Podcasts about Asana

Descubre cómo evitar errores comunes al usar IA en tu negocio, aprende a crear buenos prompts y a filtrar resultados de calidad.   Minuto a minuto del episodio:   - ¿Puedes confiar en la IA para tu negocio? Expectativas, riesgos y oportunidades (00:00:00)   - Noticias cruzadas, expectativas y confusión sobre el impacto real de la inteligencia artificial (00:01:37)   - Experiencias personales y laboratorio de errores: historias de fiascos, repeticiones absurdas y limitaciones tecnológicas (00:03:02)   - Cómo desarrollar un vínculo sano con las nuevas tecnologías, oportunidades y peligros (00:05:10)   - Alucinaciones y errores de la IA: cuando los datos, cuentas y razonamientos fallan, ejemplos concretos y peligros de delegar pensamiento (00:08:06)   - Cuándo la IA realmente ayuda y cuándo hay que mantener el "músculo" mental (00:19:00)   - Tips para prompts simples y complejos: cómo estructurar mejores instrucciones y aprovechar la IA para tareas automáticas (00:17:14)   - Cómo escalar tu relación con la IA, desde el primer uso hasta prompts específicos y bases de datos personalizadas (00:31:26)   - Súper pregunta de la comunidad: ¿Se pueden integrar ChatGPT y Asana? (00:34:06)  

In this episode of the Grow A Small Business Podcast, host Troy Trewin interviews Phil Risher, founder of Phlash Consulting, shares how he transformed from charging $50 per hour as a consultant into building a $2M digital marketing consulting business serving home service companies. He explains how niching down, productizing services, and focusing on solving real customer problems helped drive consistent 20% annual growth. Phil also discusses the mindset shift from hustler to leader, hiring and building an 18-person remote team, and buying back his time to scale the business. The conversation dives into why content and AI-driven search are becoming critical for modern marketing. Phil also shares practical lessons on leadership, systems, and thinking bigger when building a successful business.   Why would you wait any longer to start living the lifestyle you signed up for? Balance your health, wealth, relationships and business growth. And focus your time and energy and make the most of this year. Let's get into it by clicking here.   Troy delves into our guest's startup journey, their perception of success, industry reconsideration, and the pivotal stress point during business expansion. They discuss the joys of small business growth, vital entrepreneurial habits, and strategies for team building, encompassing wins, blunders, and invaluable advice.   And a snapshot of the final five Grow A Small Business Questions: What do you think is the hardest thing in growing a small business? According to Phil Risher, the hardest thing in growing a small business is balancing growth with building the right team. As more clients come in, business owners must hire and train employees quickly enough to maintain service quality, but hiring too early can create cash-flow pressure while hiring too late can overwhelm the team. This constant challenge of managing new client demand, onboarding capable team members, and keeping finances stable at the same time is one of the most difficult parts of scaling a small business. What's your favorite business book that has helped you the most? According to Phil Risher, the business book that helped him the most is Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. He says the book had a major impact on how he manages finances in his company because it teaches business owners to prioritize profit first instead of treating profit as what is left after expenses. The system helps entrepreneurs control spending, improve cash flow, and build a financially healthy business by allocating money into specific categories like profit, taxes, and operating expenses. He also highly recommends Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell, which focuses on delegating tasks and buying back the founder's time so they can focus on leadership and scaling the business. Are there any great podcasts or online learning resources you'd recommend to help grow a small business? According to Phil Risher, some of the best resources for learning how to grow a small business are podcasts, YouTube, and books, especially content that teaches practical strategies. He specifically recommends learning from Alex Hormozi on YouTube because his videos break down business growth, marketing, and sales in a clear and practical way. Phil also emphasizes not relying on just one learning format—he suggests combining podcasts, books, and videos because different formats help you understand ideas better and apply them faster in your business. What tool or resource would you recommend to grow a small business? According to Phil Risher, two tools he strongly recommends for growing a small business are Asana and Slack. He explains that Asana helps business owners organize tasks, projects, and workflows so everything is tracked in one place instead of scattered across emails or spreadsheets, while Slack creates a centralized communication hub for teams to collaborate efficiently, especially as the company grows beyond a few employees. Together, these tools help improve productivity, transparency, and coordination within a growing team. What advice would you give yourself on day one of starting out in business? According to Phil Risher, the advice he would give himself on day one of starting a business is to think much bigger from the start. He explains that when he first began, he was focused on small goals like making $100,000, but over time he realized the opportunities were far larger than he imagined. His lesson is that entrepreneurs often limit themselves by thinking too small, while the real potential of a business can grow far beyond what they initially believe is possible. Book a 20-minute Growth Chat with Troy Trewin to see if you qualify for our upcoming course. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your small business to new heights! Enjoyed the podcast? Please leave a review on iTunes or your preferred platform. Your feedback helps more small business owners discover our podcast and embark on their business growth journey.     Quotable quotes from our special Grow A Small Business podcast guest: Success comes from taking information breaking it down and executing on it quickly - Phil Risher The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make is thinking too small about what their business can become - Phil Risher Stop chasing money and start solving real problems and the money will follow - Phil Risher      

