[Top Software & Resource Series] What Leaders Rely on to Grow and Scale

Philip Hill is the CEO and President of Purebred Marketing. The Atlanta-based marketing agency creates digital marketing strategies and provides services such as SEO, web design and development, and email marketing. Philip is an avid dog lover and launched his first business in the pet space while attending the University of Alabama. 

Sherrie Sokolowski is the Owner of SLS Event Planning and Consulting, a company dedicated to creating seamless, personalized events through thoughtful planning, creative vision, and detail-oriented execution. She has managed high-profile events, including Funnel Hacking Live, and has worked with industry leaders like Russell Brunson and Bill Glazer, producing sold-out experiences for audiences of up to 7,000 attendees.

Richard Jacobs is the Founder of Speakeasy Marketing, a company focused on building meaningful connections through podcasting and curiosity-driven conversations. He has conducted over 4,000 interviews with experts, executives, and innovators, creating opportunities for collaborations, lasting relationships, and ventures such as organizing a Bitcoin conference.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:22] How Purebred Marketing drives DTC growth through affiliate programs
• [4:41] Why “Who Not How” can transform your business approach
• [9:58] Shift to AI tools like Perplexity and Claude for business operations
• [17:52] Using AI tools to supercharge e-commerce affiliate outreach
• [27:47] Why most people overlook Perplexity Computer’s full potential
• [36:30] Importance of engaging speakers who deliver actionable insights
• [40:30] Events for entrepreneurial attorneys and long-term client partnerships
• [46:44] Building Speakeasy Marketing and helping small law firms grow
• [57:15] Applying the 80/20 principle to marketing and podcast distribution
• [59:06] Systemizing your business with checklists and SOPs for efficiency
• [1:02:01] Why checklists are critical — from business systems to surgery safety

In this episode…

Looking for the right tools, strategies, and resources to grow your business without wasting time on what doesn’t work? From AI automation to relationship-building, today’s top performers are blending technology with human connection in powerful ways. But how do you actually apply these insights to create real results in your own business?

Philip Hill, Sherrie Sokolowski, and Richard Jacobs share how they transform events, communication, and operations through systems, storytelling, and AI. Philip explains how tools like Perplexity streamline affiliate outreach, reporting, and workflows while emphasizing core business principles and relationships. Sherrie shows how strategic event planning turns experiences like Funnel Hacking Live into growth engines. Richard highlights how podcasting, consistent communication, and systems reduce friction, strengthen relationships, and scale law firm operations.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Philip Hill, Sherrie Sokolowski, and Richard Jacobs, to discuss leveraging AI, systems, and relationship-driven growth. They cover affiliate marketing automation, event strategy, and client communication systems. They also share practical tools, books, and insights on balancing automation with human connection.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Philip Hill on LinkedIn
• Purebred Marketing
• Overdeliver: Build a Business for a Lifetime Playing the Long Game in Direct Response Marketing by Brian Kurtz
• Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention by John Ruhlin
• Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant
• $100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No (Acquisition.com $100M Series) by Alex Hormozi
• $100M Leads: How to Get Strangers To Want To Buy Your Stuff (Acquisition.com $100M Series) by Alex Hormozi
• $100M Money Models: How To Make Money (Acquisition.com $100M Series) by Alex Hormozi
• $100M LOST CHAPTERS: Lost Treasures from $100M Offers, $100M Leads, and $100M Money Models (Acquisition.com $100M Series) by Alex Hormozi
• Influence, New and Expanded: The Essential Guide to the Psychology of Influence and Persuasion in Everyday Life by Robert B. Cialdini PhD
• Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy
• Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman
• Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire by Dan Martell
• Google Gemini
• ChatGPT
• OpenAI
• Claude
• Perplexity Computer
• Bass-Ackward Business: The Power of Helping Without Hustling by Steve Beecham
• Sherrie Sokolowski on LinkedIn
• SLS Event Planning and Consulting
• Funnel Hacking Live
• ClickFunnels
• The Money Habit: The Worry-Free Way to Financial Independence by Mike Michalowicz
• Never Lose a Customer Again by Joey Coleman
• Never Lose an Employee Again by Joey Coleman
• Dan Kennedy Books
• Magnetic Marketing: How To Attract A Flood Of New Customers That Pay, Stay, and Refer by Dan Kennedy
• Great Legal Marketing Summit
• Partners Club
• Richard Jacobs
• Speakeasy Marketing
• DocketWorks
• Zoom
• Zoho
• Clio
• Westlaw Legal Research
• LexisNexis
• The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less by Richard Koch
• 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More by Perry Marshall, Richard Koch
• Finding Genius Podcast
• Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less by Sam Carpenter
• The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande

Special mention(s):

• Russell Brunson on LinkedIn
• Jason Swenk on LinkedIn
• Gene Simmons on LinkedIn
• Ivanka Trump on Facebook
• Marcus Lemonis on LinkedIn
• Mike Michalowicz on LinkedIn
• Brian Kurtz on LinkedIn
• Dan Kuschell on LinkedIn
• Mike Agugliaro on LinkedIn
• Daniel Rosen on LinkedIn
• Devon Brown on LinkedIn
• Dan Kennedy on LinkedIn

Related episodes:

• “[Top Giver Series] Relationship Building and Referral Marketing With Philip Hill and Steve Beecham” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[AI & Agency Series] AI-Powered Lead Generation and Automation for Agencies With Ken McLoud” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Author Series] How to Have Your Business Run Without You with Mike Michalowicz – Fix This Next” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Giver Series] How to Keep Your Best Customers And Build Lasting Business Relationships” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Lessons After 9 kids, 2 Businesses, 4+ Books, and 35+ Years as an Attorney With Ben Glass of BenGlassLaw and Great Legal Marketing” on Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “AI can’t replace relationships — and that’s what still drives real success.”
• “Helping others without expecting anything in return builds lasting success.”
• “When your business is systematized, problems go from daily to rare.”
• “Weekly client updates build trust, reduce stress, and improve payments.”
• “The best events are built into your strategy, not added as an afterthought.”

Action steps:

1. Build and nurture authentic relationships: Invest time in helping others and creating genuine connections that drive long-term growth.
2. Systematize your business with clear processes: Use checklists and SOPs to improve efficiency, reduce errors, and scale smoothly.
3. Adopt and experiment with AI tools: Leverage platforms like Perplexity and Claude to automate tasks and enhance productivity.
4. Prioritize continuous learning: Read, attend events, and stay engaged with expert insights to keep growing.
5. Communicate proactively and consistently: Provide regular updates to build trust, reduce friction, and strengthen relationships.

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here. I am the Founder of InspiredInsider.com. This is a special episode where I have some amazing leaders and entrepreneurs share some of their favorite resources, so stay tuned. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help B2B businesses give to and connect to their dream 200 Relationships and Partnerships. We do this in two ways. Number one, we are an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast for ROI. We do the strategy, accountability and full execution and production. Number two, we are also an easy button for your company’s corporate gifting. We make gifting and staying top of mind to your clients, partners and prospects simple and seamless and affordable. Some companies even send gifts to staff from a culture perspective. All you have to do is give us the list of people you want to follow up and keep in touch with, and we do everything else from there. From gift selection to the card to your branding on the box. 

We call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background to make it as stress free as possible for companies so they can build relationships and run their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships, and I am always looking at how to give to my best relationships. And I’ve found no better way over the past decade than having them on my podcast featuring what they are working on and sharing it with the world, and also sending delicious treats in the mail every few months for years. If you have thought about starting a podcast or gifting, do it. If you have questions, email us at [email protected] or go to Rise25.com to learn more. 

This is part of the Top Resources, Top Great people series. And I have Philip Hill with Purebred Marketing. And we’re going to get into his favorite software tools. It could be books. It’d be good podcasts because I respect Philip and his expertise and knowledge. But before we do, Philip, just tell people about Purebred Marketing and what you do.

Philip Hill: 02:22

Yeah, Purebred. We’re a DTC focused agency, so we work with direct to consumer product brands and we build affiliate programs, which is our biggest department. And then the other side of our business, we build custom e-commerce sites, mostly Shopify and Shopify Plus sites do SEO now, all SEO and GEO. So AI search and traditional search. And do CRO as well.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 02:45 

You know, I know you’re doing a lot of really relationships, like affiliates are all relationships with the brand, with the, the expert or the influencer, whoever it is. I’m curious, I curious. I don’t know if there’s any resources like books, podcasts from that standpoint that you’ve thought of that are good from relationships. I’ll, you know, Brian Kurtz wrote Overdeliver. That’s one of my favorites. John Ruhlin wrote Giftology. That’s again, one of my favorites. And Adam Grant’s Give and Take, all kind of more around relationships, any for you that you’ve looked at throughout the years?

