Podcasts about Peter Drucker

Flutist Agnes Vass asked Bernhard a question: what if you applied the Fifth Stage of psychological safety to an orchestra?It turns out an orchestra is one of the best models we have for how high-performing teams work.(With thanks to Agnes Was, co-principal flute at the Bremerhaven Philharmonic and founder of the Body Mind Music Lab.)WHY ORCHESTRAS?Peter Drucker used orchestras constantly as a model for organisations. So has Bernhard, given his background.The reason: an orchestra of 70 to 150 musicians creates an outstanding performance in three days—often led by a conductor they have never met before. The analogies for management write themselves.---DUNBAR'S NUMBERBritish anthropologist Robin Dunbar found that humans can maintain around 150 meaningful relationships at once (his average: 148.6).The proof arrived with social media. Remember the early joy of Facebook—reconnecting with old friends? Then somewhere around 150–200, your feed filled with people you didn't really care about. Dunbar's number, demonstrated at scale.Orchestras sit right inside that number. So does W.L. Gore, the company behind Gore-Tex—they cap units at around 200 people and build a new site rather than exceed it. The belief: people at work should genuinely know each other.THE REFRAME: RELATIONAL SAFETY ISN'T FRIENDSHIPAre 140 orchestra members all good friends? No. Some are close. Some can't stand each other. And yet the best orchestras deliver extraordinary performances."The safety a good orchestra has is this: even if I don't like my colleague, I know they are committed to the highest performance, just as much as I am."Relational safety, properly understood, is built on a shared, explicit common goal—the same standard of quality, the same drive, the same dedication to practice. Not affection."If you're a flutist and you haven't practiced, every person in the audience will hear it."FUZZY GOALS vs. MOTIVATIONAL GOALSOrganisations often run on fuzzy goals—"increase turnover by 10%." That's like telling an orchestra to finish five minutes early by playing faster. Nobody is moved by it.Motivational goals are about a meaningful outcome: electrifying the audience, leaving the customer completely wowed. When everyone is committed to it, everything changes.Underneath it: a commitment to practice. Musicians practice. Most managers wing it 80% of the time. That's why Bernhard built RolePlays.ai—a place for leaders to practice the difficult conversations.DIVERSITY: HACKMAN'S ORCHESTRA RESEARCHIn the 1980s, J. Richard Hackman of Harvard studied women in orchestras. At the time, many were all-male—the Vienna Philharmonic didn't admit women until US tour pressure forced the change.What Hackman found:Below 10% women: high turnover, mobbing, sexism. Women leave.Between 10% and 33%: a hard struggle.Around 33%: an equilibrium. Men and women playing together becomes natural. Sexism drops. Performance improves. Women stay. You can even hear it—diversity changes the sound.Not only a values argument: listed companies with diverse boards significantly outperform all-male ones.THE THREE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE GROWTH ZONETo bring a team into the growth zone—where breakthroughs happen—you need three things beyond relational safety: a shared, motivating sense of purpose; a genuine commitment to practice; and space for diversity.True for a 140-person orchestra. Equally true for a team of five.Jon Katzenbach put it well: what separates a high-performing team from a merely good one is that its members are committed to their own learning—and to each other's.REFERENCES:Dunbar, R. How Many Friends Does One Person Need?Hackman, J. R. Leading Teams.Katzenbach, J. R. The Wisdom of Teams.Agnes Was — Body Mind Music Lab (Instagram).LINKS: bernhardkerres.com | roleplays.ai#PsychologicalSafety #Orchestra #Leadership #Teams #Diversity

What jobs will AI replace, and which ones will become more valuable?Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, recently wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal about how he chose which employees to replace with AI. His argument: AI is not coming equally for every role. It's coming first for the people inside organizations who measure, report, analyze, audit, manage, and process information.In this solo episode of The TechEd Podcast, Matt Kirchner responds to Prince's article and examines what it reveals about the future of work. Drawing on Peter Drucker's framework of builders, sellers, and measurers, Matt breaks down why some jobs are likely to be heavily disrupted while others may become even more valuable.The uncomfortable truth: AI may reduce the need for many traditional middle management, finance, operations, and measurement-heavy roles. But it also increases the value of people who create products, build relationships, solve customer problems, lead change, and turn technology into business value.From sales and engineering to marketing, STEM education, data science, and applied AI, this episode explores where human talent still matters most, and what businesses, educators, and professionals need to do now to prepare for the next phase of workforce disruption.5 Big Takeaways from this Episode:1. Businesses need to start their AI journey now. AI is already changing how companies operate, compete, hire, and structure their teams. Organizations that have not assigned someone to understand how AI will disrupt their business, market, or institution are already behind.2. Measurers and mid-level managers will be disrupted the most. Roles centered on reporting, processing, auditing, analyzing, tracking, and managing information are increasingly vulnerable to AI. The opportunity is not to ignore that disruption, but to become the person who knows how to use AI to do that work better, faster, and more strategically.3. Personal relationships become more important in the AI age, not less. AI can automate parts of sales, marketing, and customer engagement, but it cannot earn trust the way people do. Sellers who understand customer needs, build relationships, solve problems, and use data intelligently will remain critical to business growth.4. Creativity and leadership still rule the day. AI gives more people access to the same tools, but it does not replace the ability to see opportunity, connect ideas, build a brand, lead change, or execute a vision. In marketing, business leadership, product strategy, and innovation, creative and decisive people will continue to create value.5. The future belongs to builders. Engineers, skilled tradespeople, manufacturing talent, STEM professionals, automation specialists, and applied AI practitioners are positioned to become even more important. If AI makes builders more productive, companies will need more of them, not fewer, especially in fields tied to physical AI, robotics, smart manufacturing, autonomous systems, drones, and the edge-to-cloud continuumResources in this Episode:Read Matthew Prince's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal: "How I Choose Which Cloudflare Employees to Replace With AI"Episode page: https://techedpodcast.com/cloudflare/We want to hear from you! Send us a text.Instagram - Facebook - YouTube - TikTok - Twitter - LinkedIn

Leadership can look confident on the outside while quietly collapsing under pressure on the inside. We sit down with Rajesh Naji, a CEO mentor and “business physicist,” to get brutally practical about why high-performing founders start to flounder in stressful moments and what actually restores clear thinking. Rajesh uses a model that stuck with me: performance equals potential minus interference. When fear, doubt, anxiety, and sleepless nights pile up, the interference grows and the quality of decisions drops, even for the smartest leaders in the room.From there, we go deeper into what Rajesh means by applying physics to business: the strength of the chain equals the strength of its weakest link. Instead of chasing every tactic, we talk bottlenecks, throughput, and why simplicity often beats complexity. Rajesh also shares the surprising metrics he uses when deciding whether he will work with a CEO, including family meals, time with parents, and showing up for your kids. It's a leadership mindset that ties business performance to real life fulfillment.We also explore resonance as a coaching principle, how listening and reflecting can unlock movement without “fixing” people, and how community and belonging shape culture across countries. Rajesh shares concrete assignments, including a powerful practice to rebuild faith during uncertainty and a simple business exercise that flips your focus from what you want to what your customers want, with a nod to Peter Drucker's view of what business is for.Subscribe for more leadership conversations like this, share this episode with a founder who needs a reset, and leave a review so more people can find the show.Questions? Episode Requests? Send us a message!Ambitious leaders know that real leadership goes far beyond titles—it's about developing the clarity and mindset to guide others with confidence. In this podcast, you'll explore what today's leaders truly need, from navigating everyday problem solving to handling tough moments of workplace conflict with steadiness and respect. Episodes dive into setting healthy workplace boundaries, strengthening workplace collaboration, and building the emotional intelligence and emotional agility that make leadership sustainable. Whether you're managing a growing team or refining your voice as a decision-maker, you'll find insights that help you cultivate a resilient growth mindset and elevate your impact.

Artificial intelligence is changing the workforce, business productivity, and the global economy.In this episode of the Follow the Money podcast, Jerry Robinson explores AI, human value, and the future of work. Drawing on recent comments from Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince and insights from management legend Peter Drucker, Jerry explains why AI may disrupt “measurers” first while increasing the value of builders, creators, and problem-solvers.Jerry also discusses Pope Leo XIV's recent reflections on artificial intelligence and human dignity and explains why adaptability may become one of the most valuable skills in the modern economy.In this episode:• AI and the future of work• Builders, sellers, and measurers• Why AI literacy matters• The investment implications of AI• Market insights with Jerry• Final thoughts on learning, unlearning, and relearningSubscribe for more investing insights, macro analysis, and financial education.Visit: https://followthemoney.com

90% of dental practice owners are playing checkers. One patient stays one patient, and growth depends on ad spend and PPO contracts. The other 10% are playing chess. Every appointment is engineered to produce the next patient, and the math compounds.In this episode, Dr. Dave borrows a line from Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, to reframe the purpose of every appointment in your practice. He exposes the bribe-for-referral trap that kills practices that should be thriving, and reveals the top-three business number that tells you whether your growth is bought or earned. Dr. Dave learned this surviving brutal ad-spend math in a Colorado mountain town in 2009, and in 2026 the principle matters more, not less. Reviews are gamed. Reels are noise. A referral from a friend is the one signal still cutting through. If you don't know how many new patients came from word of mouth last month, this is the episode to hear before your next team meeting. Press play, then go run the math.

People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. - Peter Drucker Check out John Lee Dumas' award winning Podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire on your favorite podcast directory. For world class free courses and resources to help you on your Entrepreneurial journey visit EOFire.com

Go to www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming for my new book, The Price of Becoming This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. Dr. Henry Cloud is a clinical psychologist, leadership consultant, and New York Times bestselling author whose books have sold nearly 20 million copies worldwide. His titles include Boundaries, Integrity, Necessary Endings, and Trust. For three decades, he has worked with leaders, helping them close the gap between where they are and where they want to be. His newest book is Your Desired Future: The Five Essential Steps That Take You Where You Want to Go. Key Learnings Henry's five-step model for getting from here to there: Vision (clear and compelling) Talent (engaging the right people around you) Strategy and plan (how you'll win) Measurement and accountability (how you'll know) Fix and adapt (course-correcting in real time) At the age of 16, Henry's daughter asked, "Dad, how do people become singer-songwriters?" Henry went out to the garage and brought in his whiteboard. Lucy rolled her eyes. He gave her the five-step model. A couple years later, she published a song called "Crash and Learn" that got bought by CBS, the CW Network, and featured on Spotify and Apple Music. We tend to create departments and businesses in our own image. Of the five components, we're going to be good at two, maybe three. But the others still have to happen. That's where most leaders fail. Only humans can picture a desired future state. Finley is Henry's Doberman. When the FedEx guy comes to the door, she runs to it, and barks every time. Henry has never seen her stop and ask herself: "I wonder if that barking will help me get to where I want to be on Thursday." Most leaders are operating like Finley. Working hard. Doing what they've always done. Never stopping to ask if any of it is getting them where they want to be. You need an observing ego. The worst thing you can do is hit the accelerator harder when you're going down the wrong road and you don't even know where you're going. Tony Blair, while Prime Minister, spent half a day a week sitting by himself next to a pond in reflection. Warren Buffett spends an hour and a half a day at his desk staring out the window.  A revenue number is not a vision. The single worst vision statement Henry ever heard: "We want to be a $50 million company." It provides no clarity of what the company is going to do.   A vision is a compelling picture of a future state that makes people want to sacrifice for it. If your vision wouldn't inspire anyone to get out of bed early, it's a metric, not a vision. Will Guidara created a "dream maker" role at Eleven Madison Park. Their job: listen for clues from guests, then create a personalized, unexpected, memorable experience the guest will never forget and tell everyone about. Trust Fuels Investment. People invest in leaders who feel like they understand them. You're taking your team into a war. They've got to have deep trust with you. The first thing a leader has to do is develop deep, deep trust and let their team know that they understand the pressure they're under. "A vision can die without a plan or without people." Alan Mulally's weekly 7:00 AM Thursday meeting at Ford. Every VP had to give every project a red, yellow, or green status. When Mulally first arrived, the company was hemorrhaging money. Everyone was holding up green. He said: "How can you be holding up green when here's the reality over here? I need some reality in here." When one VP finally held up red, Mulally moved him to sit next to him. The wrong view of accountability is looking back to spank somebody for what they didn't do. The right view of accountability is a tool to make sure we reach our destination. You get what you create or what you allow. Henry was working with a global CEO whose team had cultural problems. Henry kept asking, "Why is that?" After a few rounds, the CEO finally said, "I guess I am ridiculously in charge, aren't I?" If you are the one actually in charge, you are ridiculously in charge. Either you're creating it, or you're allowing it. Accountability answers two questions: Did we do what we said we were going to do? If not, why not? Don't just tell people to "do better." Run a root cause analysis. Maybe they don't have the tools. Maybe you gave them competing goals. Maybe it's a leadership problem. If we executed perfectly, did we get the result we expected? If yes, pour on the gas. If no, go back up the model and adjust your strategy. Most leaders measure goals, not activities. Goals are lagging indicators. You can measure them after it's over. It's too late. Measure activities. Did we do this week what we said we were going to do? Micro drivers matter. Henry worked with a CEO who built multi-billions in valuation from a one-office company who was excellent with micro drivers. It's an atomic compression of the 80/20 rule. He knew the specific activities at each level of the business that actually moved the needle, and he made those objects of extreme awareness, focus, training, and deliberate practice. Peter Drucker said, "Nothing's worse than perfectly executing the wrong things." The number one thing the greatest leaders share: character. Not moral or ethical character. Your makeup as a person. How you're glued together. Integrity comes from the word that means wholeness. The great performers are drivers of tasks and relationships. The highest performers utilize coaching the most. Henry expected the disastrous leaders  to be the ones calling. It was the exact opposite. The ones crushing it are the ones who reach out. The struggling ones rarely do. The greatest leaders reverse the law of entropy: things get worse over time. But entropy only applies to a closed system. Open the system to a new energy source from the outside plus intelligence to organize it, and you can reverse it. That's what coaches, mentors, and advisors do. A leader is a closed system when the only voices they're ever listening to are the ones in their head. The greatest leaders embrace negative realities. They move toward problems. Not to nuke them, but to either resolve them or transform them into something better. Reflection Questions In how many areas of your life are you just barking at the door, working hard at activities without ever stopping to ask if any of it is getting you where you want to go? Is your current vision a metric, or a compelling picture of a future state that would make people want to sacrifice for it? Where in your life are you a closed system? Whose voices outside your head could open you up to new energy and intelligence? More Learning #229 - Dr. Henry Cloud: Be So Good They Can't Ignore You #050 - Dr. Henry Cloud: Integrity is the Wake You Leave Behind #682 - Will Guidara: Adversity is a Terrible Thing to Waste Podcast Chapters 00:00 The Price of Becoming – Pre-Order Now! 01:13 Meet Dr. Henry Cloud 02:40 The Leadership GPS: Where Are You Going? 04:54 Step 2: Building the Right Team Around You 06:09 Steps 3-5: Strategy, Measurement, and Adapt 10:45 Why the Best Leaders Carve Out Time to Think 15:50 Why a Revenue Number Is Not a Vision 18:20 Crafting a Vision People Will Sacrifice For 23:12 The HVAC Story, Joe Girard, and the Dream Maker 27:38 Trust: The First Thing Every Leader Must Build 30:04 Alan Mulally's Red-Yellow-Green Meeting at Ford 32:38 How to Run Status Reviews That Actually Work 34:26 Accountability Should Be an Immune System, Not Autoimmune 38:18 Measure Activities, Not Goals 43:10 Micro Drivers: The Atomic 80/20 Rule 45:14 The Voices Outside Your Head: Peers and Accountability 47:47 The #1 Trait of Sustained Excellence: Character 50:39 The Greatest Leaders Reverse Entropy 56:17 EOPC

