Making BIG Shifts

What makes someone memorable enough that people immediately know who they are, what they stand for, and why they matter?Lisa Apolinski believes one of the best examples has been around for nearly 2,000 years.In this episode of Making BIG Shifts, Lisa and I explore the marketing and personal-brand lessons behind the enduring story of Jesus, from storytelling and community to authority, trust, and clear positioning.We also get into why businesses should stop trying to be everything to everyone, how to find your "category of one," why AI is making authentic human stories even more important, and why your audience should always remain the hero of their own journey.This is ultimately a conversation about becoming more memorable without becoming more promotional.Because great marketing isn't about saying more.It's about giving people something clear enough to remember, valuable enough to trust, and human enough to care about.

Growing a business doesn’t always mean becoming a better salesperson.Sometimes it means becoming so good at serving people that they start doing the selling for you.Paul Dorsey is a 35-year wealth management veteran, a Managing Director at Mariner, a U.S. Navy veteran, and the author of Ditch the Pitch. Over his career, he built a massive referral-driven practice around a simple philosophy: stop pitching, take care of people, and give them a reason to choose you.We talk about why people hate feeling sold to, how exceptional service creates word-of-mouth, when to ask for referrals, how to build strategic partnerships, and why trust may be one of the most underrated growth strategies in business.One line from Paul sums up the entire conversation:“It’s easier to let them choose you than it is for you to chase them.”That applies to sales. It applies to marketing. And I think it applies to almost every business trying to grow today.

Being louder doesn't make you more persuasive.Robert Begley, communication strategist and author of Voices of Reason, joins me to break down what actually makes communication memorable.We talk about clarity, confidence, authenticity, character, stage fright, presentation structure, and why some speakers influence a room while others are forgotten by the next day.Robert also shares one presentation mistake almost everybody makes: ending with Q&A.We dig into lessons from Aristotle, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Winston Churchill, and other great communicators, then bring those principles back to modern leadership, sales, marketing, and business.One of my biggest takeaways was pretty simple: communication is not just about what you want to say. It's about what the audience needs to hear.And whether you're speaking from a stage or writing positioning for a healthcare practice, the principle is pretty much the same.Clarity builds trust.

Why do good healthcare products still get stuck in endless meetings, delayed decisions, and deals that suddenly disappear?Fred Sheffield has spent his career helping healthcare and health tech companies navigate that exact problem.Fred is the Chief Growth Officer of Five Stones Growth, a go-to-market strategist, and author of Health Tech Giant Slayer. In this conversation, we break down how smaller healthcare companies can compete, reach the real buying group, create urgency, and build a repeatable growth system.We talk about healthcare positioning, the difference between ROI and cost of inaction, internal champions, referrals, pipeline development, AI in healthcare, and why human connection may become even more valuable as AI becomes more common.For me, one of the biggest takeaways comes back to marketing fundamentals: know exactly why you exist, what makes you different, and how that difference matters to the organization you are trying to reach.A great conversation for anyone working in healthcare marketing, sales, health tech, or growth.

Most entrepreneurs start businesses because they want freedom. Years later, many discover they’ve created the exact opposite.In this episode, I sit down with Luke Mardigian, co-author of Exit Without Selling, to talk about owner dependence and why businesses can become completely reliant on their founder for decisions, relationships, knowledge, time, and revenue.Luke shares how he went from working 70+ hours a week in his insurance agency to becoming almost unnecessary to its daily operation, and the framework he now uses to help other owners do the same.We talk about true values, building a dream team, letting go of control, hiring A players, the “prison of success,” and why a business that has existed for 30 years may sometimes have simply repeated the same year 30 times.If you’ve built a good business but still feel like you can’t step away from it, this episode will challenge how you think about growth, leadership, and what you’re ultimately building toward.