• Brian Landry is launching a focused, six-week podcast series examining how technology and analytics are changing player development in American soccer.

A short series with a narrow focus

Missouri, USA, Sep 16, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — Brian Landry, a Missouri-based journalist, reporter, and podcast host, is starting a limited-run series inside his regular podcast schedule. Over six weeks, the series will look at one topic only: how technology and analytics are reshaping how young players are trained and evaluated in the United States.

Landry has covered soccer development pathways for years. This series narrows that broad interest into something more specific and time-bound.

“I didn’t want another open-ended conversation about technology in sports,” Landry said. “I wanted six weeks where we actually sit inside the tools and the decisions coaches are making with them.”

Why six weeks, and why now

Landry picked a fixed run instead of an ongoing beat for a practical reason. He wants each episode to build on the last one, rather than standing alone as a general interest segment.

“A single episode on analytics can feel like a demo,” he said. “Six episodes in a row lets you actually follow an idea from a training session to a game decision.”

The series will not try to cover every level of the sport. Landry plans to keep it focused on youth and collegiate development, areas he has reported on before and where he says the use of data is changing fastest.

What the series will cover

Landry outlined four areas the six episodes will move through:

• How coaches use tracking data during practice, not just after games

• What analytics can and cannot tell a coach about a young player’s potential

• How smaller programs without big budgets are adapting the same ideas at lower cost

• What players themselves think about being measured this closely

“That last one matters to me the most,” Landry said. “A lot of coverage of analytics never asks the player how it feels to be on the other end of the data.”

The format stays the same, the scope doesn’t

Landry isn’t changing how he records or produces his podcast for this series. The interviews will run the same length as his regular episodes, with the same mix of coaches, program leaders, and players he usually brings on.

What changes is the discipline around topic selection. For six weeks, guests are chosen specifically because they can speak to the data and technology angle, not because they have a broader story to tell.

“I turned down a few good guests for this run because their story didn’t fit the six weeks,” Landry said. “That was a hard call, but the series only works if it stays narrow.”

Where the idea came from

Landry said the series grew out of repeated conversations he’d had with coaches who kept describing the same tools differently, sometimes in ways that confused what the technology was actually doing.

“I noticed I was getting three different explanations of the same tracking software from three different coaches,” he said. “That told me there was a real story in just explaining what these tools do, plainly, before getting into whether they’re good or bad for the sport.”

He said the series won’t argue for or against the growing use of analytics in youth soccer. Instead, it will try to describe the current state of things clearly enough that listeners can form their own opinion.

“I’m not trying to convince anyone that data is good or bad for development,” Landry said. “I want people to understand what’s actually happening on these fields before they decide what they think about it.”

What happens after six weeks

Landry said he has no plans yet for a second series, and wants to see how the first one lands before committing to more. He said the format could return to cover other narrow topics in the future, such as coaching leadership or the business side of youth clubs, if the six-week structure works.

“If this works the way I hope, it’s a format I’ll use again,” he said. “But I’d rather do one thing well than promise a season two before I’ve finished a season one.”

To read more, visit the website here.

About Brian Landry

Brian Landry is a journalist, reporter, and podcast host based in St. Charles, Missouri. His work covers professional leagues, youth development, collegiate athletics, and the business and culture of soccer in the United States. Through his podcast and reporting, Landry focuses on the people and organizations shaping the sport at every level.

• Arthur Deibler is formalizing a standard for how his Pennsylvania businesses operate: local access and volunteer time come before expansion or outside opportunity.

The policy

Pennsylvania, USA, Sep 16, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — Arthur Deibler, founder and CEO based in Hegins, Pennsylvania, has run several ventures across food, hospitality, and fitness, including Prima Pizzeria and Lucky Horse Tavern in Valley View, and Bullpen Fitness Recreation. He is now naming a standing rule he says has guided those businesses from the start: every one of them has to work for the town it sits in before it works for anything else.

“If a decision helps the business but hurts the town, I don’t make it,” Deibler said. “That’s the whole policy. It sounds simple because it is.”

The commitment covers three areas: pricing and hours that fit local schedules, space for community groups inside his properties, and continued volunteer hours at Hebron United Methodist Church in Millersburg.

Why he’s naming it now

Deibler said he has operated this way for years without writing it down. Naming it now is about consistency as the businesses grow.

“When you’re small, everybody knows how you think,” he said. “Once you add locations or staff, people need something to point to. This is that.”

He pointed to Bullpen Fitness Recreation as the clearest example. The facility was built to be more than a gym, with space meant for teams, families, and casual users, not just members chasing a workout. That design choice, he said, only holds if it stays a policy and not a mood.

