What do you do when everything looks like it’s working, but deep down something feels a little off?
In this episode Samantha and Leon peel back the curtain on why they’ve rebranded the podcast again, and what this shift to Business Growth Lab really means for business owners, coaches, and visionary leaders navigating a fast-evolving world.
With ten years of podcasting experience and over three decades of business growth behind the scenes, they unpack the subtleties of misalignment in business, why sticking to “successful” things can be quietly destructive, and how to listen for the soft whispers of change before they become screams.
This isn’t just a name change. It’s a go-ahead for leaders who’ve outgrown their old versions, and want to grow something more aligned, more scalable, and a hell of a lot more you.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- The shift your metrics won’t always show you, and how subtle misalignment may signal it’s time to evolve (01:40)
- Understanding the subtle signs of drift in your business that don’t look like burnout but quietly erode momentum (05:09)
- Why “tolerating” can be more dangerous than failing (10:00)
- The intersection of energetic alignment and strategic scale (15:23)
- Discovering your genius zone can be a journey (20:17)
- A sneak peek into the new show format (22:31)
WANT TO EXPLORE WHAT’S POSSIBLE FOR YOUR BUSINESS?
If you would like to brainstorm a plan to explore what’s possible for you, I invite you to book in for a Scale Session.
In this quick 15-minute call we’ll dive into…
• Reviewing your niche, offer, and pricing to map out your immediate growth potential…
• Evaluating your marketing, sales, and delivery systems to pinpoint what’s working and what’s not…
• Identifying the primary bottleneck that’s holding you back from growing and scaling…
• Build a 3-step growth and scale plan rooted in positioning, profit, and simplicity
Click Here to book your no-charge Scale Session
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
Instagram @thesamriley
CONNECT WITH LEON FLITTON
Instagram @leonflitton
SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW BUSINESS GROWTH LAB
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TRANSCRIPTION
00:00
Welcome to today’s episode. And should I say, welcome to the next era of the podcast. You’re listening to what was known last week as Influenced By Design, but from today and moving forward, you’re tuning into Business Growth Lab, and I’m here with my business partner and my husband, Leon, to unpack why the change, what we’ve learned along the way, why we’ve made this shift, and what you can expect from the show moving forward. So Leon, welcome to the show.
Thank you for inviting me, and I am really looking forward to this one. So might be a bit of a walk through history as well for the podcast.
Absolutely. So let’s talk about funny timings, because this week, this first week of May, when we’re recording this is my 10th anniversary as a podcaster. So the first week of May, 2015, I released the first episode of my first podcast, Unlimited Influence. Had to think about what it was called for a moment. Then it’s a while ago, we recorded just under 100 episodes of that show, and then I canned it, and we started this show, which was originally launched as Thought Leaders Business Lab, which was actually launched on exactly the same week, the first week of May, seven years ago, and now on the first week of May, in this same week, for the third time, we’re making some changes. So I don’t know what’s in the air in the first week of May, but apparently I’m quite attuned to it.
01:35
There must be something particular about the first week of May. So …
01:40
Absolutely. So here we are, Business Growth Lab. Let’s start off by talking about what we’ve learned, because we’ve learned a lot along the way in 10 years of podcasting. Leon, you’re the producer of this podcast for me, I just show up and do the interviews and record the episodes, then you’re a lot of what’s happening behind the scenes. What have we learned?
I was going to actually, I was actually going to say, first, this is the original show is the show that I actually learned to edit on produce. That’s where it all started.
Absolutely, absolutely just because you wanted to go on a date instead of me editing podcasts.
Hey, it works, right?
02:22
Apparently.
02:25
Take the win.
02:27
Well, at least that’s a positive thing. At least you’re taking it as a win.
02:34
Let’s talk about the evolution. So this show very first launched as Thought Leaders Business Lab and in, I can’t remember when we rebranded. I’m guessing maybe 2021.
