Libsyn WPDestination – Funnel Reboot

December 31, 2025December 31, 2025

Mastering constraints of Healthcare Marketing, with Cindy Grabowski

Episode 224

Thinking up a new product and commercializing it is not easy. All products face Financial, Technological and of course Competitive market barriers. But doing this in the field of Healthcare is not like any other industry. In healthcare, there exist extra regulatory hurdles that make product innovation even more difficult.

Before every medical device is introduced, they must find academics who will research them and publish articles that are heavily scrutinized by peers. Then they have to endure clinical screening before receiving government approval, which applies tight restrictions on what you can say about the product and how it’s used. After they enter most markets, the products must be coded so insurers will reimburse patients who use them. So if you have a health or medical technology product, how can you market it when you face all these limits?”

For the first time here, the mic will be in somebody else’s hands. That person is Cindy Grabowski, founder of Mind Grove, a US-based training platform built specifically for MedTech professionals. Have to disclose that I have no affiliation with Mind Grove, other than giving them a no-charge review of the marketing course on their platform. Anyway, she turned the tables on me to hear me answer how you can market in the Healthcare space with so many constraints.

As I present my points on healthcare marketing, listen for tips on:

Building your digital assets throughout your product’s lifecycle
Setting up campaigns on digital channels without breeching privacy
Engaging your patient population to create your content for you
Getting buy-in from decision-makers on upgrades to your marketing program.

So give this unique talk I have with Cindy a listen – I imagine even if you aren’t in Healthcare Marketing, you’ll come away with better ideas on how to overcome your own constraints. Let’s go hear how we can navigate around constraints.

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Timestamp Chapters

00:00 Introducing Cindy Grabowsky

01:07 Glenn takes a turn as guest on the show

03:09 What we’ll cover in Healthcare Marketing

04:33 The Big Question: Why is Healthcare so hard?

06:38 Leveraging Data in Healthcare Marketing

09:56 Case Study: EndoGastric Solutions

17:27 Optimizing Digital Presence and Compliance

33:57 Skills for measuring, managing Healthcare Marketing

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Cindy Grabowski is a Clinical Affairs Executive with 30 years of experience in MedTech companies. She founded the MindGrove training platform to help develop tomorrow’s medtech leaders and believes true success comes from balancing work with well-being.

Cindy on LinkedIn

Mindgrove Insights website

boromir — Boromir agrees that a healthcare marketer faces a precarious task

December 20, 2025December 21, 2025

The Classical Marketing book, with Anthony “Tas” Tasgal

The world we inhabit today is, in countless ways, an extended echo of breakthroughs made by two extraordinary cultures that came from a compact corner of the mediterranean between the 4th century BCE to the 2nd century of the current era. I’m talking about Greece and Rome, whose influence on contemporary language, thought, and culture is so deeply woven into the modern world that we navigate it every day without noticing. Taking just language, be it English, French, Spanish or Italian, they all use words with origins that tie back to ancient law, institutions, arts and sciences. The concepts they gave linguistic expression to are stitched into everything that comes out of our mouths.

You’ll hear a passionate discussion today by two guys who both did an undergrad in classics. But you won’t need to know anything about this to get great marketing lessons from today’s talk. Believe it or not, the ancients can teach us a fair bit about marketing!

Our guest’s undergraduate courses taken at the University of Oxford in Classical Greek Language and Literature inspired him to write the book we’re discussing today.

He is a trainer, author, strategist, and lecturer who applies Storytelling, Behavioural Economics, and insight-driven thinking to brands and communications. Serving as a Course Director for several professional institutes, he also delivers TEDx talks and has spoken on stages around the world. His clients span organizations such as the BBC, Panasonic, Nokia, The Royal Albert Hall, and the UK National Health Service. An accomplished writer, he has published several award-winning books, including The Storytelling Book, which has sold 40,000 copies.

His seventh book, The Classical Marketing Book, is being released in North America at the start of 2026. Let’s go to the UK to speak with Anthony ‘Tas’ Tasgal.

Chapters Timestamps

0:00:00 Introducing Tas Tasgal

0:02:48 How Ancient Cultures Inform Modern Marketing Today

0:06:29 Uncovering Marketing Power in Word Origins

0:10:26 Using Ancient Myths for Market Segmentation

0:13:33 Connecting Behavioral Economics with Storytelling Power

0:17:21 Strategies to Avoid Marketing’s ‘Junk Folder’

0:21:52 Crafting Persuasive Frames with Historical Stories

0:26:43 The Power and Peril of Condensed Language

0:30:53 Mastering Persuasion with Ethos, Logos, and Pathos

0:34:48 Satire and Timeless Human Patterns in Marketing

0:37:57 Tapping into Ancient Wisdom for Modern Marketing

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Shownotes

The Classical Marketing Book

Tas’ TED Talk

Anthony “Tas” Tasgal on LinkedIn

December 12, 2025December 12, 2025

Keeping the Revenue Engine Running, with Karl Ortmanns

We often hear marketers talk about how vital their work is to sales. What we don’t hear nearly as often is the reverse: how essential sales is to a well-functioning marketing team.
If marketing creates the content, sales provides the context. And that context is what makes campaigns relevant, credible, and grounded in the real world. Sales teams feed marketing the on-the-ground truth—what prospects are actually saying, how they react to new pricing, and how they interpret a company’s positioning in different segments.
That’s especially clear when a business serving the SMB market tries to move upmarket. Sales hears almost immediately how enterprise buyers perceive the brand, revealing the gaps marketing must close for the company to compete at that level. It’s a live feedback loop marketers can’t get anywhere else.
Bridging those gaps requires real collaboration—sitting in on each other’s meetings, sharing insights early, and recognizing that both functions are cogs in the same revenue engine. Their shared job is to keep that engine running smoothly.
Our guest today understands that better than most. He’s a fractional leader of revenue and go-to-market teams, and host of the Revenue Problem Solvers Podcast, where leaders drop the script and speak candidly about what it really takes to build growth teams. He’s known for diagnosing the true cause of weak team performance – something he knows well from playing intervarsity sports. He gets frontline performing again too, using a coach’s tone to get them back on track.
And he doesn’t restrict this just to his day-job, this Southwestern Ontario native spends his weekends behind the bench as a minor hockey coach. Let’s go talk with Karl Ortmanns.

