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Every healthy roofing business is built on a strong foundation. In this episode, Dave shares why the smartest contractors inspect their business just as carefully as they inspect every roof.EPISODE DESCRIPTIONIs your roofing business healthy?Most roofing contractors know exactly what's happening on every roof they're working on—but very few know the true health of the business they're building.The biggest business problems usually don't happen overnight. Just like high blood pressure, they often develop quietly over time until they become expensive and difficult to fix.In this solo episode, Dave Sullivan introduces a different way of looking at your business. Instead of chasing the latest marketing tactic or trying to "10X" your company, Dave explains why building a healthy business starts with understanding your financials, your systems, and your foundation.In this episode you'll learn:Why most contractors treat symptoms instead of the real problemThe "Three-Legged Stool" framework: Sell Work • Do Work • Keep ScoreWhy revenue alone doesn't tell you if your business is healthyThe silent warning signs every roofing contractor should recognizeWhy diagnosis should always come before adviceWhether you're doing $500,000 or $10 million in annual sales, this episode will help you step back, evaluate your business differently, and focus on what really matters.Resources MentionedThe Roofing Business Health Check™A personalized one-on-one evaluation of your roofing business designed to help you identify strengths, uncover hidden profit leaks, and build a healthier, more profitable company.Learn more or schedule a consultation:https://theroofercoach.comSponsorsSMA SupportNeed help answering phones, following up with leads, scheduling appointments, or handling administrative work?SMA Support provides trained virtual team members who specialize in the roofing industry, helping contractors free up their time and focus on growing their business.Learn more at:https://theroofercoach.com/smaProLineIf you're serious about knowing the health of your business, you need accurate information.ProLine helps roofing contractors manage sales, production, job costing, and financial reporting—all in one place—so you can make better business decisions with confidence.Learn more at:https://theroofercoach.com/prolineUse promo code:DAVE50Connect with Dave