Philip Hill: 03:24

It’s funny you mentioned that I bought Giftology a few years ago, and then I never read the book and I probably probably should have. I’ve heard great things about it. I’ve read a ton of books. I love reading.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:35 

Some of your favorite marketing business books in general.

Philip Hill: 03:39

Yeah. I mean, all of this is not these are not relationship books really at all, but all of Alex Hormozi books that are like newer books that have come out $100M Offers and $100M Leads, and then $100M Money Models like I love all of those all like Influence is, is awesome. Like understanding basically.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:00

Robert Cialdini.

Philip Hill: 04:01

Yeah. And all his books. Yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:04 

He has a new one or like it’s a revised version. Influence, New and Expanded that I finished a month or two ago. That’s really good too.

Philip Hill: 04:13

Is it? It’s just like a new edition of. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:17

I’m looking at. Yeah. Alex, these are great. I have I don’t know if you’ve you listen or you read, but you know, $100M Leads, $100M Money Models. But there’s an audible. I don’t know if it came out with the hard book copy of it. It’s $100M LOST CHAPTERS. No, that’s inaudible. And it’s like the stuff that didn’t get included in the other books. So that’s that’s another one.

Philip Hill: 04:41

Yeah, yeah. I try to listen like when I’m, I go walk my dog and listen to books, podcasts, go sit in the sun, try to multitask and listen as well. Who Not How I think was really powerful a long time ago. I think that’s kind of a simple concept. I don’t think I had to read the whole book. I think you could have just told me what the concept was and I could just read it. You read a lot of hours, but it’s the concept is really strong. And I think so many founders end up being bottlenecks for their business. And so understanding, like, you really just need to find people who have expertise and you don’t have to be the expert in everything and you’re never going to be the expert at everything. So I think just the concept is really strong, but I really, I like just general business books. You know, I started out in my early 20s reading like scale and the lean startup and blue ocean strategy and those types of things that are maybe marketing leaning for some of them, but kind of general business and, and understanding how they work, why businesses don’t work, those types of things.

And then kind of got into more practical things with marketing as I was diving in there. And then now like I’m really fascinated with like psychology. And I think that it bleeds over to every part of your life, including business. And my life is all intermingled. Like, I’ve started businesses with friends. I have clients that are now friends. I have friends that are now clients. You know, it’s I don’t think there has to be a hard line like a lot of people think. And so I think understanding psychology and how that applies even subconsciously, oftentimes to your day to day. But I think I got into that because marketing and sales is what really interests me. And then from that diving kind of a layer deeper than like tactics of like, okay, well, what actually drives these tactics and make them work? That’s where like psychology focused books, I think are really helpful. How do we.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:33

Influence is definitely one of my favorites of all time. It’s a must must read. Yeah. The Who Not How. I’ll just so it’s by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy and both of them separately have a slew of books. So if someone likes how you could check out other books. Benjamin Hardy wrote other books Dan Sullivan wrote. I I know they have a bunch they’ve co-authored together as well. So those are those are good ones. What about on the software front? What kind of.

Philip Hill: 07:01

Let me tell you one more book. Go ahead. Might have been one of the more impactful. It’s been one of the more impactful books of the last five years that I’ve read. Is this book right here? Well, actually, all of these. So here’s a couple of Hormozi’s books and then Traction. So we run EOS completely change how our operations to our business. So. Anybody that doesn’t know what EOS is or is interested in EOS, you should probably try it out, but Buy Back Your Time. Dan Martell’s book, it’s so actionable that if you just read it and has everything laid out, you just apply those things to your to your life. Like it has completely changed the way that I view how I spend my time in business, but also like personally as well. I love that book.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:51

It’s funny because I have the hardcover. I’m just I’m not sure if I actually ever bought the audible. So after we got off, I’ll definitely do that.

