The Dwayne Kerrigan Podcast

Kate Bradley Chernis spent over a decade figuring out how to use sound to make strangers feel like friends. At Sirius/XM, she was building 200-layer audio files for 30-second commercials. Next, she was infusing radio theory into a generative AI platform before most people knew what generative AI was. Now at Backline EQ, she's using the same instinct, that sound tells you things a transcript never could, to engineer human connection at scale. This conversation covers all of it: the neuroscience, the pivots, and the parts of the journey she rarely shares out loud.
In this episode:
The theater of the mind and why it's the foundation of trust: when your brain constructs the story rather than receiving it passively, it taps into nostalgia, memory, and emotion — the three keystones of why we buy, connect, and believe
Why your eyes lie but your ears don't — Kate's case that sound is the most honest and hardest-to-trick human sense, and what that means for AI tools that rely entirely on transcripts
The "rules of radio" Kate embedded into Lately's AI — word choices like "remember" versus "don't forget" that trigger different emotional responses, drawn from her training in the neuroscience of music and parasocial connection
How Backline EQ outperformed the Microsoft/IBM/Google industry-standard language model (MFCC) by 70% in measuring team fit — using voice patterns alone, without transcription
Kate's vulnerable disclosure about a difficult period in her life after eleven years building a company and how her mother's reminder that she was a prodigy at six became the unexpected anchor that helped her begin again
The investor who finally told her to stop inventing something new and just make existing technology better and how that single pivot made everything easier for the first time in over a decade

Content Warning: This episode includes a brief discussion of suicidal ideation. The conversation is handled with care and context, but we want our listeners to be prepared.
If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 — the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline — available 24/7 in both the US and Canada.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 - Podcast Welcome and Content Warning
00:17 - Sound Design Obsession
01:20 - Meet Kate Bradley Chernis
03:32 - Kinder Egg Smuggling Story
04:13 - From Radio to AI
05:56 - Theater of the Mind
10:23 - Why Sound Builds Trust
12:36 - Building Lately Secret Sauce
15:23 - Voice Control and Trust
21:18 - Staying Human in AI
28:58 - Leaving XM and Starting Up
34:27 - Early Genius, Confidence and Reinvention
36:26 - Self Love and Authenticity
38:38 - Imposter Syndrome Scale
39:15 - Resume Exercise for Confidence
42:29 - Trusting Your Gut
44:10 - Loneliness and Standing Up
47:05 - Entrepreneurship Lessons
52:05 - Rebuilding The Village
56:19 - Backline EQ Pivot
01:01:37 - Patterns and the Bridge
01:06:49 - Collecting Data the Hard Way
01:09:56 - Sound As A Force
01:11:22 - Return on Collisions
01:13:20 - Saying No and Self Care
01:16:57 - Closing Thanks and Outro
Resources mentioned:
This Is Your Brain on Music — Daniel Levitin
The Art of the Start — Guy Kawasaki
Backline EQ Live Conversations — Kate's audio salons, every other Thursday at 2:00 PM Eastern
MFCC (Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients) — industry language model standard Kate's technology was benchmarked against

Quotes:
“Your eyes lie. They can lie to you, but sound doesn't.” - Kate Bradley Chernis
“Often people will focus so much on their life condition rather than, "No, I'm here for a reason. I just need to maybe alter the blueprint." That doesn't mean lower your expectations, it just may mean shift your standards. Shift the way you're gonna get there, timeline, trajectory.” - Dwayne Kerrigan
“You have to start measuring. You have to start collecting data.” - Kate Bradley Chernis
“I can make people I can't see feel like they belong. It's more than that. I can make you feel like with a conversation that is either as powerful or more powerful than if we were eye to eye in real life. That's how transcendent sound is. There's a magic there that is, well, it's magical. It's fantastical.” - Kate Bradley Chernis
“Entrepreneurship's f***ing hard. This is a gladiator sport. And there is no substitute for the constant and never-ending courage that you need to have inside this, this arena.” - Dwayne Kerrigan
About Kate Bradley Chernis:
Kate Bradley Chernis is an early Generative AI visionary who co-founded the first closed-data, proprietary machine learning and natural language processing platform in 2014. She is the co-founder and CEO of the Backline Network, which uses curated audio-only salons to capture real-time conversational dynamics and convert them into AI that predicts and engineers group chemistry at scale. Before her career in AI, Kate spent over a decade as a rock 'n' roll radio DJ, serving 20 million listeners daily as Music Director and on-air host at Sirius/XM. An early prototype of her technology delivered Walmart a 130% ROI year-over-year for three years.
Connect with Kate Bradley Chernis:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/katebradley
Connect with Dwayne Kerrigan
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Disclaimer: The views, information, or opinions expressed by guests during The Dwayne Kerrigan Podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Dwayne Kerrigan and his affiliates. Dwayne Kerrigan or The Dwayne Kerrigan Podcast is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of any of the information contained in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. Listeners are advised to consult with a qualified professional or specialist before making any decisions based on the content of this podcast.

