Podcast appearances and mentions of Arthur Andersen

In this episode of 'Inspired to Lead,' host Talia Meshiach sits down with Shifra Kolsky, the Chief Accounting Officer at Discover Financial Services. Shifra shares her inspirational journey from overcoming the loss of her father during her teenage years, to working through high school and college, and eventually climbing the corporate ladder. With a special focus on balancing a high-powered career with family responsibilities, Shifra opens up about the importance of self-belief, continuous learning, and effective communication. She discusses her motivations, the challenges she faced regarding Shabbos and Yom Tov in a corporate environment, and the significance of a supportive workplace culture. Listeners will gain insights on the value of asking for growth opportunities, the power of mentorship, and the joy of contributing to both family and community.   00:00 Introduction to Inspired to Lead 01:24 Interview with Shifra Kolsky Begins 02:35 Shifra's Role at Discover Financial Services 06:18 Balancing Family and Career 07:23 Shifra's Early Life and Career Path 23:43 Challenges and Mentorship in Shifra's Career 30:20 Balancing Family and Career Responsibilities 31:15 Navigating Maternity Leave in Corporate America 33:09 Overcoming Self-Doubt and Climbing the Corporate Ladder 34:47 The Importance of Asking for Opportunities 38:04 Creating a Supportive Work Environment 41:04 Balancing Religious Observance with Corporate Demands 46:28 Leadership and Personal Growth 52:14 Final Reflections and Advice     About Shifra Kolsky:   Kolsky has been with Discover over 15 years and was promoted to Senior Vice President, Controller and Chief Accounting Officer in 2020. She was instrumental in driving several key initiatives, including significant accounting changes, major technology implementations and the adoption of robotic process automation in the finance function. She is the executive sponsor of Discover's Jewish Affinity Group. Prior to working for Discover, Kolsky was in public accounting in the audit practice at Deloitte and Arthur Andersen. In addition to her role at Discover, Kolsky is also active in her community, volunteering with No Shame On U, an organization dedicated to ending the stigma associated with mental health conditions; the Chicago chapter of The JWE; and the Kehillah Fund, which supports Jewish educational institutions in the Chicago area. Kolsky's husband is a rabbi who teaches in Jewish day schools and high schools. They have four children and two fabulous kids-in-law.   https://www.linkedin.com/in/shifrakolsky   Powered By Roth & Co The JWE For guest suggestions, please email Talia: podcast@thejwe.org

Welcome to RIMScast. Your host is Justin Smulison, Business Content Manager at RIMS, the Risk and Insurance Management Society.   Justin and his guest, Jennifer Pack, RIMS 2025 Risk Manager of the Year, discuss her career and achievements, including Hyatt's VP of Risk Management. Jennifer describes how her membership in the RIMS Chicago Chapter and service on the Board impacted her career.   Jennifer helped align Hyatt's risk strategies with its evolving business model to ensure resilience in today's complex environment. Leading nearly 40 professionals, Jennifer's leadership and innovative risk solutions have helped strengthen Hyatt's risk management framework, to proactively identify risks and develop strategies to address them. Jennifer successfully redesigned and centralized Hyatt's Short-Term, Long-Term Disability, and Workers' Compensation programs, reducing manual processing by up to 80,000 hours, improving compliance, and reducing legal exposure. It is linked to millions of dollars in savings. Under her leadership, Hyatt's risk management team is overhauling Hyatt Hotels' fire safety with the first-of-its-kind Fire Life Safety Compliance and Governance Program, setting a standard for the organization and industry. The initiative includes the implementation of new technology, as well as auditing the 1,450 Hyatt hotels in 79 countries. Jennifer is a beloved mentor who has had an impact on many careers. She continues to demonstrate her commitment to advancing the risk management profession as an active member of the RIMS Chicago Chapter.   Jennifer's innovations may inspire your work for your organization's ERM program. Key Takeaways: [:01] About RIMS and RIMScast. [:16] About this episode of RIMScast. It is one of my favorite episodes to produce, with the Risk Manager of the Year. This year's honoree is Jennifer Pack, Hyatt's Vice President of Risk Management. We will talk about her success in ERM, captives, and more. [:48] RIMS-CRMP Workshops! RIMS is co-hosting an intensive four-day program which is your gateway to achieving two prestigious certifications, the DRI Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) and the RIMS Certified Risk Management Professional (RIMS-CRMP). [1:08] This workshop will be held from May 19th through the 22nd in collaboration with DRI International. Links to these courses can be found through the Certification page of RIMS.org and this episode's show notes. [1:23] Virtual Workshops! On June 12th, Pat Saporito will host “Managing Data for ERM” and she will return on June 26th to present the very popular new course, “Generative AI for Risk Management”. [1:40] A link to the full schedule of virtual workshops can be found on the RIMS.org/education and RIMS.org/education/online-learning pages. A link is also in this episode's show notes. [1:51] We're at RISKWORLD this week but preparations are already underway for the RIMS ERM Conference 2025 on November 17th and 18th in Seattle, Washington. RIMS is accepting educational session submissions through May 20th. [2:08] The best submissions will address current and future challenges facing ERM practitioners as well as provide leading practices and concrete takeaways for a diverse audience of risk professionals from industries or organizations of varied sizes, disciplines, functions, and roles. [2:26] These include officers, leaders, managers, and students. The link to the submission form is in this episode's show notes. [2:35] While you are at RISKWORLD, be sure to take away some inspirado and channel it into an educational session submission for the RIMS ERM Conference 2025. Of course, mark your calendars for November 17th and 18th and I'll be sure to alert you when registration opens. [2:55] The RIMS Risk Manager of the Year Program aims to raise the profile of the risk profession and the outstanding programs the honorees have implemented within their organizations. [3:04] The award was created in 1977 and the Risk Management Honor Roll was added in 1981. The 2025 RIMS Risk Manager of the Year is Jennifer Pack of Hyatt. [3:16] As VP of Risk Management, Jennifer has transformed risk management at Hyatt, embedding a culture that has provided a launchpad for organizational success. Her innovations in captive management also earned her this award. [3:28] Jennifer is a long-standing member of the RIMS Chicago Chapter and an all-around fantastic professional. Her profile will soon appear in the Awards Edition of RIMS Risk Management magazine. [3:40] Jennifer will receive the award on May 5th at 4:00 p.m., on the main stage at RISKWORLD. We're going to get to know her a little bit now. We'll talk ERM, captives, Chicago RIMS, hotel and hospitality, and more. [3:57] Interview! RIMS 2025 Risk Manager of the Year, Jennifer Pack, welcome to RIMScast!  [4:34] Jennifer has been at Hyatt, for going on 18 years. She can stay at any hotel she would like! [5:03] Some people like to leave their jobs every few years for a new company and skills. Jennifer's career at Hyatt has been an adventure! She hasn't been doing the same thing for 18 years. Every couple of years, she gets new roles and responsibilities. She's constantly learning. [5:24] She has a foundation of knowing whom to go to, what the systems are, and how to get things done. There's a base familiarity but with some excitement and learning opportunities. [5:36] If the feeling of being able to learn and grow ever stops, Jennifer will think about leaving. She's enjoying her time. It seems like she's working or a new company all the time. They're transforming. They're changing. The risk landscape is changing. There's never a dull moment. [5:56] Justin feels the same way about working at RIMS! He started as a writer but then got these responsibilities and they took on sort of a life of their own and attracted more of an audience. It's more work, but it's more fun and rewarding. [6:25] Jennifer joined Hyatt in a group called Compliance and Controls. She was hired to set up their Sarbanes-Oxley department. In reaction to the financial crisis after the downfall of Arthur Andersen and Enron, Sarbanes-Oxley was born and Jennifer became an expert on it. [6:58] Jennifer launched that group and then it was moved into Internal Audit where they were exposed to a lot more people and systems. Jennifer had the opportunity to backfill someone in the Risk Management department and never left. She's been in the risk function for 15 years. [7:30] When Jennifer joined the risk group it had seven risk practitioners in the corporate office. There were five or six Occupational Health Managers in the field, helping with Workers' Compensation and occupational safety. There are over 35 full-time members now. [8:09] They've taken on new roles in the 15 years: physical security, business resilience, fire life safety compliance, and other health and safety functions in the company. They could probably use a few more people but they're doing well. [8:38] The risk profile of the company has changed. The geopolitical risk profile of the world has changed. Hyatt's offerings have changed. They used to be mostly business, group, and convention, and now they lean into leisure, travel, and all-inclusive, which have different risks. [9:16] Hyatt has tripled its resort rooms and quintupled its lifestyle rooms since 2017. A lifestyle room is about meeting clientele where they are. Millennials want to travel the world and experience the environment, such as an attached nightclub in Miami or New York. [9:55] They're unconventional hotels with the framework of a well-known brand, where guests have comfort, safety, security, cybersecurity, and loyalty points while feeling like they're in a niche hotel with great and different experiences. It feels like a boutique, attached to the brand. [11:06] Social inflation is a risk. Liability insurance has gone up because claim payouts have gone up tremendously. Claim attorneys are targeting hospitality. [12:12] Hyatt is thinking globally about health, safety, and security, making sure policies are locked down, training is locked down, and people know how to report an incident, and when to report it. How do you de-escalate an incident to win the guest back? [12:36] Saying, “I'm sorry that happened to you. Here are some points. We care about you,” reinforcing that, versus saying, “Let my insurance company deal with it.” That's the last thing we want. If our guests had a bad incident, they had a bad experience. [12:51] Especially if you're traveling on leisure with your family, you want to know that you'll be taken care of. There's an expectation that you're going to be safe and secure. Hyatt wants to make sure to bring the level of care to them that they deserve. [13:07] Hyatt is working on the front end to retrain employees on ramping up safety and security measures and knowing how to respond when an incident happens. [13:18] Then, if it gets into the claims section, the claims management team has new robust processes to manage claims to drive down exposure. On the insurance procurement side, Hyatt is leaning into its captive to take on much higher retention in-house. [14:09] Hyatt is asking leadership in the field to bring education and awareness to the importance of risk management, what's at risk, and what the current legal environment is, and overlay that with wanting to care for people. Hyatt cares about the guest experience. [14:43] This is a macro-level environment. If you have litigation system abuse across the country, what are insurers doing about it? What are brokers doing about it? What are corporations doing about it? [14:56] Jennifer gets with her peers in the hospitality industry, working in their respective associations, to address these issues at the state and federal levels, change laws, and push for tort reform and disclosures of litigation funding. [15:28] Hyatt has partnered with the American Lodging and Hospitality Association and is considering partnering with insurance companies. You can't just hope someone else will take care of the problem. It's a much bigger problem that we all need to address. [16:06] Justin points out that third-party litigation funding is one of the top initiatives and campaigns for RIMS this year. RIMS recently had the Legislative Summit in Washington, D.C., where third-party litigation funding was a top priority. It was a top RIMS talking point on the Hill. [16:38] Jennifer says Hyatt and the hospitality industry are in with RIMS on the issue of third-party litigation funding. If it continues, guests are going to have to pay more for a stay and for the experiences they want to have as rising risk costs are passed to the consumers. [17:04] Plug Time! RIMS Webinars! We are back on May 22nd, with GRC, a TÜV SÜD Company, and their newest session, “Asset Valuations in 2025: Managing Tariffs, Inflation, and Rising Insurance Scrutiny”. [17:22] On May 29th, Origami Risk returns to present “Strategic Risk Financing in an Unstable Economy: Leveraging Technology for Efficiency and Cost Reduction”. On June 5th, Zywave joins us to discuss “Today's Escalating Risk Trajectory: What's the Cause and What's the Solution?” [17:44] More webinars will be announced soon and added to the RIMS.org/Webinars page. Go there to register. Registration is complimentary for RIMS members. [17:55] Spencer's goal to help build a talent pipeline of risk management and insurance professionals is achieved, in part, by its collaboration with risk management and insurance educators across the U.S. and Canada. [18:16] Since 2010, Spencer has awarded over $3.3 million in General Grants to support over 130 student-centered experiential learning initiatives at universities and RMI non-profits. Spencer's 2026 application process is now open through July 30th, 2025. [18:36] General Grant awardees are typically notified at the end of October. Learn more about Spencer's General Grants through the Programs tab of SpencerEd.org. [18:46] On the 7th of October, the New Jersey RIMS Chapter will return to the beautiful Fiddler's Elbow Country Club in Bedminster, New Jersey for their Annual Charity Golf/Pickleball Event. [18:59] Registration is open and the event proceeds are used to fund the chapter's Spencer and Kids' Chance Scholarships. It was the filming location for the upcoming movie sequel Happy Gilmore 2. For more information, and to register, please NewJersey.RIMS.org. [19:21] Let's Return to My Interview with RIMS 2025 Risk Manager of the Year, Jennifer Pack! [19:47] Hyatt put a captive in place in 2013. Back then, Hyatt had huge insurance cost swings year-on-year that they couldn't forecast. It created a lot of “noise” on the balance sheet. They originally put the captive in place to take away that noise and remove wild cost volatility. [20:38] Over time, Hyatt started to see success and build up a surplus they saw the value of a captive, especially as market conditions changed. They brought in additional forms of insurance coverage with traditional deductible buy-downs with workers' compensation and GL. [21:04] They started to see the surplus build up and they were able to give some of the surplus back to the participants and drive down their premium cost. [21:14] In the pandemic, the hospitality business came to a halt. Before the pandemic, Hyatt's average occupancy around the world was over 75%. In April 2020, it dropped to 6%. The owners of Hyatt were under extreme pressure. [21:43] Jennifer had an extra surplus in the captive and was able to give relief to the owners and to the company in that year and the next couple of years. Claim volume went down due to lower occupancy. Hyatt used some of that cash to fund large acquisitions. [22:19] That's when Hyatt saw social inflation in gaps in coverage. There was no coverage for a pandemic. Through the captive, Jennifer was able to offer that coverage to the owners. She offered wages and hours insurance to the owners. [22:48] Coming out of COVID-19, with the impact of social inflation, the captive took on larger line sizes and larger layers in its umbrella tower. They had some acquisitions in cyber. They bought the Apple Leisure Group. [23:36] In a lot of those services, Hyatt isn't providing the service but is almost like a travel agent, connecting you to the hotel, airline, or excursion. If there is an incident, the third party has the coverage. Hyatt has exposure for connecting you to the service. [24:01] Hyatt had to get creative with coverage for these new exposures, working with broker partners to fill those gaps. They did it largely with the captive, buying time until they could get a traditional product in place. [24:17] With the captive, Hyatt filled gaps, helped grow the business, and used it as a business enabler, providing cash, relief to owners, and coverage that may not have been commercially available, either to buy time or permanently fill a gap. It's been fun! [24:53] Jennifer regularly changes which hat she wears. As the captive President, she has to look at what Hyatt is doing to protect the captive and make sure it's adequately funded and complies with regulations. From a governance perspective, is Hyatt doing the right things? [25:21] Jennifer regularly brings in third-party experts to check the captive. Jennifer's decisions as President of the captive are through the lens of the captive and as the owner of this business, what they are doing to grow revenues, manage expenses, and keep an adequate surplus. [25:44] The captive doesn't run razor-thin. To have a forward-looking approach, it needs to have an adequate surplus, reserves, and cash in the captive. They're very conservative in protecting it. [26:06] From a corporate risk management perspective, when Hyatt needs to buy insurance, Jennifer asks, can we buy it from the captive? She sometimes has tough conversations with Hyatt about borrowing versus driving up investment income to protect everyone's interests. [26:37] Jennifer has to keep top-of-mind, which lens she's looking through, whether President of the Captive or Hyatt Vice President of Risk Management. She wears two hats, managing all the key stakeholders' needs and wants. [27:17] Some of the stakeholders are Hyatt, third-party owners, the corporation itself, and guests and colleagues with short-term and long-term disability and medical, adding value for the benefits team so they don't have to go to third parties for that insurance. [28:27] As the Captive President, Jennifer is looking at loss and expense ratios, reserve to operating ratios, surplus to premiums, and surplus to reserves, making sure that they're within the set ratios. They shoot for three to one. Anything above that number can go to participants. [29:09] They won't go below three to one so they are capitalized for future unexpected losses or to back up future business growth. Jennifer believes Hyatt is unique in having those ratios and guards in place. Jennifer is looking forward to future needs. [30:15] The captive evaluates from time to time whether to change the ratios to five to one or four to one. In the liability space, claims are growing. Some of the demands are wild and the settlements reached or not reached are eye-opening! [30:46] Jennifer explains the global risk management claims software that is now also used for incident reporting to the risk department. They look at data from all incidents and are seeing a trend and looking to what could come down the pike and new coverages they may need to offer. [31:44] The technology is supporting the department and overall risk management strategy. The captive is benefiting through better data on what's happening out there so they won't get blindsided by unusual trends that aren't yet seen in the claims. [32:19] Technology helps the captive to build out platforms to manage compliance, safety, and security in the environment. [32:28] The more data insights and comfort Jennifer has over the Health, Safety, and Security diagnostic at each property, region, and the globe, and overlays those with risk assessments Hyatt does, the more comfort she can get to take on more risks knowledgeably in the captive. [33:15] RIMS Plug! The first of hopefully many RIMS Texas Regional Conferences will be held in San Antonio from August 4th through the 6th, 2025. This groundbreaking event is set to unite the Texas RIMS Chapters and welcome risk management professionals from around the world. [33:34] Guess what, folks! Registration is now open! The advance rate is available through May 16th. A link is in this episode's show notes. You can also visit the Events page of RIMS.org to register. We look forward to seeing you in Texas! [33:50] Let's Conclude Our Interview with RIMS 2025 Risk Manager of the Year, Jennifer Pack! [34:04] Jennifer Pack is the RIMS Risk Manager of the Year 2025 and she has been such a wonderful guest. This episode is coming out the morning of the awards. We will see her onstage, for anyone who has the privilege of being there. [34:19] Jennifer is honored, excited, and a little nervous to be onstage at RISKWORLD for the award. A lot of the RIMS Chicago members will be there. Jennifer has a wonderful Chicago-based team that will be there. Jennifer's parents and her husband are coming. [36:26] Jennifer says moving up the ranks at Hyatt and RIMS Chicago has been a fun and wild ride! The growth in her career, switching from being a Public Accountant to Auditor to Risk Manager has been fun with a lot of learning. [36:54] Jennifer tries to lead and grow with optimism, fun, and humor. She's been able to grow and develop a team under her. It's been a really interesting 18-year adventure. [37:11] Once Jennifer was exposed to RIMS, it opened her eyes to the wealth of resources, friendship, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing. It's been such an excellent experience for her. She couldn't be prouder of the Chicago Chapter and the great things they do to develop talent.  [37:43] Jennifer says since COVID-19, it's been wonderful to see the number of people who attend the outings and forums. It's great to have such a great community and seeing them regularly is impactful. [38:06] Jennifer is Risk Manager of the Year. The Rising Star is Megan Smalter, who has had a wonderful time with the Chicago Chapter before moving to New York. In her role on the RIMS Chicago Chapter Board, and when she ran the Golf Outing, Jennifer has worked with Megan. [38:45] Julie Bean won the Heart of RIMS Award recently. Jennifer says it's great to have the bench of expertise of long-standing members in the Chicago Chapter. Jennifer learned from them personally and in professional settings. They're great for sharing ideas and working with. [39:36] Jennifer also mentioned Theresa Severson who was RIMS 2023 Risk Manager of the Year, with Kite Realty. There's a lot of talent and deep risk knowledge in the RIMS Chicago Chapter. There's a genuine camaraderie.  [40:30] Jennifer looks ahead to see companies leaning into the concept of full risk management philosophy. Risk management is so much more than just the insurance buyers. [40:45] Risk management is “How can we bring a risk management mindset to our enterprises? How can we be business enablers? How can we leverage the wealth of data and information that comes through our department to enable mindful growth in the business?” [41:05] It's “How can we help with ESG efforts, especially with the reporting? How can we mitigate risks to the company and not just to our financial tools of insurance? What can we do in loss prevention or mitigation?” [41:26] “What can we do in claims management with more expertise, as things heat up on the litigation side with social inflation and nuclear claims?” Jennifer sees Hyatt and other companies taking more risks in the captive's or balance sheet to offset what's happening.” [42:10] Risk managers are going to have to articulate that and bring solutions to the forefront of their companies. Jennifer is excited about the future. She's looking forward to launching and rolling out more technology solutions as Hyatt leverages all its data. [42:57] Jennifer knows her team can have a lot of positive impact on the organization and she's excited about it. [43:08] Special thanks and congratulations again to Jennifer Pack, the RIMS 2025 Risk Manager of the Year. A link to RISKWORLD coverage is in this episode's show notes via the Show Daily. [43:20] That will update this episode's show notes with a link to the RIMS Risk Management Magazine coverage in our special Awards Edition. More honorees from RISKWORLD will join us here on RIMScast soon. [43:35] Plug Time! You can sponsor a RIMScast episode for this, our weekly show, or a dedicated episode. Links to sponsored episodes are in the show notes. [44:03] RIMScast has a global audience of risk and insurance professionals, legal professionals, students, business leaders, C-Suite executives, and more. Let's collaborate and help you reach them! Contact pd@rims.org for more information. [44:21] Become a RIMS member and get access to the tools, thought leadership, and network you need to succeed. Visit RIMS.org/membership or email membershipdept@RIMS.org for more information. [44:38] Risk Knowledge is the RIMS searchable content library that provides relevant information for today's risk professionals. Materials include RIMS executive reports, survey findings, contributed articles, industry research, benchmarking data, and more. [44:55] For the best reporting on the profession of risk management, read Risk Management Magazine at RMMagazine.com. It is written and published by the best minds in risk management. [45:09] Justin Smulison is the Business Content Manager at RIMS. You can email Justin at Content@RIMS.org. [45:17] Thank you all for your continued support and engagement on social media channels! We appreciate all your kind words. Listen every week! Stay safe!   Links: RIMS Texas Regional 2025 — August 3‒5 | Advance registration rates now open. ERM Conference 2025 — Call for Submissions (Through May 20) RIMS-Certified Risk Management Professional (RIMS-CRMP) RISK PAC | RIMS Advocacy RIMS Risk Management magazine RIMS Now The Strategic and Enterprise Risk Center Spencer Educational Foundation — General Grants 2026 — Application Dates Press Release: “RIMS Risk Manager of the Year Goes to Hyatt's Jennifer Pack” RIMS Webinars: RIMS.org/Webinars “Asset Valuations in 2025: Managing Tariffs, Inflation, and Rising Insurance Scrutiny” | Sponsored by GRC, a TÜV SÜD Company | May 22, 2025 “Strategic Risk Financing in an Unstable Economy: Leveraging Technology for Efficiency and Cost Reduction” | Sponsored by Origami Risk | May 29, 2025 “Today's Escalating Risk Trajectory: What's the Cause & What's the Solution?” | Sponsored by Zywave | June 5, 2025   Upcoming RIMS-CRMP Prep Virtual Workshops: CBCP & RIMS-CRMP Exam Prep Virtual Bootcamp: “Mastering Business Continuity & Risk Management” | May 19‒22, 2025 | In Collaboration with DRI International Full RIMS-CRMP Prep Course Schedule “Managing Data for ERM” | June 12 | Instructor: Pat Saporito  “Generative AI for Risk Management” | June 26 | Instructor: Pat Saporito See the full calendar of RIMS Virtual Workshops RIMS-CRMP Prep Workshops   Related RIMScast Episodes: “Risk and Leadership Patterns with Super Bowl Champion Ryan Harris” (RISKWORLD 2025 Keynote) “(Re)Humanizing Leadership in Risk Management with Holly Ransom” “Risk and Relatability with Rachel DeAlto” “RIMS Risk Manager of the Year, Steve Robles, Los Angeles County” (2024)   Sponsored RIMScast Episodes: “The New Reality of Risk Engineering: From Code Compliance to Resilience” | Sponsored by AXA XL (New!) “Change Management: AI's Role in Loss Control and Property Insurance” | Sponsored by Global Risk Consultants, a TÜV SÜD Company “Demystifying Multinational Fronting Insurance Programs” | Sponsored by Zurich “Understanding Third-Party Litigation Funding” | Sponsored by Zurich “What Risk Managers Can Learn From School Shootings” | Sponsored by Merrill Herzog “Simplifying the Challenges of OSHA Recordkeeping” | Sponsored by Medcor “Risk Management in a Changing World: A Deep Dive into AXA's 2024 Future Risks Report” | Sponsored by AXA XL “How Insurance Builds Resilience Against An Active Assailant Attack” | Sponsored by Merrill Herzog “Third-Party and Cyber Risk Management Tips” | Sponsored by Alliant “RIMS Innovation with Archer” | Sponsored by Archer “Navigating Commercial Property Risks with Captives” | Sponsored by Zurich “Breaking Down Silos: AXA XL's New Approach to Casualty Insurance” | Sponsored by AXA XL “Weathering Today's Property Claims Management Challenges” | Sponsored by AXA XL “Storm Prep 2024: The Growing Impact of Convective Storms and Hail” | Sponsored by Global Risk Consultants, a TÜV SÜD Company “Partnering Against Cyberrisk” | Sponsored by AXA XL “Harnessing the Power of Data and Analytics for Effective Risk Management” | Sponsored by Marsh “Accident Prevention — The Winning Formula For Construction and Insurance” | Sponsored by Otoos “Platinum Protection: Underwriting and Risk Engineering's Role in Protecting Commercial Properties” | Sponsored by AXA XL “Elevating RMIS — The Archer Way” | Sponsored by Archer   RIMS Publications, Content, and Links: RIMS Membership — Whether you are a new member or need to transition, be a part of the global risk management community! RIMS Virtual Workshops On-Demand Webinars RIMS-Certified Risk Management Professional (RIMS-CRMP) RISK PAC | RIMS Advocacy RIMS Strategic & Enterprise Risk Center RIMS-CRMP Stories — Featuring RIMS President Kristen Peed!   RIMS Events, Education, and Services: RIMS Risk Maturity Model®   Sponsor RIMScast: Contact sales@rims.org or pd@rims.org for more information.   Want to Learn More? Keep up with the podcast on RIMS.org, and listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.   Have a question or suggestion? Email: Content@rims.org.   Join the Conversation! Follow @RIMSorg on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.   About our guest: Jennifer Pack, VP of Global Risk Management, Hyatt Corporation   Production and engineering provided by Podfly.  

