EP967 - Jake "The Wizard" Tlapek on the fact that your marketing isn't broken, your message is

In this episode of Chasing the Insights, I talk to Jake "The Wizard" Tlapek.  Jake talks to us about how your marketing isn't broken, your message is. Jake "The Wizard" Tlapek built and sold The Wizard Marketing, a marketing agency, growing it on the back of a 100,000-follower TikTok audience of small business owners. The pattern he kept seeing: the businesses that broke out fixed their message, not their channels. One landscaping client went from $2M to $10M in three years on messaging alone. Same spend, same channels. That became Eight Dominoes: A Messaging Framework That Compounds Into Awesome Clients. He now writes, teaches, consults and runs the Eight Dominoes community. You can connect with Jake here: Website: https://www.jakethewizard.com Community: https://community.8dominoes.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-tlapek-10b55962 X: https://twitter.com/JakeTtheWizard

In this episode of Chasing the Insights, I talk to Laurie-Ann Murabito.  Laurie-Ann talks to us about speaking and communicating with confidence. Laurie-Ann Murabito, Speaking & Visibility Coach, is a reformed painfully shy gal who works with motivated business owners to leverage speaking opportunities for credibility, showcase their expertise and monetize their story. She combines her years as an award winning professional speaker, executive leadership coach and having started three successful businesses from the ground up. Besides helping her clients get positioned as the expert in their industry and building a profitable business that aligns with their purpose; she's the best selling author of Rethink Leadership and Rethink Your Leadership. A few of her clients are Johnson & Johnson, American Cancer Society, Baystate Wealth and is the host of the Top 1 1/2% Be IN Demand podcast. You can connect with Laurie-Ann here: Website: https://speakandstandout.com/ LinedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurie-ann-murabito/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurieann.murabito/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laurieannmurabito

In this episode of Chasing the Insights, I talk to Sayre Blake.  Sayre talks to us about Beyond the Chatbot: The Microprocessor Revolution, Round Two. Sayre Blake is the CEO and Technical Founder of SkillSaige, a Colorado made soft skill learning app helping people practice real-world conversations, communication skills, and workforce readiness while championing sustainable, responsible, and forward thinking approaches to AI that put people first. You can connect with Sayre here: Website: https://skillsaige.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/skillsaige LinkedIn 2: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sayre-blake/

In this episode of Chasing the Insights, I talk to Bruce Law.  Bruce talks to us about Marketing in the AI age. Bruce Law over the course of his 40-year marketing career, which began on New York City's Madison Avenue, has become a recognized expert in building brands, generating sales, and capturing market share for virtually every kind of company, from startup to late stage, B2B to consumer products, for profit to nonprofit. After directing marketing for brands like Owens-Corning Fiberglas, Lever Brothers, and Intel, Bruce founded Sprout Marketing in 2002, the first firm in the US to provide fractional CMOs to companies unable to afford a dedicated marketing leader. This fractional model has since become a pivotal growth strategy for startups and small businesses alike. Since its humble beginnings, Sprout has guided marketing for more than 400 companies, launched over 1200 products, and added more than $1 billion dollars of incremental revenue to the top lines of its portfolio clients. Bruce is a popular and provocative speaker on podcasts, at conferences and in university classrooms, and has been quoted in business and marketing publications. He holds an Advertising degree from Brigham Young University where he later taught as an adjunct professor. He currently volunteers as Executive Director for The International Society, a nonprofit organization connecting thousands of professionals across the globe to make a positive impact. He served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Japan and speaks fluent Japanese. He and his wife of 37 years currently reside in Salt Lake City, Utah USA and have 4 children and 6 grandchildren. You can connect with Bruce here: Website: https://www.sproutmarketing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawbruce LinkedIn 2: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sprout-marketing Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sproutmarketingaz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sproutmarketing

In this episode of Chasing the Insights, I talk to Katherine Tuominen.  Katherine talks to us about trust based marketing. Katherine Tuominen is a marketing strategist, publicist, and Founder of Catalyst Brand Strategy, an award-winning global PR agency that has supported more than 116 brands across health, wellness, technology, and regulated industries. With a background spanning luxury retail and film, including roles with Fox Film Studios and Warner Bros., Katherine specialises in governance-first communications that help founders build long-term credibility, thought leadership, and influence through intentional personal and professional branding. Her work sits at the intersection of strategy, storytelling, and responsible growth, with a particular interest in the future of health, wellness, and longevity. Her work has been recognised through APAC Insider's Australian Enterprise Awards 2026 and Ethical Marketing Innovator of the Year 2026. Her clients have been featured in Marie Claire, Fast Company, and Women's Health, while Katherine's own work has been published in Forbes. Her keynote, Ethical Marketing Is Not an Oxymoron, challenges the idea that integrity and performance are at odds. She has delivered Lunch & Learns for startups and women's associations on branding and authenticity, as well as panels at the Founders 2.0 Conference. She is also a co-author of The Art of Being Here and Now and serves on the inaugural Springboard Enterprises Longevity Council Advisory Board 2026, where she contributes her expertise in ethical communication, brand strategy, and responsible growth to conversations shaping the future of health and longevity. In addition to leading Catalyst, Katherine has guest lectured at RMIT University on Leadership and Culture and advocates for healthier, more accountable workplace environments. She believes meaningful change begins with a conversation. You can connect with Katherine here: Website: https://catalystbrandstrategy.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherine-tuominen/