Competing in a Future World of Infinite Intelligence Navigation: Intro From Knowledge Workers to Judgment Workers The AI-Native Company: Org, Hiring, Culture The Human Element: Are We Underestimating It? Scenarios Our Take Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show:   Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Introduction Welcome to episode 79 of Tech DECIPHERED. Today, we take a leap into the big unknown. This is a thesis episode, not your classic analysis, in-depth sharing episode. The big idea for this episode is that we may be approaching the cognitive age, and how would one, or how would a company compete in a world of infinite intelligence? The big idea, again, is that intelligence, which has been mostly scarce and expensive for all of human history, might become abundant and cheap. If that happens, what happens to work, what happens to companies, what happens to society? This episode will be really framing a lot of these discussions. From knowledge workers to judgment workers, addressing the AI native company and how does that change, going into the human element and whether or not we’re underestimating it, and finally, ending up going into scenarios, feasible scenarios of a future where, well, intelligence is abundant. Intelligence is quasi-infinite or infinite itself.Bertrand Schmitt Yes. Big questions for this episode 79. From Knowledge Workers to Judgment Workers We can start with from knowledge workers to judgment workers. Let’s go back first to how came the knowledge worker. It’s a 20th-century invention from Peter Drucker in 1959. The idea here is that that category might be splitting. The production of knowledge itself is on its way to being commoditized by AI. However, our perspective is that judgment around production of knowledge is not disappearing and is staying for a bit control managed by humans. What’s your take on this, Nuno? Do you agree with this split?Nuno Gonçalves Pedro I think it’s a little bit more profound than that. It’s not just judgment. Definitely, human judgment will be needed. We’ve seen agents perform all sorts of funny things in the wrong way when left alone to their own devices. Even some very well-known AI researchers coming forward and saying, “Hey, I tried to use this myself, and actually I messed up some of my systems,” or “I messed some of my code. I messed up some of my flows for a period of time.” I think just having human-in-the-loop from a judgment standpoint will be needed for a significant amount of time. That is something you can’t just delegate into machines, into algorithms, et cetera. The second part is, ultimately, there needs to be contextualization, and that contextualization, I think, comes from two forms. One from actual data, where the machine, I think, at some point will catch up, or the machines will catch up. The algorithms, at some point, on the data analysis will get better and better and have probably the closest to the truth that you can get, minus all the biases that are in the data, just to be clear, because data has a ton of biases. We’ve looked at this in the past and discussed it at prior episodes. But maybe on that, I think the machine has a chance to catch up, or the machines have a chance to catch up, so there’s less of distinctiveness from the human standpoint. But then, on just the attributes, the ability when you’re judging some situation, you’re in the middle of the situation. You’re judging the person and how it’s acting, in some ways, a lot of the things that end up happening, end up happening because there’s human interaction. There’s someone on the other side. I see how they’re delivering the message, how they’re implicating. We’ll talk about it later in the context of the organization and what changes in companies. I don’t think it’s just judgment. I think there’s a little bit more than that. One of the reasons I went to the dark side of management early on in my career from being an engineer was Peter Drucker and this notion of the knowledge worker, which he later on reemphasized with the publishing of his book, which for me was seminal and defined a lot of my career in life, the post-capitalist society, which is this notion that information rich and information poor is going to be the key distinctiveness that will happen in the world. The two big camps, information rich, information poor, which links back to this invention of the term knowledge worker, that knowledge is going to be key in some ways. I think that’s what we’ve seen for the last decades. Again, I think judgment is not going anywhere, but I think it’s beyond judgment. There’s elements of humanity and involvement that won’t go away anytime soon, where human-in-the-loop are particularly critical. We’ll discuss later some scenarios, but for me, that’s my stick in the ground. I think human-in-the-loop is going to be critical for many decades to come.Bertrand Schmitt While we are talking about all of this, and we share some possible scenarios, there is always that question. This is moving so fast right now. If you think about AI 10 years ago, AI 5 years ago, AI with the launch of ChatGPT 3, and then AI the past 2 years, now we have agents that are running at scale. Things are moving very fast. I can tell you, me in 6 months, the change has been pretty dramatic in terms of what I can use AI for. There is always that question that whatever we are thinking about cannot just be connected to what we were able to do 6 months ago or even today, we have to think and project ourselves at least in the next 6–12 months. Of course, we can go beyond that, and we will do that with some future scenarios, but it’s a very fast-moving, and it’s not clear yet where are the limits.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro I think that’s a very fair point. Let me try to analyze things that I don’t think will change anytime soon for the next few years. Agreed with you that many things will change, and we’ll have a lot better tools, platforms out there. That will be difficult to predict what exactly won’t change. I think there’s elements of humanity, and some of them do relate to judgment, like having good or bad taste, having a view on it, on whether something looks good or bad. Obviously, all of this sometimes is subjective, but some of it may not be as subjective as people think it is. The elements of contextualization. I think a little bit going back to what we did at Chamaeleon ourselves, where we built this platform, Mantis, and the objective of building Mantis was not really to replace us, was that it was a core augmentation layer in some ways that we would use investment or investor judgment as humans in the loop to systematize pattern recognition and a variety of other things, but that Mantis would really elevate all that judgment, not just in terms of timing, us being more productive, but also in terms of the quality of the decisions we’re making. Think of it as a little bit like having our human judgment in the context of operating Chamaeleon at a higher altitude, where we are more aware of the things that are happening and how they actually happen. The ability to really get to the data pieces and then make decisions on top of that that generate the needed alpha in our case for investors. What I mean by this is I think there’s always going to be core elements of humanity that I do think are going to be difficult for the machines to replace. For example, the taste piece people are like, “I can figure out what’s the taste in the market.” Yeah, but that’s mainstream. That doesn’t identify what’s the next big thing, which normally doesn’t start from mainstream. It starts from something else. It could start from opinion leaders and influencers. It could start by someone having a different way of addressing a problem and having a solution that hasn’t been thought through. For example, elements of creativity, I think, in human judgment and in human operations is something that I feel the machine will still have difficulty to replace.Bertrand Schmitt Let’s not forget how today current algorithms are working by feeding them enormous quantity of data, actually as much data as we can find. Finding more data is becoming a limitation these days. What it means is that it’s very hard for AI to think beyond its training data. There is some level of logic that’s being added, but at the same time, take the launch of the iPhone. What was the opinion before launch? Is that no, it doesn’t make sense. Not enough battery life, no keyboard, no this, no that. If you just base your analysis on what’s written out there, what’s being sold out there, you would just say, “It’s going to fail.” AI might really follow that more generic advice and perspective because that’s what in the training data and that’s what they’re in volume. It’s, of course, raising a lot of questions of, how do you improve the quality of the training data? How do you separate the weed from the chaff? There are a lot of questions there, and obviously, it will get better over time. But it’s still a critical part of how it’s working today. It won’t be that easy to change. I really like your point regarding Mantis, and I will say in general, platforms that you build with AI or leveraging AI capacity. Because when we say knowledge production is going to disappear, but we’ll keep judgment, it will be a different type of judgment because the quantity and quality of knowledge we will have in front of us to build our judgment will be very different. If suddenly we have for free the work of 10 interns or 5 junior analysts or whatever, and you can run that on nearly anything you do in life or at work, it’s completely dramatic. Your judgment was not used to be exercised so often because often you were missing quality data to have a judgment. Before it was a lot of finger in the wind and trying to smell something, but you didn’t have enough to make a serious analysis. Except if you are working as a strategy consultant, as you used to do, Nuno. That part is actually quite interesting. That the judgment itself will be exercised much more often and hopefully on the base of much more in-depth analysis for a lot of things. We will work very differently.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro We will go in-depth, faster and more fact-based, more data-based along the way. The question some of you might have right now is, is there some judgment that’s going to go away? Is there some judgment? We seem to be defining that there’s this organization, we’ll talk about it later, that goes from doers more into deciders. I think there’s some nuances to that, so I’ll just hit pause on that. In terms of judgment, obviously, there’s judgment that has been hidden over the years under the pretense of being wisdom, but it’s actually not wisdom. It’s just repetitive tasking, and it’s rules-based for the most. There’s a lot of judgment done, in particular in the white-collar space, that you could say it’s just reps. People have been doing it all along like that, and so therefore to say, “I’ve done it before like this, so I’ll do it the same way.” There’s actually no best in class, no analysis, no nothing. It’s just, “I’ve done it like that before.” I think that type of judgment will disappear because, again, algorithms will be as good, if not much better at that. They’ll be better at figuring out, actually, this would be the better way to do this. That’s how you play it forward. Then the question is, if there are fundamental, wise people in the organization, people that can really take that more complex elements of judgment, how do you go from the world we have today, which is a world of apprenticeship, where people come out of college, they go and work, and they learn their way, and therefore, hopefully over time, some of them, not all of them, we know that, but some of them will develop that wisdom to be great decision makers 15, 20 years down the road? How do we do that in a world that now is saying, “I don’t need people out of college because I can do it myself, and I can do individual contributor, and I can have agents doing the work that would require some manifestation of management in the middle.” Basically, “I don’t need this stuff. I don’t need you.” It’s a little bit the story we’re in. How do you create then this apprenticeship? How do we create then wisdom? My two cents on that is that wisdom, because of what we were just discussing and what, for example, myself and Bertrand was just saying, because of more often interactions with more data-stressed information and insights, what will happen is people will get better through their own reps in whatever form they’re doing, in day-to-day life, in internships, et cetera. In some ways, that will create the accelerated growth. It’s a little bit the interactions with agents and the interactions with our beloved AI algorithms that will create that growth over time and maybe not as much with other people. That still leaves the question around social interactions, but that’s probably the way this gets sorted. Apprenticeship gets sorted through the machine and the human having more interactions in effect.Bertrand Schmitt I agree with you because when we talk about apprenticeship, in some ways a lot of time was wasted on stuff that were not that important. But in a way, that was the price you had to pay in order to be there when people make the big decision to try to get some wisdom from that one hour of interactions that’s really useful and make a difference out of your full week. But the rest of your full week was just basic stuff that you had to do like a machine in a way. Why not let a machine do that? That, for me, is a big question. You could argue there is a transition period where it could be hard. For instance, if you can work hand in hand with AI smartly while you are doing your 4, 5 years of universities, you could graduate with a very different knowledge, perspective, judgment, skill set than anyone who graduated 5 years ago. I think that part will require a question around, “How do you change education?” You see what I mean? If you keep education the same way, expecting that the output is someone that should go now into 5 years of apprenticeship, that’s not going to work because companies will be, “No apprenticeship anymore.” On the contrary, you have to come much more knowledgeable and ready to use the tools. The tools are so efficient that the bar pretty high. You need to come already very well-grounded. If the education is not doing their job, that will be trouble. That part for me, I think is often forgotten. In some ways, the new-found importance of universities as a place to, and not just universities, the trade to really deliver people who are ready for the workforce. If on the business side, the expectation can change, of course, you have to change the education on the other side. My worry probably right now is that it doesn’t look like universities are in touch with what businesses are looking for, businesses are working on. Of course, that’s very worrisome because the cost of university has increased very significantly. It’s not clear quality of education has improved at all. If anything, it could be the opposite. It’s pretty scary. Of course, it’s going to raise a lot of questions. How much is education worth in that type of situation? Maybe another point because we talk a lot about apprenticeship, how this stuff was useful, but at the same time, if we go back in time, not long ago in the ’50s, if you wanted to be a developer, for instance, ’50s, ’60s, the job was very different. There was barely any programmation language out there. You had to use punch cards. Your time truly spent doing the coding was very limited. Once you had your stuff working, then, the debugging was a total nightmare. My point is that no one is looking back to that time saying, “You know what? It was great. It was a great way to learn and to do an apprenticeship for 5 years. To do that crappy job of punching cards for the boss.” There was little value in this. Guess what? Everyone is happy it’s not being done anymore by anyone. I think we also have to see what AI is bringing in a similar way is that everyone’s job is going to become quite different. There are a lot of big parts of the job who are not going to look back with fondness. Just looking back as, “Wow, that was very machine-like type of job. I’m glad I’m done with it.” People will want to jump directly to the next step. You don’t need to go to the punch card phase to be able to be a good developer for the past 40 years. I guess it will be the same with AI.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro I think so. The difficulty we have as humans is to also visualize dramatically different scenarios and landscapes, professionally. It’s difficult for us to anticipate what are the jobs of the future. Jobs have changed a lot in the last few decades, not even the last century. What people do, the migration initially from the agricultural society to then the industrial society to then the services society, and in some ways, the shift within the services industry, and now we’re seeing another shift, so we can’t really anticipate what those jobs look like. Back to your point on education, because I think that’s a very important point. If you’re right now an undergraduate student or a postgraduate student, for that matter, and you’re not figuring out your own mechanisms of learning outside of your syllabus, outside of what your professors are telling you, et cetera, you’re going to face very difficult times. If you’re not right now using all these AI tools proficiently, all these cycles of vibe coding, co-working, et cetera, with agents in the mix, you’re going to have a really tough time. If you’re not at this point in time as proficient as someone like myself or Bertrand, and given that we’re nerds, we’re relatively proficient with a lot of these tools that are out there. On top of it, some of us have our own platforms in-house. If you’re not as proficient as we are with those tools, you’re going to have a very difficult time because then people like us won’t need you. I think that’s the sad truth. It’s like at some point, if you’re not needed, you’re not needed. Then again, you may find something else that’s more interesting for you to do. Start your own company, go join a new exciting job doing whatever it is that you need to do next, et cetera. But again, I think the bar is very high. If you’re in college right now, again, undergrad, postgraduate, this is the time of transition. This is the worst time. It’s not the best time, it’s the worst time. Because education and all these institutions haven’t adapted to it yet. You need to adapt. You need to adapt. You need to adapt. If you don’t, you’re going to pay for it, not just in the loans you need to repay, but also in terms of actually having difficulty finding your career path in those first few critical years.Bertrand Schmitt You need to be especially proactive when you’re facing this type of period where businesses are adapting as fast as they can because they all know it’s going to be survival of the fittest very quickly. Universities typically are working on a very different pace, and it’s pretty guaranteed they are not going to have adapted as fast as businesses. In time of big dramatic change, it will be trouble. It will be trouble. Yes, you will have not fun. Not saying it was part of the deal when you sign up for that loan and decided to go for university. But that’s life. There has been issues before. It’s not the first time. You have to do something about it. You talk about your perspective about, “Hey, why do we need you if you are not already fluent and very efficient with these tools and stuff?” The truth, in some ways, it’s even worse than that. Each time we spend with someone who is not efficient with all of this is less time we spend with the tools that are already providing magic for us.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Exactly.Bertrand Schmitt It’s a very big choice of, “Hey, do I spend more time training this person?” Do I just… there is an opportunity cost. Or, do I spend more time staying at light speed? Why do I slow down to do something else in the hope that maybe I will get to return versus the light speed I’m already on? It’s a lot of tension. Again, it’s certainly new. But if we want to look back, I think you talk about the switch from agriculture and society, industrial society, and now the service industry. The reality is that, yes, we have made dramatic changes in the past before. 140 years ago, we were 90% agricultural society in Europe, in the US, 90% of us. Today, it’s what? 2%. So my point is that that’s a normal evolution. There is no progress without change. Sometimes the rate of change is soft, and sometimes you have a step function. Now it’s a step function, and it’s also a pretty fast step function. Before, it could take decades to get new stuff being put in place, to have electricity come up, this or that. Now we see that the rate of investment in AI is insane, way beyond anything we have seen before. Two, in a way, a lot of the architecture behind the scene was already there to support an even faster transition. What’s new might be the pace of the transition, how unnatural it might look. But at the same time, if you put yourself in the shoes of someone who lived 150 years ago, I mean, this was also a dramatic change for them. From horses to cars to planes to rockets, pretty big change, maybe even bigger change.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Maybe the silver lining, just to bookend this section, is one, there will be new roles. There are a lot of things we can’t anticipate. There will be new roles, there will be new jobs being created, and new things that we can’t really quite grasp yet. The second part is that the rules are changing, and they’re changing, I would say, in general, for the better. If you are a decision-maker or an organization, and you still have your job, you’re probably making more important decisions with more data, with more tooling around you, with less red tape, hopefully over time. I know that will not hold true for all the big corporations out there that are listening to us, but it is starting to happen. Things are making an impact on how decision-making is made. There’s less and less red tape along the way in certain organizations. There are more and more fact-based discussions happening as we move along. The silver lining is better jobs, more jobs, different jobs in the future, hopefully as well. Secondly, the second part of the silver line is that the jobs that exist today, hopefully, will be more interesting, certainly on the knowledge space and on this judgment space that we’re now introducing as part of this episode. The AI-Native Company: Org, Hiring, Culture Switching gears, maybe to how does that shift? How does the company of the future look like? How does an AI native company look like? I feel there are a lot of discussions on, “Oh, you only need one person to run everything.” Let’s not go to that level. We’ve had a couple of episodes where we focused on AI as your co-founder and a couple of other elements that you guys can go back to. Let’s focus on a more evolutionary view of what’s happening to organizations, and maybe start with the org structure. In general, we should see more flat organizations where mid-level managers have to justify their pay in some ways because middle management are routers. They are normally routing tasks. It’s sometimes aggregating it, synthesizing it, and pulling it back up. Guess what? AI and agents in general are very good at that. The synthesis piece, et cetera, is not as well needed. One could say there are several elements of middle management that are valuable, like the coaching of people, the creation of apprentices, and the accountability that comes with some of middle management. But lo and behold, most of middle management is seen as a little bit of a thin line that doesn’t need to necessarily exist. I feel we’re moving into a world of smaller teams, more senior teams, where there’s more judgment at the top, where you’ll have people that both do a mix of what we used to call management in its new form, but also a lot of individual contribution. If you’re not used to that, if you’re not used anymore to be an individual in the future, again, and if you’re a very senior in an organization, maybe this is the right time to either reinvent yourself, find some other job that doesn’t require as much of that, which we’ll have plenty of those jobs for the next few decades, or maybe retire. I’ve actually, shockingly enough, seen people who have said, “You know what? This thing is changing too fast, too dramatically. My industry is changing quite aggressively right now. I’m about to retire in a couple of years. I’m just going to retire now.” I’ve literally met two people who have done that. Again, there’s nothing wrong about it. I think we’re, again, going through a step function and a huge shift, but figuring out where you fit in this new model of organizations, more senior at the top, smaller teams, more of a mix of individual contribution with management than ever was done before.Bertrand Schmitt I agree with you. In some ways, I’m not surprised that some people might say, “You know what? It’s now time to retire.” I feel a bit sad, maybe because it means you don’t like to keep reinventing yourself and changing your habits and thinking about new stuff. You were a creature of habits, I would say, if that’s your conclusion. But everyone is entitled to their own opinion, obviously, and a way of life. I guess that’s what happened, again, at regular times in the past in terms of big change. What I can see is that the rise of, you can call it the full-stack individual, someone who will have multiple roles inside the team. Before, you had to really separate the role. Especially in the US, there is such a clear separation between every role you can have in a company. Let’s take a tech company. You will have people doing design, people doing different types of designs, people doing front-end development, back-end development, and operations. You see step-by-step hyper-specialization. I have seen that, and it’s true that the level of complexity you had to deal with at some point requires some level of hyper-specialization because it will take you 6, 12 months in order to be really, really strong on a specific topic, a specific language. God forbid, trying to go deep into something that you had no real experience into. But I feel with AI, it’s a big change, actually. It’s the opportunity to go beyond that. It’s the opportunity to do more, to touch more. You can combine designing and shipping code, product managing and shipping code, being an analyst and deploying. Of course, we have to think how it works because putting a marketer shipping code to production, maybe that will get you into trouble. But I think that there must be some change. We see it changing dramatically, how fast we can get into something, something different from what we are used to. I think it would be crazy not to take that opportunity to dramatically change the scope of many positions and put an end to that hyper-specialization. I think for me, in some ways, hyper-specialization was bad. There is only so much you want to be a specialist in because a lot of things, a lot of opportunities are actually coming from the mixing of many different ideas, many different perspectives, and you lose if you go to hyper-specialization.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro I don’t think the age that is coming is the age of the generalist. I think it’s going to be the age of the multispecialist. We’re going to go into an age of multispecialization, which is a little bit, we’ve mentioned it as well in the past, what Amazon defines as an athlete or T-shaped or pie-shaped people, people that have on top an amazing ability to do general management, strategy, managing teams, et cetera, then have spikes. Spikes into business development, corporate development, product management, whatever it is. With AI and with agents, the development of those spikes, as we’ve been discussing in this episode, will actually be easier. It’s almost like a given. If you want to go deeper and deeper into a certain area, you can go much faster. I think that level of multispecialization is going to be really cool to observe. I’m not sure we’ve had an age of multispecialization over the years. Maybe people would point out, well, the Da Vinci example, people that are great across very different areas. Maybe that’s an example of multispecialization. But honestly, from my perspective, this is going to be an exciting time because of that, because you’ll have people who, instead of being just focused on this area of sales, and I only do that, they can actually and should actually do a lot of other things. So the work, as we were talking before, can be more interesting. More demanding as well, because the judgments you need to make are more complex. The context you need to actually gain needs to be gained much faster. At a level of magnitude, you haven’t been able to do it before. Talk about information overload. But actually, ultimately, the roles can be a lot more interesting, a lot more exciting, because I can jump around. If I’m an investor, in this case, we have two investors on this conversation. But if I’m an investor, one of the things that we start looking at is actually not just looking at a startup as, is this startup doing something in AI or not? Is it AI-enabled or not? Is it an AI platform or not? But actually, more fundamentally, is this an AI native startup? Meaning, organizationally, culturally, is this the company that’s already in the AI age? How is the team working? How are they defining things? It’s not just that they only have two or three people. It’s like, what are those two or three people doing? How are they doing it? What cadence are they doing it on? What tools are they using? How are they making decisions? I feel we’re still actually relatively early on that track. It’s very interesting because we’ve had all these companies raising mega rounds. First round out, we invested in one of them, but there have been many frontier labs out there raising a ton of money. But a lot of them don’t have a fundamentally different way of doing business. Of organizing themselves, of how they do the day-to-day. Although they’re working on cutting-edge stuff, with very notable exceptions, they’re actually not using it themselves. They’re not actually shifting how they do stuff themselves.Bertrand Schmitt For me, that’s very interesting because in the past, I used to be quite conservative on how you manage and run a company in the sense that if you’re already in tech, if you are already on the cutting edge of what technology can deliver, and this and that, don’t waste time trying to invent a new org structure. Just focus on delivering something great, amazing, and be great at technologies. That’s already your huge differentiator. At the time, there was no real reason to innovate on the team organization. I have seen so many teams that tried to innovate, and it was just catastrophic because there was not much to innovate on, because we had decades of optimization that we could leverage. There was no reason to invent. But here it’s very different. There is a dramatic shift in how you can organize differently a company. I don’t think there are any blueprints yet on what’s the best way to do it because it’s too new. But at the same time, I would feel very bad to invest or support a company that first is not focused on AI or AI-enabled, but at the same time is not trying to innovate on the team itself. Because if you don’t do that, you’re going to get killed by someone who is going to innovate better than you on not just the product, but on the org as well.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Indeed. The shifts are pretty substantial. If you look, for example, just at hiring, what do you hire for? Certainly, there’s this element of the multispecialized orchestrator, which normally will be someone with quite a lot of wisdom and expertise. It doesn’t necessarily mean someone who’s old, but someone who has the ability to work with all the AI tooling and platforms out there and be an orchestrator of agents. Why do they make judgments, make decisions, move stuff forward really, really, really quickly? Again, those jobs are going to be the best jobs. The second part, I think that is very interesting, around hiring, is you’re going to skew towards the elements that are potentially either very aligned with the use of AI tooling and platform, AI expertise, or being AI native, or someone who’s used to using AI. That’s one side of the fence. On the other side, you’re going to actually be optimizing to hire people that have the characteristics that will be difficult for AI to replace immediately, like taste and the notion of fundamental accountability and notion of implications, the notion of how you affect change in organizations, how you affect change in individuals, the elements of coaching, and beyond coaching. You’ll be optimizing for those kinds of hires as well. Then, last but not least, for me, I feel that there is a momentum already happening. I think it will happen even more, which is the tendency to under-hire rather than over-hire. The moment of the good old days of blitz scaling, “Oh, let me go and hire 300 people to scale my go-to-market and just land grab market.” Now, that’s not how it’s going to work. People are going to try and first get the efficiencies in-house with top talent and see if there’s, at the end, the need to hire more people or not, rather than the other way around. I think the issue here is a little bit of what we alluded to before in this episode. There is a tax on individuals. If you hire more people, you’ll have to manage people, you’ll have to work with them, et cetera. If I don’t need to, I might as well work with the agents that the tools and platforms that I use give me access to. Because that’s a world that’s much more efficient, right?Bertrand Schmitt I’m in total agreement with you on this. It’s definitely raising way more questions than before because, again, on one side, you have the product, the technology used to build products that are completely different. At the same time, all of this is also enabling new ways to design organizations and to scale differently, especially in a world where, as we have seen in 3, 6, and 12 months, stuff that you thought were impossible are suddenly becoming possible. So you’re, “Hey, I’m going to scale and burn a shitload of money for 6 months before I know if there is any return.” Versus, “You know what? Maybe I just wait 6 months. The AI has improved enough so that we don’t need this new team. We don’t need these people to do stuff.” Because actually, if you just wait 6 months, we will have stuff coming for free from either new AI models or new AI tools or this or that. If you remember, we used to say that in mobile, things were going three times as fast as on the web in terms of pace of innovation and speed of development and stuff. I mean, with AI, it’s 5X mobile.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Maybe even more. Yes, well.Bertrand Schmitt Maybe even more, maybe 10X. Every assumption around blitz scaling or scaling in general was based on past assumptions. It’s not based on how is the industry evolving today. Might make more sense for you to really grow your agents and spend more money on more tokens. I remember, of course, Jensen is selling his business interest, but he was saying, “Hey, for each one of my 450K engineers, he better spend 250K in tokens a year.” I’m not saying it’s the right way to say it, but I think there is some truth in it, and that would be something to think about. Have we maxed out the token usage per employee? I’m not talking in a stupid way because token maxing and wasting money has no value and is as stupid as it gets. But if you are truly getting a return on these tokens, can you use more? Can you generate more? Can you create more loops so that one engineer manages not just 10 agents, but 50 agents, but 200 agents? I think that’s the big question. We’re trying to add more people. More people means more management, more issues, more this, more that. That would be a fair question. Another piece of the puzzle is how do you build in a way your… I don’t know if it’s a digital twin, but more like the digital version of your companies represented by agents. How do you make sure that everything you do as a business is truly captured, is truly leveraged so that your agents are getting better and better? Not just because the model gets better, but because you are putting more data into it, because it has more opportunity to learn, and as a result, gets better at your specific business.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro The next big thing is culture. How does culture change? I think the biggest shift that I see is, why would you do meetings all the time?Bertrand Schmitt Yes.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro At least at Chamaeleon, we have a very small team, just by the way. We have a very small team at Chamaeleon. We’ve reduced by way more than 50% the time we spend on meetings between each other across the board, one-on-ones, partner meetings, et cetera. I think we’re really pushing to be more and more asynchronous. There’s stuff you can process via message. I was just asking one of my colleagues, “Can you just send me that prompt for that so I can just do that on CoWork?” Or “Can I just go on Mantis and do this? Can you tell me the cycle?” Or vice versa. Basically, it’s a little bit like you’re just going to do it. I don’t need to meet. I don’t need to meet all the time. There are some things where we still need to meet and interact, and we need to brainstorm at times, and we need to go to a different level of abstraction on the top end. Then on the lower end, there might be things that are a little bit more specific and governance-related and operational-related that we need to agree on that are more sticky. But otherwise, the culture is going to be biased towards build. “Go and do it,” rather than, “Let’s do a meeting.”Bertrand Schmitt Yes.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Async is the thing. I’m more and more like we have a couple of interns this summer. “Can we async this?” They’re like, “What does that mean?” “Can we make this interaction asynchronous?” Because synchronous interactions for me are very expensive. Can you send me something that I can process, and then I can send it back to you? We don’t waste time on you giving me context and whatever. Then I’m not ready quite yet because I need to process it. Maybe I’m in between two meetings that I’m actually thinking about other things in my mind.” Again, I feel that shifts how stuff is done. One, build rather than meeting. Two, asynchronous versus synchronous. In some way, millennials had it right when they shifted a lot to messaging and stuff like that. Let’s do more asynchronous rather than synchronous, those two elements from just an operating model of the company are significant. Maybe this is a good time for me just to put one parenthesis because there’s this thing that’s bugging me as we’re talking here. Everyone who is listening to us at this point in time might be saying, “Cool, but I work for this large organization. We’re just now…” Everything we’re saying here is contextualized by time. We’re giving you extreme situations. We’re looking into the future. Some companies that we’re talking about might be doing this already as we speak. Some of them might be in the process of doing this and might in the next couple of months be doing it like we are describing it here. Some of them might take years to get there. Then again, some of the companies that might take years might actually be destroyed in between or meanwhile, and be disrupted. Some of them might not because they’re in very legacy businesses, and it’s fine, and it’s okay. Again, don’t take everything that Bertrand and I are saying today as this is gospel, and it’s going to happen tomorrow, and why the hell are we not doing it? We think that aspirationally, this is where you should be moving to as an organization, whatever size you’re at. Speed will matter, as we discussed before, but not everyone, obviously, is going to move as fast as we’re describing it here.Bertrand Schmitt Yes. Me, for instance, take inspiration often with what some of the AI labs, frontier AI labs, are doing, the way they are working, especially in OpenAI and Anthropic. They are clearly at the top of the spear in terms of what is it that you can do because they have access to models we don’t have access to, because they have unlimited tokens they can use for tasks. They hire people who are, of course, 100% on AI. They are the best example of what is achievable if you have the top minds, if you have the latest models, if you have unlimited tokens. From there, you can take that for our needs and for our situation, and others in industries that are not as advanced. Definitely, you have some time. But as you say, things are moving fast, things are changing. Wall Street is going to expect better returns because when we discuss all of this, the conclusion is that you should be able to do more with less. That’s as real as it gets at some point. By the way, that’s what you see. You see better performance, a better business performance right now. So even if you might not get disrupted, you’d better start there. For some, it might take more time, and they might still be fine.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Maybe to bookend this section, clearly what we’re saying is organizations are going to change. Their MOs are going to change, the structures are going to change. There are elements of what we discussed before in terms of judgment that are fundamental to this. The ability that in some ways, one would say a lot of the technique of getting solutions out there, even in brainstorming or problem-solving, is going to get democratized. The algorithms are able to do that. On the other hand, having points of view and having wisdom is not necessarily democratized, necessarily by the machines. It can be facilitated, it can be more productive in achieving that level of wisdom, but wisdom still will matter at the end of the day. We’re not saying that’s out of the question. Actually, that’s going to be the asset. People who have fundamental wisdom that can come to the table and frame things. We see this even today in prompt engineering, on just creating prompts. The better your prompt is, the better the outcome is going to be, the result that you get from the algorithms. That’s not going to change, in my opinion, anytime soon. That UI interaction piece is not going to change anytime soon. Again, if you’re an organization thinking through organizational structure, culture, if you’re thinking through hiring, these are some of the elements that we think will give you an opportunity, but I would actually go one step further. On the positive side, I would say, they give you arbitrage. If you’re able to move faster than your competitors and really adapt your org faster, you’ll reap the benefits faster as well. That’s what many still say and relate to as the word innovation. That’s how innovation gets accelerated. I think there’s a huge opportunity right now for arbitrage. If you move fast, experiment, experiment on new org structures, experiment with talent, you’ll know that some of them will work well, some of them will fail miserably, so you can’t experiment on literally everything. On the other side, I think the doomsday scenario is if you don’t, if you’re on the other side and your competitor is outpacing you on trying these different organizational models, structure, hiring models, and operating models, they’ll potentially just disrupt you. They’ll do stuff that you thought you had the moat on, and lo and behold, you don’t anymore. Sometimes it comes just from org, just from injection of people with a different MRO, different operating model.Bertrand Schmitt The Human Element: Are We Underestimating It? Maybe we can move to our next section about the human elements. Are we underestimating it or are we overestimating it? The three things that are a big part of the human elements, emotion, creativity, and synthesis. Is it just soft skills, replaceable part? On the contrary, is it the durable part now that we have automated intelligence?Nuno Gonçalves Pedro I’ll start with emotion first because I think it’s probably the easiest of all the ones you’ve mentioned. Emotion is key. Many of you listening to us will know this. The way you deliver a certain message, the emotion that you have when you deliver it, just in and of itself, this could be a sentence, it’s something verbal, et cetera. Makes a difference between the person or the people on the other side actually adopting it or actually just resisting it. Emotion is critical. It’s what runs the world. Everyone talks about a bunch of things, but emotion is a currency that is still naturally human. It will be, I feel, difficult for these AI tools and platforms to recreate it fully until there’s some literally very high-definition manifestation of them as avatars or some physical manifestation of them as robots and all that stuff. It will take a while for that emotion to be manifested. Emotion, I think, is still something that we as humans have as a moat, and it’s critical. As you mentioned before, I was a strategy management consultant at McKinsey, and getting people to action is actually 80% about the delivery, communication, the emotion that you surround the project itself, more than sometimes the truth. It’s great to have the truth and to have something that is similar to the truth in terms of analysis, but in some ways, that’s not what really moves change. Change is moved by, I would argue, a significant amount of emotion and alignment on emotions.Bertrand Schmitt You could argue that’s something that most politicians have perfectly understood. If you look at most campaigns these days, everything on emotions, maybe the tagline might be one word. It’s interesting when you see from that perspective that actually it’s very little on facts, very little on all of this, but more about emotion. You could argue it’s the same for businesses in the future? That’s a fair question. I think creativity is another one that’s quite important. At the same time, it’s not so easy because I must say I’m quite amazed when I’m looking for creativity from AI, either to generate the image, to generate video, to generate audio, or to generate text. AI can be pretty creative. I still think you need to control its creativity; you need to understand what’s good, what’s bad, what’s quality, but at the same time, I can see even in creative tasks, AI can be a very strong partner. I’m talking about any creative task, like invent a name for a product, let’s brainstorm the mission for the company. AI can actually be doing a pretty impressive job. That’s the type of job where you will hire experts, where you will use some of the best people in your team to help you for days. We say, “You can do quite a lot.” It’s an interesting one because I think there is some unique human creativity, and at the same time, AI can be pretty strong at creative task as well.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro I agree. In particular, if it represents benchmarking, if it represents repetition, if it represents seeing the world and then coming up with something that presents itself as creative, to be honest, it can actually outpace humans. If it’s like genuine light bulb moments of creativity, angles that haven’t been tried before, certainly not in the same way, I think humans still have the advantage. To your point, I agree. This is not a humans-win situation. On the previous one, on emotion, still, part of it is because, also on emotion, there are exchanges. You and I might be looking at each other, and from the facial expressions and the reactions, where you judge that for AI to get there, it’s going to take a long time. There’s going to be a lot of very complex algorithmic stuff put into that for AI to be able to create synthetic emotional behaviors, but creativity, I agree with you. There are a lot more nuances to it today, where AI does have significant advantages at the end of the day. Synthesis depends. Synthesis, I feel, if we’re talking about holding a bunch of messy assumptions, contextualized inputs with different layers of data adjacent to them and then trying to create and form one coherent, fully accountable point of view that you stake something on, like a decision, a company, a business unit, whatever, I think humans have the advantage. Part of it is the complexity of what we have today with generative, pre-trained transformers, today with GPTs, where the hallucination comes through, where it’s really more statistical analysis. Over time, maybe synthesis will be a forte for AI. Right now, I think we still have that ability to really be the ultimate decision-makers and judge-makers and have that wisdom put at the table to make those decisions. Honestly, models are very good on balancing both sides, so ended up, as we say in Portuguese, neither fish nor meat. It’s to balance both sides’ answers. That’s not helpful in most cases. When you’re in a difficult position where, for example, the future of a company, company is almost dying, what do you do? I’m not sure your AI algorithms that are going to give you a great solution. Because it will give you a median or average solution, which likely will lead you to a median or average outcome, which in this case would be failure. Again, on synthesis, there are some areas of advantage for human beings. If you are looking for clearly synthesized perspectives on certain elements that are maybe less edge-focused, they’re more than the normal part of the normal distribution, then probably AI agents are brilliant at that. All the tools we have today are pretty good at that, and I think they’ll just get better over time. That’s how I see synthesis.Bertrand Schmitt I think a lot of improvements will come with a better fine-tuning of agents to what’s special about your company. Because if you just take a general agent, there is only so much. It can understand your industry, your company, and your way of working. I think that part of making sure your agents are finely trained, finely tuned on your own business, so that they can give you a really well-calibrated feedback, will have a lot of importance.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro I think that’s absolutely spot on. Maybe to end it, what is definitely different about humanity? Definitely, emotion, as we discussed, some pieces of synthesis. Creativity, maybe the light bulb creativity, not the more repeatable creativity, the one that you can put and encapsulate into processes in some ways. There are elements of us being physical, which robots can’t still recreate. That’s definitely an advantage. The embodied, we’re embodied. That’s obviously a huge advantage. With that also comes advantages because we have to interpret each other, and we have to see the complexities in physicality that land to it. Is human and the human element categorical difference? If we’re having a more philosophical discussion around this, I think it is. I think it will be for at least the foreseeable future and maybe decades to come, even in whatever scenarios we’ll discuss, which is our next section, scenarios.Bertrand Schmitt I would say projecting beyond 10 years is always pretty hard on this because, again, some of the improvements we are talking about we can imagine based on how it has evolved, but at the same time, there will be disruptions in AI. Stuff that we take for granted in terms of weakness, especially, might not be there in a few years from now. Either because it has been solved through brute force or because the field will have made significant change and improvements and discoveries, making some of our points moot. If we talk about embodiment, obviously, robots are coming. How fast, how cheap? That will be a big question. Right now, they’re not very smart. They’re usually very specialized. The more we move to a more general form factor, humanoid form factor, the more I think it will change. Also, another piece of the puzzle is that we have the assumption of agents having trouble to convince humans and stuff. At some point, we keep assuming that humans in the loop. If we’re talking about agents convincing another agent, not having embodiment might be even more efficient. That will be another perspective. Going forward, we will have not just agents we control who are doing a job and scanning the job, but agents truly interacting with other agents. You have agents controlled by one person, one team in your company, working either together or maybe not confrontationally, but trying to think and having different perspectives with another agent, controlled by other teams. I don’t think we have seen much of that now. We have seen mostly agents that are controlled by one team doing one job in one direction. Not multiple teams agents working together, or against or in parallel with another team agent. I think we will see some interesting things coming out of that.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Scenarios Switching to scenarios, we love our two-by-twos. We haven’t done one in a while. This time it’s a two by two. We have four scenarios. I think on one axis, we would have potentially the capabilities of AI. One side would be more incremental. The other side would be the extreme full AGI. I’ll define it in a bit so that we can at least have a little bit of a definitional view on what the AGI is. Then the other axis would be how gains are distributed, concentrated versus broad. Obviously, if they’re very concentrated, it’s more unequal. It only goes to a few companies, a few people, a few individuals. If it’s broad, it’s much more dispersed through society, et cetera. AGI, just to try to define it, the formal definition of it is that it’s a hypothetical AI that matches or exceeds human capabilities across virtually all cognitive and practical tasks. In some ways, AGI can learn, reason, and adapt to novel situations across any domain. Then there are several mutations on this, but there’s one notion, or rather, there are three notions that normally are across a lot of these definitions. One is generalization, ability to seamlessly transfer knowledge from one domain to another without needing retraining, which is a very impressive skill that we humans still seemingly have. Autonomy in agency, the capacity to operate independently, set goals, plan and execute complex tasks. I think AI is their issue with agents to a lot of that extent. Then, last but not least, human parity, performing economically valuable work at or above the level of a typical human knowledge worker. If you listen to one of our last episodes, you’ll realize that Bertrand and I have slightly different views on AGI, and if it’s already here or not. I think, definitionally, maybe we have slightly different views on what the definition actually is. For me, maybe AGI is a little bit more what some would call superintelligence and generalized superintelligence. Strict to census, Bertrand is more connecting to AGI as in its prime definition. It behaves as well or better than a human thing. Maybe that’s what’s leading us to differences on whether AGI has arrived or not.Bertrand Schmitt Personally, I will have a different scale where I will put AGI, as you just said, in some ways, relatively similar in performance to your average human being. On top of it, it’s able to touch different domains that most humans are not able to do. Usually, there is some level of specializations where in AI, it can be more generic. I will put ASI, Artificial Superintelligence, as clearly the step beyond. Something that, on any dimension you pick, it’s able to beat a human expert. From my perspective, I think we already discussed that, but we are at AGI already. We have AI that can do way better, not just way better, but at least as well as humans on many topics, sometimes better. Yes, there are some topics that are not for AI yet. Embodiment, for instance, to flock with your humanoid robot in 2026. For me, we are partially there or fully there in AGI. If we take the stricter definition, ASI, we are definitely not there, but my guess is that it’s moving quite fast. We might be there in a few years from now. I don’t think we are talking about multi-decades. It’s 5 years, maybe 10. Of course, there are questions because people will say, for instance, “Hey, how do you become truly super-intelligent when all your training is based on human data?” That’s not an easy one because how do you train on that? To be way better, not just a bit better, but way better. Maybe I’m going on a tangent, but some are looking at AI learning from AI, AI being taught from AI, AI fighting with AI, AI challenging AI. The same way we saw this AlphaGo moment where AI was not trained anymore, like in chess with human moves, but has been trained to play against itself. That’s when it reached superintelligence in Go. It reached superintelligence by playing against itself and basically letting go of that human baggage, if you want, and going to the next level. What I found interesting in that, actually, first, that’s what happened, but two, there was some analysis that the average level of Go players and the top players went up after AlphaGo because AlphaGo, in a way, opened doors that humans didn’t believe were open in front of them, or they didn’t see them. They didn’t see these doors, so they didn’t bother to open them. AI opened new doors, but interestingly enough, humans improved after that, thanks to AI. You see what I mean? It was an interesting, okay, that self-learning from AI was the way to go beyond the current level of human knowledge and human expertise, but at the same time, humans were able to follow up. It was not like suddenly humans are totally useless crap. They improved. Did they still beat AI? Maybe not, but it was definitely also helpful.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Back to our scenarios. We’re going to take the definitional extreme just for argument’s sake for scenarios. We’re going to talk about maybe what you were saying, ASI rather than full AGI, but like ASI. Again, artificial superintelligence as the extreme on the one hand. Let me talk about maybe the first scenario that would come to mind. Maybe we can call it the plateau scenario. All of this was great, but it was all smoke and mirrors. They were great at some cognition stuff. They’re a great tool. At some point, they’re going to hit a wall. Hallucinations are never going to be a thing of the past. We can’t fully trust them on really hardcore stuff. We’ll gain productivity enhancements. We’ll keep gaining those productivity enhancements, but at some point in time, we really won’t reach ASI. We really will be stuck with what we have. It’s a little bit like we get the next big thing, the next big spreadsheet, the next big internet, but it’s not going to change the whole world beyond just productivity, enhancements, and amazing tools that we have available to us that makes us much better. In that scenario, the winners will continue being fast adopters, probably small and medium businesses, because there won’t be a push for maximum speed either, so they’ll catch up at some point. Then AI native companies will be better companies than other companies, but not necessarily overall disruptors across the board. It’s not necessarily a new species of companies. It’s just companies that are a little bit better at doing stuff, which we also saw during the internet phenomenon and that first big push forward and then bubble, where we had some companies that were fundamentally different on how they operated. It took us another couple of decades for companies to be more and more digitally native along the way. Basically interesting, but it’s boring. It’s like, cool, we got tools, we got promised the world. What are the implications? All these companies that are worth trillions and trillions of dollars are not worth trillions and trillions of dollars. Because at some point we’ll face competition, commoditization. It will just be tools and platforms. They will not unlock that next stage. Therefore, this will have been a bubble, and likely it would be a hard landing to that bubble. That’s the implication.Bertrand Schmitt I would just say that, yes, I agree with you, but I would just say overall, even if it stopped today in terms of quality improvement, speed or stuff, or it barely improves, I still think we will have 10 years of madness just to leverage everything that we have today.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Understood, Bertrand. This is a scenario. I understand, but maybe we’re going to hit a wall, and we’re going to hit that wall next year, or we’re going to hit that wall in 2 years or whatever.Bertrand Schmitt Possibly. I’m just saying we still have 10 years of goodness from that big push in AI we experienced the past few years.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Absolutely. Agreed, but it’s boring.Bertrand Schmitt It’s boring. It’s a plateau.Nuno Gonçalves Pedro It’s a plateau. The second one is more of something that we have AI, but humans in the loop are going to be critical along the way. The judgment work that we described earlier in the episode is going to be critical to everything that happens. It’s, I would call it the augmentation scenario. The AI will be a great augmentation tool for humans, but humans will never really quite stop being in the loop. Some of the gains that AI has are broadly distributed in society and in the startup, big corporation and small medium business world. Everyone will have access to them. We humans, are still very important. We have all these augmentation things, and AI is mostly benign. There will be a couple of issues, but honestly, at the end of the day, we’re just better. We’re better, faster, more data-driven, more factually current. We’re doing stuff faster, but humans

