Management Blueprint

https://youtu.be/z5cb9rT6N4Q Tish Squillaro, CEO and Founder of CANDOR Management Consulting and author of HeadTrash: Cleaning Out the Junk That Stands Between You and Success, is driven by a belief that solutions exist simply because we can create them. A lifelong problem solver and serial entrepreneur, Tish helps leaders identify the internal obstacles that prevent clear thinking, strong decisions, and consistent execution. We explore Tish's journey from founding the first-ever dog daycare business in 1997 to building a career in human capital consulting and leadership development. Along the way, she uncovered a recurring leadership challenge: people often know exactly what to do—but don't do it. That insight led to HeadTrash and the Mental Headspace Framework, a practical system for understanding and managing the emotions that silently sabotage performance. Tish explains how everyday emotions are not inherently negative, but become destructive when they cross the line and begin to manage us. She walks through the **seven HeadTrash emotions—control, insecurity, arrogance, paranoia, anger, fear, and guilt—**and shows how leaders can recognize when emotions cloud judgment, stall decisions, and create chaos inside organizations. The episode also explores how HeadTrash shows up in entrepreneurs as shiny-object syndrome and non-listening, and how leaders can manage emotional reactions in themselves and others without suppressing or “fixing” them. — Important Links: Tish's LinkedIn Tish's website Tish's email: tish@candor-consulting.com

https://youtu.be/z5cb9rT6N4Q Tish Squillaro, CEO and Founder of CANDOR Management Consulting and author of HeadTrash: Cleaning Out the Junk That Stands Between You and Success, is driven by a belief that solutions exist simply because we can create them. A lifelong problem solver and serial entrepreneur, Tish helps leaders identify the internal obstacles that prevent clear thinking, strong decisions, and consistent execution. We explore Tish's journey from founding the first-ever dog daycare business in 1997 to building a career in human capital consulting and leadership development. Along the way, she uncovered a recurring leadership challenge: people often know exactly what to do—but don't do it. That insight led to HeadTrash and the Mental Headspace Framework, a practical system for understanding and managing the emotions that silently sabotage performance. Tish explains how everyday emotions are not inherently negative, but become destructive when they cross the line and begin to manage us. She walks through the **seven HeadTrash emotions—control, insecurity, arrogance, paranoia, anger, fear, and guilt—**and shows how leaders can recognize when emotions cloud judgment, stall decisions, and create chaos inside organizations. The episode also explores how HeadTrash shows up in entrepreneurs as shiny-object syndrome and non-listening, and how leaders can manage emotional reactions in themselves and others without suppressing or “fixing” them. — Important Links: Tish's LinkedIn Tish's website Tish's email tish@candor-consulting.com

https://youtu.be/5rB45BEXQLU Edward Francis, executive coach, IBM alumnus, and doctorate holder in Management Consulting, is driven by four lifelong commitments—family, faith, the city of Atlanta, and experiential learning. That fourth commitment fuels his mission: helping leaders bridge the gap between theoretical competency and real-world performance through outcome-based, measurable coaching. We explore Edward's distinctive EMF Coaching Framework, which integrates authenticity, mindfulness, equanimity, and neuroplasticity to help leaders develop soft skills for next-level leadership. Edward explains why authenticity protects your future self, how mindfulness deepens connection and listening, why fulfillment (equanimity) must replace “I don't know,” and how managing the brain—rather than letting it run the show—creates space for vision and innovation. Edward also shares how he teaches passion for the future, why it can be acquired through practice, and how he measures intangible soft-skill growth with precision. For leaders seeking transformation, Edward describes what “serious coaching for serious clients” truly looks like. — 4 Ways to Expand Your Vision with Edward Francis Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS Group, and the host of this podcast. And my guest today is Edward Francis, a seasoned coach who provides soft skills for next-level leading with an outcome-based and measured approach. He’s an IBM alumni and holds a doctorate in Management Consulting, so he knows a lot. Edward, welcome to the show.  Thank you, Steve. Glad I could be here.  Yeah. Great to have you. I always ask our guests because I think it’s very important that we have a mission, a purpose in life. Because if we lean into it, then we are going to get a lot better results. So what is your personal ‘Why’, and what are you doing to manifest it? Good question, Steve. I like that. Well, my personal ‘Why’ are my commitments, and I have four of them. Oh. And those commitments are me, they make me who I am. The fourth commitment is why we are here today talking, but I’ll take a minute and touch on the first three because I think they’re worth touching on briefly. The first commitment, and not necessarily in order, is family. I’m a father, uncle, godfather, caretaker for a dog and cat — family. My second commitment of the four is faith. And obviously, I could talk a lot about that, but I won’t. But that is a big commitment that makes me who I am. The third commitment is actually to the city of Atlanta, because that’s where I am and where I have served throughout the years several boards of directors — the large ones that we all know about, some for profit, some not for profit, and some of the smaller ones that we haven’t heard about. I'm at that stage now where I end up doing on boards and doing things that nobody else wants to do, but I think it's very important.Share on X And so typically I’m raising money for this or helping to promote that, or the kinds of things that are very important. But they’re not the big boards, but I’ve served on all of them throughout the years. Done a lot with the arts community, the leadership community, the city government, some politics, but primarily community activism. But the fourth commitment, which makes me who I am and why I’m here, is to experiential learning. And that is that gap between competency and how it plays out in the real world—the bridge. Not just understanding the competency of business or the competency of consulting, but how does it really play out in the real world? I have a passion for that. And that bridge can be coaching, leadership development, mentoring, and so it is experiential learning.Share on X When I was with IBM, people would inherently come to me, especially young people. I think it’s this white hair, Steve, I don’t know. They’d come to me and we’d be talking about this and that. And I began to enjoy those sessions, but found that they really were important for the person coming as well as me, because I learned a lot as well. And then when I went on to study my doctorate and my MBA, I studied experiential learning, where I began to do research on soft skills. So what are soft skills? Earning trust. Can you teach someone how to earn trust? I prove that you can. Passion for the future. Can you teach passion for the future? Can that learn? Is that an acquired skill? Is that an acquired competency? Yes, it is. So experiential learning, I have a passion that comes into my coaching, which is why I coach at a business school, at a major university. And I have clients, private clients as well. Those are my ‘Whys’. And because that’s who I am. I am those commitments.  Yeah, that’s fascinating. So let’s talk about some of the things that you do, because I find it very interesting. But I’d like to start with the framework that you developed, which is a unique coaching framework. I’ve not seen anything like that before, and I think you call it the EMF coaching framework after your name. And it involves authenticity, mindfulness, equanimity, and neuroplasticity. Can you explain what this is, how you discovered it, why it’s important, and how do you apply it? Well, my research brought it to the forefront, but my clients have really discovered it for me. When I work with a client, I take them where they are. Typically, it’s someone with a set of outcomes that they’d like to achieve, or outcomes that they want to develop. Sometimes we don’t know outcomes change, and I also have the ability to measure their outcomes, which is fairly unique. I mean, I give them measurements. People say they want measurements, but I can do them and do them well. But the framework is a way of communicating blocks that we build on, and blocks for active listening on my part.  So what is the authenticity? How do you use authenticity in coaching?  To make sure that you are aware of it, to help you measure your authenticity, to make you value your authenticity, to get you to focus on it as an important element of what you want to do and who you are, so that at the end of your career, or when you’re changing careers because you have one behind you, you can look back on it and feel good about it. And you’re not some sad old guy or sad old lady who wishing you had paid attention to your authenticity. Because what happens when you have that sadness, you end up impacting the people that love you the most. Your wife, your children, grandchildren. So you want to protect this period of time by making sure you pay attention to authenticity. And so we spend a good bit of time working on it, identifying, but more than anything else, letting you know how important it is. And of course, authenticity, I mean, we grow, we bend, we assimilate the cultures, but there’s still an authenticity that you want to measure, promote, and understand. I attempt to drive home that meaning, but more than anything else, I listen to what's important to you about authenticity, it's about listening.Share on X I have more questions than I have answers, but I do have some good questions. And where does authenticity fit, and how do you rate your authenticity, and what does authenticity matter to you are important questions.  Okay. So there’s a lot there. We won’t be able to completely unpack authenticity. Maybe that’s what you do with your client so we don’t have to do it on this call. But let’s switch to the next one, which is mindfulness. So is it about meditation? What does it mean?  Well, mindfulness is all over the place, right? We hear it all the time. It’s almost cache. I mean, it’s all over the place. But in coaching and in my building blocks, we want to examine the benefit to you as my client in achieving your outcomes. The benefit of just understanding and listening rather than making an impression.Share on X You want to listen rather than try to impress. Your listening skills, finding out where someone is before you engage with them. The idea of being mindful of the moment of where are they.  So being present with the person?  Not only present, but giving a lead to listening. What does that mean?  It’s hard to hear them if you are talking. And this type of mindfulness, you want to make sure that you are being more listening than you are trying to impress or engage from your perspective. That type of mindfulness in that moment and in each moment. So we spend a good bit of time understanding that level of engagement, and if that engagement is even authentic to you, but the benefits of that. Can you give an example?  Sure. You go to someone and you want them to help you with something, not necessarily small talk, but find out where they are at that moment, where they are mentally, where they are socially, how’s their day? It’s more than small talk before you engage because you’ll find that them even hearing you, if you show that you care about where they are, their level of listening can be increased. So an example is finding out where the person is before you engage with them.  Okay. So let’s switch gears and let’s talk about equanimity, because that’s something I don’t hear people talk about. Mindfulness is a common topic—maybe not your brand of it—but what's equanimity, and how do you use it in coaching? Sure. Equanimity means a lot of things, but when we talk about coaching in the framework, we’re really talking about fulfillment. Equanimity can mean how you handle stress or how you handle disturbances.Share on X But equanimity in coaching can mean fulfillment, your pursuit of a fulfillment what is it that you really, really, really want? And are you clear on distinguishing that from that tools to get there? The classic one is money, Steve. We all know people with lots of money, and there’s a question even in their mind, if they are really fulfilled. So, an equanimity is understanding fulfillment and that pursuit of fulfillment, and it can change.Share on X When you get to our age, “I don't know” is not a good answer. What fulfills you? You say, “I don't know.” I'd say, Steve, you're too old to be saying “I don't know.” You need an answer. You can change it as often as you want, but the problem with “I don't know” is that it breeds “I don't know.” And if you’re saying “I don't know” at age 30, my fear is you'll be saying “I don't know” at age 45. So being able to pick a horse and ride it, have the flexibility to change whenever you want is critical. Plus, just think about it: let's say you want help. I remember plenty of times people would come to me wanting help, and if they had a target, it was much easier for me to help them if they had a target. They say, I want this, it’s going to be available. Then this is the decision-maker. Can you help me with this venture capital team to see if I can get it swayed my way? They got a target. But if you come to me and say, Edward, help me figure out what I want to be when I grow up, that’s a whole other discussion. It’s very difficult to help you. So when you have a target, when you have an answer, other than, I don’t know, we have a direction to move in. So “I don’t know” is not good for most people. Yeah. And you can honestly not know, but you going to pick something. Because when you pick something, even if you’re going the wrong way, you may see what’s the right way. But you never would see that right way if you hadn’t taken that first step, even in the wrong direction. Give the information and then you can iterate from there. Yeah, I agree. And I love it. So let’s go onto neuroplasticity, which was also a very interesting concept that you talked about.  Sure. How do you use neuroplasticity in coaching?  Sure. Well, neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to create additional neurons, but in coaching it's also the suggestion and the consideration that you move outside of your brain — that you don't let your brain run you, you run the brain. That brain will get you in trouble if you are just running around following it. First of all, the brain’s number one job is to protect the body. That’s the number one job for the brain. So therefore, it often has a negative bias. The brain will think that things are worse than they are. That’s part of the way it protects you. You think a lion is going to jump out of the bushes and devour you when it's just a little puppy dog who's coming up to you. So if you keep going, most of the time you’ll see it’s not quite as bad as you thought it was — most of the time. So following the brain, you have to step outside of your brain and manage your brain. The front part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, is in charge of visioning and innovation. But the funny thing about the prefrontal cortex is that it wants to be filled. It doesn’t want empty space. So wherever you are, it’s going to fill itself with something. And you going to say to your brain, no, we are not doing that. I’m not going to let you get filled up. I’m going to keep room so that I can vision. Visioning and innovation takes time and it takes room, and the brain wants to stock in as much as it can to stay filledShare on X but you going to tell that brain, no, I’m going to sit here. I’m going to eat this ice cream and think about it. And so then that leads into what’s really a coaching dynamic is the art of delegation. In order to clear out that prefrontal cortex, you going to use resources, delegation, so that when that brain is filling up, you have a way of, as we used to say at IBM, getting those monkeys off your back. You create some free space. There was a time when professors, way back in the day, had their sabbaticals. Well, that was well-meaning. That was well-meaning — having that time for visioning. Well, as we have blueprints for business, as we have goals, as we look for moving forward, it requires vision, but vision takes time.Share on X It’s just not going to drop in your lap. Your brain won’t let you do it. Now, we both know people who carry the world on their shoulders, and yet they still get a lot of things done. And it can happen, but it’s just not the best way to do it.  Yeah. And maybe they are giving themselves time. They go on a fishing trip, or a golf trip, or travel. And the best ideas come when you’re not in the office, right?  But I’m talking about more granular than that. Not just vacations or climbing a mountain, I’m talking about just sitting still and breathing. I’m talking about family time, a meal, book, listening to some good music, a walk in the woods, things that help your mind empty out those monkeys, so that you can have space to take the time for the visioning and innovation that’s critical for moving forward. A lot of times you get to where you are by keeping that mind full. You’re always having fires to put out, and that’s fine. We’re experts at putting out fires. But at some point, to take that business to that next level — that soft skill for next-level leadership — you're going to have to manage your brain to create space so that you have time for vision and innovation.Share on X  Yeah. I love that. And I often notice that I’m driving my car and I think, okay, I’m going to switch on the audio book or podcast. I say, no, I won’t do that. I just want to sit here and just daydream over the wheel and just let my mind go different places.  And actually I love that time, and I like the long drives, and I don't take in information. And I guess that’s what’s happening. I didn’t call it that, but I am emptying out my brain and giving it space.  Well, you have to manage that brain because it will get you in trouble if you just let it run the show. I mean, really, it’ll take you to some odd places. You have to say to your brain, “No. That's not what we are doing. That's not the plan.”  Okay. That’s awesome. So your coaching framework is authenticity — being aware and living an authentic life so that you can look back on it with satisfaction. Mindfulness — being present, listening, giving space for other people. Equanimity, which is fulfillment and having that feeling of fulfillment, of living with purpose. That's why I ask you about the purpose as well, so I totally relate to this. And neuroplasticity, I love that concept. I think few people talk about it, especially this way. It’s very powerful. So before we wrap up, I like to ask you about what you mentioned at the top of the conversation about teaching people passion for the future, I’m fascinated by this idea. I thought passion was more of an internally developed thing. Maybe there’s also talent for passion. Maybe it’s part of nurture, but how can you actually teach it, I’m very curious about that.  Sure. Passion for the future. That’s when you want to be passionate about capabilities and opportunities for impacting your clients, impacting the world, and you deeply believe in the quality and breadth of personal, exceptional capability. And the key with passion for the future, when you really are doing it well, then you are energizing others about unique opportunities, and you are conveying passion for the future with them. I have an exercise—several exercises—that we go through and talk about.  So, Edward, just a quick question. So does that mean that you are passionate about the potential of your own and the other people around you? So your passion is derived not from what the politics is doing, or geopolitics, and I don’t know, AI, and that stuff, but is it about the humanistic potential that you see is there and can be manifested?  Actually, Steve, it is outcomes-driven. So it is outcomes-driven, but what I see—and when it works well, you see it—it spreads. It's not that you start out saying, I want to have passion for this client, I want to have passion for this business, or passion for this opportunity. But once you grasp it—the wins or the losses, the yeses, the no's, or the maybes—you take them all. And you are still passionate about winning. You create sense of pride, you’re seeking opportunities, you confront behavior that’s contrary to the values and to reputation. So we teach this and it can be fun, but I’ve also seen tears come from it as well. It can be a tearful experience, but it’s part of what we do, and we do it well. And it’s not cookie-cutter. I take my client where they are. So this is not just some rope that I’m going to take you through. We really have to see this as an outcome that's going to benefit you and an outcome that's desired, and an outcome that you're willing to invest in.Share on X Because look, a lot of people make it, and they are not passionate about the future. So it’s a lot of work.  So you can turn a sheep into a wolf?  Yes. If there is a real support in doing it. If there is personal support in doing it, or corporate support in doing it, or if it’s passionate support in doing it, yes, we can do it. There is a price, but it can be done. A personal price. A mental price, yes.  But doesn’t the mentee or the  coachee have to be willing to pay that price, or can they get the passion without paying any price? Personally, the company will pay, but can they do it?  Sure. Well, first of all, the person needs to be coachable. And it needs to be an objective, or it needs to be an outcome that you see now, or an outcome that you developed over your period of time in working with me. So we can start out that way or it can come, but yes, you have to see that it’s worth it because it does take work. But once you get it, I see it spread, and you in fact are passionate about the future, and you weren’t there in the first place. You might’ve been pessimistic, actually.  That is amazing. I mean, if you can do that, then you can really empower other people that maybe would must be able to empower themselves or be empowered by the usual patterns and approaches.  And we measure it. I have a measurement. I can measure your progress or lack thereof. And let’s be clear, every story is not a success story. But I can measure your progress or lack thereof, and we can agree on a matrix and see how you’re tracking towards that matrix for passion for the future.  So how do I measure my passion, or how do you measure my passion?  I’ll get you to give me an analysis, and I have some questions. And I’ll get you to give me an analysis of those questions, and then I’ll ask you those same questions another way. And then we’ll do training, and then we’ll come back to that and then we’ll do an analysis of where you were and where you are now that we are at the next phase. So that’s one way we can do, we can measure it to see your progress or lack of progress. Now, I also have a role play that we can do. So there's several things we can do. There's role play, there's reading, but primarily it's me listening.Share on X It’s active listening on my part. I don’t have the answers, but I have the questions. Well, the questions are more important than the answers. Because a lot of answers can pertain to one question. That is very fascinating. So if people would like to be coached by you — and I saw on your LinkedIn page that you offer serious coaching for serious clients, so it’s not like dabblers please don’t bother applying kind of thing. So what does it look like?  Serious coaching looks like a commitment of time and resources from someone who's coachable. It starts when you contact me to schedule a chemistry session. That’s typically can be as short as 15 minutes, most of them are an hour. So it starts with a chemistry session. Then once we get out of the chemistry session, it starts when you pay me, that’s when it starts.  Okay. So if those listeners that are taking in this episode, they’d like to explore whether they have the right chemistry for you to coach them, or whether they are considered serious enough for coaching, where should they go and how can they find you? There are two places you can find me. Of course, you can find me on LinkedIn: Edward Francis. I think it’s Edward Francis, DBA (Doctor of Business Administration). So Edward Francis. Or you can go to my webpage, www.edwardmackfrancis.com.  Awesome. So if you’re listening to this and you want a serious coach with serious coaching, and specifically want to be a more authentic person can be more present for others and feel more fulfilled, and have a bigger brain capacity through neuroplasticity, leveraging neuroplasticity, or you want to be more passionate about the future, then do reach out to Edward Francis. You will not be disappointed. And if you have a company and you want to grow it, then reach out to me at the Summit OS Group. So, Edward, thank you for coming, and for those of you out there, thank you for listening. And stay tuned because we have exciting entrepreneurs and thought leaders joining every week. Important Links: Edward's LinkedIn Edward's website