"Share your likes before your concerns." "Life is not a dress rehearsal."   Episode summary | In this engaging conversation, Nomi Bergman shares her journey from a challenging childhood in athletics to becoming a successful leader in the technology sector. She emphasizes the importance of kindness, generosity, and positive intent in leadership, drawing from her experiences at Bright House Networks. Nomi discusses the significance of creating a supportive work culture, the value of timely feedback, and the power of personal growth through action. She also reflects on her family background, the lessons learned from mistakes, and the impact of mentorship. Throughout the conversation, Nomi inspires listeners to embrace their authentic selves and to lead with kindness.   R.O.G. Takeaway Tips | Generosity in leadership fosters a positive work culture and builds trust. Sharing likes before concerns enhances team collaboration and morale. Kindness is a powerful leadership trait that can lead to greater success. Assuming positive intent can help navigate workplace challenges. Learning from mistakes and taking corrective action is crucial for personal growth. Creating a culture where employees can say 'yes' leads to better customer service. Timely feedback is essential for effective communication and improvement. Everyone has a unique story to share that can inspire others. Life is not a dress rehearsal; take action and live authentically.   Chapters |  00:00 Introduction to Nomi Bergman 02:04 Nomi's Early Life and Background 04:25 Overcoming Challenges in Athletics 06:56 The Importance of Generosity in Leadership 12:11 Creating a Positive Work Culture 14:17 The Hello Friend Campaign at Bright House 16:44 Assuming Positive Intent in Leadership 17:41 Learning from Mistakes and Taking Corrective Action 20:56 The Benefits of Kindness and Collaboration 22:19 The Shift from Right Answers to Teamwork 23:07 Reinventing Leadership Style through Kindness 25:07 The Strength of Kindness in Leadership 26:52 Delivering Feedback with Kindness and Clarity 29:31 The Power of Humility in Leadership 32:34 Finding Your Voice and Sharing Your Story 34:36 The Importance of Action and Kindness 41:53 Life Lessons: No Dress Rehearsal 42:20 The Lasting Impact of Kindness   Guest Bio | Nomi Bergman is the President of Advance/Newhouse Investment Partnership, where she brings visionary leadership to a portfolio of innovative companies in the technology and media sectors. She previously served as President of Bright House Networks, where she led over 8,500 employees and helped grow the company into the sixth-largest cable operator in the U.S. before its merger with Charter and Time Warner Cable. With more than 25 years of experience, Nomi is a seasoned operator, technologist, investor, and advisor known for developing strategies that elevate product delivery and customer experience. She began her career in Management Information Consulting at Arthur Andersen, building a foundation in analytical thinking and systems optimization. Nomi has been recognized with the CableFAX Lifetime Achievement Award and was inducted into The Cable Center's Hall of Fame in 2018. She is deeply committed to inclusive leadership and mentorship, serving on various boards and supporting initiatives that advance equity and opportunity. A passionate advocate for human-centered innovation, Nomi brings both heart and strategy to every endeavor. She is also a proud wife and mother of three daughters, balancing executive leadership with family values at the core of her life and work.   Bridge Between Resources: 5 Degree Change Course Free N.D.I. Network Diversity Index  Free Generosity Quiz    Credits: Nomi Bergman, Host Shannon Cassidy, Bridge Between, Inc. Coming Next: Please join us next week, Episode 231, Special Guest, Jason Henkel.

Optimizing the client experience is the real key to growth and profitability.The Concierge CPAWith Jackie MeyerFor CPA TrendlinesOn a recent episode of The Concierge CPA, Liscio founder and CEO Chris Farrell joins host Jackie Meyer to challenge the conventional wisdom about workflow systems in accounting. His core message? Firms don't just need better systems—they need a client-first approach to technology."Most of the problems firms are facing stem from one thing," said Farrell, a CPA and veteran software innovator. "You're always waiting on the client."More Jackie MeyerFarrell knows both sides of the equation: as a former Arthur Andersen accountant and CFO, and as a serial entrepreneur who's spent 15 years building tools specifically for accountants. With Liscio, a client experience platform, he's tackling a key pain point: fragmented communication. “When clients don't know where to send documents or how to respond, the firm grinds to a halt.”Farrell argues that accounting technology has historically focused on optimizing firm-side operations—tax software, practice management tools, document handling—but has neglected the user experience for clients. That, he says, is the real productivity roadblock.

(0:00) Intro(1:13) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel(2:00) Start of interview(2:45) Amy's origin story(3:25) Her start in corporate governance(5:02) About the implosion of Arthur Andersen (she worked there from 1993 to 2002) (7:00) Her time at BDO USA for the past 21 years and founding the BDO Center for Corporate Governance(11:50) AI governance and board approaches to new technologies.(13:53) Technology savviness or literacy of directors. (15:32) Where does technology and AI fit in the board (full board v. committees) (17:53) Climate disclosures and evolution of ESG "ESG is considered a four-letter word at this point"(21:26) Evolving geopolitical landscape and challenges to globalization.(24:25) CEO Succession Challenges(26:40) CEO Compensation Insights and Private vs. Public Company Governance (including VC and PE)(33:30) Thoughts on new SEC guidance limiting shareholder proposals on ESG issues and expanding disclosure requirements for large asset managers ("passive investors") engaging with companies on ESG issues (shifting from 13G to 13D). The rise of private markets.(38:33) Future Governance Challenges "[F]or the next 12 months; 1) strengthening of AI and technology usage and oversight, 2) Continuing to evolve enterprise risk management, and 3) Ensuring effective cybersecurity and data protection policies." Other than that: talent management, board evaluations.(42:08) Evolving Board Structures(44:07) Books that have greatly influenced her life:The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks (1996)(45:31) Her mentors.(47:20) Quotes that she thinks of often or lives her life by: "Water finds its level." and "You'll never achieve what you don't make known that you want."(48:19) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that she loves. (48:54) The living person she most admires.(49:50) BDO USA governance podcastAmy Rojik is managing partner of corporate governance at BDO USA, and director and founder of the BDO Center for Corporate Governance. You can follow Evan on social media at:X: @evanepsteinLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/__To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/__Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

Today, it is my pleasure to speak with Bruce Benesh, Managing Principal at Benesh Consulting Group. Bruce has more than 40 years of experience in executive compensation, tax planning relating to compensation arrangements, and international human resource consulting. He formerly served as the national partner- in-charge of the Human Capital Services Practice at Grant Thornton, and prior to that was the partner-in-charge of Arthur Andersen's Americas Human Capital Services Practice. Bruce, along with his firm Benesh Consulting Group, is a distinguished and generous advisor member of FOX, and we are fortunate to have his expertise available to our membership community. Bruce begins with an overview of the family office executive compensation landscape today. He describes the current state of affairs in the space, the established practices, and the latest trends pertaining to compensating key staff at family offices. Bruce then talks about some of the challenges family offices are facing when looking to create total compensation structures for their key employees and executives, highlighting the issues they struggle with the most. Bruce has worked with dozens, if not hundreds, of family offices over the years, helping them design attractive and effective compensation packages for key hires. He summarizes some of the best practices he has observed most frequently and would recommend to our listeners. Beyond hiring a compensation expert with experience in the family office space, such as himself, Bruce provides a summary of the other resources and practical tools family office owners and leaders should be aware of that can help them understand, plan, and design best-in-class compensation structures. Do not miss this highly relevant and instructional conversation with one of the foremost thought leaders and practitioners in the family office compensation space.

No 31º episódio do podcast Walking Meeting, Inês Simas do Departamento de Marketing conversou com o Pedro Brito da Nova SBE sobre 'A cultura que come a estratégia'. O Pedro iniciou a sua carreira na Arthur Andersen e depois seguiu-se a Michael Page. Co-Fundou a Jason Associates, mais tarde adquirida pela Mercer onde foi Country Business Leader. É Associate Dean na Nova School of Business & Economics, e CEO Executive Education Business School. No Campus de Carcavelos da Nova SBE conversámos sobre aquilo a que o Pedro chama 'a vaca sagrada da Cultura Organizacional'. Falámos sobre o papel da liderança e dos colaboradores, das  dimensões que as pessoas procuram nas organizações, das diferenças entre as grandes empresas e as start ups. Palavras como paixão e amor entram de forma muito natural nesta conversa. Calce os ténis, coloque os auriculares e venha connosco!

Today, we'll acquire something more from Chris Kolquist's over 20 years of experience in the freight industry! Chris explains the importance of operational expertise in evaluating companies, building partnerships over mere capital investment, the necessity for business owners to have clarity on their capital needs, and the value of thorough vetting of potential partners and creative partnership approaches in an overcrowded market!   About Chris Kolquist Throughout his career, senior executive and strategic leader Chris Kolquist has been a catalyst in driving commercial growth, positive financial results, and maximum shareholder value in challenging and hyper-competitive markets. He has built a noteworthy reputation for understanding investments, delivering ROI objectives, managing massive change, and building highly effective cultures. In 2021, Chris launched Koliway LLC, an investment and advisory firm specializing in investments, M&A transactions, board service, and advisory executive logistics work. Chris began his career with Arthur Andersen, where he served as Senior Auditor from 1998 to 2001, conducting audits, M&A transaction support, and financial due diligence for buy-side and sell-side clients. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Accounting from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1998 and obtained his CPA license in 2001 (now inactive).   Connect with Chris Website: https://koliway.com/  Email: ckolquist@koliway.com  

Are you clocking what time it is?  If you've been paying any kind of attention you know that jobs and organizations are no longer loyal to the employee--if they ever were.  With mass layoffs and sudden unexplained firings, the mood is definitely “you are on your own!”  So what can you do about this?  Definitely, not curl up in a ball and cry.   Now is the time to invest in yourself so you are ready for any and all market shifts and changes.  But how can you do this?  My guest Rochelle Moulton shares her journey of doing just this over decades of putting the work of Gay Hendricks into practice by shifting from operating in her Zone of Excellence into her Zone of Genius.  This has led to exponential growth and transformation in her life and business.  Now I bet you're wondering what that is and probably wanna know what that might be for you.  We've got you!  We get into the nitty gritty so you can also get a roadmap to what steps you can take because Rochelle is committed to helping professionals like you turn your expertise into wealth.  And it starts with knowing what you do that nobody else can do the way you do.   In this episode you'll learn:  The difference between your Zone of Excellence and your Zone of Genius and how the former may be holding you back  Why investing in your Genius Zone is the key to exponential growth and transformation  Practical steps you can take today to identify your Zone of Genius and discover what's calling you  After this, I know you'll be ready to step into your authority by bringing your best to your table by leaning into Zone of Genius.   To learn even more about what Rochelle shares about working in your “Zone of Genius” check out the work of Gay Hendricks, author of The Big Leap: A Guide to Transcending Personal Limits, Overcoming Fears, and Unleashing Your Authentic Greatness for a Better Life  Reference:  Rochelle Moulton's book: The Authority Code: How to Position, Monetize, and Sell Your Expertise    Rochelle Moulton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rochellemoulton/   Rochelle Moulton Website: https://rochellemoulton.com/   Rochelle Moulton Podcast: The Soloist Life    Reframe to Create Episode 64 - The Why and How of Building a Powerful Personal Brand | Diane Diaz   About my guest: Rochelle Moulton is on a mission to teach Soloist Consultants how to turn their expertise into “wealth”, AKA revenue, free time, flexibility, and impact.   The author of The Authority Code: How to Position, Monetize and Sell Your Expertise, she also hosts The Soloist Life podcast. She became a confirmed Soloist after leading introverted brainiacs at two powerhouse consulting firms, turning around the failing consulting arm of a Fortune 500 company and building three consulting firms from scratch—including the one she sold to Arthur Andersen for seven figures. She, her hubby, and their adorable dog Jackson have transplanted themselves to Palm Springs where they intend to live happily ever after.   About: The Reframe to Create podcast is hosted by Joy Spencer, an Executive Leadership and Storytelling Coach, Speaker, and Organizational Development Consultant working with professionals and leaders at all levels within organizations.  Joy leverages over 17 years of experience she gained while working to champion change in social justice movements, including those related to global access to essential medicines and consumer advocacy for online privacy.  This work required a dogged commitment to not merely challenging the status quo, but to reimagining and working towards creating an ideal future.  It is this commitment to creating that has shaped Joy's coaching philosophy and approach today. Using her signature C.R.E.A.T.E. framework, Joy guides her clients through a process to become incomparable in work so they can get paid to be themselves.   Follow Joy on LinkedIn  - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joy-spencer  

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Richard (Rich) Walker is the CEO of Quik!, which provides form automation and management solutions to help companies maximize efficiency and productivity. He has launched more than 10 companies and hosts The Customer Wins. Before founding Quik!, Rich was a Financial Planner at Cetera Investment Networks and a Business Consultant at Arthur Andersen. He is also the author of It's My Life! I Can Change If I Want To. In this episode: Most entrepreneurs experience financial anxiety, especially when first beginning. This includes facing instability, uncertainty, and decreased sales periods. How can you shift your mindset to focus on fulfillment rather than financial performance? Veteran entrepreneur Rich Walker defines prosperity as impacting individuals and finding purpose in your entrepreneurial endeavors. Rather than approaching challenges as barriers, Rich recommends embracing them as opportunities to grow, allowing you to manage uncertainty and financial instability with confidence. Creating and documenting company-specific systems and processes is also crucial to navigate sales fluctuations. Join Adi Klevit in today's episode of Systems Simplified as she chats with Richard (Rich) Walker, the CEO of Quik! about navigating entrepreneurship with confidence and fulfillment. He talks about his entrepreneurial wins and failures, the premise of his book, and how to identify your ideal customers.

Welcome back to The Private Equity Podcast, by Raw Selection. Our host, Alex Rawlings is joined by Sanjay Chandra, Managing Partner of Trinity Investors, a Private Equity firm based in Texas. Sanjay brings decades of experience as an operator, entrepreneur, and private equity investor. In this episode, we explore how he scaled businesses from single-digit EBITDA multiples to double-digit exits, his unique journey from operator to investor, and Trinity's focus on domestic manufacturing and industrials.Breakdown: [00:29] Sanjay shares his journey from immigrating to Texas as a child, excelling academically, and starting his career at Arthur Andersen before transitioning into entrepreneurship.[01:58] Founding American Leather, growing it into a $300–$400 million business with 1,600+ employees.[03:24] Sanjay discusses the founding of Trinity Investors, growing it into a $7 billion AUM alternative asset manager, and the firm's focus on operating companies and commercial real estate investments.[07:17] Reflecting on mistakes in private equity, Sanjay emphasizes the importance of exiting troubled investments quickly and shares how Trinity has adjusted its processes to respond to challenges more decisively.[09:46] Sanjay explains how his experience as an operator helps him empathize with founders and better understand the challenges they face in the lower middle market.[11:42] Advice for private equity professionals without operational experience: spend time on the shop floor, listen to management teams, and immerse yourself in the business beyond financial reports.[13:08] Sanjay highlights Trinity's focus on domestic manufacturing in the U.S., explaining why the firm prioritizes single-digit entry multiples with growth potential through operational improvements and strategic investments.[16:04] Insights from growing American Leather: the value of patience in scaling companies, focusing on steady growth, and the compounding benefits of later years in business.[19:29] Sanjay discusses the challenges of implementing infrastructure, upgrading management, and transitioning companies to professional operations, emphasizing the importance of respecting founders' knowledge and contributions.[22:55] Sanjay shares his passion for mentorship, explaining how he invests in the growth and development of leaders across Trinity's portfolio companies and his philanthropic initiatives.[25:21] Sanjay talks about his love for lifelong learning, mentioning his recent exploration of AI and continuous efforts to stay at the forefront of technology and innovation.[28:38] How to reach Sanjay via email or LinkedIn, along with his openness to connecting with new people and sharing his insights.[29:37] Closing remarks from Sanjay, reflecting on his journey and the value of entrepreneurial experiences, followed by Alex thanking him for his time and insights.To be added to the book waitlist, you can email alex.offer@raw-selection.comThank you for tuning in! Connect with Sanjay on LinkedIn here or via email at sanjay@trinityinvestors.com. To get the newest Private Equity episodes, you can subscribe on iTunes or Spotify here.Lastly, if you have any feedback on the podcast or want to reach out to Alex with any questions, send an email to alex.rawlings@raw-selection.com

“Coaching isn't about fixing people—it's about helping them unlock their full potential.” Accounting ARCWith Donny Shimamoto.Center for Accounting TransformationFor many accountants, career progression follows a predictable path—graduate, gain experience, and work toward a leadership role. However, as the industry transforms, many CPAs find themselves seeking something beyond technical expertise: personal growth, leadership skills, and work-life integration. That's where Doug Slaybaugh, CPA (a.k.a., the CPA Coach), comes in. MORE Accounting ARC: Demystifying Accounting Governance | Top 10 Red Flags to Watch for in Accounting Offices | Jeremy Dubow: Private Equity as a Catalyst for Growth | Break the Burnout Cycle in Accounting | Accounting in Transition: 2024 Reflections & the Road Ahead | Ron Baker: Visions for the Accounting Profession | Angie Grissom: Next Gen Inspo for Accountants | Does Accounting Belong in STEM? | Rose Wang: Where Numbers Meet Strategy and Creativity | TikTok Fraud Exposes Gaps in Financial Literacy | How Accounting Pros Own the Stage in Public Speaking | Greg Kyte: Being a CPA Is Like Being the Marie Kondo of Numbers | Rachel Bashore: A Lawyer's Case for Reinventing Accounting | Beyond the Basics in Ethics Eduction | Bailey Lenart: From Ledger Sheets to Transformational Change A former Big Four auditor and regional firm partner, Slaybaugh now dedicates his career to helping accountants thrive through professional coaching. Slaybaugh's journey into coaching wasn't a straight line. After spending years in public accounting, rising through the ranks at Arthur Andersen and later Price Waterhouse, he realized his passion wasn't just in financial statements—it was in people. 

Tune in today to learn to lead growth with Kent Bowman, former Partner at Andersen and Tanner LLC. Gain insights from his incredible personal challenges and difficult business journey, then leading the growth of a large, famous CPA firm, Tanner, LLC. Kent transformed teams, relationships, organizations and success in finance, consulting, and leadership. In this first part of our conversation, Kent shares how to preserve livelihoods and rebuild trust. Kent transitioned 120 professionals after Arthur Andersen's collapse. Discover the strategies to rebuild careers and pivot a faltering division into a success: "Set your sights high and deliver consistently." "Always take ownership of the issue." "Pain is temporary; resilience leads to growth." Find out how Kent Bowman saved family and firm from catastrophe: Mark C. Watch Bold Encounters at MarkSpencerCook.com/Podcast, YouTube.com/MarkSpencerCook, Spotify, or listen on Apple and most other podcast platforms. Lessons Learned: -Always take ownership to build credibility and trust. -Set your sights high to achieve exceptional outcomes. -Develop unique skills to stand out in competitive environments. -Foster teamwork by leveraging individual strengths within groups.

On this week's episode, MT's editorial team discusses which Big Four firms are on course to miss UK female partner goals, what CIOs want from consultants in 2025, and how a once-powerful name in consulting is making a comeback.We kick off this bumper consultancy episode with discussion of a story originally covered by the FT, which found that of the Big Four accounting firms, both EY and PwC are on track to miss their 2025 UK female partner targets. We also consider how gender imbalances might be impacting consulting firms' progress on pay parity, with an analysis of pay gap data collected as part of the process of compiling MT's inaugural Top 100 Management Consultancies list last year.What do chief information officers want from consultants? That's the question explored by Jon Bance in a recent piece for MT. He argues that CIOs increasingly demand more from external advisors, whom they expect to become fully immersed in their business, becoming a part of its culture and driving teams forward from within, while leveraging soft skills to build meaningful long-term relationships.Anyone who follows the consultancy sector will probably have heard the news by now: Andersen Consulting is making a comeback. The once-powerful name in the business will return to the sector after 25 years of dormancy. We discuss a piece by Paul Simpson that explores how the brand, once part of collapsed accounting firm Arthur Andersen, might navigate the considerable challenges in the market. Credits:Presenters: Éilis Cronin and Antonia Garrett PeelProducer: Inga MarsdenArtwork: David Robinson Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Maggie Brady is a progressive leader with 20 years of global HR leadership experience spanning Fortune 500, private equity, and venture capital backed companies. She started her career journey at Arthur Andersen as part of their Change Enablement consulting practice and then pivoted to HR, earning her stripes as a graduate of GE's HR Leadership Program. Since then, Maggie has gained experience leading all aspects of the HR/People function globally at companies such as HD Supply, Fiserv and Convoy. After an unexpected and unpaid sabbatical from her last company, Maggie thrives as VP of HR and Talent at White Cap, the leading North American distributor of construction products and equipment to over 10,000 professional contractors. Maggie is a happily retired collegiate swimmer and a fellow Swiftie. Her goal that she started in 2024 and continues today is to fall in love with her life! To know more about Maggie visit her LinkedIn: @maggiebrady1

