Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice

Getting the click is the easy part. Steve Oriola, CEO of Unbounce, joins Ryan Alford to explain what happens after it, and why so many businesses waste ad budget by sending paid traffic to generic pages instead of focused landing pages.

Steve explains how to think about customer acquisition cost all the way through to the sale, how attribution can tell you which traffic sources bring your best customers, and how Unbounce uses more than 2 billion conversion events to benchmark performance by industry. He also covers how AI is speeding up page creation and testing.

He also shares the lesson every leader is learning in the AI era: when building software gets cheap, focus becomes your biggest advantage.

Topics Covered:

• Post-click strategy and landing pages

• Acquisition cost, lifetime value and attribution

• Conversion benchmarks from 2 billion events

• AI in conversion rate optimization

• Staying focused when software is cheap to build

POWER YOUR BUSINESS WITH HIGHLEVEL

Turn more leads into customers with one platform for CRM, marketing automation, appointment booking, Voice AI and customer follow-up. Start your 30-day free trial using Ryan’s link:

https://www.gohighlevel.com/ryanalford

Links & Resources:

• Unbounce: https://unbounce.com/

• Conversion Benchmark Report: https://unbounce.com/conversion-benchmark-report/

• The State of Paid Media ROI 2026: https://unbounce.com/paid-media-roi-report/

Connect with Ryan Alford:

• Website: https://www.ryanisright.com/

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanalford/

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-alford/

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford

Scott Scovill was a self-described broken kid. He finished near the bottom of his class and flunked out of college, until a chance encounter with U2’s touring crew showed him a life he wanted badly enough to fight for. He joins Ryan Alford to talk about his new book, Tenacious: The Art of Relentlessly Pursuing Your Wildest Dreams, and the promise he made himself that night.

Scott and Ryan unpack the real fear behind not trying, which is proving your doubters right, and why the fear of failure is usually worse than failing. Scott also shares how living like he was “writing a book” led him to astronaut training, Antarctica and touring Europe as Brad Paisley’s opening act.

He also explains why grit and resilience can be learned, and how being grateful for the struggle helped him find his why.

Topics Covered:

Fear of failure and fear of judgment

The moment that changed Scott’s life

Taking the first step and staying tenacious

Living your life like you’re writing a book

Grit, resilience and finding your why

POWER YOUR BUSINESS WITH HIGHLEVEL
Turn more leads into customers with one platform for CRM, marketing automation, appointment booking, Voice AI and customer follow-up. Start your 30-day free trial using Ryan’s link:
https://www.gohighlevel.com/ryanalford

Links & Resources:

Tenacious (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637633874

Scott Scovill: https://scottscovill.com/

Scott on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scottscovill

Connect with Ryan Alford:

Website: https://www.ryanisright.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanalford/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-alford/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford

Cisco put AI agents in the hands of all 90,000 of its employees, and Joe Vaccaro, an SVP at Cisco, is here to share what they learned. He joins Ryan Alford to break down how business leaders can roll out agentic AI quickly while still keeping the trust and guardrails that critical systems need.

Joe explains why agents act like overconfident teenagers, why clear and specific direction beats vague prompts, and how giving AI the right context changes everything. He also covers the real cost of AI tokens, how model routing will bring that cost down, and when a company should train its own model on its own data.

His closing advice is simple: don’t hand AI off to someone else. Use it yourself, because that’s the only way to see where it can really transform your business.

Topics Covered:

Lessons from Cisco’s company-wide AI agent rollout

Why AI is moving faster than any past revolution

Guardrails, trust and safety for AI agents

Prompting with clarity and context

AI costs, model routing and on-device models

Turning your data into a competitive advantage

Why leaders need to be hands-on with AI

POWER YOUR BUSINESS WITH HIGHLEVEL
Turn more leads into customers with one platform for CRM, marketing automation, appointment booking, Voice AI and customer follow-up. Start your 30-day free trial using Ryan’s link:
https://www.gohighlevel.com/ryanalford

Links & Resources:

Cisco: https://www.cisco.com/

Joe Vaccaro (Cisco): https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/executives/joe-vaccaro.html

Joe on X: https://x.com/joevaccaro

Project Glasswing: https://www.anthropic.com/glasswing

Connect with Ryan Alford:

Website: https://www.ryanisright.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanalford/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-alford/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford

Derrick Hayes promised his father he would open a business. Years later, that promise became Big Dave’s Cheesesteaks, a Philly-born, Atlanta-built brand now franchising across the Southeast. The founder and CEO joins Ryan Alford to tell the story of going from selling Italian ice nobody understood to running a cheesesteak spot people fly into Atlanta just to try.

Derrick explains what fishing taught him about patience in business, why the winners keep going without proof, and why hustling without mastering your craft just makes you a “hobby hustler.” He also shares his biggest scaling lesson: be humble enough to build a team that challenges you.

He also talks about the impact of bringing a business into a community, hiring locally, and his Blue Apron program, which gives young employees a real career path.

Topics Covered:

The Big Dave’s Cheesesteaks origin story

Patience, belief and working without proof

Hustling vs. mastering your craft

Scaling and franchising a restaurant brand

Building the right team and advisors

Community impact and creating careers

POWER YOUR BUSINESS WITH HIGHLEVEL
Turn more leads into customers with one platform for CRM, marketing automation, appointment booking, Voice AI and customer follow-up. Start your 30-day free trial using Ryan’s link:
https://www.gohighlevel.com/ryanalford

Links & Resources:

Big Dave’s Cheesesteaks: https://www.bigdavescheesesteaks.com/

Franchise info: https://www.bigdavescheesesteaks.com/franchise

Big Dave’s on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigdavescheesesteaks/

Derrick on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialdhayes/

Connect with Ryan Alford:

Website: https://www.ryanisright.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanalford/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-alford/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford

Arturo Nuñez has told stories for some of the biggest brands on earth, including Nike, Apple, the NBA and Pepsi. He joins Ryan Alford to explain what separates great marketing from expensive noise, and why a customer telling your story beats anything a brand can say.

Arturo shares rare stories about Kobe Bryant's savage competitiveness, Nike's open, inspirational culture versus Apple's need-to-know secrecy, and the "Bleed Blue" campaign people in India still remember 15 years later. He also predicts that AI could make apps obsolete within two years.

It all ties back to his new book, The Culture Compass: Navigate the Corporate World Without Losing Yourself. Arturo makes the case that your culture and your perspective are your edge at work, and that in a world where AI has all the answers, being uniquely human matters more than ever.

Topics Covered:

Authentic storytelling and word-of-mouth marketing

Nike vs. Apple culture from the inside

Lessons from Kobe Bryant's obsession with the craft

Apple's business model and the future of apps in an AI world

Selling what customers actually want

Culture as a business advantage

Bringing your whole self to work without losing credibility

POWER YOUR BUSINESS WITH HIGHLEVEL
Turn more leads into customers with one platform for CRM, marketing automation, appointment booking, Voice AI and customer follow-up. Start your 30-day free trial using Ryan's link:
https://www.gohighlevel.com/ryanalford

Links & Resources:

The Culture Compass (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Compass-Navigate-Corporate-Yourself/dp/1668032171

Arturo Nuñez: https://www.arturo-speaks.com/

Arturo on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arturonunezspeaks/

Arturo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arturo-nunez-79329177

Connect with Ryan Alford:

Website: https://www.ryanisright.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanalford/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-alford/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford