Your Company Name Is Not the Place to DIY
Working with many clients who are always trying to DIY as much as they can in marketing, I regularly run across people who obviously didn't think through their branding, or the logic behind it, for long. Some relied on AI or Fiverr to generate their logo, company name, and tagline in one sitting. This post is going to focus on two of those pieces, your company name and [...]
Odds Are Your Pilot Didn’t Fail Because of Poor Results
Pilots are crucial. You test out your vision and watch it come to life, but not without trial and error. Those pilots often fail, but not for reasons you might think. Here's another way to look at it. You've built something real; now here's how you keep it. Most pilots don't fail because the results were bad. They fail because no one can tell whether the results mean [...]
What 17 Years Of Client Relationships Have Taught Susan Finch
You cannot automate trust. Like all parts of your business, you have to work for it (surprise!). Putting client relationships on the front burner really pays off, because trust is built and protection is key. You've built something real; now here's how you keep it. Susan Finch herself was invited to join Mark Adams on The Unforget Yourself Show to talk about what it actually takes to build [...]
Why Your Best Year Might Be What Stops You from Building What’s Next
It's not easy to achieve success; if you're reading this, odds are you know that. What you might not realize is that reaching your goals, as awesome as it is, can get in the way of the next step. This is how to keep going when the going gets good. You've built something real; now here's how you keep it. There's a pattern Ravi Venkatesan, CEO of Cantaloupe, [...]
Key Person and Key Processes: Protect What You’ve Built
Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was your business. Months, even years, of hard work were spent to get you to where you are today. Now that you have succeeded, it's time to ensure everything you have worked towards pays off. The goal of this series is to share a few tips and tricks that guide business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs through the bumps in the [...]
Stop Building Pages That Dead End. Start Earning the Next Conversation
Two unrelated client projects landed in Susan Finch's lap the same week — a document hub for Dan Pflugshaupt (Gallery of Homes, CSSE, NRBA) and FAQ content built for AI answer engines for Michele Scherger on Florida's Treasure Coast. Different clients, different states, same underlying problem: ads and content that dump people on a homepage instead of giving them a real answer. Susan walks through what changes when [...]
The Real Reason Your Agency Keeps Getting Stuck Guest: Melissa Morris
When agency owners hit a wall, the first instinct is usually to add a new tool — a new Slack channel, a project management upgrade, maybe an AI feature. Melissa Morris, founder of Agency Authority, says that is almost never the fix. In this episode, Susan Finch and Melissa dig into why communication overload and workflow chaos are not tool problems — they are clarity problems. Before any [...]
What Actually Keeps a Podcast Going Past Episode Three
Most podcasts don't die because the host runs out of things to say. They die because nobody wrote anything down. In this solo episode, Susan Finch walks through the operational framework Funnel Media Group uses to keep shows running — even when teams shift, guests go quiet, or life gets in the way. She covers the non-negotiables: documented SOPs for every step from guest outreach to post-production, numbered [...]
Getting It Out of Their Heads and Into Your Business
You did your homework from Key Man Part 1. You know who your key people are. Now what? Susan Finch and Lany Sullivan are back — still in the same room, still making the most of Lany's four-hour drive to tackle the part most business owners skip: how to actually approach your team about documentation without triggering a panic spiral. Someone's going to feel like their job is [...]
Key Man, Part 1: Who’s Really Keeping Your Business Running?
Most business owners think they know who the key person in their organization is. They think of the CEO, the founder, the executive. But Susan Finch and Lany Sullivan have a different perspective, and once you hear it, you cannot unhear it. In this episode, Lany opens with a concept borrowed from the insurance world: Keyman Insurance, which is an actual policy that protects a business when something [...]
The Ambassador You Didn’t Know You Were
While editing an episode of Leader Generation, I heard something that stopped me mid-cut. The guest — Mariano Bosaz, VP of Global Consumer Strategy at Coca-Cola and author of The Digital Mindset — had dreamed of becoming an ambassador for a country. Official title, formal post, the works. It didn't happen. (Turns out without a family diplomat connection, they just send you somewhere terrible when you're old to [...]
Why Your Best Business Tool Might Be Restraint Guest: Laura Patterson
Susan Finch sits down with Laura Patterson, President and Co-Founder at VisionEdge Marketing. They explore why businesses chase shiny new tools instead of maximizing what already works, the real cost of remote work on mentorship and professional development, and how strategic restraint might be the most powerful tool in your marketing arsenal. Laura brings decades of experience helping companies achieve measurable business outcomes through marketing, while Susan brings [...]