What changes in practice

Deibler outlined three commitments tied to the policy:

Local scheduling stays fixed. Hours at Prima Pizzeria and Lucky Horse Tavern will continue to work around school and shift schedules in Valley View, rather than shifting to whatever is most efficient for the business.

Community groups get facility access. Bullpen Fitness Recreation will keep space open to local teams and groups, not just paying individual members.

Volunteer hours continue. Deibler will keep volunteering at Hebron United Methodist Church in Millersburg, treating it as part of how the businesses operate, not separate from them.

None of this is new activity. Deibler said the point of announcing it is to make it a standard his businesses are held to, not a habit that can quietly slip.

How he decides when it’s hard

Deibler said the hardest tests come when a local commitment costs money or convenience.

“There are weeks a promotion would do better if I ran it my way instead of around the town’s schedule,” he said. “I still run it around the town.”

He credits his father as the biggest influence on how he thinks about that kind of tradeoff. Growing up in Hegins and playing football in high school, Deibler said he learned early that a team, or a town, only works if people show up for it even when it costs them something.

“Working hard is still how I define success,” he said. “But it only counts if it’s work that actually helps somebody besides me.”

What he’s watching next

Deibler said he’ll know the policy is working if local families keep using the businesses the way they always have, not if the businesses grow the fastest they can.

“I’m not trying to be the biggest thing in the valley,” he said. “I’m trying to still be useful here in ten years.”

He said he plans to keep the same approach as he considers any future ventures: local access first, expansion second.

To read more, visit the website here.

About Arthur Deibler

Arthur Deibler is a founder and CEO based in Hegins, Pennsylvania. He owns Prima Pizzeria and Lucky Horse Tavern in Valley View, Pennsylvania, and Bullpen Fitness Recreation. A graduate of Lebanon Valley College’s class of 2013, Deibler volunteers at Hebron United Methodist Church in Millersburg, Pennsylvania.

• Drawing on nearly 30 years in global business, former Volkswagen Group CMO and MTM Choice founder Alexei Orlov says today’s marketing leaders need to understand customers, commercial strategy, operations, and growth.

NEW YORK, USA, Sep 16, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — The chief marketing officer may have “marketing” in the title, but Alexei Orlov believes the job requires a much broader understanding of how a business actually works.

After nearly three decades working across global brands, agencies, entrepreneurship, and executive leadership, Orlov has seen the marketing function from several sides. He spent eight years at Wunderman/WPP, eventually becoming Vice Chairman and helping lead a client portfolio worth approximately $300 million. He later served as Group CMO for Volkswagen across China and ASEAN, overseeing eight consumer brand portfolios during five consecutive years of record sales.

His career later took him into broader executive leadership, including serving as a Divisional CEO within Omnicom and founding MTM Choice.

Those experiences shaped Orlov’s view that marketing leaders cannot afford to understand only marketing.

“A CMO needs to understand what creates value for the customer, but also what creates value for the business,” Orlov said. “You cannot separate the brand from the commercial reality supporting it.”

Marketing Does Not Operate on Its Own

Marketing has traditionally been associated with advertising, communications, brand identity, and customer acquisition. Those responsibilities remain important, but Orlov believes the strongest marketing leaders understand what happens before and after a customer sees a campaign.

A promise made through marketing eventually has to be delivered by the business.

That means CMOs benefit from understanding pricing, distribution, customer experience, operations, product decisions, and the organization’s financial goals.

If marketing promises convenience while the customer encounters a complicated buying process, the campaign cannot solve the problem. If a company positions itself around premium service but consistently fails to deliver that service, stronger advertising may only make the gap more visible.

Orlov believes this is why marketing leadership increasingly requires a company-wide perspective.

“Customers do not experience an organization according to its departments,” Orlov said. “They experience the product, the service, the communication, the people, and whether the company ultimately does what it said it would do.”

For the CMO, understanding those connections can lead to better marketing decisions and better conversations with other executives.

Customer Behavior Belongs in the Boardroom

Orlov’s experience leading Volkswagen’s marketing activities across China and ASEAN reinforced the importance of understanding customers within their actual markets.

He was responsible for eight consumer brand portfolios across regions with different cultures, expectations, buying habits, and competitive environments.

The experience demonstrated that customer behavior cannot simply be reduced to a marketing metric.

What people buy, why they buy it, what they value, and what earns their trust can influence product strategy, pricing, investment, growth plans, and the broader direction of a business.

Orlov believes CMOs can bring that customer understanding into senior executive discussions.

