Most marketing isn’t failing because of bad ideas — it’s failing because marketing and leadership aren’t speaking the same language. Mari-Liis Vaher learned that the hard way, standing in front of a bank CEO with a polished digital report and no answer to the question: “How does any of this help me grow my business?” That moment changed the direction of her career.

In this episode, Mari-Liis breaks down the Marketing-Leadership Gap, why 70% of CEOs don’t trust marketing to deliver growth, and why 75% of marketers are burning out — and explains why those two numbers are two sides of the same problem. She’s the founder of Powerful Marketers, author of The Greatest Marketer, and the creator of a five-step framework that starts somewhere most marketing books don’t: with your mindset.

We also got into the orchestra analogy, why the first person she talks to in any new business is on the sales team, and the question every listener should ask themselves: what are you still doing today simply because you’ve always done it?

In This Episode:

• The bank CEO moment that changed everything — and what Mari-Liis did next

• Why 70% of CEOs don’t trust marketing — and why marketers nod when they hear it

• Why marketing itself has a branding problem

• The five-step framework: Mindset, Strategy, Marketing, Communication, Leadership

• Why mindset comes first — the oxygen mask analogy

• The road trip analogy: what happens when teams drive without a destination

• What she asks the sales team before she ever looks at a campaign

• What you should probably stop doing (and why stopping won’t hurt your results)

• The companion tools inside thegreatestmarketer.com — and why they’re free

Connect with Mari-Liis:

• Website: powerful-marketers.com

• Amazon: search ‘The Greatest Marketer’ — available globally

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/vahermariliis

• Powerful Marketers on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/powerful-marketers

This episode is brought to you by Flodesk. Get 25% off your first year: flodesk.com/c/LYONCREATIVES

Not sure if your brand is working as hard as you are? Grab the free Brand Audit Scorecard at lyoncreatives.com/brand-audit-scorecard — ten questions, five minutes, and you’ll know exactly where to focus.

Howard Rudin spent 13 years cooking in New York City kitchens before trading his chef's knife for a tape measure and walking into the family conveyor belting business. Thirty years later, he's keeping production lines running for commercial bakeries, pharmaceutical companies, cosmetic manufacturers, and a snack chip brand that went viral on TikTok. In this episode, Howard talks about what it actually takes to build relationships in a business nobody knows they need, why Thursday is his most productive day of the week, and how a giver-first mindset has shaped everything about how he operates.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• How 13 years in professional kitchens translated directly into a career in industrial supply

• What conveyor belting actually has to do with bison tracking tags in Banff National Park

• Why Howard believes referral networking is the only advertising that works for B2B

• The "giver's gain" philosophy he lives by — and why he doesn't want to convince anyone to join BNI

• What it takes to rank above the fold on Google without spending a dollar on ads

• His pitch for getting people to a 7am networking meeting — and why it works

Connect with Howard

Email: beltman@acebelting.com

Social: @madeonabelt on Instagram and Facebook

LinkedIn: Howard Rudin

This episode is brought to you by Flodesk. Get 25% off your first year: flodesk.com/c/LYONCREATIVES

Julia DeWolfe is a CBT-informed business coach and founder of Off The Record, a 1:1 coaching program for women in service and expertise-based businesses. She works with clients through Voxer — in real time, not waiting for the next scheduled call — to help them untangle the beliefs running their decisions and build a business that fits their brain. In this episode, Julia walks through how cognitive behavioral therapy maps onto business thinking, how an ADHD diagnosis at 30 reshaped how she runs her practice, why cycle syncing is more useful than most people give it credit for, and why she thinks reading fiction is one of the most underrated tools a founder has.

In This Episode

• What CBT is and how your core beliefs quietly run your business decisions

• The luteal crisis — why there’s a predictable window each month when everything feels like it’s on fire (and it’s not a sign to quit)

• How Julia rebuilt her coaching model entirely around how she does her best work

• Her ADHD diagnosis at 30 and what it clarified about structure, consequence, and business design

• Why anti-hustle is not the same as anti-ambition

• The case for reading fiction as a business owner — empathy, imagination, and ideal client avatars

• What happens when you stop trying to fit your business into someone else’s model

Connect with Julia

• Instagram: @juliadewolfecoaching

• TikTok: @juliadewolfecoaching

• Off The Record (1:1 coaching): juliadewolfecoaching.com

• The Hotline (1-day Voxer intensive): juliadewolfecoaching.com

Not sure where your brand stands right now? The free Brand Audit Scorecard at lyoncreatives.com/brand-audit-scorecard takes five minutes and shows you exactly where to focus.

