The Business Trendsetter Podcast

Only 6 weeks into the new administration and many small and mid-size business leaders are giving up on planning.  With Musk at DOGE sending out cost cutting measures, while other real department heads appear to be doing nothing – or doing something equally outrageous – it’s easy to say “there’s no reason to plan. Who knows what will happen next?”

That would be wrong. This podcast explains how the big trends have not changed. On the surface it may appear different, but if you know your customers’ needs you know to continue pursuing them.  What’s happening around yo...

Starbucks succeeded for years by building out a fantastic Value Delivery System supporting its Value Proposition.  This podcast explains how leadership allowed a focus on the VDS to drift the company away from its VP, and recently hire a new CEO who’s doing enormous harm to long term value by implementing short-term VDS improvements.

This podcast also overviews what SMB leaders need to know about DeepSeek and the evolution of AI. AI is getting better and cheaper, and like the internet did previously, is greatly improving business capabilities at lower cost. What’s been called “breakthroughs” are signi...

Netflix just blew out expectations for new subscribers, and the stock – one again – is at all time highs.  To understand why Netflix is so successful is to understand that the company keeps investing in entirely new markets and solutions, which drives new revenue streams.  Rather than focusing on how to do more of the same better, faster, cheaper Netflix keeps using trends to find new growth opportunities.

This podcast explains how attempts to defend & extend your business ultimately fail – like Sears.  And like the bad decisions McDonald’s made to grow the burger business rather than investi...

The episode of the Business Trendsetter Podcast Innovators Series features Manny Teran interviewing Frank Vidal, a development manager and founder of the Tucson Thrive virtual mastermind group. Frank shares insights into his community-building efforts through Tucson Thrive, which fosters open, vulnerable discussions and authentic relationships among members. The conversation explores mentorship gaps for entrepreneurs, the impact of social media and AI on networking, the importance of financial literacy, and the need for creating meaningful personal connections. Frank highlights the value of storytelling, vulnerability, and building community as cornerstones of personal and professional growth.

The administration is changing in 2025, and it’s sure to impact businesses. But you can plan for change. Looking backward, all the way to Kodak and Xerox and Amazon we can see that it is possible to plan your way to success, while avoiding pitfalls, decline and failure.  It’s important to plan for trends, rather than just looking at the past, realizing that big trends transcend politics offering the chance to grow regardless administrations.

This podcast overviews the big trends that will impact all businesses, and offers insights on how to plan for success.  Demogra...

Molly Gravatt, the inspiring founder of Radiant Dev, shares her remarkable journey from a career in volleyball  to trailblazer in technology staffing. Her story is a testament to the power of perseverance, people, and purpose. With over a decade of experience at Allegis Group, Molly honed her expertise in building connections and understanding what drives businesses forward: their people.

A life-changing moment during her divorce, coupled with unwavering support from her partner, gave Molly the courage to leap into entrepreneurship. Today, Radiant Dev is redefining the staffing industry by crafting high-performing engineering teams and fostering meaningful relationships w...

Spark Partners is excited to introduce the Innovators Series, a special mini-series within the Business Trendsetter Podcast. In this new series, Manny Teran will sit down with entrepreneurs, business leaders, and bold innovators to uncover the stories behind their journeys—exploring their triumphs, challenges, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way.

Meanwhile, the core Business Trendsetter Podcast will continue to bring you weekly episodes featuring Adam Hartung and Manny Teran, offering valuable insights into trends, current events, and case studies that reveal what it truly takes to achieve long-term success. Stay tuned and join the conv...

After almost a decade, and investing $10B, GM has simply quit the Robotaxi effort.  It joins a long list of big-time investors who wrote off more billions – Uber, Lyft, Ford and even Apple. Why were they so wrong?  This podcast explains how the lack of a Value Proposition meant these efforts were unlikely to succeed, even with “all the money in the world.”  Lacking a clear reason for their existence, this was money chasing technology for technology’s sake – versus customer needs.

We can learn from this lesson not only how to be smart about investing in n...

We often think of risk and uncertainty as the same thing. We say “I don’t  know what to do,” concluding doing something (often anything) seems risky.  But that is wrong.  Just because you’re uncertain what to do doesn’t mean it’s risky.  And you can be certain about what you do while taking actions (often doing the status quo) that incur a lot of risk.  It’s important to know the difference so you can manage both uncertainty and risk successfully.

This podcast explains how doing nothing in the face of uncertainty is usually the worst...

The election results are in, and it’s assured that America – which means the globe – is going to be dealing with change.  Are you prepared?  Hoping these changes won’t affect your business is foolhardy, and luck is not a strategy!