In this episode of Tank Talks, host Matt Cohen sits down with Julia Maltby, a Principal at Fengate Asset Management who has lived the full venture capital lifecycle. Julia started as the first employee at Plum Alley Investments, ran partnerships at WeWork during its hyper-growth phase, spent over five years rising from Associate to Principal at Flybridge Capital, and even ran her own seed fund, Deco Ventures, before moving to the LP side at Fengate in 2025. Today, she invests in early-stage VC funds and direct opportunities across North America.Julia offers a brutally honest perspective on what she wishes every emerging manager knew about fundraising. She explains why LPs value process over outputs, why founder references from failed companies are more valuable than those from winners, and how GPs can stop leaving first meetings as a “polite maybe” and start qualifying LPs like a sales funnel. She also pulls back the curtain on LP-to-LP communication (which she says is 10X stronger than GP gossip), shares tactical advice on building data rooms that actually get read, and reveals how Fengate pre-approves co-investments to move at startup speed.Whether you're a GP in the middle of a raise, an LP sorting through an endless stack of emerging manager pitches, or just curious what venture looks like from every seat at the table, this episode is for you.From Liberal Arts to Venture Capital (02:07)* Julia's unconventional path from studying architecture and social inequality to becoming one of venture's most respected emerging investors.* How a cold LinkedIn message landed her first job in venture capital.* Why having no finance background became an advantage instead of a limitation.Learning Venture from the Ground Up (04:13)* Building crowdfunding platforms and SPVs before venture became mainstream.* Why early-stage investing means wearing product, operations, and fundraising hats.* Lessons learned from saying “yes” before knowing exactly how to do the work.Inside WeWork's Hypergrowth Machine (05:11)* Joining WeWork during its explosive expansion and learning from one of startup history's fastest growth stories.* What Adam Neumann got exceptionally right about building mission-driven teams.* The leadership lessons worth keeping and the scaling mistakes worth avoiding.The Flybridge Investing Framework (10:39)* Why durable venture investing starts with disciplined systems rather than intuition alone.* The importance of pricing integrity and staying focused on core business strengths.* How evaluating customer urgency shaped Julia's investment philosophy.Becoming a Solo GP (14:14)* Launching Deco Ventures with Flybridge's support.* The challenges of making investment decisions without partners.* Why every solo GP needs trusted people whose job is to challenge—not validate—their thinking.What Makes a Venture Manager Truly Different? (18:00)* Why there isn't just one formula for becoming a successful GP.* Understanding your competitive advantage instead of copying other managers.* How LPs think about portfolio fit beyond fund performance.The Data Room Mistakes GPs Keep Making (23:18)* Why withholding information often slows fundraising rather than helping it.* Julia's advice: send everything instead of drip-feeding documents.* How GPs should reference-check LPs before sharing sensitive materials.Looking Beyond Markups and Valuations (27:16)* Why portfolio KPIs matter more than inflated funding rounds.* How disciplined reserve strategies separate thoughtful investors from reactive ones.* Using follow-on decisions as a measure of investment discipline.The Power of Great References (31:45)* Why founders from failed companies often provide the strongest references.* How LP references reveal governance, transparency, and communication quality.* Why perfect references can actually make LPs more skeptical.Stop Leaving Meetings as a “Maybe” (34:35)* The questions every GP should ask before ending a fundraising meeting.* Understanding the difference between genuine interest and structural misalignment.* How qualifying LPs like a sales pipeline saves months of wasted fundraising.Building Better Co-Investment Relationships (37:06)* How proactive communication makes co-investments move faster.* Why LPs build internal pipelines long before deals officially launch.* The importance of giving institutional investors time to prepare.The Future of Early-Stage Venture (39:27)* Why Julia remains optimistic despite today's challenging fundraising environment.* The growing divide between mega-funds and smaller venture firms.* Why smaller funds continue delivering meaningful returns that often go unnoticed.Using AI to Build Better LP Portfolios (41:17)* How Fengate uses AI to understand portfolio exposure across hundreds of startups.* Moving beyond broad fund branding into detailed market analysis.* Why better portfolio intelligence leads to better future investment decisions.About Julia MaltbyJulia Maltby is a Principal at Fengate Asset Management, where she invests in early-stage VC funds and direct opportunities across North America. She has lived the full VC lifecycle: she was the first employee at Plum Alley Investments, ran partnerships at WeWork, spent 5+ years rising from Associate to Principal at Flybridge Capital, and founded her own seed fund, Deco Ventures. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and writes about her LP experiences on her Substack, Julia's Field Notes.Connect with Julia Maltby on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/juliamaltbyLearn more about Fengate Asset Management: https://fengate.com/Read Julia's Field Notes:Connect with Matt Cohen on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/matt-cohen1Visit the Ripple Ventures website: https://www.rippleventures.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tanktalks.substack.com

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THE RUNDOWN | WEEK OF 7/26Daniel and James are back with The Rundown. This week they cover everything from women taking over the app economy to TikTok building an Amazon Prime rival, Jersey Mike's $8 billion IPO, and Larry Page saying he'd go bankrupt before losing the AI race. They kick off with a compelling case for why vibe coding and built-in influencer distribution mean women are about to dominate the next wave of app builders, then dig into Meta's new Sellers app (not a Shopify killer) and TikTok's inevitable evolution from ads to commerce to payments to logistics.The back half covers why open weight AI models are an openness fight worth having, how Chinese labs are distilling Western AI models the same way TikTok copied Snap, and why a sandwich chain IPO being 10X oversubscribed tells you everything about where real value is being created. They close with Primary Posts — Sean Frank's "can't win if you don't try" ethos (plus a tease of ADSN's new podcast "30 Minutes"), and Ashwin's moat framework that should be required reading: brand, distribution, speed, and cleverness beat product every time.Thank you to our sponsors:AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.comThrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.aibeehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.comThe Farm — Fractional commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.comSTAY CONNECTEDJames on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborowDaniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldrugerSubscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

I'm a fan of mind games, because I feel most all of what we experience is just that, a mind game. But I've always helped myself by considering different angles to stories. And today I bring you one I've benefited myself with. You've probably heard of the concept of “10X,” as in 10 Xing your goal. But I want to be clear, today I look at this as a practice or exercise and am not presenting it as what you or I should do. This then is a conversation I'm revisiting with renowned organizational psychologist and author, Dr Benjamin Hardy. I perceive Ben as having great insight into human transformation and a knack for creating clear, contrasting, and innovative messages around concepts we've long grappled with. Along with celebrated business coach, Dan Sullivan they wrote a book titled, 10x is easier than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More By Doing Less. I've altered some of my views on this concept since this talk, but I feel this is a wonderful exercise for anyone to do in order to divest themselves of a lot of clutter we let get in our way and get to what is important for a destination or achievement we desire. You could almost compare it to asking what you would take from your home if you only had 30 minutes till you must evacuate for a flood or fire. This concept can get us super focused and realize what is truly necessary. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Autonomy Signals presented by KPMG, Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant discuss Tesla expanding robotaxi to Tampa and Orlando, Zoox recalling its entire 105 vehicle fleet after driving into an active fire scene in Las Vegas, and China embedding autonomous truck manufacturing in Kazakhstan.Tesla continues their robotaxi expansion launching service in Tampa and Orlando, establishing their third Florida market alongside Miami. All three Florida service areas are next to the airport, signaling Tesla's ambition to secure airport service, while Tampa marks the first market where Tesla launched commercially ahead of Waymo.With Tesla moving from ground validation vehicles to driverless operations in roughly three weeks compared to Waymo's 30 week timeline in Charlotte, Tesla's deployment velocity is running approximately 10X faster than its main competitor.A company that has struggled to scale, Zoox voluntarily recalled its entire US fleet of 105 autonomous vehicles after an unoccupied robotaxi drove into a smoke-obscured fire scene in Las Vegas, requiring a remote teleoperator to reverse the vehicle after its sensor suite was blinded.The recall arrives as NHTSA escalates enforcement around autonomous vehicles interfering with first responders and as Zoox's FMVSS exemption petition for 2,500 driverless vehicles remains pending. With nine vehicles operating in Miami and no Amazon branding anywhere on the vehicles, rider lounges, or website, questions are mounting about Zoox's commercial direction and Amazon's willingness to stand behind its bet.Closing out the show, Grayson and Rob discuss China and Kazakhstan formalizing an agreement to establish domestic assembly lines for autonomous SITRAK heavy trucks, turning Kazakhstan into a regional production and deployment hub for driverless freight across Eurasian trade corridors and accelerating China's Autonomous Belt and Road Initiative.Episode Chapters0:00 KPMG Sponsor Introduction01:34 Signal 1: Tesla Expands Robotaxi to Tampa and Orlando27:15 Signal 2: Zoox Recalls Its Entire 105 Vehicle Fleet57:15 Signal 3: China Embeds Autonomous Truck Manufacturing in KazakhstanFollow The Road to Autonomy Indices--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy is the leading applied intelligence platform covering the convergence of automation, autonomy, and the Autonomy Economy.™.Through our podcasts, newsletter, and proprietary applied intelligence, we set the narrative for institutional investors, industry executives, and policymakers navigating the convergence of automation, autonomy, and economic growth.Join institutional investors and industry leaders who read This Week in The Autonomy Economy every Sunday. Each edition delivers exclusive insight and commentary on the autonomy economy, helping you stay ahead of what's next.Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Eran Galperin is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt who had already had one VC-backed marketplace failure when he started Gymdesk. Originally called Martial Arts on Rails, it launched in 2016 as a naive version of what he thought a gym needed. He was training five or six times a week and every gym owner he knew hated the software they used. For four years he couldn't acquire customers, so he took a job as CTO of an e-commerce company and built the product on nights and weekends. Growth finally came through organic SEO, which still drives over half of new leads. He hit $3M in ARR by the end of 2023 with 16 employees, no salespeople, and over 40% of free trials converting without a demo. In May 2024 he sold a majority stake to Five Elms Capital for $32.5M in cash for his share. What they paid the premium for wasn't size — it was churn under 1% a month, three straight years of more than doubling, profit margins over 50%, and a payments business compounding underneath. He stayed on eighteen months and now lives in Tokyo, building a custom house and an AI vision product for real estate. Key Takeaways Churn Ceiling — Churn is the cap on growth; under 1% monthly is what buyers pay premiums for. Slow Bake — Four years of nights and weekends let the product mature in ways funded companies never can. Payments Compound — Profit share from payment providers grows as volume grows, and buyers pay extra for those rails. Buyers Differ Wildly — One expert said 5X was his cap; Five Elms paid 10X because they buy outcome, not value. Get Representation — A $60K legal bill and a good M&A broker closed the information asymmetry with private equity. Quote from Eran Galperin, Founder of Gymdesk "What we did have was very low churn, and that's one of the factors that helped us get the premium when we sold the company. Everybody building SaaS eventually realizes that churn is the cap your company has on growth. Eventually churn, which is a relative number, grows to the point where it meets the absolute numbers of your growth. "Because we had very low churn, less than one percent month over month, that definitely helped us start the conversation from a very good position. The other element was that growth was very consistent year over year. I think we more than doubled three years straight. "That in combination with the low churn and high profit margins was the last big item. We had a lean team, and we were over fifty percent profit margins when we sold. This was a firm that had multiple other portfolio companies similar to us, so they had a pretty good idea what a successful outcome would look like for them, and we filled all those criteria." Links Eran Galperin on LinkedIn Gymdesk on LinkedIn Gymdesk website Tinyseed.com website Five Elms Capital Podcast Sponsor – Full Scale This podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. Practical Founders CEO Peer Groups Be part of a committed and confidential group of practical founders creating valuable software companies without big VC funding.  A Practical Founders Peer Group is a committed and confidential group of founders/CEOs who want to help you succeed on your terms. Each Practical Founders Peer Group is personally curated and moderated by Greg Head.