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Chapters/Timestamps

0:02:29 Navigating the Rollercoaster of Sales and Problem-Solving

0:04:29 Bridging the Gap Between Marketing Content and Sales Context

0:07:34 How External Shifts Impact Revenue and Strategy

0:10:09 Adapting to Digital-First Selling and New Tools

0:14:50 Readiness and Challenges When Moving Upmarket

0:18:34 Marketing and Sales: Listening and Collaborating for Growth

0:22:10 Optimizing Pricing and Positioning Through Market Insights

0:26:01 Leveraging Churn and Product Data for Improvement

0:27:56 The Collective Responsibility of Driving Company Revenue

0:31:39 Shortening Sales Ramps and Boosting Profitability

0:34:58 Humility and Transparency in Revenue Leadership Changes

0:39:52 Where to find Karl

Shownotes

Revenue Problem Solvers podcast

Karl on Linkedin

Our mood started off with typical sales-vs-marketing caginess…but wound up agreeing we’re better as allies

December 1, 2025December 3, 2025

Brandjitsu, with Michael Dargie

Episode 221

Is your Brand truly memorable? Would a person who bought from you a year ago be able to recall your name or say what they found compelling about you? The reality is that a lot of brands are instantly forgettable.

You don’t have to wallow in a world of Meh – you can turn your brand into something memorable – we’re going to hear a process that’s been codified in a book that came out in 2025 called BrandJitsu. .

Listen in as we delve into the book’s process, which begins not with a funnel but with a Loop we’ve got to Embrace. We’ll hear how to plumb the depths of our brand by thinking of it as an Iceberg. Lastly, we’ll drill into a brand’s DNA to find out how we can spread its unique outlook.

Our guest was tired of working with brands that felt like they were screaming into the void, so he designed a process that let customers feel, remember, and advocate for a brand. He honed his methodology as a creative director, and founded the brand agency called Make More Creative to help brands that had this problem solve it outright.

He is also Host of TheRebelRebelPodcast and Speaker and mentor for the Canadian Trade Accelerator Program. Let’s go to Calgary Alberta to speak with Michael Dargie.

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Chapter/Timestamps

0:00:00 Introducing BrandJitsu

0:11:42 Why Your Brand Needs a Loop, Not Just a Funnel: Customer as Hero

0:19:32 Diving Deep: Uncovering Your Brand’s DNA with the Iceberg Metaphor

0:31:53 Beyond ICPs: Using Data and Archetypes for Effective Brand Targeting

0:43:52 Learn More: Worksheets and Michael’s other pursuits

Persons, Products mentioned in this episode

Michael on LinkedIn

Michael on Instagram

Michael’s personal site

The book “BrandJitsu”

His Make More Creative agency

He is also Host of TheRebelRebelPodcast

Temet Nosce – Latin for “Know Thyself”

Phil Knight book “Shoe Dog”

November 17, 2025November 17, 2025

Human Centered Marketing, with Ashley Faus

Episode 220

Here’s a question a lot of us are asking ourselves today. How do marketers build genuine, durable trust when the cost of generating massive volumes of AI content is basically zero? How can you argue for making humanly-crafted content in small quantities When it’s so easy to have AI pump it out in big quantities?

The hard truth is that humans are wired to notice what other humans do. Meaningful communication with buyers contains elements that just don’t scale – this takes more than a trivial amount of work. But that is precisely why you need to do them.

A new book came out in 2025, called Human Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI. Even though Gen AI that’s all around looks set to marginalize content marketing, this book predicts that AI’s knock-on effects will bring old retro practices back into vogue. If Wired Magazine were to meme it using their Wired/Tired/Expired phrasing, it might say that

Humans Interacting with no machines = Expired

Machines Monopolizing Interactions = Tired

Human-Human interaction via Machine = Wired

The book also argues that marketing & communications folks have to make different types of content for segments of the buyer journey, all held to different goals and different time horizons. Don’t dump random content on social channels. Like instruments in a score, your pieces need to work together—not add noise.

It also said being Human-Centered extends to where and how we use our messages. Our leaders have to go to trade shows, make podcasts, meet people, and have real conversations. Trust grows when customers feel seen and heard.

The author of the book is by day, a speaker and is currently Head of Lifecycle Marketing at Canva. By night, she’s a Singer, actor, and fitness fiend. Let’s go to Northern California to talk with Ashley Faus.

Listen to episode

Chapter Timestamps

0:00:00 Ashley Faus, a Human-Centered Marketer

0:03:59 Rebuilding Trust with Transparency and Substantive Content

0:09:47 Understanding and Speaking Your Audience’s Insider Language

0:15:07 Replacing the Funnel with the Playground Methodology

0:19:10 Avoiding Goodhart’s Law: Metrics and Broken Trust

0:26:03 The Power of Non-Scalable Human Connections

0:32:14 From Broadcast to Community on Social Media

0:38:21 The Indispensable Human Element: Thoughts and Relationships

0:44:43 Differentiating Thought Leaders, SMEs, and Influencers

0:51:48 Creating Rigorous, Impactful Content