Disruptive Influence: The Business Storytelling & Brand Communication Podcast
If you know what you do but struggle to talk about it in a way that lands — this podcast is for you.
Most founders, creators, and leaders have the expertise…but not the story, clarity, or communication skills to express it with confidence, conviction, and influence.
Disruptive Influence is the storytelling, communication, and executive presence podcast for founders, solopreneurs, and LinkedIn-era leaders who want to communicate with more clarity and power - in meetings, in pitches, in content, and in everyday conversations.
Learn how to:
- turn lived experience into clear, compelling stories
- communicate with clarity, confidence, and executive presence
- build a strong POV that attracts the right people
- sell your ideas, your value, and your vision with conviction
- unlock the mindset shifts behind real influence and high-performance communication
Hosted by Jeff Abracen - executive storytelling coach, former agency creative director, and creator of the Disruptive Influence™ system - each episode reveals how exceptional thinkers shape narratives, build presence, and communicate in ways that create opportunity.
Through a mix of solo tactical episodes and deep conversations with founders and creators who are disrupting and influencing their industries in their own way, you’ll learn how real leaders think, speak, and tell stories that move people.
If you're building a company, growing a personal brand on LinkedIn, leading a team, or simply want to communicate with more confidence and conviction — this podcast gives you the tools and perspective shifts to become the most influential person in the room.
➞ Subscribe and learn how to tell stories that sell - and speak with clarity, confidence, and conviction.
➞ Connect with Jeff Abracen on LinkedIn to continue the conversation.
Disruptive Influence: The Business Storytelling & Brand Communication Podcast
Why Your Brands Needs to Build Out Loud with Jake Karls
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Jake Karls, Co-Founder & Rainmaker at Mid-Day Squares, joins Jeff Abracen for a fast, fun, and deep conversation on building brands by building out loud. Jake breaks down the origin story behind Mid-Day Squares' “act like a boy band” strategy, why story > features, and how humanization is an unfair advantage in a world obsessed with scale.
They also unpack the behind-the-scenes reality of growth: therapy as a non-negotiable founder practice, the emotional swing from “nothing to lose” to “everything to lose,” and how a cocoa price crisis pushed MDS to innovate into a new category with their No Bread PB&J - complete with character-driven storytelling (hello, Trudy & Chip).
In this episode, you’ll hear:
- Why “building out loud” expands your luck + opportunity surface area
- How Mid-Day Squares modeled their brand like the Backstreet Boys / Spice Girls
- Why the best brands sell feelings, not features
- The real role of attention: getting trial in a 30-40k item grocery store
- How “serendipity” becomes a growth strategy (show up and good things happen)
- Therapy as a business system for alignment, trust, and conflict prevention
- The cocoa crisis, the margins reality, and the innovation leap to No Bread PB&J
- Creating characters to scale storytelling beyond founders
- Jake on fear, pressure, loneliness, and shifting back to “play to win”
- Plus, a live taste test!
00:00 The boy band brand model
00:24 Intro
00:41 Montreal energy and Jake’s travel rhythm
02:37 First advice to founders build out loud
04:13 Showing up and serendipity
06:07 Finding Mid-Day Squares DNA and the deal that changed everything
09:27 Story over product features
11:45 Cocoa crisis and category expansion
13:05 Humanization is the advantage
14:25 Innovation as the escape hatch
15:25 The No Bread PBJ origin
18:09 Packaging storytelling and characters
22:11 Product must hit and story gets trial
25:10 Founder lanes and trust
28:37 Therapy communication and avoiding founder conflict
30:04 Fear pressure and playing not to lose
33:06 Stage mode elevated Jake
34:28 The down days and recovery
37:52 What would make younger Jake proud
39:10 Life after Midday inspiring entrepreneurship
42:13 Serendipity story fraternity to investor
43:35 Live taste test outro
Connect with Jeff Abracen on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffabracen/]
If you are or know a disruptive influencer who would make a great guest, we'd love to hear from you.
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Cover art by Daniel Devoy
Music by Stephen Voyce
©2024 The Disruptive Influence Podcast - Jeff Abracen