“Marketing should be one of the places where the organization becomes more curious about the customer,” Orlov said. “But that knowledge becomes much more useful when it informs decisions beyond the marketing department.”

That requires marketers to look beyond clicks, impressions, reach, and campaign performance. They need to understand what customers are actually doing and how that behavior affects the business’s economics.

CMOs Need Commercial Fluency

Orlov also believes aspiring marketing leaders should become comfortable with the commercial side of business.

A creative idea can be excellent and still need to answer practical questions. What is the company trying to achieve? How does the work support growth? Which customers create the greatest opportunity? What resources will be required? How will success be measured?

The ability to participate in those conversations can change the role marketing plays within an organization.

Rather than operating as a department that receives a budget and produces campaigns, marketing can become part of how the company identifies opportunities and makes growth decisions.

Orlov saw the relationship between creativity and commercial performance differently when he moved further into executive leadership.

As a Divisional CEO within Omnicom, his responsibilities included integrating and transforming multiple businesses, improving commercial performance, and creating a more unified operating model.

Later, as the founder of MTM Choice, commercial questions became even more immediate.

Orlov secured $35 million in growth funding and built MTM Choice into an approximately 200-person multidisciplinary creative and advisory group generating roughly $55 million in annual revenue. Growing the company required decisions about people, investment, international expansion, clients, and organizational structure.

For Orlov, experiences like these reinforced the importance of understanding the entire business, not just one function within it.

Operations Can Strengthen or Undermine the Brand

Operations may seem far removed from marketing, but Orlov sees a close relationship between the two.

A brand is partly built through what a company says. It is also built through what happens after the customer responds.

A brilliant campaign may attract attention, but inventory shortages, poor service, confusing processes, or inconsistent delivery can quickly reshape how customers see the company.

That means marketing leaders should care about operational reality.

They do not need to run every department. They do need enough understanding to recognize when a marketing challenge is actually a product, service, or operational challenge.

Orlov believes that distinction can prevent companies from trying to advertise their way out of problems that marketing did not create.

Sometimes the best thing a CMO can do for a brand is identify where the customer promise and the customer experience have stopped matching.

The CMO Is Becoming a Broader Business Leader

For marketing professionals hoping to reach the C-suite, Orlov recommends developing experience beyond the discipline’s traditional boundaries.

That might mean becoming more comfortable with financial statements, participating in product discussions, spending time with sales and operations teams, learning how investment decisions are made, or better understanding how the company earns and retains customers.

It also means learning to communicate with executives who may approach problems very differently from marketers.

A CFO may begin with economics. An operations leader may begin with capacity and execution. A CEO may be balancing investors, employees, customers, and long-term strategy at the same time.

The CMO needs to participate in all of those conversations while continuing to represent the customer and protect the brand’s strength.

“You should understand your discipline deeply, but you should never allow your discipline to become the boundary of your curiosity,” Orlov said. “The more you understand about how the whole business works, the more useful you can become.”

For Orlov, that principle reflects his own progression from marketing and brand leadership into CEO, founder, and advisory roles.

The title may change, but the underlying lesson remains useful: understanding the customer is powerful. Understanding how the entire organization creates value for that customer is even more so.

About Alexei Orlov

Alexei Orlov is a global CEO, CMO, entrepreneur, and strategic adviser with nearly 30 years of experience building, transforming, and scaling businesses and consumer brands across the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Asia.

His career includes senior leadership roles at Volkswagen, Omnicom, and Wunderman/WPP. He is also the founder and former CEO of MTM Choice, which grew into an approximately 200-person multidisciplinary creative and advisory group with an international presence. Orlov secured $35 million in growth funding and helped build the company to approximately $55 million in annual revenue before transitioning it to new leadership. He remains an adviser to the chairman.

Today, Orlov works with founders, boards, investors, and leadership teams on business transformation, brand strategy, growth, and organizational change.

• Dave Ferrera, a founder at RC Medical, is recommending that other medical device leaders adopt a written mentorship standard before any new company gets built.

A rule he applies before the first product sketch

California, USA, Sep 16, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — Dave Ferrera has helped start several medical device companies over the past three decades, including Blockade Medical, Single Pass, and Infinity Neuro. Before any of those companies wrote a single line of design specification, Ferrera says he sat down with the physician-founder and asked one question: what problem do you see every week that nobody has solved?

That question, he says, should be a written standard for anyone who mentors physician-entrepreneurs, not an occasional practice. Ferrera is now recommending it as a fixed first step for other leaders in the field who work with physicians to build new companies.