"If you use low-cost capital, you don't need tax credits to make the economics work. That's what excites me the most about how to scale this thing up. [...] How do I help every other community bank get in the game of building their green lending muscle and thinking about resilience? And if we can do that, then we don't need all of the tax credits and all the incentives that everybody has thought we needed in this industry." — Chris Castro, founding director and chief sustainability officer, Climate First BankFederal support for climate and clean energy programs is being dismantled, and the question of who will finance resilience has turned urgent for communities throughout the Ten Across geography. The money that flowed from Washington is thinning; the need is not.Few people have approached that question from as many sides as Chris Castro. He built Orlando's sustainability and resilience office under Mayor Buddy Dyer, then moved to Washington as a presidential appointee, helping stand up the Department of Energy arm created to move historic infrastructure and climate funding to states, cities, and school districts — until the change in administration halted the work.Now Castro is pursuing the same goal from inside the private sector. As founding director and chief sustainability officer of Climate First Bank, he is testing whether a community bank can finance resilience at a scale federal programs no longer will.In this episode, Ten Across founder Duke Reiter and Chris Castro trace that arc from city hall to federal government to mission-driven banking, and land on a question 10X is now taking up with its own networks: what resilience officers need to know about finance.

Everybody thinks 10X takes 10 times the work. It doesn't. 2X is the grind. You just do more reps, more hours, more volume until it works. But you can't out-hour your way to 10X. There aren't enough hours in the week. 10X isn't a math problem you solve with effort. It's a different game entirely, and almost nobody plays it right.In this episode I break down why 10X is actually easier than 2X, and why the reps and leaders who get it stop adding and start cutting.What we cover:    •    Why 2X is linear and 10X is exponential (and why that changes everything)    •    The 80/20 rule most people quote but nobody actually applies    •    Why 10X is a subtraction game disguised as a growth game    •    The 3 things every 10X move comes down to: identity, time, and leadership    •    How to spot the 20% of activities driving your results, and kill the rest    •    The team application: stop spreading your time evenly across reps    •    The individual application: what to delegate and what to guard with your lifeIf you run a sales team or you're trying to break your own ceiling, this one will change how you spend every hour of your week.Drop a comment with the one thing you're cutting this week.New episodes of the Rainmaker Podcast every week. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one.Connect with me:Instagram: @nicknsales (https://www.instagram.com/nicknsales/)Youtube: @nicknsales (https://www.youtube.com/@nicknsales/)#SalesLeadership #Rainmaker #DoHardShit

(Original Run Date: 7/02/2026) Dr. Tom Curran discusses the journey that led him to moments of conviction and commitment to walk the Camino de Santiago. Tom addresses the pressures of raising a family and testifies to discerning God's 10X vision for his life, pursuing a gracious disruption and overcoming obstacles.Referenced Book/ Podcast10x Is Easier than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy

There are only 2 numbers that define the speed of your wealth. Dive into the episode to get the goods.  You'll discover why not all dollars are created equal. And the secret to financial freedom 10X faster than anyone else. Inside you'll find: The two numbers that define the speed of your wealth and why your income isn't one of them Why some dollars are worth nearly 200X more than others--and which ones are more important How to collapse your financial freedom timeline from 30 years to as little as 3 Why your portfolio, not your business revenue, is the real measure of your wealth And the danger of celebrating cash flow (what you're missing)

