Management Blueprint

Tim Martinez, Value Creation, Strategic, and Exit & Succession Planning Advisor—also known as “The Inside Man”—is on a mission to empower entrepreneurs and make the world a better place with his philosophy of “No entrepreneur left behind.”  In this episode, Tim shares how he evolved from starting small businesses as a teenager to advising founders on high-stakes growth and exit decisions. We explore Tim's 3 Exits Framework, which breaks exit planning into three critical phases: Mental Exit (separating identity from the business), Role Exit (building leadership and succession so the business can run without the owner), and Technical Exit (valuation, deal structure, and the formal sale process). Tim also explains why AI is accelerating business disruption, why minimalism is a competitive advantage, and what keeps so many businesses stuck at the $3M revenue ceiling. — 3 Ways to Exit Your Business with Tim Martinez Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS Group. And I have as my guest today Tim Martinez, who is a Value Creation, Strategic, and Exit & Succession Planning Advisor, also known as “The Inside Man.” Tim also has a successful Substack with lots of followers, which has a similar title, Inside Man. He's also built his own ChatGPT API, so he's running with the times. Tim, welcome to the show.  Thanks, Steve. Great to be here.  Finally, we have someone who is ahead of the curve on AI and the technological evolution that's part of this new industry revolution. So let’s start with my favorite question. What is your personal ‘Why’ and how are you manifesting it in your practice and in your business?  Yeah. My personal ‘Why’ is to make the world a better place and to empower entrepreneurs. “No entrepreneur left behind” has kind of been my motto. Since I was a kid—I started businesses very young, like 15 or 16—people would ask me, “How are you doing this?” And I would help however I could. And it was just always felt really good to help my fellow entrepreneurs, whether I was helping them in a small way or a big way. And there's nothing better than seeing some of the advice you're able to give someone actually get implemented.Share on X Then you see them go, “Wow, oh my gosh, this is great.” And again, sometimes it’s small, sometimes it’s big. But I believe entrepreneurs rule the world, and I do my part every day—whether it's writing my Substack, jumping on podcasts, or writing books. I'm always here just to share what I've learned, because I think that’s what makes the world go round.  Well, you have a boundless energy, because you are writing books, you are writing your blog, you are doing these podcasts. Then you also have to gather the information, right? You have to work with clients—otherwise there's no raw material. That is very impressive. So what took you to this point? How did you evolve? I mean, you started at 15, but surely you were not coaching or consulting people at 15.  Yeah, so I probably spent about 10 years just starting small businesses. I had the lemonade stand, then a coffee business and a silk-screen business. I had a DJ business, a retail store, a marketing and advertising agency, a small one, but I was able to sell it. And I got lucky and sold a couple of these small businesses. I built websites, built apps—I mean, anything you can do to make a buck. I was just kind of hustling and figuring it out on my own. And at a certain point in time, maybe like 10 years later, someone asked me to help them write their business plan. It was the first time I thought, “Huh, someone wants to pay me to help them write a business plan. That sounds interesting.” Okay. And I had written all of my own business plans for 10 years. I used to go to SCORE—the Senior Corps of Retired Executives, a division of the SBA—and they would consult for free. They still do, by the way. And I always said my long-term goal was to be an old advisor at SCORE, because they helped me so much when I was a kid.Share on X So I charged money for my first business plan. That person was able to raise money from their uncle. Then they said, “Well, hey, we got this money. What do we do now?” So I said, “Well, I think I can charge you. I think this is called consulting. Maybe I'll just charge you to help execute your business plan.” It was a small business, and I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a book that was like this big—How to Start a Consulting Business. I just sat there and highlighted the whole thing. It had CD-ROM forms in the back. I knew nothing about consulting. And probably for the next handful of years, I just focused on writing business plans and helping people. That's kind of what got me into consulting and working with bigger businesses. It really started with business plans and small businesses.Share on X  Yeah. I mean, business plans are great because you are envisioning the future of the business, crunching the numbers—what's going to happen with your top line, bottom line, costs, overhead, margins—and essentially it helps you visualize the skeleton of the business. Then you can put the meat on the bone, kind of thing.  Yeah. And I had worked on hundreds of business plans, and  pitch decks, financial models, and market research. That documentation aspect of a business, I had spent a good, let's say, 10 years working very heavily with clients as an analyst in consulting firms. And that’s really what got me into the game and got me into bigger and bigger businesses, because I got very good at doing that with no formal training—and we didn't really have what the internet is today. I remember going to the downtown library in Los Angeles, finding articles, and taking scanned copies of them. That’s how we did our market research. And business plans used to be like a dictionary. The SBA would require business plans to meet all these requirements, so we ended up with huge business plans. Now people want a one-pager, maybe a 10-slide deck, and call it a day. Where I got my chops was from understanding every imaginable nuance of every business in all verticals. I worked around the world with businesses, and I guess I was in the right place at the right time for it.Share on X  Yeah, that’s very humble. So one of the things that you do is you help people prepare for exit, and you came up with this framework called The 3 Exits Framework. I thought it was fascinating to think about exits from different perspectives and to have different mental models for them. How did you come up with this, and can you explain to the audience what it looks like, how it works, and how it helps entrepreneurs? Yeah. And it’s important to note that I started my career starting businesses, helping people get the start. And as I got older, the businesses I worked with were also getting older. And as I got a little more gray hair and a few more wrinkles, people would take me more seriously at the later stages of the business, when they maybe wouldn’t take me so seriously when I was in my early twenties. So my business had evolved from starting to growing and then eventually to exiting, and that’s where most of my clients are now. What I’ve discovered is most people enter the exit planning conversation at the very end, asking, “What is my business worth? Who wants to buy it?” Needing a business valuation is the most common first question: “Whoa, what's it worth?” But after working with a handful of companies through this whole exit process, you start to realize that there’s far more than just the numbers. The 3 Exits Framework says there are three exits that need to occur before you're out and on your yacht, sailing into the sunset.Share on X The first exit is the mental exit, which we can talk about at length. It's your role—your identity in the business. Who am I if I'm not the CEO? What am I going to do with my time if I'm not running this business? Who am I if people can't come to me with their every burning question? It’s this piece, it’s so important. And a lot of people don’t want to give up control. They don’t even know they’re control freaks, which I'll call them for lack of a better term. But they don’t even know that they are that. You have to help them through that.  The second exit is really your role exit, because eventually someone needs to run this business in your absence. The whole tenant of selling a business is that you're not going to be in it. You might have earnouts or some transitional involvement, but eventually, you will not run this business. So you have to replicate yourself. Most people say, “I've tried, but it hasn't worked.” Well, you know what? Now’s the time for this to work. It's time to build SOPs, standards of excellence, and get someone who could be better than you ever were in that seat. So that role exit is a big part, and that would be true succession. The other part of that is it’s not just the CEO or the owner. A lot of times it’s them and they’re number one, or they’re number two, or number three, because in many cases those people also have equity and ownership in the companies in some cases. So we need to get succession in line for multiple roles.  And then the third exit is your technical exit. It’s the one piece everyone feels like they start with that is your valuation, getting your documentation together, running a formal auction process, making sure that you’re looking at multiple buyers, whether strategic or financial. And just running a very thorough, formal process that’s going to get you the highest valuation possible. And structuring a deal that there’s going to be a little bit of give and take. Most deals die because of misaligned expectations. And they’re usually misaligned expectations on that final exit. So when you put those three things together and someone says, I want to sell my business, or we're thinking about exiting in the next couple years, I just start first with the identity part.Share on X Yeah. And people underestimate the significance of that. It can sound touchy-feely and like an afterthought in most cases. And people think that just by earning a sack of money, their life will be solved and all problems will disappear. But actually, problems exist at all levels. Elon Musk probably has more problems than most listeners here.  Sure.  So, it's not going to solve your problems, and identity is huge. I talk to people—I was also an M&A advisor for over 10 years, sold many businesses, visited former clients, and went out on their boats on the lake. Often, that was the one time they actually used the boat, because they didn't really need it. They thought they did, but they didn't. Next time, the engine wouldn't start, or the boat was full of water. Or they'd go out on the golf course, meet new people, and ask, “Who are they?” It turned out they were just retired rich people—not interesting entrepreneurs or CEO. That's a huge change. And with the Great Wealth Transfer and the aging Baby Boomer population, there's a statistic that says 50% of business owners are forced into an exit—meaning there’s some life event that occurs that says you now need to sell your business and get out. And you and I both know that if you’re forced to an exit, you’re going to be taking a major discount. But those forces can happen when you have a heart attack, or someone in your family has a health issue, or your grandkids and everybody moves multiple states and you want to go with them. All these things happen. So our recommendation is just start having the conversation now.  Yeah. And so I think it's a little bit like saving for retirement. A lot of people keep putting it off, and eventually there's no time left to do it, and then they’re in trouble. So how do you even raise awareness with people about this? How do you work with them to prepare this? Can you actually raise awareness and make them feel this is a real issue? How do you raise awareness?  Well, I have my blog, and that’s probably where I do most of my conversations. I wrote about the 3 Exits Framework. Any chance I get to speak, I always use it to raise awareness around the subject. In my consulting practice, I work with a handful of consulting firms and investment banks. Anytime I get pulled into a conversation about exit planning, I usually just pause for a second and just talk about their life goals.Share on X Like, what do you really want this exit to do for you? Because there are so many things you can do and a million ways to do it. So, what do you really want this exit to mean for you? Also, remember, Uncle Sam is going to take his cut—so not everyone gets the biggest check possible. Usually, what we hear is people say, “I'm just so exhausted. I don't have anything left in me for this thing, and anything I can get for it, I'd be happy to take, as long as it means I don't have to put out every single fire.” And this usually happens because they didn't build good systems to remove themselves from the business.  Otherwise, they would've been the chairman, and just meeting with their CEO, who's running the business. That’s usually not the case with these owner-operator businesses. And that doesn't mean they're small, by the way. I mean, they could be running a $50 million business and still the choke point where everything has to run through them and they’re just exhausted and burnt out.  Do you think that this AI revolution is going to change things? Is it going to make more people exit-ready because it's easier to create systems?  Perhaps. Yeah, I think it's helping the service provider world be more efficient. In my world as a management consultant, I'm 10 times more efficient. I’m sure you’re 10 times more efficient with tools like the one we’re using here, and it just helps us speed things up. I've noticed people use it as a thought partner, as a psychiatrist, even as a best friend. I've seen people go into deep dialogue like, “Should I sell my business? Give me five factors.” The ones who are aware of this are using it fully. The people who aren't are a little behind the times. And then from an operational standpoint, yeah, I mean with the bots and all the many things you could put in your business to make you more efficient, but that doesn’t apply to everybody. I would say there’s going to be a 10 to 20% group of people that are already on it, making it work for them, and then there are the laggards who will probably never touch it.  Or is it that—okay, maybe we can be more efficient with AI, but we'll have the appetite to do more, and there will be more complexity? Some things we'll simplify, but we'll create other complexities that replace the previous ones. What do you think about it?  Yes. So businesses typically have cycles. There's usually a five- to seven-year cycle where a business hits its peak, and then it starts to trend down. And they usually have some level of innovation that has to reoccur for it to hit another up cycle, and then there will be a down cycle and so on and so forth. So it's always like an up slope after an up slope. When you've been in business for 30 or 40 years, you've gone through multiple rounds of these cycles—three or four rounds of those cycles. What I’m hearing right now is business owners that are, let’s say, at retirement age, they’re saying, “I don't know if I have what it takes to go through this AI cycle. Maybe I had what it took to make it through the eighties, nineties, and two thousands, but now we're in 2026. I’m not sure I’m equipped, or my team who’s also very senior, they don’t feel like they have what it takes to get through that next cycle without hiring young talent. But even then, they don’t really understand what they’re talking about. So there’s this gap. And again, I’m hearing it more and more of people saying, I think now’s the time to get out and let some other company that has gas in the tank, vision, and capacity to come in and do that thing.  Yeah, that's interesting. Do you think a multiple-AI–enabled company versus a post-AI company is going to be markedly different?  