"The tax industry is a gift for people who want to learn and grow and be challenged. There's never going to come a day where you close volume two of the code and say, 'I figured it all out, I know what it all means now.'” Tony Nitti, Partner — EY National Tax   In this final episode of 2024, Tony Nitti shares his journey within the tax industry, emphasizing the importance of finding one's passion, investing in oneself and overcoming personal challenges. Listen as Tony shares his personal experience and practical advice for career growth and fulfillment in the tax profession.   What you'll learn from this episode:   ·       Finding Your Passion: The importance of identifying and nurturing your specific passion within the tax industry, whether it's the law itself, client relationships, or running a firm. ·       Invest in Yourself: The value of investing in your knowledge and skills by learning, writing, and teaching the tax law. ·       Overcome Challenges: Strategies for attracting and retaining talent in the tax industry by providing intellectual challenges and growth opportunities. ·       Try hard things: The benefits of overcoming fears of public speaking and using writing as a tool to communicate complex concepts and share your passion.   Resources S Corporation Shareholder Compensation: How much is Enough?, The Tax Adviser, August 2011 Note: This was the article referenced in the podcast written by Tony. In August 2012, it was the winner of The Tax Adviser's 2011 Best Article Award.   Transcript April Walker: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Tax Section Odyssey podcast where we offer thought leadership on all things tax facing the profession. Today, I'm excited to be here with Tony Nitti. Tony is a partner at EY National Tax and he's a frequent guest on the show. We were just chatting about we think this is maybe the sixth time he's been with us. We appreciate you being with us. Our topic today is not a techie topic. It is a soft topic, but I think an important one. Tony, you did a session at National Tax which was just a couple of weeks ago, on finding your passion in tax and it incorporated some technical topics. But today, we're just going to lean right into the finding your passion. I think we, as listeners, we just want to hear your story, tell us more about how you started and got where you are today at National Tax at EY, which is pretty impressive, I must say. Tell us more, Tony. Tony Nitti: It's good to be here with you, April. I will also say I admire your bravery, because like you said, we just did this National Tax a couple weeks ago, or at least a shorter version of it you just went charging full speed ahead and said, let's do a podcast before we get our hands on those evaluations. We might just be doubling down on a disastrous decision. April Walker: Never know. Tony Nitti: Nobody wants to hear, but that's not the hope. Obviously, the hope is that something here will resonate with people who are listening who maybe are just struggling to find their center and find their passion within their careers. But if it's all right with you, I always want to address what I consider the elephant in the room of the conversation like this before we get started. When we talk about this passion for tax, when we did it at National Tax, when we're doing it today, we're talking about a specific type of passion for this industry. What I mean by that is this idea that people are lured to the tax industry as I certainly was by a desire to live in and learn the law. Because we take one look at that tax law and we realize that it's something that's not solvable, and we want to spend our careers being challenged and being forced to grow and learning that law and apply it to our clients. But that's not the only passion you can have in a tax industry. This passion for law, you probably need to learn the law regardless of your passion, but I've met many people in my career who have a very different passion than me. People whose passion is client relationships, building a relationship that lasts for decades, other people whose passion would be to run a firm someday because they want to prove that accounting can be done differently. Those are extremely valid passions and we don't mean to discount them, but we're focusing today on a passion for the law. Learning and applying the law, and we're doing it for two reasons, I think. Number 1, at the AICPA, we're keenly aware of the challenges we have attracting and retaining talent. And specific to retaining talent, we just see all these good people at all levels of experience, leave the industry and as they're on their way out the door, they say, You know what, I got into this industry because I wanted to work in the law. I wanted to solve complicated problems for sophisticated clients and be forced to think on my feet. Instead, for the first four years of my career, all I've done is prepare the same 30 tax returns every year. I haven't seen anything new in 18 months, I'm bored out of my mind, I'm going to go try something completely different. That should never happen. It should never happen in this industry because the tax industry, it is a gift for people who want to learn and grow and be challenged. I think we've all been around long enough to know that there's never going to come a day where you close volume two of the code and say, I figured it all out, I know what it all means now. That day is not coming and so we should never lose people because they're bored, because they're not being challenged. But we do, I assume for two reasons. One is the reason we want to tell ourselves when things aren't going well. It's not to say it's not appropriate sometimes. But this is the reason we want it to be and we want it to be because we're not getting a fair shake. We're getting a raw deal. We work for the wrong firm or the wrong people, and we're not getting the type of work that we enjoy. That may be possible. If you're in a situation like that, the beautiful thing about the industry today is there's more change available to you than ever before. We're not tied into geographic regions. There are purely remote firms. You can change your situation in a heartbeat. But there's also a second possibility. That's a possibility that people don't want to embrace as much. But there's a possibility that we're not in a terrible situation, we just haven't let it be known to the people we work for, the people we work with, what we're passionate about. We haven't shown what's meaningful to us and proven to people that this is the type of work that I want to do. That leads to the second reason we're focusing on this specific type of passion for the law. That reason, April is I'm not Tony Robbins, I'm not a paid motivational speaker. The only thing I have to offer your listeners is my experience, and my passion for this industry, there's no two ways about it is rooted in the law. I'm not someone who has a passion necessarily for forging client relationships that last 40 years. I'm not someone who ever thought I would run my own firm. My passion is constant intellectual stimulation, growth, learning that law. The only thing I have to offer people until I become a paid motivational speaker someday and go through the five step training program is my life experience, what I've learned in this career. That's why I just want to address that because I feel bad. I can't tell someone with other types of passions how to reconnect with their passion in tax,  because I only know my experience at this point. But the hope would be that my experience can help some people because I am a good example of someone who got into this industry for a specific reason, like I said, this desire to learn and build expertise in the law. And then quickly went down the wrong path that so many of us do, and I arrived at a crossroads where I was ready to leave this industry four or five years in because I wasn't growing. I wasn't the person I wanted to be. I wasn't doing the type of work that lured me to this industry and I had to make a conscious decision at that point to say, if I'm going to stick it out in this industry, I am going to make what I'm passionate about the centerpiece of my career and hope that it pays off. That was, again, a proactive conscious decision, and it paid off in ways that I would have never seen coming because what I found is the more I showed people what I was passionate about, the more I made my passion the centerpiece of my career, the more the industry rewarded me with more of the type of work I was passionate about. We can talk about that process. But that decision being something that I decided to do proactively, I also ended up learning lessons later in my career that were taught to me that I didn't decide to do. That I learned the hard way, that had made all the difference as far as understanding, that in life, in our careers, it's probably best to leave no stone unturned. To try different things, to find out what you're capable of, what you might be passionate about, and just say yes to new opportunities. It's been a mix of making a proactive decision to invest in myself and we can talk about that. And then being taught through just the harsh reality of life that you're probably best served to say yes to as many opportunities as you can to just constantly move the goal posts on what you love and what you need out of your career to be happy. With that long rambling introduction.... April Walker: I think it's good. You don't have to convince me because I think some of the themes in your story will apply to a lot of people, even if, like you said, their passion is not necessarily your direction or whatever. Let's get into it. Tony Nitti: That would be the hope. Like I said, it's always uncomfortable because I only have my own experience to talk about, you end up talking about your own experience the whole time and you just sit there and go, why does anybody want to listen to my path? But listen, I didn't grow up dreaming of being a CPA, and I don't know that many people do. I didn't really have many dreams growing up as far as a career. The one thing I thought I would want to be was a writer. Because I love to read as a kid and I wanted to be a sports writer, but it's never something I took seriously. Because I decided at a very young age that I did not have anywhere near the talent necessary to be a writer, and so it's just something I never even pursued. But I went to college undecided as far as a major goes. The only reason I ended up an accounting major is because I told one of my college soccer teammates I was going to go to law school. And he said if you want to get into a good law school, be an accounting major. I'd never even considered accounting, and I don't even know if there's any truth to what he said. But I didn't want to go to law school because I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to go law school because I had no idea what I wanted to be. And I just thought I'd put off that decision as long as I could. I end up this accounting major by accident. But after I get through the cost accounting class and the microeconomics class and those types of things, I eventually land in my first tax class. I'm guessing that other people had a similar experience where I get introduced to the tax law and I say, now this might work for me. Because even though I didn't know specifically what I wanted my career to be, I knew that I wanted a career that provided an opportunity for constant challenge, constant growth. I wanted that feeling of going to bed every night a little bit smarter than when I woke up in the morning. To me, the idea of a death sentence was any career where after three months or three years or even 30 years, you've seen everything there is to see and you're just going through the motions. There's nothing wrong with a career like that, it just wasn't going to work for me. The first thing you see when you get introduced to the tax law, this stuff is hard. Hard is good, hard is what I want. We know that in common culture, the tax law is held up as this point of reference for something that's incomprehensible. Einstein once famously said that the hardest thing for him to figure out was the income tax. Sitting there as a 21-year-old kid, you're like, All right, if this was a challenge for Einstein, it's certainly going to kick my butt for the entirety of my career, and that's what I'm looking for. That's how I ended up choosing a career in tax and taking a job with Arthur Andersen. As I said before, this industry should certainly provide all the opportunities someone like me craves, that wants to grow and learn. You could even argue that if you are making your career in the tax industry, it's almost hard to not be passionate about your career if you're passionate about learning and growth. But that doesn't mean it's impossible. I am living proof of that April because pretty much as soon as I started my career, I fell into a very familiar trap. You take a guy who was lured to this industry by this desire to learn the law, and then you put him as a new hire at what was at that time, the largest firm in the world, Arthur Andersen. And pairing up with 25 other new hires. What happens. You get in that competitive environment and you say, forget that learning the law stuff. I have one singular focus and it is to move up the ranks as quickly as possible. To climb the ladder as fast as I can, because I will be damned if I am to let Sally make it to senior before me or Johnny make it to manager before me. That became the focus. That became the priority. How do I get promoted? That is largely based sometimes on just playing the game. Shaking hands with the right clients and being close with the right partners. And just making sure everyone knows what you want, when you want to get promoted, being the squeaky wheel. When you get promoted as senior, pushing your staff as hard as you can to meet deadlines. That's what I valued. That's what was important to me was moving up those ranks, and the thing is it worked. Now four and a half years into my career, I get promoted to manager at what is now PWC, not Arthur Andersen anymore because in the interim there, Andersen collapsed on itself like a dying star after the Enron scandal. Now I'm at PWC, and they promote me to tax manager, and it's supposed to be this cause for celebration. Because they say, you make manager in public accounting. It opens doors that aren't open at any previous level. You want to go make an extra 20, 30 grand and work at another accounting firm, you can do it. You want to go work in a tax department of private company and make some more money while working fewer hours, you can do that, too. Everybody's patting me on the back and they're telling me, this is an impactful day for you. It's a big day in your career. You can go anywhere and do anything now. The thing is, it wasn't just the biggest day to that point in my career. Looking back at it now a full 20 years later, the day I made manager at PWC was and is the single biggest day of my entire career. Now that I could leave you now on a cliffhanger like Dukes of Hazard. Remember, like, they would be launching off some jump, and they go to commercial and you don't know are they going to be okay? This was the biggest day in my career, April, and you probably wondering why? What was so big about? April Walker: Yeah, I'm wondering. Tony Nitti: I went home that night, and all, like, the pats on the back had ended. I'm sitting there, and it hit me like a brick wall. It was this realization that I was a fraud. I know that may sound harsh. I know there are people who are listening that may think you're just being unduly hard on yourself, but I also know there's people listening who are going to say, “I know exactly the feeling he's talking about.” What I mean when I say I was a fraud, April, is it dawned on me that I had just been promoted to tax manager at the second biggest tax firm in the world, and I didn't know a damn thing about the tax law. I didn't. April Walker: I'm sure you knew some stuff. Tony Nitti: Well, that's what everyone says, because they say, “How could you get promoted to manager if you didn't know.” I never have read a court case at that point in my life. I didn't know how the code was strung together. You know what I was good at? Do you know why I got promoted? Because I was good at following processes. April Walker: And competitive, a little bit competitive. Tony Nitti: But I could take the last year's work papers for the return I was doing and turn them into the current year's workpapers. I knew how to do that, but when I was doing that current year return. When I was adding back 50% of M&E, I wasn't doing it because 274(n) told me to. I was doing it because they did it last year. When I was asking the client, how much of your accrued liability was paid within eight and a half months? I had no idea it's because I was trying to apply the recurring item exception of 1.461-5. I was doing it because that's what they had done last year. April Walker: SALY, man. Tony Nitti: SALY. And I know people have shared this experience, but what hit me was that I had been so focused on those processes to get promoted that I had never actually bothered to learn much of anything about the law in which I lived every day. What was terrifying was the realization that I couldn't go anywhere and do anything. It was the exact opposite, April. I was a prisoner at PWC because they knew my limitations. They knew what I could do and couldn't do, and they were content to respond to my constant complaints about promotion by promoting me. But if I wanted to go somewhere else or think about what I had already learned four years into my career. I had learned the lesson that the largest firm in the world can disappear overnight. What if that happened again? And I had to go somewhere else. Could my resume get my foot in the door? Yeah, of course, I could. Would my undeniable charm possibly land me that job? I'd like to think it would, April, but then what after that? Because how long would it take my new employer to realize, Oh, we just hired a tax manager who can't think critically, can't research and solve problems in the code, can't provide planning advice for clients. You know what he can do? He can take last year's workpapers and turn them into this year's workpapers, and that's about the extent of it. I realized when I say I was a fraud, I realized that I had fallen into a trap of pushing so hard for promotion that I had gotten promoted to a level that I was not capable of delivering on. I hated that feeling. The reason it was the most important day of my entire career is because two things changed that day. Number 1, I said, no more am I going to measure my success in this industry by my pace of promotion or my pay rate. I'm done with that. Look what it's gotten me. I've gotten everything I've asked for and it's now made me miserable and terrified. From now on, I am going to reprioritize what attracted me to this industry, which was the law, the substance. I'm going to make that the centerpiece of my career. Whatever happens good or bad, I'm going to live with the results. But if I'm going to call myself a tax person, then I'm going to be the best version of a tax person that I can imagine being. To me that meant building technical expertise. The second thing that happened, and this is a part people aren't going to want to hear quite as much about. I realized that it was nobody's fault but my own. Of course, I wanted to blame PwC, but for what? They gave me everything I asked for. I showed them what I cared about. What I cared about was getting promoted. They promoted. It was not their job to feed me every piece of law I ever wanted to know when I hadn't prioritized that to them. They were trying to run a business and I helped them run a business. The fact that I hadn't learned what I needed or wanted to learn, that was on me. That's when I made the conscious decision to invest in myself. And April, it really was as dramatic a switch as I'm making it sound here. Four and a half years of my career, zero priority on my passion, learning the law. That day everything changed. The way it changed is, first things first, desperate times call for desperate measures. And I had a big gap between what I could do and what my resume said I could do. To solve that gap, I applied that day to the graduate tax program at University of Denver. Because I needed to be spoon fed tax law as quickly as I could. But as soon as I showed up in that program, what happened is I realized I had made the right choice in making this the focus of my career. Because I forgot how passionate I was about the law about learning and growing. Because now I'm sitting there in this class and they're feeding me the law and every day I am going to bed, a little bit smarter than when I woke up in the morning. And I'm saying to myself, this is what attracted me here, this needs to be the focus. Then the second thing is, I'm listening to these professors and I finally know what I want to be in my career. I don't mean a professor, even though that's a great gig as well. I just wanted that substance. I'm listening to them cite case law from 50 years ago, off the top of their head and reference private letter rulings down to the final digit. And I'm saying, I want to be able to do that, because one, that's where my passion lies, but two, I'm guessing if I can have that substance, I will never have to have this horrible feeling again of feeling like I can't deliver what I should be able to deliver. That just set me on the right track, but it didn't solve all the problems, obviously. This decision to invest in yourself, it's got to become a career-long process. I graduate from the program. I felt like the program really helped me bridge that gap, but I knew the process was just starting. Coming out of the program, the one thing I know for sure is that, yes, my one true passion in this industry is to live in the law. Let's be honest, we can argue about it, but you said in your intro. If you truly love working in the law all day and solving complicated problems for sophisticated clients, one could argue there's nowhere you can do that at a more regular level than National Tax group for a big Four firm. That was my dream job back in 2005, when I came out of DU, but it was never possible for me. The reason I say possible is because, look, if we had all the time in the world, we'd be talking about not just pursuing your passions professionally, but also personally. I am a guy that has a lot of passions from a personal perspective. From the time I was 16-years-old, I knew that I was not going to be a happy adult unless I lived in a mountain town where I could be on skis, 70 days a year and riding my mountain bike another 250 days a year. It had to be that way. When I graduated in 2005, I was already laying the groundwork to move up to the mountains of Colorado in 2006. At that time, if you were going to work in Big Four National Tax, you had to physically sit in DC. It's something I never even sent a resume, never even applied for. Because I knew that even if I were happy professionally, if I were miserable personally, it wasn't going to be a winning formula. What I did instead was I took a job at a wonderful regional firm called Withum. And they were so wonderful, in fact, that they let me work remotely at a time where remote work was not really prevalent within our industry. But they let me work from Aspen, even though they were an East Coast firm. But we finally get now to the lesson, how? How do you connect with your passion for your industry? Knowing that my passion was learning the law, now starting at a brand new firm. I don't have anybody spoon feeding me tax law every day. How do I unlock the secret to a happy career? That secret is not really a secret. You want a happy career, do more of the work you love and less of the work you don't. How do I get my hands on this type of work I love and the decision that I made. There are people listening who are at that crossroads right now who may have to say, it sounds like a lot of work, but I get it. Maybe it's time for me to make that decision as well to invest in myself. Was that if I can't bring myself to Big Four National Tax and do the type of work I love, I am going to find a way to bring the type of work I love to me. I realized that the responsibility is mine to show this new firm that I'm passionate about working in the law and that I'm capable of working in the law. Part of that happens obviously on the job. Part of it happens by doing diligent research and coming up with good answers and thinking outside the box. But I knew that I needed to really prove to everybody where my passion lies so I could get more of that work. What I did, and this was the thrust of our AICPA class, is I instituted this three-step process that I had been using for the last 20 years and just repeating over and over again, and it has served me better than I ever could have dreamed. But what I did was Step 1, I'd say, I am going to learn everything I can about some narrow area of the law. I would pick an area of the law, usually one that I found that the industry was struggling with. What I mean by that is we all know there's certain things we do in the tax world that all of us do, and we apply it all the time for our tax returns. We never truly understand why we're doing what we're doing. That was back to what we said earlier, the same as last year's stuff. Perfect example would be allocation of partnership liabilities under Section 752. We all fill out a K-1 on a 1065 and allocate recourse and non-recourse liabilities. But how many people truly understand what makes a liability recourse and non-recourse or how those liabilities should be allocated? I would say, Sec. 752. I am going to learn everything I could about 752. This is a part people don't want to hear, but it would happen outside work hours. I would read the code, I would read the regs, I would read the editorial content, I would read the key cases and the rulings and things like that. And I would read and re-read and make notes and do outlines until I felt like I understood what it was I was reading. Then I would move on to Step 2. Step 2 is, how do I cement this knowledge? I would sit down and say, if I truly understand all that stuff I just read, I should be able to explain it to other people. I would sit down and I would write up everything I just read. Try to re-package and re-purpose the law in a way that would make someone who read what I was writing understand. Maybe some of your listeners know that later and we'll get into this, I would go on to write for more national publications. That's not what I'm talking about here in 2006, April. I didn't have a platform. When I say I'm writing about the law, I was quite literally putting together an email for my firm's tax department that absolutely nobody asked for. I would summarize 752. I would put together a PDF decision tree and flow chart and show how we should be allocating things. I was doing it for two reasons. The reason I like to tell people is I wanted to help my firm understand 752. But the true selfish reason I was doing it is because I wanted to understand that law, and I wanted to show everyone else that I understood that law and that I was passionate about that law. I would send out this email to my firm's tax department explaining 752. Going through that process of writing it up really did cement that knowledge for me because I had to think about the law in a different way from reading it to say, how do I now explain it? April Walker: How did they react to those emails? Tony Nitti: You could almost hear the eyerolls in the system. You can almost hear, who is this kid? What is he doing? I wasn't even a kid at that point, I was near 30. Here's the thing. We're going to talk some life lessons here, but I was talking to somebody after the presentation at AICPA. Sometimes the key to success in any career is just being willing to do the thing other people won't. What I mean by that is those books, the code, the regs, we all have access to them. What I was doing is I was diving in and saying, I'm going to figure out what they say and what they mean. Other people probably rolled their eyes when I would summarize law that nobody asked for. But you know what those same people would do when they had a 752 issue? Who were they coming to? April Walker: For sure. Tony Nitti: Well, the only other option was to open the books themselves. That's what I mean about doing what other people won't. That's not everyone's priority and I'm not here to say it's right or wrong, but the reality is when I showed people that I'm willing to open the books, I started to get that work because other people aren't. Not everybody, but there are just people who say, I'd rather just push it to someone who enjoys that stuff and that became a common theme of my career where people come to me and say, I know you love this research stuff, so I'm going to give it to you. You probably give it to me because you don't want to do the research stuff. That's fine by me because I do want to do it. I do want to do this work. To your point, there are eye rolls, but those eye rolls, I'm sure, were the same people who'd say, I got this question. I know this dude seems to care about this stuff. I'm going to go to him and let him answer it for me, which is exactly what I was hoping for. After that writing step, I would go to Step 3. Step 3 was the uncomfortable step. Because as much as I enjoy writing, and I know this sounds strange because we're doing a podcast about a presentation I gave, but speaking in public, not for me. We're going to talk more about this later, but terrifies me. And I would go into my partner's office, and I'd say, you see that email that I sent around about 752? I need to teach it. I need to teach here at the firm - some lunch and learn local office or the firm's annual update, but I need to teach it. Why would I ask to teach if I was terrified of it? It's because I was terrified of it. Because if I want to know that law, there is no greater motivator than fear. If I'm going to stand in front of a room full of my peers or some people who've been practicing 20 years longer than me, I was really going to make sure I understood that law really well. To this day, I don't give a presentation that I don't walk around my house and rehearse to air, just to time it out, to make sure I'm comfortable with the transitions, to make sure I know the law. Because that fear still exists from a public speaking perspective. I would go through that process, and by the time it was done, by the time I was done handling that fear and speaking in front of -  these are tiny rooms. These are my firm. These are not strangers to me, but by the time I was done, I would say, that area of the law, that is in my back pocket. I feel like I know that well, and more importantly, my firm now knows that I know that well. All those questions are going to come to me. I would just repeat that process, every year, not every year. I'm just repeat it over and over again with deducting accrued liabilities or 263(A) or prepaid expenses. I would just repeat the process if the firm. Read about it, write about it, teach about it. The more I'm doing it, the more they can see where my passion lies and that I'm capable. To the point where 2008ish, the firm decides to launch its version of a National Tax Group and in addition to our mutual friend Brian Lovett, who's still at Withum, and I get to be one of the founding members of that National Tax Group. Now all of a sudden, I have brought national tax to me and my passion is much more of the focus of my career. As I said, that's the recipe, right? Do more of what you like and less of what you don't and that's what I'm getting now as a return on my investment. That's where the proactive decisions I made to help improve my career, that's pretty much the end of them. From there, it's just life has taught me because now you get to 2008, April and my career is going really well. I'm doing the type of work I love to do. Personally, I am living in Aspen and like I said, I'm on skis 70 days a year. I'm living on my mountain bike all spring. Life is good. April Walker: That's when life smacks you in the face. Tony Nitti: Exactly. That's when the headache started, and I'm your audience with the entire story, obviously. But after one particularly brutal race in Aspen, I was rushed to the emergency room with a terrible migraine-type headache. But I imagine more intense than most migraines because eventually, what they would figure out, it took a little bit of time, was that I had an aneurysm in my brain. Most people know somebody impacted by brain aneurysm and those stories typically do not have happy endings. The reality is once an aneurysm leaks blood into the brain cavity, 70% of people are dead by the next morning. As my surgeon so eloquently put it, of the other 30%, half of them will wish they were by the next morning because they're permanently disabled. This is something where I went from thinking I was invincible at 33 years old to absolutely certain that I was going to die. The only reason we bring this up here is because I had to face my mortality, and I had to go in for 8 hours of surgery to save my life. I had that morning to lay on that metal table before they wheeled me in for the surgery. They were very clear about the risks. There's a 5% chance I go into vasospasm and I never wake up. There's a 15% chance if I wake up, I've got memory problems, right side of the body problems, cognitive deficit, and that's terrifying. Laying there that morning, I know it sounds cliche, but looking back at 33 years I'd spent on the planet, I wasn't spending any of that morning regretting the things I had done that maybe didn't go the way I wanted him to do. I was spending the time regretting the things I had said I was going to try, but I hadn't tried yet. It was eating away. Like, I thought I had so much more time, and now the prospect that either I don't wake up or I wake up a different person and I never get to find out some of those things about myself. It was not something you ever want to have to face. That the tomorrow you thought you had may never arrive. Now, obviously, I had a good surgeon. April Walker: Given that that was in 2008? Tony Nitti: Yeah. Doctor Jefferson. He fixed me right up. I knew within 48 hours that all the Simpsons references, all the code sections, they were all still in there. But I did come out of it a changed person. Not cognitively, necessarily, but I came out of it saying, I'm going to live the rest of my life slightly different than I did before, starting with the fact that I'm leaving no stone unturned. This is what we were talking about earlier. Anything I've been curious about - personal, professional, could I be good at it? Would I enjoy it? I am going to find out. I'm going to say yes, because I just want to know. It started simply enough. I wasn't even in my professional capacity, like silly little thing. I spent my whole childhood saying I wanted to learn how to play guitar. I never bothered to learn guitar. I had a year, basically year it took me to recover from that surgery before I could get back to my normal life, and I spent that year playing ten years worth of guitar. But what happens is you realize, I love this. I thought I would enjoy it. Tony Nitti: I do enjoy it. I shouldn't let other things slip past me like this. I should try everything. Within my career, it's now 2009, and I've made partner at Withum. There's no impetus to try new things in my career. I've gotten the last promotion I'm never going to get. But that's not what's driving me at that point. What's driving me is this primal realization that, life is fleeting and so I'm going to go find out whatever I want to find out about. We go back to how we started this conversation. Growing up, the only thing I ever thought I would enjoy was being a writer. I had been doing those emails to my firm, but I never tried anything bigger than that because I just assumed I didn't have the ability. What bothered me after the surgery is I never even risked it enough for someone to tell me I wasn't any good. I just decided it for myself. I said, look, I'm never going to write the Great American novel. I'm not that talented, but they say write what you know and I know some things about the tax law. April Walker: Sure. Tony Nitti: I said, I just want to find out. I want to find out what I'm capable of. The next time I went through that three step process, it was about a court case that came out on S corp reasonable comp. I said, well, this time, even though no one's pushing for it, no one at my firm cares, it's not anything anyone else values, I'm going to find out if I can get this thing published externally. I wrote up the entire case history of S-Corp Reasonable comp for The Tax Adviser. I wrote and rewrote and I edited, I reedited and I eventually submitted it for publishing and they published it as a feature article. What I had learned in that process was not that I was a talented writer, but that I was as passionate about it as I thought I would be. I loved it. I love the process of trying to explain the law to somebody else in the hopes that the light bulb goes off and they go, I never understood that before, now I understand. Of course, I looked from a selfish perspective having to learn the law that well, to read all of the cases that had ever been settled. It was just a really gratifying process, but the problem is, my firm's not paying me to sit around and write articles all day, so it's a bit of a bummer. Because I had done it, I loved it. But how do I get to do more of it? This is where the worlds collide between leaving no stone unturned, but also investing in yourself. Where the article, it went well. Tony Nitti: It went well to the point where The Tax Adviser asked me to write a couple more articles, and I did. Then what happened is just if you invest in yourself, I firmly believe good things happen. You get a return on that investment. CCH reaches out to my firm and they're like. Hey, we see this writing this kid's doing, it's pretty darn good and we need someone to co author a treatise on consolidated returns and we'll pay your firm for six months of his time if he can contribute a bunch of chapters to this treatise. Tony Nitti: My firm comes to me and says, CCH wants you to write a treatise on consolidated returns, you want to do it? Like any rational human being, every instinct in my body said, absolutely not. Why would I want to write a consolidated returns treatise, it's terrible. It's the worst area of the law. But the point is, who am I to say no? I'm passionate about writing. I want to be challenged, and it's just this idea of leave no stone unturned. I'm going to write it just to see if I can write it and to see if good things come of it. Now my firm is getting paid for me to write, so they allow me to do more of the type of work I'm passionate about. I got to write that treatise, which is probably the last time I thought about a consolidated return. But it just things snowballed. From there, April and now the editor at Forbes, Janet Novack, she's reading my writing. She reaches out to me more than day. I'd never met her, or heard her. She reaches out to me and says. Hi, I like your style of writing. Would you move your platform over to Forbes? For a regional firm like Withum at that time, the exposure was tremendous. Of course, we'll do it and so that's how I land at Forbes, where now anyone who ever read anything I wrote on Forbes, I'm not making up this three step process. Because the entirety of my writing on Forbes, for the most part, was this, like trying to explain complicated areas of the law. There was that whole Tax Geek Tuesday. That's all it was. Breaking down things that no one was insane enough to want to write about because it's so dry and so complicated, like opportunity zones or 263 A or whatever it may be. Now all your listeners know my deep dark secret, which is it may have looked like I was doing all that writing because I wanted to help the industry, which obviously I'm joking. Obviously, I did. But why else was I doing it? Because I wanted to learn that stuff. I wanted to build that expertise and hope that it would pay off. One of the things we'll finish with in a couple of minutes is how that ended up paying off with my dream job. But even at that point, even with the writing, and this comes full circle to how this class came to be for us because of what happened in Engage this summer. But at that point, we're talking 2011. I've never done public speaking. Outside of my firm, outside of a lunch and learn, I've never stood in front of a room full of strangers and taught. What happened was you do enough writing, eventually, someone's going to come to you and say, you're decent at explaining a tax law, wouldn't you like to try it, like in person. So you don't have to trust that someone's going to read your writing and understand it all, first try, things like that? My friend Mark Friedlich at CCH approached me and said, "We do this conference every year. Come speak at the conference.". Again, every fiber of my being said, Mark, absolutely not. Because I am someone who has got more than my share of social anxiety. I just do, I'm an introvert. There's a reason I love having my nose in the books. The idea of standing in front of a room full of strangers, it terrifies me to this day. I just learned to deal with it a little bit better. Then, of course, there's the impostor syndrome that comes with it. I'm like, why would anybody want to listen to me? There's so many people who know this stuff better than I do. I said, "Mark, it is not for me." Because as much as I always knew I would enjoy writing, I knew I would hate public speaking. He just said, "Look, just give it a try. What's the worst that could happen?" Eventually he's right. Who am I to say no to this? The whole point of this second act I'm getting in life, is say yes, find out what you're capable of, find out what you might enjoy. I flew to Arizona, April and I did 90 minutes on the tax consequences of foreclosures and short sales. That tells you. April Walker: That's very specific. Tony Nitti: It's 2011. This is where it's getting real for the crash and so everybody's dealing with foreclosures and short sales. I went in there and I talked for 90 minutes, and let me tell you, it was every bit as awful as I thought it was going to be. But when I walked out of that room, I knew my goals in my career. I knew my passion in my career had changed, had evolved. Because I walked out of that room saying, I need to do more of this. But why? If it was so terrifying, why? Because it was so gratifying, Just to have even one person come up to you afterwards and say, "I struggled to understand that now. The light bulb went off. I get it." This desire to communicate and help other people and explain the law in a way that people can understand. It's fun to do it in writing. Maybe not that efficient. You have to trust that they're going to read the whole thing, not have any follow up question. But with speaking, I could read their faces. Are they following along? Do they look lost or are they tilting their head to the side like my pup Maggie does in some futile attempt to understand what I'm saying to her? I'm like, I'm not built for this, but I need to do it. For me to be the best version of myself, the happiest version of myself in my career, I need to do this thing regularly that terrifies me because the reward is so great. That ability to repackage and repurpose the law in a way that connects with other people in the industry. Of course, the byproduct of learning it so well. If I'm going to stand in front of the room and talk about foreclosures and short sales, that's another thing I'm going to get to add to my quiver as far as areas of expertise. It's funny, because like I said, growing up, I knew I'd be passionate about writing, and I was. Knew I'd be terrified to speak publicly, and I am. But I'm just as passionate about it now as I am the writing. One final story to just tie everything together and just show you how. Look, I don't know. Maybe my experience is unique. Maybe we need one of those things to run on the bottom of the podcast that says. What is it? Past performances are not  indicative of future performances? April Walker: Future yeah? Tony Nitti: I don't know. Maybe it's just unique, but this right place, right time. The rewards I've gotten on the decision to invest in myself from Withum's willingness to create a national tax group, to Forbes noticing my writing and bringing me on. Just the little things that have impacted the course of my career. It's remarkable because listeners out there, especially the younger variety, they're going to think it's these big decisions that I stress out about that are going to impact the course of my career. Which job do I take or what area of the law do I focus on? But my goodness, it's sometimes the smallest things. What changed the course of my career was a decision in 2013 to waste my Thanksgiving weekend. Because 2013, right around this time, the IRS issues regulations under 1411, the net investment income tax regs. I didn't want to necessarily spend my Thanksgiving weekend learning about those regs and writing about them, but it was new. I love writing about new stuff. I love trying to explain to people how to read [how the] law works and so I said. I'm going to sit down and go through the three step process, at least the first two. For now, I'm going to learn about it, I'm going to write about it. I wrote about the net investment income tax regs. It was no different than any other article. There's nothing special about it. The only thing that was special is a couple of days later, I get an email from the attorney at the IRS who wrote those regulations. April Walker: Spoiler. Tony Nitti: Felt encouraging. He just reached out to me to say, here's what you got right. Here's what you got wrong. I want to send a unified message out to the people. You know [David] Kirk, so there's probably some expletives thrown in there. April Walker: Absolutely. Tony Nitti: I just thought, that's so admirable that this guy would take that level of ownership over his work. Dave and I would become what I would loosely call friends. I think we met in person once at National Tax, but other than that, we maybe connected once a year for the next decade. But the point is, this return on investment, that decision to write that article would change everything. Because 10 years later, Kirk is not at the IRS anymore. Now he's at EY running one of the National Tax groups, and one of his partners is retiring and unbeknownst to me, he's been keeping track of my career the entire time and he's seeing this investment I'm making in myself. He's seeing my passion for learning the law and whatever small ability I might have to explain that law to other people. He's saying. That's the guy I want. He's going to his bosses and saying. This is the person I want to come in as the new partner in EY National Tax. In 2021, he reaches out to me. And I was working for an amazing firm at the time, Rubin Brown, and I loved my job.  But he reaches out to me and he says. Come work with me and work in this National Tax group. The opportunity, obviously, to work with Dave Kirk is pretty much all you need to hear. But of course, me being a pain, the first thing I say is, do I have to move to DC? Now, this is the benefit of the post pandemic world. We can do this remotely from Aspen and so he's offering me my dream job, April. What's amazing about that is I spent a couple months agonizing over that decision. I very nearly turned it down. Why? Because, honestly, I was scared. I couldn't do it. It was back to almost that feeling of being a fraud again, but just feeling, I don't know. This guy has forgotten more about the law than most people know. And I had that impostor syndrome kick in again. Can I do it? Am I capable? Who knows? Maybe I'm not and the firm has just been lying to me for the last three years. The point is, I almost didn't take it and then I sat down and said, hold on a second. What is it that makes you not want to take this job? I'm scared because I think I might have to learn a lot to be able to hang. Then I'm like, wait a minute. What is it you're most passionate about in your career?  Where you're forced to learn a lot so that you can hang? Finally, it just became obvious to me that I had to take the opportunity because this was my dream. My dream to just live in the law all day, every day, and it came about in the most bizarre fashion. April, I didn't submit a resume because it didn't mesh with my personal goals. But then this decision to invest in myself, which eventually led to Forbes, which got me in front of Kirk. It's just crazy. Crazy to think how it all unfolded. The message for someone listening out there, is I was no kid when Dave Kirk called me. I was 45 years old. 45, to land my dream job in this industry and patience is certainly a virtue. The bigger virtue is just understanding some of the things we talked about here today. Which is, look, no one wants to hear this. The easy way out is to say, I'm in a bad situation, no one's treating me fairly. I'm not learning what I want to learn. Look, there are bad situations out there. Like I said, if you're in one, it's pretty easy to move. Problems are going to follow you even to good situations, if you don't take ownership over your own career and if you don't say at a certain point, it's no one's job to make me the professional that I want to be other than myself. That's not easy. It comes with a lot of extra work. You think I wanted to be reading Bittker & Eustis on the beach on a weekend back when I was fielding materials a lot? Of course, I didn't. The BNA portfolio at night? No, but I was making an investment in the hope that it would pay off. The way it paid off, like I said, was doing more of the type of work I love, which is all you can possibly ask for. It's not an easy thing to communicate to people - as much as we work in this job, sometimes you have to you go above and beyond to show people what you're passionate about and that you're capable of handling it. If you don't show, no one knows and you can just get lost in the shuffle and end up being that person we talked about that's doing the same tax returns five years in a row and not growing and not learning. If you haven't shown people that you're not content with that. If you haven't shown people where your passions lie, human nature is such that firms of any size are just going to say, April just keeps doing what we ask for every year. We're just going to keep asking her to do it. April Walker: I think that's great. It's funny when you were starting to tell your story about that you hadn't learned anything. I had a question in my mind, like, don't you think that's partially the firm's responsibility that they hadn't invested in you to send you enough trainings or things? Then you answered the question. That's a personal responsibility thing. Tony Nitti: Perfect example of that. They did send me to trainings. I can remember most of those trainings, and everyone knows someone like this. Being the guy who spent half of the trainings outside the room, doing work for my senior or my manager back in the office because I didn't value the training. What I valued was getting promoted. If my senior manager said, I need you to do something right now, even though I was at a training at St. Charles for Andersen, I was going to walk out of that room and get that work done for them.   Everybody wants a villain. Life is always easier with a villain. PWC was no villain. Because it's not like I asked them to teach me and they refused to. I showed them what I valued and they rewarded that. If I only valued promotion, they gave me promotion. Since that point in my career, when I showed my employers that I valued the type of work I love, I valued being challenged, I valued living in the law, I have gotten rewarded with more of that type of work. I refuse to believe my experience is a one-off, that it's completely unique. I definitely got some very lucky breaks at some key points in time. Then I got dealt a harsh lesson that I wouldn't wish upon anybody. I don't want anyone at 33 years old to have to face their mortality. But that was an impetus to say, I got to find out more of what I'm capable of. And that opened up doors that I never dreamed, April, that I would spend as much of my career doing. When I say passionate about my love for writing, I just never thought it would even be an option in a career in tax. Then it ended up being a huge part of what I did for so long. I refuse to believe that that's unique to me. I think that anybody who says, I'm willing to do what the other person isn't. I'm willing to get into these books, learn what they say, show people that I care about what they say, and that I can communicate them to other people, that really good things are going to follow. April Walker: Writing might not be your passion, but I think the message today, as we're wrapping up, figure out what that passion is. It doesn't matter how old you are. You can try to figure it out and do more. I just read this book that was talking about -  do the next right thing. The big picture might feel huge and scary, but just whatever the next step is, just do the next right thing. Tony Nitti: The way I've always described that too, April, is you shouldn't at any point in your life be finished finding out what your passions are. That's the whole point, is you should be a fundamentally different person at 35, that you're at 25 and 45 that you're at 35. You should be saying yes to opportunities that help you unearth new passions and new things that you are capable of doing. Because like I said, there is no scenario, and people who know me well know what I mean, where I should be making career out of public speaking, doing as much public speaking as I do. It is so foreign and uncomfortable to me. But I look past that, because I'm passionate about it and so I find a way to make it work through truly ridiculous levels of preparation. April Walker: Some might say you're good at it. I'll give you a little spoiler. Your two sessions were the top rated at National Tax, so there you go. Tony Nitti: Now, you have to edit out earlier today when I said, we're doing this without the safety net of the evaluation. April Walker: I didn't want to tell you in advance. Tony Nitti: See that. Again, but that is proof that anybody, if I can make any career out of public speaking, anybody can. That's why you got to try. That was the thing at ENGAGE that started all this, is when we were just talking about say yes to opportunities because you know what, if you are as bad as you think you're going to be and you hate it as much as you think you will, you haven't lost anything. You just go back to not doing it anymore, but you might unearth new passions that move the goalposts on what you need out of your career. That's a goal in life to keep growing and keep finding things that really drive you. Hopefully, April, something we said resonates with the listeners, but I guess we'll find out. April Walker: I hope so too. This is our last podcast episode of the year. You can listen to it at the end of the year. I used to love your resolution articles. I think that was a Forbes thing. I love these articles. I miss those articles and people come up to you still all the time and are like, I really miss those articles. Tony Nitti: What's funny is the last thing I ever wrote for Forbes was one of those resolution articles and I don't know. Maybe I wrote 200, 300 articles for Forbes over the 10 years, but the last thing is my favorite thing I ever wrote because it had absolutely nothing to do with tax. I had to do with my pup Macy. April Walker: I know. Tony Nitti: You knew well and Macy was on her way out of the world at the time and just to be able to even have a platform to write about my pup, that is still the one thing I've ever written that I go back and read. I don't hate this. I don't want to change anything. April Walker: That's good. Thank you so much, Tony. This was so fun. I know our listeners will enjoy it. Also, again, thanks a bunch. This is April Walker from the AICPA Tax section. This community is your go to source for technical guidance and resources designed, especially for CPA tax practitioners like you in mind. This is a podcast from AICPA and CIMA together as the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts and we encourage you to follow us so you don't miss an episode. If you already follow us, thank you so much.  Please feel free to share with a like-minded friend. You can also find us at aicpa-cima.com/tax and find our other episodes. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful holiday season and come back and 2025 is going to be an exciting tax year. I just feel it. Thanks for listening. Keep your finger on the pulse of the dynamic and evolving tax landscape with insights from tax thought leaders in the AICPA Tax Section. The Tax Section Odyssey podcast includes a digest of tax developments, trending issues and practice management tips that you need to be aware of to elevate your professional development and your firm practices. This resource is part of the robust tax resource library available from the AICPA Tax Section. The Tax Section is your go-to home base for staying up to date on the latest tax developments and providing the edge you need for upskilling your professional development. If you're not already a member, consider joining this prestigious community of your tax peers. You'll get free CPE, access to rich technical content such as our Annual Tax Compliance Kit, a weekly member newsletter and a digital subscription to The Tax Adviser.

