotics don’t replace workers—they transform their roles from manual labor to skilled technicians. This episode is essential listening for CEOs wrestling with hiring challenges, retention issues, or leaders who’ve never been taught to view human resources as a strategic imperative. Kevin proves that being the employer of choice isn’t just good ethics—it’s good business.
Most podcasts don’t die because the host runs out of things to say. They die because nobody wrote anything down. In this solo episode, Susan Finch walks through the operational framework Funnel Media Group uses to keep shows running — even when teams shift, guests go quiet, or life gets in the way. She covers the non-negotiables: documented SOPs for every step from guest outreach to post-production, numbered episode folders, a shared master tracking spreadsheet, templates for audio, video, and clips, a link to your branding guide, and a boost package strategy that actually gets your guests to share the episode. Short, practical, worth bookmarking. If your show has started and stalled, or you want to set it up right from the beginning, this is where to start.
In part two of this series, Barry Trailer, Chris and Corey bring a touch of humor to the conversation on the topic of sales and how it relates to the corporate business world today. Barry emphasizes the importance of establishing and elevating relationships over time, stating that sales isn’t about predicting anything but rather bringing people together. He compares the unpredictability of sales to the unpredictability of a baseball game, where even the best players are out 70% of the time. Chris Beall adds that the desire for predictability is a universal human desire, but sales is about doing things that have a reasonable shot of bringing people together so that problems can be solved that would otherwise be left unsolved. There is even a reference to fortune tellers, who are able to convince people to believe in the impossible. They guys agree that while the game of sales has not changed, the tools available to do it have improved, and the ability to access and share information has greatly increased, making sales performance level much higher today than in the past. If you haven’t listened to the first half of this series, we highly recommend you to check it out, “The Scarcest Commodity in Corporate Business Today.”
Laura Patterson brought Alfonso Aramburo of Brecher Manufacturing onto What’s Your Edge? to talk about what actually happens when you stop chasing the wrong customers and commit to the right ones. Sally Pace and Anthony Hartley of Patient Advisor LLC went deep on pharmacy spend and cell therapies on The Granite List Live — a conversation that matters to every employer managing a benefits plan.
On All-Volunteer, All Heart, Liza Buck from Experience Camps returned to talk about scaling a grief sanctuary from 27 kids to 2,000.
We hope you enjoy this playlist of our favorite episodes of the week.