Maybe. Because it all comes down to revenue—it comes down to the revenue story. I'll give you a perfect example. You have a very profitable company, but they're using an old CRM. A new company comes in and says, “Hey, you're already profitable. If we buy you and put in a new CRM, maybe we could be even more profitable.” That’s cool. So we don’t really need you to put in all the tech. We’ll come in and do all that, and then we’ll get the upside on that. Just as long as you’re profitable, as long as you’re profitable, yet you don’t have major client concentration, your business has all the components. A new company with new vision could come in. That would largely be a strategic buyer. The PE buyer, the financial buyer, most likely is going to want to inject capital into your business so you can go and reinvest, and build new tech, or become a platform, whatever you’re going to be. But that would be a different arrangement. So it's basically a numbers issue. It doesn't matter your technological evolution. And maybe it’s even worse if you've already implemented AI and that only allows you to make five million dollars—there's less upside for the buyer.  Yeah. The bigger concern is: Is your industry at risk because of AI? Is your particular business at risk? And that's why I think people need to adopt it—so they can say, “No, we're not at risk. We've adopted it, we're applying it in whatever fashion we're doing it, and we're going to see the results.” We've already seen a major downswing in a handful of industries because of AI. I mean, advertising agencies are getting hit really hard. People used to be able to charge for writing press releases, to write blogs, to write social, to do video editing on social media. A lot of that's gone, so the bottom tier of those agencies is just gone—there's no need for them anymore.  Do you see people proactively working on making themselves AI-resilient? Everyone knows that they need to do it. Nobody is unaware that today, it’s like websites. There was a time when everyone knew they needed a website. They just didn’t really know how they were going to build it or who was going to build it. They knew it was going to be expensive. It’s kind of where we’re at right now. Everybody knows they need AI. They’re just not exactly sure how they need AI, what it can actually, literally do for them.I think for some people, that big dream that it was going to do everything quickly got taken off the tableShare on X and they say, okay, we could do this much, but even this much is make me very effective.  But it’s just not going to do everything. Like, I still need an accountant. I still need an account manager. I still need someone to do these things, but maybe I don’t need as many people as I once did. So we’re seeing kind of some leveling off there. But I would say largely most people don’t know what AI can do for them, and they’re not really prepared to make those investments. We have a client right now that just made a half million dollar investment into an RFP tool that’s going to help them move faster than their competitors, submit more on RFPs, build everything out in a very complicated way, but they’re making a half million dollar investment. How many companies out there are saying, let’s go, give me the invoice. I’m ready to roll. There’s still a lot of pause there.  What you're describing feels more like a defensive play—okay, we know AI is coming, so we have to implement some AI tools. But I’m thinking more about the big picture. Is my industry going to be disrupted by AI? And how do I pivot my business before I lose momentum, so I become like Netflix—going from a video rental company to a streaming company? Yep.  Do you see companies rethinking their business model?  I think from what I’ve seen, people are rethinking everything—top to bottom. Because you have to start with labor. That’s usually where people start. “AI can do all these things—do I need less talent on the deck?” And if I do, then what can AI do so I don’t have such heavy overhead? Because overhead is also liability, and it has this employment risk behind it. So if you can go from a thousand staff to 800 or 750, great, let’s do it—why wouldn't you do it? Most people are saying, “Let's figure that part out first.” The next thing is the industry disruption, which is what’s our competitors doing to service clients better, manufacture faster, or do things cheaper, so then we’re not left in the dust. So from a production standpoint, we need to figure this out quickly. What I'd say—what I do—is, as an analyst, as a consultant and advisor coming in, that's why I built my AI. I built my AI to fire myself. I basically said, “What I used to do as a management consultant is now irrelevant, because AI is better than me.” So let me just build the digital me and not worry about that side of my business anymore. So I just don’t worry about that anymore. I don’t even really take on assignments that I used to, because AI can do it better and faster. Now, if you want to hire me and allow me to use my AI tool to handle the technical work, I'm more than happy to do that. But I'll tell you firsthand—save your money.  So you're giving it away, or are you selling it?  Yeah, it's free. It's free. It's on ChatGPT. What people can’t do is sit down and have an honest, sincere conversation and ask them the hard questions and challenge them. That's where AI still lacks the human component. I can take a client and say, “Hey, let's hang out. Let's get lunch. Let's go play golf. Let's bring in your kids. Let's talk to your kids. Let's talk about the family dynamic.” Let’s just have a sincere conversation. Let me hold space and create a forum where I can hear people. And that human component is the only thing that I’m worried, like I’m working on now. I'm out of the technical side, because that part of my job is gone.  So fascinating. So does it mean you have to be more of a social animal?  I think so. If you're not going to be a social animal and you're just going to sit at your desk, you should probably be building software using tools like Replit, n8n, or any of these different software tools and just go all in.Share on X But the way we used to do it—you probably see this on LinkedIn, with all the bots on LinkedIn, it’s not what it used to be. It used to be a place where you had a handful of connections and actually met people. Now it’s just so overrun with the bots. It’s like I don’t even want to accept connections anymore. I'd much rather have a conversation like this. To me, this is the future.  Yeah. But maybe we connected originally through LinkedIn. I don’t know where, how we connected, but we may have have connected through a bot—actually.  It’s possible.  Yeah.  It’s possible. But I'll tell you, I connect with maybe one or two percent of people now. Previously, because I didn't get so many inbound inquiries, I would connect with more, because I felt like there was a sincere person on the other end. Now, I really don't know. I've become very skeptical.  Yeah, I'm with you. Let's switch gears, because our time is running out. And there are a couple of things that in our pre-interview you talked about, and one was minimalism. Yeah.  What is minimalism? How do you do it? And what’s a low-hanging way to start to become a minimalist?  It's kind of like that first-principles idea of what really matters. It’s essentialism. It’s kind of getting down to the one thing, that was my recent blog, if there was only one thing you could do this year, but it would make all the difference, what would it be? And anything that gets in the way of that one thing is just noise. For me, minimalism is really about reduction, and kind of getting rid, and being aware and cognizant of things that really shouldn't be on your desk, on your to-do list.Share on X And using AI tools and assistance to get rid of everything that’s low-level activity. If you think of a pyramid, at the very top is where the most value that you can add would be. But yet we spend all of our time, if this is a time pyramid, most of our time is spent at the bottom, the wide part that pretty much anyone can do. So we kind of got to invert the pyramid. To get there, you have to reduce and extract. To protect your time, you have to treat it as very precious and focus only on the most important thing at all times. It is a very hard thing for all professionals to do, and it’s always been a hard thing, but I just take it upon myself and say, okay, well, as a minimalist, I mean, if you were to come to my house and see how sparse my furniture is on purpose. How sparse my closet is on purpose. I’m trying to get rid of options. It's like Steve Jobs and the black turtleneck—if I have one less thing, because I can only make so many choices and decisions in a given day, let me spend my time on the things that are the most important and most impactful.Share on X And that’s not always, because it’s going to put millions of dollars in my bank account. Sometimes it’s just helps me sleep better at night. So I don’t need 50 clients. If I’m going to have 50 headaches. What if I just have five clients? And every one of those was one that I felt very good about, and that would allowed me to charge more. It allowed me to go deeper with them. It's that concept—then you're free to see where your scalable opportunities are. It's the story I told you about a monk who was carving away at this beautiful elephant. Someone walks up and asks, “How did you learn to do this, carving away this elephant in the stone? And he says, Oh, I just chip away everything that's not the elephant. So for me, I have to have a very clear picture of what the elephant is. I have to see the picture in my brain first—like what my life is, what I’m trying to build, how good of a dad I’m trying to be, how good of a husband I’m trying to be, how good of a business partner or a service provider, an advisor. This is my life’s work as a masterpiece, so let me just get rid of anything that doesn’t belong as part of that picture. So that, to me, is kind of how I would explain it. And my approach toward it is I just get rid of everything. It’s not about accumulation. I don't really need more information, because AI already has all the information. Anything I'm going to absorb, I have to be very intentional about—why am I reading it? I see all the books on your shelf. I could show you my bookshelf—tons of books, right? I feel like I've read them all. Am I going to learn anything new? I could also just go back to the books I've already read. I try to highlight them and stuff, but it's like, what more do I need at this point?  Yeah. So I’m wondering about this idea of a lifestyle business versus a growth business. Because what I see is that people who are building a lifestyle business, it’s easier for them to be a minimalist. Because you just do this most valuable thing. You don’t have to build the business. You don’t have to worry about necessarily all the other people, systems, and processes, or making sure of quality control. You just do your high-value work, and at the end of the day, you can put things down and relax. Whereas a growth business, it's different.  I would say with the clients that I have—some have thousands of employees, some have hundreds—I still encourage them to reduce and subtract. Even though they're in high-growth, highly scalable businesses, sometimes the conversation is: How many direct reports do you have, and why do you have that many direct reports? How are you delegating? How are you giving authority? How are you limiting all the inputs? Because a lot of it is noise in your given day. So how do I make your day a little more silent so you can have a little more peace to make better decisions while you run this highly scalable business? Just because you're scaling doesn't mean it needs to be pure chaos. That's what people think—they think, “Oh, if I scale, that means chaos.” I'm anti-chaos.  Okay. But let me ask you this: Two of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time are Elon Musk and Jensen Huang. Elon Musk runs six companies, so he's got a lot of direct reports and goes deep in each of them. And then Jensen Huang has, I don't know, 20, 30, or 40 direct reports—he basically has a million direct reports as well. And that actually allows them to be closer to decisions and make sure things don't go off the rails and their vision gets manifested. So that's what I'm kind of wondering—whether minimalism means you're going to, maybe the flip side is you have to accept less growth, or maybe not.  So I’ve met with a lot of entrepreneurs in my life. Not one of them has been Elon Musk. So I would say we’re looking at the median of entrepreneurs, the average entrepreneur. Those are the people I deal with. I’m not dealing with Elon Musk. I would love to, but I don’t have those types. I have the family-owned business who took it over from their dad and they’ve been running it for 50 years, and he has 250 employees, and he’s got pure chaos, and I’m getting the call to go in and try to sort him out. These are not always the highly sophisticated Steve Jobs types of the world. If you really take a look under the hood with Elon—I read his book and listened to the audiobook with my kids, so I'm very familiar with his story, because I've heard it twice now—what they don't really mention is all the heroes underneath Elon. He wouldn't be who he is without all the many heroes, all the systems, and the Six Sigma and other processes and procedures. That's not to say he doesn't take a deep analytical look at everything, but who are those heroes and what are the processes? I'm far more interested in hearing about his VP of Operations than about Elon. Because what has his VP of Operations worked out? What systems have they implemented that allow him to scale and build a Tesla? Or his COO, like, what do they have going on? Elon's a face. Elon's a madman. He creates all this momentum and chaos, and then he has teams of people behind him who make sense and order out of that chaos. That's why you have what you have with Tesla. If he were just Elon Chaos, without that, I don't believe he would be where he is. But he had people that wanted to get in line. He had a lot of people that wanted to get in line. They believed in his vision. He had huge visions, and it's very inspiring to get behind those visions. Then they say, “Okay, give me the ball. We'll create the infrastructure that allows this thing to take off.” So I'm far more interested in the infrastructure that allows for that scale.  I agree. I'm just thinking whether there is this kind of dichotomy. Because I see that many entrepreneurs—when I was an investment banker—until they sold their business, they were not able to have that simple lifestyle they perhaps desired, because they were building, they were reinvesting. And it wasn't just reinvesting their cash—they were reinvesting their time. So every time they simplified, that was the opportunity cost of not using that time to improve their business. So they plowed it back in, plowed it back in.  Well, it's kind of like the E-Myth is a bit skewed. It's almost like the E-Myth is a myth. E-Myth is a dream—a dream that you can work on your business, step out completely, and everything about it runs itself. It doesn't really work that way. If you're going to be a successful entrepreneur, you're going to have late nights, long weekends, and you're going to feel like every major problem is your own because you're taking all the legal risks. I'm not telling people not to scale. I'm not telling them not to have chaos. What I'm trying to help them do is get clear on what they consider to be important.  And not get killed in the process, and not get divorced.  Statistically, that can happen—the more successful someone gets.  Yeah, it does. Because our time becomes much more valuable, and at some point, it's really hard to say no to the million-dollar hour—to spend that hour watching Netflix with your spouse, right? Exactly. Just feels harder to do.  Exactly.  Yeah.  That was good.  Alright, well, I enjoyed this tremendously. So one more question, one more question that I have to ask you. You talk about this $3 million rule—what do you mean by that? That’s a really interesting concept.  