All the NEO Murderer updates:Luigi Mangione/Brian ThompsonMangione attended elite schoolsBA/MS PennGilman School, an elite all-boys preparatory school in Baltimore: In his valedictorian speech, Mangione praised classmates for "challenging the world"Mangione comes from a wealthy and influential Baltimore familyMangione is one of 37 grandchildren of the late Nick Mangione Sr., a prominent multimillionaire real-estate developer in Baltimore who died in 2008Members of the Mangione family own the Turf Valley Resort in Ellicott City, Maryland, and Hayfields Country Club in Hunt Valley, MarylandHe favorably reviewed the Unabomber Manifesto: Ted Kaczynski's "Industrial Society and Its Future""He was a violent individual — rightfully imprisoned — who maimed innocent people," Mangione wrote. "While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary.""'Violence never solved anything' is a statement uttered by cowards and predators,'" Mangione quoted.He founded an app and worked in techHe was arrested while on his laptop at a McDonald's, the police saidThe complaint said that when asked for identification, Mangione gave police officers a New Jersey driver's license with the name "Mark Rosario." When asked why he lied, Mangione replied, "I clearly shouldn't have," the complaint said.Police in Pennsylvania also found a three-page, handwritten “manifesto” taking aim at the health care industry for prioritizing profits over patient care by two law enforcement officials, according to the New York Times.Some reactionsCEO killing, rage over insurance plunges UnitedHealth into crisisBrian Thompson's death has become a symbol of revenge over denied medical bills and lack of access to necessary care, an issue that some UnitedHealth employees say they're growing increasingly anxious about.The vitriol following the shooting sparked a reckoning among some UnitedHealth employees. Much of the public animosity was aimed at the way insurance companies prevent Americans from getting the care their doctors prescribe. Some employees grappled with the idea that their paychecks were padded in part by the practice of denying care.Witty, in a video to staff last week, attempted to address the rage but failed to change the narrative for some workers. “As you've seen, people are writing things we simply don't recognize, are aggressive, inappropriate and disrespectful,” he said, urging employees to ignore the media. “There's no value in engaging.”But:Before the investor day last week was cut short, Witty used some of his time on stage to acknowledge the widespread dissatisfaction with his industry. “You only have to walk into a room with five people to hear four stories of frustration. ‘I couldn't find a doctor, I didn't know where to go. It's too difficult to understand,'” he said in a room full of financial analysts and investors.The culture at the top was shaped for years by veterans of the defunct accounting firm Arthur Andersen, where Chairman and former CEO Stephen Hemsley once worked. A previous CEO, William McGuire, unceremoniously left the company and settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission over backdating stock options that regulators alleged enriched him and other executives.In recent years, a series of acquisitions have consolidated UnitedHealth's position so much that when a cyberattack took out its Change Healthcare subsidiary, doctors offices and hospitals across the country were paralyzed. That market dominance has come under review by the Department of Justice, Bloomberg News has reported. Members of Congress who have called for a breakup of the conglomerate.Thompson was one of a handful of executives who sold UnitedHealth shares after the company learned it was under investigation by the DOJ, but before that information was shared with the public, Bloomberg reported. The company's stock fell when the DOJ investigation was reported. Thompson sold $15.1 million worth of shares, according to Bloomberg calculations.Market insanity: rage of insurer causes murder of NEO, up 1%. Social media outpour of rage over insurers because of NEO murder, down 8.5%1-star McDonald's reviews and sympathetic merch: Companies try to stop online support for CEO killer suspectTed Cruz Accuses Luigi Mangione of Being a 'Leftist' Despite Social Media Posts Praising Tucker Carlson and Decrying the 'Woke Mind Virus'After thousands celebrated UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson's killing, now even top internet sleuths are not willing to help in investigation; what's the reason?“This sparking of online praise for the killing or the killer is shocking in nature”“some are talking about Thompson being one of those responsible for the fragile state of the US Healthcare industry, which is shocking as, during other cases netizens usually post videos, condolencesFrom the Indian English-language business-focused daily newspaper: “delivering profits of a whopping $16.4 billion, in the previous year alone”How UnitedHealthcare and other insurers use AI to deny claims UnitedHealthcare and Humana have been sued over their use of algorithms to determine coverage of care for some patientsIn October, a report from the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations showed that the nation's insurers have been using AI-powered tools to deny some claims from Medicare Advantage plan subscribers.The report found that UnitedHealthcare's denial rate for post-acute care — health care needed to transition people out of hospitals and back into their homes — for people with Medicare Advantage plans rose to 22.7% in 2022, from 10.9% in 2020.The rise coincides with UnitedHealthcare's implementation of an AI model called nH Predict, originally developed by naviHealth, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group that has since been rebranded.Algorithms like nH Predict can analyze millions of data points to generate predictions and recommendations by comparing patients to others with apparently similar characteristics, according to an article on JAMA Network. However, the article cautions that claims of enhanced accuracy through advanced computational methods are often exaggerated.Both UnitedHealth and Humana are currently facing lawsuits over their use of nH Predict. The suits allege that insurers pressured case managers to follow the algorithm's length-of-stay recommendations, even when clinicians and families objected.One lawsuit filed last year against UnitedHealth claims that 90% of the algorithm's recommendations are reversed on appeal.The lawsuit states that UnitedHealthcare wrongfully denied elderly patients care by “overriding their treating physicians' determinations as to medically necessary care based on an AI model that Defendants know has a 90% error rate.”Leaked video shows UnitedHealth CEO defending practices that prevent ‘unnecessary' careAccording to ValuePenguin, a site that helps users compare insurance plans' costs, UnitedHealth's 32% claims denial rate was twice the industry average. Disclosure?CVS, Anthem, other big corporations remove executive photos from their websites after UnitedHealthcare CEO shootingUnitedHealthcare CEO killing spurs Centene to hold virtual meeting and insurers to pull exec photosUnitedHealthcare and other major insurance companies pull company and board leadership bios from their websites after executive's killingUnitedHealthcare and other insurers are pulling info about execs offline after a CEO was killed SecurityThis was preventable': Corporate world shudders at new risks after slaying of UnitedHealthcare CEOHere's how the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO will change executive security moving forwardExperts say companies will more closely track their corporate and executives' social media accounts for any potential threats.Targeted killing of UnitedHealth CEO sends a chill among executivesUnitedHealthcare CEO shooting reveals complexities in safeguarding corporate executivesThomson death benefits payout: $20,893,067100 Most Powerful People in Business Main Takeaways:Andrew Witty (51)The actual CEO at UnitedHealthThe company has been in the spotlight this year after suffering a major cyberattack, and Witty testified before Congress that data from “maybe” one-third of Americans was stolen.!28.5 POC/17.5 FMary Barra (9) was a DEI placement, Sorry, Mary.One black man? And it's a 17-year-old from a horrible restaurant. Sorry, Damola Adamolekun (89)Became CEO in August 2024; bankruptcy plan approved 10 days laterWhere's Lowe's CEO/Chair and FedEx board member Marvin Ellison?How about Eaton ($143B) CEO/Chair Craig Arnold?Also Nom chair at Medtronic ($107B) where he has 11% influenceDaniel Ek (37) way higher than Tik Tok founder and ByteDance Chair Zhang Yiming (92) from Spotifybut nobody from Snap or RedditCarlos Tavares (62)“Carlos Tavares, CEO of Stellantis, is a self-described “petrol-head” whom colleagues view as a “Samurai” laser-focused on building competitive car brands.”“on a daunting path to turn around the carmaker's fortunes before he retires in 2026. Stellantis is dealing with a bloated inventory following unpopular price hikes, with profits nearly halving in the first half of 2024 to $5.6 billion”Fired last weeK: Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares lost control of the automaker with ‘arrogant' mistakes, sources sayDoesn't the fact that co-CEOs are listed together undermine the entire list? It means the position is powerful and not the person:Netflix: Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters (41)KKR: Scott Nuttall and Joseph Bae One of the most powerful people in business in the world doesn't even have a picture? Charlwin Mao (77): CEO and Cofounder of Chinese social media company XiaohongshuSatya Nadella (3) is more powerful than Mark Zuckerberg (7) and Jeff Bezos (11)?

...Ron then achieved his proudest accomplishment to date: founding the fastest-growing commercial real estate firm in Long Island: American Investment Properties. His passion for real estate grew out of his childhood experience of watching his father survey buildings and construction sites. “Helping people like my father find the perfect property to call their own eventually became my ultimate dream, “ he said. Welcome back to That Entrepreneur Show. Join our latest conversation with Ron Koenigsberg.Ron's journey to success began in the competitive New York business world. After earning a BS in Accounting from American University's Kogod Business School, he joined Arthur Andersen, excelling in the rigorous tax and financial demands of real estate. Seeking a more dynamic career, Ron earned a master's degree in real estate and development from NYU's Real Estate Institute and led real estate acquisitions at Chiyoda Life, managing a $360 million annual budget.Ron's openness to learning from industry leaders shaped his approach, later guiding him as Senior Vice President at a Long Island commercial brokerage. Drawing on his experience, Ron founded American Investment Properties, now the fastest-growing commercial real estate firm on Long Island, renowned for exceeding client expectations.Recently, Ron earned the prestigious CCIM designation, held by only 6% of commercial real estate professionals.Here are some awards Ron has received:2022 Executive Circle Award by Long Island Business News2022 Platinum Broker Award by CREXI2017 Broker of The Year by Long Island Business News2017 Build Real Estate & Property AwardsSupport the showThis episode is brought to you by Coming Alive Podcast Production: Helping You With All Your Podcasting Needs. You can head to www.comingalivepodcastproduction.com to learn more.Have a question for the host or guest? Are you looking to become a guest or show partner? Email Danica at PodcastsByLanci@gmail.com to get connected.

