A fractional CMO and a PR firm founder explain what marketing and PR actually mean today, and how founders in the middle of a pivot can get the market to see who they are now.
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Everywhere you look, accomplished people are starting over. Corporate leaders are becoming founders, executives are going fractional, and founders are stepping into a whole new stage of their business. They all run into the same truth: nobody knows this version of you yet.

In the first of a recurring series, Matt sits down with two people who explain marketing and PR plainly. Gokce Sezgin is a fractional CMO with Chief Outsiders and has spent 25 years building growth in healthcare, health tech, and consumer products. Ryan Walker left corporate PR in 2018 to start RJ Walker & Co., which helps small and early-stage companies in tech, fintech, and financial services tell their stories.

They start with their own leaps. Gokce left a global giant for a much smaller company, while her husband asked whether they could even pay her salary. Ryan went out on his own the same year he bought his first house and had his first kid. Then they get practical: what marketing and PR really are, why AI has made earned media matter more, how to know you’re ready for outside help, and why the story behind your company matters more than the tools you use to tell it.

Plus, the story of how Ryan’s team brought a cowboy to Wall Street to lasso the Charging Bull.

In this episode:

• Why marketing is more than advertising, and why clarity and consistency are the hard part
• PR as the art of getting other people to talk about you
• Why old-school long-form SEO is dead, and what AI search rewards now
• Signs you’re ready for a fractional marketer or a PR firm
• Personal narrative and the founder’s “why”
• Why your own team is your first audience
• Three questions to ask before your next phase of growth

Got a question for Gokce and Ryan? They’re coming back to answer questions from founders. Send yours to matt@mattstone.co.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3bfHlFyPIVc

Connect with the guests

• Gokce Sezgin, Chief Outsiders: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gokcesezgin/
• Ryan Walker, RJ Walker & Co.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-walker-a80348a/

Most founders don’t have an ideas problem. They have an action problem. Jason Durkee, President of Idea Development in Tokyo, shares what it really takes to grow a business past its first success.

Jason Durkee moved to Japan for university, joined a corporate training startup while still in college, and in 2003 founded Idea Development in Tokyo. More than 20 years later, his firm serves 130+ clients a year, including many of Japan’s best-known companies. He named his company after ideas, then learned the ideas were never the hard part.

In this episode, Jason and Matt talk about:

• Why action comes before the plan, not after
• How to get unstuck when your signature offer has become a hamster wheel
• Why existing clients give you the chance to build something new
• How to sell a service clients can’t see yet
• Casting a team of specialists instead of hunting for the perfect hire
• Losing 90% of a year’s revenue in two weeks, and rebuilding
• What non-Japanese managers at Japanese-owned companies need to know about headquarters

About Jason Durkee
Jason is President of Idea Development, a workplace learning and performance consulting firm in Tokyo, and a director of ATD Japan. Since the 1990s he has designed and delivered innovation, communication, and cross-cultural programs for more than 40,000 participants across Asia.

Connect with Jason
Idea Development: http://www.ide-development.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-durkee-idea-development/

The Bigger Stage
Conversations with founders and builders about what it takes to step onto a bigger stage.
https://thebiggerstage.com

Everyone told Mylena Maulepes not to bother applying to Harvard. She applied anyway. Now she helps companies beat burnout by fixing how the work is designed, not by asking people to be more resilient.

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Everyone told Mylena Maulepes not to bother applying to Harvard. She was Brazilian, English wasn't her first language, and she already had offers from other schools. She turned them down and applied anyway. A few months later, an email arrived at work: "Welcome to Harvard."

Mylena started out as a mechanical engineer on a truck engine line, went on to earn a master's in industrial-organizational psychology at Harvard, and came home to Brazil with a better question. Companies keep asking how stressed their people are. She asks what's making them stressed in the first place.

In this episode:
- The night she gave up the sure thing to take a shot at Harvard
- Why an engineer's habit of asking "why" became her edge in psychology
- Why well-being spending isn't moving the needle, and what does
- Crocodiles in the pond: fix the environment, not the swimmer
- What younger generations want from work, and why founders should pay attention
- Selling culture work to numbers-first buyers
- What her eight-month-old son is teaching her about leadership
- The mentor who believed in her before anyone else did

Chapters
00:00 Cold open
00:46 Meet Mylena Maulepes
04:28 The girl who wanted to fix engines
08:01 Why engineering wasn't enough to lead
11:08 When everyone says your dream is too big
13:25 "Welcome to Harvard"
18:06 An engineer in a psychology world
23:25 Stop fixing people. Fix the work.
25:46 Crocodiles in the pond
28:18 What's actually working
29:13 What clients ask for vs. what they need
32:20 Selling culture work with numbers
36:05 Becoming a mom, and a new lens on work
40:13 Why you need a mentor
45:35 Advice for your bigger stage
47:12 Where to find Mylena

Follow Mylena
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mylena-maulepes
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mylenamaulepes
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@maulepes

If this episode was useful, share it with a founder who's trying to build a team people want to stay on.