Yeah. So most small businesses get stuck around $3 million, statistically. The question is, why? Why do they get stuck there? A large majority gets stuck and it’s because they create a lifestyle for themself around $3 million. They’re taking enough off the table that they would never be able to find a job that would be able to replace that type of income. So they've made their small business their sole business, their job, and they say, “This is good enough for me,” because let's say half a million dollars, more or less, is going into their bank. They're filling up their 401(k), sending their kids to private school, giving themselves big bonuses. If they're profitable, they don't really see the need to take more risks or double down to go past that wall. I've seen many businesses kind of stay there. They’ll go fluctuate up and down through the years, but more or less they’ll hit that wall. They could stay there for 20 years and never make any progress. It’s not until they put on new thinking and say, we’re going to grow through acquisitions, we’re going to target a different market, new products, we’re going to innovate in some way. But that takes extra gas in the tank. Sometimes, a lot of entrepreneurs, once they hit that first level of success, say, “This is good enough for me,” because it usually takes them about five to seven years to get to that first major breathing point.  They're not hungry enough anymore.  Exactly.  Does someone has to be a little crazy to still want to eat more, even though they're already full?  Yeah. Some people are just wired that way. Some people just more and more, and that's no slight against them. They're never satisfied. They always want more—another dollar, another nickel. If they saw a nickel on the floor, they would stop and pick it up. They want every piece of everything. And those people usually are the ones that go and go and go and go. They’re usually the ones that just keep going because it’s an insatiable appetite. I'm not talking about people who get—well, I don't want to call it lucky—but sometimes things do fall out of the sky. Sometimes a big client falls out of the sky, or an opportunity opens up, and people are smart enough to buy their competitor when the competitor approaches them. Or sometimes they make these little moves, and that gives them a leap. I’m not talking about those people. Those are outliers to me. I’m talking about your average entrepreneur that built a $3 million business on his own with no major clients falling, just hard work, blood, sweat in tears. The average Joe typically gets stuck around that $3 million.  Yeah, that’s interesting. Fascinating. Alright, well, if you don't want to be stuck around $3 million, or if you want to get to the next level, then reach out to Tim and check out what he’s doing. So where can our listeners find you? Where can our listeners find you if they want to learn with you, learn about you, read your Substack, read your books? Where should they go?  Just go to Google or AI and type in Tim “The Inside Man” Martinez. The Inside Man is an acronym for Tim. You'll find my LinkedIn—happy to connect with you, just tell me you heard me on Steve's podcast. You can also check out my blog: it's Tim “The Inside Man” on Substack, or go to www.theinsideman.biz, my website. I'd love to connect with anyone. Well, do check out Tim's Substack—it's awesome. You're going to get more of what you heard on this podcast. And if you enjoy listening, make sure you follow us. Subscribe on YouTube, LinkedIn, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts, because every week I'm inviting—and luckily more and more people want to come on the show—to have a conversation. So thank you, Tim, for coming, and thank you for listening. Important Links: Tim's LinkedIn Tim's website

https://youtu.be/knpxJ7KATsU Joshua McMahon, President of McMahon Custom Homes and a business coach, is driven by a purpose he discovered the hard way: money wasn't his ‘Why.' His real ‘Why' is lifting others—helping people find clarity around their purpose, unlock their potential, and gain traction toward it. We explore Josh's journey from C-suite construction leadership and integrator roles to building his own company as an “evolved visionary.” Josh shares his Satisfaction Pyramid, explaining how customer experience is created upstream through brand awareness, team support, trade partner support, and training, which together produce the outcome every builder (and business) is chasing: customer satisfaction. Along the way, he breaks down why the construction industry struggles with talent, how coaching becomes a competitive advantage, and why McMahon Custom Homes wins through transparency, collaboration, and guiding clients to align budget with what truly matters. — Take 5 Steps to Satisfy Customers with Josh McMahon Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS group and the host of Management Blueprint. And my guest today is Joshua McMahon, the president of McMahon Custom Homes and a business coach. Although I don’t know how much time you have for that these days, josh. Welcome to the show.  Yeah, thanks for having me, Steve. We go a long way back, so it’s an honor to be a business owner and now be on your show.  Well, yeah, you are a business owner. In your previous, recent life, you was an integrator, a COO of a business. So you’ve been running construction businesses and have been C-level in other construction businesses, where we also collaborated. So we have been tracking each other’s journey, for sure. So, Josh, let’s start with my favorite question. What is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in your business?  Yeah. I think this is always a great question. And the real truth of this question, Steve, is that I didn’t know what it was for so long. I thought my personal ‘Why’ was just to make more money. And every time I made more money, I was just more miserable. I was never happy. So my ‘Why’ was never money. I really think my ‘Why’ is all about lifting others. And what I mean by that is I have this ability to extract other people's 'Why' and their purpose from them, help them better see that, get clarity around it and then help them get traction to go attack that 'Why'.Share on X And that’s really my ‘Why’, is to help other, lift other people to really achieve their greatness. So I get a lot of energy and joy from boosting others, and watching that untapped potential really take off.  That is fabulous. And I can see that, as a business coach, that's really very appealing to people when you can do that. How does it manifest in your construction business? You have these Custom Homes construction business, how does that help you there?  And this is where it was really born. So in the C-suite and as I grew in my business, the one part that you have to do is you have to know how to recruit. At least, I had to know how to recruit. And in order to recruit, you have to find the right talent at the right price. And what I was really looking for was that potential. I was looking for the right attitude—the right hunger. I was looking for those right pieces that I could make you a construction individual. I could make you a great construction manager, but I couldn’t fix those other things. And so when I could tap into that and take and help somebody see the vision of what I could do and what our company could help you do in your career, that’s where I was able to really take and 10X my recruiting ability, but also to really tap into that untapped talent that’s out there. Because, Steve, we have a hard time finding talent in the construction industry. Well, the talent’s out there. What’s making it hard is that we don’t recognize that talent, and we’re saying, you’ve got to be this perfect candidate. You've got to fit all these marks. You've got to check all the boxes.And I’m saying, no. I just need you to check a few boxes. I'm going to help you see how you can really fit into this organization and how we can help you thrive. So that's where my ability to see that in them, help them see that in themselves, and then help them tie it to our vision as a company. That's where it really gets a lot of fun.Share on X Yeah. It’s so interesting that it’s not just about doing the job, but it’s about being emotionally invested in doing the job. And how do you get your people emotionally invested? You have to find the motivation that they have inherently that you can tap into, and then you have to make your business attractive so that it inspires them, so that they feel excited to work with you there. That’s exactly what you’re trying to do. It’s like you’re not trying to fool anybody on anything, but to think people just get excited to come do work, or just do the job, or just collect the paycheck. If that’s your motivation, that’s the type of candidate you’re going to get. Then what type of culture do you have? So if you flip that and you say, “Hey, we want to help you  transform who you are, transform your career for the better, and it’s going to help us get to our vision. Well, Steve, that sounds like a win-win scenario to me. And that’s a really appealing piece. And that’s a thriving culture.  Yeah, culture eats strategy for breakfast, as Peter Drucker said. And especially in the age of AI, it's probably even more important, isn't it, that you have a great culture, because AI can copy everything, but it won't be able to copy your culture.  No, that's exactly right. I think AI is a great tool. It’s really going to help us magnify and improve our businesses. But if your culture is broken, AI is just going to magnify the brokenness of your culture, and then AI’s going to tell your people how to go find another job. That is probably true. I haven’t thought about that. So you developed this framework, we are a podcast of frameworks. I’m always looking for the framework and and you talked about this Satisfaction Pyramid framework. Yeah. Is this also something that helps create that culture? Tell me a little bit about this pyramid and how did you come up with it and what does it do?  Yeah, it’s an interesting thing, right? So you understand Maslow's hierarchy of needs. These are the things you need for survival and for happiness. And I've said, look, in home building, we've always talked about customer experience and customer satisfaction. We want people to be happy. And I'm saying, well, I don't know what that means. I don't know—if I hit my schedule, if I hit my budget, if I do everything on time, but they're still not happy—so what exactly am I missing? What's the missing link?  And kind of tying the hierarchy of needs to this triangle of customer satisfaction or happiness, I found that there are some really key fundamental pieces that we've got to lock into place to really get to the customer satisfaction and customer experience that we're seeking. For me, I think brand awareness is first. If your brand awareness is out there and it's really strong, people are going to gravitate towards it organically.Share on X That’s going to decrease your SEO spend, you decrease your marketing, decrease your turnover for people, because people want to be part of that. The interesting story on brands — and I don't know how true it is, I meant to look it up before this — but I saw something on social media about Tommy Hilfiger. And before he launched his clothing brand, he didn't have anything, but his brand was so far out in front of himself that people thought this was this great designer, and he hadn't designed anything. And it was all tied to that piece of brand. So if your brand is strong enough, you can do incredible things. So I think brand is super important.  Yeah. Let me just interject here. So probably 20 years ago, I was working with a company, and it was actually in the construction space. It was in the environmental construction space. And this company had an amazing brand. So the founder was a great thought leader, and he was blogging and talking in forums. And I really thought that this company's got to be a $50 million company. I mean, they're so powerful. And then they invited me to their board as a board member. I said, “Wow, this is such an honor.” This big company. And it turned out it was just a $5 million company. But the brand was so powerful that they looked much bigger.  Yeah. And that statement, that’s an appealing thing. So if you think of yourself as a high level achiever, an A-player, and you are gravitating to that brand, that’s what it’s going to do. You're going to bring in the right people, and then if you've got the right culture and the right other pieces, you're going to stick around with that company.Share on X So a $5 million company can look like a $50 million company and be really attractive to people that are interested in that type of world. Yeah. Super important. Love that story. The second thing for me is team support. This is where I really saw in my career as I grew. I can tell you, my first construction job at the construction management level, my VP of construction told me, and this is 20 plus years ago, I haven't forgotten it — he said, “My leadership style is to give you just enough rope to hang yourself.” And to this day, I have no idea what the heck that means. But what he did show me was he wasn’t going to support me. He wasn’t going to encourage me. He wasn’t going to help me grow. He was basically going to let me swim in the deep end. And if I made it, great. And if I didn’t, no problem — there's another guy behind me. And that’s the mentality of the construction industry. And what I said was, we do a great job of spending money for our sales team. Sales team needs training, we’ll spend the money on training. If the executives need training, we’ll spend the money on training.  But who’s training the middle managers? Who’s training the young men and women coming into the industry? Who’s training the people who don’t have the experience? There’s a big myth in that world. So I think from an internal standpoint — and mind you, coaching is a buzzword right now, just as leadership is — not everybody's a coach, and not everybody's a leader, and that's okay. But if you do have somebody who can coach on your team, and you can coach your team up internally, it’s a very big value add. And so for me, my coaching ability has been a real value add for people that I've recruited, for people I've had on my team, and people I've really invested in and helped grow.Share on X And quick story on coaching. I interviewed this young candidate, I mean, really good-looking kid. He had tons of talent, education, everything he needed, but no construction experience. Still, he had all the right soft skills. And it came down between our company and one of the big national builders. And typically, you’d go to the national builders, more money, more upside, more advantages. And he asked me, the last question he asked me, he said, “Why would I come work for you guys versus this other company?” I said, “Because they don't have me.” I said, I’m not saying this is an arrogant thing to say. I’m saying that I’m going to pour everything from me into you and help take you to where you want to go. You won’t get that anywhere else. Because when we’re done after three years, you can go anywhere you want. And that young man is currently making almost as much as I was making as a C-suite employee, and he’s out in the field running projects. And that’s only like a three or five year period. Like that’s incredible growth, but it’s because of the investment we made in him.  Yeah. There's this saying — I think it's Zig Ziglar — that people don't invest in their people, they don't coach their people, because they're afraid that they’re going to go away to the competition. And then Zig Ziglar asks, “Okay, but isn't there a greater risk that you don’t coach them and and they stay?”  Yes. This is always the thing. And I think a lot of people have a scarcity mindset where they’re so afraid of, if I pour into you, you’re going to go and you’re going to take it somewhere else. What I say is, I’m okay with that. Because when you go somewhere else, you're going to say, “Josh McMahon built me up. He gave me the foundation for my career. He put me in the position I’m in today. I have what I have because of my start. You should go there and get the training from him. There’s no sham e in that because, again, we go back to point number one: brand. That’s tight. That’s my brand out in front of our company that adds value to our company.  So I started my career at KPMG, and one of the ideas they had was this pyramid structure — up or out. But the idea was to take care of the people that even when they leave, they become ambassadors for you on the client side. And then they’re going to convince the client to hire KPMG to be their auditor. And I really like this.  