Making BIG Shifts

Making BIG Shifts is a growth and decision-making podcast for founders and operators, hosted by strategic integrator and founder of MKTG Reboot, Josh Anderson.Each episode features real operators, founders, and leaders unpacking the hard parts of running a business, the tough decisions, the setbacks, the inflection points, and the wins that follow. Through founder stories, growth strategies, and startup strategy insights, conversations span growth, marketing, leadership, systems, and strategy, with a focus on the shifts that actually move businesses forward.

Making BIG Shifts is a business podcast hosted by MKTG Reboot, with 65 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

MKTG Reboot hosts Making BIG Shifts, a business show with 65 episodes published.

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  Making BIG Shifts

  Your Business Is Successful. So Why Are You Still Trapped in It

  Sep 28, 202627 min

  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.

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  Making BIG Shifts

  50 Buyers, 3 Years and One Exit: What It Really Takes to Sell a Business

  Sep 21, 202624 min

  Most entrepreneurs spend years thinking about how to build a business. Far fewer think seriously about what it takes to leave one. Chris Slocumb built her agency over more than two decades before beginning a three-year exit journey that included roughly 50 buyer meetings, multiple letters of intent, several rounds of due diligence, and eventually a successful sale. In this episode of Making BIG Shifts , Chris and Josh talk about the parts of selling a company founders rarely hear about. They dig into valuation, recurring versus project revenue, founder dependency, paying yourself properly, choosing the right buyer, negotiating earnouts, and why a great financial outcome can still create a major personal identity shift. Chris also shares lessons from her book, Mastering the Exit Gauntlet , and the three questions founders should answer before deciding to sell: Why do you want to sell? When do you want to sell? What number do you need? If an exit might be somewhere in your future, start thinking about it long before you actually want out.

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  Making BIG Shifts

  Does Your Business Actually Own You?

  Sep 14, 202633 min

  Most entrepreneurs start businesses because they want more freedom. Then the company grows, the team grows, the responsibilities grow, and suddenly every important decision still comes back to the owner. Dan Paulson calls it The Owner’s Trap . Dan is an executive advisor and bestselling author of Escape the Owner’s Trap . In this conversation, we dig into how owners become the bottleneck, why delegation and training so often break down, how to create real accountability without micromanaging, and why reducing owner dependence can dramatically change the long-term value of a business. We also talk about succession planning, better meetings, simpler KPIs, employee onboarding, and one lesson Dan learned after a major health scare forced him to look at his own business differently. The biggest takeaway is simple: if you know something in your business needs to change, don’t assume you’ll get to it tomorrow. Start today.

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  Making BIG Shifts

  Why More AI & Data Won’t Automatically Grow

  Sep 8, 202644 min

  More AI. More data. More technology. But does any of that automatically create more revenue? Not even close. I sat down with James Roth, CRO of ZoomInfo , for a wide-ranging conversation about what the next era of sales and marketing actually looks like. James shares his unconventional path from college football and professional music to door-to-door sales and eventually the CRO seat at ZoomInfo. We talk about why leaders need enough competence to challenge the experts around them, why listening directly to customers matters more as you move up the organization, and why being willing to admit what you don't know can actually become a competitive advantage. We also get deep into AI. James explains how businesses are thinking about build versus buy, why AI is only as useful as the context and data underneath it, how small businesses are adopting these tools, and where ZoomInfo is headed next as it brings more of its go-to-market capabilities together. A really interesting conversation about AI, leadership, sales, marketing, and what still matters when everything around us seems to be changing.

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  Making BIG Shifts

  When Should You Quit? A 7-Time Founder on Pivoting, Failure & Finding Product-Market Fit

  Sep 3, 202637 min

  Entrepreneurs are constantly told to keep going. But what happens when persistence becomes stubbornness? Nuri Otus has built seven companies, experienced successful pivots, raised capital, shut down ideas that weren’t working, and is now building DUO, an AI-powered matchmaking platform. In this conversation, we dig into how founders can recognize real market validation, why criticism can actually be incredibly valuable, how positioning affects whether a product gets traction, and the signals that tell you when it might finally be time to change direction. Nuri also shares how an elevator conversation led to an investment from AOL, why DUO gained users almost immediately after launch, and why some of his best business lessons came directly from mistakes. A very real conversation about entrepreneurship, product-market fit, marketing, and knowing when to keep pushing versus when to move on.

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