https://youtu.be/5rB45BEXQLU Edward Francis, executive coach, IBM alumnus, and doctorate holder in Management Consulting, is driven by four lifelong commitments—family, faith, the city of Atlanta, and experiential learning. That fourth commitment fuels his mission: helping leaders bridge the gap between theoretical competency and real-world performance through outcome-based, measurable coaching. We explore Edward's distinctive EMF Coaching Framework, which integrates authenticity, mindfulness, equanimity, and neuroplasticity to help leaders develop soft skills for next-level leadership. Edward explains why authenticity protects your future self, how mindfulness deepens connection and listening, why fulfillment (equanimity) must replace “I don't know,” and how managing the brain—rather than letting it run the show—creates space for vision and innovation. Edward also shares how he teaches passion for the future, why it can be acquired through practice, and how he measures intangible soft-skill growth with precision. For leaders seeking transformation, Edward describes what “serious coaching for serious clients” truly looks like. — Important Links: Edward's LinkedIn Edward's website

https://youtu.be/ivElg53993A Ian Leaman, Summit OS® Guide, former investment banker, senior finance executive, and investor, is driven by a mission to help entrepreneurs build, scale, and successfully exit their businesses by applying the hard-won lessons he's learned from more than 100 exit journeys. We learn about Ian's path from growing up around small family businesses in the UK, to training with Deloitte, advising entrepreneurs through hundreds of M&A processes, co-founding a SPAC, and ultimately relocating to the United States to embrace a more optimistic and opportunity-driven business culture. Ian explains his Can-Do Framework, a mindset blueprint inspired by the contrast between European “can't-do” thinking and America's bold, frontier-style optimism. He also breaks down how Summit OS® empowers owners to achieve “private equity–level growth without giving up private equity,” and why the 45-Day Execution Momentum plan creates faster change than a typical 100-day private equity program. Ian closes with a gripping case study illustrating how leadership blind spots and misaligned incentives can devastate exit outcomes. — How to Break Ceilings in America with Ian Leaman Good day, listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS® Group and host of the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today here is Ian Leaman, who is a Summit OS® Guide, a former investment banker with over 100 exits under his belt. He’s also a senior finance executive and an investor. So Ian, welcome to the show. Hi, Steve. It’s great to see you, and thank you for having me on.  Absolutely. And we go way back, and one of your international board positions I think I’m sharing with you, but I’m not going to go into that because it’s long in the past. What I like to explore is what you’re doing now, why you’re doing it, and some things about why you moved to the States. I mean, both of us moved to the States since we were on this particular board for different reasons. And I’d like to explore your framework, which is very intriguing. So let’s start with your ‘Why’. So what is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in your business life?  What I’m doing right now, Steve actually squares the circle. It brings us back together as working colleagues. You mentioned that we worked previously on an international board. Today we’re working together as Summit OS Guides. How did I get here, and how does this relate to my ‘Why’? Well, my business journey started really in my youth, where my parents had small businesses. And so the conversations over the evening dinner table were all about the trials and tribulations, the successes, failures, challenges, et cetera, of running a small business. So that got into my blood very early. That translated through a career in finance, where I qualified originally as an accountant with Deloitte in the UK, and then progressed into the transaction side of finance, helping entrepreneurs grow and exit their businesses. As you said, having come through more than a hundred successful exits, but many  more which didn’t cross that finish line.  I really became interested in the differences between those who succeeded and those who didn't, what they were doing in their businesses, which made them attractive prospects from an M&A point of view and made their processes successful ones.Share on X And eventually, I came to reunite with you when you’d started your Summit OS® Initiative and understand that we can bring our respective experience, whether it’s as a CEO of a previously exited business or as an advisor to many which have done that, we can bring that experience to there. And how that translates into my personal ‘Why’ is I get huge satisfaction out of being involved in and assisting the process of entrepreneurs building and exiting their business. And I find huge satisfaction in a successful outcome there. So my personal ‘Why’ is to work with entrepreneurs who are building their businesses to help them do so better, faster, more successfully, and, if relevant — which isn’t in all cases — take them across that exit finish line to a conclusion of that particular part of their business journey. Yeah. I totally relate to this, and I often felt guilty even when we sold the company, and I felt like we could have gotten more for it if the company was improved, and there were some low-hanging fruits that we could have helped fix in a short order. And then we can do it now, and that’s very fulfilling. That’s right. I mean, there are many war stories, if you like, from that phase of my working life that illustrate very well the point you just made. For example, on the positive side, I can recall a conversation with an entrepreneur. I met him for the first time at his place of work. It was a distributor of electronic components, so they bought in bulk, stocked, broke into small pieces, and sold and distributed at a good margin, electronic components. They had a big warehouse. He and I had an initial discussion and he was quite an impressive guy. I remember in his very austere functional office, and he said, would you like to look around? I said, yeah, of course. I’d love to. So we walked together from the upper level where his office was down a stairway into the warehouse. And just as we got to the foot of the stairway, we encountered one of the warehousemen. His name was Jim, and he said, the owner said, Hey, good morning Jim. How’s it going today? And Jim said, 81%. Why did Jim say 81%? I asked myself, I left it at that moment, but they were both very satisfied with Jim’s answer. When we returned from the visit to the office, I said, so what’s 81%? He said, well, that’s Jim’s metric. Jim has to measure a certain number of things he’s doing and relate them to that day, and he was well within his range of target, and that’s how this guy ran his business. All that translated into a very successful exit at a multiple one or two points above the regular for a distributor in that sector. Because he was growing fast, he was doing it really well, and he built a business which was somewhat independent of him. That’s great. And just a quick reference to the LinkedIn post that you put up yesterday, where you mentioned that a lot of people who are trading time for money and working 55 or more hours is basically a leading indicator that they’re not going to build a self-managing business, they’re not going to scale, they’re going to burn out. So it’s great if someone has good KPIs to make sure that they know where they are and where they’re moving towards where they want to be. Okay, so let’s switch gears here. And you have a really intriguing story of how you made it to America and particularly to LA. So what was your calculus, and how did you end up there? I’d been working successfully as an M&A advisor — as you had, Steve — working with entrepreneurs on that journey. And a lot of that was about the growth of their companies, about building them somewhat before they actually made the exit, often through acquisition or financing. And one day I got a phone call from a friend who was a headhunter who joked with me when he got on the call: “Ian, don’t put the call down. I’m going to talk to you about a new role, which is not doing what you’re doing.” I guess his call landed at a particular moment when I was restless for a change, and he described a role as the third co-founder of a startup to be newly listed on the London Stock Exchange as blank check company, often known as a SPAC in the US. Long story short, I was a good fit for the team of two entrepreneurs who had built previous businesses, financed, acquired, IPO'd, and then sold. We got together and set out on a path of acquiring businesses in the US, even though the listing was in the UK, in the oil and gas services sector. That experience was amazing. It put me on the front line as a principal, doing many of the things I'd seen done secondhand and getting my hands into the weeds of operations much more than I had previously. And these were great learning experiencesShare on X but what became most valuable over time was the experience I got working in the US and finally appreciating the fundamental contrast in business ethos between a European starting point — can’t do — and a US starting point — can do. And that framework, that basic business framework of can-do US against can’t-do Europe, really set me on the path that I then pursued. When that job came to an end and my wife and I were deciding what next, we decided to vote with our feet, relocate to the US — now 12 years ago — with three teenagers and a dog in tow, and rebuild our careers over here. That’s awesome. And that’s very similar to what we did in many ways. So tell me about this Can-Do framework. So how do you break it down? How do you make it more tangible? What differentiates an American entrepreneur or American businessperson — or just a general person — and European or UK in terms of their outlook on business or life? Okay, so it’s all about positivity. And that manifests itself with just really at the start of any conversation about anything within business, whether it’s a small change to an existing business or perhaps something at the opposite end of the scale, a big new opportunity that hasn’t previously presented itself. It’s all about the positivity. Americans will enthusiastically embrace change, generally — in my experience — without the cynicism overtaking them. Americans have just as much valid experience of what can go wrong as you build and change businesses as Europeans, but instead they choose to parlay that experience and those learnings into positive aspects of change rather than cynical aspects of resistance to change. So, for example, in America, if as a businessperson you hit some failures and those failures result in a failed business or a personal bankruptcy, those things are not regarded as necessarily negatives, which can impede your progress in the future. Quite the opposite — they can be seen as great learning experiences, which leave their battle scars in a positive way. Yeah, that is indeed amazing. I mean, you can even become president in America after failing several businesses, right? The sky’s the limit.  The sky’s the limit. That’s the point.  Yeah.  And there’s no one else’s negativity, which is going to constrain the optimistic American entrepreneur from striving to achieve their goals. All right. Okay, so there’s the positivity. I get it. So interpreting changes as looking at the positive aspect of it rather than the negative aspect. It’s more of a bold, fearless attitude rather than a conservative, resistant attitude. What else would you say characterizes this ethos? I’d say another facet of it would be the confidence to challenge the status quo. So much of European culture and business is based on history, and that history is a kind of anchor to the past, whereas America still has this frontier feeling — a sense that it’s a new country, a new world. And the status quo, such as it is, isn't an anchor to the past. It’s actually something to be critically praised and challenged with confidence if relevant. I think that very much resonates with me personally. I recall when I was choosing my firm to join and to become an accountancy trainee, leading through a qualification to becoming a chartered accountant, and at the quality end of the range were the Big Eight in those days. I interviewed with three of the Big Eight, and interestingly, it was number eight of eight, which was the newcomer on the block, the one that resonated most with me. They were confident, they were challenging, and ambitious, and somewhat fearless in the face of challenging the establishments in the UK.Share on XAnd those things really resonated with me. I joined Touche Ross. Touche Ross became Deloitte. Deloitte became the number one in the world.  Yeah, that’s right.  Touche Ross was the number seven or eight, I remember, when I applied, because I went through actual same training as you did. And when I applied it was the Big Eight, and by the time I got accepted it was the Big Six — they merged — and now it’s the Big Four. So anyhow, that’s less interesting for listeners, but you’re talking about describing this underdog mentality or underdog attitude. I resonated with that as well, because when we started the investment banking business in Hungary, actually our number one competitor was Deloitte in Hungary. They were the big 500-pound gorilla, and we were the underdog. I hired some of the people who had been passed over by Deloitte, and they had a stone in their shoe about it. And we made it a kind of quest that we were going to show these snooty, self-important people that we were actually better because we’re scrappier, more innovative, and so on. That was a big driver for us — this underdog attitude. So would you say that this is something that also resonates with Americans?  I think very much so. I think that there isn’t that respect for the status quo, and the 500-pound gorilla on the block is not necessarily there to be feared, revered, or left alone. Quite the opposite. In American business, they're the incumbent to be challenged. Challenger businesses grow to huge success in America. And actually, that links really nicely with the topic we're here to discuss — Summit OS® — and how it provides a framework for entrepreneurs to build their businesses using many of the tools and techniques which the big successful businesses have adopted. And using that to their advantage, to creep up on them from behind and sometimes take market leadership.  Yeah, that's a big objective, obviously, and we would be happy to talk about this, but then we would overrun our time for sure. But what is a specific concept that you enjoy about or which you are intrigued about with Summit OS® that resonates with you? One of the things that really resonated with me, Steve, having a background in investment banking as you have, is the notion that private equity doesn’t have a monopoly on expecting and delivering high growth from businesses. That principle, that objective, that achievement can be something which the entrepreneur, owner, manager can adopt just as validly. So one of the potentials of Summit OS® is private equity without private equity. You can set yourself the objective of, let's say, 3x value in three years.Share on X You can set yourself the objective of creating a self-managing business that has a valuation way in excess of its peers because of the way you run it, because of the rate of growth you achieve, because of the differentiators it has from its competitors. And in so doing, you create something of high value, high desire, and a high level of marketability if you’re in the market to exit. That’s a really powerful and resonant aspect of  Summit OS® for me.  Yeah, I’ve often seen business owners who sold a large minority or a small majority stake to private equity. And then someone came in with an MBA but with a lot less experience, and they would start telling the business owner what they knew that they had to work on to begin with. Maybe they were not disciplined enough or not focused enough, but a coach — a good coach, a guide like you and I — could have helped them to do that without giving away a big piece of their business. Now granted, putting capital to use can be a very effective way of achieving high levels of growth. And the scale of capital that’s available from private equity may not be available to an independent owner-managed business. But having said that, I was with an entrepreneur last week, one of a group of partners who’d sold his business initially to PE, that PE had been refinanced to an even larger one. And he described his experience with those PEs as being managed by spreadsheet. It sounds like a bit of a cliché, Steve, but it's real — that’s his actual experience. And another negative experience, from a negative point of view, that a lot of entrepreneurs have shared with me is this notion of inappropriate interference. The young MBAs just don’t get where appropriate boundaries are between them as investors and the leadership team in the businesses, and so the areas they interfere in are often not value-adding. I’ve experienced that myself, actually. I was engaged once by a private equity firm to be a consultant on a transition period. The business in question had been an orphaned subsidiary within a very large multinational corporation. When people talk about orphan subsidiaries, what they essentially mean is this businesses that don’t particularly fit within where the big corporation had moved to, and are kind of left adrift — but within. So they’d sold this business to a private equity, and the private equity engaged me to help with a transition. A transition of the business from this orphan state into an independent business. And the private equity really was clueless. The people there were absolutely clueless as to how best to manage the transition of the team, particularly the team and the way they interrelated to their ownership from how it used to be to how it was now. It’s a very good example of poor management, and I suspect it wasn’t one of one. It was one of a big pattern. Yeah. I mean, experience is really hard to replicate in the classroom. And some of these MBAs, they come out from great business schools, and they do excellent case studies, but they just don’t have the reps to develop the pattern recognition that some of these business owners who have been in the trenches for 20 or 30 years have, right?  Yeah, you can’t put a high enough value on less experience. Yeah. And if you then harness that experience into a framework which enables people with that experience to share it really effectively with clients, that's a really powerful combination.Share on X  Yeah, I love it. Yeah. By the way, we all know that private equity groups, they often have their 100-day plan. They come into a company and then they want to make a string of changes, like a new prime minister or president would do as well. So is there an equivalent process in Summit OS® to do that? Can you speak to that?  There is, actually. And there’s a big premium today on speed of change. And the private equity guys think that a hundred days is rapid. Well, it’s not. Summit OS® has got a 45-day Execution Momentum plan, which takes the business through some very actionable processes, which result in very rapid and noticeable change. So that the 45-day Execution Momentum takes the business leaders through 2 one full-day meetings in which very heavy agenda is filled with things that really interesting and opposite ends of the scale. What do I mean by that? At the very macro, high end, there will be an examination — possibly for the very first time — of why the business exists, what it’s on the earth for, how is, how’s it going to create a dent in the universe over a 30-year period? What really big changes can an ambitious management team make in the business? And this at the opposite end of the scale, a whole bunch of very day-to-day actionable skills like how to run a really good business meeting that’s super effective and results in measurable change. And then things in between those two, which join the very high macro level to the very daily micro level. Putting these things into action over the 30-day separation period between these two days, and then a 15-day follow-on, gives you your 45 days. And that results in these really measurable, perceivable changes, which catapult the start of a company’s journey with Summit OS® — very quickly, double the speed of PE. Yeah, that’s definitely. I do believe that there’s no reason why every company should not adopt all the good management practices that already exist and widely known. And the faster we get them to adapt it, the faster they’re going to get a big push, a big momentum, and then it’s going to open them up for other changes. And suddenly this whole change management is not going to be that difficult because people will say that it actually works. So why not do more of it? Before we wrap this conversation up, can you share from your experience as an investment banker or senior CFO a story that really you feel relates to the work that we’re doing here? I can, and I’m going to illustrate this with a something negative, not something positive to learn from the negative, as I suggested. It was really valid for me to do learning from all the reasons businesses failed to get across the exit line and what we can do to help build businesses better. So, I was engaged to sell a business — owner-managed, a very successful call center business based in the UK, but with an American client base. And the vertical in which the call center business work was technology sales. So they were being engaged by large American technology houses to generate leads for selling their products into European customers. The entrepreneur who started it was an experienced businessman, but from the moment I met him, what I recognized was a brutish personality. A very tough taskmaster, very unforgiving, and actually very cold and lacking in emotion. He built this business to quite some success with a very high growth rate, and soon I got to meet his management team. These were young, thrusting, ambitious people who had been early enough in their careers for him to mold them into a likeness of his own. So what he’d created was a team of very similar-behaving, similar-acting people who were aggressive, over-assertive, cold, non-emotional in the business context and actually quite a scary team. Well, that could have been okay were it not for the fact that early on in the process, I had a word with him and I said, “Look, Chris, you're going to need to motivate these guys in the exit. They're well paid, but you need to give them a little bit of a taste of the proceeds you're going to receive as the founder and 100% owner of this business. Otherwise, you might see some trouble brewing.” Nope — he wasn't having any of it. This was his business. He was going to do this his way. Guess what happens, Steve? At the 59th minute of the 11th hour, as we came towards closing the transaction with a great buyer, the animals turned on their master. And they turned with a viciousness that was similar to his own character, and they basically held him to ransom. It cost him 30% of the business. He had to give 30% of the equity in order for them to come along and be supportive in the discussions they were at this stage, having with the buyer around satisfaction with the working there, continuing to work post-transaction and all those things that were super important for the buyer. So there’s an example, a real case study. We did actually get the business closed. It cost him millions more than it could have done had he done this deal with them early on when they didn’t have the whip hand. And here’s a great example of how adapting the way you work, respecting the senior people, and nurturing them into positions of ownership of their parts of the business, not just in terms of being mini CEOs, but actually sharing some of the equity of the business could have made a huge difference, both to the risk in the process and to the dollar outcome for him. Yeah. I think this is a common failing that the entrepreneur, they take under their wings, these young people, and they feel like that they owe everything to them for raising them. But they forget that those people stuck around because they actually had internal drive and they had ambition. It wasn’t the entrepreneur who create these people. These people were there to begin with. They just took advantage of the opportunity to have bigger responsibility, and as they rose in capability, if the entrepreneur or business owner didn't recognize that and reward it, they’re going to go somewhere else and they’re going to get rewarded another way, or they’re going to turn on their master. Yeah. So this is a very tricky thing and you need a degree of self-awareness to realize that it’s not all you and you have to reward them. Even if you help them get there, you still have to pay them more because they did get there.  That’s right. It’s all part of respecting the people you work with and rewarding them appropriately. Yeah that’s a great way to finish this up. Okay. So, Ian, if the listeners would like to learn more about you, maybe connect with you, learn what you could do for them, where would you advise them to go? Well, it’s very simple.  They can contact me at https://ianleaman.com. There you’ll find some very comprehensive and interesting material all about coaching and about Summit OS® in particular, and how we work with businesses to help elevate them.  Awesome. So do check Ian out at https://ianleaman.com, not hard to remember. He is also has a great LinkedIn profile. And if you enjoyed this conversation, stay tuned, because every week I bring an exciting entrepreneur or business operator, or thought leader in some cases, who come and share their frameworks with us. And if you’d like to learn more about what Summit OS® can do for you, then visit SummitOS.co, and check out all the downloadable tools, videos, process maps, and everything, and client stories to learn more. So Ian, thank you very much for coming and sharing your war stories and experiences, and thank you for listening. Important Links: Ian's LinkedIn Ian's website