Terry Briscoe is five years into his voiceover career and starting to see real momentum. His question for Marc: what do you do next? How do you take that leap from where you are to the next level? In this Summer Series episode, Marc gets honest about his own leveling-up process - including the year he booked zero agent jobs, the hot seat session that left him beat red in front of 121 people, and the mindset shift that led to four national bookings in the first quarter of 2026. Inside this episode: Why leveling up never stops - and why the moment you feel like you've arrived is actually the moment you start going backwards The right kind of coaching for where you are right now - and why you need someone who will tell you when you suck Why leveling up your network is just as important as leveling up your skills - and what that actually looks like in practice The rooms voice actors avoid because they don't feel ready - and why those are exactly the rooms they need to be in Marc's hot seat session with Hugh Klitzke - 121 people, beat red, sweating, and convinced he was going to make a fool of himself in front of the whole industry Andy Roth's four-word response that changed how Marc thinks about auditioning Zero agent bookings in all of 2025, four nationals in Q1 2026 - what changed Why finding your why is the foundation of every level-up decision you'll ever make Whether you're five years in like Terry or fifteen years in like Marc, this episode is a reminder that the next gear is always there. You just have to be willing to feel uncomfortable to find it.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we're joined by Alvin Sanders, President and CEO of World Impact, an organization committed to equipping leaders to build healthy churches in every community experiencing poverty. After decades in pastoral ministry and leadership development, Alvin has become passionate about helping ministry leaders avoid one of the greatest threats to long-term effectiveness: burnout. Are you serving faithfully but feeling increasingly exhausted? Wondering how to sustain ministry for the long haul without sacrificing your health, family, or relationship with God? In this conversation, Alvin shares the personal lessons that transformed his own leadership after experiencing burnout. Tune in as he offers a practical framework for building a ministry that lasts. When work becomes worship. // Ministry itself can quietly become an idol. He didn’t intentionally choose work over God, but somewhere along the way, serving Christ replaced walking with Christ. Spiritual disciplines gave way to ministry responsibilities. Prayer, Sabbath, retreat, fasting, and personal communion with God slowly disappeared beneath endless demands. The result was a ministry that looked productive on the outside while becoming spiritually unsustainable on the inside. Return to the basics of spiritual formation. // Rather than searching for complicated solutions, Alvin returned to the foundational practices Christians have embraced for centuries. Prayer, engaging Scripture, fasting, Sabbath, retreat, generosity, commitment to the Church body, and intentional spiritual rhythms are not optional extras for ministry leaders. They are essential practices that sustain healthy leadership. Just as championship football teams return to blocking and tackling when they lose, pastors must continually return to the spiritual basics that anchor their lives. Pay attention to the warning signs. // In hindsight, Alvin sees numerous warning lights he ignored. His daughter once looked at him during dinner and innocently asked, “Daddy, why are you here?” because she had grown so accustomed to his absence. He gained significant weight, neglected his physical health, ignored emotional exhaustion, and consistently placed ministry ahead of family. None of these issues appeared overnight, but together they revealed a leader drifting toward collapse. Burnout is often less about one dramatic event and more about a thousand small compromises over time. Healthy leaders steward their whole person. // Pastors often underestimate the importance of caring for their physical and emotional health. Exercise is no longer something he squeezes into his schedule. Now, it is part of his workday because caring for his body directly affects his ministry. Likewise, emotional health is not separate from spiritual maturity. Leaders who fail to process stress, trauma, criticism, and disappointment eventually carry those burdens into every aspect of ministry. Healthy ministry begins with healthy people. A three-legged stool for sustainable ministry. // At World Impact, staff health is built around three interconnected priorities: spiritual formation, engaging stressors, and leadership development. Spiritual formation keeps leaders rooted in Christ. Engaging stressors helps them process trauma, maintain healthy boundaries, and avoid adopting a “savior mentality.” Skill development—including emotional intelligence, leadership growth, and contextual ministry effectiveness—equips leaders to serve wisely. Remove any one of these three “legs,” and long-term ministry becomes unstable. If you’re approaching burnout, don’t ignore it. // Alvin closes with practical encouragement for leaders who recognize themselves in his story. First, honestly acknowledge where you are instead of pretending everything is fine. Second, intentionally rest by embracing Sabbath, vacations, and healthy rhythms. Finally, if the burden runs deeper, don’t hesitate to seek help from a trusted counselor. Burnout isn’t a badge of honor—it is a warning that something needs attention. To learn more about Alvin or World Impact, visit worldimpact.org or connect with Alvin on LinkedIn. You can find his expanded book Redemptive Poverty Work on Amazon and his recent webinar on redemptive poverty work here. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: TouchPoint As your church reaches more people, one of the biggest challenges is making sure no one slips through the cracks along the way.TouchPoint Church Management Software is an all-in-one ecosystem built for churches that want to elevate discipleship by providing clear data, strong engagement tools, and dependable workflows that scale as you grow. TouchPoint is trusted by some of the fastest-growing and largest churches in the country because it helps teams stay aligned, understand who they're reaching, and make confident ministry decisions week after week. If you've been wondering whether your current system can carry your next season of growth, it may be time to explore what TouchPoint can do for you. You can evaluate TouchPoint during a free, no-pressure one-hour demo at TouchPointSoftware.com/demo. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Listen, I know you’ve got a million things going on this week. In fact, if you’ve got a lot of things going on, you really need to set aside the next half an hour or so to lean in on this conversation because I really think this is going to be helpful for you. I know it’s the kind of thing that you and your team is wrestling with plus we have a return guest on the podcast which what that indicates to you is this a person I want you to hear from. Honored to have Reverend Dr. Alvin Sanders with us he is the president and CEO of World Impact which empowers leaders to build healthy churches in communities of diversity and poverty. When urban leaders so when urban leaders are empowered that to own and lead their own ministry, individuals, families, and neighborhoods ultimately flourish. Super excited to have him with us. Enjoyed his episode from maybe a couple years ago and honored to have you back today. Alvin, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.Alvin Sanders — Glad to be here, Rich, and thanks for having me back.Rich Birch — Oh, it’s great to connect a little bit. Why don’t you bring us up to speed? Tell us a little bit about yourself, about World Impact. Give us some context if people don’t remember.Alvin Sanders — Yeah, so President, CEO World Impact – our vision is a healthy church in every community experiencing poverty. We’re working to solve the problem that 95% of the world’s pastors have no formal ministry training whatsoever.Alvin Sanders — So we we try to bring that training to them and make it affordable and accessible. I don’t know if you’re paying attention to what’s going on in the Christian educational world right now in terms of universities, but it’s ugly out there. Rich Birch — Yes.Alvin Sanders — So we are really trying to make sure that people are equipped and they can be able to do ministry in the in the context that they’re called to do it.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah. And I really, friends, I would commend you to to, if you don’t know World Impact, you should get to know them. You know, all them and the team do such good good work here. Well, we I want us I want you to take us back to 2007, so almost 20 years ago, which is insane to say that that’s 20 years ago, because it doesn’t feel like 20 years ago. It feels like just yesterday.Rich Birch — What was going on in your ministry and life? Yeah, kind of bring us into that part of the story. Let’s start there.Alvin Sanders — Yeah. So in 2007, I was wrapping up a 10-year project of planting and starting a church in inner city Cincinnati. And the denomination that I was a part of, the Evangelical Free Church of America, had offered me a position to leave the pastorate and to come work for them and run what’s called our “all people initiative”.Alvin Sanders — So me and my wife prayed, thought about it and said, yep, you know what? It’s time to make a good transition. And we made that transition. Yet for the first six months after that transition, we were, it was really a weird dynamic in the fact that when we would run into other people, people would say, hey, you guys look so much better than…, I mean, they didn’t say it this directly… Rich Birch — Right. Alvin Sanders — …but essentially what they were saying is you look so much better now that you’re out of the pastorate.Rich Birch — Right. What happened? You look great.Alvin Sanders — Yeah. What happened? You look good. Did you, did you lose weight? Did you, you know, glasses, whatever, you know?Rich Birch — Oh, no. You’re like, thank you, I think.Alvin Sanders — Yeah, and Rich, this wasn’t like a small amount of people. It was like every time we ran into people. So after about six months of this, we were like, okay, so what’s going on? And then we when we looked back in hindsight, felt like the last year or so of being in the pastorate, we had burned out.Alvin Sanders — And up until that point, I really didn’t know what burnout was. You kind of sort of hear about it, but you don’t really think about it. Why? Because you’re too busy, right? So you don’t sit back and think about ordering the chaos of ministry or anything of that nature.Alvin Sanders — And so we vowed that going forward, never again would this happen to us. So essentially I divide my ministry life in the two halves. Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — The first half is pre-2007. It’s kind of like how people look at the pandemic, right? Rich Birch — Yes.Alvin Sanders — So it’s like pre-2007 and then post 2007. And so we began to implement a series of things that helped us to be able to do ministry in a sustainable way and not experience burnout because you do not have to burn out doing ministry. That’s what I’ve learned since 2007.Rich Birch — Yeah, when you so when you think about that time, yeah, I love that. Like, hey, friends, thanks for telling me I look great. Or you look terrible a year ago. Okay, thanks.Rich Birch — When you look back on at that moment, you’re like, hey, I think we were burnt out. What were some of those those patterns, habits, evidence, signs that you look at and were like, oh, that is what was going on there? You know, what what was it that, you know, got you, yeah, that you kind of saw it yourself in that moment as you looked back?Alvin Sanders — In hindsight, what I looked at is we were basically on autopilot. When I first started that ministry project, I felt a call. I felt like I was walking with the Lord. I felt the Holy Spirit’s presence. You know it was like hindsight, it’s like the book of Acts stuff. You know it was kind of like God was right there. I was energized. I was excited. I truly wanted to make a difference in the lives and the hearts of the people who were there. I wanted to make a difference in the community. Alvin Sanders — But that last year or so, I look back at it. It was just 60, 70 hours a week, flip the switch, doing what I need to do. Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — Very jaded, cynical all the time, low energy, you know, vacation didn’t matter because I had to go back to work. You know, these are, you know, it was sort of like a call of duty, so to speak. It was this is my duty to do it.Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Interesting.Alvin Sanders — Right.Rich Birch — So now you made a few decisions to, you know, in the words you use was, we do a series of things. We changed the way that we work. What were those things that you changed? What were some of those things when you look back, now that you’re on the other side of that, what were some of those decisions you made to say, hey, we’re going to live in a different way? And what was what was that? You know, what is that? What were some of those?Alvin Sanders — Well, one of the big things that I realized, and it’s going to sound elementary when I say it, but I think as pastors and people in ministry, we forget about the basic things.Alvin Sanders — You know, I’m a big football fan, Ohio State Buckeyes to be exact, right? And so I remember, I can’t remember which one of those coaches, but I remember one of those coaches, I was listening to an interview one day and they said, hey, you know, when we lose, our first practice back is we go back to the basics.Alvin Sanders — Just basic stuff. That’s all we do. Blocking, tackling, you know, simple things. And one of the things we did was we went back to the basics of what it means to be a Christian. You know, over the years, they call that spiritual formation.Rich Birch — Yep.Alvin Sanders — So the basic things of are you praying? Are you fasting? Rich Birch — That’s good. Alvin Sanders — You know, you know, just if you type in spiritual formation in Google, you’re going to get a gazillion things that pop up. Right?Rich Birch — Right. Yes.Alvin Sanders — Well, we should be doing many of those things. Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — You know, retreating. You should not be accessible all the time. Sabbath. You know, it’s Hebrews 11 tells us that, you know, we’re among a great cloud of witnesses and that great cloud of witnesses are our people who, any and everybody who has ever been Christian ever in in in the entire history of the world. And Rich, hate to break it to you, but it’s not rocket science of how to be a good Christian.Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — We just ignore it. Rich Birch — Yes. Right. True. Alvin Sanders — Because there have been people before us who have worked out, hey, these are the rhythms. These are the things that you do…Rich Birch — Yes.Alvin Sanders — …you know, to be Christian. Rich Birch — Yes. Alvin Sanders — And what had suddenly happened is I made work my worship.Rich Birch — Oh, that’s painful.Alvin Sanders — The job became what I worship. Now, I didn’t intentionally set out to do that, but I had so much passion and I had so much zeal to want to make a difference in the world that suddenly the rhythms of what made you a Christian took a backseat to the work that I was doing.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I want to come back to that. I want to put a bookmark in you made work your worship. I think that’s a powerful idea. I want to come back to that. But just before we leave this idea, you know, I love that the football analogy. I had and a nephew that was a receiver, college ball receiver. And I remember talking to him, you know, once as well. Rich Birch — And I was like, like, tell me, what you know, kind of what is your practice look like? And how are you, how do you keep on top of that? And he said, he said, well, you know, I’ve got these three formations, these three patterns that we run. And he’s like, I just run those formations all day long. Alvin Sanders — Yes. Rich Birch — It’s like, you just, you know, it’s like the same, you know, four steps this way, three steps that way, you know, turn, you know, it’s like, I’m just do that for four years. We’re just going to run that, which stuck with me similarly that, you know, I think oftentimes, you we can complicate this and we can say, hey, that you know we can complicate staying connected to praying, fasting, Sabbath, reading scripture, these kinds of things. We can drop them. Rich Birch — Were there any other warning signs looking back now that you missed? Again, in hindsight, you look back and say, oh, there were some some things on the dashboard that were blinking and I didn’t notice that you were leading up to this breaking point.Rich Birch — Were there other things in your life besides these dropping off that you know, that you, again, in in hindsight noticed and maybe are looking for now?Alvin Sanders — There was zero what they call work/life balance. Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — Zero. Rich Birch — Right. Alvin Sanders — At that time, I was working on my PhD. I was pastoring a church full time. Rich Birch — Right. Alvin Sanders — And I was running the church’s Christian Community Development Corporation that was attached to it.Rich Birch — Yep.Alvin Sanders — And oh, by the way, I was also teaching classes at the local Bible college.Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Alvin Sanders — And had a wife and I had two kids.Rich Birch —Yep.Alvin Sanders — And so I remember during that period, a huge red flag that in hindsight, I’m ashamed to say, I did not pay attention to. One Friday night I was sitting down and I was eating dinner with my family and my youngest, Gabby, she looked up in her little toddler face and she said, Daddy, why are you here?Alvin Sanders — And I said, what do you mean? I’m I’m sitting here. I’m I’m eating dinner. You know I’m here. You know she’s and she and she was so confused that I was home.Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.Alvin Sanders — So that’s so that was a neglect of family. Right. Rich Birch — Yes. Alvin Sanders — That was a huge red flag. Rich Birch — Yep.Alvin Sanders — Gained a ton of weight because I was not taking care of myself physically. I think that’s something we underestimate in ministry. Rich Birch — I agree. Alvin Sanders — You know, to the point now that I even I count when I go work out, that’s part of my work day.Rich Birch — Right. Interesting.Alvin Sanders — Because I said I can’t be a successful minister if if I am not in shape. So I see that as a you know, I don’t have this sort of dichotomy of the physical and the spiritual, all that. No, I it’s all one. You know, it’s going to hurt me spiritually if I’m out of shape, if I’m not eating right, I’m not properly fit and all those types of things.Alvin Sanders — So I wasn’t taking care of myself physically. I clearly was not taking care of myself emotionally.Rich Birch — Yeah.Alvin Sanders — We are emotional beings. We are emotional. I have come to believe, and this is maybe a controversial point, but I don’t know. It’s my belief. I have come to believe, Rich, that we are emotional beings that rationalize our lives with facts.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.Alvin Sanders — But there’s a lot of research out there that says we can think we’re rational all we want, but what we really do, we have never made a rational decision that does not agree with our emotions.Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — So we must take care of ourselves.Rich Birch — Yeah.Alvin Sanders — I was not taking care of myself emotionally.Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — Therefore, out of shape physically, neglecting family, which by the way, God says that’s the first ministry, you’re supposed to lead well. So if you’re not leading your family well, it really doesn’t matter what else you’re doing, you know. And just an emotional, just not emotionally regulated is the easiest way that I can say it. Didn’t know I wasn’t emotionally regulated, but I wasn’t.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You know, the Carey Nieuwhof, friend of mine, ah you know, he says around this whole that topic, he says, you know, if you’re an alcoholic and you stumble into work one day drunk, you know, you get fired, or you or there’s a consequence, right? If you are a gambler and you’re addicted to gambling and you know you lose your house, that’s gonna show up and you know you’re gonna lose your house, there’s consequence to that. And you know one of those might be you lose your job. Rich Birch — But this area of like overworking, if we overwork even in good things, you’re rewarded for it. Like, you’re like, way to go. You’re a good soldier.Alvin Sanders — Yeah. Yeah.Rich Birch — You know, there’s, it’s almost like a badge of honor in ministry to be exhausted for Jesus. When you said, man, I made work my worship, that stung because I was like, ooh, I think I’ve done that before.Alvin Sanders — Yeah. I mean…Rich Birch — So take us inside, you know, ah other leaders’, you know, heads. How does that mindset quietly quietly set us up for this crash? How do we, you know, kind of unpack that even more for us?Alvin Sanders — Yeah, I mean, I say all the time I’m a recovering work workaholic.Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — You know, that’s the way I put it.Alvin Sanders — And then a big thing that really set me up for this that I didn’t realize is that I come from a family of workaholics. You know, my father, who is my hero, other people have heroes outside of the household. My father is my hero. He’s 87 now, that’s my guy.Rich Birch — It’s so good. Yeah.Alvin Sanders — He, I grew up in a household, my father grew up in Jim Crow, Alabama. And he overcame so much. Rich Birch — Right. Incredible.Alvin Sanders — He went to when he joined the military, military was was sort of like a saving grace. He was in the military for 30 years. Rich Birch — Wow. Alvin Sanders — And he went to night school and he got two degrees in night school while working during the day.Rich Birch — Wow.Alvin Sanders — You know, my mom was an old farm was a was a farm girl, you know. Protestant work ethic. You know, you want she would say, son, you want to kill time, work it to death. You know, idle hands is the devil’s workshop. You know I grew up on all these idioms.Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.Alvin Sanders — And, and so that was in my DNA. And just by the fact that we live in United States of America, where busyness is a badge of honor, I believe you said, and we all are under the Protestant work ethic, you know, you know, who, what, what, what bum works only 40 hours.Alvin Sanders — I mean, you want to get ahead.Rich Birch — It’s true.Alvin Sanders — The minimum is 50.Rich Birch — Yeah. Right. Right.Alvin Sanders — You know, when I was pastoring, how many people in my congregation, you know, in terms of the white collar crew, you know, I had ah I had all spectrums in the church that I was in, I pastored. It was no big deal for them to just be gone all the time.Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — If you get offered a promotion, who would tell you don’t accept it for the sake of your family?Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — Of course I’m going to accept it. It’s more money… Rich Birch — Right. Alvin Sanders — …because more money puts us in a better position…or doesn’t it? Rich Birch — Right. Alvin Sanders — It might, or might not. So counterintuitive thinking is something that we have to do. I mean, I’m in a place now where um God has blessed me that I have a lot of opportunities and I limit my opportunities. Because I say if if I’m gone all the time again, guess what I’m on the road to? Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — You know, and we may have a little bit more money, but then, you know, I’m in the I’m in the empty nesthood stage of season of life and I’d be missing valuable time with my wife. So it’s a reordering of the priorities, you know? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Alvin Sanders — Yeah.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. And this is one of those areas where I see hope in you know next generation. You know i see hope in Gen Z leaders. There there is, like I think, a healthy pushback on on some of this area, which is I think is positive. I know sometimes, you know, I’m Gen X, classic Gen X, born 1974, the lowest birth rate year of the 20th century.Alvin Sanders — Yes. Yeah.Rich Birch — And, you know, and I think sometimes, you know, my peers and particularly the folks older than me, that generation, they they really did, they handed down this idea. And you know, there’s good change happening, I think, on this front. Rich Birch — But so how do you think about this now? So, you know, as you’re thinking about the future, or maybe you’re coaching your team, people you’re interacting with, you know, how do you kind of articulate this, maybe with a framework or thinking around this, so that we don’t just pass on more burnt out organizations?Rich Birch — How how are you helping, you know, lead an organization? Because I think there’s the reason why asked that question is I think it can be easy for us folks that are in charge. I run my own organization. I like often joke, like my boss is a bit of a taskmaster because it’s me, you know. But you know, when, but when we’re the people in charge, we get to set the pace. We get to lead in a way. How are you leading different now? How are you helping your people understand this different now? What are, how are you, what’s that look like for you?Alvin Sanders — Yes. So we, we have baked in in the cake at World Impact. Um, three things, three areas. We talked, we touched on it before spiritual formation, you know, that’s a big deal here at World Impact.Alvin Sanders — You know, we, we really want to make sure that people understand your work is not your worship. You know, part of our sustainable strategy is, you know, we care more about who you are than what you do. And we mean that. Alvin Sanders — And it’s funny because when you first say that to some people, they go, oh well, you don’t want me to work. It’s like, no we didn’t say that. What we said is we understand you are a human being. And we care about you and we’re going to invest deeply in you as you invest deeply into our our our vision. And so um making sure that work’s not to worship, make sure that people understand our identity is in Christ. Alvin Sanders — Understanding also the the spiritual disciplines. We incorporate eight particular spiritual disciplines. I probably should know them the my head, but I don’t. But let me see, I mean, I can roll off the top of my head.Alvin Sanders — Let’s see, you got church membership. You know, we, we, and It’s not cool, you know, to be a church member and people love to kill the church and criticize the church and this that the other. But I leave that to the accuser of the brethren to use the KJV version and use that to the devil.Rich Birch — Nice.Alvin Sanders — Jesus came to establish the church. Period. End of discussion. So you ought to be part of one. So, you know, we encourage our folks to be part of churches, to fast, to pray.Alvin Sanders — We have three times a year we’ve shut everything down and we have prayer days. You know, we we encourage people to be generous with their money. We encourage people to empower others. You know, so there’s we we we encourage we have a personal retreat days that we offer people for for, it’s a work day, but it’s a different kind of structured work day. We say we’ll give you one day a month where you go off and you examine yourself. You do a spiritual examen off basically, you know, off the old St. Ignatius type of spiritual examen. And then you also look at your professional development. You go off and we do that and we’ll pay you for that.Rich Birch — Right. That’s great.Alvin Sanders — You know, so there are a number of things that we do in terms of developing a rhythm. We call, you know, having a rhythm. Rich Birch — That’s good.Alvin Sanders — You know, so a lot of spiritual formation. And then the other s is we look at the, you could think of these S’s as three S’s or a three-legged stool that serves the foundation and they’re all intertwined.Alvin Sanders — So besides spiritual formation, we also encourage people to engage stressors, right? We there’s there’s a way that you work in the world. There’s I got this from my friends at Praxis that there’s three ways that you can engage the world. You can engage the world um exploitatively, ethically or redemptively. Rich Birch — That’s good.Alvin Sanders — So we want people to we want our staff to engage the world, and engage their jobs in a redemptive manner, which is, you know, sacrificing our lives in the pattern of Jesus Christ. Right. That’s we follow the pattern of Jesus Christ, that that we are doing this in order to make the world a better place.Alvin Sanders — We also have a posture of that we’re not the saviors. Many people who are in ministry, we get in it for the right reasons, but then we think that we’re the king and not a subject of the kingdom. Right. And so we think that whatever ministry we’re in, whether it’s urban, suburban, whatever it may be, that we’re the saviors. It’s like, no no, no, no, that’s not the right posture. The right posture is that to be utilized by God, you know.Alvin Sanders — And then also anybody who’s been in ministry any any time in their life, any, you know, they are going to experience a lot of what’s called secondary trauma.Alvin Sanders — You know, like mine was very intense being in a very violent neighborhood and ministering there. But even in suburban context, there’s a lot of things. Now, Rich, don’t know if you ever experienced this, but, you know, people, the sheep bite. Rich Birch — True.Alvin Sanders — They talk about the pastor. Rich Birch — Yeah.Alvin Sanders — They do a lot of things. You know, you’re misinterpreted all the time. There’s a lot of hurtful things that happen to you… Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true. Alvin Sanders — …from an emotional perspective. And if you if you try to blow them off or roll them under, you know, let them it’s water under the bridge. No, no, no. Those things need to be engaged. Alvin Sanders — So that’s keeping the right posture, making sure we keep the right pace in ministry. So we have one school of spiritual formation, one one one leg stool of engaging stressors. And then the third leg stool is is skill set development. Alvin Sanders — And we have to understand that developing the right skills will not save us from burnout. That’s a false dichotomy. People think, oh, well, if I just develop X, Y, and z well, then, you know, I won’t burn out. No. um There are three primary skill sets that I think people need to understand when it comes to any type of ministry or wherever they’re doing it. A big one is emotional intelligence.Alvin Sanders — It’s there’s a guy by name of Daniel Goldman who really popularized the concept. He wrote this book years and years ago called “Primal Leadership”. And that book makes the case that therere there are things that you can develop to emotionally regulate yourself.Alvin Sanders — There’s a book they they don’t call it emotional intelligence, but it’s another classic called “Leadership and Self-Deception”. It’s a classic book which teaches you how you can engage the workplace and and by emotionally regulating yourself, which I think is directly correlated to spiritual maturity.Rich Birch — True.Alvin Sanders — There’s also the skill set of leadership development. I believe that everybody is a leader, right? We don’t all have the same responsibilities as leaders, but there are things that we can do to develop ourselves to become better leaders in the situations that we find ourselves in. Alvin Sanders — And then there’s also a a skill set that we can develop where we engage our ministry context in a dignified manner. So that’s sort of like our three-legged stool at World Impact, you know, spiritual formation, engaging stressors and skill set. And you can’t, just like a stool, if you remove one of the legs…Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — …the stool will not work. So all three have to be intertwined and working together to give you that strong foundation. And if you do those things, I have found that, you know, you won’t touch burnout. Because… Rich Birch — Right. It’s so good. Alvin Sanders — Yeah. So I’m very, very focused on that. And we have interwoven all of those things within the DNA of World Impact.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.Alvin Sanders — Yeah, I love…Rich Birch — There’s there’s so much to unpack there, friends. And there’s, you know, in six minutes there, you gave us what a great picture of how we should be thinking and leading in our environments. I love, particularly, you know, you talked you touched on the emotional quotient, the eq issue.Rich Birch — And, um you know, I’ve had a a friend of mine say, you know, it’s it’s impossible to be spiritually mature if you’re emotionally immature. And I think…Alvin Sanders — One hundred percent.Rich Birch — I think that’s true. And there are, we all know these people who they they walk around like they’re spiritually mature, but they’re they’re, you know, emotionally immature and it comes off. It’s like they’re bleeding. It’s like the internet’s made for these people.Rich Birch — Like they are, those people get good followings, which is terrible. And you know, they get people around them who are just like, yes, sir. Yes, sir. It’s usually sirs. Unfortunately, it’s a lot of guys… Alvin Sanders — Yes. Rich Birch — …you know, we’ve got to fight that. And I love that you’re, you’re attempting to do that, you know, at, you know, in the organization you lead at World Impact, I think is, is incredible. And one of the things, you know, calling this out, I’m not directly engaged in urban ministry, but the thing I, I think is, like, I think every ministry has its stressors to it. Alvin Sanders — Yes.Rich Birch — I think every ministry has trauma related to it. And I think what you’ve outlined here, we can apply really in any context. Alvin Sanders — Yes.Rich Birch — But I do want to underline for our listeners, the fact that this has come out of a context where, again, I don’t want to stigmatize or create stereotypes around urban ministry, but there is a lot of trauma. There is a lot of stress in the ministry.Alvin Sanders — Yes. Rich Birch — You know When you’re dealing in communities that are experiencing homelessness and poverty and you know, you know at the conflict, at the you know the epicenter of racial conflict, and you know all ah all of that creates the context that makes it next to impossible to serve in. And the fact that you’re leading there, I just want to commend you you know on that. Alvin Sanders — Yes. Rich Birch — And so this is actually a part of, well, talk to me about the expanded second edition of “Redemptive Poverty Work” and how does that tie into what we’re talking about today? Because I want to move people even towards that call to action out of today’s conversation.Alvin Sanders — Yeah. So the the things that I’ve talked about that I just talked about that we instilled at World Impact, it definitely works in in any context, no doubt about it. What I tell my suburban colleagues is that whatever you experience in the suburbs, 10x it. And that’s in the urban context.Rich Birch — That makes sense. Okay, that’s good.Alvin Sanders — Just 10x it. It’s not that you don’t experience these things.Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — It’s that it’s much more intense…Rich Birch — Yeah.Alvin Sanders — …within the urban context.Rich Birch — Yeah.Alvin Sanders — So the expanded edition of “Redemptive Poverty Work” is is my attempt to really have our vision at World Impact come to fruition. Because at World Impact, if our vision is a healthy church in every community experiencing poverty, we cannot not talk about burnout.Alvin Sanders — Because the burnout rate within the urban context, because of the 10X that happens down there in in this in the urban community—but increasingly in suburban communities, to be quite honest with you. The same dynamics are happening in certain suburban communities—is that you have to be able to deal with it. And the big way that you deal with it is that you are intentionally engaging those things that can cause you to burn out.Rich Birch — That’s good. Alvin Sanders — Cause you cannot have a healthy church unless you have spiritually formed pastors who are engaging stressors and who are developing the skillset to make the community a better place.Alvin Sanders — So, It was basically by doing things in the field and spending a lot of time with our partners that I said, you know what, these folk need an expansion. Because when I wrote “Redemptive Poverty Work” a couple of years ago that we talked about, it was a little booklet and it was more academic.Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — But what I realized is, hey, these folk need to know how to implement this in a practical sense. So that’s what the expanded version is about. It’s not only teaching you the principle, it’s like, here here’s how you can apply this to your life. It’s sort of like a field handbook, so to speak.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. I think it’d be great for people to pick up, you know, a copy of this. And, you know, I think it could be really helpful for them as they’re thinking about, you know, ministry in any context. Even to help if there are folks that are listening in, you know, that serve in a suburban context and they’re trying to gain, you know, a bit more understanding of there are urban, but you know, brothers and sisters as they’re, you know, leading there. I think this could be a helpful resource.Rich Birch — For folks that picked up the first edition, you know, should they pick pick up a second? I know you’re not just trying to sell books, but like, help me understand, you know, obviously you’ve added a lot to it. For folks that are familiar with your work, what would your, you know, kind of what’s your recommendation that, you know, for them?Alvin Sanders — Yes, because the the first Redemptive Poverty Work booklet is really only one chapter in the expanded edition. It’s, as I said earlier, it’s really about how to apply and how not to burn out.Rich Birch — That’s great.Alvin Sanders — The whole thing is it assumes that there’s a point in your walk in doing your work of the ministry that you’re going you’re going to hit a wallRich Birch — Yep.Alvin Sanders — I don’t know anyone in ministry, let alone urban ministry, who hasn’t at some point hit a wall.Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — Right. To go back to sports analogy. Right. Talk about how if you’re a rookie and you’re coming into the and NBA, you only play like 40 or some college games. NBA has 82 games. No matter how skilled you are, no matter how much you play, about game 50, you’re going to hit a wall because you’ve never really played at that intense level for that long.Rich Birch — Yep.Alvin Sanders — Same thing with ministry.Alvin Sanders — At some point, you’re going to hit a wall. So within this urban context, you know when you hit that wall or hopefully before you hit the wall, read this book and begin to implement it in your life. It’s a failure for you just to buy the book and read it. Rich Birch — Yes.Alvin Sanders — A lot of books you just write, you buy it and you read it and you go, oh, I got the knowledge. I’m good. No, this book is like, read it and apply it. And I can tell you, it’ll work if you do so.Rich Birch — That’s so good. Where do we want to send people to pick up copies of the book? Where online? you know how how can they How can they get their hands on it?Alvin Sanders — Yeah, just go to Amazon. you can get it off of Amazon. Redemptive Poverty Work Expanded Edition. Rich Birch — That’s great.Alvin Sanders — You type that in or you can type in Alvin Sanders and I’m sure it’ll pop up. Rich Birch — That’s great. Alvin Sanders — Yeah, we’d we’d love for you to get it. You know, got paperback and hardback versions that are there. Rich Birch — Nice.Alvin Sanders — And then you can also go on YouTube. We just had it. We launched it last week. We had a webinar… Rich Birch — Great. Alvin Sanders — …around the topic of redemptive poverty work. It was about an hour long. So if you’re really interested in this topic, you can check that webinar out as well.Rich Birch — Nice. Yeah, we’ll link to that in the show notes to make it even easier for folks to to find that. We’d love for for people to track with you, Alvin. You’re doing such a great, great work. So let’s take us back to 2007.Rich Birch — Let’s say there’s a leader who’s listening into, well, I know that there’s a leader who’s listening in today. There’s at least one… Alvin Sanders — Yeah. Rich Birch — …in the couple thousand people that are listening in who are heading towards where you were in 2007. Not the new part, not the new job part, but the like, oh, I’m burnt out.Alvin Sanders — Yes.Rich Birch — This is not good. Maybe today they’ve been listening in and they realize, oh, wait a second. Maybe they had a similar thing with their kid. Hey, dad. Hey, mom. Why are you here? What’s one thing you’d want them to do this week? What’s one action step that they could take coming out of today’s conversation? Alvin Sanders — Well, I would say, I’m going to cheat. I’m going to give you more than one. But first is to admit where you’re at.Rich Birch — That’s good.Alvin Sanders — Because there are so I hate to say it. There are some faith traditions where it’s downright almost sinful to admit that you might be burned out. What? You don’t you don’t pray enough. You don’t do this. You don’t do that. Say, you know what? I’m tired. I’m still committed, but I’m tired. I’m jaded. I’m whatever. So the first thing is to embrace that. Alvin Sanders — The second thing is, you know, get some rest. You might it might just be an Elijah situation. You know, Elijah wanted to die and God said, no, man, just just go lay down.Rich Birch — Yeah, have a nap.Alvin Sanders — You know, you just had a really, really intense situation. Go lay down. Take some time. Go take a nap. Get some refreshment. Get some food. Look at your schedule and say, am I actually taking at least one day a week off? You know, are what’s your rhythm of rest, right? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Alvin Sanders — Are you resting as hard as you’re working?Rich Birch — That’s good.Alvin Sanders — Are you taking vacation? You know, or is vacation for the weak, right? Are you taking your paid holidays off? Do, actually really start to take the commandment of Sabbath seriously… Rich Birch — That’s good. Alvin Sanders — …and actually start to rest?Alvin Sanders — And then there are some of us, and, you know, and there’s nothing wrong with this either. We may be too far gone, and we may need to take some time to go see a counselor, and to unpack things. Rich Birch — That’s good. Alvin Sanders — And to unpack some emotional wounds and things of that nature. So I would say, you know, first, acknowledge where you’re at. Second, actually start to rest. And then third, if these things aren’t really working, don’t be prideful. Go see a mental health counselor.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Alvin, you’ve been a gift again to our audience. Thank you so much for for being here today, for helping us think through these issues and take some steps. If people want to track with you or with World Impact, where do we want to send them online?Alvin Sanders — Well, if you want to track with me, you know, as a good Gen Xer like you, I’m on LinkedIn. So you just place to find me.Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.Alvin Sanders — It’s LinkedIn. Find me on LinkedIn. I have an Instagram account. I ain’t been on that Instagram account in forever. So, you know, that’s just not me. But you can find me on LinkedIn.Rich Birch — Love it.Alvin Sanders — If you want to personally interact, talk, whatever. Great thing to do on LinkedIn. And then the other thing is go to worldimpact.org and you can learn a lot more about World Impact and what we do.Alvin Sanders — We’d love to serve you.Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much for being here today. I really appreciate you taking some time to be with us.Alvin Sanders — All right. Thanks for having me. 