It’s so special, right? Because what you, I mean, Steve, you think about this, we worked together two or three years ago. We still stayed in touch. Even though there’s no financial gain, we still help each other where we can because I want the best for you, as you want the best for me. And that’s what you’re really looking for.  Yeah, that’s true. And the thing about coaching is you have the double benefit, because the company benefits because it has motivated employees who are performing at the higher level than when they came in, and at a higher level than where you hired them, frankly. Correct.  And then they are building a career. So they are building a career equity for themselves. And actually that’s why you get a better ROI on these people, because they have more career equity, they have more skill level than what you have to pay them because you are growing them.  That’s exactly right. You’re building into those individuals that generational wealth that most of us are seeking, or think is out of reach. It's there. We just need somebody to believe in us, and that’s really that piece. The third thing for me, especially in construction, it’s the trade partners. And when I think about it, as a general contractor, look—I'm wearing a collared shirt. You're not going to see me on the job site swinging a hammer. I’m out there with the building plans. I’m verifying things. I'm scheduling. I'm doing more management-level work. That means my trade partners are carrying the lion’s share of the work that actually goes into place. And as a construction company, we don’t make money unless work goes in place.  So I have to do the same thing I'm doing with my internal staff with my trade partners. I have to build them up. I have to elevate them. I have to put them in a position to win.Share on X And this is very basic—schedule accurately. Treat them like people. Treat them with respect. When you go on the job, support them. Listen to their feedback. So if they’re sharing something that’s not working, listen to it with an open mind. And maybe we can do something different, or we can explain why we can't do something different, so they have a better understanding of the ‘Why’ behind what we’re doing. Yeah.  So the trade partners is my next big pillar.  And it’s harder to manage trade partners. I mean, I’m not in the construction, but it’s going to be harder because they are part-time with you. They have other commitments that they have to observe. They don’t wear your brand. They are being paid by someone else who may have a different corporate culture than your company has. And you have to bring them in part-time and make them as good as your standard.  Yes. The hard thing is you have to share with them your vision first. This is who we are. This is what we stand for. Share with them your core values. And then build them up and show them that they’re truly a partner in this. Most of us don’t treat them like partners. We treat them like subcontractors. We treat them like they're inferior individuals—less than me. And I think they can work for you part-time and do that. And you’re absolutely right. But if we treat them like people, we build them up, they’ll be there. Because I want to treat them in a way where, hey, you might be a great plumber, but you’re a terrible business person, and I can maybe help you better understand. I say this because I'm working with a young plumber who's bidding things, and he’s just all over the place. And I'm saying, “Hey, how did you come to this number?” “Well, I just know I need to make X dollars.” And I'm like, “Well, how do you know how much money you need to make? What's your break-even number? What's your overhead burden?” Starting to help him better understand how to break down the P&L, how to charge the right margin on the job so that you’re getting work as consistently as you want, but most importantly, so you can grow your business and continue to support my business as it grows too.Share on X Yeah, you want to create stability for them as well. And if you treat subcontractor well, then they’re going to prioritize you, won't they? So they have other customers that may not treat them as well. You’re going to get the most of the energy from them if you treat them well. And that’s also a huge benefit for your business. There’s nothing lost in that, right? Again, you’ve got brand ambassadors out there talking about, one, this guy builds a great house. He treats everybody great. You made the right choice buying with with McMahon Custom Homes. Because, Steve, if you’ve ever been on a job site, the trades will tell people what they feel, whether it’s good or bad. Yeah. So you are getting it no matter what.  Yeah. You go and you look at the construction site and ask around, and then you will get exactly the kind of general contractor you may be dealing with.  Yes. I mean, absolutely. We love to talk, and so you want people talking about good things and talking up your business and what’s happening in the field, and that’s extremely valuable. Okay, so step number one, brand awareness. We talked about that. Then supporting the team. Yes. So that they feel that they are growing and they are recognized as individuals, that you care about them. Yeah. Then the same goes with the trade partners. You support them even though they’re not your employees.  Yes.  What’s step four?  Yeah. Step four is training. Okay. And training, I think of training in terms of systems that you’re putting in place. Constant, never-ending improvement on those systems. Systems are not static, so training is a nonstop thing that we've got to continue investing in and keep helping to grow our team. So constant process improvement. Having KPIs in place, or metrics in place. And the reason for those metrics is simply where do we need to focus our attention? What levers do we need to pull? And then I go back to the training. So then we train up on metrics that maybe aren’t working the way that we want them to, or we’re not getting the result that we want to get out of them. That’s where the training really comes into place. And if we don't have that training in-house, what stuff outside of the company can we get them into? What type of training do they need to level them up? Because as I think about training, Steve, most of us think you’ve got to fit every box, you’ve got to be the perfect candidate. But you and I both know that I’m good at three out of the five things, and you’re good at two out of the five things. So we make a damn good team together. And that’s okay, and we need to better learn how to cross-train each other, level one another up, and then find those right tools.Share on X  Absolutely. Okay, so what’s the final piece of the flywheel?  Yeah. Well, I feel like if you're doing all these things, brand awareness, team support, trade partner support, and the right training, and you're doing this continuous basis, you're going to have customer satisfaction.Share on X That’s exactly what you want. You’re going to create that customer experience because look, at the end of the day, we’re only here because of the customer. If the customer’s not interested in buying my product, I don’t have a business. And so all of these pieces drive that customer experience. That’s what continues driving who I am. One thing I’m really focused on with customer satisfaction and experience is having good specifications written down. I think yes, we’re a custom home builder, but I have minimum standards that I want to achieve.  So I have the minimum standards. Now, if your budget says, “Hey, we can't quite reach that level,” well, we can certainly reduce our standard. And when I say reduce our standard, I don’t mean cut a corner. I mean change from, say, a Kohler faucet down to a Delta faucet. It’s still a great faucet. It’s still a great brand. Maybe just not the same brand that I would use at this level of home. Or we can go the complete opposite direction and elevate that standard. But just having that set in place, so that if I say, “Steve, this home's going to cost you $1.2 million,” and you're like, “Oh, great. Well, the other builder's $1.3 million, so you've got a better price,” okay, great. But what goes into the price? What are you getting for the price? So if I have those minimum standards baked in, I can tell you, This is what you're going to get for $1.2 million. Now we can go in and customize it and make it your home. Having clear expectations. How important are clear expectations even in our coaching business, right? And it’s not just clear expectations from me to you, it’s clear expectations from you to me. I need to understand what your expectations are. I need to know that I can achieve your expectations. And I think that if I believe I can’t, I need to be honest and say, look, I’m not the right builder for you. I’m not the right business for you. But here are..  Or maybe your expectations are not realistic. Sometimes, for the budget you have, you need to make some trade-offs. Maybe you can have this man cave, but you'll have to cut back on the kitchen, and you’ll have to discuss it with your wife. And that’s really key. So the thing that I love about being a custom builder is that my focus is on collaboration.Share on X If you say, “Hey Josh, the budget comes in at $1.2 million, but I really want to be at $1 million,” okay, great Steve. I’m here to collaborate with you and show you ways we can tweak things, pull this down, and future-proof your home. Because I want you to have the home that you want, and in two years you can probably afford that additional $200,000. I don't want to put you in a place where you can easily plug and play that versus oh, now I got to rip out all these walls. I got to redo this. It's not $200,000—it could be $300,000. So that’s where we can collaborate and really find the right pieces to put you in the best position.  That’s very interesting. This whole framework, the culture that you build here. Is this something that connects this whole framework, this idea that you have, how you’re projecting the culture out into the customer service? Is this why you started the McMahon Custom Homes?  It truly is. Well, two parts, Steve. One, I’m an entrepreneur at heart and I have fought this my entire life, and I’ve always thought there was something wrong with me. Why can’t I just get on board? Why can’t I just drink the Kool-Aid? Why can’t I just get in line? And two or three years I go into a company, I do great things, I start rebuilding things, and then I start to get that itch. And then I’m like, okay, I need to go somewhere else. And for a long time I thought it was, well, I’m just moving to a new company to make more money, which was true. I was making more money, but then I wasn’t happy. Again, it was never tied to the money, so it was really just that entrepreneur need. But the second piece was, I've noticed for ten years—a decade—that our industry is in need of a massive transformation. The antiquated way of doing business and how we do things. I think the builder suites and the stuff that we have at our disposal is really good, but it’s not what everybody’s looking for. But I couldn’t tell you, the owner, Hey, we’ve got to scrap this. We need to do this. Because ultimately, even as the integrator, my job is to bring your vision to life. And if this is part of your vision, then I need to bring this to life. And so I started to realize with my entrepreneur spirit and my own ideas, I needed to start developing my own home building business to start bringing some of that to life, to really satisfy who I am and do the things that I wanted.Share on X Yeah, this is so important because, as entrepreneurs, we have this frustration. We are somewhere and things are not going as well as you would like. And we don’t get to tell the boss how to do things because they have their own ideas and their own set ways, and then they just get irritated by all those ideas and they feel like we are just being disgruntled employees, and this frustration eats away at you. And at some point you say, okay, what the heck? I'm just going to rip the Band‑Aid off and try to figure it out, right? It’s very true. I mean, it’s funny now looking back on it because there were so many times where I just didn’t understand. I was like, “What the heck is the matter with me?” But you’re exactly right — you’re going to bang your head against the wall, and not everybody’s cut out to be an entrepreneur, right? I mean, it sounds really great being self-employed, doing your own thing, making your own hours. It sounds great.  But I tell you something, Josh, not everyone is cut out to be an employee either.  No doubt, Steve. So true.  So it’s the other side of the coin. I think many of us become entrepreneurs because we basically eliminate all the viable alternatives.  Yeah. Burn all the boats, right?  Yeah.  I think there’s so much value in this. The second time we really got introduced and got to work together, you introduced me to the book Second in Command by Cameron Herold. I’m a  Cameron Herold fan in the Second in Command book, and I read that book and I said, “Man, this is me. I can do this.” I love being more in the shadows, helping a visionary grow their business, and doing all that stuff. What happened was, I started to really enjoy being out there, networking, putting myself out, and getting in front of people.  And I was like, well, I’m a visionary. I can see what’s going on in the future. And I think I was more of a visionary than the person who said he was a visionary. So it was really like, then we’re clashing heads on which vision are we chasing. And I’m like, I got to get outta here because I’m steering you away from what you want to do, and that’s not fair to you.  I think there are two major types of visionaries. There are the born visionaries, and then there are the evolved visionaries. So you have the born visionary who is a visionary because they are just not able to execute, but they can come up with all the big ideas. And if they find people who can execute for them, they're in luck, and they might build a company. And then you have the evolved visionary who starts out doing the work, grinding, figuring things out, teaching themselves discipline and work ethic. And then they start to manage people because they’re doing it better, so they get more responsibility, and then they become an integrator or operator. And at some point, they want to come out of the cocoon and do it themselves. And maybe you’re that version of it, the evolved visionary.  You summed that up perfectly because that's exactly how this whole thing transpired.  Love it. So tell me about, what makes McMahon Custom Homes unique? Beyond the culture—is it the culture that makes you unique, or is there something else? From the eyes of the customer, what makes you unique?  I don’t know that it’s our culture that makes us unique. I think what really makes us unique is our process—how we do things. We start everything with an initial consultation, just myself meeting with the homebuyers. Typically, it's a virtual meeting where I want to learn more about your project. I’m interested in what you want to build, what your expectations are, what your non-negotiables are, and I just really explore everything under the sun about your project.  Then I'm going to ask the dreaded question: what's your ideal budget? Most—or a lot of—people say, “You know what, I don't want to give the budget. So I'll say, “Okay, what budget number scares you?” Because as a custom home builder, I’m going to help you design the home that you want for the price that you want. But I’m going to also share with you if it’s not possible. If you have a home design that's more than what your budget is, I'm going to share that with you in real time, as soon as I can. So I'm very transparent. And I learned this from working in my past, where we wouldn't share those numbers with clients. We had a client where we were a million dollars over their ideal budget. It was six to eight months of working with them and about $25,000 in actual costs. I don't need to tell you—the homeowner was not pleased, and the homeowner did not pay that bill.  