What happens when the business you built becomes too dependent on you to keep growing?
Mark Bradley, Founder and Chairman of LeanScaper and author of the newly released The Landscaper’s Operating System: Build a Landscape Company That Runs Without You, joins Dwayne Kerrigan for Part Two of a conversation about one of the most important transitions an entrepreneur can make: moving from being the person who runs everything to becoming the leader who builds a company capable of running without them.
Mark draws on decades of experience building, scaling, and evolving businesses to break down the disciplines that separate growth from sustainable scale. He shares why strong systems and processes matter, how a CEO’s role must change as the company grows, and why the ability to prioritize, protect your time, and develop capable people becomes increasingly critical at every stage.
The conversation also gets into Mark’s relentless approach to learning — seeking out experts, asking better questions, openly measuring progress, and refusing to let past success become a reason to stop improving. For Mark, better businesses are built by leaders willing to continuously evolve themselves alongside the organization.
That philosophy has shaped each chapter of his career. Mark scaled TBG Landscape from a backyard operation into one of North America’s Top 100 landscape contractors before co-founding LMN in 2009, creating the business-management software he wished had existed while running his own company.
Today, he is continuing that mission through LeanScaper, helping landscape business owners build stronger operations, better teams, greater profitability, and businesses that no longer rely on the owner to solve every problem.
His new book, The Landscaper’s Operating System, takes that mission even further, distilling decades of hard-earned lessons into a framework for owners who want to step out of the bottleneck and build a company designed to perform beyond them.
If you are trying to scale a business, lead at a higher level, or create something that does not require your constant involvement to succeed, this is a conversation worth revisiting.
You can access Mark's book here: https://book.leanscaper.com/
Time Stamps:
[00:00] Introduction
[01:24] Preframing the Landscape Industry
[02:15] Creating Software for the Landscape Industry
[10:22] Asking for Mentorship and Luck
[13:53] Mental Shifts in Transitioning to Software
[17:40] Overcoming Personal Overwhelm
[19:22] Impact of Personal Goals on Business Success
[21:57] Journey to Losing 140lbs
[24:05] Advice to Younger Self
[29:26] Initiating Landscape Management Network (LMN)
[37:13] Keys to Business Success
[43:00] Innovating Your Business Model
[50:50] The Importance of Being Feedback-Oriented
[53:25] The Role of Progress in Success
[1:01:45] Scaling from 1M to 30M in Revenue
[1:11:36] A Day in the Life of a CEO
[1:18:00] Thanks and Connecting with Mark Bradley
[1:20:08] Closing Remarks and Disclaimer
Connect with Dwayne Kerrigan
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Disclaimer: The views, information, or opinions expressed by guests during The Dwayne Kerrigan Podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Dwayne Kerrigan and his affiliates. Dwayne Kerrigan or The Dwayne Kerrigan Podcast is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of any of the information contained in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. Listeners are advised to consult with a qualified professional or specialist before making any decisions based on the content of this podcast.