In this episode, Jason Li, CTO of Laurel, reveals how the company is turning timesheets into the AI playbook for the entire knowledge-work economy. Jason breaks down why $2,000/hour lawyers still spend Saturdays manually filling out time in six-minute increments, how Laurel's AI platform automatically captures every click, email, and meeting, and why data (not code) is the only real moat left in the age of the SaaSpocalypse. Jason shares how Ernst & Young is using Laurel to identify high-leverage work, why Laurel deliberately integrates with "decades-old" software like Classic Outlook that most startups ignore, and the counter-intuitive reason your best rainmakers should never be forced into cookie-cutter roles again. He also explains why Laurel doesn't train its own LLM, how they run AI feedback loops that self-iterate prompts, and the frameworks leaders can use to actually measure AI ROI instead of just surveying "did it help?" Key Topics Covered: Why "what gets measured gets managed" is the most important rule in AI adoption The Moneyball insight that changed how Jason thinks about metrics How Laurel auto-generates timesheets for lawyers and accountants Why Ernst & Young chose Laurel for their tax group The hidden cost of manual timesheets for $2K/hour professionals How Laurel maps knowledge work to a company's "work ontology" Why decades-old software (Classic Outlook) is a competitive moat, not a liability The SaaSpocalypse: what survives when AI eats applications How to measure if an AI tool actually delivers ROI Why data, not models, is the real defensible asset in AI Episode Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 00:25 - The Peter Drucker quote that shaped Jason's career 02:49 - A Moneyball analogy for AI adoption 03:25 - What Laurel actually does: the AI platform that maps time to outcomes 07:19 - Why every business (not just law firms) needs time visibility 09:17 - Inside the Ernst & Young deployment 12:27 - Jason's journey to becoming CTO at Laurel 14:21 - Live product demo: Laurel's work ontology engine 17:49 - How AI shifts the line between high and low leverage work 21:15 - What onboarding a 2,000-person firm actually looks like 23:06 - The technical architecture behind Laurel's desktop client 28:35 - Why Laurel doesn't train its own LLM 29:39 - How Laurel handles AI models "getting worse" overnight 33:35 - Capturing time for work that doesn't happen on a computer 37:17 - AI adoption meets employee behavior change 41:54 - The SaaSpocalypse and why Laurel's moat is data, not software 48:00 - Why Jason left Ironclad to join Laurel 51:16 - Jason's answer to The AI Why's signature closing question Jason Li's Socials: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhli/ Laurel: https://www.laurel.ai Partner Links Upgrade your AI toolkit: https://www.theaireport.ai/ai-executive-pass Subscribe to our free newsletter: https://newsletter.theaireport.ai/subscribe Join the community: www.theaireport.ai/leaders-launch-guide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you building a cathedral, or are you simply cutting stones to earn a living?Leadership is not just a shiny title to wear; it is a profound responsibility to bear. In this sizzling, energy-packed episode of Bacon Bits with Master Happiness, host Marty Jalove sits down with a very special guest, his son, Luke! Together, this dynamic father-son duo dives deep into the brilliant mind of Peter Drucker, the visionary who transformed the cold corporate machine into a thriving, human-centric community.What will you pull from this powerful conversation?Discover the true power of the "Knowledge Worker" and why your frontline employees are your absolute greatest asset.Learn how to become the ultimate "gardener" of your team, cultivating rich growth instead of just cutting down weeds.Master the bold art of "Planned Abandonment" to let go of yesterday's comfortable habits and fiercely embrace tomorrow's innovations.We bring it all together by slicing into our signature B.A.C.O.N. framework. You will learn to Build on Strengths, Accept Responsibility, Cultivate Clarity, Optimize for Results, and Nurture Innovation.Are you ready to stop managing tasks and start leading people? Hit that play button! Don't forget to follow Bacon Bits with Master Happiness, share this episode with a fellow leader who needs a spark of inspiration, and leave us a sizzling review to help us spread the happiness!www.MasterHappiness.comwww.WhatsYourBacon.comwww.BaconBitsRadio.com

In this episode, we take the timeless insights of Peter Drucker and ask a simple question: what should HR and OD actually do with them? Drawing from The Daily Drucker, we focus on a few ideas that still hit hard. First, the purpose of any organization is to create a customer—so if HR isn't helping the business win externally, it's missing the point. We also challenge the overused idea that culture “just happens.” Drucker's thinking pushes OD to shape the daily behaviors that drive results—not just talk about them. Then there's accountability. Drucker saw management as a discipline. For HR, that means stepping beyond support roles and helping leaders make better, tougher decisions. And finally, focus. In a world of endless initiatives, Drucker's message is clear: do fewer things that matter—and do them well. This isn't about quoting Drucker. It's about applying him—and pressure-testing where his ideas still hold up, and where they might fall short.

Verandermoeheid is een groot thema in organisaties en in managementland. Daarom neemt Marischka ons in deze aflevering van de DNHS podcast Let's talk Business mee in de hoeveelheid veranderingen die in de organisatie gerealiseerd moeten worden.Want hoe groter de organisatie, hoe meer veranderingen er spelen. Natuurlijk zijn er die veranderingen die vanuit de besturingscyclus komen en die hun vertaling krijgen naar alle functionele gebieden, verantwoordelijkheden en werkzaamheden. We kunnen daar inzicht in krijgen als we de werkwijze van Management by Objectives van Peter Drucker volgen. Maar ook elk functioneel gebied heeft veranderingen vanuit eigen expertise en ontwikkelingen in het vakgebied. En dan hebben we nog de operationele optimalisaties die op elk onderdeel van de organisatie spelen. Samen vormen ze een waterval aan veranderingen waar medewerkers mee moeten dealen.

“What I’m really interested in and fascinated about is that, as AI penetrates and spreads throughout the workplace and gets placed into or integrated into workflows, the first thing that happens is that people in the mix are going to have to learn how to use AI and learn why to use AI when they do.” –Jon Husband About Jon Husband Jon Husband is the Founder and Principal of Wirearchy, a creative research and experimentation laboratory exploring the crossroads of AI and networked workplaces and society. He works as a coach, consultant, speaker and writer, and has co-authored three books, including Wirearchy. Website: wirearchy.com LinkedIn Profile: Jon Husband What you will learn The origins and evolution of wirearchy as a response to traditional organizational hierarchies How AI integration is reshaping knowledge work, workflows, and tacit knowledge within organizations The persistence of Taylorist job evaluation and why traditional work design remains resistant to change The rise of the relational economy and the increasing value of human judgment, trust, and relationships beyond financial exchange New approaches and tools for surfacing and mapping intangible or non-financial value exchanges in organizations The concept of emergence and the need to foster conditions for positive outcomes in complex adaptive systems Challenges and opportunities as organizations shift from rigid, control-based management to adaptive, networked, feedback-driven models Why coaching, facilitation, and skills like listening and allowing for emergence will be critical in navigating AI-augmented workplaces Episode Resources Transcript Ross Dawson: Jon, it is wonderful to have you on the show. Jon: Thank you very much, Ross, it’s good to see you again. Ross Dawson: We’ve known of each other and each other’s work for a very, very long time now from, I suppose, the roots of—yeah, I suppose you can crudely say—the intersection of knowledge and networks. So, as I think many of us who have come from that background, we now are thinking about humans and their relative role to AI. Some people will know of your wirearchy and a lot of your work of the past; others will not. So I’d love to just start off with: what is the concept of wirearchy? And then, how is that morphing or evolving, or are you building on that in how you’re thinking now? We’ll dig in and explore that. Jon: Okay, well, I started paying attention to knowledge work and work in organizations and so on as I changed careers in my early 30s, moving from banking, where I was in management, into management consulting. I ended up working for a large global HR consulting firm that, amongst several others—all the major consulting firms that address organizational issues—have services where they do what’s called job evaluation. What job evaluation does is put a size or a measure or a weight to a job, which then basically places it on the organization chart. I spent quite a few years writing thousands of job descriptions and helping streamline workflows and so on and so forth. So, when the internet came along, I had always been an avid reader, and I suppose a wannabe futurist—a wannabe Ross Dawson, if you will. I was reading all sorts of books back then. Instead of dating, because I was single in my mid-30s, I was spending Friday nights reading books about organizations, like “The Living Company” by Arie de Geus, the Tofflers’ work, “Powershift,” certainly Peter Drucker’s work. There was one day—well, I was reading all of these books, and all of the books were about the coming Information Age. The Information Age had not arrived yet; this was roughly late ’80s, early ’90s. All of a sudden, we hit 1994. I’m sitting in London, and I was just told by my team leader in my consulting firm that I was going to be proposed as one of the next global partners. Three weeks later, I quit my job in the consulting firm because I had begun to feel very uneasy about the work I was doing. If I was made a partner, your job becomes basically selling larger projects to keep the younger consultants employed. I realized that I would be selling methods that I had come to not believe in anymore, and the reason for that is that all of the job evaluation methods sold by all the major consulting companies are all versions of generic Taylorism. They have semantic statements that you pick to figure out a level of a job on a number of different factors. This is one of the things I’ve talked and written quite a bit about in wirearchy: this generic Taylorism is still deeply at the core of most of the work of most organizations. It’s how the work is designed. There has been now, what, 15 or 20 years—how far back does Enterprise 2.0 go?—about collaboration and cooperation and better knowledge management and sharing and transfer of knowledge, and so on and so forth. If you know these semantic statements, which are burned into my brain from this method—the Hay method—you realize that no amount of talking about doing things differently is going to make much difference. It’s not going to change much. And the remuneration—the way people get paid—every single person in every single company, is tied to all of that. It’s tied to your job size, it’s tied to the compensation practice, it’s tied to your performance management, it’s tied to your career plans, if an organization is still doing career planning. Frankly, it has not been touched in 75 years now. Ross Dawson: Used to describe it as a job as a box. Jon: Well, sure, and that’s where that term “think outside the box” comes from. I wrote an article about this at one point in time—oh, I can’t remember the title, so it doesn’t matter—but about the semantic statements essentially becoming semantic straightjackets, because they put limits around what you do. They’re a graded level of permissions, basically, or amounts of influence and authority, and that’s the codified, official organizational chart. So anyway, I was working with this all the time, and I realized if I was going to be made a big-time partner, I’d have to be selling these tools all the time. The internet had come along, so I quit, and I didn’t know what to do after that. I had to move from the UK because I was on a work permit, had to go back to Canada. When I went back to Canada, all the companies I tried to approach to work as an independent consultant didn’t want to engage me, because all of the work I’d been doing in the UK was with really large multinationals, and according to them, too sophisticated for what they were doing in Vancouver. But at the same time, I was still reading all the time—reading Charles Handy’s work, reading Gerard Fairtlough’s work on heterarchy, and so on. I came to believe very strongly that the ongoing sharing of information—which we were starting even 20 years ago to build into constant, incessant flows of information carried via hyperlinks—was going to inevitably begin to affect, I’m going to use the word affect, the traditional top-down power of hierarchy. That comes from the “knowledge is power” by Francis Bacon kind of perspective. Now, that was 25 years ago. What we’ve seen since is, of course, what you know—one umbrella term I could apply to much of what’s going on outside of organizations is the “enshittification” of the web. The same thing applies in a lot of ways, I think, to people doing work, sitting behind screens in organizations. Now, a whole host of things have happened in the past 10 or 15 years: there were armies of developers sitting in office spaces, all of them with their headphones on behind screens coding. There were all sorts of people beginning to understand how to use the internet. There were many failed attempts at effective knowledge management because of the idea that it’s still just good search, find documents, retrieval, without really paying any attention to the connections between people and how they work together, and so on. Ross Dawson: So, the frame there is, I mean, obviously, moving—the wirearchy being an arche of the organization being essentially a network. Obviously, there’s more richness to that as you describe the organization as a network, as opposed to the rigid structures, which are still very much rampant. But fast-forwarding to today, what we’ve overlaid is, whilst the old rigid structure is in place, organizations are effectively a lot more loosened up by Enterprise 2.0 and other types of frames, and essentially more peer communication. Now AI is changing a fundamental role, now being, in many ways, a participant in those workflows, in the creation of value. So where does that take us today, in this humans-plus—essentially wirearchy—pulled into where AI plays a role within those networks? Jon: Well, it’s a fascinating question for which I don’t have an answer. I have some responses, I suppose. The notion of wirearchy came, as you pointed out, out of everybody being wired, everybody being networked—the organization as a network. What I’m really interested in and fascinated about is that, as AI penetrates and spreads throughout the workplace and gets placed into or integrated into workflows, the first thing that happens is that people in the mix are going to have to learn how to use AI and learn why to use AI when they do. Often, it’s very soft at the beginning because it’s reminders, or “did you want to do that,” or “do you want to say that,” and so on. Increasingly, the AI, I think, will have more and more coaching built into it. But what I’m interested in is how, as we learn from the mistakes that are made in integration, and also learn from the successes that are made from integration, is that going to decompose a knowledge worker’s work and eventually capture most of their tacit knowledge and ways of working to reduce the cost of doing that kind of work? Then, on a larger scale, what is the active decomposition of types of work through the influence and integration of AI? How is that going to change the fundamental assumptions about work design? My belief is that the work of Dave Snowden and others with respect to complex adaptive systems is what is going to become—and this is a poorly connected parallel or analogy—but I think something like the Cynefin framework, or a unified approach