This episode is brought to you by Flodesk. Get 25% off your first year: flodesk.com/c/LYONCREATIVES

Faith Morris moved back to the U.S. from Australia in 2023 with two kids under two, no local community, and a husband starting a stone masonry business from scratch. Within six months, that business turned profitable. Within a year of launching her own operations consultancy, she hit six figures. She did both with what she calls a minimal marketing plan.

In this episode, Faith breaks down exactly how she built the back end of two businesses at the same time, why hustle culture gets a bad rap it doesn't always deserve, and what most entrepreneurs get completely wrong about hiring. She also shares the four rules that got her masonry business booked three months out and growing 65% year over year in gross profit margin.

If you're a founder running on fumes and wondering whether it's worth building the infrastructure before you have it all figured out, this one is for you.

In this episode:

• How Faith scaled a stone masonry business to profitability in six months with zero local community

• The four-rule client experience system that sounds obvious but almost nobody does

• Why referrals alone will eventually destroy you

• Her take on hustle culture and why year one and two require a different mindset

• The difference between online and local business owners when it comes to spending money

• Her minimal marketing plan: two platforms, one community, three months

• Why a VA is not always your first hire and how to figure out what you actually need

• What happened when she finally rebranded and wrote every word of her own copy

Connect with Faith:

faithemorris.com

LinkedIn: Faith Morris

Instagram: @remote.ops.partner

Faith's offers mentioned:

• Ops Diagnostic

• The Six Week Sprint

• Before You Bring Them On

• The Efficiency Circle (group program, runs twice a year)

This episode is brought to you by Flodesk. Get 25% off your first year: flodesk.com/c/LYONCREATIVES

Not sure where your brand actually stands? The Brand Audit Scorecard walks you through the key areas founders overlook. lyoncreatives.com/brand-audit-scorecard

Most leadership tools tell you what to do. Chemp.ai lets you practice. Susanne Drews spent 15 years in middle management across media, IT, and healthcare, and she built this app because she lived the problem herself. Now she's an AI educator based in Malaga, Spain, helping leaders show up with more empathy and a lot less stress.

In this episode we talk about:

• Why the middle manager position is one of the hardest in any organization

• How Chemp.ai uses role-play, AI feedback, and empathy scoring to help leaders prepare for difficult conversations

• The five features inside the app: message drafting, role plays, empathy check-in, micro learnings, and a wellbeing tracker

• What positive leadership looks like, and why it starts with the leader, not the team

• Who Chemp.ai is for (hint: it's not just managers) and how to become a beta tester

Connect with Susanne:

• LinkedIn: Susanne Drews

• Instagram: @susanne.ia @chemp_ai

• chemp.ai

Want to become a beta tester for Chemp.ai on Android? Use the app daily for 14 days and get a free 6-month subscription (valued at ~150 EUR / ~$65 USD) plus 20% off when you renew. DM Susanne on LinkedIn to get access.

This episode is brought to you by Flodesk. Get 25% off your first year: flodesk.com/c/LYONCREATIVES

Think your brand could use some work? Take the free Brand Audit Scorecard at lyoncreatives.com/brand-audit-scorecard and find out where you stand.

AI content is everywhere right now, and we all know it. Polished, perfect, and somehow completely forgettable. In this solo episode, Svenja Lyon digs into why authentic brand voice is the thing that’s actually cutting through in 2026, and what it really means to develop one that sounds like you.

In this episode:

• Why AI-generated content is creating a trust and engagement collapse, and what that means for your brand

• The difference between brand voice and brand aesthetics

• A real example of what it looks like when brand voice works

• How to start identifying your own voice using what you’ve already created

• Why consistency in voice, not posting volume, is what builds recognition and trust over time

This episode is brought to you by Flodesk. Get 25% off your first year: flodesk.com/c/LYONCREATIVES

Want to know where your brand actually stands? Take the free Brand Audit Scorecard at lyoncreatives.com/brand-audit-scorecard — it takes about 10 minutes and gives you a clear picture of what’s working and what isn’t. Or book a call directly: calendly.com/svenja-lyoncreatives

Diana Friedman found a journal from 1987 — she was in her twenties — where she had written that she wanted to run writing retreats for women. Decades later, she's doing exactly that: in the Basque Pyrenees of Spain, the Pocono foothills of Pennsylvania, and the mountains of Maryland. And she brought her longtime friend Valerie Berton along for the ride.