Ian Leaman, Summit OS® Guide, former investment banker, senior finance executive, and investor, is driven by a mission to help entrepreneurs build, scale, and successfully exit their businesses by applying the hard-won lessons he's learned from more than 100 exit journeys. We learn about Ian's path from growing up around small family businesses in the UK, to training with Deloitte, advising entrepreneurs through hundreds of M&A processes, co-founding a SPAC, and ultimately relocating to the United States to embrace a more optimistic and opportunity-driven business culture. Ian explains his Can-Do Framework, a mindset blueprint inspired by the contrast between European “can't-do” thinking and America's bold, frontier-style optimism. He also breaks down how Summit OS® empowers owners to achieve “private equity–level growth without giving up private equity,” and why the 45-Day Execution Momentum plan creates faster change than a typical 100-day private equity program. Ian closes with a gripping case study illustrating how leadership blind spots and misaligned incentives can devastate exit outcomes. — Important Links: Ian's LinkedIn Ian's website

https://youtu.be/jtNEdTVPrwE Corinne Gavlinski, high-impact leadership and team development coach and creator of the Executive Table Read (XTR) method, is on a mission to help leaders improve communication, understand their people, and drive stronger team performance by transforming how leaders read, interpret, and utilize the strengths of their teams.  We explore Corinne's Executive Table Read framework: table read the script, understand the actors, get how to utilize them, and optimize team performance—a method that helps executives gain clarity, reduce friction, and build alignment inside leadership teams. Corinne shares why many leadership issues stem from misunderstanding roles, how actor awareness reshapes collaboration, and why structured team conversations are essential for building healthy, high-performing executive groups. --- Important Links: Corinne's LinkedIn Corinne's website Corinne's email

https://youtu.be/NUdn7G2_y4Y Tim Rexius, Serial Entrepreneur and Founder of Omaha Protein Popcorn, shares how he helps people reach their personal greatness through health, fitness, and nutrition. We explore Tim's journey from homelessness to multiple successful ventures, the strategies behind Omaha Protein Popcorn, and how purpose-driven leadership creates long-term impact.Tim introduces his Entrepreneur Creation Framework—Identify Them, Give Them a Voice, Coach & Mentor, Secure Financing, Let'em Do It Their Way—a system that turns talented employees into entrepreneurs, scales businesses, and drives innovation across industries. --- Important Links: Tim's LinkedIn Tim's website Omaha Protein Popcorn

Alana Dobbins, Executive Director of the Business Owner Success Alliance (BOSA) and Business Development Specialist at W.G. Nielsen & Co., shares how servant leadership and active listening help advisors and entrepreneurs make smarter, faster, and more aligned business decisions. Alana introduces the 5-Step Listening Framework she developed through her extensive experience in investment banking and business development: Mandate, Plan, Team, Execution, and Self-Awareness. This framework helps leaders build trust, uncover risks, and strengthen alignment between vision and execution. She also discusses BOSA, an upcoming mentorship platform connecting business owners with trusted advisors through short, video-based guidance — creating an accessible way to get sound advice at the right time. From building chemistry with clients to balancing empathy with accountability, Alana shares how genuine listening and mentorship drive growth and confidence in the world of M&A. --- Important Links: Alana's LinkedIn Business Owner Success Alliance (BOSA) W.G. Nielsen & Co.

https://youtu.be/76GQZb8nj_Q Pál Jalsovszky, founder of Jalsovszky Law Firm — Hungary's fastest-growing commercial law firm — shares how he built a top-tier legal practice by challenging tradition and creating a firm that reflects his values of professionalism, creativity, and clarity. We explore Pál's journey from international firms to founding his own, and how his Straightforward Legal Advice Framework—being Practical, Specific, and Risk-Weighted—reshaped the client–lawyer relationship. Instead of theoretical opinions, Pál believes lawyers must take responsibility, quantify risk, and give actionable answers that empower clients to decide with confidence. He also discusses building a culture of collaboration, training lawyers to think like business partners, and how AI will transform the legal profession—from due diligence and analysis to redefining what young lawyers should focus on next. --- Important Links: Pál's LinkedIn Pál's website

Adam Joseph, entrepreneur, 5-time PE-funded CEO, two-time Fortune 100 executive, and Summit OS Guide™, shares how developing people through ownership, mentorship, and trust drives leadership growth and organizational success. We explore Adam's journey from first-time founder to leading multiple private equity–backed companies, and how his Leadership Growth Framework—Identify Talent, Launch Careers, Mentor, and Allow Them Room to Fail—has helped him build empowered, high-performing teams. Adam explains why potential matters more than experience, why CEOs must coach forward instead of managing backward, and how giving people space to fail builds resilience and confidence. He also discusses the “Burn the Boats” mindset—what it means to go all in as a leader—and shares how to balance ambition with purpose, family, and fulfillment. --- Important Links: Adam's LinkedIn Adam's website

Tinsley Galyean, CEO of Curious Learning, is on a mission to eradicate illiteracy worldwide by helping people reframe how they think, learn, and lead through curiosity. We explore Tinsley's journey from the MIT Media Lab to co-founding Curious Learning, a non-profit transforming education for children in over 200 countries. He introduces his Eliminate Limiting Beliefs Framework, which guides leaders to let go of defensiveness, open up to curiosity, ask questions to understand, and create awareness of their assumptions. Tinsley explains how curiosity dissolves barriers to change, why awareness precedes transformation, and how these principles can drive both personal growth and global literacy. He also shares stories of communities teaching themselves to read and offers a surprising belief that 90% of leaders would disagree with—challenging traditional notions of control and leadership. --- Important Links: Tinsley's LinkedIn Tinsley's website Tinsley's Email: Tinsley@curiouslearning.org

Bill Ryan, Founder of Ryan Consulting, helps organizations maximize their investment in technology and people by ensuring they work together efficiently and effectively, regardless of location. We explore Bill's journey from technologist to consultant and his mission to connect people “over time and distance” by giving them what they need at the time of need. Bill introduces his Culture of Curiosity Framework, a leadership model designed to foster innovation, engagement, and problem-solving inside organizations. The framework emphasizes being willing to say “I don't know”, making it safe to ask “why”, encouraging employees to figure out solutions, and provoking thoughtful conversation that sparks collaboration. Bill also shares why curiosity is the foundation of leadership, how leaders can model vulnerability to build trust, and why he views learning and development not as an expense but as a strategic investment in long-term performance and retention. --- Important Links: Bill's LinkedIn Bill's website Bill's Email: bill@williamjryan.com

Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble, has devoted his career to helping people grow their businesses by turning contacts into lasting, valuable relationships. We explore Jon's journey from creating GoldMine, one of the first successful CRMs, to founding Nimble, a relationship-focused CRM that brings contact management back to its roots. Jon shares his personal “Why” — to grow his soul by helping others grow theirs — and explains why relationships, not technology, are the real key to business success. He introduces his signature frameworks: the Five F's of Relationships (Family, Friends, Food, Fun, and Fellowship) for building authentic connections, the Five E's of Brand-Building (Educate, Enchant, Engage, Embrace, and Empower) for expanding influence, and the Three P's (Passion, Plan, Purpose) for achieving personal and professional goals. Jon also describes how Kanban-style workflows and selective automation enable entrepreneurs and teams to manage contacts at scale without losing the human touch. --- Important links: Jon's LinkedIn Start a free trial of Nimble Email Jon directly: jon@nimble.com

Sri Kaza, serial CEO (most recently of BriteCap Financial) and author of Un-Convention: A Small Business Strategy Guide, joins me to share how unconventional thinking and the Trust Equation Framework can transform client relationships and small-business strategy. Sri explains how he discovered entrepreneurship through his own career, from Y2K programmer to global sales executive to CEO, and why developing people is at the heart of his personal “Why.” We explore Sri's memorable experience selling software in Japan—where karaoke, izakayas, and takoyaki roulette taught him more about trust than any sales manual—and how David Maister's Trust Equation Framework — credibility × reliability × intimacy ÷ self-interest — later helped him make sense of it. Sri also unpacks the principles behind his book Un-Convention: why small businesses can leverage their proximity to customers, nimbleness, and purpose to outperform bigger competitors, and how to avoid “empty-calorie” expansion by focusing on the right customers. --- Important Links: Sri's LinkedIn Sri's website

Patrick Seaton, President and Owner of Innovative Management Tools and creator of the Change OS™ Framework, helps leaders and organizations proactively navigate change with clarity and structure. Drawing on decades as a corporate manager facing growth, chaos, and constant change, Patrick built tools to give leaders a roadmap for facilitating change instead of simply reacting to it. We explore Patrick's journey from survival-mode middle manager to building 28 frameworks for change facilitation, culminating in Change OS™. Patrick explains why traditional “change management” became a messy junk drawer of tactics, and how the Change OS™ Framework reframes it into seven clear steps. In this conversation he walks us through four of them—Change Management, Change Preparation, Change Enablement, and Change Readiness—showing how proactive preparation of people, skills, and motivation creates far better outcomes than simply “dealing with it.” Patrick also shares why people don't actually resist change—they resist being changed—how to create internal champions who spread buy-in, and why slowing down up front helps organizations go faster later. Important Links: Patrick's LinkedIn Patrick's website

What fuels a business? It all starts with the dream. In this episode, we look at lessons from the legendary Michael E. Gerber, author of The E-Myth Revisited, who first championed the idea that entrepreneurs must cultivate their dream before anything else. From there, we explore why emotion is the spiritual energy behind every great business, movement, or mission. Without it, even brilliant ideas and top teams fall flat. With it, you attract missionaries instead of mercenaries—people who believe in your vision and help you build something that lasts. Defining a higher purpose is an overlooked advantage. Bring that spiritual dimension into your company and your people can put a small dent in the universe. --- Bring in the Spiritual Dimension Hi everyone. Today I want to share something really special. I recently had the honor on interviewing the great Michael Gerber, yes, the author of The E-Myth Revisited on my podcast. Now, Michael is close to 89 years old, but let me tell you, he's still sharp as a samurai's blade. During our conversation, Michael emphasized just how important it is for every entrepreneur to cultivate their dream. Because the dream, it fuels your passion for the business. And once it's alive, it becomes the energy behind everything else. Your role as a thinker, a storyteller, a leader, a designer, a builder, a launcher, and ultimately a grower. It really hit me. All of this is about tapping into one thing, emotion. Think about it. You can have brilliant ideas, unique assets, and a team of full of A-players. But without emotion, nothing happens. Emotion is the fuel in the tank of your business. And doesn't that sound familiar? Every great religion, every movement, every political ideology in history, what did they all do? They tapped into the spiritual power of emotion to rally people. So why would it be any different in a business? Here's the real question. Do you want mercenaries or missionaries helping you to grow your business? If it's the latter, then you need a mission that excites you and inspires your people. The good news? Every company already has a seed of a great mission inside it. At Summit OS®, we call this the Company Why™. And here's the thing: it's not about inventing it—it's about unearthing it, polishing it, and sharing it boldly. Let me give you a few powerful examples. “Liberate people from unhealthy and unpleasant tasks”. That's the 'Why' of Combi Packaging Systems. A maker of packaging machines that help people not have to climb high ladders or work in dusty and steamy places. “Facilitate people's independence and self-determination”. That's the 'Why' of RackN that manages physical server parks. “Transform people to help fulfill their potential and enjoy a better social life”. That's the 'Why' of Eos Rejuvenation, a facial plastic surgery in Los Angeles. And finally, “Help entrepreneurs reach their Ideal Lives while creating a positive impact”. That's our very own 'Why' at Summit OS Group. Defining a higher purpose is the number one missed opportunity for business owners, and yet it's one of the most powerful ways to create excitement, pride, attract top talent, and spark creativity in your business. So don't forget to bring that spiritual dimension into your company because when you do, your people will begin to put a small dent in the universe. If you'd like to dive deeper, check out SummitOS.co for more videos on this concept. And until next time, keep growing.

https://youtu.be/JgJaZ9-fg-E Steven Wilson, CEO of Parallel 42 Coaching & Consulting, Certified Working Genius Facilitator, and Six Sigma Black Belt, helps leaders unlock potential by applying Patrick Lencioni's Working Genius Framework to transform teams and organizations. His mission is to guide people and businesses to be better at who they are, what they do, and how they serve others. We explore Steven's journey from Lean Six Sigma process expert to leadership coach and how the Working Genius Framework helps individuals identify whether they're in the right seat, boosts productivity by focusing 80% on natural strengths and 20% on personality, and increases team collaboration. Steven explains how the six types of genius align with the phases of any project and how leaders can recognize where people are most engaged to build resilient, high-performing teams.He also shares why organizational “health” often matters more than “smarts,” how hungry, humble, and smart behaviors strengthen culture, and how servant leadership creates accountability, trust, and long-term success.