So that was a major lost opportunity in the build, but also the opportunity cost and how much time we spent on it. I learned from that and said, “Hey, I don't want to do that. I don't need every buyer to be a yes. If I'm a good fit for you, and I'm a good builder for you, great—let's go.Share on X I want to build your house. I’m excited about building homes for people. But I don't need to build everybody's house, because for some people, it's just not the right fit. So for me, I'm your guide in this process. And that's what I really pride myself in. You want to build a home, I’m going to guide you through this process, help you with each step of the way. Help you with the county side, the field side. I’m here to guide you through that whole thing. We really work towards your budget, your ideal budget. We build it out. We’re very transparent. A lot of clarity on what we’re doing, where we can collaborate, where we can maybe say, Hey, instead of $80,000 tile package, we can get a $45,000 tile package. Because we’re really looking for what’s your vision for it.  Yeah.  What do you want to see? How do you want to feel? And we can help you pull that together.  Yeah, I think that’s very interesting, because I can see that there is value being created when you have an empathetic CEO who runs the business. You, in that case, who really gets to feel what the lifestyle of the individual is, what their vision is. You help them paint the picture so that you see it as well, and then you measure each element in proportion to their desires. Because maybe they want something like a really flashy countertop in the kitchen, but they really don’t care about what the deck is going to look like. Maybe it’s a stup*d example. And when someone buys, I don’t know, a standard home, then you are going to pay for stuff that you really don’t care about, and you are not going to get the stuff that uniquely is important to you. And with that approach that you’re doing, you are measuring everything to the right degree, and it’s going to be a perfectly balanced meal for the customer. That’s a great way of looking at it. That’s exactly right. And the deck versus man cave or versus this, that’s exactly the right way to look at it. A deck is a great add-on. It can be done anytime in the build. It can be done anytime. It's a minimal barrier to entry. Well, something on the inside of the house, the kitchen, the showstopper kitchen, that’s a different story, right? Because now you're impacting your life. You’re changing things. If we understand that the kitchen is a really prime target, then we want to make sure we commit enough money to that area. We want to make sure we commit enough design hours to that area. And maybe other areas are like, “Hey, minimum standard's great with us.” Perfect. Done.  Yeah. We only sleep in the bedroom, we don’t do anything else.  Exactly. Great point.  Which is a problem in itself. Anyhow, if someone would like to learn more and maybe learn your ideas—maybe they want to be coached by you, or they want to learn about McMahon Custom Homes, what it takes to align with your vision—and particularly if they're in Central Virginia where you work, where should they reach out and where can they find you? Yeah, so several different places. McMahonCustomHomesLLC.com is our website, so you can certainly find us there. We have an active Instagram account, McMahon Custom Homes. I have an active Facebook account, again, McMahon Custom Homes. I do have a LinkedIn account, McMahon Custom Homes, LLC. Also for myself, my wife and I host a bi-monthly podcast. We took a year hiatus, and we just started again in 2026. Our podcast is not on McMahon Custom Homes, but it's really about the construction industry, different things that you experience, and really just giving back and trying to help others learn from maybe stuff that we did or things that we’re experiencing. My wife is a designer. I'm the home builder, so you kind of get a good mixed bag. And that's Feed Me Your Construction Content, if you're ever interested in tuning into that.  Yeah. And if you would like to see what a collaboration between Josh and his wife looks like, then check out his website,  McMahon Custom Homes. You can check out his house, or their house, that they built together. And it’s a beautiful house.  Yeah. Thank you.  It's a good place to start. Josh, loved it. I loved your content. Really interesting how you created the Satisfaction Pyramid in construction. I think that parallel applies to other businesses as well. Obviously, the elements are slightly different, but brand awareness, supporting the team, supporting your partners, training your people, pouring into them, and then creating that customer satisfaction are important in any industry. So thank you. If you enjoyed listening to this show, make sure you follow us on LinkedIn and on YouTube. And stay tuned, because every week I bring an exciting entrepreneur or thought leader on this show. Thank you for coming, Josh, and thanks for listening. Important Links: Josh's LinkedIn McMahon Custom Homes website McMahon Custom Homes LinkedIn

Jason William Johnson, PhD, Founder of SoundStrategist, is driven by two lifelong passions: creating and teaching. Through SoundStrategist, Jason designs AI-powered learning experiences and intelligent coaching systems that blend music, gamification, and experiential learning to drive real skill development and engagement for enterprises and entrepreneur support organizations. We explore Jason's journey as a musician, educator, and business coach, and how he fused those disciplines into an AI-first company. Jason shares his AI for Deep Experts Framework, showing how subject-matter experts can identify an industry pain point, envision a solution, brainstorm with AI, leverage AI tools to build it, and go after high-value impact—turning deep expertise into scalable products and platforms without needing to be technical. He also explains how AI accelerates research and product design, how “vibe coding” enables rapid MVP development, and why focusing on high-value B2B impact creates faster traction with less complexity. — Turn Your Expertise Into Software with Jason W. Johnson Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS Group, developing the Summit OS Business Operating System. And my guest today is Jason William Johnson, PhD, the Founder of SoundStrategist. His team designs AI-powered learning experiences and deploys intelligent coaching systems for enterprises and entrepreneur support organizations blending music, gamification, and experiential learning to drive real skill development and engagement. Jason, welcome to the show.  Thanks for having me, Steve.  I’m excited to have you and to learn about how you blend music and learning and all that together. But to start with, I’d like to ask you my favorite question. What is your personal ‘Why’ and how are you manifesting it in your business?  I would say my personal ‘Why’ is creating and teaching. Those are my two passions. So when I was younger, I was always a creative. I did music, writing, and a variety of other things. So I was always been passionate about creating, but I’ve also been passionate about teaching. I've been informally a teacher for my entire adult life—coaching, training. I've also been an actual professor. So through  SoundStrategist, I’m kind of combining those two passions: the passion for teaching and imparting wisdom, along with the passion for creating through music, AI-powered experiences, gamification, and all of those different things. So I'm really in my happy place.Share on X  Yeah, sounds like it. It sounds like you're very excited talking about this. So this is quite an unusual type of business, and I wonder how do you stumbled upon this kind of combination, this portfolio of activities and put them all into a business. How did that come about? So Liam Neeson says, “I have a unique combination of skills,” like in Taken. I guess that's kind of how I came up with SoundStrategist. I've pretty much been in music forever. I've been a musician, songwriter, producer, and rapper since I was a child. My father was a musician, so it was kind of like a genetic skill that I kind of adopted and was cultivated at an early age. So I was always passionate about music. Then got older, grew up, got into business, and really became passionate about training and educating. So I pretty much started off running entrepreneurship centers. My whole career has been in small business and economic development. SoundStrategist was a happy marriage of the two when I realized, oh, I can actually use rap to teach entrepreneurship, to teach leadership skills, and now to teach AI and a variety of other things.Share on X So pretty much it was just that fusion of things. And then when we launched the company, it was around the time ChatGPT came out. So we really wanted to make sure we were building it to be AI-first. At first, we were just using AI in our business operations, but then we started experimenting  with it for client work—like integrating AI-powered coaches in some of the training programs we were running and things like that. And that really proved to be really valuable, because one of the things I learned when I was running programs throughout my career was you always wanted to have the learning side and the coaching side. Because the learning side generalizes the knowledge for everybody and kind of level-sets everybody.Share on X But everybody’s business, or everybody’s situation, is extremely unique, so you need to have that personalized support and assistance. And when we were running programs in the entrepreneurship centers I were running and things like that, we would always have human coaches. AI enabled us to kind of scale coaching for some of the programs we’re building at SoundStrategist through AI. So with me having been a business coach for over 15 years, I knew how to train the AI chatbots. It started off as simple chatbots, and now it's evolved into full agents that use voice and all those other capabilities. But it really started as, let's put some chatbots into some of our courses and some of our programs to kind of reinforce the learning, personalize it, and then it just developed from there. Okay, so there's a lot in there, and I'd like to unpack some of it. When you say use rap to teach, I’m thinking about rap is kind of a form of poetry. So how do you use poetry, or how do you use rap to teach people? Is it more catchy if it is delivered in the form of a rap song? How does it work? So you kind of want to make it catchy. Our philosophy is this: when you listen to it, it should sound like a good song.Share on X Because there’s this real risk of it sounding corny if it's done wrong, right? So we always focus on creating good music first and foremost when we’re creating a music-based lesson. So it should be a good song. It should be something you hear and think, oh, between the chorus and the music, this actually sounds good. But then, the value of music is that once you learn the song, you learn the concept, right? Because once you memorize the song, you memorize the lyrics, which means you memorize the concept. One of the things we also make sure to do is introduce concepts. The best way I could describe this is this, and this might be funny, but I grew up in the nineties, and a lot of rappers talked about selling dr*gs and things like that. I never sold dr*gs in my life. But just by listening to rap music and hearing them introduce those concepts, if I ever decided to go bad, I would have a working theory, right? So the same thing with entrepreneurship, and the same thing with business principles. You can create songs that introduce the concepts in a way where if a person's never done it, they're introduced to the vocabulary.Share on X They’re introduced to the lived experiences. They’re introduced to the core principles. And then they can take that, and then they can go apply it and have a working theory on how to execute in their business. So that’s kind of the philosophy that we took, let’s make it memorable music, but also introduce key vocabulary. Let’s introduce lived experiences. Let’s introduce key concepts so that when people are done listening to the song, they memorize it, they embody it, and they connect with it. Now they have a working theory for whatever the song is about.  And are you using AI to actually write the song?  No, we're not. That’s one of the things we haven’t really integrated on the AI front, because the AI is not good enough to take what’s exactly in my head and turn it into a song. It’s good for somebody who doesn’t have any songwriting capability or musical capability to create something that’s cool. But as a musician, as somebody who writes, you have a vision in your head on how something should sound sonically, and the AI is not good enough to take what’s in my head and put it into a song. Now, what we are using are some of the AI tools like Suno for background music. So at first, we used that to create all our background music for our courses from scratch. We are using some of the AI to help with some of the background music and everything and all of that so that we can have original stuffShare on X as opposed to having to use licensed music from places like Epidemic Sound. So we are using it for like the background music. But for the actual music-based lessons, we're still doing those old school.  Okay, that's pretty good. We are going to dive in a little bit deeper here, but before we go there, I’d like to talk about the framework that you’re bringing to the show. I think we called it the AI for Deep Experts Framework. That's the working title right now, but yeah, we're still finalizing it. But that’s the working title. Yeah.  But the idea—at least the way I'm understanding it—is that if someone has deep domain expertise, AI can be a real accelerator and amplifier of that expertise. Yep.  So people who are listening to this and they have domain expertise and they want to do AI so that they can deliver it to more people, reach more people, create more value, what is the framework? What is the five-step framework to get them there?  Number one: provided that you have deep expertise, you should be able to identify a core pain point in your respective industry that needs solving.Share on X Maybe it’s something that, throughout your career, you wanted to solve, but you weren’t able to get the resources allocated to get it done in your job. Or maybe it required some technical talent and you weren’t a developer, or whatever, right? But you should be able to identify what’s the pain point, a sticking pain point that needs to be solved—and if it's solved, it could really create value for customers. That's just old-school opportunity recognition. Number two: now, the great thing about AI is that you can leverage AI to do a lot of deep research on the problem. So obviously, you're still going to have conversations to better understand the pain point further. You're going to look at your own lived experiences and things like that. But now you can also leverage AI tools—using Perplexity or Claude—to do deep research on a market opportunity. So whether or not you have experience in market research, you can use an AI tool to help identify the total addressable market. You can brainstorm with it to uncover additional pain points, and it help you flesh out your value proposition, your concept statement, and all of those things that are critical to communicating the offering. Because before we transact in money, we always transact in language, right? So pretty much, AI can help you articulate the value proposition, understand the pain point, all of those different things. And then also if you have like deep expertise and you haven't really turned it into a framework, the AI can help you framework it and then develop a workflow to deliver value.Share on X So now you have the framework, you have the market understanding, and all of those different things. AI can even help you think through what the product would look like—the user experience, the workflow, things like that. Now you can use the AI-powered tool to help you build that. You can use something like Lovable. You can use something like Bolt. You could use something like Cursor, all different AI-powered tools. For people who are newer to development and have never done development before, I would recommend something like Lovable or maybe Bolt. But once you get more comfortable and want to make sure you're building production-ready software, then you move to something like Cursor.  