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We're talking with Brandon Boyd, Executive Pastor at Quay Church in Windermere, Florida—one of the fastest-growing churches in the country. What began as a struggling congregation marked by multiple splits has experienced dramatic renewal and growth since a 2022 replant under Lead Pastor Luke Lazon. Is your church experiencing rapid growth that feels both exciting and overwhelming? Wondering how to scale systems, structure, and culture without losing spiritual health? Tune in as Brandon shares how Quay Church is stewarding momentum while building clarity, accountability, and lasting impact. From flat structure to scalable leadership. // When Brandon arrived in 2024, Quay had grown from 400 to 1,500 people, but its internal structure hadn't caught up. Meetings were crowded, decisions were unclear, and Sunday services were running long due to lack of coordination. The church had been operating as a flat organization where everyone contributed to every decision. That worked at a smaller size but became chaotic during rapid growth. Quay implemented tiered leadership levels: elders at 50,000 feet guarding mission and doctrine, an executive team at 40,000 feet solving forward-facing challenges, and a lead team at 30,000 feet ensuring weekly ministry execution. This created clarity in decision-making and allowed the church to scale effectively. Systems in many places leads to excellence. // A guiding philosophy Brandon has is SIMPLE—Systems In Many Places Leads to Excellence. Brandon introduced tools like Asana for project management, Slack for communication, and Otter for meeting documentation. Agendas are shared ahead of time, action items are clearly assigned, and meeting notes are converted into trackable tasks. Each meeting is defined by purpose—innovation, execution, or decision—so participants know what is expected. The tools support clarity, but the real goal is alignment and accountability. Guarding culture during rapid growth. // Growth creates urgency that can easily become chaos. Quay combats this with clearly defined staff values: Kingdom over castles. Nimble over fragile. Sled dogs over show dogs. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Burn the ships. These values act as decision filters. Everyone owns the broader mission, not just their ministry lane. Staff lead by example—serving first, giving first, even parking farther away to prioritize guests. A 2026 staff covenant outlines expectations for spiritual leadership, generosity, and ownership, ensuring alignment as the church continues to grow. Spiritual health beyond attendance growth. // While attendance has surged to nearly 2,700 adults weekly, Brandon points to transformation as the real marker of health. Spontaneous altar ministry has become a defining feature of services—not manufactured, but Spirit-led. People regularly respond in repentance, prayer, and life change. One man publicly confessed infidelity and committed to reconciliation. The church just celebrated 188 baptisms last year, reinforcing that growth is not just numeric but spiritual. Leading through overwhelm. // Brandon closes with a vulnerable reminder: rapid growth can be overwhelming. Leaders must acknowledge that reality rather than pretending to be superhuman. Honest conversations with lead pastors, elders, and trusted peers help prevent burnout. When God calls, He equips—but leaders must stay transparent and supported during demanding seasons. To learn more about Quay Church, visit quaychurch.org or follow @quaychurch on social media. You can connect with Brandon on Instagram at @bgboyd. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe Do you feel like your church’s or school's facility could be preventing growth? Are you frustrated or possibly overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that you could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs? Well, the team over at Risepointe can help! As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead you to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Your mission should not be held back by your building. Their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to incorporate creative design solutions to help move YOUR mission forward. Check them out at risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there, schedule a FREE call to explore possibilities for your needs, vision and future…Risepointe believes that God still uses spaces…and they're here to help. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today, and you’re definitely going to be rewarded for that. Today, we’re talking with a church that I like to say has platinum problems. Like every church wants to be a fast-growing church. They want to be, or you’ll hear leaders talk about in a season where they’re growing, where we’re capturing a church and a leader in the midst of that right now.Rich Birch — And I’m really excited to talk to Brandon Boyd. He is at Quay Church in Windermere, Florida. This is a fast-growing church. It’s one of the fastest-growing churches in the country. He serves as the XP. And I’m really looking forward to unpacking the story a little bit. Tell us a little bit about Quay and the history there, the story, what’s going on. Tell us, bring us up to speed.Brandon Boyd — Yeah, Rich, thanks for having me on the podcast today. Just such a joy to chat with you and tell all the incredible things that the Lord’s doing at Quay. So I’ve only been at Quay for about like 15 months. And so previously, I’m a native Texan, grew up in Dallas, served my home church in Dallas and another church in the Dallas, North Dallas area. And then the Lord transplanted us all the way out here to Orlando, Florida – Windermere, suburb of Orlando, which is on the north side of Disney World, which is pretty fun. And so I’m married and I’ve got three daughters. I live in a sorority, basically, which is really fun. Rich Birch — Love it.Brandon Boyd — And so when the Lord said, hey, I’m taking you to Windermere, was pretty easy yes for our family, for what the Lord had for us. And so, you know, Quay is a little bit of a replant. And so our church was initially started in the early 2000s and went through like two or three church splits. And we shouldn’t really have a church just because of those splits and what was occurring at that time period. Brandon Boyd — And I would say our church got replanted in 2022 when Luke Lazon, who was our young adult pastor at the time when he became the lead pastor. At that time, there was basically like 400 people that were calling our church home. We were known as Lifebridge Church at the time.Brandon Boyd — And then you fast forward to when I got here in May of 2024, we had grown to 1,500 adults. And then this past weekend, we had 2,700 adults with us, and then about 500 kids and students. And so it’s just been a wild ride these last three years. And I’ve just been fortunate to be a part of it in the past like 15 months.Rich Birch — Well I, yeah, I want to acknowledge that, you know, that kind of growth is, it’s exciting and fun and and have lived through similar seasons in the past, but there is also comes with a lot of challenges and a lot of like real world problems. And so I appreciate that you’ve taken time to, you know, help us think through these issues today. And even just before the call started, we were talking about stuff literally from last weekend that was like, well, there’s a new problem. We got to figure that one out. So excited for this. Rich Birch — Well, let’s talk about when you stepped into the role. So you you you arrive, you know, the church is obviously growing, had experienced incredible growth in the couple years before you got here, went from 400 to 1500. When did you realize that maybe not just that it was growing, but maybe the qualitative, the kind of what kind of growth Quay was having was was maybe a little bit different and was kind of going to inform the next couple of years. Help us think through what was that like when you first arrived, unpack that, you know, those first weeks or months.Brandon Boyd — Yeah. So my my first Sunday was Mother’s Day in 2024. And on that day, we had communion, we had baptism, we had a parent-child moment. And I looked up to us and I said, we’re just not communicating well. So we can’t have all these elements in a worship gathering taking place at the same time.Brandon Boyd — And so I started talking with our XP over worship and creative. And I just said, help me understand your planning process through the week. And so I took that first week just to ask a lot of questions like, how are we sitting together? How are we working together? What’s not working? And then what we started to do was start to organize our meetings behind the scenes. So we really took that summer of 2024 and start putting some processes in place that would help us kind of scale up well.Brandon Boyd — And part of that was we use a project management tool on the back end to make sure that everything is operating well. We use Asana. And some of this is what I learned in Dallas with our team there. And I took that and brought it here and scaled it. And so everything runs through a project through us on the back end. Worship is a project. All of our events are a project. And so everybody knows what is expected of them today. What is expected of them tomorrow, two weeks from now. And it’s also our accountability tool.Brandon Boyd — So back to that first Sunday, when we realized that we had all these things going on, Luke still preached for 40 minutes. And then they looked at me and said, Hey, we’re just always over time on our gatherings. Well, everything’s got to be spelled out. And so that was an initial thought that I said, this can’t be the Wild West anymore. Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — Because of the rapid growth that we had going on, knowing that we’ve got natural growth cycles coming up, whether it’s in the fall when school starts, and in January. And that’s kind of what we saw happen at Quay in that first year in 2024.Rich Birch — Yeah, there’s a lot there I want to unpack. And I want to get to meetings and and project management. I want to really dive into some of those details. But one of the things I’ve been, as I’ve kind of watched from afar, what’s happened at Quay, you guys have done a good job balancing the past, even just how you talked about there, kind of balancing, talking about the past, but then you know, projecting forward and kind of casting vision for the future, how did the church’s past really approach your, or has that, ah you know, kind of ah impacted your leadership as you’ve approached leading here in the, even in the current, or as you think to the future, how are those two connected together?Brandon Boyd — Yeah, I think just an axiom I live by is I always want to speak respectfully about the past, be honest about what’s going on presently, and optimistically about the future.Rich Birch — That’s good.Brandon Boyd — And so we’re super grateful for the people that went ahead of us that helped start this and plant this church way back in the early 2000s, and then had the foresight to kind of buy this piece of property in Windermere.Brandon Boyd — We’ve got part of our property is not developed yet. And we had a developer show up the other day that offered $5 million dollars for our grass kind of parking lot where we’re going to expand our campus on. But I couldn’t imagine unloading and reloading everything into an elementary school or a high school right now. So we’re super grateful for the people that went ahead of us, not only the pastoral leadership, elders, but also the people that called this church home, that hung on for the hope that something better was coming in the future.Brandon Boyd — And so they’ve been on this wild ride, up and down of, splits, attendance, differences, whatever else, but knowing that, you know, there ought to be a church in this part of Windermere, that there should be a gospel presence, especially in a place that’s so known for entertainment. Like you can stand on our roof at nighttime and see the fireworks from Disney World.Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — If the wind, if the wind is blowing just right, you can hear the whistle from the train at the Magic Kingdom. I mean, that’s how close we are. Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — So for a spot in Orlando that’s known for entertainment, why shouldn’t there be a place that is a flag spot for the gospel. And so knowing that those people went before us, knowing that you’ve got people moving here on a daily and weekly basis, we appreciate that, but we also got to look forward to the future.Brandon Boyd — And so we had this opportunity to kind of rebrand our church. So our church was named after our young adult ministry Quay. And a quay is a literal thing. Like it’s a place where ships unload and reload their cargo. And that’s just a metaphor for the church – that the church a place where people can unload the things and that are burdensome and get refilled up with the message of Jesus and take that out into their places of influence, to their schools, to their work places.Brandon Boyd — And so when we cast that vision early in 2025, the people that had been here when all the ups and downs of the church really saw, like this is the moment. And then they saw this surge of people that were coming in to hear the gospel message. We baptized this past year 188 people. Rich Birch — That’s great.Brandon Boyd — That’s adults, children, kids. Rich Birch — Fantastic. Brandon Boyd — I got to baptize my own daughter this past year, which is super exciting. But to see life change. So you go from this really small remnant that was left to see this surge and explosion, to see people, their lives being transformed for the gospel, I think is how they’ve just seen, all right, what’s next? What’s next, Lord, for us? And we’ve got this phrase here that stewardship is our responsibility, that we’re just merely stewards of what the Lord has provided to us. Rich Birch — Right. Good.Brandon Boyd — And so we’re just stewarding this moment. And we really want to set it up well for the people that follow me, that follow Pastor Luke, that follow any of us, that we want to leave it better than we found it.Rich Birch —Yeah, that’s so good. And I just want to honor you for how you guys even publicly are handling all that. Because I think particularly with the growth that you’ve seen, it would be easy to be like, man, isn’t it incredible what’s happening now, but even kind of just forgetting what’s gone in the past. So, you know, honor you for what you’re doing there. I think that’s that’s incredible. Rich Birch —Well, let’s get back to some of those rhythms. So one of the things you talked about was like, hey, we realized, oh, maybe these, ah you know, the meetings, we just, we didn’t have the right, maybe the right flow of information. Brandon Boyd — Yeah.Rich Birch — So let’s talk through what did that look like? How did you how did you pick that apart, diagnose the problem maybe first? And then how did we make some shifts towards the kind of system you’re currently running?Brandon Boyd — So our organization was a flat organization. So when I got here, everybody was involved in every single decision. Everybody, like there was a weekly staff meeting where everybody was there and they were pitching ideas left and right about what we need to do on Sunday, what we need to do for our student ministry programming. And then we had a weekly meeting where everybody was involved with all the event processes and everything else.Brandon Boyd — And so I think another obstacle that we were trying to work past was Luke went from, like I said, young adult pastor to lead pastor. So he went from a peer on the hall to the boss. And so I knew that we had to put some structures in place and we had to scale the organization, and had to put some meeting structures around that. So we created an executive team meeting that meets on Mondays. We created a lead team that meets on Tuesdays. And we put people in those meetings that had influence or had certain gift sets, or we took Working Genius. And so we’ve kind of started to strategize our meetings around Working Genius and putting people in meetings where they thrive. Brandon Boyd — So if they’re an innovator, if they’re a wonderer, then we may need to put them on the front side of work. If they’re more of an implementer and they’re more of somebody that can get the tasks done, they don’t need to be in all these meetings. So what we’ve tried to do moving forward is really name what the meeting is before it’s even called, so people know what the expectation is.Brandon Boyd — So what what we’ve tried to do over the past year is really provide clarity and expectation.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Brandon Boyd — So when somebody comes to a meeting, they know what they need to prepare, but then they also know what their expectation is in the conversation.Rich Birch — That’s great. A couple things I want to unpack there. First, ah for listeners, we had Patrick Lencioni on talking about Working Genius. If you should go back and listen to that episode, if you don’t know Working Genius, it’s a fantastic tool. Here’s an example of a church is actually putting it into practice, not just like reading the book and putting it on the shelf.Rich Birch — So can you pull apart the, when you say executive team and lead team, the kind of Monday and Tuesday, how do you, what’s the like 30 second definition between those two and their roles and responsibilities between those two groups and who’s kind of comprises those, those teams.Brandon Boyd — Yeah. So our exec, well, it really starts with our elder team. So for a period of time, like our elders had to be really involved just because of the nature of what was going on in our church. But they have since decided that they needed to fly at a higher level. So we’ll we’ll just talk 50,000 feet.Brandon Boyd — So the elders are at the 50,000 feet. They’re really guarding the mission and vision of the church. Rich Birch — Yep.Brandon Boyd — And then you come down to the executive team, which flies at 40,000 feet. And they’re really tasked at making sure that from an executive level, we’ve got you know all the the problems that need to be solved, that we’re looking at the vision forward, that we’re not only looking at the current week, but we’re looking six weeks out. We just wrapped up Christmas. We’re already talking about Easter. and We’re talking about Christmas already for 2026. Brandon Boyd — And then you step down to the lead team. They’re at 30,000 feet. And what they’re doing is making sure that our ministries are humming and running on a weekly basis and making sure that those budgets, ministry resources, calendars, everything are executing.Brandon Boyd — So what we’ve done is the executive team is obviously our lead pastor. We’ve got myself as executive pastor. We’ve got the other executive pastor of worship and creative, Justin Melton. And then we added our spiritual formation pastor, Mike Brook on that team.Brandon Boyd — Our lead team is the executive team, plus our project manager, plus our young adult pastor. Cause young adults are so important and and vibrant to our house.Rich Birch — Sure.Brandon Boyd — And that’s kind of like the impetus for the rebirth of our church. And then we’ve got like people in charge of kind our crews, which is our small groups and then kind of our volunteer teams in that. And so that’s kind of those teams.Brandon Boyd — And then out of that, you’ve got ministry teams that run on a weekly basis. And then our staff gathers for once a month where we pray together. we have some fun together. We eat lunch. And so let’s kind of put some meeting structures that we put in place and the purpose of them.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.Brandon Boyd — So we’ve kind of walked through 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, all the way down to zero. So everybody knows what the purpose of each of those meetings are.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I’m assuming so you go executive to lead and then is there then like a weekly team meeting? So each of those people that are on the executive, or on the the lead team, they would then have their, you know, kind of trickle that down that information throughout the organization. Brandon Boyd — Yep.Rich Birch — Is that what that looks like basically?Brandon Boyd — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.Brandon Boyd — You’re exactly right. So those ministry teams meet on a weekly basis. Rich Birch — Right. Brandon Boyd — And so, yep.Rich Birch — Okay. One other thing you said that caught my attention, which is a small, it’s like, since we’re sticking with the the quay metaphor, the the nautical metaphor, it’s a small, like a rudder. It’s not that big, but it’s it’s a huge deal. Actually, people knowing what we’re talking about in the upcoming meeting and being prepared for those meetings can be transformational in an organization. So talk me through what does that look like? What’s your expectation? And then when it’s running perfect, what is the kind of goal that we’re, we’re trying to go towards on that, you know, on that front, obviously that we don’t, we don’t bat a hundred, but I’m not even sure I’m mixing metaphors. Now we don’t bat a thousand. I think it is.Brandon Boyd — Yeah.Rich Birch — What is that? You know, what, what does that look like?Brandon Boyd — Yeah. If you’re batting a hundred, I think you’re batting pretty bad. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.Brandon Boyd — And so what what we try to do, I mean, we’re not afraid of tools. And so we use several different tools.Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — Already talked about Asana. We use Slack for internal communication. So we we really try to strive that we’ve got to get our agendas out ahead of time and then understand if there is an action item in the agenda so that people can understand what’s expected of them.Brandon Boyd — We use another tool called Otter that helps make minutes and notes. And then we disseminate those to the people so they know what’s expected of them. Otter does a great job of recognizing voices and then they’ll also tag people. Then we take that and dump it into Asana. Brandon Boyd — So if we’re having, we’ll just use our student ministry. If we’re having like our weekly Wednesday night student ministry programming for middle schoolers, they’ll know what’s expected of them from what our middle school director is speaking on to what’s expected from production to what’s expected from our creative team to what’s expected from our communications team on the website, social media, some of those other things.Brandon Boyd — And so we use, we’re we’re not shy to use tools. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Brandon Boyd — And so we use those tools just to make sure that everybody understands what’s expected before the meeting and after the meeting.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I’m an Otter user as well. Brandon Boyd — Yeah. Rich Birch — Use it in my coaching. And it’s it’s ah it’s transformed my own personal interaction with the churches I work with. And then I’ve actually had a number of churches pick it up and start using it. I had an XP, this was before Christmas, texted me after just one week. He was like, dude, this has changed our game because it’s like having someone, it’s like in every meeting having like an incredibly detailed assistant that’s writing notes on everything that’s going on and they don’t they don’t miss anything or miss very little, which is, you know, incredible. Rich Birch — So now let’s talk about so from there. So like I get the idea you’re using Asana, get that Slack, Otter, tools are together. How do you ensure that things keep simple and streamlined rather than becoming con, you know, yeah really complicated and, you know, were just bolting on stuff. How do you think about those issues as, as you’re growing?Brandon Boyd — So I’ve got a phrase that I learned at one of my churches in Texas, and it’s actually an acronym. It’s for SIMPLE. So, systems in many places leads to excellence.Brandon Boyd — So we just try to keep things simple. Like we launch a fourth gathering here. We’re at max capacity on Sunday mornings with all three of our gatherings from 8:15 and 11:45. So we’re we’re launching a fourth one here in a few weeks at Sunday night at 5 p.m. And so if we just take what’s replicable from the Sunday morning experience and add it to the the evening experience. But it’s just the basic thing. Brandon Boyd — So yes, we’ve got tools. Yes, we’ve got Asana. Yes, we’ve got Slack… [inaudible] to call a stand-up meeting and just to make sure everybody’s understand what’s going on and just have a conversation. Like my door, I’ve got an open door policy. And if my door’s open, just come on in and ask a question to make sure that you understand what’s going on.Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — I think it’s just the basic thing. Rich Birch — Right. Brandon Boyd — A lot of times we can hide behind email, we can hide behind Slack, we can hide behind text messages, but we’ve we’ve just got to be more proactive than reactive and say…hey, if you don’t understand something, then it’s okay to come ask a question because I may miss something because we’re involved at a different level.Brandon Boyd — And so what we try to do is just make sure that we’ve got avenues for people to ask questions, whether that’s having quick standup meetings before we run to a big initiative. We also run things where it’s kind of an integration meeting. So if we’re looking at Christmas, Easter, if we’re looking at another objective where we’re going to get everybody on the table and we’re going to walk through a checklist just to make sure even the most small, minute details are taken care of.Rich Birch — That’s good.Brandon Boyd — Part of it is like we’re a stickler for excellence. So we would say excellence is our standard. And part of that is just kind where we are with Disney and Universal and theme parks all over everywhere that everybody that goes to our church already has an excellence experience whenever they go to that. So why can’t they have the same excellence level when they come to church on Sundays?Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.Brandon Boyd — So.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. A big issue in growing churches is, you know, the people side. So it’s related to what we’re talking about. But as you’re scaling, you know, your team has to continue to grow as people. They have to, you know, step up their game as growth has accelerated. How are you accelerating whether people are operating at their best contribution? They’re kind of really leaning in, you know, and they’re kind of performing at their highest. How how have you been able to keep an eye on that?Brandon Boyd — Yeah, I think this a growing thing for us. I’ve got a “no freak out” policy.Rich Birch — Right. Good. Brandon Boyd — So we’ve we’ve just got to talk through it.Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — We’ve only got about 20 full time equivalents behind the scene. Rich Birch — That’s great. Brandon Boyd — So when you’re in a church that’s twenty seven hundred and then you add in kids, you’re easily at thirty two hundred on a weekend basis. We have to run lean and mean knowing that we’re trying to project out for when we need to hire additional staff members or we need to hire some part-time.Brandon Boyd — We’re launching an internship program. And so what we’re trying to do is making sure that our staff team feels taken care of, feels heard, feels supported. And I think a lot of that is being accomplished by when we went from a flat organization, nobody, everybody knew who their boss was, but their boss didn’t know maybe what specifically what their directions were. So as we created the executive team, as we created the lead team, as we’ve got those ministry teams, we’ve created avenues for people to be able to feel supported and cared for.Brandon Boyd — And so what I’ve said to our team is you’re caring for the people just down the rung for us. Obviously, Luke and I are caring for our entire team. But just making sure that we’ve got avenues for feedback, avenues for just encouragement, avenues for conversation.Brandon Boyd — And then what we’re trying to figure out next is how do we hold people accountable? So how do we, yes, we’ve told people what’s expected from them. We actually created like a staff covenant for 2026. Like here here’s our expectations, just in case you’re you’re curious about what’s expected from you. And in case you’re caring, well, I was hired under this pastor and this was what the agreement was, that’s out the door. But as 2026 for Quay Church, just so we’re all entirely clear… Rich Birch — That’s cool. Brandon Boyd — …this is what we’re covenanting, not only, from us as a team, but to the Lord. And so we’ve got that. We’ve got accountability.Rich Birch — What are some of the, just before we leave that, what what are some of the things that landed in that? You don’t have to get into this… Brandon Boyd — Yeah. Rich Birch —…but, you know kind of categories of things that you’re, you’re recovenanting around?Brandon Boyd — We kind of made a joke that it sometimes we just, our volunteers, which we call stewards, they kind of outwork us.Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — And so like, hello, like we, we want to be the first one in and the last one out. And so in the covenant, it just talks about, Hey, we’re we’re going to be here for all the gatherings and we’re going to set the table and make sure that our house is ready to go before people show up.Brandon Boyd — We’re going to covenant. If we’re going to ask our church family to do something, whether be in a group or tithe or whatever, those things that we ask from the platform, we’re going to do it first. So one of the things that I just said to our staff team today is, we need to give up parking in our staff parking lot and we need to park in the farthest spots away on our grass parking a lot.Rich Birch — 100%, yep.Brandon Boyd — So those spots are ready to go for people. And so it’s just little things like that, just making sure that we’re super clear so that there’s no shadow of a doubt that as we go into 2026 and we kind of anticipated that we would have another growth wave based upon what we saw in 2024 and 2025, that in 2026, we just need to be clear what was expected from them as people stepped into it.Rich Birch — That’s cool. Well, when, you know, everything in a growth phase that you’re in, it can get chaotic pretty quickly, because everything feels urgent. It’s like, you know literally, even just the situation we talked about, and before we jumped on the call. It’s like, oh, my goodness, you know, we had a bunch of new more people show up that we’re excited they’re with us, but now we’ve got figure out how to keep them plugged in and all that. Rich Birch — How do you keep from the urgency turning into chaos? What are you doing to try to really push back in some ways and and keep your team focused? And I like that no freak out, you know, no freak out policy. Like, hey, let’s not freak out. We’ll figure it out. But but what’s that functionally look like?Brandon Boyd — I think part of it is it just goes back to our staff values. And so when we were looking, when I first came on board on this, on the church staff, Luke was like, Hey, we got to rebrand the church now. And I said, that’s a longer conversation that we need to roll out in a smart and healthy way. And also gives us time to cast vision. Brandon Boyd — But that first fall that I was here in the fall of 2024, we rolled out staff values and we really go back to those staff values to help people understand they’re not just phrases that we stick up on a wall, but it’s who we are as ah as a culture, as a people. And so one of our values is that we want to build a kingdom over castles. Rich Birch — Good. Brandon Boyd — So we’re more interested in obviously the kingdom of the church, the kingdom of the Lord, and not your own necessary small little ministry thing at Quay Church. So everybody is all in on the broader conversation of the church. Like I told our staff team this past week, as we look towards the launch of the fourth gathering here in a few weeks: No matter what your role is, you’re all jumping in and helping make sure that facilities is ready to go the next day. No matter what your role is, we’re all going to be nimble and shift to it.Brandon Boyd — Another phrase that we like to use is that we’re nimble over fragile. And so we don’t really hold on to things that that that we’re, that we created. We’re we we’re open-handed and open-palmed. It goes back to what I said earlier about stewardship. We’re just stewarding this whole thing. This isn’t ours. This is the Lord’s.Rich Birch — That’s good.Brandon Boyd — That comes down from our lead pastor to our team. He models that so well. And so we really just kind of run with the staff values. Our other staff values are: we take the risk And so we’re willing to take risks for the gospel, whatever that looks like. We’re willing to push that forward. We want to be sled dogs over show dogs. Rich Birch — That’s good.Brandon Boyd — And so we want to put in the good work and all pulled together in the same direction. “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast” is another one of our staff values. We believe that, yes, we can take time to make a decision, but once we make the decision, then we can run so much faster because we’ve got clarity. “Kingdom over castle” I already talked about. “Nimble over fragile.”Brandon Boyd — And then a last one is we just want to burn the ships. And so this is the day that the Lord has for us. And so while we do look back in the past from time, the past is in the past, and we’ve got today. We’re not promised for tomorrow, obviously. And so what can we do now with what the Lord is doing in our church to make sure that the message of Jesus is available to people not only in this part of Windermere, but also throughout the other Orlando regions?Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so cool. When you think about Quay today, what tells you that the church is becoming healthier not just bigger? i know there can be like criticisms of, and listen, that comes from a place of h being on the other side of these questions when I’ve led before where there’s like this criticism. They look at something like Quay and they’re like, oh, like that’s just whatever. It’s a fad. It’s going, you know, but that’s not the case. What are some of those, either metrics, or stories, or things that you see happening that say like, oh no, things are actually heading, not just bigger, but also healthier.Brandon Boyd — It’s not like we have a growth strategy on my whiteboard over here and we’re like, hey, we got to hit this marker and this marker by then.Rich Birch — Yes. Right.Brandon Boyd — But I think what’s, I’ll just tell you a quick story.Rich Birch — Yeah.Brandon Boyd — We’re in a collection of what we call Sermon Series Collection of Conversations. So we’re in a conversation about Song of Songs right now. We call it Divine Desire, and we’re walking through that.Brandon Boyd — And the Lord has really blessed what we would call altar ministry. And so at the end of our gathering, especially during the last song, after the message has been communicated, people just come down to the front of the altar for prayer. Rich Birch — That’s great.Brandon Boyd — And we’ve got pastors, we’ve got elders, we’ve got deacons. And some of those things that are being communicated in those moments, like last fall, we had a gentleman come down and he said that he was cheating on his spouse and was repentant. And he’s like, I got to go get her now. And we’ve got to share this right now in this moment.Rich Birch — Wow.Brandon Boyd — So I think we’re seeing like real life transformation take place in the gatherings, obviously through the movement of the Holy Spirit. But then the Spirit is directing people to make inroads right now in that moment. Like don’t leave this building today before you’ve had a conversation with the Lord and you’ve confessed your sin. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Brandon Boyd — So I think from that perspective, I’ve just been able to see that happen and to see people really take their faith seriously in that moment, rather than just like coming to a worship gathering, getting in their car and going home.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love that. That’s great. Any, you know, the talk to me a little bit more about the response time, the altar time. I would say this for sure is a “trends” may be the wrong word, but like we see more and more churches, you know, employing that, that tactic. What have you learned from just managing that as a normal part of your worship experience? What, what has been, and has that been an add in the last couple of years or has it always been there?Brandon Boyd — I think it’s I think it’s been an add, but it hasn’t been like a programmatic element… Rich Birch — Right. Brandon Boyd — …that we’ve said, we’ve got to have altar ministry. I think it’s just been a movement of the Lord. So last spring we had we had this moment where it was our last gathering of the morning was at 11:45. And then we had this altar ministry where people just stayed and prayed after the end. And I don’t even remember what Luke spoke on. That started at 1:00 basically, and didn’t wrap up till 6 p.m. that night.Rich Birch — Wow.Brandon Boyd — So we’re not manufacturing any of this.Rich Birch — No. Yeah, yeah.Brandon Boyd — I think it’s just the Lord. And I think it’s just being sensitive to what the Lord is doing. And I think it’s the courage of not only Luke, our pastor, but other people that fill the pulpit when Luke isn’t there, that says, hey, don’t leave this room.Brandon Boyd — Our worship pastor, Justin Melton, does a great job of this at the end of each gathering. Don’t leave this room before you’ve talked to somebody, if the Lord is prompting that. So I think from a programmatic standpoint, we just want to be open-handed and just provide opportunities for people either to come forward or go to the next step space to have a conversation. And so it’s just been really remarkable to watch. Brandon Boyd — Like at first, I was kind of like, what in the world is going on? These people are just getting out of their seats and coming down front. But that altar ministry is not only prevalent in our Sunday morning worship gatherings, it’s prevalent in our student gatherings, whether that’s Wednesday night for middle school or Sunday nights for high school, and Thursday nights for our young adults. So it’s just something that the Lord is kind of stirring in and through our church.Rich Birch — Yeah, I was visiting, maybe 18 months ago, I was visiting a church. It was, the year before it was the second fastest growing church in the country. And showed up, and there was nothing about the kind of my pre-experience with this church that would have led me to believe that like, oh, altar time was going to be a part of their experience. And but very similarly, at the end of the the service, it was very like nonchalant is is the wrong word, but it wasn’t it was not a programmatic. We are, you know people know what we’re talking about. Brandon Boyd — Yeah, yeah. Rich Birch — Like we’re not, we’re not trying to, we’re not doing anything to get people to respond. And I would say, I don’t know, two thirds of the room got up and came down or, you know, half the room, it was like a huge portion of the room got up and came down. And I remember talking to the lead guy the next thing, he’s a good friend of mine. And I was like, like trying to pick it apart and understand it from a process point of view. And he was like, Rich man, the fact that we don’t totally understand it is a part of what we think that God’s using, right? Which is is beautiful. So that’s, that’s great to hear. That’s cool. Rich Birch — Are you doing anything with your elders or staff team to train towards that? Because you want to make sure that, you know, the people that are receiving some of that, you know, are kind of thought about it ahead of time before they got down there. Is anything you’re doing on that front?Brandon Boyd — Yeah, we’ve had training conversations and just how to be receptive to what people are sharing and knowing that we’ve we’ve done that with our elders, with our deacons and our staff team and pastors. andRich Birch — Sure.Brandon Boyd — But some of that is obviously there’s there’s going to be greater needs that extend past a Sunday.Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — So what is the immediate conversation that we need to have? But then if it’s a counseling issue, how can we refer them to a counseling partner? Rich Birch — Right.Brandon Boyd — Are there things that we can handle internally? Part of it is like we’ve just had this rapid growth in our church where it’s like you would assume if you come to our church that we would have this ministry, this handoff, this handoff. So another thing that we’ve had to do this past year is kind of build those handoffs as we’ve experienced some of these altar ministry things.Rich Birch — Sure.Brandon Boyd — Yeah.Rich Birch — That’s cool. Well, it’s been a fantastic conversation. What kind of final words would you have or encouragement would you have to a leader who’s maybe experiencing, obviously what you’re experiencing is super unique across the country, but is maybe experiencing a season of growth that there’s, Hey, there’s, we’re experiencing more momentum. We’re seeing this across the country in a number of churches, but what would you, what would your kind of final words be to them as we wrap up today’s conversation?Brandon Boyd — I think for me, just the final thing that I’d like to say, Rich, is it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Rich Birch — That’s good.Brandon Boyd — I’ve felt overwhelmed in this season, and it’s okay to acknowledge that. And so just to have that space with my lead pastor where I can go into him and just say, look, I’m overwhelmed. I’m going to be okay. But I just want you to know that I am overwhelmed. And then being able to be transparent with our elder board about that. I think that’s just ah a feeling of, as if you’re in a fast-growing church like this situation or other situations, where it’s okay just to acknowledge we’re humans. You don’t have to act like a superhuman, that everything is okay.Rich Birch — RightBrandon Boyd — But just to say, hey, I’m overwhelmed and it’s a season. And then being able to express that not only to your lead pastor, to your elders, but I’ve got friends outside of Orlando that are in pastoral ministry that understand what that feels like. So just creating that network of being able to say that. Because what my fear is that people can just get overwhelmed and can get burned out and can say like, I hate the church. I don’t want to be a pastor anymore. And I believe that the when the Lord calls you, he’s also going to equip you. And so at the same time, you just need to be able to voice that and just say like, I am overwhelmed. We are going to make it through it, but here’s some things that I need help on.Rich Birch — That’s so good. Brandon, I really appreciate you being on today and taking time out of your schedule, packed schedule, I’m sure, to help us today.Brandon Boyd — Yeah.Rich Birch — So I really appreciate that. If people want to connect with Quay, connect with you, kind of track with the story, where do we want to send them online?Brandon Boyd — Yeah, so you can go to our social media. That’s @quaychurch, Q-U-A-Y Church. Also, quaychurch.org. And then I’m on Instagram @bgboyd.Rich Birch — Nice. That’s great. Thanks so much for being here today.Brandon Boyd — Yep, my pleasure.

