In this episode of Some Goodness, Richard Ellis interviews Todd Katcher, founder of Digital Dealership System, which provides digital signage and performance boards in more than 1,000 car dealerships. He discusses early build-vs-buy constraints in hardware, tailoring offerings with many products to enable cross-selling, prioritizing his core revenue business while running multiple ventures, and advising new leaders to ignore titles, learn every function hands-on, and not compare early stages to others’ later success.

Soundbites

• “Even if you have the money to hire other people to do your job, it’s still your job if you’re responsible for it.” (02:27)
• “If you could do something better yourself that you hired someone else for, then they’re the wrong person.” (02:09)
• “What do we do first? Everything. There’s no priority, ’cause you gotta figure it out all at once.” (03:40)
• “Know who you partner with before you partner with anybody... It’s kinda like a prenup, or pre-marriage counseling.” (05:00)
• “There’s a lot of talking heads, where they talk in theory but they don’t talk in practice.” (06:01)
• “Don’t compare your chapter one to someone’s chapter 100. Ask somebody how they got started, not how they got to where they are.” (24:20)
• “My day-to-day doesn’t have a title. My title is do what needs to get done.” (25:44)

Richard’s website: https://www.revenueinnovations.com
Todd’s website: http://www.digitaldealershipsystem.com

Host Richard Ellis welcomes Danny Goldberg, CPA, staffing and corporate training founder and author, to discuss why message delivery is a learnable leadership skill. Danny emphasizes engaging, succinct, tactfully direct communication; mastering the message without scripting; and being authentic rather than forcing humor or borrowed stories. They compare communication across one-on-one, team, and stage settings: build trust and show care in 1:1s, avoid leader-dominated talk in teams to reduce groupthink and increase psychological safety, and be clear and consistent on stage. Practical tips include using simple bullet-point prompts, avoiding podium barriers, ending early, interacting to keep adults engaged, and closing with “gold nugget” takeaways after Q&A.

Soundbites

• “If your message can’t be delivered effectively, nobody’s gonna care about it.”
• “This might be more important than your intelligence, is being able to deliver your message.”
• “The less I speak, the more effective a speaker I’ve become.”
• “If you memorize your speech, you’re not gonna sound like you know it.”
• “If I don’t feel comfortable telling you something, then that’s part of your effectiveness. You probably aren’t the most effective leader then.”
• “I do not trust anybody that stands behind the podium the whole time. A podium is a physical barrier.”
• “If I’m telling you what to do, are you truly a team?”
• “All those one-on-one meetings, all those team meetings build you into your stage presence.”
• “If you’re not a funny person, don’t try to be funny.”
• “Telling stories for the sake of storytelling is just not good, and people get frustrated.”

Danny's business, GoldSRD: https://goldsrd.com/
Richard’s business, Revenue Innovations: https://www.revenueinnovations.com

Host Richard Ellis interviews Michael Epps Utley of GoEpps about Google’s unusual transition as AI and LLMs reshape discovery. Utley argues AI may be a “Google killer,” comparing Google’s current position to past platform shifts, and says Google is pushing Gemini into prime search real estate while negotiating the differences between search and AI. For businesses, he notes SEO rankings still matter but overall organic traffic is often down while remaining traffic is more valuable; informational content is increasingly answered by engines without site visits, making unique content and commercial-intent queries more important. He emphasizes reputation as central across platforms, with GEO/AEO relying more on what others say through reviews and offsite signals, and recommends CEOs “Google” and also check themselves in tools like ChatGPT and Grok. He also discusses adding schema so bots can read offers and events, noting bots now generate over half of internet sessions.

Soundbites

1. "SEO was about what we say about ourselves. GEO and AEO are what other people say about us."
2. "Companies are getting less traffic from SEO, but the traffic that comes in is more valuable."
3. "You can't tell you're in the water when you're a fish, and right now we're all equating Google with the internet, and that's just not the way it's gonna play out."
4. "They're eating a lot of their brand recognition value to buy the data they need to make Gemini usable, so they're learning at the expense of the user base."
5. "If you've had a content strategy that was about more is better, that's not the case anymore. Unique is better."
6. "There's no replacing a good reputation. That just became the central most important thing across all these platforms."
7. "People need to Google themselves more, but they gotta start Groking themselves too."
8. "A week or a few weeks ago, bots were the biggest user of the internet for the first time. More than 50%."
9. It's okay, y'all. We're all still people. Let's stay human."

Michael's business, GoEpps: https://www.goepps.com/
Richard’s business, Revenue Innovations: https://www.revenueinnovations.com