Business Confidential Now

Meet Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, the 2025 Axiom Awards Gold Medalist in the Digital Media category for Seeking Fairness at Work! 🏅📘

A published author for 19 years, Hanna calls winning an Axiom Award “a great honor” that burnishes her reputation as a thought leader. She's proudly showcasing the win across social media, book descriptions, and marketing materials.

Her advice to fellow authors?
“I would encourage authors to apply because if they are successful, the award provides third-party validation and social proof of their work.”

Congrats, Hanna! We can't wait to see what you do next. 👏

Great news audio fans!

Business Confidential Now is on hiatus and will return in March. We’re busy creating the version that will focus on the workplace issues that make us grind our teeth at night.
In the meantime, you can get a head start addressing injustice in the workplace.

Audiobooks is offering 50% off the audio version of Seeking Fairness at Work: Cracking the New Code of Greater Employee Engagement, Retention & Satisfaction along with 2 other FREE audio books.
Enhance your leadership skills and discover how to improve workplace motivation.

This promotion will be available until 2/28/25 at https://bit.ly/40hkckZ

Elevating employee engagement to have a more productive and committed workforce is part of every leadership or management agenda.

But some people excel at it, while others fall flat.

Wishful thinking just doesn't make it happen.

Discover what does.

Listen now on your favorite app or at https://bit.ly/3OaxsCz

Business Confidential Now aims to give you smart, practical, and timeless tips focused on helping you see things hidden in plain view that matter to your career and bottom line.

It’s the stuff they don't have time to teach you in business school, but that you need to succeed!

"So, 95% of the population believe that they're self-aware," says today's guest and Line of Sight author Robert Courser. But, only 15% really are.

What that means for leaders is that they often don't realize how their behaviors impact employees and is short-changing their ability to execute the organizations mission effectively.

Learn more about Robert's 5 keys for strategic ex*****on in an age of uncertainty.

Listen on your favorite podcast app or at https://bit.ly/3UBqAS3

Business Confidential Now aims to give you smart, practical, and timeless tips focused on helping you see things hidden in plain view that matter to your career and bottom line.

Better yet, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and never miss an episode of these timeless tips.

It’s the stuff they don't have time to teach you in business school, but that you need to succeed!

So delighted to have an amazing conversation with Ashutosh Garg on The Brand Called You.

We chatted about my new book, Seeking Fairness at Work and he asked the tough questions about what fairness means in the workplace (what it is, why we need it, what happens when we ignore it, and more) that I wish more executives, managers, and business owners would think about.

It's on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5qCi4Qsm80

Thank you Ashutosh and all you do on The Brand Called You to provide a knowledge data base designed to improve business performance.

The Halloween sugar rush is over and we’re careening toward the end of the year with performance reviews, 2025 forecasts, and other strategic planning.

Where did the time go?

To help you look ahead, on November 7th Robert Courser, coauthor of Line of Sight: the Five Keys for Strategic Ex*****on in an Age of Uncertainty, will share his thoughts about the importance of self-awareness in getting the results you want and need to succeed.

On November 14th I’ll be talking about how exceptional leaders inspire and motivate their workforce to tap into the full potential of the talent they already have on the payroll. And yes, I’ll be riffing off my award-winning book, Seeking Fairness at Work: Cracking the New Code of Greater Employee Engagement, Retention & Satisfaction.

November 14th is a special day for me. It was my mother’s birthday. She would have been 93. It’s also a fitting day for the rebirth of Business Confidential Now to a new format and a new platform: Substack.

What this means for you is a few things:

1. I’m going to take a little break to enjoy the holidays with family and friends, recalibrate the show as: Business Confidential Now – TGIF, and transition it to Substack. In the short term it means there will not be any new episodes for a while.

2. Existing programs will continue to be available on your favorite podcast app and at http://businessconfidentialradio.com/

3. The new format will start broadcasting on a bi-weekly basis in February 2025 and will be syndicated on Spotify and Apple (including it’s affiliates).

4. New shows will focus on management and leadership people issues – the things that make us say “TGIF.”

5. Why Substack? Because you’ll not only be able to listen on an audio player and read the transcript, you’ll ALSO be able to leave comments and ask questions. We’ll be able to have discussions about the content. How cool is that?? We’ll be able to create a community and I look forward to doing that with you.

Business Confidential Now is, and always has been, dedicated to identifying issues hiding in plain view that matter to the bottom line.

When I started this podcast in 2016 the focus was on all of the business topics that impact that bottom line (leadership, marketing, finance, human resources, operations, risk management, etc.) because business owners need to juggle all of them.