Cursor has a large enough context window—the context window is basically the memory of an AI tool. It has a large enough context window to deal with complex codebases. A lot of engineers are using it to build real, production-ready platforms. But for an MVP, Bolt and Lovable are more than good enough. So one of the things I recommend when building with one of these tools is to do what's called a PRD prompt. PRD stands for Product Requirements Document.Share on X For those who aren’t familiar with software development, typically, and this is not even really happening anymore, but traditionally with software development, you would have the product manager create a Product Requirements Document. So this basically outlines the goals of the platform, target audience, core features, database, architecture, technology stack, all of the different things that engineers would need to do in order to build the platform. So you can go to something like Claude, or ChatGPT, and you can say: “Create a PRD prompt for this app idea,” and then give as much detail as possible—the features, how it works, brand colors, all of those different things. Then the AI tool—whether you're using ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini—will generate your PRD prompt. So it’s going to be like this really, really long prompt. But it’s going to have all of the things that the AI tool, web-building or app-building tool needs to know in order to build the platform. It’s going to have all the specifications. So you copy and paste.  Is this what people call vibe coding?  Yeah, this is vibe coding. But the PRD prompt helps you become more effective at vibe coding because it gives the AI the specifications it needs and the language that it understands to increase the likelihood that you build your platform correctly. Because once you build the PRD prompt, the AI is going to know, okay, this is the database structure. It's going to know whether this is a React app versus a Next.js app. It's going to know, okay, we're building a frontend with Netlify. The stuff that you may not know, the AI will know, and it will build the platform for that. So then you take that prompt, you paste it into Lovable, paste it into Cursor, and then you can kind of get into your vibe coding flow. Don't let the hype fool you, though, because a lot of people will say, “Oh, I built this app in 15 minutes using Lovable.” No—it still requires time. But if you can build a full-stack application in two weeks when it typically takes several months, that’s still like super fast. So pretty much, on average, you can build something in a couple of weeks—especially once you get familiar with the process, you can build something in a couple of weeks. But if this is your first time ever doing this, pay attention to things like when the app debugs and some of the other issues that come up.  Start paying attention because you’re going to learn certain things by doing. As you go through the process, you'll begin to understand things like, okay, this is what an edge function is, this is what a backend is. You’ll start learning these different things as you’re going through the process, right? So you get the platform built. Now the next step is you want to distribute the platform. So obviously, if you’ve been in your industry for a while and you have some expertise, you should have some distribution. You should have some folks in your space who are your ICP that you can kind of start having some customer conversations with and start trying to sell the platform. One of the things that I always recommend is going B2B and selling something for significant valueShare on X as opposed to going B2C and selling a bunch of $19.99 subscriptions. And the reason for that is a couple of different things. Number one, when you have to do a lot of volume, your business model becomes more complicated. And then you have to introduce things to manage that volume. Whereas if you’re selling a solution that’s a five-figure to six-figure offering, like 10 clients, 15 clients, the amount of money that you can get to with less complexity in your business model. So I always say go B2B, at least a five-figure annual offering, because I know most of the offerings that we offer are at least high five figures, low six figures—subscriptions, SaaS licensing, or whatever. And that way it just introduces less complexity to your business model, and it allows you to get as much revenue as possible. And then as you go to market, you’re going to learn. So the learning aspect, you’re going to learn maybe customers want this or this feature. We thought the people were going to use the platform this way, but they’re actually using it this way. So you’re always learning, always evolving, and adjusting the offering. Okay, so let's say I have deep expertise in some area—maybe investment banking or whatever. I want to use AI. I identify an industry pain point that I've addressed or maybe I personally experienced. I visualize a solution, then I brainstorm with ChatGPT or Claude or whatever, figure out what to do, and then I leverage AI tools like Cursor, Lovable, or Bolt. I set the price point. I go B2B. Is this something that, as a subject-matter expert, is efficient for me to do myself because I have the expertise and the vision? Or is it better for me to hire someone to do this?  It depends on what your bandwidth is. I mean, pretty much I’m of the firm belief that like these are skills that you probably want to unlock anyway. So it might be worth going through the process of learning the tools, leveraging them, and everything, and all of that. And that’s kind of how you future-proof yourself. Now, obviously, if you have bandwidth limitations, there are firms and organizations that you could hire, et cetera, et cetera, that can do it for you. Obviously, developers and things like that. But the funny thing about a lot of developers is, even though they're using AI, they're still charging the prices they charged before AI, right? They’re just getting it done faster, and their margins are a lot lower. So you're still going to pay, in a lot of instances, developer pricing for a platform. Those are the things that you have to consider as far as your own personal situation. But me personally, I believe these are skills worth unlocking.Share on X Because one of the things is, if you get very senior in your career—let's say you've been there 15, 16 years, 20 years—we all know there's this point where you either move up to the C-suite or you get caught in upper-middle-management purgatory, where you're kind of in that VP, senior director space, et cetera, et cetera, and you just kind of hover there. At that point, your career moves tend to be lateral—going from one VP role to another VP role, one senior director role to another senior director role, right? At that point, your income potential starts to get limited. So unlocking one of these skills and becoming more entrepreneurial is something I genuinely believe is worth developing personally. And what would you say is the time requirement for someone to get competent in vibe coding?  Three months minimal. You could be pretty solid in three months.  But three months full-time or three months part-time?  Three months part-time.  So three months. That's about 143 working hours in a regular month. So that's basically around 420–430 hours if you were full-time.  If you spend weekends working on your project, learning how to build it, taking notes, and actually going through the process, you can get pretty decent in a couple of months. Now, obviously, there are still levels as you continue and to progress and things like that, but you can get pretty solid in a couple months. Another thing you want to consider is who you're selling to. You obviously wanna make sure that your platform security is really well, is really done. So even if you build it yourself and then you have an engineer do code review, that’s cheaper than having them build it. I think if you spend three months, you can get really good at building solutions for what you need to get done. And then from there, you just get better and better and better and better.  How do I know that, let's say I hire someone in Serbia to do a code review for me? Let's say I learn the vibe coding thing and create the prototype, then I have someone to clean the code. How do I know that they did a good job or not?  You really don’t. You really don’t know until the platform’s in the wild, and it’s like, okay, it’s secure. So there are some things that you can do to check behind people. Let's say you don't have the money to do a full security audit or hire someone specifically for a security review, a developer for security review. One of the things that you can do is you can do multi-agent review. Like you take your codebase, have Claude review it, have OpenAI Codex review it, have a Cursor agent review it. You have multiple agents do a review. Then they kind of check each other’s work, if you will.  They kinda identify things that others may not have identified, so you can get the collective wisdom of those three to be able to be like, “Okay, I need to shore this up. I need to fix this. I need to address that.” That gives you more confidence. It still doesn’t replace a person who has deep expertise and making sure they build secure code, but it will catch common issues, like hard-coding API keys, which is a risk, right? It’ll catch those type of things that typically happen. But let’s say you do have a security, a code review, you could just kind of take that same approach also to check their work. Because they shouldn’t find any major vulnerabilities. The AI agents that come in after it shouldn’t really find any major vulnerabilities if it was like done securely securely. Another thing to consider is that a lot of these tools use Supabase for the backend and database. Supabase also has a built-in security advisor, including an AI security advisor, that points out security issues, performance problems, and configuration errors. So like you do have some AI-powered check and balances to check behind people.Share on X  Interesting. So basically, I can audit their applications, and the AI will check the code and tell me what needs to be improved?  Yeah. And they can make the fixes for you.  Yeah. Wow, that’s amazing. It still sounds a little bit overwhelming. It’s basically a language, a new language to learn, isn’t it?  It’s not really — it’s English. That’s the amazing thing about it—it’s English. I mean, you literally talk to AI in natural language, and it builds stuff for you, which is, if somebody is like, had a idea for a minute, because I mean, pretty much running entrepreneurship centers, I’ve known so many people who’ve had ideas that they were never able to launch or build, and then they see somebody build it later. If you learn these skills, you get to the point where anything that's in your head, you can kind of start bringing it to life in reality.Share on X And even if you've got to bring somebody in to make sure it's secure and production-ready, it's way cheaper than having them build it from scratch. And then another thing that you’ll find also is if you’re able to build something, let’s say you want to turn it into a startup or something, right? It’s a lot easier to bring in a technical co-founder when they don’t got to build the thing from scratch, and then they also see that you were able to build something, they’re able to see your product vision, et cetera, et cetera. It becomes a lot more easier to recruit people who actually have that expertise into the company because you’ve already handled the hard part. You got something and it works. And all they got to do is just come in, make it safe, and make it work better.  Yeah, that is very interesting. It feels analogous to writing a book yourself or having a ghostwriter. Because essentially, you are vibe coding with a ghostwriter, right? You tell the stories, and then the ghostwriter writes the book for you. Probably now you can use  AI to do that. Yep.  But that's a skill. Not everyone has the skill to write it themselves, and then they need to go to the ghostwriter, but still is their book, right?  Yep.  So it sounds a little bit similar. That’s fascinating. So what’s the path to launching an MVP? So let’s say I’m a subject matter expert, and I want to launch an MVP within a few weeks. Is there a path for me to go there?  Once you get good with the platform, once you get comfortable with the tools, yeah. So for example, we're launching an AI platform. It's an AI coaching platform, but it's also a data analytics platform. Basically, it's targeted to entrepreneur support organizations and municipalities supporting small businesses. So on the front end, it's an AI-powered advisor — it's a hotline that people can call 24/7. But on the back end, the municipalities and entrepreneur support organizations get access to analytics from each of those calls. We built this in two weeks. We’re already talking to customers, we’re already having conversations, and all of those things. We literally brought it to market in two weeks. So the thing is, once you kind of get caught up with the tools—and I'm not a developer, I'm not a developer by trade at all. I had a tech startup before, but I was a non-technical founder. I just know how to put together a product. But once you get good with the tools, that's very conceivable. And then you just go out there, and you go in the market, you start having conversations with your ideal customer profile.Share on X As you’re going through that process, you’re learning, okay, maybe this isn’t my ideal customer profile, this is their pain point. Or maybe instead of this being the feature they want, this is the feature they want. And the crazy thing about it is in the past you had to really get that ICP real tight and the feature set real tight because it cost so much money to go back and have to make tweaks and changes and to get it to market in the first place. Now, you can get a new feature added in the afternoon. It allows you to go to market a little bit faster. You don’t have to have the ideal feature set. You don’t have to have the ICP figured out. You get out there, you learn, and then you’re able to iterate a lot faster because the cost of development is super cheap now, and the speed in which like new features can be added or deprecated is a lot faster. So it allows you to go to market a lot faster than in the past.  Okay, I got it. You can do this, you can code. What do you recommend for someone who’s starting out? You mentioned Lovable, Bolt, and then Cursor. Is Cursor like an advanced product?  Cursor’s a little bit more advanced, but if you want to build production-ready software, it's something you're going to eventually have to use. But can you convert from Lovable to Cursor?  Yes, you can. Yep. So what you typically do — and I still do this to this day — is every time I launch a product, I build it in Bolt first. You could use Bolt or Lovable, either one's fine. I use Bolt because Bolt came out first, and that's what I started using. Then Lovable came out like a month later. But I use Bolt. I’ll spin up the idea in Bolt. And the reason I like doing it in Bolt or Lovable is that it's really good at doing two things. It's really good at quickly launching your initial feature set, and then spinning up your backend. Your database — it's really good at that. So I start off in Bolt, then I connect it to a repository.  For those who aren't familiar with GitHub, there's a button in Bolt or Lovable where you can easily connect it to a GitHub repository. So then once I kind of get the app to a point where the basic skeleton is set, then I go into Cursor. Then I pull the repository into Cursor and do the heavy work. The reason Cursor has a learning curve is because there are still some traditional developer things you need to know to spin up a project. Your initial database — it's a lot harder to spin up your initial database and backend in Cursor. It's also harder to identify your initial libraries and all of those things. If you're a developer, it's not difficult. But if you're new, it is. Bolt and Lovable abstract those things out for you. So you start it off in Bolt or Lovable. Basically, since they're limited in their context windows, when you're trying to build something complex, eventually they start making a whole bunch of errors. They basically start getting stup*d. That's when you know it's time to move to Cursor, because Cursor can handle the heavy lifting. So if you build in Bolt or Lovable until it gets stup*d, then you move to Cursor for the heavy lifting.  