02:50
Not entirely sure. We rebranded to Influence By Design and at that time, the reason I decided to rebrand it is because I was heavily into human design. I had this really cool idea, and I didn’t see anyone doing it, where we would still talk about business, and I would have these amazing guests on talking about strategies and methodologies and frameworks and what’s working in business. And I was, I had this vision of sort of integrating their own human design through it. So I was asking people for their human design details or their chart before the interview, and I wanted to kind of weave in their human design, and I guess how it was showing up in their business, or even giving them tips onto how to become more aligned. That was the idea for the rebrand. The other side of that was, I really wanted to share that when we’re in alignment with our human design, or when we’re in alignment with our own unique, energetic blueprint, that we are able to then create more influence. So that was the idea behind the show, and I was so excited about it when I rebranded, because I had this really cool vision. No one was doing it, but it never kind of worked the way I wanted it to, because the guests that were coming on the show weren’t open to this format, so that’s why it didn’t work. So anything that you want to add to that, Leon?
Yeah, because on this, looking back at it now, I love the idea of it. I think it’s a great idea. And as I, you know, I kind of quite commonly say this, but you know what I feel I know about human design and being in alignment, I love the idea of bringing it into integrating it with your business. I think it’s a really good idea. But, you know, disappointingly, not all guests, and there’s some amazing guests, and what they brought to the show was amazing, and it wasn’t at all, but it didn’t seem to gel enough with some of them, as much as I thought it would.
05:00
Anyway, and I’m not particularly a woowoo kind of person, but I still can see the value of the alignment and how integrated your business.
05:09
So it wasn’t that the idea wasn’t good. I just think that it didn’t work in this format, on this platform, the way that I envisioned it, which meant that it was starting to feel a little bit stale to me because my original thoughts of what I wanted to do with the show, it was because it wasn’t happening, I don’t know, the name didn’t feel in alignment with me, and this is how I describe it. If we’ve got the very spiritual human design, Wendy woo, woo on the left, and we’ve got the super data oriented marketing person, very into KPIs on the right. I’m a blend of both of those right in the middle. So it’s having the unique foundations of human design, but also still understanding that we do need to follow, or at least pay attention to certain frameworks, or think about leadership growth, or have our, you know, KPIs in our business, and that bringing these two together is where I wanted to sit, and the show was feeling like it wasn’t the version of me that I am today. It was maybe a version of me that was like two or three years ago, so it was just feeling a little bit like it wasn’t aligned.
06:31
Yeah. So just thinking about, Oh, yeah, what’s in a name? But do you feel like the name was something that was also making it lean into maybe not the right direction?
06:43
Yes, let’s talk about the name of podcasts. Because if you knew the premise behind it, it was about, you know, using your human design in business to build your influence. If I told you that, the name would make sense. However, if you were scrolling on social media or scrolling on a podcast app, and you were looking for a show about business growth, then probably influenced by design, wouldn’t jump out at you as being the right show.
07:13
So what I realized is that the name of my podcast wasn’t inviting the right people to the show.
So just for anyone else that’s listening out there as well, what do you think it feels like if you’re out of alignment? Is it some kind of telltale signs? And how do you feel about when did you realize that it was really becoming out of alignment? So yeah. So this is really interesting, how I can tell …
Yeah, because, yeah, you’re right. Because misalignment is one of the biggest reasons that we made this shift right, and it can be a little bit uncomfortable to admit, so I’ve had to really lean into, but it felt this way and these are my learnings, okay, and this will start to play out as we talk about the name of the new show. But I find that misalignment for for high performers doesn’t show up as Oh my goodness. This is totally off. I’m going to burn everything to the ground. I find that it’s more like a whisper. And for me, it wasn’t burnout, it wasn’t chaos, because the show was doing really well. We were looking at the stats, and in actual fact, because I’ve been feeling like this for probably about a year, we kept looking at the stats, and I’m like, but everything’s doing the right thing, all of the KPIs that we follow for our show, for the reason that we have the show, we were hitting every single one of them. So it’s like, I wasn’t burnt out. I wasn’t like, hating it. We were doing really well. So the misalignment was actually like, really kind of a funny little whisper, little creep. It wasn’t like a slap across the face. It was almost like, yeah, it was this little, tiny niggle. And I know you would know, I mentioned it quite a lot over the last year. I’m like, it’s just not hitting. I’m just feeling a little bit flat. I’m just feeling like I’m not getting the spark that I used to get. I’m just feeling like it’s a little bit off. So it wasn’t anything major. It was so subtle, but it was persistent, and the rebrand for this show has been very considered because of that, because it wasn’t like, oh my goodness, there’s this massive thing. We need to change it, because, in actual fact, there was nothing majorly wrong where we can go. We’re not hitting those KPIs, or we’re not, you know, achieving XYZ, whatever that is. And this is something to pay attention to, if you’re listening and something’s feeling a little bit off, ask yourself, What am I tolerating?