This was my morning practice, a moderate one with lots of space across the lower back and sacrum. 

Ian sits down with Prachi Gore, CMO of Asana, to talk about how AI is reshaping marketing and the future of work. Prachi shares why she joined Asana, why brand and community matter more than ever in an AI-driven world, and how marketing leaders need to rethink old playbooks as buyers change how they research, discover, and adopt new tools. Key Takeaways: · Brand matters more than features. When marketing and products start to look similar, trust and reputation make the difference. · Buyers are doing more research on their own. Marketers need to win in digital channels before sales ever gets involved. · The future is more personalized marketing. AI will help teams move beyond broad campaigns to more relevant experiences. Sponsor:  Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com. Qualified helps you turn your website into a pipeline generation machine with PipelineAI. Engage and convert your most valuable website visitors with live chat, chatbots, meeting scheduling, intent data, and Piper, your AI SDR. Visit Qualified.com to learn more. Links: · Connect with Ian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianfaison/ · Connect with Prachi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prachigore/  · Learn more about Asana: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asana/ · Learn more about Caspian Studios: https://www.linkedin.com/company/caspian-studios/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you keep bouncing from Notion to ClickUp to Asana (and back again), this episode is your loving intervention. Because if you have been in a tool for less than 90 days, you do not have data yet. You have vibes. In this episode, I break down the 90-day rule for system building so you can stop rebuilding your dashboard and start building an operating system that actually holds your life.We cover why tool-hopping happens (anxiety, perfectionism, and the seductive dopamine of “fresh starts”), what to focus on in each phase of the 90 days, and how to tell whether the problem is truly the tool, or the missing system layer underneath it.By the end, you will know exactly what to do in Weeks 1–2 (capture reality), Weeks 3–6 (process + ritual), and Weeks 7–12 (constraints + refinement) so you can make a clean decision from evidence, not self-doubt.In This EpisodeThe real reason tool-hopping feels productive (but is not)The 90-day rule and what it is designed to proveA simple 3-phase plan to turn any tool into a usable systemSigns it is the tool vs. signs it is your process and ritualIf you are committing to the 90-day rule, share this episode with a fellow systems slut or Notion nerd, and come join the Sunday CEO Diaries at coachellyn.com and join the Skool community here.