https://youtu.be/PniriBnM0mo Legacy may not be the number 1 driver for most business owners—but it's close. Right after financial security, wealth creation, and personal freedom. In this video, we explore why building a successful business is one of the most powerful, controllable, and lasting ways to make an impact that lives on long after you're gone. You'll hear real examples of entrepreneurs who started late and still changed the world—like Colonel Sanders, Arianna Huffington, and Ray Kroc—and discover why business can be a greater legacy-builder than sports, politics, or entertainment. We'll also look at how great businesses multiply impact—helping employees, customers, and entire communities—while setting you up to attract A-players and create something that stands the test of time. If you're ready to grow your company faster, with less risk and cost, tune in—and remember: it's never too late to start building your legacy. --- What Will Be Your Legacy? What will be your legacy? “Legacy” isn't the most important driver for most business owners to grow their business—but it's damn close. Right behind financial security, wealth creation, and achieving personal freedom. I've always believed that building a successful business is the most straightforward way to create a legacy that lives on well after you're gone. Sure, you can do it in other ways through athletic achievement, becoming a rock or movie star, writing bestselling books, or achieving top political office. But creating a business often requires fewer sacrifices of youth, health, and integrity. It's also far more controllable. Making it big as an athlete is usually decided in childhood. It's mostly a function of parenting an environment. Becoming a rock star or a movie star also hinges on youth, inborn talent, or early desire. Again, largely environment-driven. Becoming a famous author is exceedingly rare and often takes writing dozens of books before one gets recognized, let alone achieves name recognition. Political careers are mostly self-created, but it can be a long road to breaking free of party whips and agendas—if that ever happens. Turning politics into a lasting positive legacy is even rarer. No more than a handful of examples emerged each century, if that. Now compare all of these to building a business legacy. Business success is rarely threatened by injuries, addictions, or character assassinations. You can start at nearly any age. Martha Stewart was a model, caterer, and author before launching her media company in her fifties. Ray Kroc, a milkshake machine salesman, saw potential in the McDonald's burger stand and launched a franchise model at age 52. John Pemberton, a Civil War veteran and pharmacist, created the original formula for Coca-Cola at the age of 55 while seeking an alternative to morphine. Arianna Huffington, after a successful career as an author and commentator at age 55, launched The Huffington Post in 2005, which became a leading digital news platform. Colonel Harland Sanders, after a series of jobs and running a gas station restaurant, began franchising his fried chicken recipe at age 65, using his first Social Security check to fund the idea. And you can build quietly sneaking up on competitors until it's too late for them to catch up. The best part? A great business is an impact multiplier. You can help your employees, their families, and all the customers who benefit from your superior products and services. If you own a viable business, you have a massive opportunity to grow it and make it highly profitable so you can attract and retain A-players and build a lasting pyramid for yourself. The heroes of our age are business entrepreneurs who change the world around us. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Next, and CEO of Pixar. Revolutionized personal computing, digital animation, digital music, and cracked the code on tablet computing and smartphones. Sam Mond,

https://youtu.be/ySHMeFn4kPA Andy Hite, Founder of Scaling Minds Coaching & Consulting, is on a mission to help leaders navigate complexity, align their teams, and drive meaningful results by transforming both self-leadership and organizational leadership. We explore Andy's Six Shifts Leadership Operating System: Trust, Candor, Ownership, Empowerment, Alignment, and Leadership—a framework that turns groups of executives into high-performing, strategically aligned leadership teams. Andy shares why self-leadership is the starting point for culture change, how to move from hub-and-spoke decision-making to empowered departmental ownership, and why peer accountability and “The Gym of Life” are essential for lasting leadership growth. --- Take Your People to the Gym of Life with Andy Hite Good day, listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Andy Hite, the founder of Scaling Minds Coaching and Consulting, helping leaders navigate complexity, align their teams, and drive meaningful results. Andy, welcome to the show. Hey, Steve. Thanks for having me. I'm excited for the conversation. Yeah, you've got a great story. You've got a great business. And let's get into it with my favorite question, which is, what is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your business? Yeah, I love that question. Because most people can answer what is your “Why.” They might reach for something, but I love the follow-up. What are you actually doing to manifest it? Because that's the part that a lot of people don't always consider. I have a personal and a professional “Why.” My personal “Why,” I really landed on seven, eight years ago. My personal “Why” is to show my children that they can do and be and achieve anything they want. My kids are now 19, twin daughters, by the way. And as most parents do when they're younger, as they're growing up, we tell them these things. Hey, you can do anything, you could be anything, you can create anything. But I was confronted maybe eight years ago with walking the walk, not just talking the talk. I had a corporate gig and the thought and idea of starting this business was there. And for a while, I kind of put blinders on because truthfully, as many of your listeners can imagine, I'm sure you can imagine as well, leaving something that's steady and secure to start over in your forties is really, really scary, and most people, I talked to a lot of people, entrepreneurs, they're like, I can't do it. I have a family of obligations, I have bills. And I was confronted with that. I've been telling my kids this forever, am I living it? Am I actually going after the things that I want? And so I didn't want my words to be hollow. So I started walking the walk. I left that work and I started this business. And every day, as entrepreneurs know, can be a struggle as we're building. And so it's really just showing them, hey, if you're willing to put in the work, you can create anything. You can be anything.Share on X So that's a long-winded answer, Steve, of what my personal “Why” is and how I get up every morning thinking about, don't be a hypocrite, go do the work and show them. I tell this to my kids as well, that the biggest thing about being a father is that, or any parent, is that there's nowhere to hide. So, you really have to evoke, otherwise you are a hypocrite and it's not always easy. You have to really do the right thing, not just pretend you're doing the right thing because they're gonna see it. Yeah, well, and I didn't want my words to just be for them or hollow. So I was forced to kind of walk the walk and thank God I did. Yeah. Okay, well, I'm sure that there is another motivation behind this. It's not just the show for the kids. You've got to love what you're doing. So, tell me a little bit about what you do and specifically you develop the leadership operating system called Six Shifts.

https://youtu.be/avv30Z0wD9Q Josh Tarbutton, Entrepreneurial Chairman and Chief Innovation Officer of Bravo Team Engineering Design and Fabrication, is on a mission to restore the dignity of engineers and unleash their creative potential through intentional culture and agile structure. We explore Josh's journey from soldier and professor to engineering leader, and his Engagement Success Framework, which includes: Scoping/Visioning, Customer Communication, Resourcing, and Solution. Josh explains how this structured process allows Bravo Team to align deeply with client goals, unlock team creativity, and deliver complex, high-impact innovations with confidence. We also discuss how “grooming” a project helps avoid costly misalignments, how AI and Agile methods are transforming the engineering workflow, and why design for sustainability and accessibility will define the next frontier of innovation. --- Unleash the Power of Engineers with Josh Tarbutton Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Josh Tarbutton, former professor, soldier, and currently the Entrepreneurial Chairman and Chief Innovation Officer of Bravo Team Engineering Design and Fabrication. Josh, welcome to the show. Steve, glad to be here, thank you. Well, I'm excited to have this conversation because your kind of firm has not been represented on the show for the last 300 episodes. So, we're definitely gonna have some new insights and the new perspectives. We've never had an engineering consulting firm, I believe. And you also have a very inspiring “Why” of why you're doing this. So let's start with this. And would you share your personal “Why” and how you are manifesting it in Bravo Team? Yes. So why Bravo Team or why do this? So I think there's the truth that if you want to create new things, you got to imagine them and put yourself in a position to create.Share on X And I think as engineers, we have that unique opportunity and in many of our careers to be the tip of the spear for creativity in our organizations. And, for me personally, seeing how soldiers are trained in the army, seeing how engineers are matriculated in academia and seeing the career paths that they end up with, I really feel like there's a little bit of a mismatch in the market between what the engineer is really capable of and what they're actually able to produce in an organization. And I would say that to the extent that there's a blockage between the creative capacity of the engineer and the value that they could deliver, I feel like I kind of want to help that. And so what is that? Well, part of it has to do with like just the dignity of the engineer and how we understand the value contribution. And so part of my “Why” is I actually believe that if we actually have intentional conversations and we change some of the ways that we do things that we can get, we can allow people to be much more creative and we can have bigger budgets because we're reducing waste in other areas and really make a dramatic impact into the way that we do design work. Okay, so that is fascinating. And you mentioned the dignity of engineering. So, what is happening with the dignity of engineering? Why it needs to be restored? So fundamentally, dignity is, I think, mostly just about respect. And I think, sometimes, when two people are having a conversation, our assumptions that we bring into the conversation can really take away from what the other person is saying. And I think that happens a lot in engineering, where the engineer is doing their best to try to communicate what needs to be communicated. And yet, there's a little bit that's lost in translation. So, then the engineer comes across as being a resistive or adding some restriction or creating problems or trying to slow things down. When in reality, I'd say almost all the time, these individuals are trying to help and reduce risk and increase the customer experienc...

https://youtu.be/w1ZbzfSrdFk Michael Viane, Executive Coach, Strategic Advisor, and Keynote Speaker, is driven by a mission to help people overcome challenges and find the clarity to act. His Marathon Mindset Framework includes Purpose, Preparation, Pace, and Perseverance—four guiding principles that help individuals and teams sustain momentum and avoid burnout in pursuit of long-term goals. We dive into Michael's journey from a 30-year corporate career to coaching, inspired by a desire to live with purpose and help others do the same. He explains how leaders can use the Marathon Mindset to navigate overwhelm, maintain strategic focus, and build resilience. Michael also shares the concept of DMAs (Difference-Making Actions)—intentional, goal-aligned tasks that counter reactive busyness and drive daily progress. --- Make a Difference Each Day with Mike Viane Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Michael Viane, Executive Coach, Strategic Advisor, and Keynote Speaker, empowering individuals, teams, and organizations to overcome challenges and find the clarity to take action. Michael, welcome to the show. Thank you, Steve. Thank you for that nice introduction. I copied it from your LinkedIn page, so it wasn't my creation, but I think it's a good one. So as an introduction, by way of introduction, Michael, why don't you share what is your personal “Why” with our audience? I will give you a rather lengthy answer on it. My “Why” started after 30 years in corporate America of having the recognition that I was waking up each day without any passion for what I was doing, without any sense of fulfillment at the end of my day. And the recognition that I needed to find the courage to move forward and do something that I deserved. And that was to have passion and fulfillment in my everyday life, to want to wake up in the morning and do things. And I had the very obvious and rewarding recognition that my greatest accomplishments in my career were always in coaching and mentoring people on my team to be greater organizational contributors, to be future leaders. And when I said this to people, they said, let me introduce you to somebody. And I met a coach. I met a business coach who explained to me what he does. And then I was introduced to Focal Point Business Coaching. And at Focal Point, we have the idea that we are a pebble in the pond, and that when we help one person and we drop that pebble into the pond, we see the ripple effect go out. My “Why” is literally to help others, to teach others, and make even the smallest of difference in their lives and in their business worldShare on X so that it creates that pebble in the pond ripple effect and it affects and makes people who work for this business owner, their lives better, their family lives better, the community stronger. This is my goal, this is my “Why,” this is my passion. Okay, love it. To be the pebble in the pond and create the ripple effect, that is awesome. And definitely coaching can create that, especially when you coach executives who then coach their direct reports and their family life gets better. Let's talk about how you do that and one of the things that you talked about earlier when we chatted really struck a chord with me when you talked about the marathon mindset. It's not a sprint, it's a marathon. And how do marathonists think about the race and how they pace themselves? So, what is the Marathon Mindset and what are the four Ps of the Marathon Mindset? Yeah, and this was actually the topic of our Focal Point conference this year. The Marathon Mindset and the four Ps. The four Ps are Purpose to begin with. And we just talked about this and “Why.” Our “Why.” So we talk about our purpose. then we talk about Preparation. Preparation is our process, our ability to plan, our ability to practice, to set goals, to have a mental readiness,

https://youtu.be/FB11MbVTtlo Andrew Jernigan, CEO of Insured Nomads, is on a mission to redefine insurance for the globally distributed workforce. His Globally Distributed Company OS includes communication, documentation, education, and integration—core pillars that help companies effectively manage international remote teams. We learn about Andrew's journey from banking and global living to founding Insured Nomads—a company providing health, travel, and risk coverage for digital nomads, remote teams, and expats. Andrew shares how cultural nuance, asynchronous collaboration, and documentation help build trust and cohesion in a fully remote environment. We also explore how comprehensive global health insurance differs from standard travel insurance, what digital nomads often overlook, and why benefits like mental health access, cybersecurity, and global lounge access are becoming essential for the international workforce. --- Mine Gold in Your People with Andrew Jernigan Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Andrew Jernigan, CEO of Insured Nomads, providing frictionless travel and health insurance for globally distributed teams, expatriates, digital nomads, remote workers, travelers, world schoolers for a successful international lifestyle. Andrew, welcome to the show. Well, thank you, Steve. And hi, everyone. I'm glad you're tuning in. This is going to be a fun episode. Yeah, it is going to be fun. I'm super excited about what you have up your sleeves about how you built this business, because this really a post-COVID type remotely operated business that you have, and it's a global business. You have like an interesting background. You lived in Amsterdam for several years. You're married to a Brazilian woman. I lived in Ghana, worked in England, Thailand, Emirates. Running a cross-border team is something I've been part of for a couple of decades now. So this is a valuable conversation for the way the world works today and the future of work as well. Yeah, so basically you are the target market of your company, maybe, that you call the Insured Nomads. So tell me, what is your “Why,” your personal “Why,” that inspired you to start Insured Nomads in the first place? I've lived the lifestyle, I've had the plans and then fast forward a few years, I brokered over 26 of the international companies in our space and realized, took me back to my banking days back out of university, where I was building online banking and a lot of the FinTech components many years ago. And I realized, wow, insurance needs that kind of change. Healthcare, financing of healthcare needs reform. And so brought together some leaders in the industry and said, let's do it differently. Took off to build Insured Nomads for health insurance and short term travel insurance that meets today's standards. And this was before the pandemic was declared. I was working from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro. And my co-founders were oceans apart. And this was birthed and soon after pandemic was declared, and the trigger effect of that, of realizing, okay, flexible, hybrid, remote first, digital first, etc. Work dynamics have affected the world.Share on X Yeah. So basically, you fell into this. So you had this international background, then suddenly the Zoom revolution came and it made it possible, or somehow people's paradigm shifted and suddenly it was totally okay to meet on Zoom. If you can meet on Zoom, then you can meet with anyone in the world on Zoom, basically, and then suddenly the world becomes your oyster because you can hire people anywhere in the world. So how did that evolve and how do you put the blocks together? Was it hard to start to build a culture with more people? Well, prior to this, we go back in time, we had ICQ, we had AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Instant Messenger, etc. and others in other cultures and regions of the w...

https://youtu.be/vKFULhTQwg0 Katie O'Malley, Founder of (en)Courage Coaching, is on a mission to create workplaces that do no harm by equipping leaders with the skills to prevent toxicity and foster cultural transformation. We dive into Katie's career path from political campaigns and higher education to leadership coaching, and explore her Power of Listening Framework—the AIR Methodology: Attention, Intention, and Recognition. Katie shares how listening well is one of the most powerful tools leaders have to build trust, increase engagement, and demonstrate respect. We also discuss how she uses LEGO Serious Play to unlock team vulnerability and build connection in a playful but profound way. --- Make People Feel Heard with Katie O'Malley Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Katie O'Malley, the founder of (en)Courage Coaching. She has helped over 200 leaders and leadership teams prevent toxic workspace experiences and create cultural transformations across the US and the UK. Katie, welcome to the show. Steve, thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to be here and really eager for our conversation and to be helpful to your audience. I'm sure you will be very helpful. You bring a different perspectives than what we had, the previous 300 guests, so definitely very interesting. But let's start with my favorite question, which is, what is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your practice? Absolutely. So my personal “Why” goes all the way back to when I was in college studying political science. I have always wanted to make a positive impact in the world, the communities that I'm a part of, the connections and the relationships that I have. And that thread has pulled throughout my entire career, whether it was working on political campaigns and nonprofit organizations or in higher education. And eventually what I realized is I had this kind of itch for small business ownership, entrepreneurship, having the agency and autonomy to work the way that I wanted to work and took that, combined it with my “Why” of really helping folks at the intersection of mental health and work. It's where we spend eight, 10, 12 hours of our day. And to think that it doesn't have an impact on how we move through the world or our overall well-being is bonkers. And so I spend my days really helping folks to align their strengths, talents, and values with the roles and organizations that they're pursuing.Share on X And also working on the other side of the equation, on the employer side of the equation, training up their leaders to do no harm to their teams and employees throughout the workday. And so, yeah, my “Why” is how do we help people have, at worst, a net neutral experience in their workday and at best, a workday that elevates their life outside of work. Yeah, I mean, it's a huge thing and a lot of companies don't realize that they have these employees in the company and if they are happy, they're going to be much more productive. They are going to project a much better impression of the company to the outside world. They are going to make their customers happier. So it's really worth investing in improving the mental health and the happiness of the people in the company. That's a big lever that you're pulling there. So let's take this as a good pivot point because we are podcasting on frameworks, as you know, and our listeners know. I'm always on the hunt for a good framework that someone has discovered. What you do definitely is an important topic. You talk about the empathy, you have background in counseling. So you came up with a framework called the Power of Listening Framework, and I would love it for you to explain why it's important and how does it work with our listeners? Yeah. So I call it the AIR Methodology. A stands for attention, I stands for intention, R stands for recognition.

https://youtu.be/lljfWj6VRmc Phil Wofford, Entrepreneur, Fractional CFO/COO, Business Coach, and owner of Scale and Thrive, is on a mission to help business owners scale profitably, improve operations, and build teams that run without them.  We explore Phil's entrepreneurial journey, including the successful exit of two healthcare clinics, and how he now supports other leaders through coaching and fractional leadership. He shares his Focus Time Framework, which helps owners regain control of their day by:Writing 3 top priorities above a line, 2–3 secondary tasks below it, and staying focused on what's above the line. We also discuss how strategic financial oversight drives long-term profitability, what makes a business attractive to buyers, and why every owner should be asking what truly matters in life and business. --- Focus Your Time with Phil Wofford Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Phil Wofford, the owner of Scale and Thrive, who helps business owners scale, increase profitability, and build teams that run without them. Phil, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Well, great to have you here and great to talk about some of your frameworks and what you are doing as a coach, as a fractional CFO, COO, as an entrepreneur. So a lot to get into here. But let's start with my favorite question. What is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it? Yeah, my personal “Why” is I just really enjoy using my experience and background to help business owners and CEO grow their business.Share on X And really that manifests by us really drilling down into their business and understanding what are the key components that affect their profitability, their operations, all the things that are really important. So I just really enjoyed doing that because I've done it in my own businesses over the years and so now it's my chance to give back as well. Love it. So, you say that you like to drill in and see what prevents people from growing, being more profitable. What do you see as being the most common two or three things that is creating an obstacle for entrepreneurs, business owners? Yeah, it's kind of a two-pronged thing. Some businesses don't understand their KPIs or their key performance indicators. And it may be that they just haven't been exposed to it and they haven't created those. In my world that I've operated in, those have always been really important items that we use to manage the business day to day, month to month, quarter to quarter. And then you have the other side, the business person that's really into it and they want to measure everything. They have 48 components of KPIs and it just drives them and the staff crazy trying to keep up with that many. When really there should be three to six really key things that we're keeping our eyes on,Share on X depending on the business, that really help guide us to make decisions day by day. Yeah, that is true. And if you have too many KPIs, then essentially you diluted their power and then it just becomes noise. But if you have a few good ones, then you can really drive the business. And Jim Collins even talks about the profit per X having one big differentiating, and that's going to be very powerful. Okay. So you're an entrepreneur as well. And you're in the process of exiting some clinics in Alaska that you created. Tell me a little bit about how that came about and what did you do there and why are you exiting? Yeah, I've done many international startups and that led me to becoming a business coach and a fractional COO, fractional CFO. And a few years ago, my friend from kindergarten that we grew up together, we ran across the business opportunity in the healthcare field. And so we created a clinic here in the Atlanta area. And subsequently that led to a second one. And we exited the first one, middle of COVID,

https://youtu.be/GigFOIkP3BI Doug Gray, Family Wealth Advisor, Succession Planning Expert, and Founder of Action Learning Associates, is passionate about helping leaders flourish through agency, curiosity, and collaborative frameworks. We discuss Doug's ADFIT Protocol for Leadership Development, a simple and effective framework that assumes people don't need to be “fixed” — they need the structure to grow. Doug also explores how family businesses can navigate succession by understanding emotional dynamics, empowering Next Gen leaders, and shifting from control to collaboration. His latest book, The Success Playbook for Next Gen Family Business Leaders, gives rising leaders the tools to step into their future with clarity and confidence. --- Enable Family Transitions with Doug Gray Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Doug Gray, Family Wealth Advisor, Business Change Management Agent, Organizational Leadership Facilitator, Succession Planning Advisor, and Executive Coach. He's also the founder of Action Learning Associates and the author of three books on leadership. Doug, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Steve. Pleasure to be here. Yeah, great to have you. And let's start with my favorite question. What is your personal “Why” and how do you manifest this in your practice and in your activities? I like to go big. So, to serve tens of thousands of leaders, I'm not sure how to quantify it, but I think the idea of serving others in their leadership development journey is the most important “Why” I can imagine. Yeah, well, that certainly can be rewarding. Any particular reason it's important to you to serve others? We don't use the verb serve enough. I live in the south where Chick-fil-A is abundant and people will openly ask, how may I serve you? Which is a delightful question. Greenleaf was an academic and a Quaker who asked, how may I serve you? And service servant leadership emerged from that philosophy. And I think we need to do a better job of serving one another's needs. Yeah, I love that. Really, this mindset of looking at the other person and thinking about the other person rather than ourselves and not be self-serving, but be other serving. It's definitely a resonance with me. It's primary also in leadership development, but also in learning. Curiosity is the result of, like you worked in executive coaching for a long time. And curiosity is the currency of learning. To what extent can you become curious about the other person on the call? Similarly, right now, your podcasters are thinking, oh, this Doug Gray guy, he's fairly weird. And they get curious about various things. And they ask questions or they invite you to do so. And that curiosity is what impels us to learn. It's what enables us to use tools like AI. Coaches are great at writing prompts, thankfully. What I love about AI is that anything that comes to mind, I'm a very curious person. And I hear a word, I say, where does this word come from? And then I can immediately ask AI and then I can go about my business. It doesn't take any effort and better insight. So yeah, I agree. I was talking to a client just the other day, a new client, and he asked whom should I bring to the team into discussion? And we went through different perspectives and still there was some uncertainty in his mind about who has the potential to be leader. And I asked him, which of these people are curious? He says, oh yeah, some of them are not curious. And then he connected the dots that if they're not curious, they're not going to learn, they're not going to grow, they're not going to be leaders. That's right. Yeah, totally agree with that. Okay. So I'm very curious about the framework that you're bringing to this show. And we discussed in the pre-interview about this idea that people don't need to be fixed because they have agency and capacity.