10:00
Because it’s so much easier to tolerate something that’s just not quite hitting the mark than absolutely burning it to the ground. And that’s why it took so long, because I kept thinking, well, we don’t have to change it now. We’ve got other projects. This is still okay. We’ll just keep going. And I’m putting this in air quotes. I’m just tolerated it, even though I wasn’t jumping out of bed with the same spark that I used to and as a generator, I get that real spark of like, oh my goodness, this is my, because this is my favorite content to create on the podcast. I love it. Yeah. I get the biggest buzz out of interviewing and meeting our guests. You know, I come flying out of the room after every episode, and you always go, how was that one? Oh my God, it was the best. And that’s every single person that’s ever been on the show. You’ve all been the best. I love it. But it was more like, yeah, that was a really great episode. Not oh my goodness, that was the best. Does that make sense? It was just ever so slightly off, and it just got to the point where we sort of, I, you know, I just had to really have that conversation and say, I know I bought this up a million times, but I think it’s time, something’s got to change.
Yeah, yeah. And like you said, the data was great, you know, and …
It was and it still is.
And then if you look at, yeah, exactly, and I think it’s good to note as well, that being out of alignment did mean hitting a brick wall either and falling over or going to burn out.
No. And there was this really weird, let’s call it shame. And I don’t know if that’s really what I mean. I’m just speaking this out now, but it’s like I’d created this, or I’d already done the pivot. I’d done the name change, and at that, at that moment when I changed Influence By Design, it felt spot on.
11:58
But I had to really lean into the fact that it didn’t feel spot on anymore. And then I had the thoughts of, oh my goodness, like I’m renaming my show again, but I had to really lean into the fact that I’m a different person today than I was a few years ago. And I think that’s really important for anyone that’s in business, is to give yourself the grace to know that as you evolve, it’s okay for your business to evolve. And I had to give myself that grace that I just wanted the spark back. And let’s just lean into. well, what could this look like? What could it turn into?
Yeah, business moves pretty fast, I think, and we probably need to come back to this in the later in the episode. But I think also, like you said, people change and evolve. So, you know, I could think of others that we know in the industry, so to speak, where, you know, they’ve kind of stuck, stuck to something out of alignment, but they just pushed and pushed and pushed and kept going at it because they were like, you know, they maybe said didn’t want to give up, or they felt like they’re going to fail, but they’re clearly, you know, out of alignment.
I think there’s two thoughts behind that, and I think, number one, it’s that shame that I don’t want to fail, and if I give it up, it means that I failed. So I think that’s the first piece. They’re too afraid to say, I’ve got this wrong. But then there’s the second side of, I’ve created this thing that’s successful, and what if I burn it down and something bad happens, like, What if I lose my business, or I can’t pay my bills next month, or whatever that is. So I think it’s, it can be a mixture of those two things, and those things really do matter as well.
Yeah, yeah. And it’s interesting that from the outside looking in, most people will think that everything’s fine, but it’s not quite hitting for you, what you’re doing, so initially enjoying it. It’s not like you said, the spark isn’t like it was there previously.
Totally and I think there’s a lot of people in that right now, because how business was five years ago is very different to how business was two years ago. And everyone that I’m speaking to right now, business is just evolving at such a speed and the energy, the landscape, you know, like what’s happening around the world is just so different right now. So you really do need to tune in and honor how you’re feeling. Because if there’s a misalignment, you need to catch that before it turns into burnout, before it turns into resentment, and giving yourself the grace and the permission to choose to evolve even when it’s uncomfortable, which is how it started out for this show. I had this uncomfortable feeling of, oh my goodness, like I got it wrong,
14:54
and to be able to step back and go, No, I didn’t. Because at that time, that was the vision.
