The My True Talent Podcast

Mike Solitro is a lovely bloke. What we like to call in these parts a diamond geezer.

Professionally, he’s a triple threat - an attorney, a realtor and a business coach, mostly for fellow realtors. He pretends to be a reluctant family man but I’m sure you can tell we all know differently.

And I think he’s just the sort of valuable person you’d like to get to know so that’s why he’s on the podcast.

I asked Mike about what it means to be a Dad, how he got into the marketplace he’s currently in, how coaching works in the real estate world. 

I asked him to tell me a cautionary tale and we also had a fascinating conversation about consumerism and why it’s so frustratingly compelling sometimes. 

But first, quite simply, I asked Mike what he did at the weekend.

Jeffrey Fullerton is a veteran entrepreneur. Fairly astonishing as he’s still only 22. 

He started his own business at the age of 12, providing a multitude of businesses in varying sectors with a suite of IT services. 

From there his abilities and fast-growing experience and nous led to adventures far, wide and (not forgetting his local neighbourhood) much closer to home in China, Japan and Santa Fe, with significant roles in manufacturing, community development and the entertainment industry. 

Nowadays, amongst many non-profit making activities, he heads up Liquid Zoo (LZ), a hybrid technology-entertainment studio focused on developing the framework for next-gen multi-generational experiences. And now Jeffrey can count luminaries from Apple, Netflix, MTV, SAG, and Paramount, as team members to help him and the business produce countless immersive shows, films and experiences.  

We had not one but two fascinating conversations about the ever-expanding role of tech in all aspects of life and business, the music business, where it’s at and where it’s going, and his role in the entertainment business moving forward. And a lot more mind-altering stuff besides. But first and quite simply, I asked Jeffrey what his plans were for world domination.

Barbara Wei runs Aime - interactive workshops, in Chicago Illinois, that provide young Asian-Americans with the tools, experience and support they need to understand and solve life's social, emotional and mental challenges.

Public health and wellbeing in the young is Barbara’s modus - she’s extremely passionate about it and in 2021 she even gained a Master in Public Health degree at Harvard.

In this podcast, I asked her what inspired her to pick up this challenging mantle, her views on the effects of social media on her audience, her plans for the near future, her own feelings about the success of her sessions and first, what motivates her.

Mar-Liis Vaher is a marketing and PR entrepreneur based in Tallinn, Estonia. Her passion is helping people understand the power of marketing at its many and various applications, which is why her marketing and services and coaching business is naturally enough called Powerful Marketers.

She describes herself as a Sales and Marketing Alignment Builder, Marketing Mentor, Team Coach, Master Marketer and Public Relations expert, working as a strategic collaborator to build organisations marketing their business and their future. That and she's just launched her Powerful Marketing Tips podcast.

So I asked Mari-Liis how far outside her marketing remit her services go, to what extent she values accountability for her clients, where she would like her business to be in three years time but first I asked her what gets her out of bed in the morning.

Abi Mellor is an accomplished visual storyteller.

She's co-founder of MOREVER, an award-winning creative agency based in Brighton. She works directly with her clients to deliver outstanding visual content through film and animation.

In 2020 MOREVER won the Charity Film Awards (20-50 million category) with Blind Veterans UK, Ken's Story and were also highly commended at the Third Sector Awards.

In today's podcast, I asked Abi how she dealt with the dual challenges of being a Mum and running a business, particularly during lockdown, what Abi's special sauce is and how she provides it to her team and clients, how as a business for good she makes money. And first... what is Abi most proud of?

Dalia Courridge is the type of person you might not think you need in your business - her business is marketing strategy - but you do, you definitely do. 

Particularly Dalia, as you're about to find out. 

Dalia provides a service that delves deep into your business's reason for being, extracts exactly what makes it tick and why, what and how you should be going about spreading the word. 

In today's podcast we talk about why marketing expertise matters, why you should prepare a marketing plan, persuading tricky customers to do the right thing, we have a particularly cool natter about marketing, psychology and how the two go hand-in-hand but before all that I ask Dalia, simply, "what is marketing strategy?"

Ricardo Ramos has a vision. That one day everyone will feel at home wherever they go in the world. That they'll be informed, helped out, entertained, absorbed within the many destinations they visit. And he's doing something about it, right now, building apps and making connections so that everyone's well looked after. 

And safe. 

In today's podcast, I ask Ricardo what his current app does and how it benefits the traveler, what his goals are for rollout, how, as a highly energetic entrepreneur, he keeps himself going but first I asked him... where his ideas to do with city discovery originated.