And then is there a point where Cursor gets stup*d as well? No. Cursor has a couple of different things that allow it to extend its context window, which is his memory. You can put documentation into Cursor. For example, whatever your PRD prompt was, you can save that as a document in Cursor. You can also set rules. One of my rules in Cursor is: I'm not technical, so explain everything in layman's terms. And then as you’re starting to build code, you can save that code or you can point it to that repository. So there's some more flexibility with Cursor as far as managing your context window.Share on X But with Bolt and Lovable, the context window is more limited right now. So I start off in those, and then once I kind of get the skeleton up, then I move to Cursor. And at that point, a lot of the complicated things like spinning up your dev environment and all those things are kind of abstracted out. Then you can just jump in and use it the same way you use Bolt and Lovable. Fantastic. Fantastic. So, Jason, super helpful information for domain experts who want to build an application that will help them promote their product or manifest their ideas in product form. I think that’s super powerful. So if someone would like to learn about SoundStrategist and what SoundStrategist can do for them in terms of learning and experiential products, incorporating music, or building curriculum, or they would just like to connect with you to learn more about what you can do for them, where should they go?  Jason William Johnson, PhD, on LinkedIn, or www.getsoundstrategies.com.  Okay. Well, Jason William Johnson, you are really ahead of the curve, especially connecting this whole idea of vibe coding to people who are subject matter experts and not technical. And you know it because you don't come from a technical background, yet you've mastered it. I’m living it. Everything I’m sharing—this is not like a theoretical framework. I'm living all of this. So everything I’m saying. Super authentic. And especially coming from you—you understand what it's like to not be technical person, learning this, applying this.  So if you'd like to do this, learn more, or maybe have Jason guide you, reach out to him. You can find him on LinkedIn at Jason William Johnson, PhD, or visit www.getsoundstrategies.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you follow us and subscribe on YouTube, follow us on LinkedIn, and on Apple Podcasts. Because every week I bring a super interesting entrepreneur, subject matter expert, or a combination of the two—like Jason—to the show, who will help you accelerate your journey with frameworks and AI frameworks in that gear. So thank you for coming, Jason, and thank you for listening. Important Links: Jason's LinkedIn Jason's website

Rich Kahn, CEO and Co-Founder of Anura, is driven by a mission to help businesses grow by eliminating digital ad fraud that silently siphons marketing budgets. A lifelong entrepreneur and developer, Rich is passionate about ensuring that advertising dollars reach real users—not bots, malware, or human fraud. We explore Rich's journey from launching an early digital advertising platform to uncovering widespread fraud that threatened his own business—and how building an internal solution eventually led to Anura. Rich breaks down his Ad Optimization Framework—Minimize Fraud, Optimize Conversion, Refresh Content—and explains why fraud must be addressed before any meaningful optimization can occur. He also shares how ad fraud impacts ROI, why lifetime value matters more than cost-per-click, and the conviction required to build and scale a SaaS company in a crowded market. — Improve Traffic Quality by 25% Overnight with Rich Kahn Good day, dear listeners. My name is Steve Preda, the Founder of the Summit OS Group, and the creator of the Summit OS Business Operating System. And today, my guest isa Rich Kahn, the CEO and Co-founder of Anura, an ad fraud solution that monitors traffic to identify real users versus bots, malware, and human fraud. Rich, welcome to the show.  Thanks for having me today.   Well, it’s super interesting business you have and the entrepreneurial journey. So let’s start with my favorite question. What is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in Anura?  My personal ‘Why’ has always been to help people. Fraud is a huge problem. And it’s no longer a question of if you have fraud, it’s a question of how much fraud you have. And I’m watching people spend millions and millions of dollars on digital marketing and getting it siphoned out by fraudsters with bogus traffic. So the ‘Why’ is that, in all the businesses that I've done, I've wanted to help people grow their business. I want to help people grow their staff. I wanted to help people grow, just in general.Share on X And in this case, with the Anura, I’m able to help them identify, wasted spend, eliminate that so they can grow their marketing campaigns and grow their company. And if they grow their company, then they have to grow their staff, and it’s a good thing for everybody. Yeah, definitely. And until we talked, I was not aware that fraud is rampant, especially in ad spend. It didn't occur to me. And I kind of wonder why this is happening. But tell me how you found this problem, and why do you want to solve this, and how did you get to this point to launch a company about it?  Well, in 2003, my wife and I launched a digital marketing firm. Think of Google, but really small. So it’s text-based ads you can target by keyword, bid price, geography, audience, like it had all these targeting criteria. We launched it in 2003. By 2004, we had a nice, stable list of clients, but we started getting some complaints about the traffic quality. Something wasn’t right. And I’m a developer, so I started looking at the code and realizing, looking at all the analytics and the data, and realized that it was bad traffic, it was fraudulent traffic. So I figured, you know what? I don't want to solve fraud. I want to go out, buy a fraud solution, bolt it onto my platform, and just continue doing my business.Share on X Kind of like buying McAfee for your laptop. You just buy and let it scan and do its thing. But in 2004, it didn't exist any fraud solutions. In fact, the first commercial available fraud solution didn’t start selling until 2008 or '09. So I was a developer, and I said, we're going to lose our business if I don't do something. So I figured it out I'd build it myself, and we did. I wrote the software. It worked great. We had to continue evolving it as fraud evolved. And it got to the point where we started having clients ask—if not beg—to use our software outside of our network. And that’s when we kind of got the idea that this might be a good tool to sell by itself, as opposed to baked into our platform. And that's where we launched it, in 2017. We ended up launching a Anura as a standalone solution.  Wow. I mean, it's definitely, if this is a big problem, it's going to affect everyone who advertises. So it could be hundreds of millions of people. How can someone even make money with fraudulent traffic? How does it help them to make money?   Well, what happens is internet advertising fraud is not illegal. There’s no law that says you can’t do it. So if you do find somebody that’s doing it, it’s really difficult to prosecute them in the U.S. But a lot of it happens overseas, so it’s even worse. There’s a lot of countries that allow all kinds of stuff. So basically, what we focus on is that their job is to try to make money. And I read an article one time from another company that was doing stats on fraud detection. They said the average fraudster—and this is why they do it—makes $5 million a year. But how?  There’s a lot of different ways. It depends if they're buying from Google, Facebook, DSPs, or affiliate marketing. But I’ll give you a simple example. One example, which is affiliate marketing. A lot of companies use affiliate marketing. I think it's a $20 or $30 billion industry at this point. It's a big market. So what happens is, right now, you or I can go to Amazon and sign up for their affiliate program, and every time we send them a new client, they'll give us 5% of what they spend. So I'm getting paid on the spend, right? So what if I sent fake users there? I’m not going to get paid for anything because they're not spending money. But what if I’m the fraudster? I use stolen credit cards to make those purchases. So if the purchase gets made and shipped, I get 5%. Affiliates usually get paid net 7. So I get paid net 7, somewhere across that month, maybe the next month, the person whose credit card was stolen says, “Hey, wait a second, I recognize charges that don't belong to me.” And then the investigation starts and takes months before it comes back to Amazon and says, “Oh, you shipped out a product to a fraudulent credit card. You're not getting paid for this. We're taking the money back.” But by then, they've already shipped the product, so they're out the hard cost of the product. They've already paid out the affiliate. The affiliate has already been paid. The affiliate can continue to do that for weeks, knowing that it’s going to take months for them to get caught. Once they get caught, they just set up another account. And what they're doing is making those affiliate margins. So if they spend a hundred dollars, they make five. If they create dozens and dozens of accounts, you can quickly see how they can make a lot of money in a short period of time. That’s just one example.  Yeah. That’s very interesting. Very interesting. So, okay, that’s really cool. So you basically help people not have the fake traffic. So whatever traffic they have, it’s real. So they pay real prices for real value. That’s got to be a significant improvement in advertising efficiency. What is the kind of improvement that you see on average happening for people?  On average, it’s 25% improvement. So 25% of the marketing dollars that they’re spending is fraudulent. Now, if they buy from like Google and Facebook, it's probably around 10%—they're on the lower side. If you buy from the programmatic space, like The Trade Desk and things like that, it’s upwards of 50%, and then everything else falls in between. All the digital types of marketing. If you're doing influencer advertising, if you're doing affiliate advertising, each one has different levels of fraud that we’ve found. But on the high side is programmatic, and on the low side is probably search and social.   Okay, so this seems like a big part of optimizing an ad, and making it perform better. So what I’d like you to share with us—and we'd talked about this in the pre-call is that you have a framework for generally optimizing digital ads. So what would that look like? And one element is fraud, but what are the other elements, and how do you go about optimizing your advertisement?  Sure. Like the heaviest hitter, in my opinion, is fraud. So you start with fraud, you look at where fraud is, and you minimize that, right? The next thing you want to focus on is conversion value. Every campaign has some level of conversion. It could be as simple as a click. It could be as simple as watching a video. It could be purchasing a product. It could be generating a lead for, let’s say, Hey, save money on my car insurance, and you fill out a lead. So what you want to do is look at where that conversion takes place. First off, you want to analyze the conversions because not all conversions are real conversions. You’ll get conversions like credit cards, fake credit cards being used, or fake information being used in fill in forms, and that’s where the fraud comes in. Once you eliminate that, now you can rely on the data that you see in your conversion value, and you start optimizing your campaigns around that conversion value. So as long as hey, this source is generating me a 20% conversion, this source is generating me 10%. Guess what? I want to stop spending on the 10%, spend more than the 20% just optimizing for the conversion value. And that's what's going to get your campaign to perform at its highest level.Share on X  So what are ways to optimize conversion beyond the fraud piece? Yeah, so once fraud’s out of the game, we’ve eliminated fraud, it’s really focusing on the data. What source you buy the traffic from, what sources they get the traffic from. Because sometimes you might buy a source of traffic like Google, and it may not come from Google. It may come from one of its syndicated partners like a CNN or a weather.com or Bloomberg, somewhere where you’re not familiar with, but if they’re getting traffic, that’s their partner network. They’re getting traffic from there. So you want to identify the sources. It could be by keyword, right? You can take a look and break it down by keyword. If you're looking at Google and maybe you have certain keywords that have a much higher performance because it's a better audience to targetShare on X and then you can have some that are much lower, then you got to decide what the cutoff is. So if you say, “Hey, anything less than a 10% conversion, I'm going to get rid of. And anything greater than 10%, I'm going to buy more of.” So that’s kind of where you focus on your conversion value. And ultimately, it’s to try to maximize your conversion while still spending your budget. Because let's say if you've got a source that's converting at 80%. It's going to be far and few between, and they're going to be expensive, and the volume of traffic is going to be light, and it's not going to be enough. Because if you've got one conversion a month, that's probably not enough to survive your company on. So you got to get somewhere in between, where you get the volume and you get the conversion value that you're looking for to give you the best possible campaign.Share on X So basically, you calculate your ROI on each type of conversion, and you get to a point where you still get a positive ROI. Is there like a rule of thumb? What is the kind of ROI do you need in order for it to generally be worth taking the risk of doing the advertising and putting in the effort?  Yeah. It’s very different from client to client. It’s got to be specific to a client. And I'll give you an example. I used to work with a company called TigerDirect. They were a huge reseller of electronics, computers, computer components, and stuff like that. And they would spend $110 to generate a $20 sale. So everybody knows that’s losing money, right? You're losing $80 on every sale you generate, or whatever the number is. If they're spending $100 to generate a sale just to get a $20 sale, why would they do that?  Well, they know once they get a client in the door, they market. They used to send weekly magazines of all the new stuff that's out in the market, the new pricing index, constant email bombardments. They would call you and say, “Hey, I saw you bought recordable CDs. We have a special on recordable CDs if you're looking for them.” They would market like crazy to their client base, and they would average over $300 per client.  So that’s the lifetime value.   