Philip Hill: 08:02

Yeah, I, I just read it because Jason sent, you know, Jason Swenk sent those out after, after we did like a workshop with him and I loved his workshop and then read his book and big fan.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:15

Well, I just bought it. So thanks for that. There’s another one and you know, is Bass-Ackward? You want to talk about that?

Philip Hill: 08:25

Yeah. Beecham’s book. Steve Beecham yeah, yeah. That was one of my that was one of my first one. Like I was probably 22 when I, when he gave me first copy of that book. And the whole concept is basically is basically like helping people with no expectation of anything in return. And how if basically most people are so calculated in their time, willingness to give like kind of the law of reciprocity. You do something for somebody else, you expect something in return. And his whole concept is like, just help other people out and good things will come to you. 

And that’s how he’s built his entire business and career. And he’s been super successful on that route. And that’s just genuinely how he is wired to, you know, just to be a helpful person. And now people want to help him as well. And he stays top of mind by, you know, being involved and helping people with different things. And he’s one, he’s probably the best person I’ve ever seen at generating referrals for other people that might not even need to use his services at all.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:34

It’s definitely a good one. I, I, I consumed it Bass-Ackward Business: The Power of Helping Without Hustling. And there’s a separate podcast interview that Philip and Steve and all of us did, which is really good. So people could check that out. What about on the software front? Well, are there certain tools.

Philip Hill: 09:58

Ironic timing of you asking me this? Because I feel like I can get rid of all of my tools now. Because a Perplexity Computer came out about five weeks ago and my life is forever changed. I already I’ve had a paid Gemini and ChatGPT account for OpenAI account for a couple of years or whatever it’s been since they’ve been out. And I think ChatGPT is just like kindergarten now compared to other tools. So like now I’m, I’m just all in on Claude and, and perplexity computer, but perplexity, everybody else is just talking about Claude. Perplexity computer is insane. Like I know Claude is too. Like Claude is great in its own right, but perplexity computer uses like 20 plus models, and Claude is one of those models. So it ends up using whatever model is best for what you’re trying to get it to do. But for what? What I’m trying to get it to do is I give it outcomes and then it does what it learns skills, teaches itself skills, and then builds workflows to generate those outcomes. 

Now granted, the average person can’t just go on there and use set it up and expect it to give you expect to do everything properly like I have fed it so much information, everything about myself, my family, my personal life, my business, my employees, my clients, past clients, target, you know, ICP, like all that type of stuff. But like our back end operations, like I’m, I’m so focused on like strategy, growth, marketing, sales, general business strategy, those types of things. And that’s where I try to use it. But I’ve had Jessica, our director of ops, using it to just automate everything on the back end. So like what our CFO can do in 8 to 10 hours a month, it takes her six minutes now, and it took her only 40 minutes to set up. And now all of our financial reporting is done with in six minutes each month. Like invoicing.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:51

A lot of it, too, is you have to be a skilled at prompting to do that stuff.

Philip Hill: 11:55

100%, not just prompting, but giving it assets and information that it can base things off of. So that’s what I’m saying. Like, you can’t just go in there and expect it to like come up with a perfect strategy if you haven’t given it enough information. So I spent, I blocked a day and I spent about eight hours feeding it, just feeding it information before I ever used it for anything. The first day that I got Perplexity Computer, I used almost half the monthly credits that it allots you and you can go over like there’s overage, but for what you pay for, for the highest plan they have, you get 10,000 credits a month and I use like 4500 in a day.

But it’s because I was just feeding it everything about me to set it up for success later connecting all of my different software, stuff like that. So yeah, like if my dad tried to go in there and use it. Who’s not? You know, he doesn’t have to use technology anymore. Whatever. Like he certainly would not get the outputs that I’m getting. So some of it is like prompt engineering and understanding that a lot of it is making sure that it has all of the relevant context needed. But from operations standpoint, streamlining things and there’s not a lot of room for error. It’s not like humans can go and enter a wrong number and a wrong cell and throw your whole spreadsheet out, right? It’s like pulling from different places and it’s pretty.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 13:13

Pretty slow. Is it kind of is acting as like a fractional CFO for you?