What the standard requires

The standard he recommends has three parts.

First, no new company should get funded or staffed until a physician has described the clinical problem in plain language, without reference to any device or technology. Ferrera says this keeps the team from designing a solution before anyone has agreed on what is actually broken.

Second, the physician-founder should sit with the engineering team through early concept review. Ferrera has held engineering and clinical research roles at companies including Microvention and MindFrame, and he says the biggest gap he has seen in medtech is engineers designing in isolation from the people who will use the product in a procedure room.

Third, every new company should name a single point of accountability, one person who owns the decision when the physician’s clinical instinct and the engineer’s technical constraint disagree. Ferrera says without that person, the “no” from either side gets ignored, and the wrong choice gets made by default.

Why he is recommending it now

“I’ve watched good ideas die because nobody wrote down how we were supposed to work together,” Ferrera says. “A standard on paper doesn’t fix everything, but it stops the same argument from repeating at every company we start.”

Ferrera points to his own path through the field as the reason he trusts a written standard over instinct alone. He co-founded Micrus Endovascular and later Blockade Medical, which Balt Extrusion of France acquired in 2016. He was also part of the team at MindFrame, acquired by Covidien/ev3 Neurovascular in 2012. Each company had a different founding team and a different clinical problem, but Ferrera says the companies that moved fastest were the ones where the physician and the engineer sat in the same room from day one.

The benefit he sees for other leaders

Ferrera says leaders who put a standard like this in writing before a term sheet or staffing plan is discussed save time later, when a company is trying to raise money or hire its first engineers.

“I’d rather spend three extra weeks agreeing on the problem than three extra years fixing a product built around the wrong one,” Ferrera says.

He recommends the standard to any leader working with physician-founders, whether the company is already in motion or just starting to take shape.

A personal habit behind the recommendation

Ferrera says the recommendation grew out of his own habit of writing down what worked and what didn’t after each company he helped start. He wrote about the broader idea, that big ideas need a disciplined path from concept to product, in his book Innovation in Translation, published by Advantage-Forbes in 2021. The mentorship standard he recommends is a narrower, more specific version of that same argument: physicians and engineers need a shared structure before they need a shared product.

He says other leaders should revisit the standard with each new company at the six-month mark, to check whether the accountability structure is actually being used or has quietly fallen away.

To read more, visit the website here.

About Dave Ferrera

Dave Ferrera is a founder at RC Medical, a medical device venture studio based in Lake Forest, California, that builds companies with physician-entrepreneurs in the interventional radiology field. He co-founded Blockade Medical, Single Pass, and Infinity Neuro, and formerly served as Chief Technology Officer of Balt Global. He is the author of Innovation in Translation: How Big Ideas Really Happen, published by Advantage-Forbes in 2021. He lives in Lake Forest, California.

• Steve Valdiserri, SVP of Operations at Tally, finished his second Hyrox event on September 5 and is now based in Ashburn, Virginia.

A second Hyrox, and the year isn’t over

Michigan, USA, Sep 16, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — Steve Valdiserri crossed the finish line at his second Hyrox competition on September 5. His first was in May 2025, and the plan from the start was to compete twice a year, not once.

Hyrox pairs running with functional work stations: sled pushes, wall balls, rowing, farmer’s carries. There is no shortcut through it. You either did the training or you feel it by the second station.

“The gap between my first and second race is the part I care about,” Valdiserri said. “Anyone can show up once. Showing up again, trained better, with the same discipline, is the actual test.”

He is expecting additional photos from the event within the coming week and plans to share them as they come in.

The move to Northern Virginia

Valdiserri is now based in Ashburn, Virginia, in Northern Virginia. The move puts him closer to not only the pace of the healthcare and technology work he does day to day, but also to the founding team of Tally who are all located just outside of D.C. 

“Location changes. The work doesn’t,” he said. “I still train early, I still run operations the same way, and I still expect the same things from myself no matter which city I’m waking up in.”

What stays constant

Valdiserri runs company operations at Tally, the AI and automation layer, and its sister company Accurio Health, the human-led revenue cycle services business Tally is built on. He owns client success and delivery, operational readiness, client launches, and growth. The arrangement is simple in principle: the CEO focuses on strategy and market, and Valdiserri runs the engine underneath it, team, systems, and execution against the plan.

That kind of operating discipline is the same muscle he uses in Hyrox training. Both come down to a plan, a daily commitment to it, and enough honesty with yourself to know when you’re cutting corners.

“Training and operations both punish shortcuts eventually,” he said. “You can hide a weak spot for a while. Race day or launch day, it shows up.”