Dr. Chris Fuzie, President of the National Leaderology Association and Founder of CMF Leadership Consulting, is on a mission to elevate leadership into a respected science—and to develop better leaders by grounding them in theory and behavior. We dive into the emerging field of Leaderology and how Dr. Fuzie is working to verify and certify leadership practitioners as “Leaderologists.” He introduces the STICKUM Framework for building team cohesion through Sacrifice, Teamwork, Interaction, Communication, Keeping people focused, Unique norms and symbols, and Mission. Chris also explores the concept of Liminal Leadership—where leaders must seamlessly transition between leading and following—and explains how followership is as critical as leadership itself. --- Create Cohesion with Dr. Chris Fuzie Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint podcast. And my guest today is Dr. Chris Fuzie, president of the National Leaderology Association, a non-profit organization that establishes and promotes leaderology, the study of leadership as a respected discipline in science. He is also the owner of CMF Leadership Consulting. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Chris. Thank you, Steve. I'm very happy to be here. Yeah, I'm looking forward to this. Well, I have to tell you that we are 300 episodes in and you're the first leaderologist that we ever had on this podcast. So it's kind of a big day for us. Oh, good. So, what is leaderology? I've never heard this before, but it sure sounds interesting. Well, okay, so you have psychology, you have psychologists. You have biology, you have biologists. You have all of these other ologies, which is the scientific study of or the study of whatever the discipline is. So leaderology is nothing more than the scientific study of leadership. So as a leaderologist, there's different levels within leaderology. And as a leaderologist, that means that you are formally educated in leadership theory and leadership practice.Share on X And the different levels, if you have one degree, two degrees, like I have three degrees, so three formal degrees in leadership. And so that's what a leaderologist is. It's just somebody who studies just like a biologist studies biology. So, is this a trademark designation or anyone can call themselves a leaderologist who are expert in leadership? Yeah, that's the thing is that we actually verify that the person is a leaderologist. And so through the National Leaderology Association, what we do is in order to join, you have to submit your transcripts to show that you've actually studied leadership, not management, but leadership. I know you know the difference between management and leadership, but that's why we look at the type of classes that people have taken, what is their dissertation on that kind of stuff. So we look at all that kind of stuff before we designate somebody. That's why they're called verified leaderologists, because they have been vetted, they have been verified as a leaderologist before we will say, yes, this person knows what they're talking about. Okay. That makes sense. So in terms of definition, my favorite definition is that you manage things and you lead people. What is your definition? What is the official designated definition of a leaderologist and the leader? I say the same thing. Manage things, you lead people. But a leaderologist understands the theories behind the concepts of leading people. As an example, let's use cohesion as an example. There's different ways of building cohesion. I use the acronym STICKUM. Personal sacrifice, teamwork, getting people to interact. C is communication. K is keeping people focused on the mission. U is unique norms and symbols. And then the M is the mission focus.Share on X If you think about all those things, when you look at cohesion, then it's important that you use all of those things. Plus cohesion,

https://youtu.be/wrIFxgnkJ1A Nathan Miller, Founder and CEO of Miller Ink, is on a mission to help organizations communicate clearly and strategically—especially in moments of high stakes and crisis. We explore Nathan's journey from diplomacy and speechwriting at the UN to launching one of California's top crisis communication firms. He shares the Miller Ink Communications Framework, which anchors every campaign with a clear objective, a targeted audience, and a compelling message. Nathan breaks down how to craft memorable messaging using the 3 Cs (Clear, Concise, Compelling) and the 3 S's (Stories, Statistics, Soundbites). He also reveals how to build a reputation-driven business, navigate hiring decisions, and future-proof your communications in a rapidly changing media landscape. --- Communicate in Soundbites with Nathan Miller Good day, dear listeners. It's Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint and my guest today is Nathan Miller, founder and CEO of Miller Ink. and he's also a seasoned communication strategist with deep experience in business, government, diplomacy, crisis management and issue advocacy. Nathan, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Steve. It's great to be here. Well, it's good to have you. And I've got some questions I'm really curious about that I want to ask you. And starting with my favorite one, what is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your business? My personal “Why” really is a couple of things. One, our business makes a huge impact for a lot of people and to feel that impact every day is tremendous and it gives me a lot of satisfaction and pride. The people who work for Miller Ink., the people who work here and launched their careers through this company, our clients, every day you get to be in rooms with people who are solving problems, addressing challenges, navigating different challenges, and helping them get to a better place is incredibly gratifying. You want to be somebody who's of service in that way. We do a lot of advocacy and mission-driven work as well as an agency. I've done a lot of work on behalf of the Jewish community and the State of Israel, which has also been very meaningful. And for me, the most important personal “Why” is I have three kids and so much of what I do is really for them. And that is really one of my big North Stars in life. Yeah, well, lots of meaningful stuff in your life. And you left the UN Security Council, where you were a writer, to become a PR entrepreneur. So tell me about this journey. The journey was crazy. My career began, I got a master's in public policy here at UCLA. I went to Europe for a little bit. I worked in Brussels with the EU institutions there at a think tank. And then I came back and I worked at a PR firm in LA for a couple of years early in my career. I got a job as the chief speechwriter for Israel's mission to the UN. And it was a crazy time to be doing that job. I was really young, and it was the outbreak of the Arab Spring. A lot of different things that were happening in the Middle East and in the world. So, fascinating moment. And I did that job for three years. And at that point, my now wife and I were dating, and she was in LA and I was in New York, and we had to figure out a place to be. So I said, you know what, I'm gonna come back. And I think I have a problem with authority is what I learned working in big institutions in different ways. And I like to be able to set the pace of what I do. And so I say, every entrepreneur has a different cross that they're trying to not bear. And for me, it was really having control of my own destiny, and that mattered a lot to me. So I was a young guy. I saw communications changing rapidly, really rapidly. When I started at the UN, then the ambassador, Susan Rice, they asked her if she was on Twitter and she said, I don't do diplomacy by haiku. And that was like a funny thing.

https://youtu.be/7kbdcPkeCuY Alanna Levenson, Business Coach and Workshop Facilitator, is on a mission to help driven business owners reach their highest potential through self-awareness and no-excuses action. We explore Alanna's coaching journey and her Executive Improvement MAP, a framework that guides entrepreneurs to elevate their mindset and mission, align strategy with values, and build legacy-driven, profit-focused teams. She outlines how leaders can reclaim their focus, lead with intention, and foster quiet influence by becoming profoundly self-aware. Alanna also shares the three critical questions business owners should ask daily to stay on a growth path. --- Build Your Team's Self-Awareness with Alanna Levenson Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Alanna Levenson, business coach and workshop facilitator who helps driven business owners reach their highest potential and take no excuses action. Alanna, welcome to the show. It's good to be here. Well, I'm super curious about how you do that with these business owners, even though they are driven, which is a good given. But let's start with my favorite question. What is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your practice? Yeah. So, the question of our “Why.” I mean, I asked that of my clients too. It's an important one, because if we don't know what it is, then in essence, we're directionless and we're disconnected. So when I think about that, I reflect back at when I was very young and I was introverted and very shy and didn't really feel like I had much of a voice. I was also very insecure. And there were things that I did throughout my life, like I studied dancing, which was more of a physical expression than a verbal one. But I did it in a very committed way for, I mean, I could say from when I was four until I was 18, but I even did it in college. So really my “Why” is about connecting with yourself, finding confidence, knowing your voice, and what does your voice wanna say?Share on X And that will evolve throughout your lifetime because what my voice has wanted to express or is currently expressing is very different than even who I was just a few years ago.  So, my “Why” is really reflecting and connecting with who you are, understanding that we are evolving living beings. And we're having this incredible experience and that we're not the only ones on the planet. So, since we're constantly bumping up against other people in life and in work, how can we be the best that we can be while also supporting others and being the best that they can be too? Yeah, okay. That's, that's pretty powerful. Be the best we can be and make other people the best that they can be as well. I love it. So how do you do this? How do you help your clients kind of map out a roadmap to get there? So what does it take to be the best you can be as a business owner as you are traversing this terrain and trying to be in the business and be a better human? Well, I've been coaching for 20 years, and even my journey with coaching has evolved over time. My clientele has evolved. The “Why's” have evolved within the clientele as well. And where I am now, it's about giving people, it's not so much a framework as it is guardrails. And then there's a very intuitive, organic, custom process within that, that I work with people on. But if we're talking about a roadmap or the word MAP, as an acronym, I am using that as a framework. So what do I mean by that? So the M, if you think of that in terms of your mindset and your mission, if I was to sum that up, it's about reconnecting to your purpose, your “Why.” It's reclaiming your focus. So what I've noticed about people is they tend to get very distracted and it's easy and it's becoming quote unquote easier to get distracted these days, especially because of so many things happening in the world and the world changing so fast.

https://youtu.be/Me3XLCOh1iM Carla Fowler, MD, PhD and CEO of THAXA Executive Coaching, is driven by a mission to help ambitious leaders perform at their best by applying the principles of performance science. We explore Carla's journey from scientist to coach and explore her Performance Framework, a science-based model that guides high achievers through four core areas: strategy, execution, mindset, and physiology. Carla explains how strategic clarity and resource prioritization drive focused leadership, and how physiological resilience and mental perspective are essential to long-term success. She also shares how she applies scientific tools to coaching engagements to help leaders build empowered teams and make high-quality decisions under uncertainty. --- Tap into Performance Science with Carla Fowler Good day, dear listeners, it's Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And today my guest is Carla Fowler, who is an MD, a PhD, and also the CEO of THAXA Executive Coaching, which helps CEOs and executives with clarity, focus, growth, and support using a proprietary process based on performance science. So welcome to the show, Carla. Thanks so much, Steve. It's really fun to be here chatting with you. It's exciting to have a scientist who is also a coach because I love to combine the two and to have the scientific approach in coaching. I'm trying to do the same thing, but I'm sure I'm not mastering it to the degree that you are. So I'm all ears of how that works. But let's start with my favorite question for guests, which is, what is your personal “Why” that drives you to do what you're doing and how are you manifesting it in your practice? I love that you asked this question, Steve, because I think taking this moment, like there are often a lot of different “Why's” along the way, but for me, I think in reflection, one big “Why” was that as a young person growing up, I always looked out at the world and saw there were a lot of things you could go do. There were exciting goals that you could set for yourself. And I wanted to figure out how to go do that. That was just a very pure sort of desire that even as a young person I had. And I also was very interested, I mean, I certainly had some talents, but I wanted to know like, what could someone do? What did someone have control over? To have more agency in your life as you were trying to navigate and do all of that. And so I think for me, how this manifest was number one, an interest in science, like approaching things scientifically, because certainly my coaching practice, I look at performance from a scientific standpoint, which is to say, what are the principles that really guide how we perform and how it is received and what results we get that has nothing to do with our talent? I mean, we get whatever talent we're born with and we don't really get to control that. But when we think about performance scientifically, now we're talking about things that anyone could access that might help them improve their leadership and I really liked that idea.Share on X Like it motivates me not just for myself to say, well, these are principles I can access, but also to say, these are principles I can share with other people. And regardless of what talent they were born with, we could use them and apply them in day-to-day life and work. That would be really helpful to them. And to me, that just feels like motivating. It feels inclusive, and that's my “Why.” Wow. Okay, so let's dig in and see how that works. So these scientific principles, so how do you connect it to the work at hand? So you're talking to a CEO or an executive, you're trying to figure out what they need to do to perform better. How do you apply principles? Like you observe what's going on and then intuitively some principles flash into your mind and then you say, okay, that would work here or you have a process that you walk people through?

https://youtu.be/_FFUS8tb-b4 Michael E. Gerber, author of The E-Myth Revisited and over 35 other books, is driven by a mission to transform the state of small business, entrepreneurship, and economic development worldwide. We explore Michael's origin story and the moment that sparked the E-Myth movement, including his revelation that most business owners don't understand their own businesses. He shares how his intuitive and soul-driven approach led to the creation of the first business operating system and the now-iconic principle of “working on your business, not in it.” Michael introduces his Eightfold Path Framework, built on the eight discrete personalities of an entrepreneur: The Dreamer, Thinker, Storyteller, Leader, Designer, Builder, Launcher, and Grower. We also discuss his Dreaming Room methodology, the Radical You 5-year entrepreneurial school, and how AI is enabling the creation of 199 vertical-market E-Myth books. --- Awaken Your Inner Entrepreneur with Michael E. Gerber Good day, dear listeners. So guess who I have here as my guest today. After five years, we finally got to the day when I can interview Michael E. Gerber, who is the author of the E-Myth Revisited, E-Myth Mastery and 35 other best-selling books that have sold over 5 million copies in 30 languages and 150 countries. Michael was the original mastermind behind the concept of the first business operating system back in 1986. And he coined the idea of Working On Your Business, Rather Than In Your Business, which idea touched at least 100 million entrepreneurs worldwide. So Michael is also currently the founder at age 88, almost 89. He is the founder and CEO of the Michael E. Gerber companies, owning programs including Gerber Works, Radical You, Become The One, and The Dreaming Room most recently, and he owns the rights to 35 E-Myth books. So Michael, without further ado, welcome to the Management Blueprint Podcast. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you, Steve. I'm so excited because really, I read your book back in the early 2000s. I got immediately smitten. I actually started a side business trying to implement your system without any training from you, which unfortunately was not successful. So I had to close down my side business, but we definitely implemented it in my own business. And I was just very enamored. I also got a dog-eared copy of E-Myth Mastery, which is like a big volume, and I kind of went through all the ideas there. And finally, to have you be a guest is a great honor, and it's a very exciting day. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you. So, Michael, I'm going to start with my favorite question, even though you are like a super guest here, but tell me about your personal “Why” and how it influenced your life and how it got you where you are at age 88, almost 89, still going strong, still being an entrepreneur. So, what was that “Why” that you had and have? Well, I have said it so many times, it's to transform the state of small business worldwide. To transform the state of small business worldwide. I can almost dance to it because that is what I've been working on all these years. And in the heart of that is to transform the state of entrepreneurship worldwide. And in the process of accomplishing each of those to transform the state of economic development worldwide. Because were I capable of doing the first in order to do the second, I would absolutely achieve that result, economic development worldwide.Share on X And within that resides the spirit of all that, but you know all about that. Well, I mean, I know as much as you've written down and as much as you told me, I definitely know that part. I don't know what's going on in your mind because you're still being creative. You're still developing programs, which is amazing to me. I like to be like you when I get to your age. It's definitely awesome. So tell me about the beginning. What prompted you to write the E-Myth?