Philip Hill: 13:18

That’s just one use case. Okay. But yes, I mean, I’m not trying to like get rid of my CFO. He’s awesome. Like he can provide a ton of value. That’s just like the financial reporting side. The things that are take task oriented work that he’s having to go in and pull numbers from different places and build out like our end of month reporting. So I’m not it’s not to replace him. That’s not the that’s not we haven’t done that, nor is that the goal. It’s really like, how do we give back hours to our team for task oriented things that they are doing?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 13:47

Totally.

Philip Hill: 13:48

So like, we’ve built a tool on Claude for the affiliate. Affiliate side, I think it’s kin built it for, you know, Ken.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 13:56

Yeah. Ken McLoud.

Philip Hill: 13:57

Yeah. Ken McLoud, who’s awesome that I absolutely.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 14:01

Did an episode. He’s on the podcast. People can check it out. So if you want to like geek out on AI related stuff, Ken does talk about that as well.

Philip Hill: 14:09

Yeah. So, so we’re working with Ken. It’s about done. And it’s basically like, so you were saying at the very beginning of this, talking about affiliates and relationships and all that. So what I’m really bullish on is of all of the things in the digital marketing realm, the one thing that can’t be replaced by AI, or at least it at this point and for the foreseeable future is you can’t replace relationships, right?

So like, what we really do on the affiliate side of things is we build relationships with journalists, with commerce editors, with account managers at these big like traditional affiliate platforms, credit card reward programs, things like that. And you can’t replace that. So like we have direct contacts that we can just reach out to. If you have just a bunch of AI agents just sending mass blast email type things like it’s probably, and then trying to negotiate placements like it’s, it’s not going to work it, at least for right now. So we’ve built, I’m.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:03

Sure there’s someone out there, Philip, that’s going to be like full of, I’m going to create like a hey Jen video that’s like, hey, I’m Philip. Do you want to, you know, do you want to, you know, and they’ll say, oh, you could build relationships with AI videos, etc., but but I go, what? You mean it’s different? You’re on the phone with them, you’re chatting and even initial outreach. Usually it’s like, hey, let’s schedule a call and like connect deeper rather than, yeah, that’s just one step in the process.Yeah.

Philip Hill: 15:30

And I’m also not naive to knowing that like in ten years, the world is not going to look anything like it does today. Like there will be so much change that people aren’t going to be so turned off by AI, or just assume that it’s going to go so heavily this way. People are not going to be that turned off by AI. And if you have some video that’s like, it looks like me. It talks like me.

It’s, you know, just a, you wouldn’t know the difference. Like, sure, maybe it goes to that and it doesn’t matter, but because it’s as close to me as it could be, like maybe, but like we’re not anywhere near that. So we, so this tool, so like, here’s the first, their number of use cases. Here’s the first use case just to give you like practical understanding.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:08

This is for internal purposes or can people use this externally?

Philip Hill: 16:11

This is for internal purposes, but we are talking. I had a call with him on Friday and another guy that toyed with the idea of making this a SaaS platform, but it would take some re-engineering.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:22

So if you’re listening to this and you’re interested, just reach out to Philip. It’s possible. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Philip Hill: 16:27

Okay. So and this is not something you can just go do on like perplexity computer. This took can be in a master engineer and just having AI in there. But so basically it like we love to land articles that already rank. So like a lot of PR is landing. You know, trying to pitch for, for new content to be created, which we are obviously doing as well, but we like conclusions and articles that already rank on the first page of Google because they’re getting traffic every single day, right? And there’s buying intent behind like for one of our clients is a sales or one of our clients is named is bully beds. They sell dogs for large aging arthritic dogs. They’re like luxury dog beds. Awesome client, awesome brand. And so if we, we have trained this to go look at bully bed site, it flushes out all the keywords that would relate to their site. 

And we’ve trained it on like formulas that would have content sites listed. So like best dog beds for large dogs, they’re going to be a few brands on there. There may be PetSmart, Amazon on there, and then there are going to be a few listicles that are content sites. So it flushes out all the keywords that relate to the brand, and then it puts those in a list. Then it taps into Google’s API, pulls the first two pages of search results, and then we’ve trained it on what’s a content site versus what’s a e-com site? So it takes all those content sites to rank on the first two pages for all those search queries, throws them in a spreadsheet. Then from there it goes and taps into media databases that we have. So it will go pull journalists information.

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