to complex adaptive systems, will become the Taylorism of the 21st century. In other words, there will come to be forms of patterns and models and actions that help you address certain kinds of conditions, because I think, especially with AI, work and outputs are going to become continuous flows. They are the push and the pull, or the dynamic flow of power and authority that is alluded to in the working definition of wirearchy, the working definition of wirearchy includes knowledge, trust, credibility, and a focus on results, each of which you could write a book about. But as general headings, they are what capture what’s in play, I believe. Ross Dawson: Yeah, no, I think absolutely still relevant today. Now, the point I was going to make was around, in complex adaptive systems, a really central concept is emergence— Jon: Yes. Ross Dawson: —where you are not planning or overlaying or dictating a structure; the structure and the value and how that’s created emerges. And to your point, a lot of the key aspect in that world is, how do you create the conditions for emergence of positive outcomes, as opposed to less positive outcomes? And that’s still, of course, arguably at least as much an art as a science, particularly when you’re looking at complex adaptive systems composed of not just many humans, but also AI, which are stochastic in nature. Jon: Yes, well, it’s a very, very good point. I think it relates to the paper I shared with you a couple of days ago about what the author is calling “weaving the web.” There is an enormous amount of human input and activity, combined with the AI, that doesn’t get measured and is not seen in our currently technocratic, generic Taylorist worldview. That’s not seen, not captured, and it arguably is the kind of human input, work, and knowledge that is going to make this whole new era operate fairly well. That’s this notion of exchanges of value. Once that code is cracked, in terms of how to understand it, surface it, see it, measure it, this is going to lead to more and more of what Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is doing with respect to tokenization. There are some people who say tokenization will become the replacement for money in some cases, or even many cases in another, let’s say, 10 years or so. It’s kind of hard to imagine, but if you come back to the paper that you and I first connected on—Alex Imas’s review of the structural changes to the economy—if you can see the logic of his argument, he says there’s going to be a lot more work, but it’s going to be relational economy work, which ties directly into value exchange and surfacing how that exchange of value operates, say, between two people at work, or a group and a person, or two groups, and so on. This notion of value exchange is going to ground a lot of the conceptual and abstract issues that we talk about when we talk about, you know, why is making effective collaboration so hard? Why is it hard to de-silo an organization? All of those kinds of things are going to, I believe, eventually be washed away in this continuous flow of information. So we have to look for new concepts and new ways to measure what’s being created, the value that’s being created. Ross Dawson: Well, that’s—I mean, this is really interesting. As long as you do not recall, in “Living Networks,” I was actually laying out a quite similar thesis around value creation and network structures, and I did quite a bit of work with Verna Allee on value networks. We ran some workshops together, and we’re essentially—a lot as laid out in the paper you described, and as you’re saying now—a lot of it is saying, how do you look at the non-financial or intangible exchanges of value, which sometimes are apparent and sometimes less apparent? There are all sorts of these structures where, as you say, there is an exchange of value. Sometimes it involves money, oftentimes it doesn’t. To understand the landscape, you do need to understand all of these non-financial structures. But are you suggesting that in this tokenization or other structures, there is a way then of being able to, I suppose, capture some of these non-financial values, which does imply there needs to be some kind of measurement, or at least a mutual agreement or assessment on what that value is? Jon: Yes, the paper that I sent you, and the tool that I’m interested in and think is important, is called VEMapper—Value Exchange Mapper—which has some sophisticated capabilities with respect to AI, mainly by calling the main AI engines into the conversation. There’s a process set out whereby, in a dialogue that’s captured both by recording and by typing, there’s a record of a conversation or a dialogue about value exchange. I’ve carried out a few of them. I recommend trying it, because it’s quite remarkable. You really just tell your story, but it surfaces the tacit knowledge often that you’ve put to work in the creation and exchange of the value. The tool is also quite sophisticated today in terms of its databases and other components. Please forgive me, I’m not a technologist, but it creates a data commons. You, as a participant in a value exchange using this tool, your data, your output, is yours and yours alone. You own it. There’s a notion of data ownership and privacy, and as you carry out more and more of this value exchange, the way it’s captured—and again, I don’t really know about this, but I do know about the structure of the semantic web—it captures triplets: subject, predicate, object, which then makes them readable, makes them discoverable in knowledge graphs and other ways. The tool also has a 3D knowledge graph. If you read that paper, it’s really following the logic, the reasoning, and the innovations that were introduced by Vint Cerf long ago in terms of how knowledge would work, whether there would be things like knowbots, which are agents, and so on. So it stores all of this, and then there’s a process whereby you enter into a dialogue. The AI coach helps you clarify, elaborate, and so on, and then you revisit this process. What this does is it builds and scaffolds trust between people and between groups or whomever is working on a problem. Ross Dawson: Back to a broader frame here. So, what you’re describing—this tool or other tools—has been able to, as you state, capture or make visible value exchange in various guises, with the potential to shift to where we are looking and understanding far beyond the exchanges of financial or overt products and services, and so on. But we’re also relating it to Alex Imas’s thesis that we are moving into a relational economy, where the value—what is scarce—is not AI churning away on reasoning; what is scarce is human relation and judgment. In a whole variety of exchange contexts, including in simple conversations or other knowledge exchange, they’ll be able to apply human expertise to people in situations and organizations. So perhaps, if we just marry those two, what do you see might happen if we move into both a relational economy with the potential to surface more of the nature of how value is exchanged? Jon: Wow, that’s quite a question. I think it’s one of those things where there’s likely to be a very large and durable polarity emerge. I think that the polarity is that there will be some people—probably younger, I’m guessing under 45-ish—that will take to the new environment like ducks to water. They’re already living it in many ways. Their work is much more precarious. They operate in networks that are often networks of support and help, and so on. I think the other end of the polarity is that there will be lots of people who are—I sent you another piece about a week ago called “Artificial Intelligence and Sleeping Humans,” which was about the fact that many of us are, whether we like it or not, not all that much awake when we’re walking around every day, particularly after we’ve been working for 10 or 15 or 20 years, and, you know, kids, busy life, and so on. As AI moves through the workplace, different industries, different natures of work, and brings up issues of relation and so on, I think that relational work will always be AI-aided and supported. I think there’s a significant possibility of something emerging that currently I’m calling AI psychosis. I think that it will disturb a lot of people. They’ll try to build habits or create habits, and they’ll be trained for this with organizations with respect to using AI, but I think it will feel very foreign to them. I think there’s been something—you probably have talked about this before somewhere; I seem to remember reading something from you—but there’s been about 25, 30, 40 years of what I’d call atomization and augmentation in the social fabric. I don’t think that the introduction of AI on a widespread basis throughout work and everything is going to help with that atomization very much. So I think that the longer-term, emergent impacts of AI—I don’t think they’re going to be about productivity and efficiency. They’re going to be up a level or two in terms of the discombobulation and ongoing anxiety that are created. That makes sense? Ross Dawson: Yeah, yes, it does. I think most people can relate to what you’re saying. So, you were just saying before we started the podcast, you’ve, in a way, come back to your work. You’ve been reinvigorated by seeing some interesting shifts in the world. So, what are the next years for you? What do you think we should be thinking about? What should we be focusing on? What should we be creating to enable, as much as possible, all of this to go in a positive direction? Jon: Again, a tough question. It’s so hard because these conditions are all swirling around us. But for me, 10 years—10 years, I’ll be in my early 80s. I don’t like to play golf. I like to swim, so I’ll probably still be swimming. I think we’ll see more and more evidence of the relational economy, with respect to wirearchy and my implication. I’m going, in about a week, to Cambridge to start a creative residency there that involves a number of components. I’ll meet people with the Digital Futures Institute at the University of Bristol, some people at Cambridge. What I’m going to be doing with this creative residency is paying attention to and learning about improvisational facilitation. I think what’s going to happen, what I’m seeing happen everywhere, is shifts in what will be brought to work around the integration of AI. I think the evolution of wirearchy, which implies a different kind of leadership and power, will mean there will just be more and more—how do I want to say it? What I’m noticing is that there’s an enormous amount of talk on LinkedIn and other places where people are wondering about similar things to what we’re talking about. They’re emphasizing the ability to listen, the ability to suspend judgment, the ability to allow the time and the space for emergence—a very, very different mindset than the predict, plan, execute, control, linear types of work. This will be more circular. Many of the elements are already there. We’ve already seen in the last 10 years: develop fast, push versions out fast, fail faster—sort of recursive feedback loops. We’ll all be operating in recursive feedback loops, probably forever more. Ross Dawson: That’s actually very central to my own beliefs. Jon: Yeah, and we just—we have to get used to it. There’s an example I like. It’s not specifically apt for this, but I think you’d probably relate to it. Living in Bondi and in Australia, I presume you’ve gone scuba diving more than once in your life. There’s a kind of dive called a drift dive. Do you know what a drift dive is? Ross Dawson: No. Jon: Okay, I participated in one once, and it was really fascinating. At certain places, there are coral reefs where, I guess because of the topography, the current moves past it quite quickly—more quickly than you can swim against or manage yourself in. So if you go on a drift dive, the dive masters take you out, drop you in somewhere. They know how fast the water is moving, they know how much air you have, they know where you’re going to come up, so they meet you when you come up. But while you’re in the drift dive, what you do is essentially drift along the coral reef, watching the reef vertically because you can’t really swim. I learned about that reading a book a long time ago called “The Horizontal Society” by a Yale Law professor. I can find the title and I’ll email it to you. He described that living in our media-saturated environment—and this was a long time ago—was like living in a drift dive. I think we’re all going to be living in a big drift dive for the next forever—well, certainly for the rest of my life. It’s really interesting to think about things in that way. It relates particularly poignantly to my quitting my job as a management consultant, where I learned all of the method with the generic Taylorism. Because if you go back 20 years ago, the assumption—I know you’ve done a lot of strategic planning with companies and organizations—the assumption was that the next thing, the next time, and we get the strategy right, this thing is going to be stable. This is how it’s going to operate. Ross Dawson: Yes, it’s a common fallacy. Jon: Yeah, exactly. That wasn’t the case 20 years ago, and I started realizing it, and it’s much less the case today than it was 10 years ago. So, you know, I guess it’s like, get used to it. Ross Dawson: Yeah. So where can people go to find out more about your work and what you’re doing, Jon? Jon: At the moment, just LinkedIn. I’m going to put up a new site. I keep—another interesting, fascinating little story. I’ll do it quickly. I was over in England about a month ago, and there’s a guy, a friend of mine, whose claim to fame is, I think he built the first website in the UK in 1994. His name is Felix Velarde, and he’s run a number of agencies and is on the board of directors of a number of digital agencies now, as he’s gotten older. When I visited him a couple days later, I said, “Okay, I want to build a new website. I want to develop a new website, and I have some ideas. But Felix, can you point me to—you know a lot of really talented people—to help me design my next website?” He said—we were on a Zoom like this—he said, “Hang on for a sec.” Started typing into Claude a pretty general statement of, “Give my friend Jon Husband—go scrape his website and blah, blah, blah, and give him an idea of what a good website would look like.” Enter. Wow. Wow, just wow. I started playing with it, and I can do all sorts of interesting things. I can take the wirearchy graphic, I can embed that as a semi-opaque in the back. Anyway, just astonished. I don’t have it up yet, but I will have a new website called wirearchy.com in, I don’t know, about a month or so. I’ll try to put up a couple of my key pieces, but it’s mainly just going to be a landing page. I’ve decided that I don’t have any answers for anything, but I have, you know, 40 years of knowledge about watching organizations morph and change. So I’m going to really just offer half-day and one-day master classes. I respond to all sorts of different situations with different methods, done a lot of facilitation. I think facilitators and coaches are going to be very happy in this new era. Coaching is really interesting. From what I’ve used—Claude, you know, a bit as a personal coach, haven’t tried the others—but I’m really impressed with what they’re going to be able to do, or already can do. Where coaching is going to become critical is at the higher levels, the top of the organization, because all of what we’ve been talking about—sensing, listening, allowing for emergence. The phrase I used to replace “command and control” was “champion and channel”: champion ideas, channel resources. See what happens. Does the node light up? Does the node wither? Does the node connect to other nodes, and so on. This is the world where I think we’re going to be living in, and coaches will be operating at the higher levels to help executives—who have typically been hard-charging and with mindsets they learned 20 or 30 or 40 years ago—helping them adapt, which will be critical. Ross Dawson: Absolutely. There are many people who, for a long time, have been following and applying your insights, Jon, so I’m sure they’ll all be glad to get the update from this podcast and also when your website’s back up. Thank you so much, Jon. Jon: Thank you, Ross. The post Jon Husband on wirearchy, web weaving, the relational economy, and drift diving (AC Ep41) appeared first on Humans + AI.