In this episode of 10x Your Team with Cam & Otis, Jeff Lenning shares his insights on how to enhance business efficiency through smarter data management and process automation. Jeff discusses the importance of streamlining workflows and how leaders can leverage technology to reduce manual tasks, allowing teams to focus on strategic initiatives. The conversation highlights the significance of understanding data flows and implementing systems that support seamless operations. Whether you're a business leader or a team member, this episode offers practical advice on optimizing your work processes for greater productivity and impact.More About Jeff:Jeff Lenning, the founder of Excel University, is a revolutionary force at the intersection of accounting and technology. Starting in Arthur Andersen's audit practice, Lenning's career unfolded through Gateway Computers and Click Consulting Inc., but it was at Excel University where his passion for Excel and technological innovation converged.  As a Microsoft Office Certified Excel Expert, nationally recognized speaker, and former president of CalCPA OCLB Chapter, Lenning's impact on the accounting community is profound. Excel University, launched in 2012, is the culmination of his dedication to empowering professionals with transformative Excel skills. More than an online training platform, Excel University is a dynamic hub where Lenning's expertise and passion converge, providinga comprehensive resource through courses, live office hours, live office hours, webinars, and articles.  Lenning's narrative goes beyond individual and career development; it serves as proof of how accounting practices have transformed with technology. Excel University emerges as a guiding light, symbolizing efficiency, innovation, and empowerment in the era of digital advancements.#10xYourTeam #BusinessEfficiency #DataManagement #ProcessAutomation #WorkflowOptimization #Leadership #TechnologyInBusiness #StrategicInitiatives #Productivity #TeamSuccess #SeamlessOperations #BusinessGrowth #EfficiencyTipsChapters:Time: 00:00 - 05:00Description: Opening remarks and introduction of Jeff Lenning, discussing his background and expertise.The Importance of Streamlining WorkflowsTime: 05:01 - 15:00Description: Exploring how streamlined workflows can enhance business efficiency and productivity.Automating Tasks for Strategic FocusTime: 15:01 - 25:00Description: Jeff shares insights on reducing manual tasks to allow teams to focus on strategic initiatives.Understanding Data Flows for Seamless OperationsTime: 25:01 - 35:00Description: Discussion on the significance of understanding data flows and implementing supportive systems.Practical Advice for Optimizing Work ProcessesTime: 35:01 - 45:00Description: Jeff provides practical tips for optimizing work processes to improve productivity and impact.Closing Thoughts and Key TakeawaysTime: 45:01 - EndDescription: Final reflections on the discussion and key takeaways for listeners to apply in their own teams.Jeff Lenninghttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jefflenning/https://www.facebook.com/exceluniversityinchttps://www.instagram.com/exceluniversity/https://www.youtube.com/c/exceluniversityinchttps://www.excel-university.com/

Welcome to the Hughes Hubbard Anti-Corruption & Internal Investigations Practice Group's podcast All Things Investigation. In this podcast, host Tom Fox is joined Mike Huneke as we explore the recently released 2024 ECCP. In this discussion, Tom and the speaker examine the extent to which the government issues detailed guidance, advice, and settlement documents in areas of law like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The conversation reflects on historical perspectives, including a statement by an SEC commissioner from the 1980s who compared issuing guidance on the FCPA to advising on committing murders. The dialogue also touches on lessons from the Enron collapse and the dissolution of Arthur Andersen, noting the government's cautious approach to putting corporations, employees, and shareholders at risk. The speaker argues that while this guidance can be seen as helping companies avoid misconduct, ignoring or rejecting it can lead to significant legal trouble. Key Highlights ·      Introduction to ECCP ·      Government's Approach to Corporate Risk ·      Mike's Top 5 Takeaways ·      What does it all mean?  Resources: Hughes Hubbard & Reed website  Mike Huneke

Enron: Der Name des Energiekonzerns steht heute für einen der größten Wirtschaftsskandale der USA. Der Konzern manipulierte systematisch seine Finanzen, um Schulden zu verstecken und blähte Gewinne künstlich auf. Mithilfe komplexer Finanzkonstruktionen verschleierte das Unternehmen über Jahre hinweg Verluste. Im Jahr 2001 wurde der Betrug aufgedeckt, was zum raschen Zusammenbruch des Unternehmens führte. Tausende Mitarbeiter verloren ihre Jobs und Altersvorsorgen, und die Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft Arthur Andersen, die in den Skandal verwickelt war, ging ebenfalls unter. In dieser Folge spricht Kayhan mit Investigativreporterin Joana Lehner über die Hintergründe des Skandals und seine Hauptfiguren Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling und Andrew Fastow. Mehr Infos und Fotos findet ihr hier: ⁠www.instagram.com/machtundmillionen⁠ Macht & Millionen - eine Produktion von Business Insider Redaktion: Kayhan Özgenç, Christine van den Berg Produktion und Sound: Peer Semrau Titelmusik: Afonelli Du möchtest mehr über unsere Werbepartner erfahren? Hier findest du alle Infos & Rabatte! ⁠https://www.businessinsider.de/podcasts/wirtschaftskrimi/werbepartner/ Impressum: ⁠http://www.businessinsider.de/informationen/impressum⁠ Datenschutz: ⁠http://www.businessinsider.de/informationen/datenschutz/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Jing sits down with Darryl Wagner, an accomplished actuary and leader with a career spanning over three decades. Darryl shares his insights on resilience, the power of networking, and the importance of volunteering, which played a crucial role in his career progression. He reflects on the collapse of Arthur Andersen in 2002, a pivotal moment that taught him the value of adaptability and the strength of community support. Darryl also discusses his passion for holistic health and how it has shaped his approach to life and work. As a candidate for SOA President-Elect, Darryl outlines his vision for the future of the actuarial profession, emphasizing the need to amplify the impact, identity, and intersections of actuaries worldwide. References https://www.actexlearning.com/products/textbooks/design-your-future-with-the-competency-framework https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nathanworrell_design-your-future-with-the-competency-framework-activity-7216870190104354817-0Zuc?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

It's My Life and I Can Change if I Want To   Take away: The power of mindset and belief in shaping one's financial and personal success. Success isn't just about external circumstances, but about how we perceive and respond to challenges, and our willingness to continually learn, adapt, and push beyond our perceived limitations. Take charge of their beliefs and attitudes, recognizing that these internal factors play a crucial role in achieving abundance and fulfillment in life.   Money Learnings: Richard Walker's mother demonstrated how to make the most of limited resources, such as salvaging food from grocery store dumpsters and eating beans to survive. At a young age, Walker started selling water toys to other kids, demonstrating how to identify and fulfill market demands. He learned to earn money through various means like raking leaves, selling candy, and making bracelets.   He learned to spot opportunities, like buying tubing from a neighbor to make and sell water toys. Walker developed the belief that money is a tool to get what you want, not an emotional entity. Despite financial hardships, he learned not to let circumstances dictate his emotional state or limit his ambitions.   Bio: Richard Walker is the CEO and co-founder of Quik!. Having started over 10 companies since age 12, host of The Customer Wins podcast, author of two books, and father to three boys, Richard empowers people to do their best work. Prior to starting Quik!, Richard was a financial advisor with Financial Network (currently known as Cetera) and a business consultant with Arthur Andersen. He started Quik! in 2002 to help people spend less time processing paperwork and more time on what they do best.   Highlights from this episode: Childhood experiences of poverty and frequent moves can shape one's perspective on money and resilience. Developing an entrepreneurial mindset from a young age can lead to creative problem-solving and financial success. Believing in your ability to change is the first step towards personal growth and transformation. Having a strong motivational desire is crucial for overcoming inertia and taking action towards your goals. Examining and changing limiting beliefs can have a profound impact on behavior and overall outlook. Optimism is a key trait shared by successful people, allowing them to set and pursue ambitious goals. Personal development through reading or listening to books correlates strongly with professional and personal success.   Links: Book: http://amzn.to/iKPWK0 LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/quikformsceo/ Podcast - https://www.quickforms.com/podcast Website – www.quickforms.com Email – rwalker@quikforms.com   Richer Soul Life Beyond Money. You got rich, now what? Let's talk about your journey to more a purposeful, intentional, amazing life. Where are you going to go and how are you going to get there? Let's figure that out together. At the core is the financial well being to be able to do what you want, when you want, how you want. It's about personal freedom!   Thanks for listening!   Show Sponsor: http://profitcomesfirst.com/   Schedule your free no obligation call: https://bookme.name/rockyl/lite/intro-appointment-15-minutes   If you like the show please leave a review on iTunes: http://bit.do/richersoul   https://www.facebook.com/richersoul http://richersoul.com/ rocky@richersoul.com   Some music provided by Junan from Junan Podcast   Any financial advice is for educational purposes only and you should consult with an expert for your specific needs.  

Why do we drift away from our values and our integrity? Is it inevitable? Does it happen to everyone? And what can we do when it happens?John Blumberg joins me to answer these questions. John is a national speaker and author and his thought leadership on integrity deepens and broadens our understanding and experience the concept of integrity.This conversation will make you think! About the Guest:John G. Blumberg is a national speaker and author. His thought leadership on integrity may very well deepen and broaden how you personally experience the concept of integrity. In 1996, John left behind an 18-year career he loved … one that had taken him from CPA to worldwide recruiting responsibilities at Arthur Andersen. Over the two decades that followed, John has evolved his general focus on leadership and culture … to a laser focus on precisely what fuels them. John is the author of four books. His most recent two books are both titled Return On Integrity. One of them was written specifically for the leader-at-the-top of any organization and is subtitled The New Definition of ROI and Why Every Leader Needs to Know It. The other was written for everyone … regardless of title, role or stage of life. It is subtitled, The Individual's Journey to the One Essential Thing. Leading business author Patrick Lencioni describes Return On Integrity as “the most comprehensive compelling guide to core values I've ever seen. It's a treasure for leaders who understand the importance of culture.” About the Host:Amy L. Riley is an internationally renowned speaker, author and consultant. She has over 2 decades of experience developing leaders at all levels. Her clients include Cisco Systems, Deloitte and Barclays.As a trusted leadership coach and consultant, Amy has worked with hundreds of leaders one-on-one, and thousands more as part of a group, to fully step into their leadership, create amazing teams and achieve extraordinary results. Amy's most popular keynote speeches are:The Courage of a Leader: The Power of a Leadership LegacyThe Courage of a Leader: Create a Competitive Advantage with Sustainable, Results-Producing Cross-System CollaborationThe Courage of a Leader: Accelerate Trust with Your Team, Customers and CommunityThe Courage of a Leader: How to Build a Happy and Successful Hybrid Team Her new book is a #1 international best-seller and is entitled, The Courage of a Leader: How to Inspire, Engage and Get Extraordinary Results.www.courageofaleader.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/amyshoopriley/ Resources mentioned in the podcastThe Inspire Your Team to Greatness assessment (the courage assessment).How can you inspire our team to be more proactive, take ownership and get more done?You demonstrate and empower The Courage of a Leader. In my nearly 3 decades of work with leaders, I've discovered the 11 things that leaders do – even very well-intentioned leaders do – that kill productivity. In less than 10 minutes, find out where you're empowering and inadvertently kills productivity, and get a custom report that will tell you step by step what you need to have your team get more done.https://courageofaleader.com/inspireyourteam/ Find John Blumberg's Return on Integrity books here: https://www.blumbergroi.com/book/Find John's first book, Good to the Core, Building Value With...

Season 1, Episode 6: Sanjay Chandra is the Principal and Managing Partner at Trinity Investors, a Texas-based private equity and real estate firm he co-founded in 2006. Sanjay has led Trinity investors to over $7 billion in deals, building a portfolio that includes 160 commercial real estate assets and 19 operating companies.   But Sanjay's journey didn't start in real estate. As a first-generation immigrant with an engineering background, he began his career founding American Leather before transitioning into private equity. In this episode of No Cap by CRE Daily, Jack and Alex peel back the curtains on one of Texas's most recognized investors, exploring Chandra's entrepreneurial journey and his transition into real estate.   TOPICS 0:38 — Sanjay's background 7:59 — Moving into private equity and founding Trinity 14:08 — The private equity business today 16:48 — How Sanjay is approaching portfolio allocation  22:45 — What makes a good OpCo investment? 25:30 — What makes a good real estate deal?  28:00 — What Sanjay looks for in partners 31:50 — The risks of the past few years Sanjay wasn't prepared for 36:30 — The effect of current market conditions on Sanjay's business 38:25 — Is there a rate cut coming? 41:33 — Sanjay's thoughts on bank liquidity 45:18 — Sanjay talks UT and why Austin might be a better living city than Dallas 47:59 — Sanjay's thoughts on Miami 51:09 — Conclusion    We want to thank our sponsor Viking Capital.    For more episodes of No Cap by CRE Daily visit https://www.credaily.com/podcast/   About Our Guest SANJAY CHANDRA Sanjay serves as a principal and managing partner at Trinity and its affiliated companies in a variety of roles and responsibilities on a full time and active basis. Sanjay brings to Trinity over 30 years of experience as a successful entrepreneur and an active private investor.   In addition to his day to day role at Trinity, Sanjay serves as a board member for American Leather, which he co-founded in 1990, and where he was formerly president and CFO. He is a board member for Robokind LLC, ELB Learning, Nuclein LLC, Falcon Structures LLC, Bentwood Kitchens Inc and other affiliate companies, as well as the Longhorn Council of the Boy Scouts of America, where he serves as Vice President of Development. Sanjay is a Special Advisor to Urban Genesis, Capital Boutiq and AllTrades, and serves as Chairman on the Engineering Advisory Board for the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. ​ Before co-founding American Leather in 1990, Sanjay was employed with Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting, a division of Arthur Andersen & Co.), where he specialized in computer integrated manufacturing systems, business systems development and Just-In-Time manufacturing methods. Sanjay also worked with the George Group as director of systems design, where he specialized in cycle-time reduction and other business and manufacturing productivity improvements. George Group was acquired by Accenture in 2007. ​ Graduating with highest honors in 1987 from the University of Texas at Austin, Sanjay received a bachelor's of science in electrical and computer engineering. He is also a CFA charterholder with the CFA Institute. Sanjay resides in Westlake, TX, with Manisha, his wife of over 28 years, and has three adult children.   About No Cap Podcast Commercial real estate is a $20 trillion industry and a force that shapes America's economic fabric and culture. No Cap by CRE Daily is the commercial real estate podcast that gives you an unfiltered ”No Cap” look into the industry's biggest trends and the money game behind them. Each week co-hosts Jack Stone and Alex Gornik break down the latest headlines with some of the most influential and entertaining figures in commercial real estate.   About CRE Daily  CRE Daily is a digital media company covering the business of commercial real estate. Our mission is to empower professionals with the knowledge they need to make smarter decisions and do more business. We do this through our flagship newsletter (CRE Daily) which is read by 65,000+ investors, developers, brokers, and business leaders across the country. Our smart brevity format combined with need-to-know trends has made us one of the fastest growing media brands in commercial real estate.  

How did a Certified Public Accountant launch and scale his recruitment business from the ground up? In this episode, you will hear about Troy's journey in starting and growing his search business! Troy shares the hurdles he faced and his strategies to overcome them and thrive.   Troy is the President of Benchmark Search Group in Dallas. He founded the company in 2018 after working at one of the Big Four accounting firms and more than a decade with one of the largest national recruiting firms.    Troy has built Benchmark's reputation as a trusted advisor for sourcing and recommending the right accounting talent, specializing in direct hire placement, executive search, and temporary staffing for accounting and finance professionals.    Episode Outline and Highlights [02:02] How Troy got into recruiting and was almost fired in his first 90 days. [08:00] Winning Best Place to Work for Working Parents. [11:57] Key challenges in Troy's journey of building his own business. [21:44] Time tracking exercise to improve efficiency while focusing on value-adding activities. [24:00] Hiring a VA and fostering an environment where your team members are proactive. [33:09] Doing things differently to improve the training component. [42:40] Troy shares insights on what he had learned while running his search firm. [50:01] Troy's three most important metrics in running a search firm.   Overcoming Showstoppers When Launching a Search Firm   How a successful search firm owner started his journey is always interesting. Most often, launching your recruitment business can be extremely challenging! Even if you are an excellent recruiter, running your own business is a different ball game; nothing can fully prepare you for it. Troy shared his journey from being a solo entrepreneur to building his own team. Below are the takeaways from the challenges he had, and I am sure you will be able to relate if you are already running your own recruitment business:   Starting as a solo entrepreneur: Troy knew he needed to hire, but it took him nine months to hire his first employee. Slow initial growth: His hiring process was slow, which resulted in impediments. However, Troy focused on hiring top producers from other firms who were looking for a better culture fit, enabling him to build a core team over time. Lack of infrastructure or processes in place: When he started to scale, Troy realized he didn't have enough infrastructure or processes to support his growth. He established SOPs and initiated training programs to create a more scalable structure. Trying to do everything: Troy became a bottleneck as he felt he needed to get involved in everything. He struggled with the need to control all aspects of the business. He eventually learned to delegate and focus on higher-level activities.   Fostering a Proactive Team Environment for Virtual Team Members   A good sign of a great team is when your members come to you and ask to take stuff off your plate rather than you having to reach out and delegate the tasks. This behavior describes Troy's team, especially his virtual assistants. How do you foster a proactive team environment with a virtual team?    Troy fosters a proactive team environment, even with onboarding virtual assistants, by treating them as integral members of the team rather than just freelancers. He emphasizes the importance of full integration, where the VAs are not just completing tasks but are actively involved in the business. An example is when his first VA quickly took on leadership responsibilities and even helped onboard a new marketing VA while he was away, demonstrating trust and empowerment.   Another approach is to ensure that the VAs are involved in the company's operations and goals, which fosters a sense of ownership and commitment. This approach allows them to proactively take on tasks and support the team, contributing to a strong and cohesive work environment despite the physical distance and different time zones.   Troy's Top Three Metrics in Running a Search Firm Metrics and KPIs are not there to micro-manage your team but rather guide them in ensuring that they are prioritizing tasks that contribute to your organization's bigger objectives. I wanted to know Troy's take on the three most important metrics to measure his team's success. He gave a straightforward response: “Recruiters have to have at least, ten interview screens... And then six client interviews in a week... If you end up with three a week, you're going to end up with one to two placements a month. And so there's a scaling factor to that. Then, on the client side, there are at least two meetings with clients every single week. And then that will be five to eight also interviews a week.”   Troy Ashby Bio and Contact Info Troy Ashby, President and Founder of Benchmark Search Group, founded the company in 2018 after working at one of the Big Four accounting firms, in addition to more than a decade of experience working with one of the largest national recruiting firms. With more than 20 years of professional service experience, Troy has built Benchmark's reputation as a trusted advisor for sourcing and recommending the right accounting talent, specializing in direct hire placement, executive search, and temporary staffing for accounting and finance professionals. Troy is responsible for overseeing business development and talent acquisition along with P&L responsibility, marketing, and operations.   Troy's greatest joy comes from encouraging and helping others, personally and professionally. He has a genuine passion for people, developing long-term relationships while working to make a lasting impact in the Dallas Fort Worth community – Troy takes a servant leader attitude to heart and delivers excellence every day. He has a proven track record of building teams, creating culture, and empowering associates, clients, and candidates to win!   He has a passion for developing long-term relationships in both business and his community. He has been actively involved in various professional and civic organizations around DFW chairing committees or serving on boards including the Richardson Family YMCA, The Family Place, the Dallas Regional Chamber, and the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce. He is a graduate of Leadership Dallas and Leadership Richardson and has also been an active volunteer in March of Dimes, Genesis Women's Shelter, and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. He has been a guest speaker for multiple professional associations including the Risk Management Association (RMA) Young Risk Management Association (YRMA) and the Dallas Society of CPAs. Troy has also been cited in industry publications such as the Journal of Accountancy as an expert source   Troy received both his bachelor's and master's degrees in accounting from Oklahoma State University. He is a Certified Public Accountant and previously worked in public accounting at Ernst & Young, Arthur Andersen, and Whitley Penn. He and his wife Cayce have two children, Owen and Claire. Troy places a strong emphasis on family which is why he has built a strong internal corporate culture for his employees, centered around a workplace that has been designated as a Best Place to Work for Working Parents for multiple years.   Troy on LinkedIn Benchmark Search Group website link Benchmark Search on Facebook Benchmark Search on X (Formerly Twitter) Benchmark Search on Instagram Benchmark Search on YouTube   People and Resources Mentioned Clockify Asana The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday   Connect with Mark Whitby Get your FREE 30-minute strategy call Mark on LinkedIn Mark on Twitter: @MarkWhitby Mark on Facebook Mark on Instagram: @RecruitmentCoach   Subscribe to The Resilient Recruiter   If you've been enjoying the podcast, please take two minutes to leave a review. Your review is greatly appreciated because it helps us attract a bigger audience and help more recruiters.  

What if the innovation you believe in is just an illusion? Elliott Parker joins Kevin to discuss the reasons why companies often struggle with innovation, highlighting the "capitalist dilemma" where we prioritize short-term financial capital. Elliott compares modern corporations to wildfire management in the Western United States, to explain how optimizing for short-term efficiency can build up "innovation debt". He shares how to balance efficiency with the need for innovation, both in business and personal contexts. Listen For 00:08 Introduction and Episode Overview 02:33 Elliott Parker's Journey and Background 05:55 Learning from Arthur Andersen's Collapse 08:16 Gerald Shur and the Witness Protection Program 09:03 The Capitalist Dilemma: Optimizing for Short-term Metrics 11:08 The Importance of Resilience Over Efficiency 12:01 Story of Hafthor Bjornsson and Learning Through Stress 15:13 Practical Solutions for Balancing Efficiency and Innovation 18:56 The Importance of Contrarian Views in Business 19:12 Avoiding Extremes: Bleeding from the Eyeballs vs. Complete Chaos 22:08 Learning vs. Execution Problems in Organizations 24:06 Elliott Parker's Optimism About the Future 26:13 Importance of Learning from Diverse Fields 28:08 Controlled Burns: Managing Innovation Debt 34:27 Closing Thoughts and Call to Action Meet Elliott Elliott's Story: Elliott Parker is the author of The Illusion of Innovation: Escape “Efficiency” and Unleash Radical Progress. He is the founder and CEO of High Alpha Innovation, a venture builder that partners with corporations, universities, and entrepreneurs to co-create startups that solve compelling problems. He built his career in strategy consulting at Innosight, the firm founded by Clayton Christensen, in corporate venturing, and as an entrepreneur bringing new ideas to market. To date, he has launched over 40 venture-backed startups. Originally from California, Elliott currently resides with his family in Indiana. He earned a B.S. in Finance from BYU and an M.B.A. from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Book Recommendations The Illusion of Innovation: Escape "Efficiency" and Unleash Radical Progress by Elliott Parker  Napoleon's Maxims of War by Napoleon Bonaparte (Author), George Charles D'Aguilar (translator)  Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World by Marco Iansiti (Author), Karim R. Lakhani  Like this?

Todd Patriacca was more than a dozen years into his finance career when two things happened that accelerated its trajectory. The first was that he found a mentor—or, rather, that his future mentor found him. The second was that he became immersed in Lean culture. Starting his career at Arthur Andersen, Patriacca spent nearly 10 years in public accounting, a span that allowed him to gain a broad perspective on various industries. However, it was in a subsequent role as corporate controller at a private company that he found a mentor to guide him through essential areas like tax, treasury, and operations—preparing him for the CFO role that he eventually assumed. It was during these years that Patriacca was introduced to Lean principles. Initially rooted in manufacturing, Lean focuses on continuous improvement and eliminating waste. Patriacca saw the potential to apply these methodologies to finance. He began by implementing standardized processes and automation, significantly improving efficiency. For instance, 80% of accounts payable invoices with purchase orders became processed without human intervention, allowing his team to focus on exceptions and strategic tasks. Upon joining BVI Medical in 2023, Patriacca continued to champion Lean principles. He established a Center of Excellence in Poland, centralizing operations to enhance efficiency and scalability. His approach to Lean extended to leveraging AI for forecasting and inventory management, exploring opportunities to further streamline operations. When asked how far along in their career finance professionals should be exposed to Lean thinking, Patriacca's response is clear: “As early as possible.” He believes that early exposure helps finance professionals to develop a mind-set geared toward continuous improvement and collaboration. Patriacca's career journey underscores the transformative impact of Lean thinking, illustrating its power to drive efficiency and innovation in finance.

