What does it take to lead an idea the market isn't ready for yet?

Most leaders I work with can spot a problem in seconds. Fewer can see the opportunity sitting inside it, and fewer still have the patience to sell that opportunity through a long, skeptical buying cycle.

In this episode of The Perfect Route, I sit down with Jonathan Jakubowski, co-founder and CEO of SmartSolve, the Bowling Green, Ohio company behind PureNil 0, a 100% bio-based, water-soluble packaging material. Jonathan shares how a business plan written after a failure became a conviction, why he prefers innovation to mandates, and what it really takes to lead at the front of the adoption curve.

In this conversation, we cover:

• Why problems and opportunities are two sides of the same coin
• How innovation, not regulation, has solved some of history's messiest problems
• What long sales cycles teach you about patience and qualifying risk
• Why respecting the old solution makes you better at building the new one
• The case for multiple bottom lines, chosen rather than mandated
• Why the best step you can take is the next step

Whether you're leading a team through change or trying to win buy-in for a new idea, this conversation offers a practical lens on conviction, patience, and stewardship.

Listen on your favorite platform:

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | n3ed.com/podcast

#ThePerfectRoute #BillSodeman #Leadership #Innovation #Stewardship #Sustainability #PurposeDrivenBusiness #LeadershipDevelopment #PodcastForLeaders

Why does your personal brand sound like everyone else's?

Scroll LinkedIn for five minutes and you'll see it: different faces, different industries, same story, same buzzwords. Most professionals don't have a talent problem. They have a visibility problem, and the shortcut they're reaching for is making it worse.

In this episode of The Perfect Route, I sit down with Tiyon L. Simpson, a London-born personal branding and brand positioning consultant now based in Bulgaria, where he and his wife run three businesses. Tiyon spent nearly ten years in corporate financial services before he asked himself why he wasn't on the other side of the table.

In this conversation, we cover:

• Why every brand starts with "the why underneath the why"
• How AI-generated branding produces forgettable, cookie-cutter profiles
• Why brand building works like dating, with milestones instead of instant results
• What a beginner with $20 can learn from Emma Grede's approach to showing up
• Why executives already have a personal brand, whether or not they manage it
• Where branding is headed: back to real, human storytelling

Whether you're a rising executive, a new business owner, or a coach building a practice, this episode will change how you think about your reputation.

Listen on your favorite platform:
YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | n3ed.com/podcast

#PersonalBranding #BrandPositioning #Leadership #ExecutivePresence #Entrepreneurship #Storytelling #AIandBusiness #ThePerfectRoute #BillSodeman

What does leadership look like when every mistake costs capital?

Most leaders I work with have more room for error than they realize. A pharmaceutical startup doesn't. The team is small, the specialists can't cover for each other, and a single drug can take a decade to reach the finish line, with no guarantee it gets there.

In this episode of The Perfect Route, I sit down with Isaiah Shalwitz, Senior Vice President and co-founder of Inversa, a pharmaceutical company developing an eye drop for diabetic keratopathy, a condition with no approved treatment. Isaiah brings twenty years of drug development experience, including leading development teams at Akebia Therapeutics.

In this conversation, we cover:

• Why the pharmaceutical industry struggles to tell the story of how hard it works, and what drug failures have to do with drug prices
• How Isaiah measures engagement on a small, largely virtual team where he rarely sees his people
• Why he invites anyone in the company to challenge strategy, and what he learns when someone goes quiet
• The "blob of paint" approach to collaboration that cuts busywork and speeds up decisions
• What the next twenty years of pharmaceutical innovation may bring, from GLP-1s to longevity research
• The two lessons ten years of entrepreneurship taught him: persist, and assume you don't know everything

Whether you lead a startup, a specialized team, or a department that runs lean, you'll come away with practical habits for building candor, ownership, and momentum.

Listen on your favorite platform:

YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | n3ed.com/podcast

#StartupLeadership #Entrepreneurship #EmployeeEngagement #LeadershipDevelopment #Biotech #PharmaceuticalIndustry #ThePerfectRoute #BillSodeman #PodcastForLeaders

What if the questions you ask are actually shaping the future of your organization?

In this episode of The Perfect Route, I sit down with Dr. Lindsey Godwin, professor at Champlain College and Academic Director of the Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry, to explore how leaders can create meaningful change by focusing not only on what is broken, but on what is already working—and what is possible next.

Dr. Godwin explains Appreciative Inquiry, a strength-based approach to organizational change that helps teams, leaders, and entire systems build on existing strengths, co-create solutions, and move toward a shared vision of the future.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• What Appreciative Inquiry is—and what it is not
• The 5D Appreciative Inquiry cycle: Define, Discover, Dream, Design, and Deliver
• Why Appreciative Inquiry is more than positive thinking
• How better questions can change the direction of a team or organization
• Why people are more likely to support change they help co-create
• How diversity and equity of voice improve organizational decision-making
• The difference between traditional SWOT analysis and the strength-based SOAR framework
• Why leaders should focus on creating healthy conflict instead of eliminating conflict
• How Appreciative Inquiry can be applied to coaching, strategic planning, and organizational development
• The emerging connection between Appreciative Inquiry and artificial intelligence
• Why human connection, collaboration, and meaning may become even more important as technology advances

One of the biggest takeaways from our conversation is simple:

Organizations move in the direction of the questions they ask.

Instead of always beginning with:

“What’s wrong?”
“What’s broken?”
“What needs to be fixed?”