https://youtu.be/N-og1bznPbs Andy Seeley, CEO of Creatively Disruptive and Ashworth Strategy, is on a mission to become the “8:00 AM call” for small business owners—the trusted partner they can turn to after those sleepless 3:00 AM nights filled with uncertainty. Having experienced the stress and isolation of entrepreneurship firsthand, Andy now helps technician-turned-business-owners (plumbers, gym owners, bakers, and more) build scalable, sustainable businesses with the right systems, strategy, and support. We explore Andy's perspective on success—not as a shortcut, but as a combination of fundamentals: embracing failure, never giving up, and most importantly, building the right team. He shares how most small business owners get stuck because they try to do everything themselves, and why true growth comes from surrounding yourself with smart, hardworking people of strong character. Andy also dives into a critical operational insight: sequencing—doing the right things in the right order—to avoid overwhelming clients (and yourself) while still driving meaningful results. — Help Your Clients Sleep Soundly with Andy Seeley  Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and today my guest is Andy Seeley, the CEO of Creatively Disruptive, an agency supporting local, community-based small businesses, and Ashworth Strategy, an e-commerce, multi-channel marketing agency that is creating sustainable growth for beauty, apparel, pets, and kids industry businesses. Andy, welcome to the show.  Thank you. I’m very happy to be here. Nice to see you, Steve.  Yeah, I’m excited to talk to you. It’s a very interesting combination that you have going here, but I’d like to start with my favorite question: what is your personal “why,” and how are you manifesting it in your businesses? I think the personal “why” kind of straddles all the businesses that we deal with. We typically don't work with large corporate brands. We don’t typically deal with, not that we wouldn’t want to, but we typically don’t, and we don’t actually even try to focus on them. Because the main  why”, the founding of our business came from when my partner and I were talking—we weren't very happy with the two different businesses we were operating. We were both working on one project together, but he had his own thing, and I had another thing. We were both there, we’d both gone through some really tough times ourselves and had experiences of feeling very alone, trying to figure things out—sometimes successfully, sometimes very unsuccessfully. And we both talking about our troubles and tribulations, and all of those kind of things. And we were like, wouldn’t it have been nice, wouldn’t it have been good if there was someone there to help us? That “staring at the ceiling at 3:00 AM” in the morning. And the morning is a thing that a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners are very familiar with, right? You wake up at 3:00 AM, staring at the ceiling, thinking, “I've got all these things to do.” Or if it's tough times—how do I make payroll? If there's a legal issue—what am I going to do about that? Whatever it is, there's always something. Even in good times, there's often something. What we thought to ourselves was we are oftentimes, when we were in that situation, we didn’t really have anybody to go to. That 3:00 AM turns into 4:00 AM, then 5:00 AM, and sometimes we were just like, well, I’m just going to get up. And then there are sleepless nights. And we thought if we come from the standpoint, it's a real thing. It's something we're passionate about is that most small business owners are technicians.Share on X Most small business owners are very good at a thing, like they’re a plumber and they start a plumbing company, or a baker who starts a bakery. The E-Myth.  This is the E-Myth concept.  Right. They're a gymnastics coach, so they start a gymnastics gym. Most business owners are technicians, which means they’re very good at a very specific thing, not so good at many other things that you have to be. And we wanted to be that 8:00 AM. We wanted to be their 8:00 AM. And what that means is—staring at the ceiling at 3:00 AM, maybe their mind racing for 30 minutes or so—but then they can say, “You know what, we'll reach out to Andy and Russ at Creatively Disruptive at 8:00 AM. I'll get some sleep. We'll get to the bottom of this idea. We’ll get to the bottom of this problem. We’ll get to the bottom of it. And that was really important to us. And it really was a guiding light. That's why, from a marketing standpoint—you could call us a marketing agency—but I don't think it really is what we are. Because we do consultancy work. We work through exit strategies. We work through financial goals. We work through a whole bunch of stuff that does not include putting an ad up on Facebook, Instagram, or Google, or building websites. We ask—why are you doing all that stuff? I love your first question, because what's the point of it all, right? I had a conversation with a frustrated client yesterday, and at the end of the frustration that the client had, they were not frustrated. And I said to them, “Look, we're talking about a lot of different things, and the reality is what’s going on with you when working with us is there’s some amazing things happening, which you agree with.” But the reality is, you are not talking to us about running a Facebook ad. You didn’t come to us because you desperately want a Facebook ad run, or come to us because you would love your company on Google. That’s not the reason why you came to us. The reason why you came to us is something that those things will change in your life for the better. That's why you're talking to us. There’s a reason why you bought this business. So our “why” is really to help those small business owners—who are often technicians, very specialized people—develop a broader skill set and a team that can help them through their challenges.Share on X The beauty of what we do is—we have 120 clients, all dealing with different issues and different situations. Because we engage with them at a consultative level, we hear it all. We hear, many times many subjects, here’s what not to do—and on those same subjects, here’s what to do. And we actually collate that stuff. As you saw on our Zoom, there was a Zoom link we used—you saw my Read.ai. that read.ai As much as it’s for us to make sure that we have our ducks in order when we’re talking to somebody, it’s also an archive for us to make sure that some things that we spoke about, we learned about that now we can put that in our database to help other clients. And it’s not that we show other clients what we’ve spoken about and give state secrets and so forth.  It’s a repository of company knowledge that you have developed.  Absolutely. Me and you having a conversation like this, Steve, is all well and good. The fact that we are recording it is going to allow loads of other people to understand it. For us internally, it allows my team and us to look at stuff and go, okay, well this is a really good thing, let’s actually turn that into a process. Yeah. Love it. So a very long-winded, long thing. The “why” is, we want to be that 8:00 AM call after you’ve had a 3:00 AM wake up. Love it. I mean, that is the definition of trust. If you are the person that they call at 8:00 AM, then they know that they can sleep well because you’re there.  And the big, burning part of that “why” is that we didn't have it—and it was tough. It was emotionally tough to be so concerned. I had a lot of 3:00 AM wake-up calls during the Great Recession in 2008–2009. It was a very worrying time. There was a market crash. Our house went from being worth $400,000 to being worth $100,000. We owed $300,000 on that house. We had a business that income went from about $500,000 a month. It was a gymnastics gym that my wife ran to making about $200,000 in a two month period, because so many layoffs were happening. My job, which was working for a TV station, we had loads of clients calling in, asking to cancel, trying to figure out how, so there was so much going on. Those 3:00 AMs were very regular thoughts that came up, and I would just sit there not knowing what to do and having no one to talk to. I desperately want to at least be someone that someone can think of, “You know what, we can call Andy. We can call the CD team, and we'll figure this out.” So anyway, there you go.  Okay, so this is a great segue, because you mentioned Read.ai and how you're thinking about about processes—and how to use the 120 clients you have and the challenges you solve. How do you turn that into a process so other clients can easily access to it? So this podcast is really about this kind of stuff. It’s called Management Blueprint, and I’m always looking for shortcuts—business shortcuts, frameworks that entrepreneurs have discovered along the way and that they could share with the listeners and could help other people listening to have a better process. It could be anything—three to five steps—looking at something, seeing something in a different light. So what do you have in mind for us?  So a shortcut to success—I'm always a little bit leery of statements like that. “Shortcuts to success”. It always feels a little bit like a 2:00 AM infomercial—blah, blah, blah—and you get steak knives with it. Because the reality is, oftentimes there's no shortcut. I'm sure you've asked this question a million times, and a lot of people say, “Here are the shortcuts.” But my experience is—the real truth is—there are a couple of fundamentals to success. One is being okay with not having it right? That's a “shortcut,” if you want to call it that. Failure is actually the journey to success. Being okay with failure. There’s a reason why 95% of humanity doesn’t run a business, and it’s because they find failure difficult, and we’ve been trained as humans to not embrace failure.  Failure is the journey to success. It's where you learn. The other part—which is linked to failure—is never giving up.Share on X I don’t know if that’s a shortcut, but you only lose when you give up. Now, some people might say—sunk costs and things like that—at some point, you've got to stop putting into something that's not working. But the reality is, if you believe in what you're doing, there are going to be troubles, there’s going to be failures, there’s going to be difficulties. And as long as you don’t give up, and you learn from each mistake in each thing that happens, you will have success. You only won't have success if you decide to give up. I really, truly believe that. I live that.  I resonate with that, and I wouldn't even say that the 3:00 AM wake-up is a bad thing. It's really a forcing function. It's forcing you, as the entrepreneur, not to give up—to put the energy in and figure the problem out so that you can move forward. Because if you sleep until 7:00 AM, then 8:00 AM the day starts, and you still haven't solved the problem. You're just snowballing it.  But I would say—and those are more operational, ongoing things—so they don't really fit your question of a shortcut to success. To me, that's more the ingredients or material of success, right? But one of the things I would say would be a pattern of success that I’ve seen across hundreds of businesses that I’ve worked with—and that we currently work with—is building a team around you. Almost all of the successful people that I know—and when I say successful, I mean way more successful than I am, with multimillions of income and so forth—and I know a few of these guys… all of them have teams. All of them have people who are experts in certain areas. And almost all of them, to a T, are pretty good at building teams—finding people and putting them together.  And what I would suggest, any business owner, if you are going to think that you are going to become wealthy and do well by doing everything yourself—one, I think you'll fail. I don't know anyone with no team who has achieved strong success. And two, your life’s going to suck. I would say, it’s going to be tough, right? So if I had to choose something—even though I don't like the word “shortcut,” if I’m honest with you, and I know that was a question that was coming up and I did think hard about it, and I kind of feel like I could give you a cheesy one-liner, but that kind of is like nahh. But the reality is, I think our success with our companies is probably my ability to actually find good people. And my philosophy is: hire smart, hardworking people of good character—and then train them.Share on X And if I can find somebody who is smart, hardworking, and of good character, and also has a skill set—that's a bonus. What I'm really looking for are those first three. A smart, hardworking person of character—you can train them, if they have an interest in what they're learning.  So how do you do it? So maybe that's the framework. “Shortcut” is actually—I agree—the wrong word. I meant a business framework.  Okay.  Maybe I shortcutted the expression. So how do you find that smart, hardworking person of character? Do you have specific questions you ask to figure that out?  A lot of what we do is—I'll ask questions around what they've done in past jobs, even past personal lives. I'm not looking for something too narrow—more broad, like: tell me about a situation where you saw something bad happening. What did you do? It’s kind of open-ended, and it’s not telling them the answer. But you know, something bad was happening. Tell me what the bad thing was. And they might say, “Well, it was this kid, and they were drowning in a pool.” Okay—what did you do? Did you run to get someone to help? Did you turn away and walk off? Did you pull out your phone and film it? Or did you jump in and save the kid? What did you do? That gives you an understanding of what kind of person they might be. And then part of it, for me, is I feel I have a decent gauge of whether people are lying to me. Sometimes I don’t get it right, but I feel I have a decent gauge when they’re saying it. In my mind, I'm noting—does this sound like a real story? Does it feel real? Does their face look like they're revisiting that moment that what they’re doing and what they’re telling me? Or does it feel like a story being made up? And then I put that down. And if it’s like, the person said that they jumped into the pool and saved the kid, and I could see the emotion in them and it feels like they revisited, this feels real to me. Check. There would be multiple questions along those lines. It would tell me about a time when maybe you’re ending the day and some things are missing or some things haven’t happened, or blah, blah, blah. What is your thought and what is your plan to address that? And are they going to go back and spend more time working? That might be a good answer—or not. Are they going to note it and handle it first thing in the morning? Or do they say, “Ah, someone else will take care of it”? Getting those kind of answers of how their mind thinks about real world things that they’ve done in the past. Trying to keep it open so it’s not so specific that they say, oh, I’ve never had that experience before gives you an idea of what their character is, right? It also gives you a sense of how hard they work. And I'd say a hard worker should also be balanced with being an organized worker. How organized they are. Are they on top of things? Because I’m okay with you not being such a hard worker, Steve, if you’re very well organized and you get stuff done. You might not be busting your butt, working long hours and saying, Oh my God, I’m working so hard and lots of long hours, but you’re so organized and you’ve got yourself in such good order that you actually outproduce everybody else, because you're more efficient. That, to me, would fall under the hard work category, right? Yeah. Yeah. So a good answer to something wasn’t done that needed to be done, and it’s the end of the day.  A good answer might be, I looked at it and I was like, I can wait until about midday next day. I put it on my list of the first thing that I’m going to do in the morning. Then the next morning I came in, I got it done within 25 minutes, and everything was great. I would look at that and go, okay, that’s not a bad answer. I’m okay with that. As an employer, I care about your work-life-balance. I’m not always looking for somebody who’s prepared to work till midnight every night. That, to me, once in a while is okay. But if I have an employee that’s looking to do that all the time, that’s a problem. Because I know there’s a limitation to that. And then again, when we’re talking about we’re looking at good character, hard work, and smart.  So yes, if they are intelligent, it’s clear. And I'm not going to say, “Hey, here's an algebra test—tell me the answer.” That comes through with the questions, right?  It's common sense. You're looking for common sense—which is not very common. I like it, because essentially you are triggering some signs of authenticity in that person. Are they really showing up? Are they authentic, or are they trying to look like something they're not? And it's a really good filter.  So a lot of times, I think interview questions are like, “Here's a situation—what would you do?” do? Any question like that, especially when you're selecting teammates. And I don’t always have interview with teammates, sometimes the people that I have relationships with and I go and say, I need you to work for my company. I know you well enough. I've experienced you enough—I'm going to bring you in. But during that journey of coming to that conclusion, I'm looking for those qualities. And when you're in an interview and you don't know someone, and you ask a fabricated question—that's a fantasy. They can come back with a fabricated answer—that's also a fantasy.  And most of the time, that's what happens. I’m a pretty good interviewer because my interview, when I’m looking to interview with somebody, not that I’ve done it for a very long time, but let’s say I’m interviewing with something other than work, I dunno what it might be, but maybe something like a school counselor, school for my kid or whatever. And we are interviewing, I’m analyzing what the person who’s asking me the question, I’m trying to figure out what answers they want. And I think anybody with an element of intelligence does the same thing. And you end up giving answers, not necessarily, which are 100% what the interviewer needs to know. The interviewer gets the answer what the interviewee thinks they want to know. And I think when you ask questions that are kind of open-ended, but experiential about what they’ve done in the past, you get a sense of kind of who they truly are. And then the goal is listening to see, to get those cues on.  I always like asking, “Tell me about a time when something bad happened in your life.” Okay—what did you do? That's something you can really work through and get a sense of—are they truthful? Are they emotional? It’s a question I think some people are uncomfortable with, and some interviewers might think, “I don't know about that. What might come up in that interview? I've never had a really terrible answer—like, “I was at the scene of a murder, or blah, blah, blah. I’ve never got that answer. But I've definitely had things like, “I was coaching a team, and one of the players broke their leg.” Okay—what did you do? And they talk me through it, and I'm like, okay, that makes sense. That’s a good answer from a good standpoint. I’ve had stuff like that. So I’m yet to come across a real traumatic story, but what I found is that I can really tell whether or not somebody is telling the truth. And I can get a sense of kind of how they handle really difficult situations.  Okay, Andy, I'd like to switch gears here. What I’m hearing is that you are good at building teams and empowering them. You have a good ability to hire people that have good character—smart and hardworking. What is one thing that you are actively trying to figure out in your business right now?  We've gotten to the point where we have so many moving parts in our business that, sometimes, with our client base, it's overwhelming. There's a lot going on. We've got an AI system with multiple components—it's tremendously useful, a very powerful tool—but it can be overwhelming for a technician, like a baker or a gymnastics coach, who's specialized in something else to suddenly have to take that on. We've got ads, we build websites, we provide consultancy—we've got consultancy, we’ve got all these things that, when tied together, create a really powerful machine. And what we’re trying to do right now is try to figure out how to set expectations and set out how to roll all of the stuff out.  When we first started doing a lot of this in one lump sum, we would almost dump it all on the client within a week of them signing and start working through all these things. And what we found is that it’s quite overwhelming and almost to the point where the client runs away and they don’t actually want to continue. It’s just too much work all at once. So one of the things that we’re working on right now to try to improve our situation is we’ve got a lot of stuff. We’ve built this machine that really helps businesses inside out. But do we have to build every part of that machine in the first three weeks? Clients want things to happen in the first three weeks. We can have things happen in the first three weeks. Do we need everything to happen in the first three weeks? That’s why I said to you, doing everything all the time forever is tough all at once. Right now, we’re actually literally working through a process, talking with the team, working with the team of what’s the order of priority of all these things that we have from the point of view of what’s easy to implement, but maybe not as important, but we can get it implemented within minutes of a client joining. What’s really important, but it takes a long time and trying to prioritize those things. Because all of the smaller things, individually, aren't hugely impactful—but collectively, they are. But we can get them all done in a day. And then some of the things that are singular that have a huge impact, they take a little bit longer. How do we scale this out so we can actually get results very quickly for the client without overwhelming them with all of the stuff? And I think there's a word you've probably heard a lot—sequencing is really important. I think a lot of businesses fall apart because they do things out of sequence. They don’t think about the sequence. They go for the fun, cool thing first, and sometimes that's the worst decision they can make. Right now, we're working through how to properly sequence our onboarding of new clients—to make sure the experience is really positive without overwhelming them. We’re actually getting into a really good place. And some of that is, I mean, most of this is because there is so many things. We have these—like I say—technician business owners, and they come to us and they're amazing at plumbing, but they've got a phone, and that's all they have. So whenever anybody needs to call them to schedule a new job, it rings their phone—and they're under a sink doing work. The phone's ringing. They're like, “Oh, hell,” and they're under the sink. Well, sometimes they don't answer it, or whatever. They've got no system. They’ve got no process to take care of things. And we've got to build all that out, right? And it's so common—and it's totally fine. They’ve been successful in what their technical part of is, but they want more than a job that they own, right? You’ve probably heard that a lot. And they want to start scaling. They want to take vacations without losing income. They want to do all of these things. We can do all that for them—but we can't do it like that. Even though they want it like that, if we do it like that, their brain nukes.  Yeah.  I don’t know if that’s a good answer for you, because that is something that we’re actually working on from a business standpoint of is how to sequence and do things in the right order that allows people to get the best bang for their buck without melting their brains down. Indigestion. Yeah. I don't know who said it—maybe Peter Drucker—but he said most businesses die of indigestion rather than starvation. So that's true. So what drives your business? What is it that helps your business grow? I mean, you mentioned 120 clients. I saw your video—we were talking about 114, 115 clients—so you've been growing since the video.  Yeah.  So what drives your business?  If I’m honest with you, philosophically, what drives us is the failures that we’ve had in the past. My business partner and I—we've had some pretty tough times, going back to that 3:00 AM question. We almost lost our house during the Great Recession. We didn't lose it—we still have it to this day. It's actually a second house now, in Lake Tahoe. We went through times that were quite stressful, difficult, and troublesome for us. I mean, not necessarily nearly as bad as other people have had, probably much tougher times that they’ve had to go through. But I would say what drives us is the fact that we had those tough times. We understand what it’s like to struggle, and we really want to do what we can for a small business owners—mom-and-pop level businesses—avoid those situations. All of our decisions are about how we can make a difference. Again, going to that conversation with that client yesterday that I just mentioned a moment ago, I actually said to them: if you guys decide to leave because of these frustrations that you’ve had, ’cause they had a couple of frustrations, and it was mainly about what I was talking about the everything was getting dumped on them. They were like overwhelmed. There’s lots of stuff happening and they were thinking that it all needed to be happened in one month, but really it was, no, it’s okay if it takes three months for this stuff to get rolled out. And I said to them: if you leave, I'm going to be very disappointed in myself and my team, because of the massive difference we can make in your lives. And that is the driving force for our business—to make a real difference. And the fact that what we've done so far—we're seeing the germination of those really good things. And they agreed. They said, “Yeah, there are some really good things happening. We really like those. We're just frustrated with the amount of stuff going on.” And I'm like, “Well, I think we can spread it out, take the heat off, and make sure things roll out nicely.” That reminded me that the reason our business exists is to help these small businesses be all they can be—to reach for the stars. There are so many very good people who could make a lot of money and do a lot of good things—but their specialty is so focused that they're not rounding out their overall situation.  Especially in gymnastics—we work with a lot of gymnastics coaches. Probably about 60% of our business is kids' activity centers. A lot of kids activity center owners tend to be, they do everything themselves. They put everything on their shoulders, and they don't build out their team—which means they can't scale. So they end up owning a job, not a scalable business. What drives me is: how do we help these small businesses scale, have a better life, reach more people, help more kids, and support their employees? All of that kind of stuff. And people might say, “Oh yeah, sure, Andy—you're like some Mother Teresa figure.” I'm like, no—because my experience is, if we do a really good job of that, the money takes care of itself. A “shortcut,” going back to your earlier question, is: stop thinking about how much money you can make from each customer. Really focus on taking care of that customer. Charge a reasonable rate, and the money will come. If you become well known—if you become a major figure in an industry—that money will come. I'm lucky enough that, in the gymnastics industry and the kids' activity center space, I've become reasonably well known. People I don't know—and I think you become a well-known figure when people you don't know recognize you. You walk into a conference, and people come up and say, “Hi, Andy.” And I'm like, “Oh, okay—I don't know who you are.” I’ve been watching you on this, or I’ve been doing that, I’ve been seeing you talk or speak or blah, blah, blah. I don't think of myself as famous at all, but in some of the niches we work in, I've become well known. And I think that's happened because we care—and we let the money take care of itself.  Andy, our time’s coming to an end, but I'd like to ask—if someone is running an activity-based business, maybe a gym, a swim team, a dance studio, or selling classes—and they want to ramp up their business because everything is on their shoulders and they're a technician—where should they go, and how can they find you? So, like I said, we help plumbers, home service businesses—we've worked with banks, rec centers, kids' activity centers, and all sorts. Where our real specialty is, in a very real way, is pushing the needle for local brick-and-mortar businesses. Obviously, we also have Ashworth Strategy, which we didn't get into—that's our e-commerce brand. But my personal passion is that mom-and-pop business that opens up a storefront. The best way to reach us—regardless of whether you're a plumber or anything else—is to go to creativelydisruptive.com. You might look at it and think, oh, this seems like a whole bunch of kids on here. We do have another brand called highlevelthinkers.com, where we do the same kind of work for home service businesses. So go to creativelydisruptive.com and reach out there. We actually have a little chat square that you can go into and start talking to us and you’ll actually speak to our little AI up here. It knows everything—it's basically like talking to me. It can help you set up a time to speak with one of our team members. We don't have salespeople—we call them business development consultants, because that's really what they do. They'll talk with you and figure out the best way we can help. But basically, in a nutshell, there’s lots of ways to reach out to us. But in my mind, the best and easiest way, just go to creativelydisruptive.com or highlevelthinkers.com, and reach out to us through there using the chat bot, or using the form and just reach out. And we'll help you.  Okay. Well, if you're listening and you're running a local business—whether it's an activity-based business, a mom-and-pop business, or a contracting business—and you'd like to level up, put in systems, and sequence them properly, then reach out to creativelydisruptive.com or highlevelthinkers.com. yep.  And then you can connect with Andy—or the chatbot, if he's sleeping—and it'll get back to you.  The chatbot's probably a much more fun conversation.  It could be. You can listen to the podcast and use the chat at the same time, so you get the best of both worlds. So thank you, Andy, for sharing your experiences and being very vulnerable. And if you, as our audience, enjoyed listening to this, then stay tuned—because every week I have an entrepreneur sharing, not necessarily shortcuts, but good frameworks that can help your business. So thanks for coming, Andy, and thank you for listening.  Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Important Links: David's LinkedIn David's website https://highlevelthinkers.com/