If you keep bouncing from Notion to ClickUp to Asana (and back again), this episode is your loving intervention. Because if you have been in a tool for less than 90 days, you do not have data yet. You have vibes. In this episode, I break down the 90-day rule for system building so you can stop rebuilding your dashboard and start building an operating system that actually holds your life.We cover why tool-hopping happens (anxiety, perfectionism, and the seductive dopamine of “fresh starts”), what to focus on in each phase of the 90 days, and how to tell whether the problem is truly the tool, or the missing system layer underneath it.By the end, you will know exactly what to do in Weeks 1–2 (capture reality), Weeks 3–6 (process + ritual), and Weeks 7–12 (constraints + refinement) so you can make a clean decision from evidence, not self-doubt.In This EpisodeThe real reason tool-hopping feels productive (but is not)The 90-day rule and what it is designed to proveA simple 3-phase plan to turn any tool into a usable systemSigns it is the tool vs. signs it is your process and ritualIf you are committing to the 90-day rule, share this episode with a fellow systems slut or Notion nerd, and come join the Sunday CEO Diaries at coachellyn.com and join the Skool community here.

Quick Summary: In this candid solo episode, Kelsey pulls back the curtain on what building a business as a stay-at-home mama actually looks like — not the highlight reel, but the real thing. Over three days, she shares her scheduling systems, productivity hacks, business priorities, and the inevitable curveballs that come with parenting, entrepreneurship, and doing it all with intention.In This Episode:The "4 Days in a Day" framework Kelsey uses (inspired by Ed Mylett) to structure her time as a mama and business ownerWhy she increased Freddy's daycare days from 2 to 3 and what that decision felt likeHow she uses "time confetti" (small pockets of time) in the 72 hours before a presentationHer morning routine, workout habits, and why she refuses to feel guilty about prioritizing movementA real-time look at her client roster and daily coaching workHer content strategy anchor: why the podcast is her #1 priority and what she's NOT doing in 2026The Three M's framework: Mission, Mindset, Main IngredientsHer VA system, Asana workflow, and how she delegates podcast productionHer experience leading a training in the High Vibe Women community on ranking on ChatGPTThe power of masterminds — both running one and being a member of oneWednesday's curveball: daycare closes early, support squad to the rescueThe visibility conversation she keeps having with clients: long-form + short-form + in-personKey Takeaways:Structure your day in chunks, not one long stretch. Kelsey's "4 Days in a Day" model helps her show up for her business and her family without burning out.If it's not in the calendar, it's not happening. Time-blocking is non-negotiable when you're running a business with young children at home.Start with Mission before choosing your strategies. Don't ask "should I be on Instagram?" until you know what your actual business goal is this year.Your body is your vessel. Prioritizing physical health isn't selfish — it's the foundation of sustainable entrepreneurship.Delegation is a growth strategy. A great VA + clear SOPs + Loom videos = time and mental space to do your highest-level work.Memorable Quotes:"Movement is medicine. If I'm not diligent about scheduling my workouts, they simply don't happen.""We can only come up with the right main ingredients — the ones that will make your first $100K or $500K year — if we know what you're trying to do here.""People don't know what you do unless you tell them what you do, over and over and over again."Resources Mentioned:Instagram: Send Kelsey a DM to connectWebsite: kelseyreddle.comWave Mastermind: kelseyreddle.com/mastermindEd Mylett — "4 Days in a Day" time structuring conceptLaura Sinclair, This Mother Means Business podcast — "time confetti" conceptPeloton App / Jess Sims — Treadmill Bootcamp workoutHigh Vibe Women Community — Workshop: How to Rank on ChatGPTAsana — Client project management and communicationLoom — Recording SOPs and training videos for VAThe Mentor Collective Mastermind — Mastermind Kelsey is a member ofTrail Hub, Uxbridge Ontario — Upcoming podcast episode guestDr. Shannon Home — Vocal performance coach; speaker at upcoming April eventWave Mastermind — kelseyreddle.com/mastermindGrumpy Monkey — Freddy's current favourite book

A great all around flow this afternoon. 

Review, organize, and plan for 2026 with a SWOT analysis! Discover what SWOT is and how it can help you create a plan for your insurance business. Read the text version   Get Connected:

Rebecca Hinds: Your Best Meeting Ever Rebecca Hinds is a leading expert on organizational behavior and the future of work. She founded and led the Work Innovation Lab at Asana and the Work AI Institute at Glean, where she partners with leading experts to help organizations transform their work with AI. She is the author of Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done (Amazon, Bookshop)*. Considering the amount of time we all spend in meetings, it's odd that most organizations do so little to measure meeting results. If that's sounding familiar, this conversation between Rebecca and me will show you exactly how to get started. Key Points Metrics that only measure the costs of meetings (dollars and time) can be useful, but rarely capture the full picture. Use Return on Time Invested (ROTI) anonymously to survey attendees to determine if a meeting was a good use of time. Also ask, “What would it take for you to improve your rating by one point?” Survey sparingly to avoid survey fatigue. Bringing in a survey 10% of the time is a benchmark to start from. If the amount of time in meetings vastly exceeds 10 hours a week, there's likely an opportunity to scale back or redefine the work before or after meetings to use time better. Equal speaking time in meetings is a key indicator of team performance. Be transparent with employees about any technology you use to capture data. Punctuality and attendance rate are indicators of how valued meetings are for people. Resources Mentioned Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done by Rebecca Hinds (Amazon, Bookshop)* Interview Notes Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required). Related Episodes How to Lead Meetings That Get Results, with Mamie Kanfer Stewart (episode 358) Moving Towards Meetings of Significance, with Seth Godin (episode 632) How to Lead Engaging Meetings, with Jess Britt (episode 721) Discover More Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Isa Gardt, CMO und Geschäftsführerin der OMR, über authentisches Netzwerken, den Mut zur Verletzlichkeit und warum echte Community wichtiger ist als perfektes Personal Branding.Netzwerken – ein Wort, das viele von uns an steife Business-Cards und oberflächliche Gespräche auf überfüllten Events denken lässt. Aber was, wenn Netzwerken eigentlich das Gegenteil davon ist?Isa Gardt, CMO und Geschäftsführerin der OMR – dem größten Online-Marketing-Festival im deutschsprachigen Raum mit 70.000 Besucher:innen – zeigt in dieser Folge, wie aus strategischem Networking echte, tragfähige Community entsteht.Isa ist von der Werkstudentin zur Geschäftsführerin aufgestiegen, hat das OMR-Festival mit Stars wie Kim Kardashian und Ryan Reynolds zu einem Branchenhighlight gemacht und treibt die Initiative OMR 5050 für mehr Gender-Gleichstellung voran. Und: Sie bezeichnet sich selbst als introvertiert.In dieser Episode sprechen Vera und Isa über:Warum Netzwerken als Introvertierte funktioniert – und wie Isa ihren eigenen Weg gefunden hatDen Unterschied zwischen Networking und Community – und warum dieser Unterschied alles verändertKochabende und Female Lunches: Wie bewusst gestaltete Begegnungen Vertrauen schaffenWarum dein Erfolg anderen nichts wegnimmt – und wie wir dieses Mindset wirklich verinnerlichenWie OMR 5050 bottom-up entstand – und was Organisationen wirklich brauchen, um Diversität zu lebenIsas konkretes Produktivitätssystem: Inbox Zero, Asana & die App IntrosIsas wichtigster Ratschlag: Einfach machen. Reinspringen ins Networking-Becken. Denn alle anderen kochen auch nur mit Wasser.Für alle Frauen in Führung, die sich nach ehrlichem Austausch sehnen, Netzwerken bisher gemieden haben – oder endlich verstehen wollen, wie Community wirklich funktioniert.+++Alle Links und Details findest du hier.Du willst 2026 deine Karriere selbst erzählen? Dann melde dich jetzt bei der Female Leadership Academy 2026 an und gestalte deine Leadership Karriere mit uns.Du brauchst mehr Infos? Melde dich hier zum Newsletter an.+++Keywords: Female Leadership, Netzwerken, Community, OMR, Geschäftsführerin, Introvertiert netzwerken, Women in Leadership, Diversität, Gendergleichstellung, Vera Strauch, Firma Leadership Academy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of DisrupTV, hosts R "Ray" Wang and Vala Afshar explore three critical performance levers in the AI era: negotiation strategy, meeting discipline, and founder focus. Brian Doyle (Holden Advisors) explains why AI-armed procurement teams are reshaping B2B negotiations—and why sellers must shift from discounting to outcome-based value conversations. Dr. Rebecca Hinds (Work Innovation Lab at Asana) reveals how modern meeting culture mirrors sabotage tactics—and how leaders can eliminate “meeting debt” using her 4D + CEO test. Venture capitalist Dr. Igor Ryabenkiy shares why ruthless focus—not feature sprawl—is the hidden engine behind unicorn startups. If you want to protect margin, reclaim your calendar, and build with clarity in an attention-scarce economy, this episode delivers practical frameworks you can apply immediately.

If you've ever struggled to defend brand budget in a performance-obsessed company — this episode is for you.We sat down with Matt Maynard, VP of Brand Advertising & Comms at Asana, to break down how brand actually drives growth — and how to measure it properly inside a B2B business.This isn't theory. It's a practical framework for small teams trying to prove brand works.We unpack:- Why brand keeps losing to performance- Why “consideration” is usually measured wrong- How to use Category Entry Points (CEPs)- The 95:5 rule explained simply- And how to measure mental availability without a massive budgetTune in and learn:- Why growth is driven by memory, not persuasion- The 3 brand metrics every B2B team should track- How to turn brand into a performance engineIf you're in a B2B team trying to punch above your weight, this is mandatory viewing.-----------------------------------------------------

If your content marketing strategy still depends on gated PDFs and vanity metrics, you're basically shouting into a void and calling it demand gen.In this episode, Matt Hemsley, Marketing Operations Team Lead at Asana delivers the unsexy truth: the funnel isn't “broken”—it's been replaced. He breaks down what happens when AI becomes the new front door, web traffic gets weird, and attribution starts lying to your leadership team with a straight face.We get into the real power shift happening inside modern B2B orgs: marketing ops moving from order-taker to architect, building guardrails and self-serve systems that let teams ship faster without turning the brand into a global game of telephone. Matt also calls out the silent killer of high-growth marketing: data overload that creates analysis paralysis—and how the best teams balance measurement with judgment.We also explore:Why ungating content isn't a “nice-to-have”—it's survival in an AI-first buyer journey.The self-serve model that removes bottlenecks and protects brand consistency.Why attribution oversimplifies enterprise buying (and how it misleads execs).The difference between automating “work about work” vs automating decisions you'll regret.Why retention is still the most ignored growth lever in B2B.