What does it take to build a business that is profitable, principled, and strong enough to scale?
Mark Bradley, Founder and Chairman of LeanScaper and author of the newly released The Landscaper’s Operating System: Build a Landscape Company That Runs Without You, joins Dwayne Kerrigan for Part One of a wide-ranging conversation on the decisions, disciplines, and operating principles that helped shape his career.
Mark’s path was anything but conventional. After leaving the nuclear industry, he entered landscaping and began building what would eventually become TBG Landscape, growing it from a backyard operation into one of North America’s Top 100 landscape contractors. Along the way, he developed a distinctly operator-driven approach to business — one built around understanding the numbers, choosing the right customers, investing in great people, and refusing to compromise on the standards required to build something sustainable.
In this conversation, Mark explains why not every customer is a good customer, why strong businesses need healthy margins, and why paying exceptional employees exceptionally well can become a competitive advantage rather than a cost to control. He also breaks down the importance of clear goals, disciplined budgeting, job costing, and measuring productivity so that business decisions are driven by facts rather than instinct.
At the heart of Mark’s philosophy is a simple idea: a better business should create better outcomes for everyone involved. Better customers create healthier margins. Healthier margins allow you to invest in better people. Better people deliver better work. And when the entire system is aligned, growth becomes far more sustainable.
That operating mindset eventually led Mark to co-found LMN in 2009 after recognizing that the business-management software his own landscape company needed simply did not exist. What began as a solution to an internal problem grew into technology used throughout the landscape industry.
Today, Mark continues that mission through LeanScaper, helping landscape business owners strengthen their operations, improve profitability, build more capable teams, and create businesses that are less dependent on the owner.
His new book, The Landscaper’s Operating System, brings together decades of those lessons into a practical framework for owners who want to build stronger companies with greater clarity, discipline, and independence.
If you are building a company and want to understand the fundamentals beneath sustainable growth — the customers you choose, the people you hire, the numbers you measure, and the standards you refuse to compromise — this conversation is a powerful place to start.
You can access Mark's book FREE here: https://book.leanscaper.com/
Time Stamps:
[00:00] Introduction
[00:35] Mark Bradley: TBG Landscaping Journey
[01:38] Starting a Business: Mark's Story
[07:34] Acquiring First Customers: Strategies
[13:17] Business Evolution: Landscaping Today
[14:03] Replicating Business Success: Insights
[18:41] Targeting Ideal Customers
[23:59] Maximizing Revenue Per Hour
[27:15[ Mindset: Abundance vs Scarcity
[29:33] Financial Management: Budgeting Tips
[32:55] Crafting a Solid Business Plan
[37:00] Preserving Company Culture During Growth
[42:10] Leadership's Role in Business Success
[46:06] Setting Strategic Business Goals
[47:53] Implementing Goals Across Your Team
[51:39] Earning Based on Results: A Business Philosophy
[54:54] Transition from Landscaping to Software Development
[57:20] Emphasizing the Role of Education in Business
[1:00:18] Entering the Software Industry: A New Venture
[1:06:48] Mindset Shifts for Software Business Success
[1:07:27] Announcement: 2 Part Podcast Series
[1:07:54] Future Podcast Topics Discussion
[1:09:00] Finding Industry Mentors
[1:10:33] Youthful Entrepreneurship: Learning the Ropes
[1:12:12] Tailoring Advice to Fit Your Business
[1:13:55] Closing Remarks and Contact Information
Connect with Dwayne Kerrigan
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Disclaimer: The views, information, or opinions expressed by guests during The Dwayne Kerrigan Podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Dwayne Kerrigan and his affiliates. Dwayne Kerrigan or The Dwayne Kerrigan Podcast is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of any of the information contained in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. Listeners are advised to consult with a qualified professional or specialist before making any decisions based on the content of this podcast.