Disha Parekh knows digital. So well, in fact, that she is now a senior digital content strategist and manager at Gupshup, a leading global AI messaging solutions provider. And AI chatbots and other online messaging products and solutions, she believes, are playing a major role in communication between brands and their customers.

We talk about how the pandemic has had an effect, nay, impact on consumers, how and why the bot software that Disha is partially responsible for is important in the development of relationships between consumers and brands, what of the future in artificial intelligence and inter-communication and firstly, and quite simply, what in Disha's view, is digital content?

I have to confess to having more than a sceptical view of purveyors of business authenticity, value, trust and sincerity.  That's partly in line with my innate curiosity and, I have to say, a suspicion that people are frankly trying a little too hard to be seen through what I might call high-minded virtues rather than good old-fashioned decency, stoicism, creativity, reliability and productivity. That said, I often check myself, particularly when I meet the likes of Paul Spiers.

Paul is founder of the New P&L, which stands for principles and leadership rather than profit and loss of course. As well as running a business based around the values surrounding the business name, Paul delivers a regular podcast, also called the New P&L, where he interviews luminaries who, in his view, have values in line with the New P&L.  Paul, as you'll discover, is a fundamentally passionate guy who's clearly determined to make the business world a better place through his own and others principles & leadership. In the podcast, we talk about what he thinks about others' profound views of what's happened to them in the past year, how much of himself he puts into his work, how diverse he thinks the guest pool for his podcast are and what he feels would be his gift to the world.

But first, I asked Paul what he thinks he's learnt from this particular business journey.

My guest today is Shawna Rossi. 

Shawna is an accomplished public relations and corporate communications business leader whose experience and expertise encompasses business strategy, managing crisis and corporate reputation. 

She's also an equally accomplished long-distance runner and competitive sailboat owner. 

Her professional incisiveness and compassion are both insightful and rewarding, as you will discover. In this podcast we cover the quality or otherwise of mass media including how to avoid the perils of fake news, about The Sesame Street effect and about the relationship between PR agencies and clients, 

And first I asked Shawna how she thought PR has changed over time,

Geri Rosman is a rare thing. A no-nonsense, straight-talking public relations expert. In my opinion. 😉 

She's been President of her own Public Relations business for nigh-on a quarter of a century and she's developed a particular expertise for providing PR for legal businesses. She shares a refreshingly frank and enlightened worldview with my other guests. 

In the podcast we talk about communicating in a crises, why honesty is the best policy, how engendering loyalty can be simpler than you think for an employer and first I asked Geri why communication is so important in business.

Proloy Mitra is a tech entrepreneur and a true believer in the future of technology. After quite a few years working in the large corporate space, Proloy is now focusing his talents on helping tech start-ups to develop their products and brand.

We talk about Proloy's current project, the development of a pioneering gaming solution, how partners are important to the success of his business and his beliefs and joys around fiction and what it can tell us about the future. But first and specifically in the context of his current role, I asked him about why and whether the word "intrapreneur" helps to describe where he's at and what he does.

Kevin MacKenzie is an extraordinary person. By day he's a brand strategist, working with large international businesses such as Siemens, Airbus, DSV, Accenture, Interpol and Carlsberg. He's also an author. His latest book, written under the pseudonym of Gillies MacKenzie, is Gabriella, a deeply dark and Gothic-rich novel about war-torn Berlin towards the end of the 2nd World War. It's one of the best books I've read.  

Lise Keeney is one heck of an original. She's a communications and brand expert who loves to converse. Which suits me down to the ground as it turns out. We talk about everything you might want to talk about in an hour, from toilet snakes to "Side of Ranch", her soon-to-be-named new residence, to how racism is inherent in all of us (and why we should keep talking) and why small talk is cool if done in the right way. 

That's her rather natty pepperoni onesie, by the way 😎

My guest on today's show is Rob Morley, Founder & Commercial Director at Fountain Partnership, a highly successful paid search business specialising in the dark science and art of search engine optimisation. Rob unravels the complexities of search, explains why it matters and tells us how he got into this part of digital marketing in the first place and what his hope and visions are for the future.

Jack de Wolf is on a mission to ensure that when business is done, it's done in a good way. 

On today's My True Talent podcast, we chat about the virtues of being virtuous, of why remote working is still cool, what B-Corp is and why it's important and why now more than ever we should all be more aware of our beautiful blue planet.

My guest on the very first episode is Pamela Munoz, a Global Communications and PR expert.

The trailer for the My True Talent Podcast, interviews with people with talent who have purpose and know how to use it.