In this episode of Chasing the Insights, I talk to Peter Boolkah.  Peter talks to us about The Hamster Wheel Trap®. Peter Boolkah is an award-winning business coach, entrepreneur, author and keynote speaker who has spent more than two decades working alongside business owners around the world. But his fascination with business has never really been about revenue for revenue's sake. It has been about a contradiction he kept seeing: people started businesses looking for freedom, worked incredibly hard to make them successful, and then discovered they had built something that couldn't function without them. Peter calls this The Hamster Wheel Trap®. That observation became the foundation of his book, Your Business Sucks – Build a Business That Works Without Destroying Your Life, in which he challenges founders to rethink what business success actually means. His belief is simple: being indispensable to your business isn't something to celebrate. The real achievement is building an organisation with the people, leadership and systems to thrive without you at the centre of everything. Today, Peter is increasingly focused on taking that message beyond the coaching room through writing, podcasting and keynote speaking. His mission is to challenge the conventional obsession with growth and help entrepreneurs build businesses that create wealth, freedom and opportunity without consuming the lives of the people who created them. You can connect with Peter here: Website: https://www.boolkah.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Boolkah Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pboolkah/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boolkah/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@pboolkah YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTransitionGuy Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H465YQMP

In this episode of Chasing the Insights, I talk to Simone Sauter.  Simone talks to us about Why Your Next Client Asks AI About You Before They Ever Visit Your Website. Simone Sauter is a PR and AIO strategist, visibility expert, and former journalist with more than 20 years of experience in the media industry. She specializes in helping founders, CEOs, and established entrepreneurs build authority recognized by the press, Google, and, increasingly, AI systems that influence public trust. Her work sits at the intersection of PR, search authority, and artificial intelligence optimization. Through her Visibility Triangle™ and Publicity Rockstar™ Method, Simone teaches leaders how to engineer digital credibility through strategic media features, high-quality podcast interviews, and Google-verified identity assets. Her approach gives entrepreneurs a visibility ecosystem that compounds over time and positions them as the go-to experts in their field. Simone's career began in journalism before transitioning into communications and PR roles for global brands including Match.com, Siemens, Daimler, and Tupperware. In her entrepreneurial journey, she attracted features in Cosmopolitan, InStyle, Closer, and more than forty international media outlets, signed a major book deal, and grew her online platform to over 100,000 monthly readers, all without relying on social media. Today, she continues to write for Business Insider and Parents.com and has been interviewed on more than ninety podcasts worldwide. You can connect with Simone here: Website: https://simonesauter.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonesauter/

In this episode of Chasing the Insights, I talk to Simon Bowen.  Simon talks to us about How to Make Price Irrelevant. Simon Bowen is the world's leading authority on strategic thinking systems and the creator of The Models Method® - the proven methodology that helps organisations uncover, protect, and scale their unique intellectual property and strategic genius. He partners with Fortune 500 companies, government leaders, military organisations, and visionary CEOs to make the invisible visible, transforming intuitive expertise into clear, visual frameworks that reshape how businesses think, communicate, and create value. For more than two decades, Simon has advised some of the world's most influential organisations across manufacturing, mining, financial services, technology, defence, infrastructure, and professional services. His work sits at the intersection of strategy, communication, and innovation, helping leaders articulate what makes their organisations truly unique and turning complex thinking into practical competitive advantage. The Models Method® has now been adopted in more than 30 countries and is used in over nine languages. Simon's flagship framework, The Genius Model®, has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales while transforming the way organisations communicate value, influence decision-making, and accelerate growth. Combining exceptional pattern recognition with a rare ability to surface tacit knowledge, Simon has helped organisations simplify complexity, increase commercial effectiveness, protect their unique ways of thinking, and scale without diluting the expertise that made them successful in the first place. His work equips leaders to make better decisions, accelerate innovation, and build businesses with lasting impact. You can connect with Simon here: Website - https://www.modelsmethod.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonbowen-mm/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@simonbowen_mm FaceBook - https://web.facebook.com/themodelsmethod/

In this episode of Chasing the Insights, I talk to Alex Brockway.  Alex talks to us about running AI agents like a workforce. Alex Brockway is the founder of AI Code That Works, where he teaches non-technical founders and operators how to ship real, production software with AI. A lawyer by trade — not an engineer — Alex builds live SaaS products used by real businesses, and is currently building RevAStack in public: a platform that puts your brand on autopilot, producing and publishing your content end-to-end — video, images, posts, ads, and email — from one automated production system. It's being built entirely by teams of AI agents that write, review, and test code around the clock. His core message: AI doesn't need you to be technical. It needs you to have a method. He teaches that method — proven on his own shipped products first — through his community, courses, and build-in-public content. You can connect with Alex here: Website: https://aicodethatworks.com Skool: https://www.skool.com/aicodethatworks/about Revastack: https://revastack.ai

In this episode of Chasing the Insights, I talk to Rita Rai.  Rita talks to us about The Knowledge Gap - Exploring the space between what leaders know and what they need to know, and the conversations that close it. Rita Rai is the founder of discussIt.co and a senior executive with deep roots in management consulting. She's spent her career working with Fortune 500 leadership teams on strategic planning, operational improvement, digital transformation, and change management - the kind of work where the difference between a plan that sits on a shelf and one that transforms a business comes down to how well people connect, communicate, and share knowledge. You can connect with Rita here: Website: https://www.discussit.co/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wediscussit/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weDiscussit X (Twitter): https://x.com/WeDiscussit