How do you get out of the swirl of busyness and cynicism that it's so easy to get into these days? How do you set aside doubts and imposter syndrome?Rich Walker, CEO and cofounder of Quik!, joins us on The Courage of a Leader podcast to give us profound and practical ways to think about ourselves and our work that will have us being bold and creating the extraordinary.You'll love hearing from Rich! About the Guest:Richard Walker is the CEO and co-founder of Quik!.Having started over 10 companies since age 12, host of The Customer Wins podcast, author of two books, and father to three boys, Richard empowers people to do their best work. Prior to starting Quik!, Richard was a financial advisor with Financial Network (currently known as Cetera) and a business consultant with Arthur Andersen. He started Quik! in 2002 to help people spend less time processing paperwork and more time on what they do best. The best way to reach Richard is by email, rwalker@quikforms.com About the Host:Amy L. Riley is an internationally renowned speaker, author and consultant. She has over 2 decades of experience developing leaders at all levels. Her clients include Cisco Systems, Deloitte and Barclays.As a trusted leadership coach and consultant, Amy has worked with hundreds of leaders one-on-one, and thousands more as part of a group, to fully step into their leadership, create amazing teams and achieve extraordinary results. Amy's most popular keynote speeches are:The Courage of a Leader: The Power of a Leadership LegacyThe Courage of a Leader: Create a Competitive Advantage with Sustainable, Results-Producing Cross-System CollaborationThe Courage of a Leader: Accelerate Trust with Your Team, Customers and CommunityThe Courage of a Leader: How to Build a Happy and Successful Hybrid TeamHer new book is a #1 international best-seller and is entitled, The Courage of a Leader: How to Inspire, Engage and Get Extraordinary Results.www.courageofaleader.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/amyshoopriley/ Resources mentioned in the podcastThe Inspire Your Team to Greatness assessment (the courage assessment).How can you inspire our team to be more proactive, take ownership and get more done?You demonstrate and empower The Courage of a Leader. In my nearly 3 decades of work with leaders, I've discovered the 11 things that leaders do – even very well-intentioned leaders do – that kill productivity.In less than 10 minutes, find out where you're empowering and inadvertently kills productivity, and get a custom report that will tell you step by step what you need to have your team get more done.https://courageofaleader.com/inspireyourteam/ Richard Walker's first bookIt's My Life I Can Change If I Want Tohttps://www.amazon.com/Its-Life-Can-Change-Want/dp/0578074214 Thanks for listening!Thanks so much for listening to The Courage of a Leader podcast! If you got inspired and/or got valuable leadership techniques you can use from this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have questions or feedback about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the...

Send us a Text Message.In this episode, we dive into the fascinating story of Grant Borzikas, the CISO of Cloudflare. From his passion for baseball and a brief stint in accounting to becoming a prominent figure in IT, Grant's journey is anything but typical. Listen as he recounts how his father's influence and his own relentless curiosity led him into the tech world.Grant shares his early experiences balancing financial auditing and computer risk management roles at Arthur Andersen, highlighting the challenges he faced and how he overcame imposter syndrome through continuous learning. His insights and personal anecdotes offer valuable lessons for anyone navigating their career path.We discuss the importance of continuous learning for IT professionals, covering key areas such as understanding personal learning styles, asking fundamental questions, and securing certifications. Grant emphasizes building a strong foundation in technical areas like Linux, networking, and DNS, and staying ahead in rapidly evolving fields like AI and machine learning. Discover how tackling challenging subjects and maintaining curiosity can significantly enhance your career, keeping you relevant and effective in the fast-paced tech industry.The episode also explores the future of AI in cybersecurity, addressing both the promising advancements and the sophisticated threats posed by AI-driven attacks. Learn about the crucial role of data and intelligence in strengthening network security practices and the innovative approaches of companies like Cloudflare. Grant discusses the accessibility of Cloudflare's services, from creating accounts and developing websites to utilizing security solutions with ease.Packed with insights and practical tips, this episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in IT, cybersecurity, and the relentless pursuit of knowledge. Join us as we uncover the remarkable journey of Grant Borzikas and his contributions to the tech industry.What It's Like To Be...What's it like to be a Cattle Rancher? FBI Special Agent? Professional Santa? Find out!Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the Show.Affiliate Links:NordVPN: https://go.nordvpn.net/aff_c?offer_id=15&aff_id=87753&url_id=902 Follow the Podcast on Social Media!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secunfpodcast/Twitter: https://twitter.com/SecUnfPodcastPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/SecurityUnfilteredPodcastYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@securityunfilteredpodcastTikTok: Not today China! Not today

Ready to transform your retirement into an exciting new chapter? If so, listen to Bette Gardner as she shares her transition from a high-paced professional life to a fulfilling period focused on family, hobbies, and volunteerism. Discover how to find joy, purpose, and adventure by tuning into this conversation.    Key takeaways to listen for The impact of entering a new life phase and scaling back professional commitments How to prioritize family while managing a successful career Insights into the creation and impact of the "Friday Night at the ER" simulation Benefits of experiential learning and team collaboration in organizations Why you should remember the little things in life and work   Resources Friday Night at the ER   About Bette Gardner Bette founded Breakthrough Learning in 1994 to offer leadership coaching, management consulting, and business development services. Her interest in systems thinking led her to create innovative tools for managing complex systems, including the flagship product, Friday Night at the ER. This tool emerged from a consulting engagement at an urban hospital and trauma center.   Bette developed computer-based learning and decision support tools throughout her career, including ‘management flight simulators.' She collaborated with Peter Senge and Arthur Andersen on The Fifth Discipline-Interactive, and with High-Performance Systems (now isee systems) on simulations for population health management.   Bette continues to support customers and projects as a senior educator and partners with academic and business leaders to integrate systems thinking into routine work and communities. She holds a degree in psychology from Boston University.   Connect with Bette  Website: Breakthrough Learning LinkedIn: Bette Gardner   Connect with Us Website: Angel Flight West LinkedIn: Alan Underwood  YouTube: Plane Success Instagram: @thealanunderwood Facebook: Alan Underwood

Description: Your WakeUp Call begins when you start to challenge conventional thinking. When you empower yourself to break free from the daily grind. When you choose to design your own lifestyle and economy. Ron Koenigsberg, president of American Investment Properties, discusses the importance of relationships and communication in the commercial real estate industry. He emphasizes the value of working with commercial real estate brokers to gain access to the best deals and shares his insights on finding opportunities in a challenging market.  Ron also highlights the significance of active listening, negotiation skills, and human engineering in achieving success in business and life. In this conversation, Paul and Ron Koenigsberg discuss the importance of sales skills and critical thinking in various aspects of life, including business and personal relationships.  They emphasize the need for active listening, asking questions, and building genuine connections with others. Ron shares his strategies for success as a commercial real estate broker, including using a CRM and regular check-ins with clients. They also discuss the current market opportunities, such as owner financing and the potential for capital appreciation in commercial real estate. Key Takeaways: Building strong relationships with commercial real estate brokers is crucial for accessing the best deals. Active listening and effective communication are essential skills for success in the industry. Negotiation involves finding common interests, identifying conflicts, determining criteria, and seeking compromise. The commercial real estate market can present challenges, but opportunities can still be found by digging deeper and exploring value-add scenarios. Adapting and being resilient is key in a changing market and entrepreneurial landscape. Sales skills and critical thinking are essential in various aspects of life, including business and personal relationships. Active listening and asking questions are key to building genuine connections with others. Regular check-ins and relationship-building are important for success in commercial real estate. There are opportunities in the current market, such as owner financing and potential capital appreciation in commercial real estate.   ► Resources Ron's POWER BROKER Book:   https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CLJ3S428?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_2GJCHWYWGXJMRPBFM5ZE&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR1sIHA9FOrqUCi7lR3oB_0-VBeReqtp-OmvXD8foVMtPmC3XRiR4ZnTFm8_aem_gE2ITBwWT_1lYMI3XPp7Rg Follow Ron on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ron.koenigsberg https://www.facebook.com/AmericanInvestmentProperties How can I help you?  Book a 1 on 1 strategy session here  https://bit.ly/4bXI1CQ Looking for your commercial deam partner? Learn more https://shorturl.at/AzEip Opt into my newsletter  https://shorturl.at/kxMO8 My social media accounts: https://linktr.ee/pauldavidthompson Check out my blog https://pauldavidthompson.com/blog/ Listen to my latest podcast episodes  https://pauldavidthompson.com/podcast-2/ Build your real estate portfolio hassle-free with our Partners at SHARE: https://calendly.com/sfrteam/pdt-share?month=2024-04 Ready to revolutionize your content production? Try Riverside.fm.  https://riverside.getrewardful.com/signup Free guide 'Making Offers Sellers Can't Resist': https://bit.ly/offerguide About Today's Guest:  Ron Koenigsberg is the President of American Investment Properties, Inc., a leading commercial real estate firm. Inspired by his father's work in construction, Ron pursued a career in real estate, earning a BS in accounting and a master's degree in real estate and development. His career includes roles at Arthur Andersen and Chiyoda Life, where he managed large-scale capital and honed his financial expertise. Ron founded American Investment Properties, the fastest-growing firm in Long Island, applying his deep knowledge and passion for real estate to help clients find their ideal properties.  

There are simple, daily habits that can transform your Direct Selling business from ordinary to extraordinary. Whether you're new to the industry or a seasoned veteran, this episode promises to deliver valuable insights and helpful practices to help you keep on striving, pushing yourself and your business out of your comfort zone and into the extraordinary!  Today, I have the pleasure of introducing Danny Lee, the President and CEO of 4Life - a renowned Direct Selling company based in Utah, USA. With a background in accounting and finance, Danny brings a unique perspective to his role, blending analytical acumen with a passion for the industry. Over his 16 years at 4Life, Danny has amassed a wealth of knowledge and is here to share some of his most impactful strategies with us. Danny shares with us the importance of daily habits, emphasizing the true impact of stepping out of your comfort zone . He talks into his beliefs that a successful long-term business is built upon the actions you take at the very beginning of your journey - starting with the end in mind. From financial insights to practical daily routines, Danny offers a comprehensive guide to building and sustaining a thriving Direct Selling business.   We'll be talking about:  ➡ [0:00] Introduction ➡ [3:08] Catching up with Danny Lee ➡ [3:46] A fun fact about Danny ➡ [12:09] The big shift in Danny's career ➡ [14:41] 4Life story ➡ [21:35]  Do you quit or keep pushing? ➡ [23:55] What do you bring to the table? ➡ [26:45] Danny's advice, finding the right direction for your business ➡ [33:16] The financial tool you need to have in your business  ➡ [40:32] Importance of developing good habits for growth ➡ [43:15] Top habits to have for business owners ➡ [49:45] Where 4Life is heading ➡ [53:17] Industry message from Danny ➡ [58:53] Danny Lee's favourite book ➡ [1:02:29] Danny Lee's dream superpower ➡ [1:03:23] Danny Lee's favourite quote ➡ [1:04:29] Danny Lee's advice to his past self ➡ [1:04:35]  Check out 4Life's website   Resources:  Book Recommendations ➡ The 5 am Club by Robin Sharma: https://bit.ly/3znRvci ➡ The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer: https://bit.ly/3zpGRBR ➡ The Way of Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman: https://bit.ly/4euqX9H Quote: ➡  “Wealth comes in having few wants” About our guest: Danny Lee was appointed President and CEO of 4Life in 2017. He came to 4Life in 2008 as the Chief Operating Officer and in 2015, was appointed Chief Marketing Officer. Danny has worked at well-known companies such as Mrs. Fields®, Merrill Lynch, Arthur Andersen, and Overstock.com™ throughout his career, which includes 21 years of executive experience. Danny enjoys creating opportunities to promote the 4Life brand all over the world.  Prior to 4Life, Danny worked at Overstock™ as Senior Vice President of Merchandising as well as Vice President of Finance and Controller. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Utah with dual degrees in accounting and finance. In addition to his professional successes, Danny and his wife Tara have five children aged 7-18.   Connect with Danny Lee:  ➡ Danny Lee's website: https://www.4life.com ➡ Danny Lee's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danny.lee.3382/ ➡ Danny Lee's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/daniellee   Connect with Direct Selling Accelerator: ➡ Visit our website: https://www.auxano.global/ ➡ Subscribe to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DirectSellingAccelerator ➡ Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/auxanomarketing/ ➡ Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/auxanomarketing/ ➡ Email us at grow@auxanomarketing.com.au If you have any podcast suggestions or things you'd like to learn about specifically, please send us an email at the address above. And if you liked this episode, please don't forget to subscribe, tune in, and share this podcast.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of the Arete Coach Podcast, host Severin Sorensen interviews Jack Gelman, CEO of Gelman Associates LLC, revealing profound insights into leadership, coaching, and personal transformation. Recorded on June 18, 2024, Jack shares his extensive experience navigating the business world, including pivotal roles such as Anderson Partner and President & CEO of Alternity Wind Power LLC. Listeners will gain valuable lessons on achieving balance, fostering humility, and cultivating resilience, all of which are essential for both personal and professional growth. The episode, titled "Jack Gelman: Beyond Success - Living a Life of Importance," underscores the shift from achieving success to finding significance. Jack delves into his journey from a high-powered executive to a respected coach and mentor, highlighting the transformative impact of the New Warrior Training Adventure. This experience helped him find balance in his life and ignited his passion for coaching. He also recounts his foundational experiences at Procter & Gamble and General Mills, which provided a solid grounding in marketing, sales, and business commercialization. These early career roles set the stage for his later success in turning around and growing companies like CrossPin, Nashua, and Rust-Oleum. The episode also explores Jack's time in the military as a Naval Aviator and Assistant Professor of Naval Science, where he learned critical lessons in humility and leadership. He discusses the collapse of Arthur Andersen and the importance of having a backup plan, emphasizing resilience and adaptability in the face of unforeseen challenges. These experiences have profoundly shaped his approach to coaching and mentoring, allowing him to guide others through similar transitions and transformations. Throughout the conversation, Jack shares key insights and practical advice, underscoring the value of listening, patience, and living a life of significance. Inspired by Raphael Pastor's idea of transitioning from a life of success to a life of importance, Jack emphasizes the impact of meaningful work that positively affects others. This episode, "Jack Gelman: Beyond Success - Living a Life of Importance," is a treasure trove of wisdom for executives, coaches, and anyone striving for excellence in their professional and personal lives. The Arete Coach Podcast seeks to explore the art and science of executive coaching. You can find out more about this podcast at aretecoach.io. This episode was produced on June 18, 2024. Copyright © 2024 by Arete Coach™ LLC. All rights reserved.

Kevin Berson '96 is the founder of Kinected Advisors, a Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) and Exit Planning Advisory firm. Kinected helps lower-middle market business owners (businesses generating $5M-$50M in annual revenue) navigate the process of selling their businesses for maximum value. Prior to founding Kinected in 2014, Berson spent 18 years with global firms Technicolor and Arthur Andersen. Berson frequently speaks about various M&A related topics and has addressed groups at Entrepreneurs' Organization, Vistage, CalCPA, Exit Planning Institute, Strategic Advisory Board, Bruin Professionals, UCLA Anderson School Alumni, Aerospace & Defense Forum and ProVisors, among others. He has been named by the Los Angeles Business Journal as an Investment Banking Leader of Influence for 2021, 2022, and 2023 and is a member of the Entrepreneurs' Organization M&A Source, ProVisors and Bruin Professionals. The Bruin Success Podcast is hosted and produced by Sara Mosgrove and Kelsey Beisecker. Thank you to our sustaining donors.