Long-term trends are not affected by this election.  The upside-down demographic pyramid isn’t going to change, nor is climate change and awareness thereof, nor is the rapid movement to automated processes. The new administration will likely react to all 3 differently than the previous administration, but the trends are still there and will impact  your business...

AI chip maker Nvidia is replacing Intel on the Dow Jones Industrial Average this week.  This may seem irrelevant to your business.  But it is, in fact, pretty meaningful.  There is an important lesson in this podcast for all leaders about maintaining relevancy, following trends and smartly investing your resources.

The DJIA members are supposed to be the 30 most secure, powerful and safe public companies in America.  But they keep changing. In the last years some pretty important companies were kicked off the list – Intel, Walgreens, Exxon-Mobil, Pfizer, GE, AT&T, Alcoa, HP, Bank of America...

During the pandemic we learned how to work very effectively outside the office.  Work From Home became the trend, and it has persevered more than 5 years later.  But some leaders want to go against the trend and make employees return to the office full time.  It is never a good idea to fight trends, and this podcast explains why full time return to office is a very bad idea.

1) Employees are less productive working from an office.  A lot of time is wasted on unnecessary tasks (documented in this podcast,) which costs a lot of money...

Every business owner wants to know the secret to great success.  It’s really more simply than most think – because it’s all about growth. Years ago we researched the sources of wealth creation, and nothing was even close to being as important as revenue growth.

This podcast explains why 10%/year revenue growth is crucial to remaining relevant, and why just 2 quarters of declining revenue can be deadly.  A dive into Starbucks revenue troubles demonstrates how easily a company can derail itself by focusing on one thing. And we explain why higher earnings at Tesla is buoyin...

Not so amazingly, we now know that people no longer stay at their jobs as long as they once did.  Few stick around 10 years, and most leave a job every 4.  Likewise, we know that warmer oceans have led to warmer gulfs, so hurricanes are more frequent and stronger – as are other bad weather events like floods and tornadoes. 

Despite knowing this is true, too few people build these facts into their future scenarios so they can make better decisions.  This podcast explains how you can make far better decisions for the long-term health of your company if you ut...

23andMe came on the scene as Time magazines “Invention of the Year” in 2008.  The silicon valley DNA testing company went public with a $6B valuation in 2021. Now it’s worth $150M and sinking fast as the Board has resigned and the company appears directionless.  What went wrong?

MOL Group in Hungary thought of itself as an oil & gas developer and retailer.  But today it is doing wildly better, growing revenues and profits and is a leader in AI implementation despite being far from silicon valley operating in eastern Europe.  What went right?

This podca...

Recent headlines could have easily persuaded you that the long term trend to sustainable energy was being upended. Yes, coal generation is closing, and nuclear plants are being reopened.  Yes, the demand for electricity is expanding faster than ever due to the growth of AI. But headlines don’t try to explain trends, and the trend to sustainable energy will continue. 

This podcast explains how important it is to separate trend data from headlines, so that you can smartly follow trends to better growth.  At the same time, by exploring Apple’s floundering in AppleTV and its...

The “Mandela Effect” is a term describing large numbers of people believing something is true, when in fact it is not true.  The term originated from large numbers of people believing Mandela was dead almost 30 years before he died. There are lots of examples, such as most people think they can buy “Jiffy” peanut butter when the real name is Jif.  Or thinking Tupperware is non-existent when in fact it was still selling plastic ware until filing bankruptcy this week.

This podcast explains how in business there is one very deadly Mandela Effect.  That is the belief t...

A decade ago Microsoft was well on its way to irrelevancy. Forbes mag christened Ballmer was the worst CEO in America.  The Board fired him, and today his replacement has led Microsoft to pre-eminence in tech, atop the AI heap.  His lessons for how to turn around a behemoth are relevant for organizations large and small.

This podcast explains how Nadella immediately de-invested in the “core” Microsoft products of Windows and Office.  Instead he poured company resources into SAAS (Software As A Service) and cloud computing.  He quit investing in 3% growth markets, and put the money (and people...

Spark Partners has been coaching clients for almost 30 years on how to achieve long-term success.  But despite the research, the books, the Forbes (and other) articles and interviews, people are still getting things wrong.  The failure cases of 30 years ago are forgotten (Multgraphics, Kodak, Xerox) while new cases – with identical patterns to the old – are happening right now in 2024 – Boeing, Intel, Walgreens, Red Lobster and Big Lots.

This podcast explores how the “best practices” for business from the 1990s and early 2000s are killing companies.  Old ideas of “focus on your core” doom your success.  Even though we thin...