15:00
That was what I did, and it wasn’t wrong at all, and that, what did I learn from this? What are the lessons? And that’s why we’ve rebranded, because exactly that whole piece that I’ve just spoken about is how I want the whole premise of the show to be, moving forward.
15:23
Yeah. So how do you feel that the new show name fits in with what you’re doing now, and how it aligns, I should say, not fits in, but how it aligns with you at the moment, like this version of you.
15:36
So I’ve been in business for 32 years this year, in multiple industries, niches, so many different types of businesses. I’ve bought businesses, I’ve sold businesses, I’ve started businesses from scratch. I’ve got so much experience. And as a six two generator, I’m here to respond. And I get asked all the time. I have people reaching out to me all the time asking me, you know what’s going on in the landscape now? Like, what can we do? And I’m here to share my experiences. The other thing in my human design is that I’m everywhere in my chart, like I am here to help people, to create systems, to manage resources and to bring order and big dreams and visions in and to actualize them for prosperity. It’s very much about taking big ideas, turning it into something that turns into money. That’s what business growth is all about. So, you know, I love business. I could talk about business for 10 years without taking a breath underwater with marbles in my mouth.
Total business nerd.
16:47
I am a business nerd. I love business so being able to talk about business growth, to be able to talk about scaling systems, to be able to talk about stretching into a bigger vision, to be creating a business that works for you, building infrastructure, talking about leadership and building systems. That’s all things that I’m really good about, growing and scaling businesses. It’s not just positioning and building influence. So when I really leaned into that. So you know what? I can own all of this, and do it in a way that we bring conversations to the table that are bringing that foundation of energetic alignment and your energetic blueprint, and bringing all of this business growth and scale conversations to the table, and blending them and understanding that everything in business is like an experiment, then I believe that these, like really big conversations, talking about the mistakes that we made. You know, having the messy conversations of behind the scenes will help so many people. So that’s why I feel like this is just my next evolution.
18:03
Yeah, I feel it fits really well currently with, I suppose the business landscape, I’d call it too. I feel that, you know, because business moves so fast, you almost need to experiment faster as well. So could be a busy lab.
18:21
It’s going to be a very busy lab
18:23
Absolutely. I think what I love about experimenting and, you know, seeing, you know, what’s missing, or what could we do? If I think back to my days in the dance studio, we would have costume rehearsals before we went on stage for a competition. And the kids used to, you know, get their costumes on, and they’d all come in in a row, and I would look to see if everything was the same, because that’s part of being a dance teacher. There’s gotta be uniformity. And I’d look, and I’d go, oh, you know what? There’s just something missing. And the parents would be all along the front of the studio. They’d be like, Oh, no, there’s nothing missing, because they knew what was coming next. I’d say something like, what this costume needs is missing, just like this little row of sequins, or little row of braid across the top. And you know, the younger parents, when they were still getting to know me, would always like, No, we don’t want to do that. We don’t have time for that. But as, you know, as the students got older and the parents were more used to me, they would always go, you know, if Sam said, that’s what, it’s missing, it 100% is because what they all reported back to me was, when the kids were on stage, they could tell that it looked just right. And what they noticed was they would look at other costumes, and they would say there was something missing, but I don’t know what it was, and that’s what I’m here. It’s almost like on this X-ray that I can see there’s something missing. We just need this, this little jush. We need this extra little piece. And I think business is the same. Sometimes we can’t see what’s missing, but you can tell when it’s not there. Does that make sense?
20:00
Yeah, I’m just having a bit of a giggle too, because I’m thinking about, you need to talk about the 30,000 foot view, but I’m like, it’s like a 30,000 foot view with eagle eyes and, like, you know, a massive telescope so you can see all little details that are going on.