Together, Diana and Val are the co-founders of KindWrite Studio — a writing studio that helps writers at every stage of the process. Diana works with clients who are just getting started, finding their voice, or coming back to writing after years away. Val comes in closer to the finish line — developmental editing, submission strategy, finding the right literary magazine for the right story.

Their retreats sell out. Their clients get published. And their approach is built on something that most of the writing world is not known for: being kind.

In this episode we talk about:

• How Diana's mother shaped her relationship with writing

• Val's unexpected path from government communications to co-founding a writing studio

• What actually happens at a writing retreat — and who they're really for

• The Motherload retreat, which helps women write about the most complicated relationship in their lives

• Why their in-person conversion rate is nearly 100% and what that tells them about their digital presence

• Why writing is a craft, not a talent — and what it takes to help someone believe that

If you have been sitting on a story, a book idea, or a chapter that keeps getting pushed to the back of the pile — this one is for you.

Connect with Diana and Val:

• Website: kindwrite.com

• Instagram: @kindwritestudio

• Retreats Instagram: @pyreneanwritingretreats

• Diana's Substack: Under the Red Pen

• Facebook: KindWrite Studio

• YouTube: @KindWriteStudio

Connect with Lyon Creatives:

• Website: lyoncreatives.com

• Free Brand Audit Scorecard: lyoncreatives.com/brand-audit-scorecard

• Book a discovery call: calendly.com/svenja-lyoncreatives/free-30-min-discovery-call

• Instagram: @lyoncreatives

This episode is brought to you by Flodesk. Get 25% off your first year: flodesk.com/c/LYONCREATIVES

What happens when you spend 16 years helping the world’s biggest brands find their voice — and then realize you’ve lost touch with your own?

In this episode of This Might Get Creative, I sit down with Eric Vasquez — a ProMax Award-winning Key Art Designer and Design Director based in New York City. Over a 16-year in-house career, Eric crafted high-profile campaigns for NBC, SYFY, Oxygen, Major League Baseball, WWE, A+E Networks, HGTV, and Wondery. Two and a half years ago, he bet on himself and launched Eric Vasquez Design LLC.

Eric’s story is not a straight line. It started with being fired from his first design job, a hospitalization from a freak gym accident that cost him his dream opportunity to work alongside the designer of the Pulp Fiction poster, five layoffs, and losing his mother to stomach cancer. Each time, he found a way to turn the setback into a next step.

Now he’s on a deliberate mission to bring the human element back to design — through an annual Analog Pivot where he trades his digital workflow for gel plate printing, hand sketching, and screen printing. And he has a clear message about AI: it’s a tool, not a replacement. Perfection is boring. The magic is in the imperfection.

In this episode we talk about:

• His journey from Connecticut to NYC — the false starts, layoffs, and the moment he decided to bet on himself

• What key art is and what it actually takes to design campaigns for multimillion-dollar global launches

• The difference between working in-house for corporate brands versus running your own creative studio

• Why he does an annual analog retreat in New Orleans and what it teaches him every year

• How he is incorporating screen printing, gel plate printing, and drawing back into his professional workflow

• Why human-made branding and design will always have an edge over AI

• What he tells business owners who are thinking about rebranding — and why story matters more than style

• His YouTube channel where he documents the whole journey for the next generation of designers

Connect with Eric Vasquez:

Website: ericvasquez.net

Instagram: @ericvasquez84

LinkedIn: Eric Vasquez

YouTube: The Key Art Designer

Connect with Lyon Creatives:

Free Brand Audit Scorecard: lyoncreatives.com/brand-audit-scorecard

Website: lyoncreatives.com

Instagram: @lyoncreatives

Flodesk — the email marketing platform built for small business owners. Get 25% off your first year: flodesk.com/c/LYONCREATIVES