I had a bit of a shock recently. My wife tried to reach out to an Instagram vendor to pick up an order, but she found herself completely shut out. This business owner had somehow managed to disable every single live call function—regular calls, WhatsApp calls, even Instagram and Facebook audio calls. The only way to reach them was through messaging, which led to a generic automated reply.I get it. Some of you want "peace of mind," calm, and control in your business. Maybe phone calls give you "palpitations" or make you nervous. But if you are a small or medium-scale enterprise (SME) or a brand-new CEO, being inaccessible is a serious mistake.When you cut off phone calls, you lose qualitative data. Text messages can tell you what happened, but they can't give you the tone, inflection, and nuance that come with a voice. You can't hear if a customer is truly happy, lukewarm, or secretly frustrated. Without those conversations, you can't build rapport, establish credibility, or easily earn referrals.As Peter Drucker said, the purpose of a business is to create a customer through marketing and innovation. You cannot market effectively if you don't know who your customer is, and you cannot innovate your product if you aren't hearing their honest feedback. Unless you are a massive PLC, a monopoly like NEPA, or you have spoken to so many customers that you can finish their sentences, do not turn off your phones.Talk to your customers. Let them hear you, and more importantly, make sure you hear them.

"What if you train them and they leave?" It's the fear that quietly keeps most healthcare leaders from investing in their people. Matt Staub — CEO of Your Health — wants you to sit with the question his mentor once asked in return: What if you don't train them, and they stay? In this episode, Matt joins Jamie Preston for a conversation about why workforce education isn't a perk at Your Health — it's the culture. From nationally accredited apprenticeships, to a training pipeline built out of a licensing crisis, to the real people behind the success stories, this is a blueprint for leaders who want to grow something that lasts. Key topics covered: The lumberjack story: why sharpening your axe beats swinging harder every time How a shortage of licensed administrators became the catalyst for Your Health's training engine The shift from "education happens on your own time" to "this is how we behave" Real success stories — Olivia, Kristin, Taylor, McKinsey, Rebecca — and what they share Matt's three challenges for anyone ready to grow: show up, find your who, take your shot If you've ever wondered whether developing your people is worth the cost, this episode will change the math. Press play — then look around, and ask yourself who's looking at you.

What gets measured, gets managed. - Peter Drucker Check out John Lee Dumas' award winning Podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire on your favorite podcast directory. For world class free courses and resources to help you on your Entrepreneurial journey visit EOFire.com

“A cultura come a estratégia ao pequeno almoço”. A frase, atribuída a Peter Drucker, parece estar em voga nos últimos tempos: nunca se falou tanto de cultura nas empresas. Só que, como nos lembra o convidado deste episódio, qualquer cultura tem raízes biológicas. Se queremos entender como agem os humanos, inclusive nas empresas, é por aí que devemos começar. Paulo Finuras é sociólogo, consultor e autor de vários livros, sempre com a mesma abordagem: cruzar as ciências sociais com a biologia evolutiva para entender tudo o que diz respeito ao ser humano. É assim que nos propõe repensar temas como cultura organizacional, liderança e comunicação a partir da nossa natureza enquanto espécie. Numa época marcada por transformações tecnológicas aceleradas, tensões geopolíticas e muita incerteza, faz todo o sentido regressar às perguntas mais básicas: quem somos enquanto animais sociais? Como decidimos? Como cooperamos? Como construímos confiança? E o que significa isso para as marcas, para a comunicação interna e externa, e em particular para empresas que operam em contextos business-to-business?Ouça o episódio e descubra: Como a biologia evolutiva explica as decisões aparentemente irracionais dos clientes B2BO segredo para construir confiança num ambiente de negócios instávelA estratégia para contornar a resistência natural do cérebro e acelerar a adoção de mudanças na sua organizaçãoComo usar os instintos biológicos para reter o melhor talentoComo criar uma predisposição favorável antes mesmo de o cliente racionalizar a compraComo compreender a biologia do cliente permite rever para cima a sua tabela de preços Com base na transcrição deste episódio, pedimos ao ChatGPT que nos fizesse um resumo da conversa, que pode ler a seguir. A Falsa "Tábua Rasa" nos NegóciosGerir clientes e colaboradores assumindo que são movidos estritamente por argumentos racionais gera falhas diretas na faturação e na retenção de talento. A biologia evolutiva demonstra que os comportamentos corporativos diários – desde a resistência à adoção de um novo software até ao conformismo em reuniões – são adaptações biológicas documentadas para poupar energia.Liderar com eficácia exige, portanto, deixar de combater estes instintos e começar a desenhar processos que trabalhem a favor da natureza humana. A ilusão da racionalidade no B2BA venda complexa raramente resulta de cálculos matemáticos rigorosos. O cérebro humano está programado pela evolução para poupar energia cognitiva. Na prática, a decisão de compra num comité B2B procura a minimização de riscos perante o grupo e a afirmação de estatuto social (o conceito de bens de Veblen). O marketing gera resultados quando alinha a sua mensagem com estes instintos de sobrevivência corporativa, em vez de depender apenas de tabelas de especificações técnicas.Modernização defensiva e LiderançaO medo de perder relevância leva as empresas a adotarem Inteligência Artificial de forma reativa, um fenómeno que Paulo Finuras classifica como "modernização defensiva". Esta adoção apressada gera instabilidade interna. Em cenários de disrupção tecnológica, a estratégia mais rentável passa por investir na previsibilidade do líder, utilizando a confiança como a principal âncora de estabilização do negócio.Sobre o convidado: LinkedIn Paulo FinurasEditora Silabo Artigos Observador  Livros da autoria do convidado (recomendações): Primatas Culturais: Evolução e Natureza Humana Bioliderança As Outras Razões A Natureza das Causas  Podcasts recomendados: The Dissenter (Ricardo Lopes)  Livros recomendados no episódio: The Moral Animal – Robert Wright The Adapted Mind – Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides e John Tooby The Theory of the Leisure Class (A Teoria da Classe Ociosa) – Thorstein Veblen  Pessoas mencionadas: Peter Drucker Charles Darwin Robert Trivers Steven Pinker Alexander Todorov Thorstein Veblen

Alfredo Ocampo Zamorano es un destacado poeta, científico social e investigador académico colombiano-estadounidense, nacido en Cali en 1930. Su trayectoria abarca la literatura, las ciencias sociales y la docencia universitaria, con una notable presencia tanto en Colombia como en el ámbito internacional. Doctor en Ciencias Jurídicas y Económicas por la Universidad Javeriana (1957). MBA dirigido por Peter Drucker en la Universidad del Valle (1966). Ph.D. en Sociología de la Universidad de Columbia, Nueva York (1972), donde estudió bajo la tutela de reconocidos académicos como Lucien Goldman, Inmanuel Wallerstein y Robert Merton. Ha desempeñado roles como profesor e investigador en diversas instituciones, incluyendo la Universidad del Valle, la Universidad Javeriana y la Tulane University en Nueva Orleans. Además, ha sido consultor para el Banco de la República y ha trabajado en investigaciones sobre líderes de opinión en Colombia. Como poeta bilingüe, Ocampo Zamorano escribe en inglés y español. Entre sus obras más destacadas se encuentran: Poemas Reunidos (1974), que le valió el Primer Premio Nacional de Poesía de Colcultura en 1973. La Savia Sin Nombre (1975). Bitácora, año dos mil (2002). Desde las mil colinas de Ruanda (2008). Farewell: Poems in American-English, 1995–1999. También ha sido galardonado con el Premio Nacional de Poesía en el Año Internacional de la Mujer (1976) y recibió una mención de honor en el Premio Nacional de Poesía Alférez Real (1989). unto a la poeta Guiomar Cuesta Escobar, fundó Apidama Ediciones, una editorial dedicada a promover la poesía afrocolombiana y la literatura escrita por mujeres. Han compilado antologías como ¡Negras Somos! y Poesía colombiana del siglo XX escrita por mujeres, contribuyendo significativamente a la visibilización de voces tradicionalmente marginadas en la literatura colombiana. El 4 de septiembre de 2023, Alfredo Ocampo Zamorano fue nombrado miembro honorario de una academia, destacando su invaluable contribución a la literatura y las ciencias sociales. Su vida y obra reflejan un compromiso profundo con la poesía, la investigación social y la promoción de la diversidad cultural, consolidándolo como una figura influyente en el panorama intelectual colombiano e internacional.

AI can write your first draft, research your competitors, and build your workflows overnight. It does all of that faster and cheaper than any one person can. That part is real. But there's one thing it absolutely cannot do — and it's the thing that matters most. I watched a woman cycle through personal trainers for years, renting motivation from the outside. The moment she stopped paying, the drive disappeared. Your experience, your judgment, your way of reading a room — that's the push-up only you can do. AI just helps you do more of them. Featured Story Years ago, I worked with a woman who kept hiring personal trainers. Not the same one — a new one every few months. She'd get results for a while, drift, then start over with somebody new. One day, I asked her about it. She said she just needed someone to push her. She wasn't hiring a trainer. She was renting motivation from the outside. And the moment she stopped paying, the motivation went away. The trainer could design the program and count the reps, but the contraction happened in her muscles, not theirs. I see the same pattern emerging with AI right now — people producing polished output that sounds like nobody. Important Points AI is a multiplier, not a replacement. Bring your experience, and it delivers faster. Bring nothing, it returns nothing. Your judgment from years of living inside problems is pattern recognition; no dataset can replicate on its own. Two columns this week: what only you can do goes in one, everything mechanical goes in the other. Column two is AI. Memorable Quotes "You can't hire somebody to do your push-ups for you. The strength you want only grows through the work you do yourself." "If you don't bring anything specific to AI, it gives you a very polished nothing. That's all you'll get back." "Your particular way of seeing the world exists because you've lived a certain life. AI can't generate that for you." Scott's Three-Step Approach Draw a line down a page and list what only you can do — relationships, judgment, your particular angle on the work. Put everything else in the second column — drafting, formatting, research, repetitive tasks that eat your mornings. Hand column two to AI this week and double down hard on column one. That's where your real strength compounds over time. Chapters 0:02 - Post-Easter confessions and Scott's candy weakness 1:48 - The AI arc continues, and where this is heading 2:33 - You can't hire someone else to do your push-ups 3:47 - The woman who kept renting motivation from trainers 5:34 - AI multiplies what you bring — or polishes your nothing 8:01 - Peter Drucker's knowledge worker and why judgment wins now 11:29 - LinkedIn slop and why sounding like everyone helps no one Connect With Me Search for the Daily Boost on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify If you enjoy the Daily Boost, you might like Notes From Scott. A few mornings each week, I send a short note with something I've been thinking about or noticing lately. Sometimes those ideas turn into podcast episodes later. You can sign up at https://notesfromscott.com. Email: support@motivationtomove.com Main Website: https://motivationtomove.com YouTube: https://youtube.com/dailyboostpodcast Instagram: https://instagram.com/heyscottsmith Facebook Page: https://facebook.com/motivationtomove Facebook Group: https://dailyboostpodcast.com/facebook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if the key to transforming an entire organization started with the same foundation you learned in kindergarten? Marcia Martin is one of the most prolific influencers in thought leadership over the last 40 years. Renowned as a top transformational trainer and executive coach worldwide, she has provided training for global organizations in over 20 countries. Her clients include Capital One, Warner Bros., InterContinental Hotels, American Cancer Society, Chase Bank, Allianz, McCain Foods, Evian Water, Danone Group, and Hard Rock International. A pioneer of the human potential movement, Marcia served as Vice President and Board Member of Erhard Seminars Training, now known as the Landmark Forum, helping grow its graduate base from inception to millions within a decade. She has consulted for LifeSpring, Robbins Research, Jack Canfield Seminars, Wealth Dynamics, and the Money and You Seminars, and notably organized the film shoot of The Secret: Law of Attraction with Executive Producer Rhonda Byrne. Her memoir, Sex, Power and Transformation, is available now on Amazon.   [00:04:00] At the Birth of the Human Potential Movement Marcia was present at the very beginning of the human potential movement in San Francisco in 1971 Left the University of Washington at 20 for a spiritual quest during the era of the flower children and Haight-Ashbury Apprenticed with her aunt, a clairvoyant healer and esoteric astrologist, who taught her to go inward for answers That training shaped her core belief: answers come from within, not from outside of yourself [00:06:00] Werner Erhard and the EST Years Attended Werner Erhard's very first guest seminar and recognized his message as aligned with what her aunt had taught her Joined the team and became Senior Vice President of EST, helping grow it from 30 people to over 800,000 graduates Was responsible for marketing, sales, training guest seminar leaders, and filling all events Learned both what to do and what not to do by watching how fame and wealth changed people up close [00:11:00] Organizing the Film Shoot for The Secret Co-created the Transformational Leadership Council with Jack Canfield, bringing together top thought leaders and coaches Received a call from Rhonda Byrne, an Australian TV producer, asking to film the group for what became The Secret Ended up organizing the entire film shoot, squeezed into a tiny borrowed office at her country club in Aspen, Colorado Rhonda's skill in editing made the cramped shoot look cinematic [00:19:00] The Night Werner Put Her in Front of 2,500 People Marcia started out speaking to guests on the edge of a bed in a bedroom; groups grew to 20, then 50, then hundreds The day of a major 2,500-person event, Werner told her she would be leading it instead of him She refused, panicked, and was furious; her largest audience to that point had been 150 people His advice: find one person in the crowd, look at them, and remember how much you love them [00:24:00] Empowerment Over Micromanagement Werner's decision to trust Marcia with that event became the defining lesson of her leadership philosophy Most senior executives she works with today are micromanagers who unwittingly signal they don't trust their people Her belief: if a leader is micromanaging, it is not just a lack of trust in others but a lack of trust in themselves True empowerment means giving people room to make mistakes and grow into their potential [00:27:00] The ABCs of Leadership: Her Three-Day Transformation Marcia's flagship offering is a three-day intensive for senior leadership teams of entrepreneurial organizations Covers leadership, championship performance, communication mastery, relationships, confidence, mindset, and causing action Mentored by Buckminster Fuller, Peter Drucker, Jerry Weintraub, and Werner Erhard; she now passes those lessons on   KEY QUOTES "So many human beings look outside of themselves to find answers. We haven't been taught how to go within and connect with our own higher power." - Marcia Martin "Werner was smart enough to give me the room and the empowerment to get it done. He didn't micromanage me, he trusted me and he made a good bet on me." - Marcia Martin "I've figured out the concepts, the fundamentals, the ABCs of leadership and championship performance, and put them together in a way that is fun." - Marcia Martin CONNECT WITH MARCIA MARTIN

Ashok sits down with Ron Baker, co-founder of THRESHOLD and founder of the VeraSage Institute, to explore how mid-market companies must rethink their economic model in the age of AI. Ron began his career at KPMG before pioneering value pricing and leading a decades-long movement away from time-based billing. He is the author of eight books, including Times Up, and has sold more than 80,000 copies worldwide. This conversation digs into how CEOs in traditional industries can move from activity-based thinking to outcome-based economics in an AI-enabled world. In This Episode.. • Why most firms optimize around internal activity rather than measurable customer outcomes • The idea of the Transformation Economy and what it means for traditional industries • Why customer profit is the most overlooked metric in business • A real-world example of a CPA who created 15 million dollars in value but billed only 38,000 • Outcome-based pricing and the concept of a tip clause • How AI increases structural capital and changes firm design • Why smaller, more leveraged firms may outperform larger legacy organizations • The direct primary care model and what it teaches about transformation • Why human capital, structural capital, and social capital matter in the AI era Mentioned in This Episode Ron Baker - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronaldbaker THRESHOLD - https://thresholdnow.com VeraSage Institute - https://www.verasage.com Times Up by Ron Baker - https://www.amazon.com/Times-Up-Reinventing-Professional-Economy/ The Soul of Enterprise Radio Show - https://www.voiceamerica.com/show/2735/the-soul-of-enterprise-business-in-the-knowledge-economy Fender and Fender Play - https://www.fender.com/play Howard Moran and MD Squared - https://www.mdsquared.com Dr. Paul Thomas - https://www.plumhealthdpc.com/ Palantir Technologies - https://www.palantir.com Peter Drucker - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker Ron's articles on "Earning his mouse ears" from his time at Disney University  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20131020050344-38251380-earning-my-mouse-ears-part-i/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20131103175004-38251380-earning-my-mouse-ears-part-ii/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20131117162628-38251380-earning-my-mouse-ears-part-iii/

Junaid Shaikh: How Scrum Masters Can Measure Their Own Impact, Practical Self-Assessment Metrics Junaid's favorite retrospective format? The vanilla: what went well, what could have gone better, what to do better next. He's tried many formats — the Three L's (liked, learned, lacked), the Three Little Pigs, the sailboat — but the core principle is always the same. His practical advice: stick with a consistent format so the team gets better at the process itself rather than constantly adjusting to new concepts. One addition he insists on for any format: an appreciation component. In the rush to analyze processes and outcomes, teams often skip acknowledging how another team member, PO, or Scrum Master helped during the sprint. That appreciation builds trust, respect, and openness that feeds into subsequent sprints. On defining success as a Scrum Master, Junaid starts with a Peter Drucker quote: "You cannot improve something you cannot measure." He proposes several practical self-assessment metrics: First, the Agile Team Maturity Index — a spider graph that shows where the team stands across multiple criteria, making gaps visible and actionable. Second, track retrospective action items. Create tiger teams for specific issues, run small iterative experiments, and measure in the next retrospective whether the trend is improving. Third, watch for shared sprint goals. Junaid once saw a team with nine sprint goals for a two-week sprint — those weren't goals, they were individual tasks. A real sprint goal should be something multiple team members work together to achieve. Fourth, self-organizing teams. If the team falls apart when the Scrum Master is absent for a sprint, there's a problem. Coach teams to self-organize, and their ability to function independently becomes a success metric. Fifth, communication patterns. Too many emails flying around can signal hidden conflicts or trust barriers. If communication happens through the right channels — dailies, direct interactions — you're likely in good shape. Sixth, Scrum event health. If events get canceled too frequently, the team may be reverting to traditional ways of working. [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Marcia Martin is the author of Sex, Power, and Transformation and a pioneering force in the Human Potential Movement, with more than five decades of experience as a renowned speaker, executive trainer, and transformational coach.An international expert in leadership and communication, Marcia has personally trained over 300,000 individuals and consulted for major brand companies, including Hard Rock International, Warner Bros., Capital One, Evian Water, DANONE, and InterContinental Hotels. Marcia's personal mentors include world renowned thought-leaders Buckminster Fuller, Peter Drucker, Jerry Weintraub, Oscar Ichazo, Warren Bennis, and Werner Erhard. Her work bridges corporate leadership, personal development, and human potential.Contact:Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcia-martin Website: marciamartin.com Email: marcia@marciamartin.com Phone: +1 (818) 395-5637 Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/marcia-martin-author-mark-stephen-pooler