What could change if leaders also asked:

What’s working?
What can we build on?
What do we want tomorrow to look like?

If you are a CEO, executive, business leader, coach, consultant, or anyone responsible for leading people through change, this conversation offers a practical new way to think about leadership and organizational development.

To learn more about Appreciative Inquiry, visit the Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry at Champlain College at appreciativeinquiry.champlain.edu.

You can also connect directly with Dr. Lindsey Godwin on LinkedIn.

Subscribe to The Perfect Route for more conversations about leadership, business growth, organizational change, and building stronger teams.

#AppreciativeInquiry #Leadership #OrganizationalDevelopment #ChangeManagement #LeadershipDevelopment #ExecutiveLeadership #ArtificialIntelligence #StrategicPlanning #BusinessLeadership #ThePerfectRoute #BillSodeman

Ever wonder why some franchise brands scale into empires while others stall out for good?

Most franchisors do not fail because the business model is bad. They fail because they never solve the harder problem: finding the right partners and building systems that do not depend on the founder to hold everything together.

In this episode of The Perfect Route, I sit down with Luke Frey: 20-year franchise owner, founder of Bella Vista Executive Advisors, former Fortune 250 engineer, and volunteer fire chief. Luke has spent his career on both sides of franchising, first as an owner who scaled a laundry franchise to $2.5 million in revenue, now as an advisor helping franchisors and franchisees avoid the mistakes he made along the way.

In this conversation, we cover:

• Why the biggest challenge for a new franchisor isn't the operations manual, it's finding the right franchisees
• The real numbers behind franchise growth, and why so few brands ever make it past 50 units
• What firefighting taught Luke about self-awareness, situational awareness, and servant leadership
• Why matching a franchisee's risk tolerance to the right opportunity changes everything
• The engineering-school advice that shaped how Luke thinks about continuous improvement
• How franchisors can build a multi-brand empire without starting from scratch each time

Whether you're considering franchise ownership, already running a franchise, or building a brand to franchise yourself, this conversation will change how you think about scaling a business through people.

Listen on your favorite platform:

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | n3ed.com/podcast

#Franchising #BusinessCoaching #ExecutiveCoaching #LeadershipDevelopment #SelfAwareness #ServantLeadership #ThePerfectRoute #BillSodeman #FocalPoint #PodcastForLeaders

Your leadership problem isn't the problem you think it is.

Most leaders come to the table asking for help with change management, team bonding, or meeting efficiency. My guest today says none of that is ever the real issue. The real issue is always something closer to the leader themselves.

In this episode of The Perfect Route, I sit down with Zaher Ibrahim, founder of Eclarity, a leadership development firm working with corporate and government leadership teams on assessment, coaching, and development. Zaher's path ran through civil engineering and organizational development before landing in executive coaching, and it shows in how he talks about leadership: he skips the competency checklist and goes straight to the engine.

In this conversation, we cover:

• Why the leadership challenge a client brings you is almost never the real challenge
• The three fears driving most leadership dysfunction, and why micromanagement is really fear of failure in disguise
• Why trust isn't a switch, and how to actually gauge the strength of trust in your key relationships
• Zaher's car analogy for why competency frameworks fail to change leadership behavior
• Why judgment, not intelligence, is becoming the scarce and valuable skill in an AI-driven workplace
• A different way to define leadership impact, one that follows a leader home

Whether you're leading a team, coaching executives, or building your own leadership development practice, this conversation will change how you diagnose what's really going on with the leaders around you.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | n3ed.com/podcast

Would you judge a tree for the way it grew around a rock?

Most leaders I talk to think a good coach is someone who gets in the trenches with them, another player on the field calling shots. That is not what coaching is, and getting that distinction wrong is exactly why so many coaching relationships fail to deliver.

In this episode of The Perfect Route, I sit down with Robin Piccione, a business coach with EA Lewis and Associates in Toledo and a former twenty year veteran of national broadcast television. Robin built her coaching practice around storytelling, dialectical thinking, and a philosophy she borrows from Ram Dass: let them be trees. It reframes how leaders judge the people around them, and it changed how I think about the guide role coaches are supposed to play.

In this conversation, we cover:

• Why a business coach should be a guide, not a narrator, and what changes when you get that right
• How to treat emotions as terrain to navigate instead of a destination to avoid
• The dialectical thinking tool that helps you hold two conflicting truths at once
• Why hiring for attitude and work ethic outperforms hiring for resumes and credentials
• The "let them be trees" philosophy, and what it means to lead people without judgment
• Where business coaching is headed as AI reshapes hiring, teams, and the workplace

Whether you are a business owner, an executive, or a coach building your own practice, this one will give you a new lens for how you lead and how you see the people around you.

#BusinessCoaching #ExecutiveCoaching #LeadershipDevelopment #EmotionalIntelligence #Dialectics #ThePerfectRoute #BillSodeman #PodcastForLeaders

Is your business built on partnerships that boost the numbers but quietly cost you trust?

If your calendar is full and your revenue looks fine, but something still feels off, you're not alone, and you're not imagining it. Your organization might be missing one critical filter: mission alignment.

In this episode, Julia Hage, CEO of The Hage Co, and I unpack:

• Why financially attractive partnerships can still be the wrong move
• What real alignment and authenticity look like in leadership and business
• How to lead a multigenerational team by asking, not assuming
• Why emotional intelligence is a leadership advantage, not a liability

Less ego-driven decisions. More authentic alignment. Real leadership growth.

#businesscoach #executivecoaching #n3ed #billsodeman