A mild one on a grey, rainy day. A great practice for the day after leg day. Lots of hip opening and hamstring lengthening. 

Episode web page: https://bit.ly/4tH0nSl Leading without the title: The real power of the staff designer What does it take to grow your impact as a designer—without becoming a manager? In this episode of Insights Unlocked, host Jason Giles sits down with Catt Small, staff product designer, game maker, and author of The Staff Designer, to unpack the evolving role of senior individual contributors in design organizations. Catt shares her unconventional journey from creating digital dress-up dolls as a kid to shaping products at Etsy and Asana—and how those experiences shaped her perspective on leadership, influence, and creative confidence. At the heart of the conversation: a mindset shift. Moving from being told what to design to diagnosing what matters most. What you'll learn in this episode The misunderstood role of the staff designer: Catt explains why the staff-level IC role often feels ambiguous—and how influence, not authority, becomes your primary tool. She breaks down what “building influence” actually means in practice and why it's more intentional than mystical. Invisible work and strategic impact: From relationship building to cross-team alignment, much of a staff designer's impact happens behind the scenes. Catt explores how to prioritize the work that truly moves the business forward—and avoid getting stuck in “glue work” that doesn't drive career growth. From craft to communication: Design leadership at the IC level requires a shift from pixel perfection to clarity of thinking. Catt shares why low-fidelity diagrams and conceptual artifacts often create better alignment than polished UI—and how to coach teams away from jumping into high fidelity too soon. Navigating politics with integrity: If you've ever felt “allergic to politics,” this conversation reframes the idea. Catt explains how understanding motivations, fears, and power dynamics is less about manipulation—and more about empathy, curiosity, and emotional intelligence. Managing energy like a product: Influence takes energy. Catt shares practical strategies for auditing your calendar, designing your workweek intentionally, and partnering with your manager to balance short-term execution with long-term strategy. AI as a tool, not a replacement: AI is another tool in the designer's toolkit—but you're still the creative director. Catt discusses how to use AI to accelerate research and exploration without outsourcing your thinking or critical judgment. A key takeaway: Leadership is a mindset One of the most powerful themes in this episode is confidence. Staff-level designers aren't waiting for permission—they step into leadership by trusting their experience, sharing their perspective, and partnering across the organization. As Catt reflects, the transition is uncomfortable at first. But the shift from execution to influence starts with believing you belong in the room. Resources & links Catt Small on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cattsmall/) Catt's website (https://cattsmall.com/) Catt's Maven page (https://maven.com/catt-small/staff-designer) The Staff Designer book page — 20% off with code UserTesting until Feb 28, 2026 (https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/the-staff-designer/) Nathan Isaacs on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanisaacs/) Learn more about Insights Unlocked: https://www.usertesting.com/podcast

Text Kristen your thoughts or feedback about the showYou don't always get the full five-year blueprint in business.Sometimes you get a clear season.Sometimes you get a quiet one.And sometimes you hit a speed bump and think… okay, now what?This 10-minute solo episode is a grounded reframe for those moments.Not a checklist.Not a dramatic pivot.Just a steadier way to think about uncertainty, slow seasons, and the in-between chapters of building a sustainable business.If you've ever felt tempted to overhaul everything because things felt unclear — this is the episode to come back to.Tune in for a practical mindset shift on choosing direction over certainty, using planning containers (like a 12-week sprint or seasonal strategy), and why long-term business growth requires calm leadership instead of panic decisions.And if you're curious about the Marketing Planning Reset I mentioned in the episode, you can join the waitlist here.Whether you're in a clear season or a quieter one, this episode is one to bookmark for the next time you can't see the whole staircase.

A stronger one tonight. Lots of shoulder opening and standing on one leg. 