However, over time I’ve come to realize that while they’re all important, they pale in comparison to having the right people in the right place AND keeping them inspired and motivated.

The major employee “demotivators” are the subject of my book Seeking Fairness at Work. I view Business Confidential Now – TGIF as the next step in the journey to “ruthlessly create a wonderful place to work,” which coincidently was the title of my very first episode in 2016.

I love the way the show has come full circle and hope you’ll join me for this next exciting chapter.

In the meantime, have a great rest of 2024 and an even better New Year!

"A lot of leadership is listening and getting to know your people and, and where they're coming from and where their perspectives are, because that in-group/outgroup, and that toxic environment, can really undermine the performance of an organization," says Jonathan Stutz, co-author of Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders: A Guide to Building a Culture of Belonging.

Discover how to have those conversations and why they're critical for addressing the most challenging issues in business today, the adaptive learning problems (AI, data security, privacy, etc.) where no one person has the answer and a polarized workforce undermines the organization's ability to effectively problem solve.

Listen now on your favorite app or at https://player.captivate.fm/episode/4d4ddc63-5b2e-41f8-8e7c-2136a631f2ce/

Business Confidential Now aims to give you smart, practical, and timeless tips focused on helping you see things hidden in plain view that matter to your career and bottom line.

Better yet, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and never miss an episode of these timeless tips.

It’s the stuff they don't have time to teach you in business school, but that you need to succeed!

"It's not really the size of the business or the type of the business so much as it is what the business wants to do with itself that drives the need for a fractional CFO," says today's financial guru John Hannum.

Discover what that "it" factor is and how to take your business to the next level as John explains the difference between what a bookkeeper, CPA and a CFO can do and why a fractional CFO can help even start-ups boost their efficiency and profits.

Listen now on your favorite app or at https://player.captivate.fm/episode/e4674ba0-d469-417e-b06a-b198d94c200f/

Business Confidential Now aims to give you smart, practical, and timeless tips focused on helping you see things hidden in plain view that matter to your career and bottom line.

Better yet, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and never miss an episode of these timeless tips.

It’s the stuff they don't have time to teach you in business school, but that you need to succeed!

"They don't even realize all the issues they have in the organization that we can tie directly back to an absence of leadership," says Dr. Margie Oleson.

Dr. Oleson recognizes that companies aren't set up to develop leaders or help them adopt the right leadership skills and behaviors. They're all too often left to make it up as they go along, learning from past leaders who were left on their own as well.

As a result organizations are left with a giant gap between what research has shown to be effective leadership skills and actually implementing them.

Discover how to improve team effectiveness in this new episode of Business Confidential Now.

Listen now on your favorite app or at https://businessconfidentialradio.com/Effective-Leadership-Bridging-the-Gap-Between-Art-and-Science-with-Dr-Margie-Oleson

Business Confidential Now aims to give you smart, practical, and timeless tips focused on helping you see things hidden in plain view that matter to your career and bottom line.

Better yet, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and never miss an episode of these timeless tips.

It’s the stuff they don't have time to teach you in business school, but that you need to succeed!

Weekend downtime + podcast + coffee = PERFECT together.

Don't want to be blindsided by business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line?

If so, Business Confidential Now is for you. Available on major podcast apps here at http://bit.ly/bcnlisten .

“Qualification of skills, knowledge, abilities and other characteristics that are predictors of performance – that’s not something that’s easily gathered,” says psychometric practitioner Dr. Nikki Blacksmith.

So what are you supposed to do?

Learn more as Dr. Blacksmith, author of Data Driven Decision Making in Entrepreneurship shares her insights in How to Maximize Human Capital and Identify Preventable People Problems on the Business Confidential Now podcast.

Listen now on your favorite app or at https://bit.ly/4gvyGoI

Business Confidential Now aims to give you smart, practical, and timeless tips focused on helping you see things hidden in plain view that matter to your career and bottom line.

Better yet, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and never miss an episode of these timeless tips.

It’s the stuff they don't have time to teach you in business school, but that you need to succeed!

There's a little bit of oversight that's lacking in terms of how third party AI models like ChatGPT are being developed and what they're actually doing with an organizations data says cybersecurity and compliance expert Frank Kyazze.

Discover what you need to look out for in How Entrepreneurs Need to Start Thinking About the Ethical Use of AI on the Business Confidential Now podcast.

Listen now on your favorite app or at https://bit.ly/3zmDfRy

Business Confidential Now aims to give you smart, practical, and timeless tips focused on helping you see things hidden in plain view that matter to your career and bottom line.

Better yet, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and never miss an episode of these timeless tips.

It’s the stuff they don't have time to teach you in business school, but that you need to succeed!