In this episode, Linda McKissack and Dana Gentry reflect on the halfway point of the year, sharing why now is the perfect time to revisit goals, eliminate distractions, and focus on the opportunities that create the biggest long-term impact. They discuss lessons from the viral "Yap Challenge" and why authentic, simple content often outperforms polished perfection, before diving into the importance of thinking 10X instead of settling for comfort, building passive income through the right partnerships, and challenging yourself to pursue goals that feel just beyond reach

I picked up Start With Yourself by Emma Grede fully expecting to love it because I've been a fan of her podcast for a long time. What I wasn't sure about was how I'd feel after all the headlines and viral clips that seem to follow her everywhere.After finishing the book, I realized something: you don't have to want someone's life to learn from the way they think.I don't want to build multiple billion-dollar companies, and I'm guessing most of you listening don't either. But that doesn't mean there isn't so much we can learn from someone who has. I think we've gotten into the habit of either putting successful people on a pedestal or dismissing them because we don't agree with every decision they've made. What if we did neither?In this episode, I'm sharing the biggest lessons I took away from Start With Yourself, the parts I completely agreed with, the ideas I questioned, and why I think grit, emotional regulation, customer obsession, and having a clear vision matter no matter what kind of business you're building.

Dr. Tom Curran discusses the journey that led him to moments of conviction and commitment to walk the Camino de Santiago. Tom addresses the pressures of raising a family and testifies to discerning God's 10X vision for his life, pursuing a gracious disruption and overcoming obstacles.Referenced Book/ Podcast10x Is Easier than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy

In this episode of the Cannabis Accounting Podcast, Andrew Hunzicker, founder of DOPE CFO, recaps the biggest cannabis industry news from June 2026.Listen to learn about:✅ Trulieve becoming the first cannabis company to uplist onto the New York Stock Exchange, with Curaleaf right behind them✅ Why Q1 2026 capital raises are already up almost 10X year-over-year, with the biggest months still ahead✅ The June 29 DEA hearing on recreational rescheduling, and why 93% of the original public comments were in favor✅ The FDA's breakthrough therapy designation for a cannabis-derived drug for chronic back pain✅ SAFER Banking back on the table, plus merchant services and Visa entering the space✅ State-level momentum from Virginia, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and the tribes leading on adult-use compactsArticles mentioned in this episode:https://norml.org/news/2026/05/28/federal-judge-rejects-lawsuit-from-prohibitionist-groups-seeking-to-halt-dispensing-of-hemp-derived-products-to-medicare-beneficiaries/ https://ganjapreneur.com/minnesota-gov-signs-law-streamlining-medical-and-adult-use-cannabis-supply-chains/ https://ganjapreneur.com/republican-attorneys-general-sue-to-block-trumps-cannabis-rescheduling-order/ https://themarijuanaherald.com/2026/06/oregon-marijuana-2026/ https://themarijuanaherald.com/2026/06/one-third-of-adults-say-marijuana-improves-their-sleep-finds-american-academy-of-sleep-medicine-survey/ https://www.marijuanamoment.net/hemp-companies-sue-dea-challenging-agencys-claim-that-synthetic-cannabis-compound-hhc-is-federally-banned/ https://www.marijuanamoment.net/legalizing-marijuana-in-pennsylvania-will-be-a-lot-easier-now-that-trump-federally-rescheduled-it-senator-says/ https://themarijuanaherald.com/2026/06/idaho-legislative-council-approves-ballot-language-for-amendment-giving-legislature-sole-power-to-legalize-marijuana/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ajherrington/2026/06/05/trulieve-makes-history-with-first-nyse-cannabis-listing/ https://jessicam420.substack.com/p/federal-cannabis-policy-convergence https://www.marijuanamoment.net/gop-lawmakers-file-amendments-to-prevent-federal-recriminalization-of-hemp-thc-products-this-year/ https://www.marijuanamoment.net/virginia-governor-touts-productive-negotiations-on-bill-to-legalize-marijuana-sales-this-month/ https://ganjapreneur.com/fda-grants-breakthrough-therapy-designation-to-cannabis-derived-drug-for-chronic-back-pain/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ryan-handelman-85bb00187_raising-capital-in-the-lmm-post-1-your-share-7469731763548737536--bl3/ https://www.marijuanamoment.net/virginia-lawmakers-and-governor-have-a-deal-on-bill-to-legalize-marijuana-sales-this-month/ https://www.marijuanamoment.net/dea-begins-on-site-inspections-at-marijuana-businesses-that-applied-for-federal-protections-under-trumps-rescheduling-move/ https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-guns-drugs-marijuana-texas-a60ce6df9e735c6bc7def285ca396784? https://www.dea.gov/marijuana-rescheduling-regulatory-actions? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=matFWe-Uzu0 https://ganjapreneur.com/connecticut-enters-adult-use-cannabis-compact-with-mashantucket-pequot-tribe/? https://www.marijuanamoment.net/bipartisan-senators-file-marijuana-banking-bill-as-trumps-rescheduling-move-advances/? https://mjbizdaily.com/news/germany-could-be-auroras-backdoor-into-us-cannabis-market/616603/?

¿Tienes talento pero pocos resultados? El problema puede no ser tu capacidad, sino tu visibilidad, tu disciplina y la escala a la que estás actuando. En este episodio César Tánchez junto a Verónica Escobar de Tánchez conversamos de los principios del 10X de Grant Cardone de cómo pasar de sobrevivir a prosperar con un plan concreto para los próximos 12 meses. Espero te lo disfrutes. Para más recursos visita www.CesarTanchez.com

名言出ました▼みんな登録してねhikaruさんのsubstack：⁠https://voundaly.substack.com/⁠yamottyのニュースレター： ⁠https://yamotty.me/⁠====▼お便りや感想はこちらからお待ちしています。⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://forms.gle/73RW6Fq7TWMJpfNx9⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠採用された方には、何かノベルティをお送りします。▼フリーアジェンダとは...メルカリでグロースを務めてきた@hik0107と株式会社10Xの創業者&代表である@yamotty3 が仕事のことから哲学、雑談など話すPodcastです。名は体を表す、という諺どおり、かっちりしたアジェンダなく二人のその時のバイブスによって思いついたままに話す、まさに「フリーアジェンダ」なスタイルが特徴。▼有料コミュニティはこちら⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://community.camp-fire.jp/projects/view/318756⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠▼X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FREE AGENDA⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ /⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Hikaru⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠▼配信アカウント⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ /⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ /⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠note⁠⁠

On this episode of CoinDesk's Public Keys from the New York Stock Exchange, host Jennifer Sanasie is joined by CoinDesk Indices and Data to break down nearly $1.8 billion in weekly Bitcoin ETF outflows, Strategy's new capital plan, and whether the digital asset treasury narrative is back. SharpLink CEO Joseph Chalom joins to unpack the Ethereum Foundation's funding crisis, the launch of ETHlabs, and the company's $75 million raise, as he makes the case for an institutional supercycle in ETH. In this week's 10X, Kaizen founder Brian Jung breaks down his MicroStrategy short. Moody's Ratings Managing Director and Global Head of Digital Economy Fabian Astic explains how the firm is embedding credit ratings into tokenized securities on Solana and unveils the first-ever credit rating methodology for stablecoins. Plus, Midnight Foundation President Fahmi Syed details the partnership with Bank of England-regulated Monument Bank and why privacy is becoming the missing piece for institutional adoption. - This episode of Public Keys is brought to you by Kraken Pro. For more: https://pro.kraken.com/ - Learn more at https://www.bullish.com/. - To get market moving news delivered daily, download CoinDesk's mobile app: https://linktr.ee/coindeskapp. - Timecodes: 00:00 Welcome to Public Keys 00:52 BTC ETFs See $1.8B in Weekly Outflows 02:57 Strategy's Capital Plan and Bitcoin's Week 04:12 Is the Digital Asset Treasury Narrative Back? 06:37 Ethereum Foundation Departures and ETHlabs 07:06 SharpLink CEO Joseph Chalom Joins 08:15 Ethereum's Funding Crisis and the ETH Bull Case 10:25 Inside SharpLink's $75M Raise 13:36 ETH's Institutional Super Cycle and Price Outlook 15:19 Will the Clarity Act Pass This Year? 17:45 10X: Brian Jung's Strategy Short 19:16 Moody's Ratings Brings Credit Ratings On-Chain 19:46 Fabian Astic on the First Stablecoin Credit Rating 21:36 Do Stablecoins Need Ratings After the Genius Act? 23:17 Why launch token ratings on Solana and Canton first? 25:36 Collateral Mobility and $255T in Trapped Liquidity 28:46 Is Privacy the Missing Piece for Institutions? 29:02 Midnight's Fahmi Syed on the Monument Bank Deal 33:46 The Collateral Warehouse and Global Expansion 36:38 Thanks for Watching

Want our guidance to build and run your own marketing engine? Book a call with our team: https://call.contractordynamics.com/yt?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Description&utm_campaign=6.25.26Get our FREE marketing course for contractors here: https://course.contractordynamics.com?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Description&utm_campaign=6.25.26If you're a roofing or construction company owner who keeps saying you don't have time for content, or you're not sure where to start — this episode is for you.Justin Puetz, owner of Puetz Construction in southeastern Minnesota, started with nothing fancy. No videographer, no content strategy, no polished brand. Just 60-second Instagram stories, no editing, and a phone. That was it.Fast forward to today — Puetz Construction has nearly 400,000 views on a single piece of content, 335 five-star Google reviews, and has already surpassed all of last year's sales in just five months. 10X growth. From content.In this episode, Elizabeth Lytle sits down with Justin to break down exactly how he did it — and what any roofing or construction company owner can take from his playbook starting today.Key Takeaways for Contractors✔️ Why raw, unedited content outperforms polished highlight reels✔️ How to start creating content when you have zero time and zero budget✔️ The 80/20 content strategy Justin uses to stay consistent without burning out✔️ The Google Reviews strategy that put Puetz Construction at 335 five-star reviews and counting✔️ Why yard signs, truck wraps, and job site branding still matter✔️ How EOS helped Justin build a team that runs without him on every jobKey Timestamps00:00 Meet Justin Puetz and the origin of Puetz Construction07:28 Why content marketing works even if nobody gets on Facebook to buy a roof14:54 How Justin started creating content with no time and no crew21:48 Building the content muscle and committing to daily posting38:58 The Google Reviews strategy and why volume plus rating changes your pricing power51:40 Why EOS transformed Puetz Construction and how to get started60:38 What's next — headquarters, multiple locations, and no plans to sellFor a deeper look at how Contractor Dynamics helps roofing and construction companies build a Predictable Marketing Machine, watch this free training:https://www.contractordynamics.com/training/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Description&utm_campaign=6.26.26Ready to stop guessing and start growing?Schedule a Marketing Demo with our team and we'll show you exactly what your company needs to build brand authority, generate consistent leads, and stop relying on word of mouth alone.

徹底的に考えて出てきたアウトプットがこれなんやちきりんの部屋 - by hikaru - A Voundaly ３人で運営するsubstack大事なお知らせ―Be Fun！ - by hikaru - A Voundaly ▼みんな登録してねhikaruさんのsubstack：⁠https://voundaly.substack.com/⁠yamottyのニュースレター： ⁠https://yamotty.me/⁠====▼お便りや感想はこちらからお待ちしています。⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://forms.gle/73RW6Fq7TWMJpfNx9⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠採用された方には、何かノベルティをお送りします。▼フリーアジェンダとは...メルカリでグロースを務めてきた@hik0107と株式会社10Xの創業者&代表である@yamotty3 が仕事のことから哲学、雑談など話すPodcastです。名は体を表す、という諺どおり、かっちりしたアジェンダなく二人のその時のバイブスによって思いついたままに話す、まさに「フリーアジェンダ」なスタイルが特徴。▼有料コミュニティはこちら⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://community.camp-fire.jp/projects/view/318756⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠▼X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FREE AGENDA⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ /⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Hikaru⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠▼配信アカウント⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ /⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ /⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠note⁠⁠

The Cardone Zone – Episode 313: Be Dangerous, Not Careful  What separates those who achieve extraordinary success from those who spend their lives playing it safe? In this unforgettable episode of The Cardone Zone, Grant Cardone is joined by Tyrese Gibson and Drew Brees for a powerful conversation on vision, preparation, relationships, and the courage required to pursue greatness. From Tyrese's rise in South Central Los Angeles to becoming a global entertainer and entrepreneur, to Drew Brees' Hall of Fame career and success in business, both guests reveal the mindset shifts that allowed them to break through limitations and perform at their highest levels. Tyrese shares his powerful philosophy of being "dangerous, not careful," while Drew breaks down the disciplined routines and preparation that made him one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history. Together, they deliver a blueprint for anyone looking to think bigger, act bolder, and create a life beyond the limits others place on them. Follow us on all social platforms @GrantCardone for daily content on wealth, business, entrepreneurship, sales, and the 10X mindset. Visit GrantCardone.com for upcoming events, exclusive training, and the latest products designed to help you scale your business, increase your income, and expand your future.  

Real estate SEO can bring your hottest motivated seller leads without more ad spend. In this episode, I sit down with Greg Berney, a Joe Homebuyer franchisee who built nearly a $2M real estate business while still protecting his family time and building a strong team culture. Greg breaks down how SEO, Google Business Profile updates, geo-tagged photos, and a disciplined review process helped him create a 10X+ return from organic marketing. We also get into the systems, mindset, and community support that helped him go from wearing every hat to building a business with more freedom and leverage. --------------------- Quotes: - “SEO is the tree you wish you planted years ago—but once it takes root, it compounds into the hottest leads in your market.” - “Freedom doesn't happen after you hit the next revenue goal. It happens when you build your business with intention from the start.” --------------------- Chapters: 0:00 Intro: $2M Revenue, Strong Family Life & Franchisee of the Year 2:51 The Unexpected Path Into Real Estate Investing 6:05 The Community Advantage That Accelerated Growth 9:01 Why Most Entrepreneurs Never Achieve Real Freedom 11:31 The Lead Generation System Behind Greg's Growth 15:16 The SEO Strategy Generating 10X Returns 17:17 How Google Reviews Turn Into More Deals 28:44 Scaling From $200K to $2M Without Burning Out 33:40 The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything --------------------- ➨Our Evergreen Marketing Podcast: https://plnk.to/Carrot ➨Our CEO, Trevor Mauch's Entrepreneur Freedom Formula Podcast: https://link.chtbl.com/EFF ➨ Facebook Group for Evergreen Marketing: https://www.facebook.com/groups/officialcarrotcommunity ➨Subscribe to our YT channel: https://www.youtube.com/@GetCarrot ➨Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcarrot/ ➨Take a demo of Carrot.com: https://carrot.ly/GQ8I --------------------- About Us: At Carrot, our vision is to inspire & empower real estate professionals to gain true freedom and make a greater impact with their businesses. We do that by providing industry-leading websites, marketing tools & training that help you generate more motivated seller leads than any other platform. ➨Our CEO, Trevor Mauch's Entrepreneur Freedom Formula Podcast: https://link.chtbl.com/EFF ➨ Facebook Group for Evergreen Marketing: https://www.facebook.com/groups/officialcarrotcommunity ➨Subscribe to our YT channel: https://www.youtube.com/@GetCarrot ➨Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcarrot/ ➨Take a demo of Carrot.com: https://carrot.ly/GQ8I Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The noise around productivity has gotten really loud lately, and I think a lot of it has to do with AI. There are apps, tools, and technology promising to 10X your output, and every corner of the internet is telling you how to squeeze more into your day. But what if that constant push to produce more, faster, is actually making you worse at the very thing it's claiming to help you with?In this episode, I'm breaking down why two of the most important types of productivity are being completely ignored right now and what it's costing you.What You'll Learn:Why the push to always be producing is working against you in ways you might not see yetThe type of productivity that happens when you step away from your to-do list completelyHow well-meaning advice is quietly converting your best thinking time into more output modeWhy what happens when you sleep matters more to your productivity than any app or tool ever couldTwo small things you can do this week to start getting it back________________________________

Same presentation. Same offer. Same you. $91,000 in sales. Two weeks later with a different audience? $4,000. In this solo episode of The Expert Edge, I break down the insight that separates six-figure coaches from seven-figure coaches: the price you charge is based less on what you do and more on who you serve. This isn't about changing your offer or tweaking your funnel. It's about understanding that a psychologist charging per hour makes $250-$350. The same person doing emotional release work with an upleveled avatar charges $50K per package. Same work. Different avatar. 100X different price. Most coaches obsess over their product. "How do I improve my course?" "What sales funnel works better?" They're focused on the wrong thing. The real leverage is identifying your upleveled avatar and understanding what problems they actually have. What you'll learn: → Price is determined by who you serve, not what you offer - Two people doing identical work charging 10X different prices based on avatar → Higher level avatars have higher level problems - Beginners ask "What's a lead magnet?" High-level clients ask "How do I own market leadership?" (premium problems = premium prices) → Beginners require volume, premium clients don't - One $50K client is easier to work with than ten $5K clients and takes action faster → Different avatars have different desires - Beginners want their first $10K. Upleveled avatars want market leadership and multi-six to seven-figure businesses → Why resourcefulness is the real differentiator - Beginners are less resourceful because they haven't developed the internal mechanisms to push through hard things Real insights from the episode: The $91K vs $4K story - same presentation, same offer, different audience, wildly different results Why beginners are "stuck" - they're still dealing with foundational problems (foundational problems don't pay premium prices) The woman in my Platinum group who left a "high-level" program because everyone was asking basic questions like "What's a lead magnet?" Why you shouldn't focus only on the lowest common denominator (beginners) The emotional release work example: $250-$350/hour as a psychologist vs $50K packages with upleveled avatar Higher level problems: team problems, profitability problems, scaling problems, system problems, market leadership The consistency difference: Beginners making $3K one month and $20K the next (chaos). Premium clients with stable recurring revenue Why premium clients are easier to work with - they're resourceful, know what they want, and take action How to identify what problems your upleveled avatar actually has Building specific products for different avatar levels (not everyone joins high-level programs) If you're running an established expert business doing $300K+ (or aiming there), Platinum is our highest-level mastermind. It's for people ready to build a highly profitable, 2-3 million dollar business with a small team, full lifestyle, and zero complexity. We focus on market leadership, scaling profitably, and building systems that work. Apply at colinboyd.co/platinum Short application. If it's a fit, we'll hop on a call. Join our next Speak to Convert Masterclass. In this live workshop, you'll discover how to build and launch a high converting presentation that gets you clients every time you present. https://colinboyd.co/speak Discover how to authentically connect with your audience & fill your programs with a Conversion Story - Version 2.0 (AI Edition) is now available. https://www.conversionstoryformula.com Hit the "Follow" button so you don't miss an episode! Love this podcast? Write a review and give it a 5-star rating!  For all the show notes and links: https://www.expertedgepodcast.com/blog/episode326 Connect with Colin on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/colinboyd/  

In this special episode, hosts David Millili and Steve Carran sit down with Will Gilbert, Co-Founder of Bodhi, live from HITEC, to explore how hospitality technology is rapidly transforming hotel operations, guest experience, and revenue performance.Will shares how Bodhi has achieved 10X growth since last October, and why the company is positioning itself not just as a product vendor—but as a true hotel operating platform designed to unify fragmented systems across the hospitality ecosystem.The conversation dives deep into how Bodhi is helping hotels deliver measurable ROI through its powerful ROI calculator, which links operational improvements directly to revenue impact, guest satisfaction, energy savings, and operational efficiency.Rather than bolting on features or claiming AI hype, Will explains Bodhi's philosophy of building a purpose-built, fully integrated platform that improves over time and delivers tangible business outcomes. From housekeeping optimization and valet integration to work order management and predictive insights, Bodhi is redefining what “platform” really means in hospitality tech.The discussion also covers: Why most hotel “platforms” are actually disconnected products  How guest experience issues directly impact revenue and ratings  The importance of data security, including SOC 2 Type 2 compliance  What's next for the future of hotel operating systems Watch the FULL EPISODE on YouTube: https://youtu.be/BF9nGmpAU-kLinks:Will on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-gilbert-0348586/Bodhi: https://www.gobodhi.com/For full show notes head to: https://themodernhotelier.com/episode/290Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-..Join the conversation on today's episode on The Modern Hotelier LinkedIn pageConnect with Steve and David:Steve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/%F0%9F%8E...David: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-mil.