This episode is a re-release and features Phil M. Jones, a successful entrepreneur and speaker, who brings to light the significance of mastering pivotal conversational moments in sales and customer service for business success. Join us as we delve into strategies for overcoming and preventing customer objections, understanding decision-making processes, and enhancing customer journeys in diverse industries. We explore the necessity of identifying critical moments in a customer's journey, tailoring compensation to motivate sales teams, and the impact of mindset on professional growth. Phil provides practical advice on setting targets, using direct rewards, and resources for further learning in sales and business strategy.
An entrepreneurial success story and founder of 5 multimillion dollar companies, Phil M Jones is a strategic Advisor to pioneering leaders of the world’s biggest brands. The author of 7 best-selling books including the “Exactly” Book Series with over 2 million copies sold, he is the Producer of the “Most Listened To” Audiobook of all time and Innovator of the highly coveted “How to Persuade” audible production. To date, more than 800 different industries, across 59 countries and 5 continents, have benefited from his input. Phil recently joined a long list of global leaders who serve in residence at High Point University’s Access to Innovators Program. The program at HPU connects students with industry leaders for networking and mentorship opportunities. He joins Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak, Netflix Co-Founder Marc Randolph and many others.
For more info on Phil M. Jones; https://www.philmjones.com/ or https://exactlywhattosay.com/
Check Out Phil’s Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Phil-M-Jones/author/B0097DKWP4?qid=1510658902&sr=8-1&ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true
Timestamps:
[00:00] Introduction
[00:38] Phil Jones Background
[05:02] "Exactly What to Say" Overview
[08:32] Mastering the Art of Asking
[13:41] Effective Communication Strategies
[18:01] Achieving Results vs. Being Right
[24:30] Traits of Successful Salespeople
[28:43] Enhancing Customer Experience
[31:45] Sales Training Fundamentals
[32:35] Mastering Product Knowledge
[37:15] Developing Sales Skills
[39:45] Cultivating the Right Attitude
[41:01] Ideal Sales Training Schedule
[49:15] Encapsulating Excellence in Sales
[51:30] Embracing Discomfort in Sales Training
[1:02:05] Critical Business Moments
[1:20:58] Preventing Sales Objections
[1:40:30] Connecting with Phil M Jones
[1:42:25] Outro
Connect with Dwayne Kerrigan
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwayne-kerrigan-998113281/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/businessofdoingbusinessdk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebusinessofdoingbusinessdk/
Disclaimer The views, information, or opinions expressed by guests during The Business of Doing Business are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Dwayne Kerrigan and his affiliates. Dwayne Kerrigan or The Business of Doing Business is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of any of the information contained in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. Listeners are advised to consult with a qualified professional or specialist before making any decisions based on the content of this podcast.

Andrew Pancholi doesn't hedge his calls. In Part 2 of his conversation with Dwayne Kerrigan, the cycles analyst behind Market Timing Report lays out exactly where he thinks gold and oil are headed next — the kind of specific, put-your-name-on-it targets most analysts avoid — plus the one year already circled on his calendar for the next real market correction, and why the pullbacks along the way are buying opportunities, not warning signs. Using research that traces back nearly a century, Andy breaks down which years tend to run hot, which tend to break, and the one he's watching most closely right now. Dwayne and Andy also dig into digital currency, BRICS, and whether replacing the US dollar would really just be a way to wipe out national debt — and Andy shares how a historical pattern tied to the Dust Bowl era points toward a coming boom in grain and commodity markets.
Episode Time Stamps:
00:00 Cycles Love Or Hate
00:22 Welcome Back Andrew Pancholi
01:23 Digital Currency Questions
03:40 Crypto Value And BRICS
05:06 AI Bots and Cycle Speed
07:01 NFTs Bitcoin and Scrutiny
09:55 Debt Reset and History
11:41 Future Of Money Risks
14:50 Market Timing Report
18:28 Risk Management Trading Edge
24:00 Market Outlook and Year Cycles
31:10 Gold Oil and Commodity Boom
34:22 Mississippi Grain Crunch
36:08 Gold Cycles Explained
36:53 Why Cycles Matter
40:54 Gold Targets and Pullbacks
42:56 Cycles vs Technicals
45:45 AI and Modern Warfare
53:13 Using AI for Research
58:14 Upside of AI Progress
01:01:28 Detaching From Tech
01:02:46 Where to Find Andrew
01:04:21 Final Takeaways and Wrap
Guest bio: Andrew Pancholi is the founder and CEO of The Market Timing Report, a global macro research service used by professional investors and portfolio managers to identify risk windows and periods of asymmetric opportunity. For over 40 years, he has forecast turning points in markets including the S&P 500, gold, oil, and Bitcoin using time cycle analysis built on the methods of W.D. Gann, Edward Dewey, and Ralph Elliott. He is co-author of the bestselling book Zero Hour with Harry S. Dent Jr. and a board member of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles. Before market timing, Andrew spent decades as a senior pilot for a major flag carrier airline, including roles as Training Captain and Training Standards Captain.
Resources mentioned:
Find Andrew Pancholi's daily cycle updates and forecasts at www.markettimingreport.com or on YouTube at Market Timing Report https://www.youtube.com/@markettimingreport
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewpancholi/
https://www.facebook.com/markettimingcyclesanalysis/
Instagram @andrew.pancholi
Connect with Dwayne Kerrigan
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Disclaimer: The views, information, or opinions expressed by guests during The Dwayne Kerrigan Podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Dwayne Kerrigan and his affiliates. Dwayne Kerrigan or The Dwayne Kerrigan Podcast is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of any of the information contained in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. Listeners are advised to consult with a qualified professional or specialist before making any decisions based on the content of this podcast.