Episodes

Quinn Harwood, professional certified coach and author of Growth Time, joins Stephen Sakach and Tullio Siragusa with a daily self awareness practice he calls the Midnight Mirror, plus the three levels of listening that decide whether a leader is building empathy or just performing it.

Steve Ramona, super connector and host of Doing Business with a Servant’s Heart, joins Stephen Sakach and Tullio Siragusa to break down intentional introductions: the opening question, the four step listening loop, and why he made 1,800 referrals last year without tracking what came back.

Haley Anderson, Account Executive at Zero Company, joins the Marketing With Purpose series to explain how clarity driven messaging rescued a campaign that looked strong on paper, and why metrics tell you what people did but never why they did it.

Josh Fitzgerald went from Zoomin Groomin franchisee in 2023 to CEO in 2025. He joins Stephen Sakach and Tullio Siragusa on responding versus reacting, why he journals to find his own blind spots, and the four customer metrics that expose a trust problem.

Fredric Abramson, founder of Golden Thread Technology and a Johns Hopkins instructor, joins Stephen Sakach and Tullio Siragusa to redefine inclusivity as belonging at work, and to share ARCAR, the five step conversation method behind it.

James Doyle, Chief Marketing Officer of PIRTEK USA, joins the Marketing With Purpose series on AI call scoring and lead quality, why a QR sticker outperformed his slick automated review system, and how a rollout finally lands.

Kim Gubera, President and CEO of PIRTEK USA, joins Stephen Sakach and Mike Liwski on empathy and high standards. She visited every franchisee, asked them to tell her their story, then went home and rebuilt the support they had been missing.

Joe Dent, CEO of Everything Pets, a division of Loyalty Brands, joins Tullio Siragusa on purpose driven franchising. Three decades in the pet industry taught him that the partners who follow the system and keep the passion are the ones who build something profitable and worth doing.

Fred Navas, digital marketing specialist at Zero Company, joins Michele Brasfield on franchise marketing at scale. A two location owner and a hundred location brand need different strategies, and in both cases the job is turning an expense into an investment you can quantify.

Christopher M. Steer, founder and CEO of Steer LLC, joins Stephen Sakach and Tullio Siragusa to make the case that empathy is not niceness. It is perspective taking in service of the mission, built with reps rather than personality, and it pairs with accountability instead of replacing it.

Dominique Shelton Leipzig, founder and CEO of Global Data Innovation, joins Stephen Sakach and Tullio Siragusa on AI quality control. She has advised more than 300 companies, and her argument is blunt: raw models drift, so governance is not the brake pedal, it is part of the steering.

Anna Phillips, Account Executive at Zero Company, joins Michele Brasfield on setting client expectations early. Ten years in agency work taught her that onboarding decides the relationship, that most reporting goes unread, and that recovery matters more than a perfect record.

Shelby Parsons, COO and co-owner of Premier Inspection Services, joins Stephen Sakach and Tullio Siragusa on sustainability in decades rather than quarters. She started working with her dad at 13, and her test for any decision is whether it still holds up when the building is full of students.

Karen Price Owen, executive and life coach, joins Stephen Sakach and Mike Liwski on armored leadership. She spent 25 years believing effectiveness meant armoring up, and the shift came when she stopped performing a work self and started leading whole.

Josh Prizer, Fractional CMO at Zero Company, joins Mike Liwski on marketing peace of mind. He argues the job is not prettier dashboards but a predictable line from spend to revenue, and that growth is destructive when acquisition cost runs above contribution margin.

Michael Browning Jr., CEO and founder of Unleashed Brands, joins Stephen Sakach and Tullio Siragusa on connected loneliness. Serving 20 million kids a year across 1,500 locations taught him that belonging is getting rarer as connection gets louder, and that empathy never scales by accident.

Kelly Roddy, CEO of WOWorks, joins Stephen Sakach and Mike Liwski on emotional regulation for leaders. Running six restaurant brands through delivery upheaval and GLP-1 taught him that staying regulated is part of the job, not a personality trait.

Laura Baker, CMO of Weed Man, joins Mike Liwski on marketing as a revenue engine. Running marketing for 775,000 customers across 1,000 territories taught her that proving contribution beats asking for belief.

Craig Moody, Founder and President of Shoot 360, joins Stephen Sakach and Mike Liwski on technology that builds community. Machine vision measures every shot, and the thing that keeps members coming back is still being known by name.

Carl Comeaux, CEO of Crust Pizza Co., joins Stephen Sakach and Mike Liwski on community driven franchise growth. Thirty eight locations in, he can name exactly which decision makes community real and which one makes it a slogan.

Martha O'Gorman, CMO of Loyalty Brands, joins Michele Brasfield on empathy in brand marketing. Three decades and 7,000 franchise offices taught her that marketing can reach a customer's heart, and that a 20,000 dollar mistake can be tuition.

Jania Bailey, President and CEO of FranNet, joins Stephen Sakach and Mike Liwski on emotional intelligence in leadership. When a decision costs someone their life savings, reading the person is the job, not a soft skill beside it.

Paul Flick, Founder and CEO of Premium Service Brands, joins The Bliss Business Podcast to unpack franchise culture and belonging: the communication systems, autonomy, and purpose-driven Kids Lift initiative that turn a distributed home-services franchise network into a real community.

Teresa Johnson, CEO of Color Me Mine, joins The Bliss Business Podcast to explore empathy in franchise leadership: the open-ended questions, diagnostic habits, and "dream manager" mindset that scale care across more than 150 studios.