Is your SaaS company stuck in the valuation doghouse while a handful of names trade at a massive premium? In episode #378, Ben Murray breaks down Meritech's June 2026 public software comps report and the widening valuation gap across SaaS. The median revenue multiple has fallen 64% from its pre-ZIRP peak, and most public software now trades below 5X. If you are a SaaS founder or CFO, the multiple attached to your business depends on a short list of traits the market now rewards. This episode shows you which ones, and why the rules quietly changed. Why only 9 of roughly 100 public software companies trade above a 10X revenue multiple, while 77 sit below 5X How the Rule of 40 shifted under the surface, with revenue growth now 3.3x more correlated with the multiple than free cash flow margin Why two companies with the same Rule of 40 score can trade at 7.3x versus 3.7x, depending entirely on how they got there What the top 9 share in common: free cash flow margins above 20% and ARR growth above 20% at the same time How AI exposure now sorts the market, and why a weak AI ARR story lands horizontal SaaS in the doghouse Tune in to see exactly what separates the premium names from the rest before you benchmark your own SaaS valuation. Resources Mentioned Meritech June 2026 Public Software Comps (Pulse Report): https://meritech.substack.com/p/meritech-software-pulse-12-june-2026 Ben's academy: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/

In this episode of The Capital Raiser Show, Richard C. Wilson sits down with entrepreneur, investor, and 10X founder Grant Cardone for a high-energy fireside chat on scaling businesses, raising capital, multifamily real estate, Bitcoin, social media leverage, and building long-term wealth. Grant shares the mindset and strategies behind building a $5B+ real estate portfolio, raising over $1.8B in equity, using social media to attract investors at scale, and why he believes most traditional investment structures are fundamentally flawed. The conversation dives into real estate cycles, branding, investor psychology, forced appreciation, Bitcoin treasury strategy, scaling through audience building, and how high-performing entrepreneurs continually reinvent themselves to operate at larger levels. Topics covered include: • Building and scaling a $5B+ real estate portfolio • Raising capital outside traditional Wall Street channels • Why social media is a massive investor acquisition tool • Long-term real estate investing and 10-year holds • Bitcoin, cash flow, and treasury strategy • Branding multifamily assets for scale • The psychology of growth and thinking bigger • Why successful people must leave comfort repeatedly • Investor relations, scale, and building loyal communities • High-velocity decision making and deal flow The Capital Raiser Show brings together billionaire investors, family offices, founders, operators, and elite entrepreneurs to discuss capital raising, scaling, investing, and strategic growth. Subscribe for more interviews with top investors, billionaires, family offices, and industry leaders.

Do you want to know God's vision for your life but feel like you keep shrinking your dreams down to what you can figure out on your own? In this teaching, Travis Lee Peters breaks down what vision, mission, and purpose actually mean for the believer, and how to hear what God wants to do in your life clearly, then walk it out through daily obedience. You'll learn why most of us settle for a vision that's "too small" (just get out of debt, just get comfortable), how to stop dreaming without God involved, and why His vision for you is always bigger than anything you could engineer in the natural. We cover the spiritual version of "10X is easier than 2X," how to get quiet and let God drop the vision in your heart, and how that vision turns into a mission you live out one obedient step at a time. If you've ever felt stuck, scattered, or unsure of your purpose, this one is for you. If this blessed you, don't just watch and leave. Get plugged in today so you can begin to experience God's Promise for Increase on new and exciting levels:

Zoey Greco is a spiritual teacher, intuitive guide, numerology expert, "delusional in the best way" queen, and the host of the highly-rated podcast The Higher Self Hotline. For over a decade, she has supported thousands of clients across the globe through periods of deep personal redirection and expansion. She is the creator of the *Already Are* philosophy — which teaches that true transformation isn't about becoming someone new, but rather remembering the person you have always been.In this episode, we cover:- The *Already Are* philosophy and why the caterpillar already is the butterfly on a cellular level- Why we are drawn to numbers — frequency, resonance, and how humans make sense of the world- The four numerology numbers Zoey uses for any reading: Life Path, Birthday Number, Attitude Number, and Personal Year- Amy's full live numerology read — Life Path 8, Birthday 8, Personal Year 8, Attitude 7 — and what concentrated eight energy actually means- The eight as the number of power, abundance, leadership, money, and the karmic loop of infinity- Why every number has a light and a shadow — and how to use the shadow for your own shadow work- Angel numbers, license plates, and how the universe uses the external world as a mirror to speak to you- Why "delusion" is your number one resource for manifestation and timeline jumping- The 10X list exercise Zoey runs in her container for clients calling in a partner- Why being it before you see it begins with releasing what other people think of you — "what anybody thinks about me is none of my fucking business"- The four intuitive gifts explained: claircognizance, clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience — and why knowing your type changes everythingConnect with Zoey:Website (and the free intuitive gifts quiz): https://zoegreco.comYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheZoeyGrecoInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoeygrecoFree weekly live open coaching with Zoey and her friend Brittany — starting in JunePlease remember to rate, review, and follow the show – and share with a friend!Subscribe to the newsletter:https://mailchi.mp/amyedwards/sign-up-to-amys-newsletterCheck out our new Comedy Wellness Podcast: Anything But Mid, cohosted with Whitney Stropp:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anything-but-mid/id1849386215https://www.youtube.com/@AnythingButMidFind Amy's affiliates and discount codes: https://amyedwards.info/affiliatepageAll links: ⁠⁠⁠amyedwards.info⁠⁠⁠ - https://amyedwards.info/Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠@realamyedward - ⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/realamyedwards/Fight For Her: https://www.fightfortheforgotten.org/fight-for-herTikTok:⁠⁠⁠ @themagicbabe⁠⁠⁠ -  https://www.tiktok.com/@themagicbabe?lang=enYouTube:@TheAmyEdwardsShow -  https://www.youtube.com/c/theamyedwardsshowPodcast: ⁠⁠⁠The Amy Edwards Show Podcast⁠⁠⁠ - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-amy-edwards-show/id1543432633Free Course:⁠⁠⁠ The Ageless Mindset⁠⁠⁠ - https://best-you-life.teachable.com/p/the-ageless-mindset-the-ultimate-guide-to-look-younger-feel-happierFull Course: ⁠⁠⁠The Youthfulness Hack⁠⁠⁠ - https://best-you-life.teachable.com/p/the-youthfulness-hack Amy's hair by ⁠https://www.thecollectiveatx.com⁠Podcast editing by https://podcastmagician.com/Get my FREE course "The Ageless Mindset: The Ultimate Guide to Look Younger and Feel Happier!" HERE: ⁠https://best-you-life.teachable.com/p/the-ageless-mindset-the-ultimate-guide-to-look-younger-feel-happier⁠Get the full course “The Youthfulness Hack: The Secret System to Reverse Aging Fast and Create a New, Radiant You!” Out now! ⁠https://best-you-life.teachable.com/p/the-youthfulness-hack⁠

Passion or Profit?  What does success look like for the next generation in a world being reshaped by AI, automation, and constant disruption? In this thought-provoking episode of The Cardone Zone, Grant Cardone is joined by Swedish podcaster Theodor Ekstrand for an honest conversation about the realities facing young people today. Together, they explore the rapidly changing landscape of work, the impact of artificial intelligence on careers, and the opportunities emerging from one of the biggest technological shifts in history. The discussion also tackles a timeless question that every ambitious young person eventually faces: Should you follow your passion, or follow the money? Whether you're just starting your career, building a business, or trying to navigate an uncertain future, this episode offers practical insights on how to stay relevant, valuable, and prepared for what's next. Follow us on all social platforms @GrantCardone for daily content on wealth, business, sales, investing, and the 10X mindset. Visit GrantCardone.com for information on upcoming events, exclusive training, and the latest strategies on wealth creation, business growth, and real estate investing. TRT: 53:00:02  

“Do the right thing, not the easy thing.”  on the Daily Grind ☕️, your weekly goal-driven podcast. This episode features Kelly Johnson @kellyfastruns and special guest Gene Gerovich @nyc_hvac_heroes. Gene is a sales leader, operator, and entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience scaling businesses with a relentless focus on process, discipline, and people.He's helped grow multiple companies 3X to 10X in under five years, and today he leads B&M Mechanical in New York City—an HVAC and refrigeration company serving the hospitality industry and major brands like Macy's, McDonald's, Burger King, Dunkin', and more.S9 Episode 23: 6/16/2026Featuring Kelly Johnson with Special Guest Gene GerovichFollow Our Podcast:Instagram: @dailygrindpod https://www.instagram.com/dailygrindpod/  X: @dailygrindpod https://x.com/dailygrindpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dailygrindpodTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dailygrindpodPodcast Website: https://direct.me/dailygrindpod   Follow Our Special Guest:Website: https://bmmechanical.nyc/Instagram: @nyc_hvac_heroes

In this episode of Million Dollar Flip Flops, Rodric sits down with private equity investor Steve Walsh for a conversation about what it really takes to grow a business beyond the next plateau.Steve shares how he helps entrepreneurs think bigger, build stronger companies, and avoid the common mistakes that keep them stuck at two, three, or even ten million in revenue. The discussion explores mindset, customer understanding, culture, capital, and why the right investor can bring far more than money to the table.From there, Rodric and Steve dive into the difference between smart capital and dumb capital, the importance of hiring A players, and why communication with investors matters more than most founders realize.This is a practical, high-level conversation about growth, leadership, and building a business with the right people around you.In This Episode, You'll LearnWhy many entrepreneurs get stuck before their next levelHow to think bigger than your current revenue targetWhy mindset is often the first bottleneck to growthThe difference between smart capital and dumb capitalWhy the best investors bring doors, systems, and strategyHow to build a culture that attracts A playersWhy customer understanding matters before capitalWhat entrepreneurs often get wrong about their investorsHighlights & Timestamps[00:00] Tell your investor the truth Steve opens with a blunt truth: the things you least want to tell your investor are often the things they most need to know.[01:00] Meet Steve Walsh Steve shares that he works in private equity and focuses on investing in entrepreneurs and helping them reach the next level.[02:00] Why 10X thinking matters He explains why he believes 10X growth is not harder than 2X growth—it just requires a different mindset.[03:00] Special snowflake syndrome Rodric and Steve discuss how entrepreneurs often believe their market is different, when in reality the core principles of business still apply.[04:00] Culture can solve hiring problems Steve shares an example of a company that believed it could not find talent, and explains how better culture can attract people away from competitors.[05:00] Shiny object syndrome The conversation shifts to the trap of spending capital on things that do not move the business forward.[06:00] Start from the end and work backward Steve explains why entrepreneurs should begin with the end goal in mind and then reverse-engineer the path.[07:00] The Magnet and sales fundamentals Rodric connects the conversation to sales and marketing, explaining how many founders neglect the basic “magnet” that attracts customers.[08:00] Why builders struggle with sales They discuss how many builders and contractors are excellent at building but weak at sales, marketing, and customer messaging.[09:00] Smart capital vs. dumb capital Steve explains the difference between money alone and strategic money that brings expertise, relationships, and systems.[10:00] Partnership, not transaction The best investors, Steve says, are true partners who want to help founders succeed beyond the check they write.[11:00] Tell your investor the hard stuff He emphasizes that many founders hide problems from investors when those are exactly the issues that need to be surfaced.[12:00] Why the right investor changes everything Rodric and Steve compare smart capital to strategic help like networks, expertise, and market access.[13:00] A players need a big mission Steve explains why top performers need a meaningful challenge or they will get bored and leave.[14:00] The book and where to find Steve Steve shares where listeners can find his book and connect with him.[15:00] The family man question Steve answers the signature question: businessman with a family or family man with a business?[16:00] Energy, time, and personal alignment He shares how he looks at both business life and personal life when evaluating entrepreneurs.[17:00] Closing thoughts on priorities Steve closes by reinforcing that personal and professional priorities always show up in the calendar and the bank account.Notable Quotes“Most of the things you do not want to tell your investor are the things you need to be telling your investor.” – Steve Walsh “10X it is just as easy as 2X it.” – Steve Walsh “The bigger picture is always bigger than what they see.” – Steve Walsh “Start from the end. Start from where you want to go and work backwards.” – Steve Walsh “Smart capital opens doors you probably never could open on your own.” – Steve Walsh “If you want A players, you need a big goal.” – Steve WalshConnect with Steve Walsh

On this episode of Public Keys from the New York Stock Exchange, host Jennifer Sanasie is joined by GSR's Joshua Riezman on SpaceX's $1.29 billion Bitcoin bet and the outlook for the CLARITY Act; Citi's Artem Korenyuk on the bank's new platform for tokenizing private company shares; and Coinbase's Lincoln Murr on AI agent trading and the future of autonomous finance. Plus, Ponzi Trader's highest-conviction trade of the week on 10X, presented by Kraken Pro. - This episode of Public Keys is brought to you by Kraken Pro. For more: ⁠⁠⁠https://pro.kraken.com/⁠⁠⁠ - Learn more at ⁠https://www.bullish.com/⁠. - Register now for CoinDesk's Policy and Regulation event on September 24, 2026: ⁠https://policy-regulation.coindesk.com/⁠. - Timecodes: 00:00 Welcome to Public Keys 01:00 U.S.-Iran Deal Reopens Strait of Hormuz 01:28 SpaceX IPOs With $1.29B in Bitcoin 02:01 GSR's Joshua Riezman Joins Public Keys 03:23 Bitcoin's Corporate Treasury Era 04:47 AI vs. Crypto for Capital Flows 07:06 CLARITY Act: Now or Never 10:20 10X: Ponzi Trader's Top Trade is XPL 12:04 Citi's Artem Korenyuk Joins Public Keys 13:29 Digital Depository Receipts Explained 16:13 Citi's Broader Tokenization Strategy 18:12 Investor Rights and Private Share Ownership 20:20 BTC and ETH ETF Flows 21:18 Coinbase Launches for Agents, Lincoln Murr Joins 23:03 AI Agent Safety and Coinbase Advisor 26:02 The Agentic Financial Future and x402 28:19 Fear & Greed Index Climbs to 20 - This episode was hosted by Jennifer Sanasie.

Read my new book, "The Price of Becoming." www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. My Guest: Scott Harrison is the founder and CEO of charity: water, a non-profit that has raised over a billion dollars and funded tens of thousands of water projects to bring safe drinking water to millions. He previously spent a decade as a New York City nightclub promoter before a dramatic career shift led him into humanitarian work. Key Learnings Scott started a charity: water with $20 from a birthday party. Then $15,000... Twenty years later: over a billion dollars raised, 21 million people served. He says it should be 10 to 100 times more. The cure for water already exists. We're looking for water on Mars while 700 million people drink dirty water on Earth. We solved this hundreds of years ago. We just haven't implemented it. 25% of the money sitting in American donor-advised funds would give every human on Earth clean water. That's parked philanthropic capital. Already tax-benefited. Just waiting. The goal is always 10X what you're doing. If we raised a million last year, we want ten this year. If we raise $100 million, we should raise a billion. The opportunity is always orders of magnitude larger than the moment. Show, don't bullet. Scott shows 210 photos in a 45-minute keynote. No PowerPoint. Single images. A story unfolds frame by frame. Be early to the technology. First charity on Instagram. First to hit a million Twitter followers. First to use VR. The question is always the same: how does this new thing further the mission? The 100% model: solve for the cynic.  Public donations go to one bank account that funds only water projects. Overhead is raised separately from entrepreneurs and business leaders. Then track every donation to a specific village. Don't be mid. Scott's 11-year-old daughter says nobody wants to be mid. Excellence is a core value. There's a lot of mid out there. Design everything. The fact cover sheet. The PowerPoint. The website. The package. "We're always dating." If the message comes in an ugly package, you're at a disadvantage before you start. Treat the donor like a Michelin three-star guest. If a restaurant can think that carefully about a meal, you can think that carefully about a donor who can save a million lives. The Goldman Sachs partner who changed Scott's paradigm. Before making an eight-figure ask, Scott asked a partner: "How does it feel when people ask for a lot more than you expected?" The expected answer was irritated, offended, put off. The actual answer: "I feel flattered that they think I would be that generous." People are generous. The well is there. You just have to drill deep enough. Scott has spent 20 years asking for too little. That might be his next obsession. People give to people, not causes. A dynamic leader who transfers their enthusiasm gets the donation. The cause doesn't. Most of the donations Scott and his wife give are to people, not topics they were already passionate about. Talk 10% of the time. When Scott meets a donor for the first time, he wants to know their whole life story. Their marriage. Their kids. What they wanted to be when they grew up. Be genuinely curious or don't bother. Hire for integrity, humility, curiosity, and energy... 16,000 applicants for 36 roles last year. Energy matters most. Someone who can get you fired up about pickleball, Patagonia, or a new running shoe is exactly who you want on the executive team. The dinner test for hiring: Can you imagine having this person at your home for two hours at dinner? And wanting to keep them for another hour? Get the whole life story. Scott wants the arc from the beginning to the present in an interview. If someone can't tell their own story coherently, they probably don't know themselves yet. The 11-year-old with the piggy bank. He told his parents he was going to fund a whole village. They told him to set a realistic goal. He went knocking on doors. He came back with $10,000. Scott's experience lab in Nashville. A 60-minute immersive tour. A 100-degree room with a treadmill where you carry a 40-pound water vessel. Microscopes that show you parasites. A VR film that ends in celebration. The "give shop," not the gift shop. 53% of visitors donate. 10,000 visitors. $3.9 million raised in year one. Scott's champagne moment: a single billionaire who picks water. The water sector doesn't have one. Republicans and Democrats agree on it. Atheists and people of faith agree on it. Everyone has to drink. Reflection Questions What is the 10X version of your current goal? Where are you asking for too little because the smaller ask felt safer? Who in your work or life is the Michelin three-star guest, the customer, donor, or partner who deserves your most thoughtful experience design?  When was the last time you went 10% talking, 90% genuinely curious about someone else's story?  More Learning:  #290: Scott Harrison – Redemption, Compassion, & The Transformative Power Within Us #680: Scott Galloway - Don't Follow Your Passion, Follow Your Talent #682: Will Guidara - Adversity is a Terrible Thing to WasteAudio Chapters 00:00 The Price of Becoming - Pre-Order Now! 01:18 Welcome Back, Scott Harrison 02:56 From a $20 Bill to Over $1 Billion Raised 04:59 Why the Goal Should Always Be 10X (or 100X) 07:54 Storytelling: How to Get People to Care About a Problem They Don't Feel 10:30 Being Early to Instagram, Twitter, and VR 16:10 Radical Transparency: The Bank Account That Built Trust 19:51 The Beauty of a Healthy Obsession 21:22 Drilling Deep for the Artesian Wells of Generosity 25:04 What It Feels Like in the Room When Generosity Breaks Through 27:01 "Nobody Wants to Be Mid." 30:56 Design Everything: We're Always Dating 32:13 Treat Your Donor Like a Michelin Three-Star Guest 35:39 Selling With Integrity: Talk 10%, Listen 90% 39:15 16,000 Applicants for 36 Jobs: What Scott Looks For 43:12 The Power of Vulnerability in Hiring 45:39 Inside the Nashville Experience Lab 50:34 The Champagne Question: A Billion-Dollar Vision 52:10 The 11-Year-Old Who Raised $10,000 Door-to-Door 54:25 EOPC  

Dan Newman heads FP&A at RingCentral, a $2.5B public SaaS company (a platform for business phone, SMS, contact center, workforce engagement management, video collaboration, and messaging) , where he has overseen a  period of 10X growth. Discussing a career comprising consulting, being a financial analyst at Salesforce, private-equity-backed startups, Dan discusses building financial models towards a sale, navigating the shift from 30% growth to efficiency, and AI processes. In this episode Building the FP&A team at SchoolMessenger and pivoting to a sale  Joining RingCentral at a $250m run rate and a six-person FP&A team towards $2.5billion Why revenue is rarely as simple as it looks  Business partnering in an age of efficiency in SaaS

Are you falling behind—or getting 10X more productive—with AI? Kevin Surace, the father of the virtual assistant and AI futurist. Here are my 5 biggest takeaways: ✅ If you're not AI-first, someone who is will replace you ✅ AI isn't a tool — it's a workflow multiplier ✅ Productivity is now 10X minimum, not 10% better ✅ Your voice still matters — edit AI, don't fear it ✅ The winners? People who learn faster than AI evolves What's ONE way you're using AI today to boost productivity? Kevin is the father of the Virtual Assistant and a Silicon Valley innovator, serial entrepreneur, CEO, and futurist. He was INC Magazines' Entrepreneur of the Year, a CNBC top Innovator of the Decade, World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer, Chair of Silicon Valley Forum, Planet Forward Innovator of the Year nominee, featured for 5 years on TechTV's Silicon Spin, and inducted into RIT's Innovation Hall of Fame. He has 94 worldwide patents and led pioneering work on the first cellular data smartphone (AirCommunicator), the first human-like AI virtual assistant (Portico), soundproof drywall, high R-value windows, AI-driven building management, Generative AI for QA automation, supply-chain auctions, and the window/energy retrofits of the Empire State Building and NY Stock Exchange. Connect with Jon Dwoskin: Twitter: @jdwoskin Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.dwoskin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejondwoskinexperience/ Website: https://jondwoskin.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondwoskin/ Email: jon@jondwoskin.com Get Jon's Book: The Think Big Movement: Grow your business big. Very Big! Connect with Kevin Surace:Website: https://www.kevinsurace.com/ X: https://twitter.com/kevinsurace Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevinsurace/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ksurace/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kevin.surace/ *E - explicit language may be used in this podcast.