Right. Their lifetime value was much greater than their cost for acquisition. And they were comfortable and in a position to spend that money to acquire the client knowing that they would make the money over time. Most companies don't operate that way. Most companies operate like GEICO—they pay $15 or $20 to get somebody to fill out a form saying they want to save money on car insurance. And they may close 15% of those leads into actual deals. And when they do the math, they’re making money every single lead that they get in, the ones that convert. And on the ones they lose, they're making enough money on the wins that the losses are outweighed, and they're still making money. So again, every company, every product—it's different. I've seen the same industries, like car insurance. Let's stick with car insurance. I've seen four or five companies where I'm looking at their conversion rates. Conversion rates are different. Their ROIs are different, their spend is different—everything's different. It's just targeting different audiences.Share on X  So if I had unlimited funding, let’s say, and I want to ramp up as fast as possible, but I wanted to make it in a smart way. Is there like a rule of thumb that your lifetime value—the profit you make on a customer—has to be 3x the amount you spend on advertising? And the lifetime is measured by the profit, not the top line, but the bottom line.  Yeah, I haven't seen a specific rule of thumb to give clients. Obviously, your lifetime value of a client needs to be more than the cost to acquire that client.  And if you want to be profitable, not every company starts out profitable. Look at Uber—they were a billion-dollar company before they went profitable. They were able to raise enough money to keep everything going, because all they cared about was client acquisition.  Yeah.  Let me get as many clients and as many drivers and riders in the door, as many drivers and riders in the door as they can possibly get so they can own the market. They had a great idea. Lyft was right behind them. They didn’t care. They were able to raise enough capital to just keep spending like crazy, knowing that in the long game, once they owned the market in all the different markets they were targeting, they were going to be profitable.Share on X So they were spending like crazy.  Doesn't that mean that there are some actors in the advertising market that inflate prices because maybe they’re venture-funded, and one out of a hundred company is going to make it unicorn? And the other 99 are going to be spending money on advertising, driving up prices. So if someone comes in and they're bootstrapping, they're going to be hard-pressed to actually make a return on their Facebook ads, because there's so much demand chasing results without appropriate expectation.  Well, if there’s enough demand, then the bootstrapper can make it work. I’ve been a bootstrapper my whole life. So if you’re in a market where there’s enough demand, it’ll work. But if you're in a situation where, let's say today, you decide to come up with a rideshare app, you're going to be hard-pressed to win riders and drivers as a new bootstrapped company. Personally, I don't think Uber would be where it is today if it were bootstrapped. A business model like that required to grow fast, and they needed the capital to do it. So there are certain industries that bootstrappers just aren't going to be able to touch, because you've got a company like Uber that was losing money while acquiring all these new clients, knowing that down the road they would own the network and they would be able to be profitable. That’s a big gamble. Yeah. But it's also all the other companies that get funding but never actually make it. And the venture capitalists are spreading their risk because they invest in ten companies, and if one blows up, that's enough.  Yeah.   So that means that there’s a lot of fake demand, basically.  Well, I’m talking about the demand from the client, not demand from the company. The company has the product, and they're trying to generate demand for their product. So when I say demand, I mean demand from the customer.  No, I mean, demand for advertising.  Oh, okay. Yeah, I see what you’re saying.  So clicks.   Yeah. So there's a limited number of people that are looking for that term. You’ve got a lot of people spending money. It’s going to make it difficult to get it unless you’re spending a lot per click.   Yeah.  So that means that maybe pay-per-click advertising is not for the faint of heart.  I wouldn't say that.  Yeah.   It's not for everybody when you're talking about every industry, right? Certain industries—I’ll give you an example. Let's say you're a roofer. Pay-per-click is going to work great for you because there are only so many roofers in a given area, and there's a high demand for roofing. You can get away with spending a couple dollars a click, where it’s not going to break the bank, and you get that phone ringing. My son, for example, owns a power washing and holiday lighting company. And he does Facebook and Google ads. He’s a small company, bootstrapped, and generates plenty of demand because of that situation. But again, if he decided he wanted to compete with Uber, he'd be lost. So it really depends on the industry, Insurance. Let's say you want to start your own Rich Kahn insurance company. Well, I’m going to be competing against Allstate, Progressive, GEICO—all these companies that are spending heavily in that sector. The only way you're going to get action is to spend more per click than they do. And if I’m spending more per click, and I don’t have the scale like they do, I’m going to lose money. Yeah. Super interesting. So let’s circle back to your framework. So we talked about fraud minimization as a way to optimize ads. We talked about conversion. What's the third leg of this stool?  For me, it’s content.   So let's say you've got fraud out of the game. You optimize by campaign and your ads are showing up number one every single time, but the copy doesn't draw. Or you don't refresh the copy often enough, then it gets stale, and people see it and think, “Eh, let me try somebody new.” So they're always looking for newer content, a way to hook the client. You really have to optimize campaign copy. So again, working with Google—that's ones out there—you have the ability to put up multiple ads, multiple creatives. Their system will automatically take titles and rotate them for you so they stay unique. And then they'll push more traffic to the ones that are getting a better conversion rate or a better click-through rate. So it's about constantly staying on top of your copy. Just like when you watch TV. You'll see the same companies advertising over and over again, but it's always a different commercial because they're trying to hook you. If they played the same commercial for the last 20 years, you'd just tune it out.  Tune it out. Yeah.   Yeah. But when you see something new, it's like, “Oh, let me watch that one.” It's kind of cool. Because the commercials have to have good copy. If it's boring, stale copy, nobody's going to pay attention.  And if it's entertaining, then it's even better, right?   Exactly. If it becomes memorable and you think, “Oh my God, you've got to see this commercial I just saw, it was amazing,” that's the kind of commercial you try to build—but it's very difficult to build.  Yeah, that’s very interesting. The creative element is very important. To catch attention and keep it, it has to be creative, curiosity-inducing, and potentially entertaining. That’s wonderful.  Yeah.  So when did you decide to go all in on Anura?  Yeah. We launched it April 1st, 2017. We spent that first year trying to figure out who we were as a business. Because I'd never sold SaaS before, so I was trying to figure out—do I have a pitch deck? How do I talk to people? What works best? How do I get the person to say they're interested and want to get on a call? There was so many things that we were struggling with that first year. I don’t know if we signed up more than one or two clients that first year. By the second year, we signed up a bunch of clients because we started to figure out what was working, who we’re talking to, the right trade shows to go to, the right Google ad campaigns to run.  And as we started getting that, we started getting our traction and we started growing the client base. So I guess we would say we launched in 2017, but really went all in in 2018. That's when we saw our first couple of clients jump on the software, fall in love with it, give us case studies and reviews, and say, “I can't believe how you changed my business. This is amazing.” Once we got into the hands of a client, and we had one or two clients that really embraced it, that's when we felt, “Okay, we're onto something special. We're all in.” That was about 2018.  And then you started winding down your consulting business and went all in on the SaaS business?  Yeah. We left the Google competitor, the really small Google competitor marketing agency. We left it up for a couple years because we had some clients that were still buying and using it. As the client attrition naturally occurred, we got to a point where we said, “Okay, it's time to shut it down.” That was also around 2018–2019. Basically, in 2018 we pulled all the resources from it and just kept it running for the clients that were still there. They'd been with us for years, so we kept it stable. We weren't going to trade shows, we weren't advertising it. Support was handled by two of us, the client support, actually the whole company was run by two of us, three of us, and we just let it run for a couple of years until the last client jumped off, and then we shut it down. Yeah. Actually, that's a great approach—to evolve from a business that maybe has a ceiling, find another opportunity, start putting more time into it as it takes off, reallocate resources, use the legacy business as a cash cow, your legacy business and then once the new business takes off, then basically cut bait. That’s very interesting. And I’ve seen this happen. I’ve done it myself as well. So what's the hardest decision you've ever had to make in your business?   I’m going over the last 22 years. The hardest decision I ever had to make was firing a best friend. And unfortunately, it actually happened twice. My two best friends—one was a partner and one was an employee. We were working together, and it just got to the point where we had to go our separate ways from a business standpoint, and that hurt the relationship. We stopped talking. It was a bad breakup. And I just ran into them about a year ago, and we picked up where we left off—bygones be bygones. It was tough back then because you have a good friend, and it's like, “Oh, I want to bring my friends into the business. So I always tell new business owners when they're starting: if you're going to start the business with friends as a partner, that's different.Share on X But don't hire your friends as employees. Because if you hire them as employees and you have to make a business decision that doesn't go well for them, they're going to pull the “friend card.” And you’re going to be stuck between either getting rid of a bad employee, and I say bad, but like an employee that you need to get rid of or lose a friend. That’s tough. Friends are hard to come by, especially good friends. Especially when you get older and your kids are out of school, you're not hanging out on the sidelines at sports or having coffee with people. As you get older, there are fewer groups you hang out in, so it's harder to find friends. So it’s not worth losing a friend over business.  Yeah, I agree. I agree. I had this experience as well, and it’s it was super painful for both of us. It did impact the relationship, even though we both put up a brave face over it, but it kind of breaks the trust.  Yeah. It’s not fun.   Yeah. So, final question I want to ask you is: what is the most important question an entrepreneur should ask themselves, in your opinion?  Am I willing to not give up? Like I said, when I started this company, it wasn’t a new concept. If it’s a new concept, it's a lot easier to say, “Man, I'm going to crush this.” Because when we started this, there were probably about a half a dozen different fraud solutions in the marketplace back in 2017. There was a handful of them that were out. They were already getting a lot of traction. I think all of them were fully funded and doing really well. It’s not the greatest time in the world to enter the fraud detection market when you have traction like that—kind of like entering the market trying to compete with Uber. But I looked at it and thought, based on everything I was doing, I think we have a better product. And once we started getting that feedback from clients who use the other products and realized we had a better product, it made me more convinced that this is the direction we want to go to.Share on X We want to turn this into its own company. We want to grow it. And for me, that question is: is this something I can do and not give up on? But if it’s something like you’re like, “Ah, if it doesn't do this, I don't know,” then don't start. Because one of the things you’ll find with most entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs, they don’t give up, persistence. They’re can be smart about it, but persistent.   It’s also a balance. It’s a belief. Maybe this is what you’re talking about that, do you have this conviction that this is going to work out in the end?  Yeah.  So how do you know? How do you know that you are willing to not give up? What makes you be able to make this decision? Is this a decision or is this like an ongoing question that you keep asking yourself?  For me, it's: I've got to run it through my head and feel that it's an unfillable business. And then I got to feel it in my heart. If I don’t feel it in my head and my heart, I’m not going to do it. I’ve had cut dozens and dozens of great ideas, some that I think would be phenomenal even in today’s standard, but I didn't have the resources I wanted behind them. I didn't really have the heart in those businesses, so I didn't start them. I wasn't all in. Like I said before, with this business, when we started it, I was all in with my toe. And then once I started getting feedback from clients, I jumped in. Because then I knew, it wasn’t me saying I’ve got the best solution, it was my client’s telling me I got a better solution. And then as I get client after client, so now you know, you look at seven, eight years later, I’ve got new people in the office. I started working for this new fraud company. I see they’re kind of small compared to some of the other big companies out in the marketplace. And then they’re on the phone with clients who are like ranting and raving about our software. They come back—now they're all in. And that's really what I want is I want every team member to feel that, to know that they're with the right company. It's not just for me—it's for the team too. Share on X Yeah, the team. I agree. That’s super important. Well, I love that. And this whole idea of the client feedback, reinforcing the value, and making people confident to sell it is huge. Yeah.  All right. So if people would like to reach out to learn about your solution—maybe they’re advertising, they’re spending a lot of money, and they want to save the 25% without losing any conversions, or they just want to reach out and learn more about and get to know you—where should they go and how can they reach you?   I would start with anura.io or www.anura.com . We own both. And on there, we have huge amount of resources. We publish several blogs every week. We have dozens of eBooks online. We have the world’s only comprehensive guide on ad fraud, it’s about an 80 page document. So plenty of ways to learn. And then once they want to talk to somebody, once they’re ready, and like they’ve done their research and they’re ready to talk to us, they can fill out a form and we'll reach out, or they can just pick up the phone and call us. If they want to follow me on LinkedIn, that’s my social media of choice. I post videos like this on there, some wacky videos sometimes with me and my grandkids. The best way to find me is just Rich Kahn on LinkedIn. I'm easy to find.   Awesome. Well, Rich, thank you for coming and sharing your framework—the Ad Optimization Framework. So it's content, fraud minimization, conversion, and this idea of conviction: when you are willing to not give up concept. It’s fabulous. For those of you listening, if you found this valuable, follow us on YouTube, check out our LinkedIn page, and stay tuned because every week we are going to get a wonderful contributor like Rich Kahn, the CEO of Anura. So Rich, thanks for coming and thanks for listening.  Appreciate it. Important Links: Rich's LinkedIn Rich's website

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,