Casey O'Quinn is the founder of Gravity Digital, a family-owned marketing agency that has served direct-to-consumer family businesses for 25 years. He works alongside multiple family members including his father, wife, sister, cousins, and in-laws across several ventures including the agency, healthcare, and real estate. Casey built his firm on a unique revenue-share model where his team only gets paid when clients grow, challenging the traditional agency retainer approach.SHOW SUMMARYIn this episode, Jonathan Goldhill is joined by Casey O'Quinn, founder of Gravity Digital, a family-owned agency serving family-owned DTC brands for 25 years, about marketing as capital allocation that can drain family wealth and strain relationships when spent on vague retainers without measurable return. Casey contrasts traditional hourly/retainer agency models with Gravity Digital's revenue-share approach, where the agency is paid only on growth above a baseline, aligning incentives and enabling investment in creative, websites, and testing. They discuss protecting “the family farm,” handling generational risk tolerance, patience and education around digital channels, and a “seven-figure blueprint” formula (customers × frequency × average order value) emphasizing ads for scalable acquisition, email/SMS for repeat purchases, and upsells for AOV. Key metrics include new customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, new vs returning customers, and cautious use of ROAS amid attribution limits, plus integrating marketing into EOS scorecards and quarterly testing.KEY TAKEAWAYSFamily before business: Make a commitment to walk away from the business before letting it damage family relationships—this principle forces better conflict resolutionRevenue share model: Align agency incentives with client outcomes by only getting paid when clients grow, rather than fixed retainers that don't ensure resultsMarketing as investment: View marketing spending through the lens of capital allocation and ROI, not just as an expense line itemNAC is critical: Understanding your New Customer Acquisition Cost and being willing to spend MORE than competitors (while staying profitable) is how you win at scaleSimple growth formula: Revenue = Customers × Frequency × Average Order Value. Focus on these three levers systematicallyTest before committing: Start with small tests and let data drive decisions rather than assumptions, especially when navigating generational disagreementsFailure is feedback: Marketing experiments that don't work aren't failures—they're learning opportunities to "fail forward"Patience + transparency: Success in family business marketing requires educating all generations, managing different risk appetites, and showing early wins to build trustQUOTES"We would walk away from the business before we let it come between us." — On family business priorities"He who is willing and able to spend the most to acquire a customer wins." — On competitive advantage in customer acquisition"Good marketing can't fix a bad product." — On fundamental business requirements"The cheapest customer you'll ever get is the one you already have." — On the value of repeat business and frequency"Marketing and innovation produce results. Everything else is just a cost." — Peter Drucker quote on business fundamentals"Protect the family farm—that's the family business." — On preserving generational wealth and avoiding capital drain"Failure is just feedback." — On reframing marketing experiments"Marketing is half art, half science, half left brain, half right brain." — On the dual nature of effective marketingConnect and learn more about Casey O'Quinn.https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseyoquinn/If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, review, and share with a friend who would benefit from the message. If you're interested in picking up a copy of Jonathan Goldhill's book, Disruptive Successor, go to the website at www.DisruptiveSuccessor.com

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

Peter Drucker once said “Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else”  How is your management of time?  Links: Email Me | Twitter | Fac ebook | Website | Linkedin   The Time-Based Productivity Course    Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl's YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack  The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 403 Hello, and welcome to episode 403 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.  Are you in danger of boxing yourself in with too many processes and too much structure?  Now, it's important to stress that having some structure to your day is important. But too much can lead to boxing yourself in and losing flexibility.  Let me give you an example I often come across. Protecting time for doing your focused work. Having this protected on your calendar so the time cannot be stolen by others is important.  If you protected 2 hours and finished in 90 minutes, that doesn't mean you have to continue for another 30 minutes. Take a break. You're done.  But this works the other way, too. If you have two hours protected for a project task but cannot finish it in that time. It's okay. You turned up. You did the work, but you miscalculated how long it would take.  This happens to all of us. Some days we're on fire and can plough through a lot of work. Other days, a lot less so.  The problem is that when you begin your day, you really don't know what kind of day you're going to have. There are too many variables. How you slept, whether you're catching a cold or simply something else is on your mind.  Your life is not measured by what you do in one day; everyone has bad days.  So, with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question.  This week's question comes from Alex. Alex asks, hi Carl, this year I'm trying to be better at time blocking, but I am really struggling to stay consistent with my blocks. What advice do you have to help stay true to your calendar?  Hi Alex, thank you for your question. Something I have always taught is that of all your productivity tools, one of them needs to be sacred. One of your tools must be the “truth” about what you are going to do that day.  Task managers are generally not good at this because we throw a lot of things into them. That's a good thing. Yet, the issue is that most people never curate what they throw in. This creates overwhelming lists of low-value, ill-thought-out items that will never get done. They just cripple your task manager's effectiveness.  The best tool for acting as your sacred base is your calendar. It's never going to lie to you. It shows you the 24 hours you have each day and where you need to be, with whom, and when.  You cannot overload yourself without it being plainly obvious that you are trying to do too much. And let's be perfectly clear, an agreed appointment with someone will always take priority over an email or proposal you need to write. If not, you cancel the appointment.  I hope, at a basic, civilised human being level, you get that.  I've called off face-to-face meetings in the past if the person I am meeting cannot put their phones down and actually talk to me. It is rude, disrespectful, and no person with an ounce of integrity would ever do that.  One of the striking things I've noticed about the highly successful people I work with is that they never have a phone. Tablet or laptop near them when they are in meetings. A notebook and a pen are all they have.  That's focus, professionalism, and demonstrates to the person you are meeting that you are focused on them in that moment.  When you make your calendar your primary productivity tool, you gain clarity about how much time you have available for the things you want to do.  It's visual, it's staring at you, and there's no escape from reality.  If you work 9 hours a day and today you have 7 hours of meetings, you only have 2 hours to do solo work. That's it.  If you need three hours to get your critical, must-do work done, then you have two choices. You either cancel a meeting or you accept that you will need to work an extra hour.  It's strange how so many people waste so much time trying find other solutions. That's time they could have spent on getting started on the work.  The solution is to time-block slots for doing the work that matters. The best salespeople block time every day to prospect and follow up with their customers. That's why they are the top salespeople. The best CEOs block time every day for working on their top priority task. That's why they are the best at what they do. Best-selling authors block time for writing every day. That's why they sell a lot of books.  Now, as I eluded to at the beginning, there will be some days when things don't go according to plan. You might be sick, had an argument with a loved one or just be distracted for whatever reason.  Or there could be a good old-fashioned emergency that needs your attention.  It happens. That's life.  However, it's not really about what you do or not to do in one day. The purpose of time blocks is to get you to show up and do the work. It's not about volume.  Spending twenty minutes on your actionable email is better than spending zero minutes. It's surprising how much you can get done when the pressure of time is on you. You don't dilly-dally around. (Wow! That's a phrase I haven't used for a long time!)  Ultimately, the measure is how well you did against your plan for the week, not necessarily an individual day.  Let me give you an example.  I have two blog posts, two newsletters, this podcast and a YouTube video to produce each week. They are my measurables. Six pieces of content. I know I need about 12 hours a week to produce that content. I also have 15 hours of coaching appointments. So, in total, I need 27 hours protected before I begin my week to complete my professional work.  It's doable, and based on my completion rates, I complete this work around 87% of the time over 12 months. I'll take that. (I measure it at the end of every year)  I work with one highly successful CEO who writes a LinkedIn Newsletter every week. Her company has over 50,000 employees in six different countries. She protects two hours every week to write that newsletter. One hour for the first draft and one hour later in the week to edit it.  Last year, she didn't miss one newsletter. She had a 100% completion rate. And that was her goal.  How did she do it? She protected her writing time every week. She would protect Monday mornings when in the office, and when travelling, she would take advantage of jet lag and write when she was wide awake in the early morning or late at night.  She time-blocked the time. She knew the only way to achieve a 100% completion rate was to make sure each week she had protected the time to do the work.  However, time blocking only works if you are planning your week. Not planning your week leaves you open to other people hijacking your calendar, and as I am sure you are aware, other people are often very persuasive… or demanding.  When you sit down to plan the week, you first look at what meetings and appointments you have scheduled. How much time does that leave you?  That will tell you what you could realistically get done that week.  If you're away at a conference for three days, you really only have two days to work with. However, one of those days will probably be needed for catching up, so realistically, you've got one solid work day.  But let's look at a typical week when you are at your usual place of work.  How much time do you need to do the work you are employed to do each week? A journalist may be expected to write an article a week. How long does it typically take to write the article, excluding the research and interviews? That would be their starting point.  Doctors I work with often need 2 hours or more after seeing patients to handle paperwork. If they want to get home at 7:00 pm each evening, then that will affect the time they need to stop seeing patients and do paperwork.  Salespeople are focused on seeing clients most of the day, but they also often have paperwork and follow-ups to do. Where can they fit the time they need for paperwork and follow-ups? Knowing what you are expected to do as part of your job and ensuring you have sufficient time to do it each week is what I call protecting time for your core work, and it goes back to the birth of humankind. Our ancestors on the Savannahs knew their core work. To hunt for food. If they'd had a big kill one day, they may have been able to take a day off, but when they started their day, they knew their job was to go out and find food. It was a non-negotiable part of their day.  That's what time blocking does for you. It gives you clarity on what you need to do that day. All you need to do is show up.  One tip I can give you about time-blocking is to keep your time blocks general. For instance, the CEO I mentioned a moment ago calls her newsletter writing time simply “writing time”. That gives her some flexibility.  If she needs to write a report for the board and is up against a tight deadline, then that is what she will write in that time. She will then find another space for the newsletter writing. I do something similar. I have writing time and audio/visual time protected on my calendar. I can then choose what I write or record on the day as part of my daily planning routine.  If you're in sales or a client-facing role, the time you spend working for your clients can be called “client” or “customer” time. I would also highly recommend that you set aside time every day to deal with messages, emails, and admin. These tasks will creep up on you if you're not dealing with them every day. Even if you can only find thirty minutes, take it.  Whenever I am on a business trip, whether domestic or international, I make sure to set aside time during the day to address my actionable messages. The most challenging ones are domestic, as I generally drive to the appointment or event. The easier ones are international as there is a lot of time hanging around in airport lounges.  Another tip I would give is not to go crazy here. Time blocking is not about blocking every minute of the day. It's about protecting time only for the important work you need to do.  When I look at my calendar, there are only three hours a day protected for solo work. On days when I have a lot of meetings, I usually reduce that time to one hour.  So there you go, Alex. I hope that has helped.  You are going to have good and bad days. That's perfectly normal. But, you have complete control of your calendar, so you can move things around, change your blocks if necessary. But, and this is the important but, once you've locked them in for the day, you stick with them. Remember, it's not about how much you do in the time, it's about turning up and doing the work.  And if you want to transform your time management and adopt a sustainable time-based productivity system, my newest course, the Time-Based Productivity course, will do that for you.  It will teach you how to time-block effectively and organise your work so you are doing the right things at the right time. PLUS… by joining the course, you get free access to my recently updated Time Sector System course and my Time Blocking Course.  If I were to recommend one course for 2026, that's the one I would recommend.  Thank you for your question, Alex and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

Mark Schaefer is a globally recognized keynote speaker, business consultant, and bestselling author known for his leadership in modern marketing and digital strategy. With over 30 years of experience in sales, PR, and marketing, he leads Schaefer Marketing Solutions and writes the acclaimed blog {grow}, consistently ranked among the world's top marketing blogs. A respected academic and practitioner, Mark holds advanced degrees in marketing and organizational development, teaches in the graduate program at Rutgers University, holds seven patents, and studied under Peter Drucker, the founder of modern management. He is a highly sought-after speaker, presenting at major events worldwide and advising organizations from startups to global brands like Adidas, Pfizer, and the U.S. Air Force. Mark is the bestselling author of ten influential books, including Marketing Rebellion, KNOWN, The Content Code, Belonging to the Brand, and his most recent How AI Changes Your Customers. His work is used as teaching material at universities globally, and he co-hosts The Marketing Companion, a top-ranked marketing podcast with over 1.5 million downloads, while contributing regularly to leading media outlets such as Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. During the show we discuss: The most significant ways AI is reshaping organizations, workflows, and decision-making How AI is expected to impact humanity, work, and society over the next decade Why AI is rapidly changing how people learn, process information, and make decisions The rise of AI as a primary source of emotional support and guidance How businesses can make customers feel valued and human in an AI-driven world Why brands must now optimize for AI—not just end users What truly matters (and what no longer does) when communicating in the age of AI Resources: https://businessesgrow.com/

What if your leadership's team's biggest risk isn't bad strategy, but unspoken, outdated assumptions?   In this episode, Bradley Hartmann reveals why even powerful mental models like Dr. Peter Drucker's Theory of the Business often get ignored by executive teams—and what you can do to change that.    Based on the recent outreach of a Construction Leadership Podcast listener, this episode uncovers how you can bridge the gap between strategy and action using a practical new diagnostic tool you can download below.    In this episode you will:   Learn how to frame Drucker's model in a way that actually resonates with your leadership team. Discover the 6 critical assumptions every business needs to challenge—and how to map them. Get a proven tool to document your team's thinking, surface hidden gaps, and lead with clarity.     Listen now to learn how to align your executive team around what really matters—using one simple framework that drives results.    You can download the tool here.   The Construction Leadership Podcast dives into essential leadership topics in construction, including strategy, emotional intelligence, communication skills, confidence, innovation, and effective decision-making. You'll also gain insights into delegation, cultural intelligence, goal setting, team building, employee engagement, and how to overcome common culture problems. Whether you're leading a crew or managing an entire organization, these conversations will equip you with tools to lead smarter and build stronger teams.      This episode is brought to you by The Construction Spanish Toolbox —the most practical way for construction teams to learn jobsite-ready Spanish in just minutes a day over 6 months.   *** If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback will help us on our mission to bring the construction community closer together. If you have suggestions for improvements, topics you'd like the show to explore, or have recommendations for future guests, do not hesitate to contact us directly at info@bradleyhartmannandco.com.    

I met Albino Sanchez in the bleachers at a high school JV football game. While our sons battled it out on the field for Palo Alto High School, we found ourselves deep in conversation about something far removed from touchdowns and tackles: why some product leaders thrive while others crash and burn in seemingly similar companies.Albino doesn't fit the typical Silicon Valley mold. Born and raised in Mexico City, he spent his early career as a strategy consultant helping large companies implement frameworks like Balanced Scorecard and OKRs. But unlike most consultants who move on to the next engagement, Albino couldn't stop thinking about his former clients. Some organizations flourished with these frameworks. Others abandoned them within months. The strategic tools were identical. The execution was completely different.What he discovered would fundamentally change how I think about my own career moves—and it should change how you think about yours too.The Pattern That Changes EverythingAfter years of looking back at his consulting clients, Albino noticed something remarkable: “Those organizations that were really thriving with these frameworks and really growing, they had a special type of leader. And that leader was usually a people-centered leader, a leader that was humble, that was a servant leader, and that this leader cared about their people, listened to them, and really wanted collaboration.”This wasn't just about nice leadership. It was about creating what he calls “the atmosphere for people to thrive.”The insight hit him hard enough that he completely pivoted his career. He became an executive coach, spending the last 15 years working with leaders to shape healthier, more productive cultures. He moved his family from Mexico City to Palo Alto four years ago and recently founded Aha! Impact, a company focused on helping organizations achieve the right culture so both the business and employees can thrive.But here's what matters for you as a PM: Albino's journey revealed something most of us learn the hard way. Culture doesn't just influence whether a strategy succeeds. Culture IS the strategy.Why “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast” Isn't Just a Poster on the WallYou've probably seen this quote attributed to Peter Drucker plastered on every startup's office wall. But do you actually believe it?Albino puts it this way: “We need to have the right environment so people can thrive and then implement and then be successful in business.” Without that environment, even the most brilliant product strategy becomes a document that sits in a Google Drive folder, gathering digital dust.The Culture Paradox: Why Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft All Win DifferentlyDuring our conversation, I pushed Albino on something that had been bothering me. If culture is so critical, how do companies with wildly different cultures all succeed? Amazon's frugality and bias for action looks nothing like Google's innovative freedom and psychological safety. Microsoft's collaborative enterprise focus differs dramatically from Meta's move-fast-and-break-things mentality.His answer surprised me.While different cultures can succeed, Albino sees clear patterns in what works today: “Innovation is one of them. We need to have nowadays with so many changes with AI, technology, globalization, communications. We need to be innovative. We need to be adaptive. We need to embrace change as something that's part of our day to day.”The successful organizations aren't choosing between being people-centered OR innovative OR efficiency-driven. They're becoming all three simultaneously. The old archetypes (pick your culture and stick with it) no longer apply in our rapidly evolving landscape.But here's the critical insight for PMs: You need to understand which cultural attributes matter most to you personally. Because while multiple cultures can succeed, not every culture will allow YOU to succeed.The Real Reason You're Miserable at WorkAlbino shared something that hits close to home for many experienced PM's: “People join organizations because of the company and they leave the organization most likely because of the boss.”This tracks with every conversation I've had as an executive coach. The PMs who come to me aren't struggling with their OKRs or roadmaps. They're struggling with leadership dynamics, unclear values, and cultural misalignment.Think about your own career. When you've been most energized, most productive, most creative. Was it because of the company mission statement? Or was it because you had a leader who created space for you to do your best work?When you've been most miserable, was it really about the compensation or the commute? Or was it about a leader who micromanaged, who didn't value collaboration, who created an atmosphere of fear rather than trust?Culture doesn't just make work more pleasant. It fundamentally determines whether you can bring your best self to the job.The Leadership Styles That Shape Product CulturesHere's where Albino's work gets really practical. He identifies four primary leadership archetypes that shape organizational culture, and understanding these can help you decode any company you're considering:1. The Controlling Leader This leader centralizes decision-making, micromanages execution, and views team members as resources rather than collaborators. They might get short-term results, but they create cultures where PMs become order-takers rather than strategic partners. Innovation dies because risk-taking gets punished.2. The Competitive Leader Everything is a zero-sum game. Teams compete internally for resources, recognition, and rewards. This can drive individual performance but often at the expense of collaboration. For PMs, this means product launches succeed but platform thinking fails. You win your battle but lose the war.3. The Collaborative Leader This is Albino's people-centered leader. They invest in relationships, foster psychological safety, and view success as collective rather than individual. In product organizations, this looks like cross-functional partnerships that actually work, user research that influences decisions, and retrospectives that drive real improvement.4. The Creative Leader These leaders embrace experimentation, tolerate failure, and push for innovation. They create cultures where PMs can propose bold ideas without fear. But without enough structure, these cultures can become chaotic.The best leaders, and the best cultures, combine elements of all four, calibrated to the organization's specific needs. As a PM evaluating a new role, you need to assess not just the stated values but the actual leadership style you'll experience day-to-day.The Questions You're Not Asking in Interviews Most PMs treat interviews as one-way evaluations. The company assesses you; you try to impress them. Albino argues this is backwards.“This is a two-way assessment,” he told me. “You are also interviewing them.”I know what you're thinking: “Tom, that's easy to say when you have options. When you're desperate for a job, you can't afford to be picky.”I get it. But here's the truth Albino helped me see: accepting a role at a company with cultural misalignment doesn't solve your job search problem. It delays your job search problem by six months while making you miserable.Your objective isn't to get as many offers as possible. Your objective is to get offers from places where you'll thrive.So what questions should you actually ask?On Work-Life Integration: “How do you manage team collaboration across different locations and time zones?”These aren't just logistics questions. They reveal whether the company trusts employees or requires surveillance. They show whether leadership believes productivity comes from presence or output.On Decision-Making: “Tell me about a recent product decision where you had significant disagreement among stakeholders. How did you resolve it?”This behavioral question (turned around on the company) reveals their true decision-making process. Do they rely on data, authority, consensus, or customer feedback? Do they value PM input or just expect execution?On Failure and Learning: “Describe a recent product launch that didn't meet expectations. What happened, and how did the team respond?”The answer tells you everything about psychological safety. Do they blame individuals or examine systems? Do they learn from failures or hide them?On Growth and Development: “How do PMs typically grow in their careers here? Can you share specific examples of PMs who've advanced and what enabled their growth?”This reveals whether the culture actually invests in development or just talks about it in the handbook.But here's Albino's most important advice: “It's very important that you are authentic, you are yourself. Don't try to make an act there. It's very common to do that just to cover the expectations of the potential employer. But you know what? Try to get rid of that fear and try to be yourself.”This is counterintuitive in a competitive job market. Every instinct tells you to mold yourself to what they want. But cultural misalignment has costs. Stress. Burnout. Short tenure. Another job search in six months.Better to be yourself, assess fit honestly, and find a place where you can actually thrive.How AI Is Changing Culture Assessment Here's where Albino's work gets really interesting for those of us in tech. He's building an AI-powered tool to help companies assess cultural fit during hiring.Traditional culture fit assessment is notoriously unreliable. It often means “do I want to get a beer with this person,” which perpetuates homogeneity and bias. Or it gets delegated to a single interviewer who may not accurately represent the actual culture.Albino's approach is different. His tool analyzes the organization's stated values, actual behaviors, and cultural attributes. Then it evaluates candidates against these dimensions through structured assessment.“It's going to analyze your organization, what are the values, and depending on your stage, your size, your location, what type of company you are, it's going to analyze all this information and it's going to recommend which are the key cultural factors or cultural behaviors that you need to assess when you interview a candidate,” he explained.The tool is currently in beta testing, launching in January. But the concept matters even if you never use it: Culture fit should be systematic, not subjective. It should be measured, not assumed.For PMs, this has implications beyond hiring. If companies can systematically assess culture, you can systematically evaluate it too. The questions you ask, the observations you make, the research you do before accepting an offer—these aren't nice-to-haves. They're essential.The Framework: How to Evaluate Culture Before You Accept the OfferBased on Albino's expertise and my own painful lessons, here's a practical framework for assessing culture fit:Step 1: Define Your Non-NegotiablesBefore you start interviewing, get clear on what cultural attributes you need to thrive. Not what sounds good in theory, but what you've actually needed in roles where you've done your best work.For me, that includes:* Collaborative decision-making where PM insights influence strategy* Data-informed but not data-servant culture that values research * Psychological safety to propose bold ideas and learn from failures* Work-life integration that respects boundariesYour list will be different. Maybe you thrive in competitive environments. Maybe you need more structure. Maybe remote work is essential. Be honest with yourself.Step 2: Research Before You ApplyDon't just apply to every open PM role. Albino recommends something smarter: “Make a list of those companies that you have learned about a little bit about their culture. Maybe you have a friend that worked at a company and they told you that it was an amazing place to work. So make a list of those companies and ask people about their companies they work for.”Use LinkedIn to find people who've worked at target companies. Look for patterns in how long people stay. Read Glassdoor reviews not for specific complaints but for themes. Check whether executives walk the talk on platforms like Twitter or in company blog posts.This front-loaded research saves you from wasting time in processes with companies where you'll never fit.Step 3: Interview Your InterviewersDuring the interview process, systematically assess culture through:* How they respond to your questions (defensive vs. open)* Whether they can articulate values with specific examples* How they talk about past failures and learning* Whether individual contributors speak freely or defer to managers* How they describe decision-making processes* What they emphasize in describing the role (impact vs. tasks)Step 4: Talk to Your Future BossAlbino is adamant about this: “What's really important is to get to talk to the hiring manager. Usually if you get to the final stages you get to talk, but if they are not planning on doing that, that's critical because people join organizations because of the company and they leave the organization most likely because of the boss.”Don't accept an offer without substantive conversation with your direct manager. If the company won't arrange it, that tells you something about the culture. I'd argue talking to the skip level is also really important if available.Step 5: Trust Your Gut, But VerifyPay attention to how you feel during the process. Are you energized or drained? Do you find yourself trying to be someone you're not? Do the people you meet seem genuinely engaged or going through the motions?But don't rely only on feelings. Look for concrete evidence. Ask for examples. Request to speak with current team members. If they're not willing to arrange it, that's a red flag.Choosing Culture Over BrandOne of Albino's most powerful points challenges the default Silicon Valley career path: “You need to be intentional. You need to be really clear on what you want in your next job and not just go for the brand, not just go for the open position. Look for the environment, the leadership, and ask people that have worked there.”This is hard advice to follow. The brand matters. The comp matters. The resume line matters.But I've watched too many talented PMs burn out, get fired, or quietly quit because they optimized for the wrong variables. They went for the FAANG or unicorn prestige without assessing whether they could actually thrive there. They took the higher offer without asking about the leadership style. They joined the hot startup without understanding the culture they were stepping into.The intentional career path looks different:* Define success for yourself (not what TechCrunch or your parents think success looks like)* Identify companies whose cultures align with your needs* Pursue those companies specifically, even if they don't have posted openings* Assess fit rigorously during the interview process* Choose the role where you can do your best work, even if it's not the highest offerThis approach requires confidence. It requires clarity. It requires believing that your best work in the right culture is worth more than mediocre work in a prestigious culture.What This Means for Your Next Career MoveIf you're currently employed and happy, use this framework to understand WHY you're happy. What cultural attributes are enabling your success? How can you protect and expand them?If you're currently employed and miserable, stop trying to fix yourself. The problem might not be you, it might be cultural misalignment. Start researching cultures where your strengths would be assets, not liabilities.If you're searching for your next role, resist the temptation to spray and pray. Be intentional. Research culture. Ask hard questions. Be authentic in the process. The goal isn't to get the most offers. The goal is to get the right offer.And if you're a hiring manager or product leader, recognize that culture isn't something HR handles. Culture is shaped by your leadership every single day. The questions you ask, the behaviors you model, the decisions you make—these create the environment where your team either thrives or survives.The Future of Culture and Product ManagementAlbino's work on AI-powered culture assessment points to something bigger: culture is becoming quantifiable. We're moving from vague values statements to measured behaviors. From gut-feel assessments to systematic evaluation.For PMs, this is good news. It means you can make more informed decisions. It means companies can be more honest about their cultures instead of pretending to be something they're not. It means better matches, longer tenure, and more impact.But it also means you need to get serious about understanding culture. It's no longer enough to read the values page on the careers site and hope for the best.You need to research. You need to ask questions. You need to assess fit as rigorously as the company assesses your product skills.Your Next StepsHere's what I'm taking away from my conversation with Albino, and what I recommend you do too:This Week:* Write down the cultural attributes of every job you've had where you thrived* Identify patterns: what conditions enable your best work?* Make a list of companies you've heard have cultures aligned with your needsThis Month:* Reach out to three people who work at companies on your list* Ask them specific questions about leadership, decision-making, and day-to-day culture* Update your interview preparation to include questions that assess cultureThis Quarter:* If you're searching, be more selective about where you apply* If you're employed, have an honest conversation with your manager about cultural alignment* If you're a leader, audit your own behaviors—are you creating the culture you claim to value?Culture isn't soft. Culture isn't secondary. Culture is the environment where your product skills either flourish or wither.Choose wisely.If you're navigating a career transition or want to develop a more intentional approach to your product leadership journey, I offer 1:1 executive, career, and product coaching. Learn more at tomleungcoaching.com.And if you're interested in being a beta tester for Albino's culture fit assessment tool, reach out to him at albino@ahaimpact.com or visit ahaimpact.com. He's looking for a few more organizations to participate in January testing at a significantly discounted rate.OK. Let's ship greatness. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit firesidepm.substack.com

What do a 1970 psychology experiment and the 2008 housing crash have in common? In Episode 6 of Built to Divide, Dimitrius Lynch traces how social identity theory—the instinct to form “us vs. them” groups—became a political weapon that helped sell a bipartisan push for mass homeownership, weaken skepticism, and pave the way for subprime mortgages, mortgage-backed securities (MBS), CDOs, and a crisis engineered by incentives.We move from NAFTA-era globalization and Peter Drucker's “core competencies” mindset, to the dot-com bust, Fed rate cuts, and the explosion of “stated income” lending. The episode spotlights Washington Mutual (WaMu)—from community-friendly bank to shareholder-driven mortgage machine—then follows the collapse, the scapegoating of low-income borrowers, and the rise of institutional investors turning foreclosures into portfolios. A story about housing, finance, and the narratives that keep us divided—even when the math says we share the same stakes.Episode Extras - Photos, videos, sources and links to additional content found during research.Episode Credits:Production in collaboration with Gābl MediaWritten & Executive Produced by Dimitrius LynchAudio Engineering and Sound Design by Jeff Alvarez

What if the future of marketing is a lot more human than we think? Today's guest, Mark Schaefer, has been shaping that future for decades — and he was actually on this show ten years ago. So this is part reunion, part masterclass. Mark's a futurist, bestselling author, Rutgers faculty member, and Drucker-trained strategist whose ideas guide brands from Adidas to the U.S. Air Force. His ten books and his top-ranked show The Marketing Companion have become industry staples. He's also a longtime friend who somehow manages to push your thinking and make you laugh at the same time. What You'll Learn in This Episode Why the future of marketing belongs to the most human companies, not the most automated ones How AI can scale trust, creativity, and teaching without killing the brand When removing friction actually damages customer relationships Why curiosity is becoming the most important career skill in the AI era How marketers must act as brand defenders when technology pushes too far Episode Chapters (00:00) Reunion and why this moment matters (02:00) Why this is the most amazing — and unsettling — time in marketing (04:20) Scaling humanity with AI and the MarkBot experiment (07:30) The most human company wins (and what that really means) (10:40) When AI goes too far and brands lose trust (12:30) Harley-Davidson, friction, and knowing your customer deeply (17:00) Curiosity as a career strategy in an AI world (27:00) The brand that made Mark smile About Mark Schaefer Mark Schaefer is a globally recognized futurist, keynote speaker, educator, and bestselling author. With more than 30 years of experience in marketing, PR, and global sales, he has advised organizations ranging from startups to Adidas and the U.S. Air Force. Mark studied under Peter Drucker, teaches in Rutgers University's graduate program, and holds seven patents. He is the author of ten influential books used at universities worldwide and the host of the top-ranked podcast, The Marketing Companion. Known for blending sharp insight with humanity and humor, Mark's work helps leaders navigate what's next without losing what matters. What Brand Has Made Mark Smile Recently? Mark couldn't stop smiling about Nutter Butter — a once-forgotten cookie brand that decided to go full weird. By embracing surreal, chaotic, almost inexplicable short-form videos, the brand ditched boring category conventions and leaned into creativity with nothing to lose. The result? Tripled sales and a case study in what happens when brands stop playing it safe and start being interesting. Resources & Links Connect with Mark on LinkedIn. Check out his website, BusinessesGrow. Listen & Support the Show Watch or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon/Audible, TuneIn, and iHeart. Rate and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify to help others find the show. Share this episode — email a friend or colleague this episode. Sign up for my free Story Strategies newsletter for branding and storytelling tips. On Brand is a part of the Marketing Podcast Network. Until next week, I'll see you on the Internet! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if the biggest risk isn't failure—it's staying down when life knocks you flat? Marshall Goldsmith didn't become the world's #1 executive coach by accident. He sat in the back of Paul Hersey's classroom for months serving coffee for free, studied under Peter Drucker, and learned that credibility must be earned twice: first by doing good work, and second by making sure people know about it.From IU Kelley School of Business to coaching CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, Marshall reveals why happiness and achievement are independent variables, why your good work will never speak for itself, and why the hungry ghost—always eating but never full—is the trap that catches every high achiever.