Intel is looking more like Kodak, Hostess Baking, ToysRUs and GE every day.  People wonder “How can a company that is so successful, so innovative screw up its business so badly?”  There really is a pattern to what these companies did wrong, which you can avoid.  Listen to this podcast, using the Intel case study to explain how leaders fall into the bad decision-making trap.  Learn how you can be more like Microsoft, Apple and Amazon today, on the edge of “the next big thing.”

People get stuck doing what they’ve always done, and reluctant to do...

Shockingly, YouTube is now the #1 streaming service on televisions – bigger than Netflix – and bigger than broadcast TV.  For 17 straight months YouTube has been the winner, with ad sales growing at double digit rates and exceeding $50B/year.  This podcast tells the phenomenal story of how Google kept tinkering with the platform until it figured out how to profitably monetize those users.

An even better story in this podcast is about the real winners who are the YouTube content creators, many of whom make more than $1M/year.  Even though YouTube doesn’t spend anything on content cr...

Intel was once the leader in semiconductors by a huge margin.  They were half of the “wintel” platform that was the PC business for over 20 years.  But now, Intel is on hard times.  Sales are down over 30%, profits are down (losses in semiconductors), and plans are to lay off 15K employees while discontinuing the dividend.

This podcast delves into what went wrong with the innovation engine at Intel.  How things changed, and Nvidia, AMD and TSMC took the  lead, while Intel’s ability to catch up looks bleak.  Mismanaging the innovation process can have a huge impact o...

Most people focus on operating their business better, faster, cheaper.  They look for efficiencies in doing what they’ve done.  But that is NOT the road to long-term success.  That’s just making sure you have an effective Value Delivery System.

Success requires knowing your customers’ needs, and then understanding the value you can provide by fulfilling your needs.  Yes, there will be a delivery system. But before that you need to know your Value Proposition. And too often we fail at knowing customer needs and the value they really want.

This podcast uses real life case...

Lots of people somewhat glaze over when told they need to be more involved in AI.  The tendency can be to think of AI as requiring very hard core, high end, difficult technology skills that take years of education and application.  It’s easy to think that most of us are simply incompetent when it comes to AI, and it’s a challenge beyond most of us.

This podcast explains the top skills needed to succeed with AI, and none of them are technical.  Yes, technologists are part of the implementation process, but skills understanding data, setting up prob...

Do you ever wonder how a business as successful as Kodak could invent digital photography, and then completely lose it and all relevancy?  Or how Blockbuster could dominate home video sales, and end up bankrupt?  It happens because leaders don’t move early enough to understand customers, and don’t move quickly enough to react to customer needs.

This podcast uses the Biden crisis to demonstrate how leaders make monumental mistakes.

Every small and midsized business leader tells me they know their customer.  They are sure that’s why they succeed.  But, unfortunately, most don’t know the vast majority of their customers very well, and they are surprised when business turns south on them.  They try to raise prices, or cut costs, and they are surprised that customers leave.  Or they try to expand into new markets, and they never attract a strong customer base. 

The problem is we get too involved in perfecting our Value Delivery System for the customers we had in the early stag...

As business leaders we tend to focus on what we control. But what we don’t control is infinitely larger than what we do control. We can’t control the world, so the smartest thing to do is focus more on the world, so we can adapt and adjust we do control toward greater success. 

Geopolitics is about as far away from what we can control as possible; especially as small and mid-size organization leaders. But these global events do make a difference to our businesses.  Understanding various scenarios can really help a small biz guide i...

Everyone sees trends, but most of us are so locked into our current situation that we don’t recognize how to use those trends for better outcomes.  We are so stuck doing what we’ve done that we feel little room is available to doing something new.  But the good news is that new tools – most of which are free – can help enormously with this overcoming this problem.

This podcast not only explains how we lock into our current situation, but how we can use something as easy as ChatGPT to identify ways to unlock the situati...

Unbeknownst to most people, 3D printing is a $20B business growing at 25%/year.  While most people haven’t used a 3D printer, or even thought about it, it’s really a lot like ChatGPT.  It’s a new technology on the scene that took 35 years to develop – and opens the door to enormous innovation, better business practices, lower costs, exciting new products and a whole lotta growth!  3D .printing is to the physical world what AI is to the information world.

This podcast overviews how 3D printing technology has become very cheap, and easy to use.  It ove...

We at Spark Partners are constantly asked how to know when to invest in a trend.  We’re asked how to tell a trend from a fad, and how to know that investing in a trend will pay out.  This podcast answers those questions by looking at case examples like Amazon, Apple, Tesla and even making predictions about Nvidia and the future of AI.

The key to identifying trends is learning how to read weak signals.  If you wait until the trend is dominant you’re already late, and early adopters have advantage over you.  It’s then impor...

This podcast explains why so many of us make poor business decisions.  Quite simply, we tend to look backward rather than forward.  We think the future will look like the past, when that is mostly unlikely.  We let biases built up over time, and perceptions of today (which are often wrong) drive decisions - instead of data and trends.