20:17
Thank you, Leon. That’s really sweet. And I think that when I realized, it was probably about 15 years ago, and when I realized this, I was on a cruise ship in Europe with a group of entrepreneurs, and we were sitting, we’d been offshore for the day in Italy, and we all came back, and we’d met in the coffee shop for some cocktails. I said coffee shop, but we were drinking cocktails, let’s be honest. Just before dinner, and we were, you know, we were all nerds, entrepreneurs, and we were chatting about business, and I just had this massive epiphany as we were all chatting, that I have a skill that I didn’t realize that other people didn’t. And that’s, you know, when we think about our genius zone, usually, most of us don’t realize that genius zone, because it comes so easily to us, right? And this is what, when I realized, Oh, don’t other people see things like this? Because I can see big picture, and I can pull into all these little, tiny places. It’s like, come at 30,000 feet and but I’m in a helicopter, and I’m just like, straight down into something, but then I can pull straight back up again. And I didn’t realize that people couldn’t do that, so since I realized this makes it a lot easier to lean into that even more and go, Oh, I can see what’s happening here. I can see what’s happening here. Have you tried this? Maybe you could try that, but treating it as an experiment and collecting the data along the way, so that you know what has worked and what hasn’t worked.
Yeah, absolutely. So like, you know, business growth, but treating it like as an experiment, as a lab, and really getting into it to work through all of these you know thing, I suppose, like it’s, you know, fail faster and learn faster. So you know, the more you can experiment, more you can learn. And if you have that ability, like you do, to be able to, you know, look, you know, zoom into the doing hair signals here, so you can’t see me, to zoom into the, you know, like, what the important pieces are, you know, learn from zoom back out again and see what’s happening at a bigger level is, is really important, I think, in business. So I feel like the name suits and it fits, and it’s in alignment, or using all the alignment words, where we’re at right now, where you’re at right now.
22:31
Totally and that’s going to give us the focus moving forward. Here’s what’s not changing. We’re still going to be bringing you amazing guests every Tuesday, exactly as we have been for 10 years. We’re going to be talking about building businesses that reflect your genius. We’re going to be talking about scalable business models, systems to build freedom. We’re going to talk about leadership evolution, building legacy brands that grow without burning out, all of the really cool stuff that we already talk about. And then on our Thursday episode every week, Leon’s going to be joining me where we’re going to share our own little messy lessons along the way. Going to be talking about what is working in business and what’s not working in business and like really bringing you the behind the scenes conversations between the two of us, talking shop, sharing, you know, our little shifts and what we’re going through, and also breaking down what’s working right now for our clients.
Yeah, I’m really looking forward to those conversations, and really, you know, diving into some of those, probably behind the scenes conversations that, you know, I think are worth sharing because it’s going to help everyone learn.
23:46
Absolutely, let’s share one behind the scenes conversation just of today. Shall we? Four hours ago, we sat down to record this episode, and my mic didn’t work, so we had to change the mic. Then we had to change your mic. Then we recorded the whole episode and press, definitely pressed record on Zoom, but goodness knows where I went. So this is what happens behind the scenes. It can be messy. We’ve written the data down, get new mics.
24:16
Triple check that we’ve recorded on Zoom. I don’t know what happened there.
24:21
But this stuff happens, right?
Yeah, yeah, this stuff always happens. And tech is always going to be tech, and there’s always a funny story to it. So I should also add that what’s not going to change is our corny jokes are still going to be there.
So yes, if you’ve been with us since the early days, thank you. And if you’re new here, welcome to the Business Growth Lab. We’re so glad you’re here. We would love to hear more from you about what you would like to hear from us, whether you want to hear more corny jokes, less corny jokes.
25:00
But definitely the guests that you want to hear and the topics that you want us to talk about. We are here to share it all. So we’d love you to share this with your business bestie and you know the lab right now the Business Lab, it’s open, it’s ready for business, and the experiments are just getting started. So Leon, thank you for joining me for our very first episode of Business Growth Lab, 600 and I believe 30 of the podcast. Look forward to seeing you next Tuesday with another guest and Leon, I look forward to joining you or having you join me, either way, next Thursday.
Yep, I’m looking forward to it.
If you enjoyed today’s episode, and you want to hear more behind the scenes conversations between Leon and I, you can scroll back to our episode on April 15, where we were talking about how to break out of freeze mode and lead the people who need you most.
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