In this episode, I'm joined by Rebecca Hinds — organizational behavior expert and founder of the Work AI Institute at Glean — for a practical conversation about why meetings deteriorate over time and how to redesign them. Rebecca argues that bad meetings aren't a people problem — they're a systems problem. Without intentional design, meetings default to ego, status signaling, conflict avoidance, and performative participation. Over time, low-value meetings become normalized instead of fixed. Drawing on her research at Stanford University and her leadership of the Work Innovation Lab at Asana, she shares frameworks from her new book, Your Best Meeting Ever, including: The four legitimate purposes of a meeting: decide, discuss, debate, or develop The CEO test for when synchronous time is truly required How to codify shared meeting standards Why leaders must explicitly give permission to leave low-value meetings We also explore leadership, motivation, and the myth that kindness and high standards are opposites. Rebecca explains why effective leaders diagnose what drives each individual — encouragement for some, direct challenge for others — and design environments that support both performance and belonging. Finally, we talk about AI and the future of work. Tools amplify existing culture: strong systems improve, broken systems break faster. Organizations that redesign how work happens — not just what tools they use — will have the advantage. If you want to run better meetings, lead with more clarity, and rethink how collaboration actually happens, this episode is for you. You can find Your Best Meeting Ever at major bookstores and learn more at rebeccahinds.com.  00:00 Start 00:27 Why Meetings Get Worse Over Time Robin references Good Omens and the character Crowley, who designs the M25 freeway to intentionally create frustration and misery. They use this metaphor to illustrate how systems can be designed in ways that amplify dysfunction, whether intentionally or accidentally. The idea is that once dysfunctional systems become normalized, people stop questioning them. They also discuss Cory Doctorow's concept of enshittification, where platforms and systems gradually decline as organizational priorities override user experience. Rebecca connects this pattern directly to meetings, arguing that without intentional design, meetings default to chaos and energy drain. Over time, poorly designed meetings become accepted as inevitable rather than treated as solvable design problems. Rebecca references the Simple Sabotage Field Manual created by the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. The manual advised citizens in occupied territories on how to subtly undermine organizations from within. Many of the suggested tactics involved meetings, including encouraging long speeches, focusing on irrelevant details, and sending decisions to unnecessary committees. The irony is that these sabotage techniques closely resemble common behaviors in modern corporate meetings. Rebecca argues that if meetings were designed from scratch today, without legacy habits and inherited norms, they would likely look radically different. She explains that meetings persist in their dysfunctional form because they amplify deeply human tendencies like ego, status signaling, and conflict avoidance. Rebecca traces her interest in teamwork back to her experience as a competitive swimmer in Toronto. Although swimming appears to be an individual sport, she explains that success is heavily dependent on team structure and shared preparation. Being recruited to swim at Stanford exposed her to an elite, team-first environment that reshaped how she thought about performance. She became fascinated by how a group can become greater than the sum of its parts when the right cultural conditions are present. This experience sparked her long-term curiosity about why organizations struggle to replicate the kind of cohesion often seen in sports. At Stanford, Coach Lee Mauer emphasized that emotional wellbeing and performance were deeply connected. The team included world record holders and Olympians, and the performance standards were extremely high. Despite the intensity, the culture prioritized connection and belonging. Rituals like informal story time around the hot tub helped teammates build relationships beyond performance metrics. Rebecca internalized the lesson that elite performance and strong culture are not opposing forces. She saw firsthand that intensity and warmth can coexist, and that psychological safety can actually reinforce high standards rather than weaken them. Later in her career at Asana, Rebecca encountered the company value of rejecting false trade-offs. This reinforced a lesson she had first learned in swimming, which is that many perceived either-or tensions are not actually unavoidable. She argues that organizations often assume they must choose between performance and happiness, or between kindness and accountability. In her experience, these are false binaries that can be resolved through better design and clearer expectations. She emphasizes that motivated and engaged employees tend to produce higher quality work, making culture a strategic advantage rather than a distraction. Kindness versus ruthlessness in leadership Robin raises the contrast between harsh, fear-based leadership styles and more relational, positive leadership approaches. Both styles have produced winning teams, which raises the question of whether success comes because of the leadership style or despite it. Rebecca argues that resilience and accountability are essential, regardless of tone. She stresses that kindness alone is not sufficient for high performance, but neither is harshness inherently superior. Effective leadership requires understanding what motivates each individual, since some people thrive on encouragement while others crave direct challenge. Rebecca personally identifies with wanting to be pushed and appreciates clarity when her work falls short of expectations. She concludes that the most effective leaders diagnose motivation carefully and design environments that maximize both growth and performance. 08:51 Building the Book-Launch Team: Mentors, Agents, and Choosing the Right Publisher Robin asks Rebecca about the size and structure of the team she assembled to execute the launch successfully. He is especially curious about what the team actually looked like in practice and how coordinated the effort needed to be. He also asks about the meeting cadence and work cadence required to bring a book launch to life at that level. The framing highlights that writing the book is only one phase, while launching it is an entirely different operational challenge. Rebecca explains that the process felt much more organic than it might appear from the outside. She admits that at the beginning, she underestimated the full scope of what a book launch entails. Her original motivation was simple: she believed she had a valuable perspective, wanted to help people, and loved writing. As she progressed deeper into the publishing process, she realized that writing the manuscript was only one piece of a much larger system. The operational and promotional dimensions gradually revealed themselves as a second job layered on top of authorship. Robin emphasizes that writing a book and publishing a book are fundamentally different jobs. Rebecca agrees and acknowledges that the publishing side requires a completely different skill set and infrastructure. The conversation underscores that authorship is creative work, while publishing and launching require strategy, coordination, and business acumen. Rebecca credits her Stanford mentor, Bob Sutton, as a life changing influence throughout the process. He guided her step by step, including decisions around selecting a publisher and choosing an agent. She initially did not plan to work with an agent, but through guidance and reflection, she shifted her perspective. His mentorship helped her ask better questions and approach the process more strategically rather than reactively. Rebecca reflects on an important mindset shift in her career. Earlier in life, she was comfortable being the big fish in a small pond. Over time, she came to believe that she performs better when surrounded by people who are smarter and more experienced than she is. She describes her superpower as working extremely hard and having confidence in that effort. Because of that, she prefers environments where others elevate her thinking and push her further. This philosophy became central to how she built her book launch team. As Rebecca learned more about the moving pieces required for a successful campaign, she became more intentional about who she wanted involved. She sought the best not in terms of prestige alone, but in terms of belief and commitment. She wanted people who would go to bat for her and advocate for the book with genuine enthusiasm. She noticed that some organizations that looked impressive on paper were not necessarily the right fit for her specific campaign. This led her to have extensive conversations with potential editors and publicists before making decisions. Rebecca developed a personal benchmark for evaluating partners. She paid attention to whether they were willing to apply the book's ideas within their own organizations. For her, that signaled authentic belief rather than surface level marketing support. When Simon and Schuster demonstrated early interest in implementing the book's learnings internally, it stood out as meaningful alignment. That commitment suggested they cared about the substance of the work, not just the promotional campaign. As the process unfolded, Rebecca realized that part of her job was learning what questions to ask. Each conversation with potential partners refined her understanding of what she needed. She became more deliberate about building the right bench of people around her. The team was not assembled all at once, but rather shaped through iterative learning and discernment. The launch ultimately reflected both her evolving standards and her commitment to surrounding herself with people who elevated the work. 12:12 Asking Better Questions & Going Asynchronous Robin highlights the tension between the voice of the book and the posture of a first time author entering a major publishing house. He notes that Best Meeting Ever encourages people to assert authority in meetings by asking about agendas, ownership, and structure. At the same time, Rebecca was entering conversations with an established publisher as a new author seeking partnership. The question becomes how to balance clarity and conviction with humility and openness. Robin frames it as showing up with operational authority while still saying you publish books and I want to work with you. Rebecca calls the question insightful and explains that tactically she relied heavily on asking questions. She describes herself as intentionally curious and even nosy because she did not yet know what she did not know. Rather than pretending to have answers, she used inquiry as a way to build authority through understanding. She asked questions asynchronously almost daily, emailing her agent and editor with anything that came to mind. This allowed her to learn the system while also signaling engagement and seriousness. Rebecca explains that most of the heavy lifting happened outside of meetings. By asking questions over email, she clarified information before stepping into synchronous time. Meetings were then reserved for ambiguity, decision making, and issues that required real time collaboration. As a result, the campaign involved very few meetings overall. She had a biweekly meeting with her core team and roughly monthly conversations with her editor. The rest of the coordination happened asynchronously, which aligned with her philosophy about effective meeting design. Rebecca jokes that one hidden benefit of writing a book on meetings is that everyone shows up more prepared and on time. She also felt internal pressure to model the behaviors she was advocating. The campaign therefore became a real world test of her ideas. She emphasizes that she is glad the launch was not meeting heavy and that it reflected the principles in the book. Robin shares a story about their initial connection through David Shackleford. During a short introductory call, he casually offered to spend time discussing book marketing strategies. Rebecca followed up, scheduled time, and took extensive notes during their conversation. After thanking him, she did not continue unnecessary follow up or prolonged discussion. Instead, she quietly implemented many of the practical strategies discussed. Robin later observed bulk sales, bundled speaking engagements, and structured purchase incentives that reflected disciplined execution. Robin emphasizes that generating ideas is relatively easy compared to implementing them. He connects this to Seth Godin's praise that the book is for people willing to do the work. The real difficulty lies not in brainstorming strategies but in consistently executing them. He describes watching Rebecca implement the plan as evidence that she practices what she preaches. Her hard work and disciplined follow through reinforced his confidence in the book before even reading it. Rebecca responds with gratitude and acknowledges that she took his advice seriously. She affirms that several actions she implemented were directly inspired by their conversation. At the same time, the tone remains grounded and collaborative rather than performative. The exchange illustrates her pattern of seeking input, synthesizing it, and then executing independently. Robin transitions toward the theme of self knowledge and its role in leadership and meetings. He connects Rebecca's disciplined execution to her awareness of her own strengths. The earlier theme resurfaces that she sees hard work and follow through as her superpower. The implication is that effective meetings and effective leadership both begin with understanding how you operate best. 17:48 Self-Knowledge at Work Robin shares that he knows he is motivated by carrots rather than sticks. He explains that praise energizes him and improves his performance more than criticism ever could. As a performer and athlete, he appreciates detailed notes and feedback, but encouragement is what unlocks his best work. He contrasts that with experiences like old school ballet training, where harsh discipline did not bring out his strengths. His point is that understanding how you are wired takes experience and reflection. Rebecca agrees that self knowledge is essential and ties it directly to motivation. She argues that the better you understand yourself, the more clearly you can articulate what drives you. Many people, especially early in their careers, do not pause to examine what truly motivates them. She notes that motivation is often intangible and not primarily monetary. For some people it is praise, for others criticism, learning, mastery, collaboration, or autonomy. She also emphasizes that motivation changes over time and shifts depending on organizational context. One of Rebecca's biggest lessons as a manager and contributor is the importance of codifying self knowledge. Writing down what motivates you and how you work best makes it easier to communicate those needs to others. She believes this explicitness is especially critical during times of change. When work is evolving quickly, assumptions about motivation can lead to disengagement. Making preferences visible reduces friction and prevents misalignment. Rebecca references a recent presentation she gave on the dangers of automating the soul of work. She and her mentor Bob Sutton have discussed how organizations risk stripping meaning from roles if they automate without discernment. She points to research showing that many AI startups are automating tasks people would prefer to keep human. The warning is that just because something can be automated does not mean it should be. Without understanding what makes work meaningful for employees, leaders can unintentionally remove the very elements that motivate people. Rebecca believes managers should create explicit user manuals for their team members. These documents outline how individuals prefer to communicate, what motivates them, and what their career aspirations are. She sees this as a practical leadership tool rather than a symbolic exercise. Referring back to these documents helps leaders guide their teams through uncertainty and change. When asked directly, she confirms that she has implemented this practice in previous roles and intends to do so again. When asked about the future of AI, Rebecca avoids making long term predictions. She observes that the most confident forecasters are often those with something to sell. Her shorter term view is that AI amplifies whatever already exists inside an organization. Strong workflows and cultures may improve, while broken systems may become more efficiently broken. She sees organizations over investing in technology while under investing in people and change management. As a result, productivity gains are appearing at the individual level but not consistently at the team or organizational level. Rebecca acknowledges that there is a possible future where AI creates abundance and healthier work life balance. However, she does not believe current evidence strongly supports that outcome in the near term. She does see promising examples of organizations using AI to amplify collaboration and cross functional work. These examples remain rare but signal that a more human centered future is possible. She is cautiously hopeful but not convinced that the most optimistic scenario will unfold automatically. Robin notes that time horizons for prediction have shortened dramatically. Rebecca agrees and says that six months feels like a reasonable forecasting window in the current environment. She observes that the best leaders are setting thresholds for experimentation and failure. Pilots and proofs of concept should fail at a meaningful rate if organizations are truly exploring. Shorter feedback loops allow organizations to learn quickly rather than over commit to fragile long term assumptions. Robin shares a formative story from growing up in his father's small engineering firm, where he was exposed early to office systems and processes. Later, studying in a Quaker community in Costa Rica, he experienced full consensus decision making. He recalls sitting through extended debates, including one about single versus double ply toilet paper. As a fourteen year old who would rather have been climbing trees in the rainforest, the meeting felt painfully misaligned with his energy. That experience contributed to his lifelong desire to make work and collaboration feel less draining and more intentional. The story reinforces the broader theme that poorly designed meetings can disconnect people from purpose and engagement. 28:31 Leadership vs. Tribal Instincts Rebecca explains that much of dysfunctional meeting behavior is rooted in tribal human instincts. People feel loyalty to the group and show up to meetings simply to signal belonging, even when the meeting is not meaningful. This instinct to attend regardless of value reinforces bloated calendars and performative participation. She argues that effective meeting design must actively counteract these deeply human tendencies. Without intentional structure, meetings default to social signaling rather than productive collaboration. Rebecca emphasizes that leadership plays a critical role in changing meeting culture Leaders must explicitly give employees permission to leave meetings when they are not contributing. They must also normalize asynchronous work as a legitimate and often superior alternative. Without that top down permission, employees will continue attending out of fear or habit. Meeting reform requires visible endorsement from those with authority. Power dynamics and pushing back without positional authority Robin reflects on the power of writing a book on meetings while still operating within a hierarchy. He asks how individuals without formal authority can challenge broken systems. Rebecca responds that there is no universal solution because outcomes depend heavily on psychological safety. In organizations with high trust, there is often broad recognition that meetings are ineffective and a desire to fix them. In lower trust environments, change must be approached more strategically and indirectly. Rebecca advises employees to lead with curiosity rather than confrontation. Instead of calling out a bad meeting, one might ask whether their presence is truly necessary. Framing the question around contribution rather than judgment reduces defensiveness. This approach lowers the emotional temperature and keeps the conversation constructive. Curiosity shifts the tone from personal critique to shared problem solving. In psychologically unsafe environments, Rebecca suggests shifting enforcement to systems rather than individuals. Automated rules such as canceling meetings without agendas or without sufficient confirmations can reduce personal friction. When technology enforces standards, it feels less like a personal attack. Codified rules provide employees with shared language and objective criteria. This reduces the perception that opting out is a rejection of the person rather than a rejection of the structure. Rebecca argues that every organization should have a clear and shared definition of what deserves to be a meeting. If five employees are asked what qualifies as a meeting, they should give the same answer. Without explicit criteria, decisions default to habit and hierarchy. Clear rules give employees confidence to push back constructively. Shared standards transform meeting participation from a personal negotiation into a procedural one. Rebecca outlines a two part test to determine whether a meeting should exist. First, the meeting must serve one of four purposes which are to decide, discuss, debate, or develop people. If it does not satisfy one of those four categories, it likely should not be a meeting. Even if it passes that test, it must also satisfy one of the CEO criteria. C refers to complexity and whether the issue contains enough ambiguity to require synchronous dialogue. E refers to emotional intensity and whether reading emotions or managing reactions is important. O refers to one way door decisions, meaning choices that are difficult or costly to reverse. Many organizational decisions are reversible and therefore do not justify synchronous time. Robin asks how small teams without advanced tech stacks can automate meeting discipline. Rebecca explains that many safeguards can be implemented with existing tools such as Google Calendar or simple scripts. Basic rules like requiring an agenda or minimum confirmations can be enforced through standard workflows. Not all solutions require advanced AI tools. The key is introducing friction intentionally to prevent low value meetings from forming. Rebecca notes that more advanced AI tools can measure engagement, multitasking, or participation. Some platforms now provide indicators of attention or involvement during meetings. While these tools are promising, they are not required to implement foundational meeting discipline. She cautions against over investing in shiny tools without first clarifying principles. Metrics are useful when they reinforce intentional design rather than replace it. Rebecca highlights a subtle risk of automation, particularly in scheduling. Tools can be optimized for the sender while increasing friction for recipients. Leaders should consider the system level impact rather than only individual efficiency. Productivity gains at the individual level can create hidden coordination costs for the team. Meeting automation should be evaluated through a collective lens. Rebecca distinguishes between intrusive AI bots that join meetings and simple transcription tools. She is cautious about bots that visibly attend meetings and distract participants. However, she supports consensual transcription when it enhances asynchronous follow up. Effective transcription can reduce cognitive load and free participants to engage more deeply. Used thoughtfully, these tools can strengthen collaboration rather than dilute it. 41:35 Maker vs. Manager: Balancing a Day Job with a Book Launch Robin shares an example from a webinar where attendees were asked for feedback via a short Bitly link before the session closed. He contrasts this with the ineffectiveness of "smiley face/frowny face" buttons in hotel bathrooms—easy to ignore and lacking context. The key is embedding feedback into the process in a way that's natural, timely, and comfortable for participants. Feedback mechanisms should be integrated, low-friction, and provide enough context for meaningful responses. Rebecca recommends a method inspired by Elise Keith called Roti—rating meetings on a zero-to-five scale based on whether they were worth attendees' time. She suggests asking this for roughly 10% of meetings to gather actionable insight. Follow-up question: "What could the organizer do to increase the rating by one point?" This approach removes bias, focuses on attendee experience, and identifies meetings that need restructuring. Splits in ratings reveal misaligned agendas or attendee lists and guide optimization. Robin imagines automating feedback requests via email or tools like Superhuman for convenience. Rebecca agrees and adds that simple forms (Google Forms, paper, or other methods) are effective, especially when anonymous. The goal is simplicity and consistency—given how costly meetings are, there's no excuse to skip feedback. Robin references Paul Graham's essay on maker vs. manager schedules and asks about Rebecca's approach to balancing writing, team coordination, and book marketing. Rebecca shares that 95% of her effort on the book launch was "making"—writing and outreach—thanks to a strong team handling management. She devoted time to writing, scrappy outreach, and building relationships, emphasizing giving without expecting reciprocation. The main coordination challenge was balancing her book work with her full-time job at Asana, requiring careful prioritization. Rebecca created a strict writing schedule inspired by her swimming discipline: early mornings, evenings, and weekends dedicated to writing. She prioritized her book and full-time work while maintaining family commitments. Discipline and clear prioritization were essential to manage competing but synergistic priorities. Robin asks about written vs. spoken communication, referencing Amazon's six-page memos and Zandr Media's phone-friendly quick syncs. Rebecca emphasizes that the answer depends on context but a strong written communication culture is essential in all organizations. Written communication supports clarity, asynchronous work, and complements verbal communication. It's especially important for distributed teams or virtual work. With AI, clear documentation allows better insights, reduces unnecessary content generation, and reinforces disciplined communication. 48:29 AI and the Craft of Writing Rebecca highlights that employees have varying learning preferences—introverted vs. extroverted, verbal vs. written. Effective communication systems should support both verbal and written channels to accommodate these differences. Rebecca's philosophy: writing is a deeply human craft. AI was not used for drafting or creative writing. AI supported research, coordination, tracking trends, and other auxiliary tasks—areas where efficiency is key. Human-led drafting, revising, and word choice remained central to the book. Robin praises Rebecca's use of language, noting it feels human and vivid—something AI cannot replicate in nuance or delight. Rebecca emphasizes that crafting every word, experimenting with phrasing, and tinkering with language is uniquely human. This joy and precision in writing is not replicable by AI and is part of what makes written communication stand out. Rebecca hopes human creativity in writing and oral communication remains valued despite AI advances. Strong written communication is increasingly differentiating for executive communicators and storytellers in organizations. AI can polish or mass-produce text, but human insight, nuance, and storytelling remain essential and career-relevant. Robin emphasizes the importance of reading, writing, and physical activities (like swimming) to reclaim attention from screens. These practices support deep human thinking and creativity, which are harder to replace with AI. Rebecca uses standard tools strategically: email (chunked and batched), Google Docs, Asana, Doodle, and Zoom. Writing is enhanced by switching platforms, fonts, colors, and physical locations—stimulating creativity and perspective. Physical context (plane, café, city) is strongly linked to breakthroughs and memory during writing. Emphasis is on how tools are enacted rather than which tools are used—behavior and discipline matter more than tech. Rebecca primarily recommends business books with personal relevance: Adam Grant's Give and Take – for relational insights beyond work. Bob Sutton's books – for broader lessons on organizational and personal effectiveness. Robert Cialdini's Influence – for understanding human behavior in both professional and personal contexts. Her selections highlight that business literature often offers universal lessons applicable beyond work. 59:48 Where to Find Rebecca The book is available at all major bookstores. Website: rebeccahinds.com LinkedIn: Rebecca Hinds  