Bob Wright is an Illinois guy through and through. He grew up just outside of Chicago. Interestingly enough, he decided much of Psychology was balderdash until he spent time in France. He will tell you this fascinating story.   After returning to the states, he took up the subject for some of his Master's Degree work and then beyond. Although he didn't say it in so many words, once he began truly delving into Psychology, he was quite hooked and made aspects of it his career.   He has been coaching for more than 40 years. He also understands sales and led his first sales course in 1981 for a part of Prudential Insurance where he vastly improved the performance of the group.   Bob and I have quite the conversation as you will see. He even analyzes me a bit. We agreed that we will have a second episode later, but first, I will have the opportunity to talk with his wife, Judith, who is deeply involved with Bob's work at all levels. Stay tuned.   About the Guest:   Bob Wright is an internationally recognized speaker, author, and educator. He's a cutting-edge thinker, called upon by top leaders across the country. He coaches Fortune-level CEOS from coast to coast, as well as entrepreneurs. Part of what Bob loves is hitting every level, people that want to make a difference, people who are movers and shakers in the world, that's where his sweet spot is. In fact, he was called one of the top executive coaches by Crain's Chicago business. He led his first sales course in 1981 for Prudential Insurance, for a division of the organization that was ranked 200th out of 2000 nationally—within a month, they shot up to #16.   He is also a dynamic entrepreneur who has founded several successful businesses His first venture, Human Effectiveness, was ranked tops in the country by the Mercer, as well as Arthur Andersen. He sold that business in 1994 to focus on consciousness, maximizing human performance, and the fulfillment of human potential.   He has sold to Fortune level companies from coast to coast, has managed his own sales force, and was one of the first people in the country to develop a Neurolinguistic Programming Training for sales professionals. Likewise, he is the developer of The Wright Model of Human Growth and Development that we will work with this evening. This is a distinct opportunity to learn some concepts from a master who actually developed this and has helped numerous worked with it over time.   Highly respected by major business figures – he has coached and trained leaders who have risen to national prominence in the areas of finance, technology, retirement, economics, compensation, governance, and the list goes on and on. Bob has trained and supported hundreds of sale professionals to higher levels of performance and satisfaction.  It is common for people he supports to triple and even quintuple income while learning to have greater satisfaction and fulfillment in all areas of their lives. His cutting edge approach to selling is empowered by his revolutionary integrative model of human growth and development. Sales people he coaches find themselves enjoying life more, and succeed even in down markets. The people that he has coached and trained over these years are movers and shakers making a major difference in the world today.   Ways to connect with Bob: drbobwright@judithandbob.com https://drbobwright.com/   About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hi, welcome once again to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here I am your host, Mike hingson. And today we get to talk with Dr. Bob Wright. Bob is by any standard and entrepreneur and I would say very much an unstoppable one. He has started and, and sold many businesses in his life. He actually conducted his first sales course with a division of Prudential insurance in 1981. Now we're starting to pin down his age. And he he made that division go and sales from number 200 In a few weeks to number 16. I liked that. Having been in sales, a lot of my adult life. He loves to coach CEOs and entrepreneurs. And we'll find out what else So Bob, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 02:13 Thank you so much, Michael, I'm looking forward to talking with you.   Michael Hingson ** 02:18 Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. And as I said, we got to have fun doing it. So I think we'll we'll do that. Tell us a bit about tell us a little bit about the early Bob, you know, growing up and all that sort of stuff that sort of shaped where you went and where you have gone in life?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 02:37 Well, yeah, I was the almost the ultimate good boy. Everything My mom wanted me to be going through high school and then college begin throwing some monkey wrenches in the story. And it wasn't until my sophomore year of college when I went to Germany. And I discovered that the narrow world of wooddale, Illinois was far from all that was the world and that the values I learned there were the only values were not the only values in the world. And it was like this. Consciousness shock.   Michael Hingson ** 03:17 What a concept, right? Yeah.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 03:19 Now where's wooddale? West of O'Hare. Back in the days when Midway was the busiest airport in the world. Yeah, we're about 15 miles west of O'Hare.   Michael Hingson ** 03:30 I have relatives in Genoa and DeKalb. So, and I was born in Chicago, so I'm a little bit familiar with the area, but I don't think I've been to wooddale   Dr. Bob Wright ** 03:41 Oh, you've probably been through it if you know, Park Road. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 03:45 I might have very well been through it. Well, I live for my first five years on the south side of Chicago 5017 Union, and it's changed a lot since we moved in 1955. So that's okay, though. Things do need to change. It makes it makes for an interesting world otherwise, so where did you go to college?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 04:06 Oh, well, I started at Lawrence in Appleton, Wisconsin. Ah, I went to school in Germany. Left Lawrence came back to the quarter at the College of DuPage. west of Chicago, graduated with my bachelor's from the University of Illinois, Chicago in sociology, because that was the subject that gave me the most credits and everything else I had done in my life. And so then I went to school, in in, in France after that, and that blew my mind even further. I mean, just horrendously drew mind blew my mind even further. Because I was always looking for what I thought of as ultimate truth. And the French experience just was the mind blowing, launch in some ways of my, my my life   Michael Hingson ** 05:04 a lot different than even Germany, right? Well, it was different   Dr. Bob Wright ** 05:08 than Germany and I had a database. The irony is that I'm in something that people think of as psychology, positive psychology, performance psychology, I think of it as my research in my life work as optimizing adult development. And going into high school, there was this really, you know, good counselor, we thought that my friends went to see. And I was already kind of against counselors because the the social worker and the grade school my mom's friend, and she would be sitting in our kitchen crying in our coffee about boyfriends every Saturday morning. And so I was going already these people are pretty darn weird. But my friends start seeing this woman, and and she starts telling these best, brightest kids in high school that they're latent ly suicidal. And they go, Whoa, this is really sick. Oh, stuff. And so then I was rapidly against psychology. Now, the rest of that story that is public domain, is there a husband was this guidance counselor down the road, Irving Park Road, another 20 some odd miles at Lake Park High School, they were a murder suicide. He boy, so that's nailed down my assumption. This is all inland as sickos know, I'm in school in France, and I'm going to study phenomenology. But my in six months, my French wasn't good enough to understand philosophy classes. So I ended up taking psychology classes, I could understand them. They were an English, that got me into group dynamics, which led to the rest of the story that I have discovered, there are well Valid Elements of psychology. And it is really the people not the discipline. That was the problem back then. So   Michael Hingson ** 07:07 they weren't all just sickos after all? I   Dr. Bob Wright ** 07:11 don't think so. Either that or you joined the ranks? No, no, no, not at all. But the profession in search of validity for a long time, right, so profoundly insecure? Well, it's   Michael Hingson ** 07:23 a it's a tough subject, because a lot of it is is so I'm not quite sure how to describe it. It's so nebulous, it's so much that you can't really just pin it down and define it. You're dealing with emotions, you're dealing with people's attitudes, and so on. And that's really pretty nebulous, it's really kind of hard to just define it in so many words. Yeah,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 07:51 if we don't go to human experience, then we'd have nothing. But you've got to figure back in the 50s and 60s and 70s, the humanistic psychology movement was transforming businesses, or Life magazine had an issue that said, sooner or later, everybody's going to be an encounter group at their church or somewhere else. And so what what happened was, they still never tied that up to performance. And so you fast forward, and you get a guy named Goldman who bring in Oh, psychology, so wanted to be as science. And he starts out with positive psychology. He denies everything before, which is just absolutely not true. He and I are similar ages, and we grew up breathing those things. But positive psychology now has a deep research base that is becoming less and less nebulous, whether it's the emotional part with Frederick SENS Research, or his his part with other positive psychology research. So it's kind of cool, what's happening. And it just, unfortunately, doesn't include what happened before because it was so thoroughly attacked.   Michael Hingson ** 08:58 Well, and it's, it's an evolutionary process, right. Yeah, you got it. Yeah. Which is, which is exactly the issue. And that's, that's true of a lot of sciences. I mean, we can go back and look at physics and look at any any of the sciences and they've evolved over the years for a long time, classical mechanics, was it everything fit Newtonian law, but then we discovered that well, it's not quite that way, especially when you get closer to the speed of light. A lot of things change, but also, attitudes and philosophies of of sciences have have changed. So what you're saying certainly is no surprise, psychology as a science, social science or whatever, is still a pretty new science by comparison. So you're   Dr. Bob Wright ** 09:47 obviously a science guy more than I knew. And so, did you read Boones structures of Scientific Revolutions a long time ago. So that is where the term is. Trent was a sap perspective transformation, a new paradigm. That's yeah, he coined the term paradigm as we use it today. And he's in particular talking about the disconnect between Newtonian physics and einsteinium physics. And that gets us down to all the different paradigms, because a paradigm is a shift in knowledge. And the paradigm that psychology is wrestling with, is the shift from pathology and problems to potential and realizing making real our potential. Right.   Michael Hingson ** 10:35 And again, still, that is a harder thing to quantify them what you can do with a lot of physics, we also know that Einsteinian physics doesn't go far enough, but it's what we know, or what we have known. And again, we're evolving, but in the case of what you're talking about, it's a lot harder to pin down and put an exact number two, which is what also makes it a little bit more of a challenge. And we need to learn better how to define that, and communicate it as we move forward.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 11:03 Well, you know, that's the bind of pure research, but I've got a slightly different perspective on this. So what we measure our success against is the total quality of somebody's life, their relationships, their work, their personal concept, and their spiritual and their service to our world. And so in our work, now, our foundation is closing down in December, sadly, because we didn't survive COVID. But we had more than 90% of our students felt that they were living with a higher sense of purpose and spiritual integration. They tended to make more money by 30% or more in the first year of working with us. And and the divorce rate in our advanced couples was under 4%. And in the entire school, was under 9%. The last time we took a survey on that. So when if you've got the elements that typical markers of a quality of life, looking there, and they their self esteem was higher, people gave them comments that they looked better, and even commented to a lot of them that they look younger. So if you take those variables, we're now starting to find something for which everyone is reaching, whether it's better relationship, more money, more career fulfillment, or more contribution to the world, we help you be more you. And our core assumption is, then you will automatically grow in all those areas, the mistake so many disciplines make is they forget that the core element of that entire formula is the individual. And if we can help the individual optimize their self them themselves, then they are going to automatically begin shifting how they operate in those areas and get stronger and stronger in directions that are more satisfying, fulfilling, fulfilling and contributory to our world. By   Michael Hingson ** 12:52 definition. Yeah.   12:54 Isn't that cool?   Michael Hingson ** 12:55 Which makes a lot of sense. Well, some for you. You went on and got a doctorate and so on. But when you when you started coaching, I guess really the question is what got you into the whole environment of applied integrative psychology and coaching? What what really got you there? Okay,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 13:16 so, remember, we have a totally anti psychology, right? I have a taste of what we called existential psychology and group dynamics in France. So when I came back from France, I looked for the strongest program to get more training. And it was training in, in all the existential application of Gestalt transactional analysis. And the various body works and things of the time. And I studied those, I became a trainer in those. And it was wonderful to watch people learn and grow. But you still couldn't make a lot of money that way. So I went back to school and got an MSW and I, my goal was to be a therapist, therapist, and my partner Bob Kaufman was my supervisor and my MSW. And we built a business called human effectiveness. And by the mid 80s, we were doing 300 services a week, a third of whom were psychology types. And, and so that was my retirement goal. And in addition to that, we were leading in a lot of ways in what was called employee assistance and manage psychiatric care. And we were doing consulting and training, which is where you heard the story about Prudential. And so that was kind of the way to make money doing it and get licensed because I knew I was good at helping people and I just wanted the easiest and quickest license to get and that was an MSW   Michael Hingson ** 14:49 said then you got that and what did you do?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 14:51 So human effectiveness was our was our business from the 1979 To 1994.   Michael Hingson ** 15:02 And that was a business you started human effectiveness. Yeah. And   Dr. Bob Wright ** 15:05 so we had a very unique model of therapy using individual and group off of what Bob postle called contemporary Adlerian. Therapy. And we developed that more and more and more. And we started getting higher and higher functioning clients. And our clients were moving way beyond the therapy ideal. Their lives were taking off in all the areas we've discussed. And we started that we're doing well, in 82, we hired a PhD, you have to be dissertation approved, PhD from Yale, they had him start doing consumer research, found out that people loved what they were getting one time, near the mid 80s, I had a two year waiting list. And so when we asked our clients what was going on, and they said, We love it, but you're not telling us everything they wanted to know. And my first master's, which was in communications, was helping people in a psychiatric hospital, oriented to that psychiatric hospital. And so, what what, I've always been a consumer guy, and so we started putting together seminars to help our clients understand what was going on. So that changed our model, from individual group to seminars to training them, we did more and more research and they kept telling us more and more of what they wanted. So the model eventually, included Alfred Adler, existential developmental Albert Adler's areas of life, existential principles, and developmental levels, all in an axis of consciousness, helping people grow their consciousness, awareness and responsibility in life. And so those seminars were training people, many of whom could analyze their own life situation and strategize better than licensed psychologist. So we begin, we begin going, why why aren't people getting credit for this. So that's why we started graduate school on the road. And I left the therapy metaphor in 91. We started working towards developing our model in our seminars to be more and more effective with Judith in 9495, which led to the right foundation for the realization of human potential, and the right graduate university for the realization of human potential, offering master's and doctoral degrees in transformational leadership and coaching. We even got an MBA credited. Now that is, now that the foundation is closing down at Maharishi University in Iowa. So the program goes on. But the foundation is no longer running   Michael Hingson ** 17:40 it. And Judith is   Dr. Bob Wright ** 17:43 Judith and I are stepping into what we think is our ultimate mission is couples, couples, and helping people come become more conscious, responsible, satisfied in service filled couples. And so we're kicking that off in January.   Michael Hingson ** 17:58 And how long have you guys been together?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 18:02 We got married in 81. So it's 42 years or two years? Yeah. Wow.   Michael Hingson ** 18:08 Well, you have beat Karen and me by a year. But as I think I told you, she passed away last year. So we were married for two years and loved it and lots of memories. But I can appreciate the fact that you guys have made it work. And you've also worked together, which is as good as it gets. Yeah,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 18:28 so so the last two books we've written together, and to understand so the last book is called battling to Bliss. The couple's Guide to 15 Common fights, what they really mean how they can bring you closer. So our previous book called transformed. We had one paragraph as we were driving back from Texas to Illinois, that we fought over for probably an hour. And Judith has this wonderful mind. And I just, I'm the one that pushes things to get done. So I said that that sentence is good enough. She says, No, that sentence doesn't work with this. I'm going to come on down it. So she wins that sentence. And she wins. She ended up winning all four sentences. But I ended up winning and moving on. So movement is more my specialty and accuracy and depth is well we both do depth is Judith. So battling to Bliss is really about people people think fights are a problem. They don't understand fights are a symptom that you're dealing in, that you're working on becoming a better stronger couple together.   Michael Hingson ** 19:36 Yeah, and so there's nothing wrong with disagreeing as long as you eventually work together and recognize what you're doing and need to do. So. You're both one which is what it's really all about.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 19:50 Amen. You got it. So you develop   Michael Hingson ** 19:54 this thing you call the right model of human growth and development. And that's I guess what you're basically alluding to in the early 1990s? Well, I actually   Dr. Bob Wright ** 20:05 had Scott started with that research in 1982. And it developed. So the first thing we did was help people vision. Now, the work from Dr. Boyd says that Case Western is that vision is way more important than goals. So we'd have people write a vision in seven areas of life and measure their progress against that every four months. And they go, Wow, man, we're growing twice as fast. But you're still not telling us everything. We said? Well, the truth of the matter is, we think of you developmentally and we're seeking to help you develop in ways that you didn't get developed are all like plants that never got perfect nourishment. And we're helping you fill in those things. And so that led to a developmental axis of consciousness for them. And then we did another round of research. And they said, we're still not telling you said anything. We said, Well, the truth of the matter is, we're existentialists. And we, we just think if you're fully present in here, now you'll learn you'll grow, and you'll become the best you you can become. And so that brought in an existential aspect about the here and now, people engaging. And it's all driven by what we call the assignment way of living, which was started by Bob postal, who was part of the Alfred Adler Institute in Chicago back in the 1970s.   Michael Hingson ** 21:24 Okay, so but you developed it, and is that what you use in the the coaching that you did? And that you do?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 21:33 That? Absolutely. I'm working with. I'm working with an attorney who's shifting professions now, from law to coaching. And so what I do periodically is help her understand when she has a win. How did that win, take her on a step forward in her development, and then I help her understand how that win actually can be leveraged if she will have the discipline to keep doing it. Most. There's a thing called neuroplasticity. And most of the world is a little bit over in love with it. Because thinking oh, yeah, we can automatically change No, it takes 1000s of repetitions. So help her understand a vision of what it's going to mean to consistently redo that way of doing things. She challenges unconscious limiting beliefs, because our program was pretty much done by age seven, we are living out a self fulfilling prophecy off of our early programming. If we don't do things to transform, we can learn and grow. But transforming is the challenge.   Michael Hingson ** 22:39 Yeah, so what's the difference between growth and transforming?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 22:45 We're working on that for the founder of an incredible Japanese coaching group called coach a and his name is Ito son. And, and so learning is knowing something I didn't know before. Growing is doing something I've never done before. But in Judas research, the people who are in touch with their deeper yearning, engage more, and they learn more, it reveals to them regulating their limiting beliefs and their skill deficits. And it also causes them to share with other people that causes them to begin challenging their limiting beliefs. And so learning and growing can be yearning, it can be learned, knowing things and doing things who would have never done we call that liberating. When you're doing things you never would have done. Transforming requires that you pray that you that you strategically do new things in the direction that will consistently challenge some of your unconscious limiting patterns. If you think about what we have our neural pathways imagine we have a neural highway. And everything we do runs along that neural highway. But we want to cut a take a shorter road from Highway A to highway B. So we go into the jungle. Well, we get into the jungle halfway and we look back, we can't even see where we've gone. To get to highway B, we may get to highway B, but we will find out how to get back to Highway A. So we're still going to be doing the same thing. So we the first level of of as we think about it of transformation, neuro transformation is going back and forth along that path enough that we can see where we've been and we can repeat it. Then we have to widen that path. And we have to turn it into a well trodden path. And eventually if it becomes a superhighway, we have transformed and we are doing things that we never could have done before.   Michael Hingson ** 24:49 How do you get people to really overcome their limiting beliefs what what is it that you do as a coach that brings people maybe To that aha moment, and maybe it isn't quite so dramatic, maybe it isn't that at all, but it's more subtle, but how do you get people to the point where they recognize, oh, maybe it's not really quite what we thought, because not everybody's gonna go to France. Okay,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 25:16 so first of all, none of us has ever done. So I'm still dealing with my own limiting beliefs, and, and building new neural pathways the same way. But there's a way we start is what we call an Adlerian Lifestyle Analysis, Alfred Adler helped people understand there are perceptions, the unconscious beliefs that guide us, we have empowering our perceptions, limiting beliefs, empowering beliefs, that we we have limiting beliefs is our language for the limiting perceptions in Adlerian terms. And so when we understand that most of those were installed, by the time we were seven, we can do a lifetime and Adlerian lifestyle analysis that will help you understand your early programming in a way that can empower your growth the rest of your life or inform your growth the rest of your life and your learning and ultimate transformation.   Michael Hingson ** 26:15 Okay, and how do people perceive that?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 26:21 Well, the first time I experienced it was in front of a room of maybe 50 therapists. And it was a demonstration by Bob postal, the Adlerian, I mentioned. And I went up front. And in about 1510 minutes, I'm bawling my eyes out, as he's basically telling me my life story in ways that were profoundly true that I had never imagined. And most, most people except the most defensive, are blown away, that it can be that easily accessed.   Michael Hingson ** 26:54 So, alright, so he, he demonstrated that he knew you better than you thought he knew you and perhaps better than you knew yourself, then what?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 27:05 Well, first of all, he called it like mind reading. And it's what it feels like it feels like he's talking to somebody who's doing mind reading, and Bob postal it, boiled it down to like seven questions. Your birth order is super important in how you look for affection and affirmation in life. If you're the firstborn, did you win? Did you maintain what Adler called a position of primacy? Or were you overrun by a second, third or fourth born? In which case, that's a terrible blow to your self esteem? And so, how we negotiate birth order is probably the most important element of that. And then there are other elements, like who was mom's favorite? Who was dad's favorite? And we get everybody you know, most 90 90% of people say, Oh, no, my mom and dad, they were equal. That's absolute horse manure. And so what we get to that by is who is most like dad, who was most like, mom? And if you were in the zoo, walking and looking at things who would mom who would be holding Mom's hand and who would be holding Dad's hand? And then once we get to larger families, it gets even more complex?   Michael Hingson ** 28:15 How do you deal with that? And I asked that, knowing that in my family, of course, I was blind, I was the second child. And I think my brother always felt like he wasn't quite as well received, even though he was two years older. But in reality, when I look back on it, what my parents did was really worked, not to show favoritism, but they did have to do things differently with me than they did with him because he could see, and I didn't, but I think they really worked at it. But I think his perception always was that he wasn't the favorite, even though that I don't think that really was the case as I sit and analyze it even now.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 29:03 Well, you know, he may not have been wrong. He might not have been got more attention. So the primary indicator of a favorite is attention. It doesn't necessarily mean for what, because you get seen more, you get more interest more, you develop a sense that you matter. And he's developing a sense that he doesn't matter. So in Adlerian terms, you may have overrun him, and that was a terrible blow to his self esteem.   Michael Hingson ** 29:33 Yeah. Yeah. Even though this Oh, sure. If you want   Dr. Bob Wright ** 29:38 go ahead. So how's he doing today?   Michael Hingson ** 29:40 He passed away in 2015. So he died of of cancer.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 29:45 How did he do in life? Well,   Michael Hingson ** 29:47 fair question. He ended up working for the Customs Organization, the US customs in communications. He was married for, gosh, probably close to 40 years as well. I'm not sure that he was as happy as he would like, just in looking at it. He tended to want to be very controlling. And his wife didn't have a problem with that. But I think that I think there were some issues, but I think he did. Okay, but not great.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 30:28 So you've been happier in life than he has, even though you have a profound challenge. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 30:35 I think the challenge is more perceptual than in reality, but Yeah, probably. That's it.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 30:41 Thanks very much.   Michael Hingson ** 30:44 That's probably so.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 30:47 But I also so your dad overran him. Yeah, I   Michael Hingson ** 30:51 hear you. You did. Even though we even though later in life, he was in Florida, and I was in California, or in New Jersey. I think I appreciate what you're saying. Yeah.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 31:05 Yeah, it's it's hard for us to accept when we start looking at these unconscious elements of what's called the family system. And and the system is there's no blame. There's no blaming. Yeah. But But who is your mom's favorite?   Michael Hingson ** 31:21 Well, I'm sure that that there are those that would say it was me. I'm not, I'm not really so sure. Because the way my mom interacted with us, was was different with each of us. She had to help me learn braille again, when I was going from third to fourth grade. And she took the time to do that. But she also did take the time with my brother, but I'm sure that he would tell you that I was,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 31:48 well, what was your dad's favorite? Oh,   Michael Hingson ** 31:53 I'm sure that, that my dad and I spent more time together because I was interested in things that he was much more than my brother like electronics and science. So I'm sure I   Dr. Bob Wright ** 32:02 was, who was murdered?   Michael Hingson ** 32:06 Gee, that depends, I guess, on everything, but probably I was. Nobody ever wants to answer this, by the way, probably. But probably for a lot of reasons. I would say I was. Yeah,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 32:15 pretty obviously. So we don't know what his potential would have been. Right, who got developed? And so my guess is he was actually your mom's favorite. He might very well have been. But But I think it was your mom's favorite because your mom counted on him to keep things working in the family while he was hungry, but didn't didn't know how to do anything. But please her as she was ministering to you. And as your dad was enjoying playing with you? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure there's   Michael Hingson ** 32:50 a lot of there's a lot of truth to that.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 32:52 Yeah, I know. I just, it's so much fun to get out of this. Michael. Yeah. It   Michael Hingson ** 32:59 makes a lot of sense to, to really look at it in the in the way that you're doing. But I think there's there's another aspect of it, and it's part of human nature, that gets to be a challenge. Because he was probably a person who felt not as happy, not as loved and didn't know how to deal with that, and maybe address it in his own life. And I learned how to do some of that, and learn how to deal with a lot of the challenges that I faced socially, and, and economically. But I think that one of the things that he never did learn was how to go back and look at himself and look at his life and grow in the same way. Yeah,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 33:50 amen. Probably wasn't as inquisitive as you know,   Michael Hingson ** 33:54 I'm sure he was not. That I'm very sure of. And it's it is a it's an issue because one of the things that I maintain today is that all of us can do so much more to grow. If we would spend more time even just in the evening before we go to sleep, being introspective, looking at whatever happened on a given day. And why it happened the way it did, what could we improve? What went great, what could we even have done to make what went great greater? And I know that he didn't do a lot of that,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 34:28 you know, there's actually a spiritual discipline with the max handle Rosicrucians that, that goes into that. I'm not a follower of theirs, but this they call it a retro flexion or retrospect, I forget what they call it. Exactly. Because when I was in school in France, the game was the minute your head hit the pillow. You were to rewind your day in reverse to when you first woke up. Yeah, and it's incredibly challenging. It is our emotions get I get sparked off, we get to see where we had unfinished business during the day. And it took me all of pretty close to a year before I got back to a morning, and that was pretty diligence, did diligent application. And so I think you're absolutely right.   Michael Hingson ** 35:23 There's a lot of value in in doing it. Because no one can teach us anything people can give us information. But we have to teach ourselves. And I've learned, even just this year, I now hate calling myself my own worst critic. When I listen to speeches and other things I always have said, I'm my own worst critic, and when in reality is the case is I'm my own best teacher, because I'm the one that can teach me. And it's always good to take a much more positive approach. And recognizing that actually helps when I go back and analyze the day and analyze the things that have gone on. Because I look for the lessons. And the lessons aren't just in the things that went wrong or the difficult things. The lessons can come from anywhere, but we have to look for them.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 36:08 So you just defined the transformation of a perfectionist, perfectionist, criticized because it's the work outcome that matters. And people that are learning and growing and stepping beyond perfection. Look for the lessons. So you just described you growing, from avoiding mistakes, to feeling more and more success and satisfaction in learning and growing. Congratulations. Well, thank   Michael Hingson ** 36:37 you. And even the so called Mistakes You know, there aren't they're not a mistake until it ended up being one. And again, the lesson is, what do you learn and do about it? Yeah,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 36:46 but you're unusual, Michael, because you've actually taken a philosophy and applied it. A lot of people would say the same things you just said. But they don't practice it. I believe you practice it.   Michael Hingson ** 36:58 And you know what? It's fun.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 37:01 It says pretty clear. Yeah. You have fun way before now. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 37:05 Well, I like to look for the for fun. Personally, I think life is an adventure. For years, I've called the Internet, a treasure trove an adventure. And yeah, there's a lot of stuff. And there's a dark side. And there are all sorts of different things that go on. But there's also so much information that's out there if we bought look for it and use it. Amen. So it really, it really helps a great deal. And you know, so it's, it's worth doing well, in your case. So, you you have been so what business do you own? Now? What What's your business called? Or do you have one right now? Well,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 37:47 we write business Inc has been our flowthrough business forever. But we are reemerging to the world as live right? Li ve WRI ght with Judith and Bob. That is our new go to market identity. Pool.   Michael Hingson ** 38:07 That's a great name. And certainly, from a marketing standpoint, one that somebody can remember.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 38:14 Well, right now we only exist online is D r B o b.com. And Dr. Judith, Bob Wright, dot com or Judith wright.com I think or at any rate, we don't have a joint website yet. We'll be launching that in December, God Willing and the creek don't rise   Michael Hingson ** 38:35 well and make it accessible. And if you want help with that, I can help   Dr. Bob Wright ** 38:41 you. So so cool. Cool. I'm gonna have to find out more about what you can do them. Because I really don't know,   Michael Hingson ** 38:48 we can talk about that. And we can talk about ways to do it. And it's and it's something that that you should do. Because the reality is what most people don't realize is that the cost of doing business should really make sure that inclusion is part of it. You know, I when looking for jobs and talking to many, I'll just use blind people as an example. We've had companies say but I can't buy a screen reader for you. That's not in our budget. Well, you know, sure it is you buy computer monitors for everyone. I don't need a monitor. But I do need a screen reader. Inclusion ought to be part of the cost of doing business.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 39:26 Well, which is why you're going to be our consultants. So we our desire is to have our work available in all languages. We're going to be putting out our couples book the heart of the fight in Spanish. The heart of the fight reached number one nonfiction best seller in China, Judas soft addictions solution is, as of our last knowledge, number 10 self help in China. And so the languages aren't just words and spoken are they but there's I mean, there's there's what do you call blind accessibility? Michael?   Michael Hingson ** 40:06 Well, there are a couple of ways to do something like that. A lot of it is just doing the right things on on your website, or when you produce a book, if you have graphs, they should and pictures, they should be defined. You can do an electronic version, you can do an audio version. And there are ways also to put the book in Braille. And again, we can we can certainly talk about that. Well,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 40:28 I'm zipping myself an email to circle back with you on that. So let's keep going with what you've got today.   Michael Hingson ** 40:36 Well, definitely one thing I need to say, because I was looking for when I was getting ready for now, is I would like to have pictures of your book covers that we can put in the cover notes so that people can go off and find them later.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 40:51 We'll get it. Perfect.   Michael Hingson ** 40:53 Well, tell me a little bit more about you and coaching. What ultimately do people get out of what you do? After a question,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 41:07 you know, I'm gonna go back a little further, we get everybody knows we get what we put into things. Yeah. And so to get   Michael Hingson ** 41:16 the most out of coke, good psychological answer, go ahead.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 41:19 Well, I'm actually going to answer it. I appreciate the work up to I'm gonna work up to it. So the investment is time, money and personal upset. The price most people are not willing to pay is the person will upset we have to do to stretch beyond our own serious limit deeper mental limitations. And when we do that, for me, I had a lot of limiting beliefs about money. I could give you stories, we talked about the mythology rules, myths and beliefs about money when I looked growing up, my dad's brothers, who had way more money than we had, didn't have a marriage as good as my dad's marriage. And one of my dad's brothers was a particular jerk. And he was the wealthiest of them. And so I draw this conclusion from early on in life, because we all grew up within miles of each other, or blocks, actually, that it's either money or relationship. So a limiting belief I've had to challenge forever, is money and relationship. And fortunately, I'm making some progress on that and intend to make even more before I'm done. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 42:37 it's interesting. People think that if they have a lot of money, they're successful, and they're happy. And what pops into my mind? And I'm not going to try to get political here. But what pops into my mind is Donald Trump, I wonder how happy he really is.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 42:54 You know, we can actually dive right into the happiness things. First of all, there's a lot of research on it that would show that he doesn't have the characteristics. But that's another story. But right, I hear you. But I think everybody has a formula for happiness, most of them are wrong. Yeah. And I think the good fortune in my relationship foundation is relationship. You know that happiness research says, the biggest variable is learning and growing. The happiest people are engaged in learning and growing. There, they have New Horizons coming up, that they can learn and grow together and a couple or whatever they're doing, but they learn and grow. That's happiest.   Michael Hingson ** 43:33 That's the most successful thing that one can do. And it is all about learning and growing, and wanting to learn and grow. And I think he pointed out very well, a lot of people will provide lip service to a lot of this. But the reality is, they're not really growing. It's just a lot of talk. Habits are hard to break it. I've heard all sorts of different numbers about how many times you need to do something to change a habit. But still, ultimately, it doesn't happen until you can, not only intellectually but emotionally recognize that the change needs to happen and then do it.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 44:15 So that's that's the end the cost. So Judas seminal work on soft addictions was looking at the cost that turned out causes a lot of people to take on the habits. However, a habit is a behavior to order to change the deeper level behind that habit. Because they have, it's always doing something for us in service of a limiting belief. And so a limiting habits because we remember two kinds of beliefs, two kinds of habits, empowering and disempowering. And so it's really important to understand, if I really want to learn and grow to the max, I have to go through the discomfort of not just changing the habit, but changing by myself my thoughts, feelings and actions at the foundational level   Michael Hingson ** 44:59 and that's The cost. Yes, sir. And it's it's not as expensive as one might think, if you really apply it and do it. But the problem is, so many of us don't want to do that, because we're just, I hate hearing while I'm, you know, people are in their comfort zone, they don't want to change. We talk about change all the time. But I think people don't want to change I think we we are brought up to just like our comfort zones and not wanting to change, we don't do what we talked about before retrospection or introspection, that's too much work. And so we we don't get taught by others nearly as much as we should. The real value of change, but change is all around us. And change is going to be everywhere. I after September 11, I kept hearing, we got to get back to normal, we got to get back to doing things the normal way. And I bristled at that. And it took me a little while to understand why I was so upset with it. But I finally realized, normal will never be the same. Again, we can't get back to normal because if we do, we're going to have the same thing. And we will have learned absolutely nothing. Even with a pandemic, I hear about getting back to normal, but normal will never be the same again, the   Dr. Bob Wright ** 46:17 problem that you're getting it from me that I think about with that usually is that normal is is average, and none of us really want to be average, we want to be better than normal. So why would we want to get back to normal when we still haven't hit our potential? Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 46:36 But we're not thinking about that. And we haven't learned to think in that way. Until we   Dr. Bob Wright ** 46:41 understand Judith research. So there's yearning, engaging, and regulating seeing where my limitations come in. Then liberating challenging those limitations. It's so challenging those limitations, and then re matrixing. And then I have to keep stretching myself towards the new, further goals. That forced me to look beyond my limiting beliefs, because they're always there. And they're always are rising beyond them.   Michael Hingson ** 47:07 How do we get people to be able to do that?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 47:10 I don't, we don't get people to do anything. It's all about investment. Will they pay the price? Spend the time reading the money, what they need to do? I was talking to a guy today who's ultra ultra wealthy, who started out with my former partner. And he would never have been able to pay my partner's rates today. And I said, You mean, you wouldn't have charged it on your credit card at least to find out? You know, what he could do for you? And so the people that I see that really want it, some people just charge it on the credit card, but they don't do it. Others? Do, they charge it on the credit card, and they've got that credit card paid off and are able to really fly with the overtime? Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 48:00 so and I was delivered and asking the question the way I did, but it isn't how do we get people to do things? What is it that will make people understand that they need to change? I mean, you've been coaching a long time. And I know there's not one key but what, what, more often than not is the trigger that make people go, Ah, I gotta really think more about this.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 48:27 You know, there are a lot of things in life traumas, car accidents, deaths, losses, that move people into that. There's a thing called a sociopath is sociopaths, not wanting to get divorced, will sometimes start looking at themselves for the first time. And so but but I think that, that Adlerian analysis, when people understand that there is an objective way to look at who they are today, it's your strengths and your weaknesses, as revealed by that lifestyle analysis we started playing with with you, then as you understand that there really is a way to do it, and it is systematic and reproducible, then the game starts really shifting, but most of the world doesn't believe it's possible because so many people are selling so much horse manure. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 49:21 And we haven't learned to separate all the negative negativity in as you said, the horsemen or from from the positive stuff, we, we just haven't really learned how to do that and the people who have can really start to deal with it. One of the things that I have experienced over the past several years, especially with the pandemic is that for years I would travel and speak and tell people about my story and people said, well, you're blind. Of course you didn't know what happened. I point out well, the airplane had 18 floors above us on the other side of the building I got to tell you, nobody knew Superman and X ray vision are fictitious. Right? Well, but then the the other part about it is that what I realized over time was that the reason I wasn't afraid was that I prepared. I learned all about the World Trade Center, I learned what the emergency evacuation procedures were, I learned why they were as they were. And so when something actually happened, I was prepared for it. I didn't need to worry about reading signs. And if I had been in the building alone, I would have just been able to evacuate. But I wasn't alone. And we got some guests out. And then a colleague who was in from our corporate office, David Frank, and I went to the stairs, and we started down. But the reality is that what I learned was that for me, I, in fact, was not talking about why I wasn't afraid. And I didn't teach people how to learn to control here. So we're writing a book about that. And, and so I'm, I'm realizing that what I can help people do is recognize that you can learn to control fear, it's not that it's going to go away. And if you tell me, you're never afraid, I won't buy it. But you can learn to use fear in a powerful way, rather than letting it as I put it, blind you or overwhelm you,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 51:27 by preparing as you prepared the primary formula. First of all, we don't control it. But by preparing it doesn't grip us at the same level. We have pathways that we've already created. So you had created those pathways inside of yourself. And so sure you were afraid, but you had the fear motivating you along pathways for which you had prepared.   Michael Hingson ** 51:51 That's right. Help others. That's right. And we did and at one point going down the stairs, David panicked and said, Mike, we're going to die. We're not going to make it out of here and then and I just snapped at him. I'd love to joke about it and say, since I have a secondary teaching credential, I took that secret course voice 101 How to yell at students but you know, the the reality is that that what I did it I just snapped at David. I said, stop it, David, if Rosella and I can go down the stairs, so can you. And after that, he said, I'm going to I got to take my mind off of what's going on. And he walked the floor below me, went all the way down the stairs, he shouted up to me what he was seeing on the stairs. Now, did I need David to do that? No. But I knew that it would help David be more comfortable. But it had another effect, which again, was something that I figured out later. And that is that, as David was shouting up, hey, I'm at the 44th floor. This is where the Port Authority cafeteria is, we're not going to stop we're going on down. People above us. And below us. Many, many floors hurt him. And he gave them something to focus on. And I think that he did so much, not even thinking about it or realizing it to help people not panic as we went down the stairs, which was so cool. Oh, I   Dr. Bob Wright ** 53:07 just love it. So let's but let's go back. So, So fear is the primary the most basic emotion if you stay alive, sure. So you were afraid for him, not for you, but for him. And so you slapped him out of it. So you harvest your anger. So fear, fear, hurt, anger, sadness, and joy are the critical emotions that are fully foundational emotions. And so you have a relationship with your fear as few of us but in some ways, maybe. And you actually were able to harness anger as the crossover emotion between fear and joy. So you kept him alive, harnessing your anger to slap him out of it. And he became the leader he could become. Yeah. And needed.   Michael Hingson ** 53:56 Right. Well, and that's it's part of the story that that I think is he's such an unsung hero and what happened on September 11, because I know he had to keep so many people focused because they had someone to focus on. And someone who they could hear who was all right, no matter where they were on the stairs. Somebody else was okay, somewhere.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 54:21 So first of all, he was a leader right in relationship to you,   Michael Hingson ** 54:25 by definition. Well, in some ways, yeah.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 54:29 So you slapped him back into his leadership mode. And even though you didn't need it, he started leaving you in his own mind, but he was actually leaving everybody down those   Michael Hingson ** 54:40 steps. He was, you know, that was one of the things that he did his he was only in for the day from our corporate office. But but he but you know, the two of us, between us there were a lot of ways people also said to me later, we followed you down the stairs because we heard you praising your dog and We heard you staying calm. So we were calm. We followed you. Yeah. So we, in a in a very well, unpredictable isn't the right word but a very subtle way we the two of us really helped a lot of people. Oh   Dr. Bob Wright ** 55:15 my god, you guys formed the most amazing impromptu leadership team.   Michael Hingson ** 55:19 Right. Holy cow. I   Dr. Bob Wright ** 55:21 love it. Yeah. Well, isn't that cool? Oh, it's beyond cool. That is way beyond Cool.   Michael Hingson ** 55:27 Well, this has been fun. We need to do it again. And we need to get Judith involved. So we got to do   Dr. Bob Wright ** 55:33 another one of these. Absolutely looking forward to it. But   Michael Hingson ** 55:37 I really appreciate you being here. And I want to thank you and I want to thank you all for listening to us today. I hope that you enjoyed it. And and you heard Bob analyze me a little bit and it was a lot of fun and No, no problem at all. So we'll have to do more of it and and have another time together which I think would be fun. But I want to thank you for listening to us. Love to hear your comments. Please reach out. You can reach me Mike hingson at and my email address is Michael h i m i c h a e l h i at accessiBe A c c e s s i b e.com. Michael h i at accessibe.com Or go to our podcast page www dot Michael Hingson m i c h a e l h i n g s o n.com/podcast love to get your thoughts please give us a five star rating wherever you're listening to us. We value that and really appreciate all that you have to say. Bob if people want to reach out to you how do they do that?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 56:37 Well my website for now until we put them all together is Bob Wrightdot com or D r. B o b W r i  g h t dot com My email, which is easier right now we're in transition. The new company, as you heard will be live right with Judith and Bob. But right now D r. B, o b at Judith and bob.com D R B O B at J U D I T  A N D B .com. Cool.   Michael Hingson ** 57:04 Well, thanks again for doing this. It has been fun. And let us definitely set up another time and do another one of these.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 57:13 We've got more to talk about in so many ways, sooner than later while we're still putting together the web universe.   Michael Hingson ** 57:20 Perfect. Glad to do it. Well, thanks again for being here.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 57:23 Thank you so much.   **Michael Hingson ** 57:28 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

