Office Space Update: Who's Returning to the Office? Who's Not? And How is Office Space Changing?
What's Working with Cam Marston
Release Date: 10/31/2022
What an 18-Year-Old Sees That We Don't
What's Working with Cam Marston
Every year a Marston kid graduates from high school, Cam sits them down and puts them on the record. This time it's Ivey Marston — his youngest daughter, twin, varsity volleyball captain, NHS treasurer, and AP scholar — hours before her baccalaureate ceremony and but a few months before she heads to Auburn University to study aerospace engineering. It's a candid, unscripted conversation with a sharp 18-year-old who's paid close attention to the world around her. The lunch table moment. Ivy walks through the junior-year friendship breakup that rearranged her social life — gradual,...
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The Better Way to Sell — with Arthur Gonzales
What's Working with Cam Marston
If you've ever chased a prospect for months only to get ghosted, delivered a perfect proposal and heard nothing back, or found yourself unable to walk away from a deal that was going nowhere — this episode is for you. Arthur Gonzales, Managing Director of Cypress Consulting Group and area franchisee for Sandler Training, joins Cam to talk about why most salespeople struggle and what to do about it. Arthur's journey from near-broke billboard salesman working bar doors at night to sales leader and trainer is both entertaining and instructive — and the lessons he learned along the way apply...
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Kyle Sweetser Returns: Running as a Democrat in Deep Red Alabama
What's Working with Cam Marston
Kyle Sweetser is back on What's Working for a second conversation with Cam Marston. A former lifelong Republican who described himself as betrayed by a party that abandoned its own values, Kyle is now running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Tommy Tuberville. In this wide-ranging conversation, Kyle and Cam dig into healthcare, energy policy, executive overreach, the challenge of winning crossover voters, and what it actually takes to run a statewide campaign in Alabama on a shoestring budget. Kyle is candid about where he breaks with his own party, what keeps him...
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Building a Brand, Not Just a Bar: The Story Behind Mobile's Most Enduring Hospitality Group
What's Working with Cam Marston
Matt LeMond and Luke Peavy have done something most restaurateurs only dream about — they've built six thriving concepts in Mobile, Alabama, and kept them running. From the original O'Daly's to Post Downtown, Post on the Hill, Stamped Sandwich Company, Cedar Street Social, and the Insider/Outsider complex, Matt and Luke (along with partner and former MLB pitcher Jake Peavy) have quietly assembled one of the city's most recognized hospitality brands. In this episode, they pull back the curtain on how the partnership formed, how they divide responsibilities, and why their biggest coaching...
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Fraud Leaves Fingerprints - Retired FBI Agent Dan Sigmond on Financial Crime, the Cases That Stick, and Why Your Business Probably Has a Problem You Don't Know About
What's Working with Cam Marston
Retired FBI Special Agent Dan Sigmond returns to What's Working to discuss his 21 years investigating financial crimes, a remarkable story of how a previous episode of this very podcast helped crack a case, and his new private-sector firm, Special Agent Advisory Group. Dan shares how fraud always comes down to the manipulation of trust, offers vivid case stories ranging from a Jamaican lottery scheme to the "Pepper Spray Bandit" bank robber, and closes with a preview of his next topic: cybercrime as financial crime in a hoodie. Fraud is relational, not transactional. Today's scammers...
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Catalytic Projects: How Porchlight Communities is Transforming Mobile One Investment at a Time
What's Working with Cam Marston
Mobile, Alabama's development scene is quietly building something significant — and it's being done one catalytic project at a time. Cam sits down with John Ruzic, who helps run day-to-day operations at Porchlight Communities, a small and nimble real estate development firm focused on long-term impact over short-term gains. From affordable housing in Oakdale to the historic Ace Theater on MLK Avenue, John walks through the projects Porchlight is shepherding — and the creative financing, unexpected partnerships, and patient vision required to make them work. The conversation also ventures...
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Mobile's Best-Kept Secret Is 143 Years Old — And It's Just Getting Started
What's Working with Cam Marston
Something genuinely exciting is happening in Mobile — one of the city's most treasured cultural institutions, the 143-year-old Excelsior Band, is on the verge of a remarkable renaissance. Led by Hosea London, this legendary walking jazz band — founded in 1883 by Creole firemen who played instruments between calls — is preparing to establish a permanent home at the historic Ace Theater on Davis Avenue, a beautifully symbolic resurrection of both a band and a neighborhood. Developer John Ruzic and his firm Porch Light are restoring the 1943 segregation-era theater into a jazz performance...
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SNASY - The Story of Service Born to Aid Handicapped and Their Handlers. It's Coming to Mardi Gras.
What's Working with Cam Marston
This episode of What's Working introduces SNASY (Special Needs Assistant Station for You), founded by Dale Jackson after years of struggling to take his severely disabled teenage son to public events with no accessible adult changing facilities. Dale connected with Julian and Olivia Stevens — parents of a wheelchair-bound, ventilator-dependent 14-year-old — after spotting them at an Auburn game, and together they've built an organization that provides not just physical facilities but full itinerary coordination and on-site volunteers. A key insight from the families: SNASY reduces stress...
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Former US Congressman Jo Bonner and I Discuss What's Changed in Politics Today
What's Working with Cam Marston
Jo Bonner is president of the University of South Alabama and in that role is building the school in both students and infrastructure. A couple jobs before that he represented Alabama's Distict 1 in Washington, taking over from Sonny Callahan for whom he was chief of staff beginning in 1989. Joe spent a lot of time in Washignton and has insights on what has changed and what has driven the change in Washington. He, like so many of my recent interviews, is disturbed by what he sees. Joe and I discuss what's changed and what may it may take to return to country to decency to one another and...
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Christina Woerner McInnis is Candidate for AL Ag Commissioner. The Job Is Much More than Most Realize.
What's Working with Cam Marston
, and the job turns out to be far bigger — and far stranger — than most of us realize. Once she and I started talking, the scope unfurled like a county fair map: everything from how many gallons come through the gasoline pump to whether the grocery-store salad bar scale is honest, all the way to steering timber policy across the entire state. Historically, candidates have fit a familiar mold: men in cowboy hats, thick accents, and a kind of mythic farm-boss swagger. Christina is a sharp break from that pattern. She’s a woman who grew up on the office side of her family farm — the side...
info_outlineJames Lomax manages boatloads of office space in and around Huntsville. He tells me who is returing to tradiational office environments and why, who is not, and how some companies are changing their office design to lure employees back. I then talk with friends of What's Working Johnny Gwinn and Stacy Wellborn who are part owners of a co-working space in Mobile called The Container Yard about the surge of interest in their space since Covid has let up.
Show Sponsors:
Alabama Center for Real Estate (ACRE) - Presenting Sponsor
Angelo DePaola - The Coastal Connection Realty
Trey Langus - Transworld Business Advisors