https://youtu.be/rRK1UIE-9nQ Nick Warner, seasoned business coach and host of the Together at the Top podcast, is on a mission to help leaders and emerging professionals align their values, careers, and impact. We explore Nick's Managing Up Framework: What's in it for them, Preferred Cadence, Preferred Channel, Prioritize, and Make It Convenient. Nick explains how to adapt communication to busy executives, navigate different leadership styles, and influence without authority. He also shares the mindset shifts needed to coach effectively, why humility is non-negotiable, and how soulful leadership fuels high-performing teams. --- Learn How to Manage Up from Nick Warner Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and I'm excited to have today on the show, Nick Warner, who is a seasoned business coach with over 4,000 sessions under his belt, but he also was the managing partner of a lobbying firm in California for a couple of decades before that. So, lots to bring to the show. Nick, welcome. Thank you for having me, Steve. I really appreciate it. Well, it's great to have you. You've got some good information and a great career and lots of experience. So let's dive in. My favorite question for guests is, what is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your practice? Yeah, great question. My personal “Why,” I hope this doesn't sound cheesy, this is a second career for me, is I really want to help people. I want to help them find the highest level of confluence of what they want in their life, in their career or their companies. So I'm really motivated by helping. I'm not sure I knew that until I got a little bit further into it and it started to like affect my soul, a more scientific way to say it. You realize it's their families and their stress environments and their kids' college accounts, and you may end up mattering in their lives. So, I really enjoy helping people in that regard. Yeah, I mean, coaching is a high leverage activity. You touch people who are multipliers, especially when you're in business coaching and that's a pretty awesome aspect of it. So if I multiply the 4,000 with the number of people touched, it's probably more like 50,000 something. It's funny you say it that way because when I was an employer directly, I would think about my staff of 25 times and I'm making this up a little bit like an average family of four and I would think of it in my sphere of responsibility was 100 people. So if I have an agency, I have a public sector agency where there's a thousand people that working in it, there's four, they have different titles, but essentially vice presidents. And I urge them to think about 4,000 people. There are very small number of us in this room and we can really impact people's lives. So yeah, I use that same similar multiplier when I think about it. Yeah. That's pretty awesome. You're probably undercharging for your coaching, talking about this. I doubt it. Some might disagree. All right, so let's switch gears and let's talk about your framework, because that's also pretty interesting. You developed a framework about something that a lot of us struggle with. I no longer struggle with it because I don't have anyone that I report to other than my wife. But I know that when I was working for big companies, it was very hard to manage up to get your bosses to actually not complicate your life and not want to second guess you and to exert your influence when you didn't have authority for it. So what is that process? What is that framework, The Managing Up Framework? Can you walk us through please? Yeah, for sure. I want to thank you too, because when you asked me the question about, do I have a framework? I said, no. And then you asked me to just talk about it. And when you played it back to me, I realized I do have a framework. So, I appreciate it. You actually really helped me a lot in my conversa...

https://youtu.be/rADiqnrhgrk Adam Coughlin, Co-founder, CMO, and Managing Partner of York IE, is on a mission to help startups beat the odds by building strong, capital-efficient brands that resonate with their markets. We explore Adam's Drumbeat Marketing Framework:Messaging & Positioning, Develop Unique Point of View, Execution, and Scorekeeping.He shares why brand consistency beats shiny-object syndrome, how vertical AI is redefining SaaS, and why startups need to balance storytelling with measurable impact. Adam also explains how to foster entrepreneurial thinking early and why founders must lead with a deep sense of purpose. --- Run Through Walls with Adam Coughlin Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Adam Coughlin, co-founder, CMO and managing partner of York IE, where he works with startups on foundational messaging, content, communications, go-to-market strategy, website and digital marketing, revenue operations, and corporate storytelling. Welcome to the show, Adam. Yeah, thanks for having me, Steve. Appreciate it. Yeah, you guys are really a full-service shop. You do almost everything. So tell me, how are you guys unique, and what is it that makes you a superior solution for people? Yeah, absolutely. So the founding team of York IE, we all work together at a company called Dine here in New Hampshire that did the domain name system. And we built that company to about a hundred million of annual recurring revenue, got acquired by Oracle. While we were inside of Oracle, we kind of reflected on the growth journey that we took at Dine. And we felt that a lot of the legacy institutions that we turned to for growth help, whether that was our investors, our advisors, our vendors, they were operating out of antiquated models so that were really good for them, but not necessarily for us as the operators. And so that's what we wanted to disrupt. So in 2019, we launched York IE. We are an advisory and investment firm. So we help technology companies grow. We do that through investing in early stage exclusively B2B software companies. And then because we were operators, we also built a strategic advisory firm that does strategy and execution across the functional areas of R&D, go to market and G&A. Because we feel like we want to roll up our sleeves and help companies be successful.Share on X Yeah. So you're basically investing companies that advise them, help to improve them, and some you just advise them and don't invest. So it's a combination. Combination. Exactly. Right. And I think in addition to the advise, it's really important to get across that we do the execution because that is where companies need help. Especially early stage companies. A lot of those teams are small, they're dynamic, they have a good strategy, they just need help and take some things off their plates and we're there to help them with that. Sounds great. So that leads to my question. What is your personal “Why” and how are you manifesting it in your business? Yeah, absolutely. I think this is a great question. And my personal “Why” is I love entrepreneurs. I think that they are both visionary and builders and that they are pursuing their dreams in the effort to create something and build something that makes the world better. And I think that if they build good companies, then they hire good employees. Good companies have impacts on communities. Good companies build wealth.Share on X But unfortunately, the numbers are stacked against them. A large majority of startups fail, and I don't think that needs to be the case. And that's what I want to try to impact. If we can lower those numbers a little bit and help more founders and entrepreneurs succeed, then we're going to have a really positive impact on things because of all the good things that come from that success. Yeah, well, I couldn't resonate more with that.

https://youtu.be/wn9XOB_H-as Dave Molenda, Business and Sales Coach, Speaker, Best-selling Author, and Host of the Positive Polarity Podcast, is driven by a mission to help business owners grow intentionally by strengthening their teams and delivering exceptional customer experiences. We dive into Dave's journey and his ST+ICE=P Formula, which stands for Strengthen the Team + Improve the Customer Experience = Profit. Dave explains how focusing first on internal team engagement leads to outstanding customer experiences, which then fuels sustainable business growth. We also discuss lessons from his book Growing On Purpose, why most businesses grow by accident rather than design, how to spot hidden blind spots, and when letting go of the wrong customers is the right move for your company's health and future. --- Cover Your Blindspots with Dave Molenda Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint podcast. And my guest here is Dave Molenda, who is a business and sales coach, speaker, best-selling author and the host of the wonderful Positive Polarity podcast. Dave, welcome to the show. Hi, Steve. how are you today? I'm doing pretty good because I'm meeting you, so it's already injecting some positivity in my day. Well good, I'm honored to be hanging out with you and thanks to you for being on our episode 260. I loved our question, “does your business have Covid?” That was a blast. So that was a great episode. So, for anyone listening, if you wonder if your business has Covid, I'm not going to tell you anything else other than head over and listen to Steve's answer to that question. It was awesome. Well, hopefully your business doesn't have Covid because it's a potentially lethal malady. Exactly. For sure. But it was, it really was a fun episode and we created a lot of snippets that we put on our website, so we definitely are excited about it. Awesome. But we're not going to talk about this because we are going to talk about your stuff and what you are doing because it is at least as good, if not better, and we are going to dive into your frameworks, your book and all your experiences, your “Why” and all that good stuff. So, are you ready? I'm ready. I got my seatbelt on. I'm all set here so we can go as fast or as slow as you want. Okay, so let's fast track into my favorite question. What is your personal “Why,” Dave? And how are you manifesting it in your practice and in your business? Yeah, for sure. I tell you, it's interesting, Steve. I love the name of your podcast, using a blueprint as a framework, because I can't believe how many people start and try to grow a business without a blueprint, without some kind of framework. So I love unpacking that with you on my show. But my “Why” is for all the people that are out there that are so good at what they do, they're good at their craft, they're good at their skill, whether it's building a house, whether it's selling something, whatever it is, making something, they're so good at that. But boy, they struggle when asking the question about, how do I grow this business? How do I create a team? How do I develop this team? How do I make this a long-lasting business? So my “Why” is really coming alongside of those people. Again, genuine people, really good at what they do, but they very often are struggling with what to do once they have gotten to the end so far.Share on X They've asked all their neighbors and friends, they've asked all their acquaintances to buy whatever they have. I don't know about you, but we get inundated with all the Girl Scout cookies from all your friends and family. But rarely do you get a knock on the door from somebody that you don't know. So my whole goal is to help businesses that are struggling, that want to grow. And so we come alongside them and help them again and create a blueprint different than yours. Our blueprint a lot of times involves the customer.

https://youtu.be/wn9XOB_H-as Dave Molenda, Business and Sales Coach, Speaker, Best-selling Author, and Host of the Positive Polarity Podcast, is driven by a mission to help business owners grow intentionally by strengthening their teams and delivering exceptional customer experiences. We dive into Dave's journey and his ST+ICE=P Formula, which stands for Strengthen the Team + Improve the Customer Experience = Profit. Dave explains how focusing first on internal team engagement leads to outstanding customer experiences, which then fuels sustainable business growth. We also discuss lessons from his book Growing On Purpose, why most businesses grow by accident rather than design, how to spot hidden blind spots, and when letting go of the wrong customers is the right move for your company's health and future. --- Cover Your Blindspots with Dave Molenda Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint podcast. And my guest here is Dave Molenda, who is a business and sales coach, speaker, best-selling author and the host of the wonderful Positive Polarity podcast. Dave, welcome to the show. Hi, Steve. how are you today? I'm doing pretty good because I'm meeting you, so it's already injecting some positivity in my day. Well good, I'm honored to be hanging out with you and thanks to you for being on our episode 260. I loved our question, “does your business have Covid?” That was a blast. So that was a great episode. So, for anyone listening, if you wonder if your business has Covid, I'm not going to tell you anything else other than head over and listen to Steve's answer to that question. It was awesome. Well, hopefully your business doesn't have Covid because it's a potentially lethal malady. Exactly. For sure. But it was, it really was a fun episode and we created a lot of snippets that we put on our website, so we definitely are excited about it. Awesome. But we're not going to talk about this because we are going to talk about your stuff and what you are doing because it is at least as good, if not better, and we are going to dive into your frameworks, your book and all your experiences, your “Why” and all that good stuff. So, are you ready? I'm ready. I got my seatbelt on. I'm all set here so we can go as fast or as slow as you want. Okay, so let's fast track into my favorite question. What is your personal “Why,” Dave? And how are you manifesting it in your practice and in your business? Yeah, for sure. I tell you, it's interesting, Steve. I love the name of your podcast, using a blueprint as a framework, because I can't believe how many people start and try to grow a business without a blueprint, without some kind of framework. So I love unpacking that with you on my show. But my “Why” is for all the people that are out there that are so good at what they do, they're good at their craft, they're good at their skill, whether it's building a house, whether it's selling something, whatever it is, making something, they're so good at that. But boy, they struggle when asking the question about, how do I grow this business? How do I create a team? How do I develop this team? How do I make this a long-lasting business? So my “Why” is really coming alongside of those people. Again, genuine people, really good at what they do, but they very often are struggling with what to do once they have gotten to the end so far. They've asked all their neighbors and friends, they've asked all their acquaintances to buy whatever they have. I don't know about you, but we get inundated with all the Girl Scout cookies from all your friends and family. But rarely do you get a knock on the door from somebody that you don't know. So my whole goal is to help businesses that are struggling, that want to grow.Share on X And so we come alongside them and help them again and create a blueprint different than yours. Our blueprint a lot of times involves the customer.

https://youtu.be/VsYNJyvLhJQ Devin Sizemore, Connector, Consultant, Speaker, and author of Connection Expansion, is driven by a mission to help entrepreneurs unlock opportunity by building meaningful, leveraged relationships that drive growth. We explore Devin's journey into connection strategy and his creation of the Connection Expansion Framework, a system designed to help business owners stop chasing prospects and instead build a thriving network that brings opportunity to them. The framework includes five key steps: identifying connectors to your target market, asking to be introduced, building strategic partnerships, saturating your niche, and staying top of mind through long-term follow-up. Devin explains why most entrepreneurs overemphasize referrals and underestimate the value of partnerships, events, and collaborations. He shares how to reduce friction in introductions, build authority in niche communities, and turn warm relationships into a consistent flywheel of growth. He also discusses his book Connection Expansion, a tactical guide to putting this system into action. --- Expand Your Network with Devin Sizemore Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And today my guest is Devin Sizemore, who is a connector, consultant, speaker, and author of Connection Expansion. Devin, welcome to the show. Steve, thanks so much for having me. Been looking forward to this conversation. Yeah, I've been looking forward to it too, especially since I read, I'm through about halfway through your book, Connection Expansion, and I found it fascinating, so let's talk about it. But first, let's start with your personal “Why” and how you are manifesting it in your business and businesses. Definitely. I love that question. I think a lot of people aren't aligned with their “Why,” and so I love that you start there. My personal “Why” is my first core principle that I share in the book, which is always add value. So everything I do, I focus on how do I add value to others, whether that's just people I'm meeting, whether that's clients, whether that's your listeners, I'm always focused on adding value. And so everything I do, every decision I make has to align with adding value.Share on X And if it does, great. If it doesn't, I'm probably not interested in doing it. That's a good principle to live by, to always add value. I had a client who had one of their core values was always add value. It was a consulting company and I thought it was very appropriate. So let's talk about your book, Connection Expansion, which describes your unique networking system. So my question is what prompted you to write a book about networking and about the system? Yeah, again, another great question. I've been doing consulting for 15 years. I've owned a bunch of companies and the core of it has always been connections. But where I think we're a little bit different and where I'm different is I have the ability to be a visionary. So what do I think I wanna create, but also being tactical. So grounding that into an actual system. Seven years ago, I really focused on connections. A couple of hundred clients later, and we've proven the system works. And so writing the book was kind of the last step of that process with me going through and really documenting the questions, the follow-up, the cadence, the templates, the whole system in a way that I could share it easily with the world.  And then I work with a lot of book clients with one of my biggest clients. And so the combination of, I want to do it, and I'm watching all these people have success with books kind of led to me going, hey, it's my turn to do this and I need to share it with the world. Okay. And why is it important to build a network, to have lots of connections? Maybe it's a stupid question, but I'm still curious. No, it's a great question because depending on what your goals are currently, the answer is different.

David Anderson, Founder of Off Madison Ave and Lighthouse PE, is passionate about helping people and companies thrive through leadership coaching, board service, and team development. We explore how David helps companies build high-performing teams using his High-Performing Team Framework, which includes: psychological safety, a learn and grow mindset, the chemist mentality, and attention to team dynamics when introducing new members. David also shares lessons from his book Leader is not a Title, emphasizing that true leadership is about influence—not hierarchy. We talk about building trust, breaking silos, and knowing when to evolve as a leader. --- Build High-Performing Teams with David Anderson Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And today I have David Anderson with me on this episode, who is the founder of Off Madison Avenue and Lighthouse PE, two companies that are now doing their own thing. And he is spending his time sitting on boards and doing leadership team coaching as an executive coach, business coach. He's also the author of Leader is Not a Title, which actually has a very cool cover. You have to read it closely to really see what is the title, what is not the title. But we can get into this later. So David, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on today, Steve. Absolutely. And let's start with my favorite question. What is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your practice and perhaps in your businesses as well? Yeah, awesome. Great question to kick it off here this morning. My personal “Why” is to help people and companies thrive. I have been very blessed over the years to had a lot of things go my way, be lucky. Believe me, I've had my fair share of rough times and screw-ups and bad businesses, but overall, I'm very fortunate. And as you mentioned early on, I am the founder, technically CEO of two companies, Off Madison Ave and Lighthouse PE. I'm not involved day-to-day with those anymore. And I really am helping people and companies thrive now by working as an executive team coach. I really focus on building high performing teams. As we all know, you can have the best strategy in the world, but if you don't have the right people, it doesn't really matter. I do speaking on this topic and a few other things and also sitting on boards of directors, helping companies really thrive. So it's all about helping people and companies thrive. Love it. Well, okay. So help us and help our listeners thrive as well. And so let's talk about this thing that you mentioned, the building high performing teams. I totally agree. A company is really a group of people committed to a cause. And if they're not thriving, then the company is not thriving. So what does it take for a business owner or CEO to build a high-performing team? What are the steps? What is your framework on this? Well, there's a few things. There's lots of factors that get you to a high-performing team, but a high-performing team is one where everybody's roles are extremely clearly defined. People know how to interact with each other to accomplish the common goal, the strategy, the vision that they're going to. There's no silos. Many organizations get caught in silos. They keep it from being a high-performing team. They know how to communicate with each other. 95, I would even say maybe more percent of our challenges are poor communications, lack of communications that get us in the way from ensuring that we are a high-performing team. My most favorite analogy of that, I don't know how many of your listeners out there are race car fans, maybe race cars once in their life, whatever, but think of a pit crew for a Formula One, IndyCar, NASCAR race. The driver actually is very important, just like a CEO, chair of achieving goals, winning the race, but it doesn't happen without the pit crew. And the pit crew is the best example I have been ab...

https://youtu.be/ogf58Yalix8 Dr. Sharon Spano, Executive Coach, Business Strategist, and author of The Pursuit of Time and Money, is driven by a mission to help leaders realize their fullest potential and elevate their impact across business, family, and community. We learn about Sharon's journey helping high-performing leaders navigate stress, growth, and transformation through The Awareness Elevation Framework. By guiding them to witness themselves, build awareness, observe patterns, and shift behaviors, Sharon empowers deeper personal and professional growth. In this episode, Sharon unpacks the 12 stages of adult development and reveals why many leaders plateau early—despite external success. We explore how awareness creates lasting change, and how the “emptiness of success” often mirrors one's inner relationship with time, money, and life. --- Become a Self-Aware Leader with Dr. Sharon Spano Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And I have today Dr. Sharon Spano, Executive Coach and Business Strategist, and the author of The Pursuit of Time and Money. As my guest, Sharon, thanks for joining me on the show. Thank you so much for having me, Steve. I am looking forward to this. Yeah, I am very curious about what you're bringing to the table. You have some original ideas on executive coaching and business strategy. But let's start with my favorite question. What is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your practice? Well, that's a very big question. The “Why” is all about helping people realize their fullest potential. And the reason that it's so important to me is because I have seen just so much damage across the country and across the world from individuals who have been under poor leadership. And I really believe that leadership is just a very important part of our economy and how businesses are run. And so anything that I can do, the primary focus is to help leaders as I've moved into this other stage of my career, really help them discover and uncover some of the things that are holding them back, even though they may be successful. I find there's always something more that they're looking for so that they can be better leaders for themselves, their families and their businesses. Yeah, I think it's such an overlooked idea that leaders are multipliers. And when you coach a leader and you make them better, then you improve the quality of not just the family, but their employees and the employees, and they are happier then they're going to help the customers and their family. So it's a real force multiplier that you do when you coach your leaders the right way. So this podcast is a podcast of frameworks, and I'm always after frameworks, as you know. So I'm wondering about your framework that you could share with us. We talked about a three-stage transition framework for entrepreneurs. I don't know if that's the right title for it. Can you talk a little bit about this framework? I operate, as most of us do, I think, from many frameworks. The primary framework that I use is grounded in human development because I believe that's a very important part of how we become more effective leaders. Many people don't understand that the stages of human development are exactly that opportunity. But if we wanted to boil it down to some of the things that you and I talked about, we talked about being able to witness oneself, have that awareness of awareness, and then to look at how to leverage opportunities for growth so that if something is going on in your life, for instance, it might feel like it's very, very challenging, it is actually an opportunity to move into another stage of development. And then to look at what is the best option to get there, because sometimes, we're not able to do that on our own. We need other people to walk alongside of us. And that's why I believe the coaching profession has grown in the way that it has...