Why the update matters now

A location change and a second Hyrox finish are small facts on their own. Together they mark a stretch where Valdiserri has kept two commitments moving at the same time: building out operations at Tally and Accurio Health, and staying on his training plan without letting one slip because of the other.

“I don’t separate the two anymore,” he said. “How I show up physically is tied to how I show up at work. If one goes soft, the other usually does too.”

He is already thinking about his next Hyrox date, though he has not set one publicly yet. For now, the focus is steady recovery and getting back into a training cycle.

To read more, visit the website here.

About Steve Valdiserri

Steve Valdiserri is SVP of Operations at Tally and its sister company Accurio Health, based in Ashburn, Virginia. He runs client success, delivery, and growth across both companies, following a career that includes nearly a decade at VillageMD and founding Avanti Strategy Group, a healthcare strategy and advisory practice. He is a competitive Hyrox athlete who trains daily and completed his second event on September 5.

Florida, USA, Sep 16, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — Florida real estate professional Robert Flores is launching the 7-Day Real Estate Confidence Challenge, a free public initiative designed to encourage people to become more informed about residential and commercial real estate before making major decisions.

The challenge is built around a simple idea that has guided Flores throughout his career: better information leads to better decisions.

“I’ve always believed that informed clients make better decisions,” Flores said. “Taking the time to educate someone is never wasted.”

Rather than focusing on buying or selling property, the seven-day challenge encourages participants to build everyday habits that improve their understanding of local markets, community growth, and the questions they should ask before making important real estate decisions.

“Real estate is rarely just about the property,” Flores said. “There is usually a bigger goal behind every decision. When people understand their options, they can move forward with confidence.”

The challenge comes at a time when housing education has become increasingly important.

According to the National Association of Realtors, first-time buyers represented just 21% of home purchases in 2025, the lowest share since the organization began tracking the data in 1981.

Florida also continues to experience strong demand, with the state’s homeownership rate reaching 66.2% in 2025, reflecting continued interest in owning property across the state.

National housing affordability challenges have also grown. The median price of an existing U.S. home reached more than $408,000 in 2025, making education and preparation increasingly valuable for future buyers.

At the same time, research continues to show that housing remains one of the largest drivers of long-term household wealth and financial stability for many American families.

Flores believes these trends make learning about real estate more valuable than ever.

“People often come into real estate with questions they don’t know how to ask,” Flores said. “My goal has always been to make the process easier to understand.”

The 7-Day Real Estate Confidence Challenge

Day 1 – Learn Your Local Market
Spend 15 minutes reading about recent activity in your local community.

Day 2 – Know Your Goals
Write down why you might buy, sell, invest, or simply learn more about real estate in the future.

Day 3 – Explore Your Community
Visit a neighborhood, business district, or community you have not explored before.

Day 4 – Ask Better Questions
Create a list of five questions you would want answered before making a real estate decision.

Day 5 – Learn One New Real Estate Term
Choose one unfamiliar real estate or commercial property term and learn what it means.

Day 6 – Think Long Term
Write down three things that make a community attractive beyond property prices, such as schools, local businesses, parks, or future development.

Day 7 – Reflect and Share
Review what you learned during the week and identify one habit you want to continue.

“You build credibility one conversation at a time,” Flores said. “The more people understand, the more confident they become.”

Share Your Progress

Participants who want to share their experience are encouraged to post updates using prompts such as:

• Today I learned…

• One thing I never knew about my local real estate market…

• The best question I asked this week was…

• One habit I’ll continue after the challenge is…

For those who prefer to keep their progress private, Flores suggests keeping a simple notebook or journal to record daily observations, questions, and lessons learned throughout the week.

“There is no right or wrong way to participate,” Flores said. “The goal is simply to become a little more informed every day.”

Join the Challenge

Robert Flores invites individuals, families, aspiring homeowners, investors, business owners, and lifelong learners to begin the 7-Day Real Estate Confidence Challenge by completing Day 1 today. No special tools, experience, or real estate background are required—just curiosity and a willingness to learn.

“Business is ultimately about people,” Flores said. “When you help people understand their options, you give them the confidence to make decisions that fit their goals.”

To read more, visit the website here.

About Robert Flores

Robert Flores is a Florida real estate professional based in Flagler Beach and Palm Coast. He works with Palmcoasting.com and serves as Managing Partner at Vellum Capital Partners, where he specializes in residential and commercial real estate, investment strategy, and long-term relationship building. His work is guided by transparency, education, and helping clients make informed decisions while supporting responsible community growth.