Jeb Brooks gets paid to travel around the world. Here’s how
Posted On August 11, 2022
How would you like to travel all over the world and get paid to do it? Many of us would jump at that chance, but it wasn’t something Jeb Brooks set about to do initially. By finding an audience and honing his video skills to meet what that audience wants, he’s built a business in creating YouTube travel videos. Brooks shared how it all came about in a recent episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston.” It started when Brooks, a frequent traveler with his consulting business, noticed there was a “tiny genre” of creators on YouTube posting videos about… Read More
Categories: Blog, Podcast, Travel, What's Working with Cam Marston
The advantages of solar power (and the disadvantages for Alabama residential customers)
Posted On August 8, 2022
Solar power can be an effective way to cut your utility costs. So why don’t we see more of it in Alabama? This is a state, after all, with some of the highest utility rates in the Southeast. But according to the Southern Environmental Law Center, there are only about 500 rooftop solar customers – commercial and residential – in Alabama, a fraction of those utilizing solar power in other Southeastern states. Why? In the latest episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston,” I posed that question to Sam Yates, CEO of Eagle Solar and Light, the largest solar power… Read More
Categories: Blog, Podcast, What's Working with Cam Marston
The most common money mistakes normal people make
Posted On July 30, 2022
Arindam Nag will tell you the 2008 financial crisis wasn’t really caused by Wall Street. It was caused by the general public’s lack of financial literacy. That’s a problem Nag has been trying to solve as CEO and co-founder of CentSai.com, a financial education platform that seeks to provide the public with the financial guidance it needs to make informed decisions. In the latest episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston,” Nag explains why 2008 was a lesson that just because you can doesn’t mean you should. He also shares why, with longer life expectancies leaving some people retired for… Read More
Categories: Blog, Financial Services, Podcast, What's Working with Cam Marston
On the road again with the Gen-Savvy Financial Advisor
Posted On July 28, 2022
When I was asked to propose a half-day program for financial advisors I was happy to dust off the contents of the Gen-Savvy Financial Advisor – update the data, refresh the slides, rehearse the content – and deliver the program at the annual LPL Focus event in Denver. The last time I did two half day programs on the topic with in 2019 with LPL in Boston. This time I added an hour of content on recruiting and retaining talent. These small-office advisors struggle with finding and retaining talent just like other businesses do. They need some understanding of the… Read More
Categories: Financial Services, Recruiting, What's Working with Cam Marston
Being nimble: What Navy SEAL training can teach us about building better business minds
Posted On July 22, 2022
The Navy SEALs are an elite fighting force, and it’s not by accident. They are trained to deal with anything, particularly the unexpected. Perhaps that’s why I’ve found that many of them have gone on to succeed in business. Whether it’s that the SEALs draw tough-minded people or it makes them tough-minded, former SEALs tend to be adept and thinking through complex problems in the business world as civilians. So it is with Marty Strong, our guest in a recent “What’s Working with Cam Marston” replay. Strong spent 20 years as a SEAL and then went on to make a… Read More
Categories: Blog, Podcast, What's Working with Cam Marston, Workplace
Small Dream Comes True – Book Signing at Page & Palette
Posted On July 19, 2022
A small dream came true this past Saturday when I had a book signing at Fairhope’s Page & Palette book store for my new book, What Works. Sales were brisk for only brief moments of time but the event itself was what I was after. Behind me on the table are books by authors I’ve always admired (Rick Bragg, Watt Key, Winston Groome, are but a few) and to be sitting next to them with a book of my own was very special for me. Friends and family came by to check on me, buy a book, and visit for a… Read More
Categories: Advertising, What's Working with Cam Marston
What can a former CIA counterintelligence officer teach us about hiring?
Posted On July 18, 2022
When your job is to recruit informants for the CIA, you learn to ask the right questions. Blake Mobley did just that while working as a counterintelligence officer under two presidents. It was an experience that taught him how to look for the structural weaknesses in organizations, how to find what motivates people, and the sorts of questions one needs to ask to really learn what they need to know about a person. Those are valuable tools in the hiring process, too. And in the latest episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston,” Mobley shares how some of the lessons… Read More
Categories: Blog, Podcast, Recruiting, What's Working with Cam Marston
How Dr. David Bronner rebuilt Alabama’s retirement system, and its image
Posted On July 14, 2022
Dr. David Bronner wasn’t the first choice to lead the Retirement Systems of Alabama when the job was last open back in 1973. He wasn’t the second or third choice. He wasn’t even the 100th choice. But he was the right choice. Bronner, who grew up in Minnesota before coming to Alabama for law school, ended up running the state’s retirement system because neither of the two most powerful men in the state at that time – Gov. George Wallace and Paul Hubbert, then head of the Alabama Education Association – knew who he was. And therefore, after about 160… Read More
Categories: Advertising, Blog, Financial Services, Podcast, Real Estate, Succession Planning, What's Working with Cam Marston
Bello Nock walks the tightrope of show business
Posted On July 4, 2022
They call the entertainment industry “show business” for a very good reason. As one great showman I met recently told me: “If you have no show, you have no business. If you have no business, you have no show.” That showman is Bello Nock, a seventh-generation entertainer, circus performer and daredevil who performs around the country. You might have seen him on America’s Got Talent a few years ago, You might remember him from his years with Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. You might have seen him in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest unsupported… Read More
Categories: Blog, Entrepreneurship, What's Working with Cam Marston
Scott Hunsaker Leads Executives on their Business Exit Strategy
Posted On June 24, 2022
Successful succession planning isn’t just a plan. It’s a process. That’s what Scot Hunsaker has been preaching to his clients for nearly a decade as the Managing Partner of Ardent Group, an organization that mentors business leaders. And he hasn’t just preached it, he’s done it. In 1999, Hunsaker bought the firm his father built – Counsilman Hunsaker, an engineering firm that designs aquatics facilities. He grew the company from one office to five, from 10 employees to 50, and took the business global. Among its projects are recreation centers at the University of Alabama and UAB and Olympic facilities… Read More
Categories: Succession Planning, What's Working with Cam Marston