I've been podcasting for over a decade, and I still hear the same three excuses from business owners: "I don't have time," "I have nothing to say," and "I don't own a fancy microphone." Katie Brinkley has heard them too, and she has a good answer for each one. Katie is the founder of Next Step Social and Podcasting, the author of The Social Shift, and a top 1% podcaster who helps businesses turn their expertise into authority. In this episode, we talk about finding your why before you hit record, why local businesses may have an edge, how to get your show in front of new listeners (yes, Reddit comes up), and the simple trick for turning a listener into a lead. https://www.theagentsofchange.com/644 Need help with your branding, website, or digital marketing? Reach out to me (Rich Brooks!) today at https://www.takeflyte.com/contact

You've got a spreadsheet from a trade show three years ago, an email list, a CRM that half your team updates, and an e-commerce platform that knows more about your customers than you do. That's first-party data, and it's worth a lot more than most of us are getting out of it. This week I welcome back my old friend Tim Hayden, CEO of BrainTrust Partners, to talk about data sovereignty: getting off rented land, pulling your scattered customer data into one place, and putting AI to work on it without handing your business over to someone else's model. If your marketing decisions are running on guesswork and national averages, this one's for you. https://www.theagentsofchange.com/643 Need help with your branding, website, or digital marketing? Reach out to me (Rich Brooks!) today at https://www.takeflyte.com/contact

LinkedIn has been quietly turning into a video platform, and a lot of small businesses haven't noticed yet. That's an opening. This week I talked with LinkedIn strategist Louise Brogan, author of Raise Your Visibility on LinkedIn, about how to use LinkedIn Live, LinkedIn Events, and prerecorded video to get in front of the right people. We get into how to get your network to show up live, when a company page beats a personal profile, why your captions belong at the top of vertical video, and the easiest first video you can record this week. If you've been meaning to "do something with video" on LinkedIn, this one gives you a place to start. https://www.theagentsofchange.com/642 Need help with your branding, website, or digital marketing? Reach out to me (Rich Brooks!) today at https://www.takeflyte.com/contact

If you've ever searched for a local business and noticed the same three names in that little map box, you know how much those spots matter. If you run one of those businesses (or want to), you also know it can feel like a closed club. After nearly 30 years at flyte, I rebuilt our local SEO webinar from scratch because the ground had moved, and this episode is the short version of what I found. We'll walk through your Google Business Profile, reviews, your website, and the local links that push you toward the top three. Most of it costs time, not money, and none of it requires a decoder ring. https://www.theagentsofchange.com/641 Need help with your branding, website, or digital marketing? Reach out to me (Rich Brooks!) today at https://www.takeflyte.com/contact

Some of the best content ideas in your company are probably stuck inside the heads of people who have absolutely no interest in writing a blog post. Jesse Harris shares how marketers can earn the trust of subject matter experts, draw out what they know, and turn highly technical expertise into clear, compelling content without watering it down. https://www.theagentsofchange.com/639 Need help with your branding, website, or digital marketing? Reach out to me (Rich Brooks!) today at https://www.takeflyte.com/contact

Substack has been on my radar for a while, but I'll be honest: I wasn't sure it had much to offer someone who already has a blog, an email list, and a few social channels up and running. Turns out I was asking the wrong question. This week I sat down with Tracy Friedlander, a former professional orchestra musician turned Substack strategist and the voice behind The Second Act Strategist, to find out what the platform can do for small business owners and marketers who want to build a real audience without starting from scratch all over again. https://www.theagentsofchange.com/638 Register for my Local SEO Webinar (9.23.2026): https://www.takeflyte.com/flyte-school/live-events Take the Substack Quiz: https://www.takeflyte.com/flyte-school/live-events Need help with your branding, website, or digital marketing? Reach out to me (Rich Brooks!) today at https://www.takeflyte.com/contact

Every few months a new acronym shows up promising to replace the last one, and this year it's GEO. I brought Andy Crestodina from Orbit Media back on the show to settle a debate I keep having in my own head: is generative engine optimization its own discipline, or just SEO wearing a trench coat and hoping nobody looks too closely? Andy has spent twenty five years building websites that turn into lead generation machines for B2B companies, and he came in with a much sharper answer than "it depends," even though he says that phrase more than either of us would like to admit. If you run marketing for a small or mid sized business and you're wondering whether AI search means starting over from scratch, this conversation will save you a lot of wasted effort chasing the wrong checklist. https://www.theagentsofchange.com/637 Need help with your branding, website, or digital marketing? Reach out to me (Rich Brooks!) today at https://www.takeflyte.com/contact Check out Andy's first appearance and the introduction by my daughter Maya: https://www.themarketingagents.com/andy-crestodina-neuromarketing

Every time you ask ChatGPT or Claude for a recommendation, you're training it to know you better, and that changes everything about how customers find your business. My guest this week is Vivienne Wagner, founder and CEO of Houndstooth Media Group, and she's built her entire practice around helping business owners get recommended by AI the same way you'd ask a friend "who should I call for this?" We get into why clarity beats volume, how Google Business Profile reviews are quietly becoming AI training data, and why a bridal shop's "ultimate guide to summer weddings" outperformed anything her competitor across the street was doing. If you've been wondering why some businesses seem to show up in every AI conversation about their industry while others are invisible, this episode breaks down exactly what's happening behind the scenes. https://www.theagentsofchange.com/636 Need help with your branding, website, or digital marketing? Reach out to me (Rich Brooks!) today at https://www.takeflyte.com/contact

If your Google Ads budget keeps climbing while your results stay flat, you're not alone, and you're probably starting in the wrong place. My guest this week is Jeff Coleman, founder of Factor Four Marketing, who has spent more than two decades building results-driven Google Ads campaigns for everyone from local service companies to Fortune 500 brands. Jeff makes the case that most businesses jump straight into keyword research when they should start with their ideal customer profile instead, and once you make that shift, everything from your ad copy to your landing pages gets easier to build. We dig into what really makes your business remarkable (hint: it's probably not "great service"), why Jeff builds landing pages before finalizing keywords, and how to train Google's algorithm to send you better leads instead of just more of them. If you've ever looked at your ad spend and wondered whether it's working for you, this episode is for you. https://www.theagentsofchange.com/635 Need help with your branding, website, or digital marketing? Reach out to me (Rich Brooks!) today at https://www.takeflyte.com/contact

Here's a question I ask every business owner who complains their marketing "isn't working": when's the last time you actually looked at your website like a stranger would? Because nine times out of ten, the traffic is fine. It's the website that's dropping the ball. My guest this week is Irwin Hau, founder of Chromatics and Conversion Cow, who's analyzed close to 70,000 websites (yes, 70,000) and built an entire framework around the psychology of trust and conversion. Before he was auditing websites for a living, he was a card illusionist, which honestly explains a lot once you hear him talk about how easy it is to manipulate attention online. If you've ever wondered why people aren't calling, filling out your forms, or sticking around past the homepage, this episode hands you the four questions your website needs to answer, and the simple, often free fixes most businesses are missing. https://www.theagentsofchange.com/634 Need help with your branding, website, or digital marketing? Reach out to me (Rich Brooks!) today at https://www.takeflyte.com/contact