https://youtu.be/RaLbPGZBOEU Seth Tillotson, CEO and Founder of Your Business Consultation, is driven by a mission to empower everyday professionals to become confident entrepreneurs and business owners. We learn how Seth's journey—from launching service businesses to helping others transition from 9–5 roles—inspired his purpose. He shares his framework, The 7 Profit Improvement Areas, which helps entrepreneurs uncover hidden revenue and boost profitability by focusing on: Lead Generation, Conversion Rates, Closing Rate, Client Retention, Increasing Average Sale, Increasing Sale Frequency, and Cost Reduction. He also explains how to use squeeze pages to accelerate conversions, outlines the Captivate–Fascinate–Educate–Close method, and discusses how entrepreneurs can avoid the trap of staying busy instead of being effective. --- 6 Figures to Your Profit in 60 Minutes with Seth Tillotson Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Seth Tillotson, the CEO and founder of Your Business Consultation, and an investor in multiple retail-oriented businesses. Seth, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Steve. I'm excited to be here. All right. So you're a very young entrepreneur to be on the show in general, but that's great because you're bringing a different perspective, you're bringing a different energy, and you have certainly big ambitions and already a good track record. So, tell me a little bit about your personal ”Why,” what is driving you, and how are you manifesting it in your business? Sure. So, my personal “Why,” it comes from a feeling that I got. I'll tell you a specific story. The first time that I helped somebody transition from a nine to five employee to their own business owner. So, I, at one point, owned a booth rental hair salon and I encouraged everybody to have their own business as they rented the space from me. I came across a young lady who was timid and shy working a nine to five that wasn't really being treated the best at that salon. And so I said, you know what, if you come over and rent a booth, then I'll sit down with you for as long as it takes and we'll set up the whole LLC, get your registration, EIN, taxes, all that fun stuff, insurance, all of it. It took about four hours, but by the end of it, I could tell that she was feeling confident in having her own business and excited to have her own brand and be able to choose her own hours. If there was a specific service that she didn't want to offer, she didn't have to. I had no rules other than to keep the space clean and sanitary, pay the rent on time, that's it. So, about a year later, I had an interview with her and I sat down and asked, how's it going? And just the glow from her eyes and the body language, everything, it's so different. It was confident, it was inspiring. And the feeling that I got from doing that, from being a part of that transformation, the only thing that I can think of it is akin to when I was flying helicopters. And so, like the feeling of that freedom and the responsibility, I guess, it lit a fire in my soul. I'll put it that way. And I knew then that this was one of my sole purposes, something that not only am I good at helping people with that transition and answering all their questions, but it's something that I feel like I'm here to do. Love it. That's a very inspiring story. And I mean, hey, entrepreneurship can be life changing for sure. It probably is life changing. Now, not all the time for the better, but it's definitely if you embrace it, then it can make your life much more autonomous and rewarding. So, you started offering this service and, in fact, on your LinkedIn page and website you talk about a 60-minute conversation with an entrepreneur and you basically look at seven different areas in their business and you offer to identify at least six figures of profit improvement, which is quite a bold claim. So,

Andrew Amann, CEO and Co-founder of NineTwoThree Studio, is driven by a passion for building great products and embracing the entrepreneurial journey alongside his team and clients. We learn about Andrew's journey as a founder and his philosophy of finding joy in the process. He introduces The AI Operating System, a practical framework that helps companies adopt AI with clarity and speed. The system begins by building an internal knowledge base, then moves into deploying simple AI agents to automate repetitive tasks, and culminates in managing these agents through a Super-Agent that orchestrates workflows and interacts with external systems using natural language. --- Build Your AI Operating System with Andrew Amann Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Andrew Amann, the CEO and co-founder of NineTwoThree Studio, an AI consulting agency, building products for funded startups and established brands such as Consumer Reports, NPR, and Experian. Andrew, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Steve. It's a pleasure to be here. Great to have you. And I will start with my favorite question as always, what is your personal “Why,” Andrew, and how are you manifesting it in your business? Sure, so we've been at this for 12 years, and I believe that many entrepreneurs would answer that question depending on the year that they're in. As you grow, my personal”Why” originally was to build the biggest company to be on the tallest building in Boston and to have the logo basically replace Fenway Park. And that dream has has sailed. I don't think I'm interested in that anymore. It seems aspirational and I think necessary when you're starting a company to have those levels of aspirations and dreams because you have to run through things that most people wouldn't and you have to achieve things that most people would give up on. So the journey of entrepreneurship, I've discovered that my “Why” is to be part of the journey. I've read a lot of books recently, basically around the philosophy of the process of like Siddhartha is a great example, or The Alchemist, or even Life of Pi. That's been my last year of inner research about what I want to be when I grow up. And what I discovered in all three of those books is the journey is what matters, the story is what matters, and the process of success, the process part is what matters. And many entrepreneurial friends, they sell their business and they lose that aspect of their lives because they forget that the process was what was fun. The ability to learn, the ability to grow, and the ability to be part of the team is what I truly admire. So when I was asked this question in a CEO group, they said, Andrew, what do you want to do next? I said, I kind of want to do the same thing I'm doing now. And they said, well, who do you wanna work with? And I said, the teammates that I currently have. And they said, well, what type of clients do you want? And I said, the clients we currently have. And so I think my “Why” is just kind of living in the moment, being part of the process, being successful, but also supporting the teammates that we have so that they can be prosperous, that they can find their purpose. They can be great problem solvers, but they can also be great providers for their family. And so my “Why” is to support that journey and that process that we're going through right now. Wow. Okay. Well, you look very young for having such a wise “Why,” but it's good. You shortcut the process. I do agree that the journey is the destination, perhaps. It definitely is very important. And as an investment banker, I can testify that sometimes you saw businesses for people and then they fall into depression because they lost their identity. They didn't know how to recreate the success that they were having along the way. And so that's pretty awesome. So having said that,

Alistair Gordon, CEO of Expertunity, is driven by a mission to empower technical experts to reach their full potential by mastering enterprise skills that elevate their impact. We learn about Alistair's journey into expert development and his creation of The Expert-ship Model, a framework that helps technical professionals move beyond subject-matter expertise to become influential leaders within their organizations. The model outlines nine core capabilities across three domains: Technical, Relationship, and Value—ranging from solving complex problems and transferring knowledge to collaborating across teams, engaging stakeholders, understanding the business, and leading change. --- Supercharge Your Experts with Alistair Gordon Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Alistair Gordon, who is the CEO of Expertunity, a new global enterprise dedicated to helping technical experts everywhere reach their full potential. Alistair, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Steve. Thank you for the invite. It's great to have you and learn about this opportunity for experts, how to get them to reach their full potential. So, let's start with your personal “Why,” your personal mission, and what are you doing to manifest it in your business? So, over many years, I've worked for lots and lots of organizations, Steve, in many roles as a leader and as a consultant to lots of businesses. And mostly my prominence, if you like, is leadership development. Sort of topics that your podcast covers, very relevant and very familiar to me. But along the way, sort of 10 years or so ago, we discovered this large group of people who weren't really being developed, technical experts most of your listeners will, I'm sure know one or other of these people, highly technical, they might be in finance, they might be in IT, whatever. And they're technically brilliant, but they're very stuck and frustrated, and not really fulfilling their potential and not necessarily having a fully fulfilling work life because they're technically brilliant, but they're missing some of what we call these enterprise skills that really help them add value at 2X, 3X to their organization. So having spotted the gap, we've done lots of research. We've worked with thousands and thousands of them now over the years and feel like we know them really well, Steve. And the most fulfilling part of this is that once you show a technical expert how they can be a better expert, they attack it with military precision and they really lean into it. And both themselves and their families and the organizations they work for get just extraordinary benefits from them really leaning in and making the difference they know they can make. And why do you think, Alistair, there is this gap? Is it not natural to not have the gap or is it the difference between the entrepreneur who develops a multifaceted approach to the expert who is more of in a silo and they just never got the chance to develop it. Why does that happen? Is this the corporate environment that takes care of it? I mean, it's absolutely the right question, Steve, from my perspective, because the answer is, as you might expect, multifaceted. So if we just look at it from the organizational perspective, most large organizations, even medium organizations, I know a lot of your listeners are, will have someone responsible for developing talent, but 281: Supercharge Your Experts with Alistair GordonShare on X They even have a model called the 9-Box Grid, which most large organizations use to establish who is high potential talent and they are the people who get spent lots of money on them developing their skills and what have you. And the definition of potential for most organizations is the ability to lead more people in the future. So it's people leadership orientated and what have you. And in a 9-Box Grid,

https://youtu.be/8qOmMjL008Y Want to become a more adaptable and effective leader? In this episode, Kevin Eikenberry—trainer, author, podcaster, and founder—shares powerful strategies from his latest book, Flexible Leadership. As a leadership expert dedicated to helping organizations, leaders, and individuals unlock their full potential, Kevin reveals how to flex your leadership style to navigate uncertainty, make smarter decisions, and empower your team. --- Flex Your Leadership with Kevin Eikenberry Good day dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Kevin Eikenberry, a trainer, author, podcaster who's empowering organizations, leaders, and individuals to fulfill their potential through transformative and effective learning strategies. Kevin, welcome to the show. Steve, I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.  Well, I was excited to have you because you have some really cool ideas about leadership and how to make it flexible, which is what the people need. I mean, it cannot be one size fits all solution. But let's start with my favorite question which is, what is your personal 'Why' and how are you manifesting it in your practice? Well, I am fortunate that my personal 'Why' is directly connected to our organizational 'Why'. I suppose when the company has my name on it, that's a privilege. We are in the business of helping leaders to be more effective because we know that if leaders are more effective, we can make the world a better place.Share on X So ultimately, that's our goal. As you introduced me, we talked about helping people reach their potential, and that means people as humans and leaders. If we can do that for leaders, then leaders can help unleash that in others. Yeah. So there's a multiplication going on there and that's a great opportunity, but also a great responsibility. A Hundred percent, for sure. I mean, when I think about leadership in general, Steve, that I think about those two things, right? Leadership is a tremendous responsibility, right? If we're a people leader, a capital L leader, we have positional power, people are watching us. We have the responsibility to make sure that what we're doing is modeling what we want from others. We have the responsibility of setting goals and outcomes that are desirable to reach.Share on X We have a responsibility to help our people get to those things and build their skills and confidence. All of that is our responsibility, and when we do those things, the opportunities that we have to make the world a better place, our organizations more effective, our team members more satisfied and more committed to their work. All comes with that, 100%. Love it. I love it. So, let's talk about your brand of leadership, because you developed this concept of Flexible Leadership. So can you explain to our audience what you mean by Flexible Leadership? And then what is your framework around it? Because you also have a framework that you developed around it. All of this is related to my new book, Flexible Leadership: navigate uncertainty and lead with confidence. And so let's start here. What does it mean to be a flexible leader? To be a flexible leader is to be a both and leader. Too many folks think, well, I'm either this or I'm that. I'm either going to do this or I'm going to do that. Intention plus Context plus Flexors equals being a flexible leader.Share on X And so intention says, I'm willing to, I'm open to the fact that the 'How' of my leadership might need to change. That's how I do it naturally, or my first inclination, or my style, or my habit might not always best serve us. So the intention is to recognize that, hey, number one, flexibility is useful and valuable. And number two, intention to say in this moment, perhaps I need to flex. It's both a mindset and a skillset and the skillset comes from the other two components. But if we don't have that mindset right,

https://youtu.be/Fka2npq2Kjg Marcus Hamaker, CEO of [bu:st] USA, is driven by a passion for helping small businesses find their pursuit of value by simplifying projects, optimizing processes, and streamlining operations for sustainable growth. We learn about Marcus's journey from growing up in a family business to leading [bu:st] USA, where he applies lean principles to help organizations improve alignment, communication, and execution. He explains the 5 Steps to Finding Value framework—Organizational Alignment, Communication, SOPs, Change Management, and Project Controls—guiding businesses to remove inefficiencies and drive sustainable growth. He also shares how the Boost Method ensures teams operate with clarity and purpose, emphasizing fastest time to value as a key metric for success. He highlights key leadership lessons and the mindset shifts entrepreneurs need to scale effectively. --- Pursuit Value with Marcus Hamaker Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Marcus Hamaker, the CEO of [bu:st] USA, a consulting firm that helps you simplify your projects, optimize your processes and streamline your organization. He is also the host of The Pursuit of Value Podcast. Marcus, welcome to the show.  Hey, Steve, how are you? Thanks for having me.  Yeah, I am super pumped to have you. It's going to be a great episode and we are going to start as usual with the 'Why', because that's what powers great entrepreneurs. They have a strong 'Why'. So what is your personal 'Why', Marcus, and what are you doing to manifest it in [bu:st] or any of your businesses? Yeah. So, my personal 'Why' is just to make companies better. Ever since I was younger, growing up in the family business, watching my dad work hard. I'm very intrigued by business and it's really interesting to me why one business can succeed exponentially and another business really struggles to get off the ground. And so what we do at [bu:st] USA, what my podcast is about, The Pursuit of Value, is really helping small businesses be better.Share on X Real simple. And I also believe that small business has the power to change the world. I believe that business is and can be the greatest force for good in the world today because of just the entity and the formation of it. Also, not only what you can do with your employees internally, but how you can embrace the environment that you're in. Wherever that's in Italy, whether it's here in the United States, you have the ability and the responsibility and the opportunity to impact wherever your business sits. And so I really love small business.  Yeah. And small businesses are always exposed to market forces and there's no way to take it easy and you always have to strive to be competitive and make a profit and definitely is a powerful force for reducing waste. And I'm making this point because one of the things that [bu:st] does is to apply Lean principles. Tell me a little bit about the [bu:st] method that your company, your group developed, and how do you bring in Lean?  Yeah, so when we talk about Lean, it really has to do with value and it has to do with defining what is valuable to the company. So what's valuable to a manufacturer might be very different to what's valuable to a service company, right? So in our [bu:st] method, we always want to start with defining the future picture. What is success to that company? Or more simply, what is the solution to the problem that they're running into? So you define the future picture, you define the targets, you build the roadmap.  And through that whole process of defining the value, you also want to throw out what's not valuable. And that's where it lines up with Lean. And we always really try to focus on making every step, every process as efficient as possible. And that's what's really important. And that's what we do really well at [bu:st] USA. 

https://youtu.be/LvorRF-e2UQ Lawrence Armstrong, Chairman of Ware Malcomb, is driven by a mission to help leaders layer their leadership by integrating creativity, strategy, and empowerment to build resilient, innovative organizations. We learn about Lawrence's journey from architect to CEO, how he transformed Ware Malcomb into a leading international design firm, and why he developed the Layered Leadership framework. Inspired by architectural design, he explains how leadership, like architecture, involves synthesizing different layers—Light, Sound, Emotion, and Thought—to build strong, visionary organizations. He shares how leaders can apply these 4 Layers of Leadership to inspire teams, create strategic clarity, and drive sustainable growth. He also introduces the Visible Light Spectrum metaphor for business diversification, discusses the importance of fostering a culture of innovation, and offers insights on making tough leadership decisions. --- Layer Your Leadership with Lawrence Armstrong Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest is Lawrence Armstrong, Chairman of Ware Malcomb, a leading international design firm. He's also an accomplished business leader, architect, artist, and the author of Layered Leadership. Larry, welcome to the show. Oh, Steve, thanks. Thanks for having me on. Well, what a bio, what a CV. I'm proud of having you on this show. So, we'll get into all of what you are doing, but let's start with why you're doing it. What is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your different business, and I guess authorship is part of artistic activities? Thanks. Well, I think I wrote the book and pretty much everything else I'm doing right now is trying to help people. We had a great time building our company and I'm involved in a lot of other pursuits at this point. Some of the ideas and the creativity we brought to leadership I thought could really help people build their organizations. So, let's plunge right in. When you talk about leadership, what is your experience about it, and what made you want to write a book about it? Yeah, I think that I have a little bit of a different take on leadership than maybe most people do. So that's why I wrote it. The idea behind Layered Leadership is this conceptual idea of the way I see the world. Architects think of layers when they design space and buildings and different aspects of a building. And so I've sort of tried to expand that thinking to different concepts and different inspirations and how we can utilize inspirations in our life and turn them into strategies to build an organization and to inspire growth. And so using that creative thought, whether it be a business, a concept in a business book or a metaphor for a physics lesson from high school or a discussion about the example set by Leonardo da Vinci, would bring different ideas together and synthesize those into strategies to build an organization.Share on X And so I feel like it's a little different take on this idea of leadership. So, what does layered leadership look like? I mean, are there like figurative layers that you have to build in order to be a great leader? How does it work? Yeah. So it's sort of the baseline of, first of all, understanding your company and where you want to go and what you're trying to do. And then inspiring your people to help build it. And so, the various aspects are understanding your company, what it does, what it does not do, I think is very important. And then how you want to expand it, how you leverage and encourage your people and empower your people to help get there, and how you build those people and how you encourage them by empowering them and training them, and then just infusing different concepts that inspire in a creative way to build up. So, Larry, in our earlier discussion, you told me that this layered concept or layered vision,