Good leaders hire good coaches to help them understand the marketplace and how it shifts, in order to plan for a future different from the past.  As coaches we use data and trends to drive better investments with bett...

For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), intellectual property (IP) can be a hidden goldmine. But how do you capture that value when selling your company? Custom software applications can be a strategic answer.  Many SMBs have unique processes or algorithms that give them a competitive edge. Building a custom app allows you to encode these procedures into the software itself, making it difficult for competitors to replicate. This "secret sauce" becomes tangible IP, boosting your company's value.

In this podcast, we speak with Brandon Wilson, Co-founder and CEO of STEADYNAMIC, a software development firm with de...

Lots of talk about AI, but many small and mid-size businesses still aren’t applying AI.  This podcast is a short primer on what’s happening in AI and how to get started.  You can do it wrong, and we explain how easy it is to use the wrong data sets.  And you can apply it wrong, attempting problems that require adaptability between data sets.  Or you can do it right by focusing on activities that are repetitive, and where you have (or can acquire) good data.   From roboticization to machine learning to AI this podcast will help  you figure out...

In the future electricity will be free.  How’s that for a forecast?  Adam made over 200 forecasts for Forbes mag, and when he stopped writing all 200 were proven accurate.  This podcast explains how to do good scenario planning using the electric utility industry as an example.

Demand is going up.  But supply is challenged by the technology transition from fossil fuels to sustainables.  Will the industry be able to meet demand with solar and wind alone?  Or will new nuclear plants be needed?  This podcast goes step by step through how analyzing demand and supply leads to identifyi...

In this episode, Manny engages in conversation with Tanner Herbert and Rebecca Crane, both principals of the Signature Group, a longstanding full-service residential real estate company supporting buyers and sellers in Southern Arizona's fast-paced market. Beyond traditional services, their company also engages in wholesale transactions and fix-and-flip projects. Through their insights, we gain a deeper understanding of how the real estate market intertwines with global megatrends like demographics, AI, and the gig economy; and how the local landscape is in a constant state of evolution.

The Southern Arizona real estate market, centered around cities like T...

Most people think of strategic planning as a periodic exercise, typically done annually (or every 3 years) and reviewed possibly quarterly (or semi-annually.)  It’s almost an activity that is undertaken “just because” but which has minimal impact on daily decision making. 

But successful innovators do strategic planning very differently. They don’t even think of it as an exercise, but a continual process that guides decisions – and investments – in the right direction.  Strategic planning becomes part of the decision-making process, not a relegated activity. 

This podcast not only explains how good innovators use strategic planning, but profiles Nvi...

For years Adam has been a fan of Tesla.  Tesla innovated the EV market, overcoming multiple obstacles that traditional auto execs felt were unsolvable.  And Tesla’s founder proved to be an innovator of cars, as well as business models.  For over a decade Tesla had limited competition, and it grew very quickly.

Times have changed.  This podcast explains why Tesla’s value has decreased by 65% over the past 3 years, and 50% even in the last 10 months.  Tesla has failed to innovate into pick-ups, and failed to innovate into low-cost autos.  Facing intense competition from far more established companies...

Today, we're joined by Jeanne Cummings, a turnaround CEO with a specialty in guiding founder-led companies towards manifesting their visions. She delves into her unique approach, an 'inside out engagement,' which begins with grasping the founder's vision and extends through conversations with employees and customers. This process offers invaluable insights into the company's viability, free from the biases of entrenched leadership.

For Jeanne, transparency, purpose, and leveraging the right human resources are paramount in fostering a robust business model. Our dialogue shed light on a fascinating concept: the notion of "focus on your core." While I...

Today, we had a conversation with Brendan Staib, the latest addition to the SparkPartners team and a sophomore at the University of Arizona's business school. Understanding the distinct buying patterns of each generation can provide valuable insights on how to sell to each of them and grow your market share. In our discussion, Brendan shed light on the evolving trends defining the Gen Z lifestyle, highlighting the significant impact of the rise of AI. Moving forward, seizing opportunities with each new generation will require a deep understanding of their purchasing behaviors and cultural backdrop, especially by understanding what prevailing...

This podcast reviews 2 innovators launching new businesses.  One we see as very likely to succeed. The other is a lot more questionable.  We explain in detail what distinguishes the difference.

Adam Hartung made over 300 predictions during the decade he wrote for Forbes.  100% of those predictions turned out to be accurate – a record for Forbes writers.  That accuracy was based upon understanding the key elements to success of launching innovations (and new products) – elements that are still poorly understood by most business people.

Listen to how one innovator required a huge investment to launch...