I had the pleasure of meeting Peggy Leyden at Tina and Adam Curry's vow renewal celebration this past May. With nearly three decades of experience consulting, coaching, and training professionals, Peggy has built an exceptional career around empowering organizations and individuals to thrive. Her expertise stems from senior leadership roles at major companies like RR Donnelley and Arthur Andersen, as well as facilitating FranklinCovey training. Today, through her firm Leyden Consulting Associates, Peggy partners closely with clients to uncover roadblocks and develop actionable plans for growth. Peggy's high-energy, collaborative style is reshaping how companies approach professional development. She serves on the Illinois Business Consulting Advisory Board, solidifying her as a thought leader in this space. I'm thrilled to have Peggy share her insights on maximizing people's potential. Remember you can help support this show with you donations at theinterviewpodcast.org

 Why Culture Matters when you're Poised for Exit Our guest for today's episode is Dave Sparkman, Founder and Culture advisor with Spark Your Culture Advisory Services. Dave's corporate and accounting background (as a former CPA with Arthur Andersen) have served him well in his advisory practice. His biggest project to date was in leading the Culture transformation of UnitedHealth Group!  Dave lead the charge to change and build a stronger Culture there, the impetus of which was launched by its CEO, who knew that the Culture was "already good, but could be better".Dave's task of transformation at UnitedHealth Group started with his own transformation; identifying where his own blinders were and what he did to operate in a silo himself. When leaders take on developing their own Self Awareness, it opens the way for their followers to do the same. "Culture resists what it needs the most", Dave said, and yet "it's the bedrock of everything"!  Two quotes we had to be sure and include here; gems that they are!When it comes to applying his practices to privately held business, Dave says the fundamentals are the same. His work now involves much smaller companies than his original start with UnitedHealth.  Defining the beliefs of the team and the leadership first, then aligning those with that of the company is the best place to start. You can find Dave here and add your name to a waiting list for his new book coming out this fall called "Culture, Character, Results! Lessons From UnitedHealth Group's Transformational Journey" . Listen and share the episode here!Support the Show.Are you ready for your best exit? There is no time like the present to prepare. Check out these resources offered by KeyeStrategies: Business Readiness Transition online course Free Ebook download here Purchase Poised for Exit book here

Have you ever had a moment that shook you to your core and made you question everything?  For our guest today, John Miles, it was a terrifying encounter that changed the trajectory of his life.  John Miles is the author of Passion Struck: Twelve Powerful Principles to Unlock Your Purpose and Ignite Your Most Intentional Life. In this episode, he opens up about how that harrowing experience transformed him from a successful but unsatisfied corporate executive to a "passionstruck" evangelist for intentional living. He shares raw insights on integrity, empowerment, and what it truly means to embrace your purpose with courage and conviction.If you've ever felt stuck, uninspired or wondered "Is this all there is to life?", this may just be what you need to unlock your fire and start living with intention again.Key Lessons:1. Embrace Your Purpose:  A harrowing encounter prompted John Miles' life reinvention, leading him to discover the power of intentionally living with passion and perseverance.2. Integrity Matters: Always strive to do the right thing, even when no one's watching. Honesty and ethics aren't just feel-good concepts—they're crucial for success.3. Get Your People Pumped: Employees who feel engaged and empowered are more productive and deliver better customer experiences. Create a "line of sight" connecting their work to customer impact, while empowering and motivating them intrinsically.4. Live Passionstruck: Being "passionstruck" means relentlessly pursuing your purpose with unwavering dedication, as exemplified by John Miles' personal reinvention journey that inspired his brand.5. People are the Real Business: John Miles explores solving disengagement, creating a future self, and highlights this people-first approach in his book. Learn More:  Visit The Few With Boo website to find additional resources, related episodes, and more valuable content from John Miles www.fewpodcast.com Connect with John Miles:  Website: https://passionstruck.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/milesjohn/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTLdXATpxf8LP3riC0_mkKwX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/John_RMilesPodcast: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast/ Order the book Passion Struck: Twelve Powerful Principles To Unlock Your Purpose And Ignite Your Most Intentional Life: https://passionstruck.com/passion-struck-book/ Living on autopilot or ready to reignite your passion? Tune in as John Miles shares his journey from purposeless executive to "passionstruck" evangelist after one terrifying moment.Subscribe to The Few with Boo Podcast for inspiration on intentional living.  P.S. Leave a review if his story inspires you!

Derek's guest this week is Jack Daly. Jack talks with Derek about his first sales job at age 7, living a life "by design", and key insights from his book "Hyper Sales Growth".Jack Daly is a leading sales speaker and trainer with over 30 years of sales and executive experience. Jack's track record is a testament to his real-world knowledge and extensive expertise in sales and sales management. He started his professional journey at CPA firm Arthur Andersen and rose to the CEO level of several corporations, building six companies into national firms along the way, two of which he subsequently sold to the Wall Street firms of Solomon Brothers and First Boston.In addition to his comprehensive professional background, Jack holds a BS in Accounting, as well as an MBA, and was a Captain in the U.S. Army. Jack Daly is an Amazon Best Selling Author and has written and contributed to many books, including Hyper Sales Growth and The Sales Playbook for Hyper Sales Growth. Jack is a 15-time Ironman competitor and has completed over 93 marathons in 49 states and on six continents. He achieves these goals and lives life to the fullest by following his own Life by Design techniques.Learn more at https://jackdalysales.com/

Ellen Kamhi talks with Saad Harti, the founder & CEO of Legacy Healthcare, a company aiming to develop botanical drugs safe enough for chronic use especially by fragile populations, e.g. children and the elderly. Saad has started in the financial field, at Arthur Andersen. He later co-founded Altacare, a healthcare business development firm active in more than 50 markets. Saad has also pioneered contraceptive-access programs in developing countries. http://legacyhealthcare.ch

In this empowering episode of the Building Better Managers podcast, we sit down with Jan Foo, a senior director at Servicenow, to delve into her remarkable career spanning two decades. As we honor Women's Leadership Month, Jan takes us through her experiences at companies like UBS, Cisco, and VMware, and her relentless pursuit of pushing boundaries and taking risks. She discusses the significance of leadership beyond the boardroom, her advocacy for women in the workplace, and the strategies she employs to maintain balance in her fast-paced life. Get ready to be inspired and learn how to support and sponsor women's leadership in your organization. Meet Jan: Jan is driven by the mission to connect people, teams, technology, and data to make a positive impact on a global scale. She is currently Senior Director of GTM Operations at ServiceNow, focused on expanding the company's customer base within emerging market verticals and driving synergies within the digital selling motion.   Jan has over 20 years of experience in global enterprises such as UBS, Arthur Andersen, Cisco, and VMware. Jan is hyper-focused on proactive strategies to transform business and ensure ongoing business success. Jan was born and grew up in the beautiful city island of Singapore. She lives in Los Altos with her husband and their two shih tzu's. She has a son and a daughter both attending colleges on the east coast. Jan strongly advocates diversity, inclusion, and education for all. She enjoys interviewing high school applicants yearly for the Harvard University Admissions Committee, and also enjoys financial planning, listening to podcasts, and traveling. Jan's Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janfoo/ Website: https://janfoo.squarespace.com/ Do you enjoy our show? One of the easiest ways to help us out is to drop us a 5-star review on your platform of choice! https://ratethispodcast.com/newlevelwork For more information, please visit the New Level Work website. https://www.newlevelwork.com/category/podcast © 2019 - 2024 New Level Work

EPISODE SUMMARY: When you meet someone who's transformed their entire outlook on leadership, it's like a breath of fresh air in a stale boardroom. That's what happened when I sat down with Brent Pohlman, CEO and owner of Midwest Laboratories, whose journey from a numbers-obsessed executive to an emotionally intelligent leader is nothing short of inspiring. Our conversation is a deep exploration into the heart of leadership, threaded with Brent's reflections on the pivotal moments that spurred his personal and professional growth. His story, underpinned by the wisdom in his book "Leaders Look Within," serves as a powerful reminder of the unique paths we all can take to unearth our leadership potential.   BRENT'S BIO: Brent has always an interest in becoming a great leader. He has worked for a variety of managers and leaders of various companies, ( Arthur Andersen, Mutual of Omaha and HDR) . He has read many leadership and management books too. The one thing that was missing for Brent was owning his own leadership, and that meant looking deep inside his heart to understand who he was and what that exactly looked like for him. In the last few years, Brent has invested time in better understanding who he is and what he stands for. In order to effectively lead people, Brent discovered the power of owning himself and living with a strong why. Brent has gone through a major transition in the last five years and tells his story in his book, (Leaders Look Within). Brent impresses in his talks that leadership is personal and each person has to find it for themselves to truly be an effective leader. Brent's hope with this talk is to bring this message of leadership to you. We need leaders who lead from the heart like never before. Brent is the President and CEO of Midwest Laboratories. Brent's goal is to grow a culture at Midwest Laboratories where people are always first. When Brent isn't working, he spends time with his wife, Michele and their five adult children and three grandchildren.   GET IN TOUCH WITH BRENT : http://heartstrongproductions.com https://www.facebook.com/BPohlmanExecutive https://www.linkedin.com/in/bpohlman/ Instagram @bkpalive24   EPISODE CHAPTERS: (0:00:00) - Finding Leadership Through Personal Transformation CEO Brent''s transformation and leadership journey at Midwest Labs, emphasizing personal leadership and purpose. (0:12:55) - Building Strong Company Culture and Leadership Leadership's impact on company culture, preserving core values, dangers of neglecting culture for metrics, and seeking coaching for challenges. (0:17:10) - Leadership, Trust, and Culture Awakening Discovering a powerful "why" rooted in faith and passion, stepping back to delegate and prioritize people, process, and technology for successful growth and innovation. (0:23:35) - Prioritizing Health and Emotional Intelligence Self-care, emotional intelligence, and shared vision can transform personal well-being and leadership, as seen in our innovative response to healthcare costs. (0:27:40) - Solution-Driven Mindset for Success Solution-driven approach to managing healthcare costs, proactive strategies, personal stories, and passion for athletics and nature. (0:32:47) - Achieving Leadership and Fitness Goals Guest shares their journey from injury to chair workouts, emphasizing solution-oriented mindset and intentional journaling for personal growth and stress management. (0:37:26) - Leadership Skills and Techniques Discussion Valuable leadership skills and strategies shared by guest Brent, enriching perspectives and encouraging engagement and sharing. If you want to know more about Dr. Jason Balara and the Know your Why Podcast: https://linktr.ee/jasonbalara Audio Track: Back To The Wood by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Artist: http://audionautix.com/  

In this episode of the Psych in Business podcast, host Dr. Ernest Wayde interviews Dr. Liz Sweigart, a business leader and consultant with over 20 years of experience in strategy, operations, and people. Dr. Sweigart specializes in the intersection of emerging technologies, particularly Web3, and social organizational psychology.Dr. Wayde explores Dr. Sweigart's diverse career journey, emphasizing the key theme of curiosity. Liz shares her experiences, from working in international tax at Arthur Andersen to becoming a nonprofit finance executive, an investment banker, and eventually delving into the tech space.The conversation delves into the significance of understanding and integrating psychology in the tech industry, especially in the context of Web3. Dr. Sweigart illustrates a case study involving her work with a blockchain company and the crucial role of community in the success of Web3 projects.They discuss the challenges of building communities in a virtual, decentralized space and the importance of appreciative inquiry in understanding and fostering positive community culture. Dr. Sweigart emphasizes the value of human-centered approaches in a highly technical environment.The discussion further explores the diverse and inclusive nature of Web3 communities, highlighting the potential for representation and empowerment for neuro-diverse individuals and marginalized groups. Dr. Sweigart emphasizes the need for ethical research practices and thoughtful engagement with community members.The episode concludes with valuable advice from Dr. Sweigart, emphasizing the importance of asking for feedback and embracing being seen trying in public. She encourages leaders to seek support, acknowledge failures as events rather than identities, and foster a culture of trying and learning in public.Overall, the episode provides insights into the dynamic intersection of psychology and technology, showcasing the human-centered approach in the evolving landscape of Web3.You can follow her on: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizsweigart

Why are humans the only species on the planet that's been able to cooperate on such a massive scale and continuously reinvent our culture? Andrew McAfee is the co-director of the Initiative on the Digital Economy and a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His books, such as the Machine trilogy and The Geek Way, examine how technology and cultural evolution have shaped the modern workplace.He and Greg discuss what has allowed humans to evolve to be these super collaborators, how that evolution translates to organizational culture, and why the education system might be in need of an overhaul. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:What does science do with overconfidence?27:00: What science does that is brilliant is it says to us, overconfident human beings, "You're going to win. You're so smart. Your evidence is going to be right. Go collect the evidence; you're going to be right," and we over overconfidently march off and go do all that. So the amazing thing that happens, the jiujitsu that happens, is that science takes our overconfidence and channels it exactly where it should be. Which is doing the hard work to gather evidence and then confidently getting up in front of your peers and presenting it and have them kick you in the teeth over and over again. It ain't fun, but that's what we signed up for. And what I think is going on at geek companies is they're importing that ground rule to make their decisions. That's why their batting average is higher.What is it that allows humans to do this thing unique on the planet?05:12: We human beings, this weird species, have two superpowers. One of them is that we come together and cooperate intensely with large numbers of individuals who we are not related to and who are not our kin…[05:34]The other one is that we evolve our cultures much more rapidly than any other species on the planet.Navigating disagreement and safetyism in higher education33:53: If we're not training people about how to debate, disagree, argue, and do it without being jerks or without being completely thin-skinned about it, we're not doing people a service. We're doing them a real disservice. So I think there has been increased safetyism, especially on college campuses. And I think that is not serving young people well for a whole bunch of reasons.Is our politics and bureaucracy complements or substitutes?45:53: We want status, and that's where bureaucracy comes from. I'm going to figure out a need to be involved in this work. That gives me status. I honestly believe that's the deepest reason for this stultifying bureaucracy that we come across. The CEO of most companies, if they look at what the processes are like inside their company, they go, "How did things get this bad? What is going on here?" This is not anything close to what I want, but that's because the people in the organization create that encroachment or that encumbrance all the time.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Amy EdmondsonAmy Edmondson on unSILOedChris ArgyrisThe Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve by Steve Stewart-WilliamsThe Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter by Joseph HenrichThe Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science by Michael StrevensFinal Accounting: Ambition, Greed and the Fall of Arthur Andersen by Barbara TofflerMaria MontessoriGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at MITProfessional WebsiteAndrew McAfee on TEDxBoston 2012His Work:The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset that Drives Extraordinary ResultsThe Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital FutureRace Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the EconomyEnterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest ChallengesMore from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources―and What Happens Next

Richard Walker is the CEO of Quik!, a provider of forms automation and management solutions for companies looking to maximize efficiency and productivity. He started Quik! in 2002 to help people spend less time on paperwork and more time on what they do best. Before Quik!, Rich was a business consultant with Arthur Andersen. He is a published author of two books and a father of three boys. In this episode… Building a SaaS-based company is a challenging but rewarding journey. As an entrepreneur, you have a unique opportunity to create software that solves real problems and delivers value to your customers. But to succeed in such a competitive market, one must go beyond simply building a great product. To stand out and attract loyal customers, business consultant and entrepreneur Richard Walker says your software must be easy to use and intuitive. You don't want your users to struggle with complex features or spend hours figuring out how to use your product. Instead, you want to create a seamless and delightful experience that makes your customers feel empowered and productive. He also recommends creating a better customer experience. This way, you boost the adoption of your software and create a community of super users and raving fans who will not only use your software but also recommend it to others. In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Richard Walker, CEO of Quik!, to discuss how SaaS-based companies can create super users of their products. Rich talks about software adoption, the steps for converting software adopters to super users, and how creating a good customer experience boosts the adoption rate and use of your software.

Today on the podcast we welcome back Tim Steffen, who is the director of advanced planning for Baird. In that role, he researches, writes, and speaks about various planning and tax matters, including retirement planning, executive compensation, legislative changes, and overall best practices. Steffen originally joined Baird in 1999, serving in a variety of planning-oriented roles. He left Baird in 2019 to join the advisor education team at Pimco, then returned to Baird in 2021. Prior to 1999, Steffen worked in Arthur Andersen's Private Client Services Group. He earned his bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Illinois. He's a certified public accountant/personal financial specialist, a certified financial planner, and a certified private wealth advisor.BackgroundBio“Tim Steffen: Tax-Saving Strategies for a Falling Market,” The Long View podcast, Morningstar, Sept. 20, 2022.Tax Changes in 2024“Highlights of the Secure 2.0 Act,” by Tim Steffen, Baird Wealth, September/October 2023.“Secure 2.0 Act Summary: New Retirement Plan Rules to Know,” by Kelley R. Taylor, Kiplinger, July 17, 2023.“A Smaller Tax Bill in 2024 Starts in 2023,” by Tim Steffen, Baird Wealth, Oct. 18, 2023.“‘Tis the Season for Giving,” by Jonathan Raymon and Scott Grenier, Baird Wealth, Oct. 18, 2023.“Pros and Cons of Donor-Advised Funds,” by Amy Arnott, Morningstar, Nov. 6, 2023.Tax Cuts and Jobs Act“Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: A Comparison for Businesses,” IRS.gov.“2024 Tax Brackets,” by Alex Durante, Tax Foundation, Nov. 9, 2023.“State and Local Tax (SALT): Definition and How It's Deducted,” by Michelle P. Scott, Investopedia, Oct. 29, 2023.“Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) Definition, How It Works,” by Jim Probasco, Investopedia, Jan. 2, 2023.“Don't Get Tripped Up by These Tax-Reporting Missteps,” Interview With Christine Benz and Tim Steffen, Morningstar, Jan. 8, 2019.Tax-Efficient Portfolio Planning and Retirement“Why Municipal-Bond Funds Are Worth a Look,” by Amy Arnott, Morningstar, Nov. 14, 2022.“Understanding 401(k) Contribution Limits,” by Debbie Carlson, Paul Curcio, and David Tony, CNN, Nov. 15, 2023.“The Three Tests Before a Roth Conversion,” by Tim Steffen, Baird Wealth, Oct. 16, 2023.“Are IRA Conversions a Good Idea During Volatility?” Interview With Christine Benz and Tim Steffen, Morningstar, May 12, 2020.“4 Timeless Tax Planning Insights for Advisors,” by John Manganaro, Think Advisor, Oct. 11, 2022.

In this insightful episode, we sit down with Amy Chronis, a Deloitte veteran with a passion for innovation and transformation in the energy sector, to explore the dynamic changes and technological advancements shaping the industry.This episode dives into: Deloitte's Greenhouse Experience: Amy shares the concept behind Deloitte's Greenhouse facilities, designed to foster innovation and problem-solving through immersive experiences. Amy's Role and Focus: A look into Amy's extensive responsibilities, including her focus on client relationships, team development, and industry-specific challenges. Industry Evolution: Discussion on the ongoing transformation within the energy and chemicals sectors, emphasizing the shift towards advanced materials and diversified energy sources. Career Journey: Amy reflects on her career trajectory, from her early days at Arthur Andersen to her current leadership role at Deloitte. Economic Cycles and Learning: Insights into how economic booms and busts have provided learning opportunities and shaped Amy's approach to industry challenges. Diversity and Innovation in Houston: Amy talks about Houston's diversity and its role as a hub for energy evolution and innovation. AI and the Future of Energy: A deep dive into the transformative potential of AI in the energy sector, including its impact on operations, decision-making, and customer experiences. Challenges in the Energy Sector: Amy discusses the current challenges faced by energy companies, such as AI integration, supply chain issues, and the need for innovation in response to geopolitical pressures. Deloitte's Research and Insights: An overview of Deloitte's research on the energy sector, highlighting the financial performance of energy companies and the strategic use of surplus cash for innovation. Learn more about EnergyX: https://bit.ly/3pedpdC