How do you know if your media spending is bringing customers through the door? And how can you use that information while a campaign is still running? Alia Lamborghini, SVP of Global Revenue at Yahoo DSP, joins Tessa Burg to discuss how marketers can connect advertising to the business results that matter. Alia explains how customer data and real-time insights can help teams reach the right audiences and adjust campaigns sooner. She also shares where AI agents can take routine work off marketers’ plates, why human oversight still matters, and what to look for when choosing a media partner. Listen for a practical perspective on getting more from your media investments and preparing for 2027. You’ll come away with a clearer sense of the questions to ask your partners and how to give your team more time for thoughtful, collaborative work.
John D. Smith has led turnarounds across nine industries, from consumer retail to Caesars Entertainment, where he moved from retail executive to resort CEO in under five months. Raised in the Philadelphia projects and later a Harvard Business School graduate, Smith joins Deborah Fell to trace how football discipline, McKinsey training, and firsthand experience on factory floors and casino floors shaped his leadership approach. Smith breaks down his three-to-five-year transformation model: diagnose how the business generates cash, right-size the infrastructure, then rebuild trust with frontline teams before any strategy sticks. His core belief is that organizations only transform once their people do, and leadership is a behavior, not a position. This conversation covers what it really means to show up as a leader, why he treats every employee like a volunteer, and the discipline required to do the unglamorous work no one is watching.
Q4 is a good time to find out where your money is going. In this solo episode of Rooted in Revenue, Susan Finch walks through a year-end cleanup most business owners skip. She starts with the subscriptions that renew quietly every month or once a year, from CRMs, MLS fees, and AI tools to the Amazon subscriptions that come back after you cancel them. She also covers domains, which is where a forgotten renewal gets expensive. Five of her clients lost their websites in the last three months because a former marketing company registered their domains under its own name and credit card. Susan talks through what belongs on your list, who should be getting renewal notices, and why checking your own website regularly matters more than most people think. If your business runs on tools and domains you haven’t looked at in a while, start here.
Today’s episode explores the transformation of a legacy business in the fire protection industry, a sector that is highly regulated, fiercely competitive, and faces ongoing price pressure and low barriers to entry. Perhaps some of you can relate. This is also an industry where many companies experience long periods of stagnant growth or workflow. It’s not because demand disappears, but because differentiation erodes and internal complexity quietly increases. Our conversation is with Shawn Mullen, President and Chief Energy Officer at Protex Control. The company has been serving mission-critical facilities for 60 years. When Shawn took the helm in 2017, the company’s revenue trajectory was flat. Essentially, a parked car in an industry where standing still means falling behind. What’s especially interesting is that the market itself was growing; yet Protex Central wasn’t. That gap between market opportunity and company performance became the catalyst for change.
Shipping labels, blankets, and fabric across the country adds up fast for an all-volunteer nonprofit. In this short episode, Susan Finch shares the tools Binky Patrol uses to keep everyday operating costs down. She talks about switching to Pirate Ship for the labels Donna sends to chapters, how much it has saved, and why a post office clerk calling it a scam isn’t worth worrying about. Susan also covers TechSoup for discounted Microsoft software, hardware, and QuickBooks, Google Workspace for branded volunteer email at no cost, and how Rania sets up forwarding for volunteers who live in Yahoo or AOL. She wraps up with her take on GoDaddy and why Binky Patrol hosts its WordPress site on Rocket.net instead. If your nonprofit is paying full price for things it could get for almost nothing, start here.
This week, Jill Freeman, Author of The Unboring of Benefits: A Blueprint for Real Life Benefits Communication benefits leader and author, joins Sally on The Granite List. Live to dive into the crucial role that effective benefits communication plays in member utilization and ultimately member wellness. After years of experience on the employer-side of benefits, Jill witnessed first-hand the disconnect between benefits offerings and utilization. Identifying effective benefits communication as the missing, critical piece to make benefits understandable and accessible, Jill outlines the need for a consumer-like experience in benefits.
Now we are ending with Father Deacon saying, when we receive difficult things, when we’re in difficult situations, when we have things that are hard to deal with, let us ask Mary to help us as we pray the Rosary this month. Let us ask her to inspire us to receive those difficult things as coming from God, and to be able to accept them, to embrace them, to say with her over and over again as we repeat this beautiful devotion of the Rosary, “Let it be done to me according to your word.”
We hope you enjoy this playlist of our favorite episodes of the week!