Tylko 8% dzieci chce przejąć rodzinne firmy! W tym odcinku Maciej Filipkowski wraz z Adrianną Lewandowską (ekspertka ds. sukcesji, Prezes Instytutu Rodzin Biznesowych) wchodzą głęboko w temat, który jest największą zmorą polskich przedsiębiorców: przekazanie władzy i majątku.Adrianna Lewandowska, wywodząca się z 7. pokolenia przedsiębiorców, których majątek odebrał komunizm , pokazuje, że sukcesja nie jest problemem prawnym czy finansowym, ale psychologicznym. Zobacz, dlaczego założyciele niszczą relacje i jak je naprawić, zanim będzie za późno (i co ma do tego japońska sztuka Kintsugi).KIEDY MYŚLEĆ O SUKCESJI?Nie zwlekaj! Peter Drucker powiedział: "Moment, w którym obudzisz się rano i pomyślisz sobie, ale mam fajnie działającą firmę, ona naprawdę ma fajne prognozy wzrostu... to jest moment, w którym pomyśl sobie o sukcesji".Porada dla Rodziców:Poświęć rodzinie tyle samo uwagi i atencji, ile poświęcasz na biznes. Bez miłości i zdrowych relacji trudno zbudować coś na pokolenia._________________PARTNERZY AUDYCJI - WSPÓŁPRACA KOMERCYJNA

"Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right." - Peter Drucker   Check out John Lee Dumas' award winning Podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire on your favorite podcast directory. For world class free courses and resources to help you on your Entrepreneurial journey visit EOFire.com

Christopher Lochhead, the renowned “Godfather of Category Design,” recently took the stage at the Constellations Connected Enterprise 2025 conference and delivered a blistering wake-up call to every business leader, entrepreneur, and innovator hoping to surf the current wave of AI disruption. Far from celebrating the AI gold rush, Lochhead warned that almost everyone is about to repeat the same mistakes of the past, chasing after existing markets, adding AI features like “copilots” or assistants, and calling it innovation. Drawing from his decades of expertise and path-breaking research, He then laid out a blueprint for actually leveraging AI for exponential value: it's about category design, not incremental improvement. Here are three powerful takeaways from his masterclass that every forward-thinking leader needs to know. You're listening to Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different. We are the real dialogue podcast for people with a different mind. So get your mind in a different place, and hey ho, let's go.   Chasing “Better” Dooms You to Mediocrity Lochhead's central thesis is as provocative as it is true: companies that use AI to make existing products just a little better are doomed to fail. He calls this the "existing market trap." Instead of designing the future, most businesses simply bolt AI onto their old offerings, thinking it will make them competitive. But "if your strategy involves simply bolting on an AI assistant or copilot, you're making a pussy move and you're fucked." Lochhead points out that companies making this mistake are chasing a market that's already been designed by someone else. And in those markets, 76% of all the value goes to the category king (think OpenAI with ChatGPT). The rest fight for scraps, regardless of whether their AI copilot is a little nicer, faster, or more user-friendly.   Winning is About Creating the New, Not Improving the Old The path to massive value in the AI era lies in doing what legends like Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, and Steve Jobs did: creating entirely new categories that didn't exist before. Lochhead illustrates this with both tech giants and quirky startups. He jokes about how Liquid Death became a force in the water business not by making better bottled water, but by launching “canned water”; an entirely new way to experience an old product with legendary branding and a distinct point of view. The same lesson holds for technology: “Different wins, better loses.” Lochhead encourages companies to listen to the language they use; calling your new AI product an “assistant” or “copilot” puts it in the sidecar, not the driver's seat. In contrast, declaring your invention as a new category not only reframes the problem, but magnetizes the future (as when OpenAI refused to call its core product a database, instead introducing the “large language model”).   The Courage to Create: Why Category Design Demands Boldness Lochhead doesn't sugarcoat the difficulty of this path. Category design requires courage: “Grow a set of balls,” he tells the audience when asked how to nurture a creator's mindset. This isn't reckless advice; it's a recognition that in an AI-powered economy, the value of existing knowledge is collapsing toward zero. The knowledge worker, as Peter Drucker defined it, is being replaced by the knowledge contained within AI itself. The only safe (and rewarding) place is at the edge, inventing net new knowledge and value. In other words, creating the future instead of merely extending the present. Lochhead challenges all of us: “Do you really want to spend the last however many years of your career making the status quo incrementally better? Or do you want to spend whatever's left of your work life making a massive material difference?” To hear the full episode from the man himself, download and listen to this episode.    We hope you enjoyed this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners.

QUOTES from the Episode "Instead of landlines everywhere, give every heat pump a cell phone and let it call home." "We're seeing close to 40% of heat pumps undercharged or leaking—no wonder callbacks are high." "What gets measured gets managed." — often attributed to Peter Drucker (fitting this data-driven shift)   Brendan Hermalyn (CEO/founder, Thalo Labs) traces a zig-zag path from NASA and defense to self-driving cars—then into HVAC. His through-line: high-reliability sensing and prognostics. Thalo's product aims to "give every heat pump a cell phone," using a small, non-invasive module that snaps inside VRFs/splits (and eventually larger plants), measures power and line temps, backhauls via cellular, and flags undercharge/leaks and power-quality issues before they become emergency calls. It's equipment management, not a full BMS—lightweight to install, built for techs, and friendly to API integrations, texts, and weekly roll-ups. Brendan argues the market is ready: most commercial buildings still lack BMS, Wi-Fi is fragile for critical telemetry, and the economics of sensors/cloud have flipped. Thalo avoids tapping the refrigerant loop, prioritizes fast installs (often 10–30 minutes), QR/location tagging, and even a "buzz this unit" feature to find the right rooftop box. Early field data is sobering—he's seeing ~40% of heat pumps undercharged and/or leaking—driving callbacks, compressor failures, and energy waste. The pitch to contractors: turn break-fix chaos into planned maintenance, white-label the savings report, and train new techs faster with data-driven cues. Oh, and the name? "Thalo" like the deep sky blue—an homage to adding tech to make the picture clearer.   Brendan's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendan-hermalyn/ Thalo Labs: https://thalolabs.com/   This episode was recorded in October 2025.  

As we navigate a world increasingly shaped by AI, it's easy to get lost in the technical details of prompts and automation. But what about the human side of the equation? If you're building a business based on your expertise, understanding how AI is rewiring our psychology and our customers' behaviour is critical. It changes how we build relationships, create content, and ultimately, how we monetise our knowledge.In this episode, I speak with Mark Schaefer about his latest book 'How AI Changes Your Customers: The Marketing Guide to Humanity's Next Chapter', which explores the profound psychological impact of AI on humanity and marketing. We moved beyond the usual talk of efficiency and productivity to discuss what it truly means to be human-centric in a world where AI can simulate empathy.Here are three key areas we explored:

Health and longevity are measurable, quantifiable, and malleable. The first step toward health optimization is awareness. Awareness starts with measuring. Because: “What gets measured gets managed” -              Said by many, made famous by Peter Drucker (known for modern management theory)-              This idea is why I moved from primary care to longevity medicine. More about this at the end. Welcome to Season 6 of Full Scope! This season is all about how to measure health and longevity. We are going to go over:-              All of the tests utilized at Longetrics to measure health and longevity in Your Longevity Report Card-              Videos of how to perform each test (https://www.youtube.com/@BillBrandenburgMD)-              A podcast and a blog about what each of these tests (the longevity metrics) means regarding a person's health and longevity (+ some tips about how to improve them). Saddle Up!Visit Longetrics.org/blog or fullscope.org/blog for the complete post

Ram Krishnan, a seasoned technology executive with a background in systems engineering from UVA, GE leadership, and several SaaS ventures, joined Valant (valant.io) in 2020 to steer the company through its next growth phase.  His team built a “system of record” that serves as the base operating platform for medical practices—handling everything from patient intake, appointment scheduling, and payment collection to clinical documentation, claim submission, and follow‑up care—essentially automating the entire patient lifecycle and positioning the software as the practice's essential OS. His leadership philosophy is anchored by two recurring nuggets: Peter Drucker's maxim that “culture beats strategy for lunch,” and a relentless focus on the core problem being solved, whether in hiring, process design, or technology investments, echoing lean‑startup principles. Website: www.valant.io LinkedIn: ramkrishnan Check out our CEO Hack Buzz Newsletter–our premium newsletter with hacks and nuggets to level up your organization. Sign up HERE.    I AM CEO Handbook Volume 3 is HERE and it's FREE. Get your copy here: http://cbnation.co/iamceo3. Get the 100+ things that you can learn from 1600 business podcasts we recorded. Hear Gresh's story, learn the 16 business pillars from the podcast, find out about CBNation Architects and why you might be one and so much more. Did we mention it was FREE? Download it today!

In this episode, Kaylee Felio welcomes John Traver of Traver Connect to discuss what “broken” looks like in automotive fixed ops—and more importantly, how leaders and teams can drive sustainable change. John shares frameworks from sports icons, legendary business thinkers like Peter Drucker, and dealership trailblazers such as Ed Roberts to highlight the power of questioning, mission clarity, and process improvement.Tune in for real-world strategies to strengthen your parts and service department—whether it's redefining your mission, zeroing in on your “primary customer,” or getting honest about what's not working. As John puts it, “When you get your mission right, you have an unfair advantage.”This episode is packed with actionable insights for parts managers, service leaders, and anyone passionate about moving the dealership world forward.--------------------------------------------This show is powered by PartsEdge: Your go-to solution for transforming dealership parts inventory into a powerhouse of profitability. Our strategies are proven to amp up parts sales by a whopping 20%, all while cutting down on idle inventory. If you're looking to optimize your parts management, visit

Want to Start or Grow a Successful Business? Schedule a FREE 13-Point Assessment with Clay Clark Today At: www.ThrivetimeShow.com   Join Clay Clark's Thrivetime Show Business Workshop!!! Learn Branding, Marketing, SEO, Sales, Workflow Design, Accounting & More. **Request Tickets & See Testimonials At: www.ThrivetimeShow.com  **Request Tickets Via Text At (918) 851-0102   See the Thousands of Success Stories and Millionaires That Clay Clark Has Helped to Produce HERE: https://www.thrivetimeshow.com/testimonials/ Download A Millionaire's Guide to Become Sustainably Rich: A Step-by-Step Guide to Become a Successful Money-Generating and Time-Freedom Creating Business HERE: www.ThrivetimeShow.com/Millionaire   See Thousands of Case Studies Today HERE: www.thrivetimeshow.com/does-it-work/  

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old. - Peter Drucker Check out John Lee Dumas' award winning Podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire on your favorite podcast directory. For world class free courses and resources to help you on your Entrepreneurial journey visit EOFire.com

Is your strategy based on assumptions that haven't been tested in years? In this final episode in our mini-series on Dr. Peter Drucker's “Theory of the Business” article, Bradley Hartmann breaks down how the NCAA's outdated assumptions and refusal to adapt destroyed its hold on college football—and what construction leaders must learn to avoid the same fate.    From resistance to change to blind spots in emotional intelligence and decision-making, this real-life case study reveals how ignoring your business environment can kill your team's performance.   In this episode, you will:    Discover how one outdated belief system brought down a billion-dollar institution. Learn how to spot and correct faulty assumptions in your own leadership strategy. Understand how to use Drucker's “Theory of the Business” to guide better decisions and stronger teams.   Hit play to learn how to reinforce your leadership strategy by seeing what the NCAA failed to—and how you can lead with clarity and eliminate confusion.   You can download Drucker's seminal article here.    This episode is brought to you by The Simple Sales Pipeline® —the most efficient way to organize and value any construction sales rep's roster of customers and prospects in under 30 minutes once every 30 days. *** If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback will help us on our mission to bring the construction community closer together. If you have suggestions for improvements, topics you'd like the show to explore, or have recommendations for future guests, do not hesitate to contact us directly at info@bradleyhartmannandco.com.  

Are your assumptions about your construction business still valid—or are they silently holding you back from further growth and success?   In today's episode, we uncover how outdated thinking—even from a wildly successful company like DeBeers, present in both construction and diamond mining—can destroy long-term performance. We explore Peter Drucker's “Theory of the Business” and to show how your unexamined assumptions about your market, mission, and core strengths could be holding your team back.    Whether you're facing resistance to change or struggling to lead better, this episode gives you a real-time case study about the clarity needed to lead with strategy and decisive action, not reaction.   In this episode you will:    Learn how to test and evolve your assumptions before your strategy becomes obsolete. Discover how to evaluate the risks and opportunities that new technology presents in uncertain times. Walk away with a simple framework to align your leadership with a fast-changing construction environment.   Hit play to learn how to avoid the hidden traps that have brought down giants—and future-proof your construction business starting today.    This episode is brought to you by The Simple Sales Pipeline® —the most efficient way to organize and value any construction sales rep's roster of customers and prospects in under 30 minutes once every 30 days. *** If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback will help us on our mission to bring the construction community closer together. If you have suggestions for improvements, topics you'd like the show to explore, or have recommendations for future guests, do not hesitate to contact us directly at info@bradleyhartmannandco.com.  

Are outdated beliefs silently sabotaging your construction team's performance?   In today's episode, Bradley Hartman breaks down Peter Drucker's timeless “Theory of the Business” to reveal how even successful construction leaders risk falling into groupthink and losing touch with reality—especially when they assume they already know what their customers need.   In this episode you will:  Learn why updating your business assumptions is key to staying competitive in a fast-changing industry. Discover how to identify blind spots within your leadership team. Hear how a century-old retail strategy can reshape your customer approach today.   Press play now to discover one mindset shift that can help you lead with more clarity and better control.   You can download Drucker's seminal article here.        This episode is brought to you by The Simple Sales Pipeline® —the most efficient way to organize and value any construction sales rep's roster of customers and prospects in under 30 minutes once every 30 days. *** If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback will help us on our mission to bring the construction community closer together. If you have suggestions for improvements, topics you'd like the show to explore, or have recommendations for future guests, do not hesitate to contact us directly at info@bradleyhartmannandco.com.  

In this episode, eXp founder and CEO Glenn Sanford joins us for a raw, unfiltered conversation about his journey. Glenn shares the origin story of eXp, revealing how the 2008 crash forced him to craft a new business model from a "blank sheet of paper." He discusses the challenges of building a brand, surviving a hostile takeover, and why focusing on agent experience over a P&L is the only path to lasting success. Connect with Glenn on - LinkedIn. Learn more about eXp World Holding on - Instagram - LinkedIn - X - Facebook or online at expworldholdings.com. Follow these links for SUCCESS Magazine - Instagram - Facebook - TikTok - LinkedIn - Pinterest - X and online at success.com.   Subscribe to Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/@RealEstateInsidersUnfiltered?sub_confirmation=1   To learn more about becoming a sponsor of the show send us an email: jessica@inman.com You asked for it. We delivered. Check out our new merch! https://merch.realestateinsidersunfiltered.com/   Follow Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered Podcast on Instagram - YouTube - Facebook - TikTok. Visit us online at realestateinsidersunfiltered.com.   Link to Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/RealEstateInsidersUnfiltered Link to Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/realestateinsiderspod/ Link to YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/@RealEstateInsidersUnfiltered Link to TikTok Page: https://www.tiktok.com/@realestateinsiderspod Link to website: https://realestateinsidersunfiltered.com This podcast is produced by Two Brothers Creative. https://twobrotherscreative.com/contact/  

The late leadership and organizational expert Peter Drucker said, “The leader of the past may have been the person who knew how to tell, but certainly the leader of the future will be the person who knows how to ask.” Today we'll explore how we can grow in questionable influence – how we can be more effective leaders when we ask more effective questions.. . .Want to participate in the FREE webinar to learn how to enhance your questions?September 11 at 1pm ET.Just log on to www.kairospartnerships.org to register today.. . .Coaching is a GREAT way to include reflection into your leadership rhythms.If you're interested in securing a free no-pressure exploratory coaching session, check out www.kairospartnerships.org/contact or email me at jrbriggs@kairospartnerships.orgIf you haven't signed up for my every other week FREE newsletter 5 Things in 5 Minutes (5 valuable nuggets that can be read in 5 minutes or less), check outwww.kairospartnerships.org/5t5m**Resilient Leaders is produced by the incredibly gifted Joel Limbauan. Check out his great video and podcast work at On a Limb Productions: www.onalimbproductions.com

What if the primary assumptions guiding your business decisions are outdated—and no one on your leadership team is willing to say it? This episode of The Construction Leadership Podcast dives into Peter Drucker's Theory of the Business and explores why many construction executives unintentionally resist change—despite clear signals from the market.  Using the story of Jaws as a metaphor, we highlight how unchecked assumptions that led to past success can now lead to strategic misalignment, operational firefighting, and frustrated teams. In this episode, you will: Identify the assumptions that may be holding back your business—and how to surface them with your team. Learn a 3-part framework (EMC²) to lead with more clarity and less resistance. Understand how world-class leaders use “constructive discontent” to stay accountable and lead better through change with innovation. Listen now to upgrade your strategic thinking, build buy-in across your leadership team, and lead your construction business with more focus and less firefighting. You can download Drucker's seminal article here.    This episode is brought to you by The Simple Sales Pipeline® —the most efficient way to organize and value any construction sales rep's roster of customers and prospects in under 30 minutes once every 30 days. *** If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback will help us on our mission to bring the construction community closer together. If you have suggestions for improvements, topics you'd like the show to explore, or have recommendations for future guests, do not hesitate to contact us directly at info@bradleyhartmannandco.com.