The Aaxelera Podcast

Welcome to The Aaxelera Podcast, the show where industry leaders and top executives step away from the polished narratives to share the real, unfiltered stories of how they built and scaled their companies. We dive deep into the growth journeys of successful founders—exploring the major milestones, the unexpected challenges they faced (and the ones they see coming), their ambitious growth goals, and their personal viewpoints on the impact of AI and technology. Join us for candid, conversations designed to give you practical insights and inspiration from the people who are defining the future of their industries. This is about success stories, leadership approaches, and the strategies that truly drive growth.

The Aaxelera Podcast is a business podcast hosted by Montgomery (Monty) Pruss, with 10 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Montgomery (Monty) Pruss hosts The Aaxelera Podcast, a business show with 10 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #9

  Episode 9: Jennifer Speciale

  Aug 7, 202643 minS1

  What do you do when you're surrounded by 1.4 million colleagues and still feel underutilized? Jennifer Speciale's path runs from neuroscience research (four published papers) through executive recruiting at Amazon, Google, McKinsey, and Indeed, where she was employee number 86. Then came the realization that her favorite part of the job, coaching brilliant candidates to actually land the role, could BE the job. Today she runs Special Executive Leadership from Florence, Italy, coaching design and tech leaders around the world. In this episode we get into: Why she walked away from Big Tech instead of cashing in on the CV "Hire the rhombus, not the square peg": why the candidate missing a skill is often your best hire Her Articulating Impact framework, and why leaders need to "decompress the story" instead of compressing their wins into one modest line What recruiters see in your LinkedIn profile that hiring managers never will Building a business on midnight calls between Florence and Silicon Valley How she uses AI to never miss a detail across her client base, and why design still deserves its seat at the table Her parting wisdom: as far as we know, we live once, so do it well. Find Jennifer on LinkedIn or at jenniferspeciale.com

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  Episode #8

  Episode 8: Lori Palm

  Jul 29, 202656 minS1

  What if the real reason your team can't communicate has nothing to do with skill, and everything to do with what's driving each person underneath? Monty sits down with Lori Palm, founder and CEO of Core Passion and creator of the Core Passion Assessment, a valid and reliable tool that measures the twelve core drivers (she calls them codes) behind your decisions, behaviors, and communication. Lori helps leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs answer the two hardest questions there are: Who am I? And what do I want? In this conversation: The twelve Core Passion codes, and why your top five explain why you do what you do Why your greatest gift is also your greatest challenge, and how a strength like research becomes a trust problem with people The Passion, Vision, Action triangle: why busyness isn't accomplishment How to spot when you or someone on your team is "out of balance," and what it costs in productivity when nobody names it Code Talking: how to get through to someone whose drivers are completely different from yours Why culture change fails unless leadership is willing to change too The four areas of life (health, relationships, career and money, spirit) and why imbalance in any one of them shows up in your business Lori's philosophy fits in one line: when you know who you are, you know what to do. Learn more and take the Core Passion Assessment at corepassion.com . As Lori puts it: we solve the people puzzles.

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  The Aaxelera Podcast

  Episode 7: Warren Fiihr

  Jul 24, 202656 min

  Warren Fiihr has spent a career watching markets reinvent themselves and helping teams survive the shift. He ran radio and television ad sales, took over a toxic NBC affiliate as GM at 39, steered a newsroom through the Virginia Tech tragedy and the analog-to-digital transition, and later led Comcast's advertising sales across the Houston Gulf Coast. Today he's the owner and certified business coach at ActionCOACH Sugar Land. In this episode, Warren and host Montgomery Pruss trade stories from the front lines of disrupted industries. Classified ads collapsing overnight. Blockbuster missing the moment Netflix seized. The 2008 layoffs Warren had to carry out himself. And they connect all of it to the disruption everyone's living through now: AI reshaping who and what a business actually needs. But the heart of the conversation is what Warren does every day: helping owners escape the 60-hour grind and build something that runs without them. You'll hear his take on why small and medium businesses (not corporations) are what really move the world forward, why your business is a vehicle and not your identity, and the practical habits that separate owners who scale from owners who spin in circles. In this episode: Why "the market moved and you didn't" kills more businesses than bad products The four-quadrant time trap every owner falls into, and how to break it BFOs (blinding flashes of the obvious) and why accountability beats advice Don't start a business, buy one. The counterintuitive case for acquisition Hiring: why the best day is the interview, and why you wait for the right person How Warren is folding AI into his own practice, and where he thinks it's headed A candid, funny, occasionally irreverent conversation about doing the work that actually compounds. Website: warrenfiihr.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/warren-fiihr

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  Episode #6

  Episode 6: Gary Acevedo

  Jul 14, 202650 minS1

  From People-Pleaser to Miracle-Maker: Gary Acevedo on the Inner Game of Leadership What if the "hangups" you criticize yourself for are actually your greatest gifts? In this episode of the Aaxelera Podcast, Montgomery Pruss sits down with Gary Acevedo, founder of Rise Leadership Group in Salt Lake City, for a conversation more than 40 years in the making. At 19, Gary spent three years living in a community led by a mentor he calls "an unrecognizable genius," an experience that rewired his understanding of human potential and set him on a path through more than 30 disciplines, from hypnosis to NLP. What he found was that none of them matched the transformational power of what he'd learned at the very beginning. Gary shares the philosophy behind the breakthroughs he's guided for decades: that there are no true weaknesses, only gifts we haven't learned to own; that defensiveness is simply the flip side of self-criticism; and that the single greatest predictor of how fast someone grows isn't talent or intelligence, but their willingness to stop getting in their own way. Along the way, Gary explains the "moment of choice" that keeps high performers trapped in overwhelm, why the future of corporate training is experiential rather than intellectual, how a "clunk" signals the exact instant a sale is made, and what it means to lead every conversation with the intent to empower. For the founders, CEOs, and leaders who feel like they're busting their ass just to keep their head above water, this one is about learning to move to the center of the river, where the current carries you instead. Guest: Gary Acevedo, Founder, Rise Leadership Group Connect: riselg.com | gary@riselg.com

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  Episode #6

  Episode 6: Jo Self

  Jun 3, 202648 minS1

  <p>Jo Self, founder of Practical Strengths and author of the Practical Strengths book series, joins Monty for a conversation about CliftonStrengths as a second language and the gap between knowing your strengths and actually living them. We cover her path from Yum! Brands to entrepreneurship in Peru, the cancer scare that pointed her toward CliftonStrengths as a full-time calling, why "Communication" as a talent doesn't mean what you think it means, the stories that make the framework click (the kindergarten research debate, empathy in prison populations, toilet paper), and her mission to build a strengths-based generation through the Practical...

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