Celebrity brand partnerships work best when you start with the retail buyer and choose the face that buyer already loves. Weston Woodward, partner at A to B Brands in Austin, Texas, builds celebrity brands for consumer packaged goods, handles talent negotiations, and runs retail and distribution strategy for products headed to shelves like Target and Home Depot. If you have a great product and no way into the room, your problem is access. You can spend months chasing agents, managers, and lawyers, or you can work with people who reach them in days because the relationships already exist. When everyone is chasing the next tool, trust and proximity still close the deal.

On this episode of the Evolved Entrepreneur Podcast, Marc Anthony, Private Founder Advisor and founder of Evolved Entrepreneur, sits down with Weston to unpack how he went from politics and startups to fractional business development, and why it took him until the last few years to turn his gift for connecting people into a real business. Weston also shares his advisory work with Synergy Sports Capital, the $150 million fund led by former NFL players Reggie Bush and Terrence Murphy that invests in emerging teams and leagues like League One Volleyball, plus Off Market, his community for family office capital allocators. You walk away knowing why in person relationships are the long game, and how to build a network that brings you deals.

Are you the bottleneck in the business you built? Take the free Ceiling Code diagnostic: https://ceilingcode.scoreapp.com/

In this episode, you'll learn:
• How celebrity brand partnerships work in retail, and why A to B Brands asks the Target or Home Depot buyer which celebrity they like before Weston Woodward signs any talent.
• What CPG means, and why consumer packaged goods brands in beverage, beauty, and wellness pair with content creators online and with celebrities when the goal is a retail shelf.
• Why direct relationships with agents, managers, and talent lawyers let A to B Brands reach the right celebrity in days, while most brands spend months making cold calls.
• How Weston Woodward sharpened his read on people over two decades in business, and why he now only chooses partners he can see himself working with for life.
• Where handshake deals still happen, with Weston naming Austin, New York, the UK, and parts of the Midwest as places where a person's word still carries weight in business.
• Why sports, community, and in person experiences are growing, how Synergy Sports Capital invests in emerging leagues, and why Weston is betting on real life businesses for the long term.

We talk about:
00:00 Meet Weston Woodward of A to B Brands
01:10 What are celebrity brand partnerships in retail
03:53 Leaving politics for business built on integrity
06:52 Where handshake deals still happen today
09:11 Synergy Sports Capital and the Off Market community
12:23 How did Weston find his career through line
14:11 What is CPG and what Weston brings
16:39 Your vibe attracts your tribe in business
18:21 Sports and entertainment as predictors of the future
20:56 Is drinking coming back with Gen Z
32:30 AI adoption, hype, and the dot com lesson
34:48 Where to find Weston Woodward

Connect with Weston Woodward:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/westonarmstrongwoodward/

Connect with Marc Anthony:
Ceiling Code: https://ceilingcode.scoreapp.com

Connect with Marc:
Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | YouTube

Visibility is an amplifier. Whatever you are behind closed doors gets louder the moment more people are watching.

Elizabeth Mae Honeycutt has seen it up close. As a visibility strategist and founder of Luminary Agency, and before that the person who built the podcast division at a large PR agency while managing 40 to 50 clients on her own, she watched founders go from unknown to seen. Some used the platform to do real good. Others started cheating on their partners, cutting corners in business, and treating people like they were disposable.

In this conversation, Marc Anthony and Elizabeth get into what integrity looks like once it gets tested, how to read someone's character before you sign anything, and the one question every founder should answer before they build an audience: are you ready to be responsible for the people who believe you?

WHAT YOU'LL HEAR

- Why visibility reveals character instead of creating it
- The two paths Elizabeth watched founders take as their profile grew
- Her rule for going into business with a married man: meet his wife first
- How to tell real kindness and empathy from a performance of it
- Marc Anthony's answer (time) and Elizabeth's pushback (30 days to four months)
- Why discernment is a skill you can build, and the stillness practice she uses to hear the truth
- The under $100 reciprocity test that told her everything about a potential partner
- What Marc Anthony did when a new contact showed up 15 minutes late to a first call
- Why grace only works when accountability comes with it

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Meet Elizabeth Mae Honeycutt
01:04 A dangerous childhood and anger as raw material
04:00 Building a podcast division, 40 to 50 clients, and burnout
05:56 Why going back to a job felt like fun
08:45 Visibility amplifies what is already inside you
09:58 You only find out who you are when you get tested
12:09 Integrity starts with the thoughts you think alone
14:49 Young influencers and the blind leading the blind
17:13 Amplifying people who have been tested
21:22 The path of darkness and the path of light
23:40 Meet his wife before you sign
25:43 Success as a multiplier and the waiter test
28:30 How do you know when kindness is real?
31:54 Discernment as a skill and the 30 day window
34:09 Truth, stillness, and listening to your body
36:42 The reciprocity test
38:38 Protecting your ecosystem
42:35 The responsibility of being believed
45:33 Self grace and getting back on the horse

QUOTES

"My father gave me the gift of anger. My mother gave me something to be angry about. And then I chose what to do with that anger." Elizabeth Mae Honeycutt

"Visibility amplifies what is already inside of you." Elizabeth Mae Honeycutt

"You're ready for visibility whenever you're ready to take responsibility for people believing you." Elizabeth Mae Honeycutt

"With grace you have to have accountability and responsibility." Marc Anthony

CONNECT WITH ELIZABETH

Luminary Agency: https://elizabethmaehoneycutt.lovable.app/
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/elizabethmaehoneycutt
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethmaehoneycutt/

Connect with Marc:
Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | YouTube

Viktor Popovic grew up in what was then Yugoslavia. When civil war broke out in the early nineties he left for Hungary as a refugee, along with the girlfriend he had met in high school who would later become his wife. They arrived with nothing. Their idea of a night out in Budapest was splitting a single McDonald's hamburger and hunting for discount movie tickets because full price was out of reach.

Four and a half years later an opportunity brought them to the United States. Viktor studied aviation at Embry Riddle, graduated straight into the collapse of the airline industry after 9/11, and took the first real opportunity that came his way instead, a friend's idea to sell pressure washers online. That business, Ultimate Washer, survived a brutal Google algorithm update that wiped out their organic traffic overnight, forced a pivot into Amazon, and ran for twenty one years before Viktor sold it in 2024.

He didn't stay retired long. Today he is co founder and president of Avendo, a FinTech company built around a simple but overlooked problem. Merchants have almost no idea what they are actually paying to process a credit card. Avendo evaluates each transaction the instant it happens, reading factors like card type, transaction size, and whether it is domestic or international, then routes that single transaction to whichever processor offers the best available rate for it. All of it happens in milliseconds, on the back end, invisible to the customer.

This conversation covers what it actually costs to leave everything behind twice, why the person next to you can carry you through decisions you cannot make alone, and why almost nobody, including business owners processing millions in transactions, has ever checked their own rate.

What we cover

Leaving Yugoslavia during the civil war and starting over in Hungary as a refugee
Splitting a hamburger in Budapest and building a life from zero with the woman who became his wife
Studying aviation, graduating into 9/11, and saying yes to an idea with no connection to his degree
Surviving a Google algorithm update that erased twenty one years of organic traffic overnight
Selling Ultimate Washer after two decades and starting over in FinTech
How Avendo reads risk factors in real time and routes each transaction to the cheapest available processor
Why most business owners have never once looked at what they actually pay per transaction

Connect with Viktor here

https://www.linkedin.com/in/viktor-popovic-b8a6b416/

Connect with Marc:
Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | YouTube