Sweet Takes

Big Leap

Catch a ride with leaders, creators, and curious minds as they share their freshest takes on work, life, and growth. Tired of impersonal, formal business interviews? Sweet Takes is the bi-weekly podcast that brings you honest, behind-the-scenes looks at the complex business landscape, one beverage run at a time. Hosted by Big Leap leaders like Coby Bush and Dan Posner, each episode is filmed during a quick drink run to a local treat vendor. We invite our guests into the car to share their sweet takes. Hop in for a casual, unfiltered, and highly valuable conversation. Let's go get a sweet!

  1. Oct 8

    Healthy Eating Without the Deprivation: Lessons From Founding Blue Unicorn

    Healthy eating shouldn’t feel like a punishment. So why does it so often feel like one? Dan Posner hits the road with Jason and Meradith Christensen, co-founders of Blue Unicorn, to talk about building a protein bar that doesn’t taste like a protein bar. It has 7g of fiber, 3g of sugar, and 100% real chocolate. Jason, who built and sold NorthStar and now teaches entrepreneurship at BYU, and Meradith, a self-described foodie, explain why they believe the choice between healthy and delicious is a false one. Jason and Meradith walk through how the bar came to be. It started with a pantry drawer they called the “protein bar graveyard,” where half-eaten bars went to die. Then Jason brought home samples from Luke Tolley, a chemist and real-life Willy Wonka, and their kids started asking for them every day. They also share how Jason’s health journey at 25 shaped their mission of bringing joy to healthy living, and why deprivation never lasts. Along the way, they get into the fun stuff: how an alpaca with a unicorn horn became their mascot (their daughter raises alpacas, and they show up in local parades), why real chocolate matters more than a “chocolate coating,” and the morning habit of reading customer reviews, including one about how the bar fits into her health journey. They also open up about what it’s like to build a company with your spouse after 20 years of marriage, and why there’s no such thing as a finish line in entrepreneurship. Then Jason and Meradith lay out their litmus test for everything they make: the “unicorn zone.” Would you love it even if you didn’t know it was healthy? 🍫 Grab a protein bar and tune in!  🎧 New episodes of Sweet Takes drop every other Thursday. Follow, review, and share to join the conversation.

  2. Sep 24

    Are You Talking to Customers on Social Media, or Just at Them?

    Your customers are talking. Is anyone on your team listening? Coby hits the road with McCain Kennedy, founder and president of Set Fire Creative and Utah Business Magazine’s 2023 Sales and Marketer of the Year, to unpack why most brands are getting social media backwards. Posting consistently isn’t the hard part. Showing up for the conversation afterward is. McCain walks through what happened when he stepped into an e-commerce brand that was spending $10,000 a day on Meta ads and shrugging off organic social as “just an aesthetic thing.” Six months and one proper tracking set up later, organic was pulling in $10,000 a month on its own. He explains why paid and organic work as a one-two punch, why a dead Instagram page can quietly kill an ad’s conversion, and why the customer service team and the social team shouldn’t be sitting in different rooms. Along the way, the two of them get into the messier stuff: how TikTok has become a search engine for anyone under 25, why Facebook still converts even when clients swear their audience isn’t there, what Coby’s teenagers can sniff out that most adults can’t, and the LinkedIn commenter who accused McCain of using AI because of an em dash in a six-year-old post. Then McCain lays out his sweet take: three rules for any business on social media, and why the entire thing comes down to treating it like a conversation you’d be willing to have out loud, in a crowded theater. And of course, no Sweet Takes episode is complete without a special stop! This week it’s FiiZ for a King of the Jungle, a Shark Attack, and a bag of pretzel bites. 🥤Grab a drink and tune in! 🎧 New episodes of Sweet Takes drop every other Thursday. Follow, rate, and share to join the conversation.

  3. Sep 10

    Quests, Not Grades: Inside the School With No Report Cards | Tanner Bowman

    Traditional education isn’t broken. It’s just punishing the wrong things. On the road to Sinners and Saints Coffee, Coby and Tanner Bowman of Optio talk about tearing down classroom rules, replacing letter grades with experience points, and why the most powerful thing you can give a student is autonomy. Tanner shares what it took to walk away from ten years as a high school computer science teacher, how making attendance completely optional actually made kids want to show up, and why true learning happens when you stop penalizing failure. He opens up about doing his doctorate research on intrinsic motivation, how a student is currently earning math credit by analyzing the physics in Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn, and how Optio is helping homeschool families and micro-schools issue accredited high school diplomas. Plus, Tanner shares his sweet take on why letter grades create a toxic feedback loop for both teachers and students, why we need to build creators instead of consumers, and how thinking like a gardener (rather than a boss) could reshape how we approach education reform. And of course, no Sweet Takes episode is complete without a special stop! This week at Sinners and Saints coffee truck for a cold iced latte and a look at what happens when you treat the learning process as the actual goal. ☕ Grab a drink and tune in! 🎧 New episodes of Sweet Takes drop every other Thursday. Follow, rate, and share to join the conversation.

  4. Aug 13

    The Future is for the Originals

    The best creative work has never been about the tools. On the road to Protein Foundry in Daybreak, Coby sits down with Ash of Weapon to talk about what makes creative endure, why every brand needs a great story, and what it actually means to be original in the age of AI. Ash opens with a story he's never met anyone else who can match. He wanted kids, so he made it happen: embryos, a surrogate, two exits down the freeway, and now twins, three nannies, and a branding agency to run. His big lesson so far? Grace. For parents, for kids, for employees, for everyone still winging it. He also makes the case that relationships have seasons, that you strengthen a bridge instead of burning it, and that a brand, much like a kid, has to be given room to become what it wants. Then they get into the craft. Ash explains why great creative always starts with strategy, how the Allstate Mayhem campaign won by turning a raccoon in your ceiling into a genuine villain, and why a $4 million Park City condo and a local med spa are selling the exact same thing: a story. Coby counters with his own framework. Nobody buys products or services. They buy the story they tell themselves about them. And if you can shape that story, you can add a zero. Plus, Ash shares his sweet take on AI, and why the future belongs to the originals. He watches AI videos add fake film grain and thinks, buddy, that's just a darkroom. The bar is higher now, which is precisely why this is the best possible time to make something real. Also worth noting: while everyone else stares at Silicon Slopes, he's betting on blue collar. And of course, no Sweet Takes episode is complete without a stop at Protein Foundry for a PB Edge that tastes like a 90s lunchbox and a Lush that hides its avocado a little too well. 🥤 Grab a treat and tune in! 🎧 New episodes of Sweet Takes drop every other Thursday. Follow, rate, and share to join the conversation.

About

Catch a ride with leaders, creators, and curious minds as they share their freshest takes on work, life, and growth. Tired of impersonal, formal business interviews? Sweet Takes is the bi-weekly podcast that brings you honest, behind-the-scenes looks at the complex business landscape, one beverage run at a time. Hosted by Big Leap leaders like Coby Bush and Dan Posner, each episode is filmed during a quick drink run to a local treat vendor. We invite our guests into the car to share their sweet takes. Hop in for a casual, unfiltered, and highly valuable conversation. Let's go get a sweet!