I don't end many podcasts by inviting someone to come hang out at the farm, but this was one of those conversations. In this episode, I sit down with Patrick Engasser, a bestselling author, speaker, and coach who's built and led a seven-figure sales team…all while being blind since birth.  This isn't a “feel good” story. This is a wake-up call. We talk about what it actually takes to succeed when the odds aren't in your favor, how to stay aware of opportunities most people completely miss, and why building the right systems is the difference between being stuck and having real freedom. Patrick also shares powerful perspective shifts around adversity- how the very thing you think is holding you back might actually be your greatest advantage. And yeah…we even get into guide dogs.  If you've been waiting for the “right time” or better circumstances… this episode will challenge that hard.   Find Patrick at www.TalkwithPatrick.com  If I Can Do It, You Can Do It!: Inspiration for Eliminating Excuses, Overcoming Challenges, and Succeeding in Business and Life by Patrick Engasser https://amzn.to/4cIg1VH    Things mentioned in the show: 10X is Easier than 2X by Dan Sullivan https://amzn.to/4mErRok  4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss https://amzn.to/4cB3XFF  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey https://amzn.to/489fc72  Goals: How to Get the Most Out of Your Life by Zig Ziglar https://amzn.to/4twO7mY  The Power of Intention by Wayne Dyer https://amzn.to/4cX7rUk    --- Click here to change your life- http://eepurl.com/gy5T3T   Hit me up for a one-on-one brainstorming session- https://militaryimagesproject.com/products/brainstorming-session-1-hour    Check out my Linktree for different ways to rock your world! https://linktr.ee/ruggeddad    Check out the sweet Hyper X mic I'm using. https://amzn.to/41AF4px    Check out my best-selling books: Rapid Skill Development 101- https://amzn.to/3J0oDJ0 Streams of Income with Ryan Reger- https://amzn.to/3SDhDHg Strangest Secret Challenge- https://amzn.to/3xiJmVO This page contains affiliate links. This means that if you click a link and buy one of the products on this page, I may receive a commission (at no extra cost to you!) This doesn't affect our opinions or our reviews. Everything we do is to benefit you as the reader, so all of our reviews are as honest and unbiased as possible. #passiveincome #sidehustle #cryptocurrency #richlife

The Cardone Zone Episode 311  "That will never work" Couldn't think of a better title for this episode than to quote Marc Randoph's book title: "That will never work", because that is the essence of this episode. The entrepreneur's journey through adversity. What does it take to build technology that changes the way the world lives, works, and communicates? In this fascinating episode of The Cardone Zone, Grant Cardone welcomes two pioneering innovators: Marc Randolph, co-founder of Netflix, and Adam Cheyer, co-founder of Siri. Together, they share the principles, methodologies, and decision-making frameworks that helped transform groundbreaking ideas into globally recognized technologies. From disrupting the entertainment industry to revolutionizing how humans interact with technology, these visionaries reveal what it takes to innovate, adapt, and scale in rapidly evolving markets. Whether you're building a startup, growing an established business, or looking to sharpen your competitive edge, this episode delivers valuable insights from two leaders who helped redefine entire industries. Follow us on all social platforms @GrantCardone for daily content on wealth, business, entrepreneurship, investing, and the 10X mindset. Visit GrantCardone.com for information on upcoming events, exclusive products, training programs, and the latest strategies on wealth, business, and real estate. TRT: 53:00:02  

On this episode of CoinDesk's Public Keys from the New York Stock Exchange, host Jennifer Sanasie is joined by Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Research Analyst James Seyffart to break down the SpaceX IPO's pull on crypto capital, four consecutive weeks of Bitcoin ETF outflows topping $1.7 billion, and the Zcash counterfeiting bug. VanEck Director of Digital Assets Product Kyle DaCruz unpacks VBNB, the first US spot BNB ETF, the rise of "revenue chains," and what staking rewards will mean for the product. 100X Capital CIO Joy Pathak — also known as the Wizard of SoHo — shares his top conviction trade in the 10X segment. Plus, Benchmark-StoneX Managing Director Mark Palmer breaks down why the market overreacted to Strategy's first publicized Bitcoin sale, his $570 price target on the company, and his Buy rating with a $32 target on Strive. - This episode of Public Keys is brought to you by Kraken Pro. For more: ⁠⁠https://pro.kraken.com/⁠⁠ - Learn more at https://www.bullish.com/.-Register now for CoinDesk's Policy and Regulation event on September 24, 2026: https://policy-regulation.coindesk.com/. Timecodes: 00:00 Welcome to Public Keys 00:38 SpaceX IPO, BTC Drops 01:50 BTC ETF Outflows: Overreaction or Trend? 03:23 Zcash Counterfeiting Bug and the Privacy Narrative 06:34 VanEck's Kyle DaCruz on the First US Spot BNB ETF 07:18 Ghost Chains vs Revenue Chains: BNB by the Numbers 08:56 BNB Staking and How VanEck Picks Its Next ETF 11:17 BNB Chain's Decentralization 14:55 ETF Flows Deep-Dive: Bitcoin, Hyperliquid, XRP, Solana 18:02 Bitcoin ETFs vs Gold's $300B in Assets 19:14 The Yin-Yang of Crypto: "We're So Back" vs "It's So Over" 21:39 Joy Pathak's ‘10X' Trade: NEAR 24:04 Benchmark-StoneX' Mark Palmer on Strategy's First Publicized BTC Sale 25:32 Why S&P's October Critique Drove the Sale 27:47 Path to a $570 Price Target on Strategy 29:40 $32 Buy Rating on Strive and a $95K BTC Assumption 32:18 Crypto Fear & Greed Index at 8 - This episode was hosted by Jennifer Sanasie.

What does it take to become a household name, stay at the top of your game, and negotiate your way through decades of success? In this star-powered episode of The Cardone Zone, Grant Cardone is joined by John Travolta and Kevin Hart for a candid conversation about the journeys that transformed them from ambitious dreamers into global icons. From navigating setbacks and rejection to building lasting careers in one of the world's most competitive industries, both guests reveal the principles, habits, and negotiating strategies that helped them create opportunities where others saw obstacles. In Episode 310, you'll discover: The mindset required to achieve long-term success How confidence and preparation shape every negotiation The art of creating value before asking for anything in return Lessons learned from decades of navigating high-stakes deals Why persistence remains one of the most underrated skills in business and life Whether you're negotiating a contract, growing a business, or pursuing a bigger vision for your future, this episode delivers insights from two masters of their craft who have consistently found ways to create leverage, build relationships, and win. Follow us on all social platforms @GrantCardone for daily content on wealth, business, sales, entrepreneurship, and the 10X mindset. Visit GrantCardone.com for information on upcoming events, exclusive training programs, and products designed to expand your business skills, increase your knowledge, and accelerate your success.

On this episode of CoinDesk's Public Keys at the New York Stock Exchange, Jennifer Sanasie is joined by CoinDesk Indices President Dave LaValle to unpack a $2.97 billion outflow streak from Bitcoin ETFs and what it really means for institutional adoption.Bloomberg Intelligence Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas joins the show to explain why the recent outflows may be more noise than signal, share his bullish outlook on the fast-rising HYPE ETFs, and discuss how firms like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock are expanding access to Bitcoin through new investment products. In this week's 10X segment, LaValle breaks down the fundamentals of margin trading, explaining what separates professional traders from retail investors when it comes to managing leverage, risk, and conviction. Plus, Stellar Development Foundation CEO and Executive Director Denelle Dixon discusses DTCC's decision to select Stellar as the first public blockchain connected to its upcoming tokenized securities settlement platform, and what it means for the future of tokenization and institutional blockchain adoption. - This episode of Public Keys is brought to you by Kraken. For more: ⁠https://pro.kraken.com/⁠ - Timecodes: 00:00 Welcome to Public Keys 00:54 Jamie Dimon vs Brian Armstrong on Stablecoin Yields 03:21 Bitcoin ETFs Shed $2.97B in Outflows 05:50 BTC ETFs Post Worst Week Since January 06:50 Grayscale Amends HYPE ETF Filing 08:36 Bloomberg Intelligence's Eric Balchunas Joins Public Keys 09:39 Why BTC ETF Outflows Are Just 'Noise' 13:00 Wall Street's New BTC Products: Goldman, Morgan Stanley, iShares 15:33 HYPE Is the 'Hansel from Zoolander' of Crypto ETFs 17:57 Will SpaceX ETFs Pull Capital from Crypto? 20:42 10X: What Separates Pro Traders from Retail 22:25 Knowing Your 'Out': The Biggest Mistake in Margin Trading 25:06 Stellar Development Foundation's Denelle Dixon on the DTCC Tokenization Deal 26:14 Stellar Hits $3B in Tokenized Assets in Five Months 28:46 Can Blockchains Handle DTCC-Level Volume? 30:21 Digital Twins and the Issuer-Led Tokenization Question 31:50 Will One Blockchain Win the RWA Race? - This episode was hosted by Jennifer Sanasie.

Send me a derm question or story through text or voicemail!A new JAK inhibitor has officially entered the veterinary market but where does it fit into managing allergic dogs?In this episode of The Derm Vet Podcast, I sit down with boarded veterinary dermatologist Dr. Christine McKinney from Merck Animal Health to discuss Numelvi, the newest JAK inhibitor approved in the United States for canine allergic dermatitis. We break down what makes this medication unique, how it compares to other allergy therapies, and why having multiple treatment options matters when managing complicated allergic patients.We also dive into practical approaches for itch control, infection management, and building confidence when treating chronic allergy cases in practice. If you manage itchy dogs regularly and want to stay up to date on the latest dermatology treatments, this episode is packed with valuable clinical insights.Watch The Episode: https://www.youtube.com/@thedermvet3932Follow The Derm Vet Podcast: https://www.instagram.com/thedermvetpod/Follow Me: https://www.instagram.com/thedermvet/Timestamps and references: 7:26: At the recommended treatment dose, Numelvi is at least 10X more selective for JAK1 over the other JAK enzymes in in vitro assays. Reference: Kowalski T, Schuette S. The second-generation Janus kinase inhibitor atinvicitinib is a potent and highly selective inhibitor of JAK1. Vet Dermatol. 2026;37(2):179.8:03: At the recommended treatment dose, Numelvi is at least 10X more selective for JAK1 over the other JAK enzymes in in vitro assays. Reference: Kowalski T, Schuette S. The second-generation Janus kinase inhibitor atinvicitinib is a potent and highly selective inhibitor of JAK1. Vet Dermatol. 2026;37(2):179.8:07: JAK1 is the primary driver of itch and inflammation. Reference: Huang I, Chung W, Wu P, Chen C. JAK-STAT signaling pathway in the pathogenesis of atopic dermatitis: an updated review. Front Immunol. 2022;13:106826010:36: At the recommended treatment dose, Numelvi is at least 10X more selective for JAK1 over the other JAK enzymes in in vitro assays. Reference: Kowalski T, Schuette S. The second-generation Janus kinase inhibitor atinvicitinib is a potent and highly selective inhibitor of JAK1. Vet Dermatol. 2026;37(2):179.21:52: Numelvi, starts reducing itch within 2-4 hours in a canine interleukin-31 (cIL-31)-induced pruritus model Reference: Kowalski T, Prohaczik A, Locke K, Samson C, Hope K. The second-generation Janus kinase inhibitor atinvicitinib significantly reduces pruritus 2-4 hours after dosing dogs in a canine interleukin-31 model. Vet Dermatol. 2026;37(2):179-180.23:13: Numelvi, starts reducing itch within 2-4 hours in a canine interleukin-31 (cIL-31)-induced pruritus model Reference: Kowalski T, Prohaczik A, Locke K, Samson C, Hope K. The second-generation Janus kinase inhibitor atinvicitinib significantly reduces pruritus 2-4 hours after dosing dogs in a canine interleukin-31 model. Vet Dermatol. 2026;37(2):179-180.Timestamps00:00 Intro02:29 The Complexity of Canine Allergic Dermatitis06:44 What is Numelvi and How Does it Work?13:50 Dosing Guidelines and Tablet Specifications16:57 Candidate Selection and Infection Control21:37 Onset of Action and Efficacy Timeline24:08 Final ThoughtsThis episode is sponsored by Merck Animal Health

The Cardone Zone – Episode 309: Origins  Before the growth or partnerships. Before success at scale, there were the origins. In this episode of The Cardone Zone, Grant Cardone and Brandon Dawson take us on a journey into their past and the early stages of their careers, the mindset that fueled their rise, and the joint venture that brought two powerhouse operators together. It's the foundation it takes to build something meaningful, scalable,  Follow us on all social platforms @GrantCardone for more content on wealth, entrepreneurship, scaling businesses, and the 10X mindset. Visit GrantCardone.com for information on upcoming events, business training, and the latest tools designed to help you expand your success. TRT:53:00:02

Welcome to the 10X Growth Conference at Marlins Stadium in Miami, the legendary event that ignited ambition, transformed lives, and brought together entrepreneurs, sales professionals, business owners, and dreamers from around the world under one roof for 3 days, on Super Bowl weekend. In this electrifying episode, Grant delivers some of his most powerful and timeless principles on sales, marketing, money, and success. From the unforgettable concept that "money follows attention" to his ultimate definition of sales as a contact sport, "if I hit you, you might buy,"- Grant breaks down the mindset and strategies required to dominate in business and stay relevant in a constantly changing marketplace. Packed with massive energy, real-world insights, and unforgettable moments from one of the biggest business conferences in the world, this episode is guaranteed to become one of your go-to sources for motivation, clarity, and execution. Follow us on all social media platforms @GrantCardone for more content on wealth, business, sales, marketing, and the 10X mindset. Visit GrantCardone.com for upcoming events, exclusive products, and training designed to accelerate your success. TRT: 53:00:02

In this episode, I'm chatting with with America's #1 Mom Coach, Hannah Keeley, to unpack the truth behind mom brain. We explore why motherhood rewires the brain, how overstimulation and anxiety show up, and what moms can do to reclaim clarity, peace, and joy in their daily lives. Whether you're a mom of littles, teens, or somewhere in between, this conversation is full of practical encouragement and real-life strategies for thriving—mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. In this episode, we cover: What “mom brain” really is (and how it changes your brain physically) Common symptoms: forgetfulness, anxiety, overwhelm, distraction The faith-filled path to releasing control and worry Why productivity doesn't always fix your stress “Bow tying” and other practical hacks for completing tasks How to gently reclaim your focus and your peace ⁠View full show notes on the blog⁠ + ⁠watch full episode on YouTube⁠. RESOURCES ⁠Get rid of stress, boost your energy, and 10X your productivity by working WITH your Mom Brain in Hannah's program Mom Brain Makeover⁠ Join my ⁠FREE masterclass⁠ to learn my 4-step framework for making money on YouTube Master the rhythm of sourdough with confidence in my ⁠Simple Sourdough course⁠ Gain the sewing knowledge and skills every homemaker needs in my ⁠Simple Sewing series⁠ Turn your content creation dreams into a profitable business with my ⁠YouTube Success Academy⁠ Keep all my favorite sourdough recipes at your fingertips in my ⁠Daily Sourdough cookbook⁠ CONNECT Hannah Keeley | ⁠Website⁠ | ⁠Mom Mastery⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠TikTok⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ Lisa Bass of Farmhouse on Boone | ⁠Blog⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠TikTok⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Pinterest⁠  Do you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast?  A guest you'd like me to interview?  Submit your questions and ideas here: ⁠bit.ly/SFLquestions⁠.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, I'm chatting with with America's #1 Mom Coach, Hannah Keeley, to unpack the truth behind mom brain. We explore why motherhood rewires the brain, how overstimulation and anxiety show up, and what moms can do to reclaim clarity, peace, and joy in their daily lives. Whether you're a mom of littles, teens, or somewhere in between, this conversation is full of practical encouragement and real-life strategies for thriving—mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. In this episode, we cover: What “mom brain” really is (and how it changes your brain physically) Common symptoms: forgetfulness, anxiety, overwhelm, distraction The faith-filled path to releasing control and worry Why productivity doesn't always fix your stress “Bow tying” and other practical hacks for completing tasks How to gently reclaim your focus and your peace ⁠View full show notes on the blog⁠ + ⁠watch full episode on YouTube⁠. RESOURCES ⁠Get rid of stress, boost your energy, and 10X your productivity by working WITH your Mom Brain in Hannah's program Mom Brain Makeover⁠ Join my ⁠FREE masterclass⁠ to learn my 4-step framework for making money on YouTube Master the rhythm of sourdough with confidence in my ⁠Simple Sourdough course⁠ Gain the sewing knowledge and skills every homemaker needs in my ⁠Simple Sewing series⁠ Turn your content creation dreams into a profitable business with my ⁠YouTube Success Academy⁠ Keep all my favorite sourdough recipes at your fingertips in my ⁠Daily Sourdough cookbook⁠ CONNECT Hannah Keeley | ⁠Website⁠ | ⁠Mom Mastery⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠TikTok⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ Lisa Bass of Farmhouse on Boone | ⁠Blog⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠TikTok⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Pinterest⁠  Do you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast?  A guest you'd like me to interview?  Submit your questions and ideas here: ⁠bit.ly/SFLquestions⁠.