https://youtu.be/etlBrw4WKGw?si=NxtN4Gg1iZ02nmgV Ron Monteiro, Keynote Speaker, Facilitator, Trainer, and Author of Love Mondays, is driven by a mission to help professionals discover their purpose, build fulfilling careers, and burn their boats to fully commit to meaningful work.  We learn about Ron's journey from a finance executive to an entrepreneur, speaker, and author, and how he embraced the Ikigai framework—a Japanese philosophy for finding meaning in work. He introduces the Path to Entrepreneurship Framework, a four-step approach that helps individuals transition from corporate life to a career they love: Find Your Purpose, Build Your Bridge, Burn Your Boats, and Flex Your Muscle. Ron shares insights on overcoming fear, learning to say no, and balancing financial stability with the pursuit of passion, while also exploring the mindset shifts needed to create a career where every day—not just Mondays—feels meaningful and exciting. --- Burn Your Boats Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Ron Monteiro, keynote speaker, facilitator, trainer, and the author of Love Mondays. Ron, welcome to the show. Thank you, Steve. I'm very excited to be here. Well, it's exciting to have you. You have a very interesting career coming across the world to be here with us. And you also have some interesting frameworks that you're using. So, let's start with what drives you. What is your personal “Why?” And what is this Ikigai process that you mentioned on social media and your posts that help people find theirs? Yeah, I want to rewind. Like I'm a big proponent of purpose and life work and things like that. Many years ago, I would be shaking my head because I wasn't clear on my purpose. So, I've done a lot of work and a lot of personal development work that a lot of it talks about how do you start with what is your “Why,” what is your purpose? Simon Sinek, as you've mentioned. And my purpose now is I get a lot of joy from helping others. So, the way I've phrased it, how do I help myself and others love Mondays and every other day? And I think it connects to my book, which talks about how do you love Mondays? So today's a Monday that we're recording, and every other day. And then Ikigai is a beautiful Japanese concept that talks about people who don't even have a word for retirement. They love what they're doing so much, and it's connected to their life purpose.Share on X So, Ikigai is a framework I love. There's a whole book on Ikigai, if anybody's interested, which asks four simple questions. “What do you love to do?” is the first one. And this is something we journal. So let's say five years from now, what I love to do might be slightly different than today. So it's not a fixed destination. It's one of those iterative processes. So, you start with “What do I love to do?” The second is, “What am I good at?” So for me, I love teaching and I think I'm pretty good at it. I've done it for a while now. So, what do I love doing? The third is “What does the world need?” Okay, so if I continue with my example, I think the world needs people to teach them things. So, for me, one of my favorite topics to teach is soft skills and story time because I really struggled there. I landed a company that helped me overcome my fear and now I teach it for a living. So that in itself is a “Why” for me. And then the fourth question is, “What can you get paid for?” I know inflation and all these things are coming into play. So, if you can answer those four questions and it's right in the bullseye, right in the heart of those, and think about four circles, concentric circles. If you find something that's in the middle there, it's your Ikigai, it's your reason for living, it's your reason for waking up on a Monday and every other day. And that's, to me, a lifelong journey. And if you hit any of those two questions in isolation,

https://youtu.be/Q6-OaKXD2hU Rob Levin, Chairman and Co-Founder of WorkBetterNow, is driven by a mission to help small and medium-sized businesses find top Latin American talent and scale efficiently. We learn about Rob's journey from his early passion for entrepreneurship to launching WorkBetterNow, a company that connects SMBs with skilled professionals from Latin America. He explains the hiring process his company has developed—from sourcing top-tier talent to precision matching and seamless onboarding—allowing business owners to delegate more effectively and focus on growth. He also shares insights on the challenges of hiring in today's market, the importance of building a strong company culture, and why core values should guide every aspect of a business. --- Find Latin Talent with Rob Levin Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and I welcome Rob Levin, Chairman and Co-Founder of WorkBetterNow, an agency that provides high-performing talent from Latin America for small and medium-sized businesses. Rob, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Steve. Great to see you. Great to see you, and I'm excited to have this conversation. So let's start with my favorite question. What is your personal “Why” and how do you manifest it in your business? Since I was a kid, I always loved the world of entrepreneurship and more importantly, entrepreneurs, business owners. My dad, while he didn't start his business, he did end up owning a business. And I just remember even going with him, as a teenager, to meetings with his accountant and asking his accountant questions about other businesses that they were involved with. And I was reading Inc. Magazine as a kid. And I've always thought of business owners as one of the groups of heroes of this country, along with first responders and military members, what they do, what they go through, and what really is the output of all of that, the effects. Almost all of my career has been spent helping small businesses in one way or another. I started my career as an accountant, and even though I was at a big firm, I was working with the owners of closely held businesses. I was an executive in several fast-growing small businesses many years ago before I started my own, my first company, which was the New York Enterprise Report, a media company for business owners, and then now with WorkBetterNow, this is what I love to do, is to help business owners fulfill their dreams. That's awesome. So, what was the moment that led you to starting WorkBetterNow, this business that you're in right now? Well, I'll give you the medium-length story. So, I hired my first assistant maybe 11 years ago, and having the right assistant changed my life. I mean, I was not doing the work that I shouldn't have been doing. I had more free time to spend on higher value activities, more free time to spend with my family and friends, and it just changed my life. And because I know a lot of business owners, I mean, hundreds, if not well over a thousand, a lot of people were asking me about my assistant. They knew she wasn't in the office with me and she was remote from Latin America. And I was employing her through this other company based in Latin America. And at some point I said, you know what? I can do a better job than these guys are. And I won't go into the details there, but I was then in Portland, Oregon, and a friend of mine from college met me there and we were having drinks. And I said, hey, I think I'm going to start this business for, at the time, it was different than what it is today. It was just providing assistance to business owners. We believe every business owner should have an assistant. I mentioned this to my friend A.C. and he said, I'll do it with you. And that was 2018 and we've been off to the races ever since. That's exciting. And this is an exciting time to grow a business with virtual assistants. With Zoom,

https://youtu.be/NPxN5HDgqHs David Shavzin, President of The Value Track, is driven by a mission to help business owners know and make their number when exiting their companies—maximizing financial returns and securing their legacies. We learn about David's journey from corporate leadership to founding The Value Track, where he helps business owners strategically prepare for and execute their exits. He explains the What's Your Transition Looks Like Framework, which guides business owners through understanding the M&A process, estimating transferable value, refining their advisory team, conducting due diligence, and enhancing business value before a sale. He highlights the importance of early planning, maintaining business momentum, and avoiding common pitfalls that can derail a successful exit. --- Know and Make Your Number with David Shavzin Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is David Shavzin, President of The Value Track, which helps business owners set out an exit strategy and then sell their companies by optimizing price and sale terms so that they can monetize their life's work. David, welcome to the show. Thanks, Steve. I appreciate you having me. Looking forward to it. It's great to have you and we have good topics to talk about. So let's start with my favorite question. What is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your business? Yeah, for me, it really has been helping people. That's sort of number one. And of course, we tend to do that in the way that we know or our background or our experience. So for me, that has come through decades of working in the business world, more generally, a lot of large organizations, and so helping the smaller business owners and the smaller companies in that lower bid market, I get to be pretty rewarding for me. Well, definitely, you're projecting that enthusiasm about helping people, which is awesome. So what was the defining moment that led you to starting your business? It's interesting. It came really at the tail end of my large corporate career and was transitioning out, looking at what I wanted to do exactly. And early on, ended up helping a friend with their business, just kind of went in to see what was going on. And I realized that while they had a good business, they'd been working really hard, they did not have all that help around them for either maybe outside advisors. They didn't have all the resources in all of the companies that I've had, the experience. And there was so much that they could be doing to make that company run better, stronger, faster, more valuable. And that kind of triggered it for me. And I just got engaged and started working more with, like I say, those smaller companies because there was just so much I could bring to the table. That's really what kicked it all off. Yeah. So you basically helped them with their exit and you actually have developed the process to do that because it can be quite complicated. There are many moving parts. So what does your transition framework look like and can you walk our listeners through what you do when you meet with a new client and kind of help them figure all these things out? Yeah, it really starts out, Steve, with just a lot of conversation. We want to understand not just the business in depth, but what their personal goals are. So they've been often at this business for 10 years or 20 years, 30 years, and haven't taken the time often to think about, okay, what's next whenever that is? What do they really want out of, I'll say, the company, but also out of life after that? Some people might go that traditional retirement route. Some people might be thinking about another business venture, but they're just kind of running day to day. So we want to understand what those goals are, when they want out, how much money they might need, what they want to have happened to the company,

https://youtu.be/5i_RE9C7KLY Dr. Karen Hills Pruden, Founder and CEO of Pruden Global Business Solutions Consulting and the Sister Leaders Community, is driven by a mission to increase the number of women in senior leadership and help them go from intrapreneur to entrepreneur with the tools to sustain long-term success. We learn about Karen's journey from struggling to find mentorship in middle management to breaking into senior leadership and founding organizations that empower women professionals. She explains the Learn, Practice, Teach Framework, a structured approach that helps professionals transition from intrapreneurship (working for others) to entrepreneurship (leading their own ventures). She also introduces the Professional Equity Model, emphasizing relationships, reputation, and expertise as key drivers of career and business success. She highlights the power of mentorship, strategic growth, and continuous learning in building expertise and staying competitive. Go Intrapreneur to Entrepreneur with Karen Hills Pruden Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint podcast. And my guest today is Karen Hills Pruden, the founder and CEO of Pruden Global Business Solutions Consulting and the Sister Leaders Community, a global community of exceptional men and women leaders of every generation committed to increasing the number of women in senior leadership. Karen is an expert in empowering businesses to build high performing leaders, and the author or co-author of, wait for this, 32 books. Karen, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm excited about this conversation. Well, I am excited too. I've never met such a prolific author as you are. So, let's start with your “Why,” because someone like you, I'm sure, has a very powerful “Why.” So, what is your personal “Why,” and what are you doing in your practice and in your business to manifest it? Absolutely. So my “Why” in helping women professionals acquire and sustain themselves in senior leadership has to do with a pain point that happened in my career about 16 years ago. 16 years ago, I was in middle management, had lingered there for about a decade and I wanted to go into leadership, but I did not know of any senior leaders who happened to be women. And so at that time in my career, LinkedIn was about five years old. I jumped on LinkedIn, I did some research, looked for women leaders who look like me, African American, who were in a vice president position and who had been in that position for at least a decade because I wanted a mentor. So I got my two, number one and number two choices, shot off a direct message through LinkedIn with a copy of my resume with the request for mentorship. And then they made me wait about two weeks. And then at that two-week mark, my number one selection came through and said she will be glad to be my mentor for $350 an hour. Now, back then, I wasn't rolling like that so $350 an hour was a lot for me but what do you do when you are looking to achieve a goal and someone has achieved it and they can share that blueprint with you. So I negotiated one hour a month for one year. So my contract with her was one $350 for one hour a month for one year. And I worked with her for one year, four months after that one year, I was invited to apply for a senior leadership position. I went through the 4 month process and I have been in senior leadership since then. And so, in terms of my personal “Why,” I devised my professional development corporation for women professionals because it should not be this difficult to find a mentor when you are looking to go to leadership. And so, that is the whole vision and mission of my organization. The mission is to increase the number of women in senior leadership and allow them the experience and education to sustain themselves.Share on X That's great. That's very good work. And you were very smart to invest in a great mentor because that's one of ...

https://youtu.be/j1K89s-x8D8 Adam Goldman, Franchise Coach, Consultant, and author of The Franchisee Lifestyle, is driven by a mission to help individuals find their dream franchise opportunities and align them with their goals for a fulfilling lifestyle. We learn about Adam's journey into franchise coaching and his 3 Filters Framework, a tool he uses to match individuals with franchise opportunities. The framework evaluates three key factors: sales vs. execution, full-time vs. part-time engagement, and brick-and-mortar vs. service-based models. Adam explains how these filters guide potential franchisees to discover opportunities that fit their skills, preferences, and lifestyle. He also shares insights on the differences between lifestyle and growth businesses, the keys to franchising success, and the importance of finding the right cultural fit. Find Your Dream Franchise with Adam Goldman Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Adam Goldman, a franchise coach and consultant and the author of The Franchisee Lifestyle. Adam, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Steve. So great to be here today. Great to have you here. So, let's start with your “Why.” What is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your business? So, I really have two “Why's.” Let's start with them and they're in no particular order. For my personal “Why,” it's really to kind of have a great life in general. I'm talking about things such as working at my own schedule, being able to be there for my kids. My daughters are seven, nine, and 13 and I'm not getting any younger. So, to kind of make the best out of this time through travel or through fitness or whatever that might be, and my business allows me to do that. In many ways, my business is a lifestyle business. And number two, my “Why,” when it comes to my company, is really I'm here to help people. So, what that means is my work is, I almost see myself as a dating agency between individuals and franchise brands.Share on X So, the way I've structured my business is I'm really customer focused and really candidate focused, meaning I spend much of my day because of the systems I have in place that really allow me to have that biggest impact with my candidates, to get to know them better and to make that good match. And even after I've made that match to kind of have a relationship with them afterwards. And I'm very blessed to have a situation like this. That's interesting, and we'll get into what you do and being a franchise coach. But what struck me that you mentioned in your introduction is that you said that it's very much a lifestyle business. And I think you're not just preaching franchise, you are a franchisee yourself. Or are you not? No, I'm actually not a franchisee per se. I'm part of a network. But we're not a franchise organization. Okay, well, some of the franchise coaching organizations are franchises. That's right, that's correct. We're not one. You're not one, okay. So then my question is, what differentiates in your view, a lifestyle business from maybe a growth business or whatever the other category you call it? And what are the pros and cons? That's a great question. The way I see a lifestyle business is being one with flexibility. I have friends that are amazing entrepreneurs and I love them to death, but they have young kids, they don't see them. They might be traveling on a roadshow all year long. And I'm just not willing myself to kind of, for me, it's about time. What kind of hours you're working, what kind of flexibility do you have on a day to day basis? That makes sense. That's a great perspective. And I have not really considered this before. So it's a great argument in favor of a franchise or any other kind of lifestyle businesses. And do you consider franchises as more likely to be lifestyle businesses as opposed to maybe growth businesses?

https://youtu.be/dxdFmUiiQds Mark Josephson, Executive Coach, three-time CEO with three exits, Founder, Advisor, and Investor, is driven by a mission to empower leaders and think big to achieve clarity, purpose, and lasting impact in their organizations and lives. We learn about Mark's journey from leading three companies to successful exits to coaching leaders and teams to unlock their potential. He explains the Wouldn't It Be Great If framework, a four-step approach to setting ambitious goals: pushing away from the desk, asking bold questions, identifying what needs to be true to achieve them, and brainstorming without constraints. Mark also introduces the Balcony vs. Dance Floor framework, which helps CEOs balance strategic vision with operational focus. He shares lessons from his entrepreneurial journey and insights from his podcast Critical Moments. Think BIG with Mark Josephson Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Mark Josephson, Executive Coach, three-time CEO with three exits, Founder, Advisor, and Investor. Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you, Steve. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Oh, it's exciting to have you. You have built two companies up to exit. Oh sorry, three companies. That's very impressive. And you're advising other companies. And now you're going to advise our listeners, which is very cool. So, let's start with my favorite question, which is, what is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your practice? Great question. I believe that we have a choice that we make every single day that we wake up to put goodness in the world or to take goodness out of the world. And I wake up every day, most days anyway, with the intention of helping the people I meet, the people I come across have better days than they did yesterday. It is that simple. I want to make a positive impact on the people around me. I will say that I have three goals as it relates to those “Why” more personally and I borrowed this from somebody else so I didn't invent this but it resonated. Number one, I want to stay married to my wife. And I'm specific because that's the most important relationship that I have in the world. We will be celebrating our 26th wedding anniversary next week. And we met in college and have been together for over 30 years. So it is the number one most important thing that I need to do every day is make sure my wife is happy. Number two is I want to be thin and fit and why I say that is because I want to live a long time. I want to be healthy. Another really important relationship in my life is with me and my health and well-being. So I want to take that seriously and the third goal, Steve, is that I want my sons and I'm blessed with three sons, 22, 20 and 17. I want them to call me when they need help. That's it. I'm going to be really happy and healthy and will die a happy man if those things are true. It sounds like that's a great formula. Relationships, purpose, and more relationships. It helps.  I mean, they say that these are the three most important things that are required for happiness, so, definitely, you seem to be on the right track. No surprises there. Well, before we talk about the framework, I'm curious about these three businesses that you ran and exited. Sure. Tell me a little bit about that. Is this, is all this private equity, what companies did you find them? How did you come about it? Sure, so to start at 10,000 feet, I've spent 30 years in technology startups with being born and raised in dot-com one in the 1990s. And I was blessed to be at a high growth company that went public and sold. And I ended up having 12 different jobs in five years there, like truly a rocket ship kind of ride. That was a company called about.com. And I got my MBA in the world there. That was incredibly foundational for me. I have been the CEO three times.

Mark Josephson, Executive Coach, three-time CEO with three exits, Founder, Advisor, and Investor, is driven by a mission to empower leaders and think big to achieve clarity, purpose, and lasting impact in their organizations and lives.   We learn about Mark's journey from leading three companies to successful exits to coaching leaders and teams to unlock their potential. He explains the Wouldn't It Be Great If framework, a four-step approach to setting ambitious goals: pushing away from the desk, asking bold questions, identifying what needs to be true to achieve them, and brainstorming without constraints. Mark also introduces the Balcony vs. Dance Floor framework, which helps CEOs balance strategic vision with operational focus. He shares lessons from his entrepreneurial journey and insights from his podcast Critical Moments.   (1:31) Mark's personal Why (6:59) The Wouldn't It Be Great If Framework (11:17) Insights from the Critical Moment podcast (16:35) The Balcony vs. Dance Floor Framework (22:24) Connect with Mark   Links and Resources Mark's LinkedIn  Mark Josephson  Critical Moments Podcast  Test-drive the Summit OS® Toolkit: https://stevepreda.com/free-business-growth-tools-summit-os-toolkit/ Management Blueprint® Podcast on Youtube https://bit.ly/MBPodcastPlaylistYT  Steve Preda's books on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B08XPTF4ST/allbooks  Follow video shorts of current and past episodes on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/stevepreda-com/