Working/Broken
Welcome to Working/Broken with Nick Richtsmeier and Brad Farris. Every episode, we examine a trend, bias, or hot topic affecting business leaders and ask the question: Is it working? Or is it broken?
Much of what is broken in the world impacts our business and our leadership. We can’t fix all that, but we can learn to respond and lead differently. Business leaders have been hard-wired and trained to chase trends, follow conventional wisdom, and find any way possible to simplify the endless list of hard decisions they have to make.
So the ecosystem of “hacks” and “best practices” fills to overflowing, leaving you at a loss for a sorting mechanism: What applies to you? Where have bias or assumptions skewed the gurus? What actually applies to you?
The spectrum of what’s working and what’s broken isn’t fixed. It’s custom. To not just your situation, but you as a leader and what you’re bringing to the table. And while you try to follow the rules given to you, part of the magic of succeeding in leadership is knowing what’s for you and what isn’t.
So come join us. We’re gonna laugh. We’re gonna challenge. We’re gonna wrestle. Together.
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Nick Richtsmeier is a catalyst for change in organizations that rely on trust to deliver their services. If your advisory, education, or professional services firm needs to accelerate growth, visit CultureCraft.com to find out how he can craft a growth strategy that’s made for you.
Brad Farris coaches leaders of creative professional firms to become the people they need to be to lead the agency they aspire to grow. Find out more at AnchorAdvisors.com
You can find additional resources at WorkingBroken.com.
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Working/Broken
The End of Marketing as We Know It — Trust is All We Have Left
In this episode, Brad and Nick dive into what marketing is becoming now that we live in a post-trust, post-algorithm, post-authenticity world. They’re not interested in tactics—they’re interested in how the deep cultural forces reshaping trust, commerce, and identity are scrambling what it even means to “market” something.
Together, they explore:
- Why traditional marketing frameworks no longer apply
- How the best marketing today isn’t marketing at all—it’s signal
- What happens when attention becomes too expensive for most businesses to buy
- Why people aren’t buying messages—they’re buying alignment
- How real resonance begins when you quit trying to prove and start trying to be
This is a powerful conversation for anyone who senses that our current approach to audience, storytelling, and persuasion has gone stale—but hasn’t quite found language for what’s next.
As always, the episode lives up to the Working/Broken premise: challenging listeners who followed the rules of the game, only to discover the game changed mid-play.
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Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.