Emmanuel et Guillaume discutent de divers sujets liés à la programmation, notamment les systèmes de fichiers en Java, le Data Oriented Programming, les défis de JPA avec Kotlin, et les nouvelles fonctionnalités de Quarkus. Ils explorent également des sujets un peu fous comme la création de datacenters dans l'espace. Pas mal d'architecture aussi. Enregistré le 13 février 2026 Téléchargement de l'épisode LesCastCodeurs-Episode-337.mp3 ou en vidéo sur YouTube. News Langages Comment implémenter un file system en Java https://foojay.io/today/bootstrapping-a-java-file-system/ Créer un système de fichiers Java personnalisé avec NIO.2 pour des usages variés (VCS, archives, systèmes distants). Évolution Java: java.io.File (1.0) -> NIO (1.4) -> NIO.2 (1.7) pour personnalisation via FileSystem. Recommander conception préalable; API Java est orientée POSIX. Composants clés à considérer: Conception URI (scheme unique, chemin). Gestion de l'arborescence (BD, métadonnées, efficacité). Stockage binaire (emplacement, chiffrement, versions). Minimum pour démarrer (4 composants): Implémenter Path (représente fichier/répertoire). Étendre FileSystem (instance du système). Étendre FileSystemProvider (moteur, enregistré par scheme). Enregistrer FileSystemProvider via META-INF/services. Étapes suivantes: Couche BD (arborescence), opérations répertoire/fichier de base, stockage, tests. Processus long et exigeant, mais gratifiant.   Un article de brian goetz sur le futur du data oriented programming en Java https://openjdk.org/projects/amber/design-notes/beyond-records Le projet Amber de Java introduit les "carrier classes", une évolution des records qui permet plus de flexibilité tout en gardant les avantages du pattern matching et de la reconstruction Les records imposent des contraintes strictes (immutabilité, représentation exacte de l'état) qui limitent leur usage pour des classes avec état muable ou dérivé Les carrier classes permettent de déclarer une state description complète et canonique sans imposer que la représentation interne corresponde exactement à l'API publique Le modificateur "component" sur les champs permet au compilateur de dériver automatiquement les accesseurs pour les composants alignés avec la state description Les compact constructors sont généralisés aux carrier classes, générant automatiquement l'initialisation des component fields Les carrier classes supportent la déconstruction via pattern matching comme les records, rendant possible leur usage dans les instanceof et switch Les carrier interfaces permettent de définir une state description sur une interface, obligeant les implémentations à fournir les accesseurs correspondants L'extension entre carrier classes est possible, avec dérivation automatique des appels super() quand les composants parent sont subsumés par l'enfant Les records deviennent un cas particulier de carrier classes avec des contraintes supplémentaires (final, extends Record, component fields privés et finaux obligatoires) L'évolution compatible des records est améliorée en permettant l'ajout de composants en fin de liste et la déconstruction partielle par préfixe Comment éviter les pièges courants avec JPA et Kotlin - https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2026/01/how-to-avoid-common-pitfalls-with-jpa-and-kotlin/ JPA est une spécification Java pour la persistance objet-relationnel, mais son utilisation avec Kotlin présente des incompatibilités dues aux différences de conception des deux langages Les classes Kotlin sont finales par défaut, ce qui empêche la création de proxies par JPA pour le lazy loading et les opérations transactionnelles Le plugin kotlin-jpa génère automatiquement des constructeurs sans argument et rend les classes open, résolvant les problèmes de compatibilité Les data classes Kotlin ne sont pas adaptées aux entités JPA car elles génèrent equals/hashCode basés sur tous les champs, causant des problèmes avec les relations lazy L'utilisation de lateinit var pour les relations peut provoquer des exceptions si on accède aux propriétés avant leur initialisation par JPA Les types non-nullables Kotlin peuvent entrer en conflit avec le comportement de JPA qui initialise les entités avec des valeurs null temporaires Le backing field direct dans les getters/setters personnalisés peut contourner la logique de JPA et casser le lazy loading IntelliJ IDEA 2024.3 introduit des inspections pour détecter automatiquement ces problèmes et propose des quick-fixes L'IDE détecte les entités finales, les data classes inappropriées, les problèmes de constructeurs et l'usage incorrect de lateinit Ces nouvelles fonctionnalités aident les développeurs à éviter les bugs subtils liés à l'utilisation de JPA avec Kotlin Librairies Guide sur MapStruct @IterableMapping - https://www.baeldung.com/java-mapstruct-iterablemapping MapStruct est une bibliothèque Java pour générer automatiquement des mappers entre beans, l'annotation @IterableMapping permet de configurer finement le mapping de collections L'attribut dateFormat permet de formater automatiquement des dates lors du mapping de listes sans écrire de boucle manuelle L'attribut qualifiedByName permet de spécifier quelle méthode custom appliquer sur chaque élément de la collection à mapper Exemple d'usage : filtrer des données sensibles comme des mots de passe en mappant uniquement certains champs via une méthode dédiée L'attribut nullValueMappingStrategy permet de contrôler le comportement quand la collection source est null (retourner null ou une collection vide) L'annotation fonctionne pour tous types de collections Java (List, Set, etc.) et génère le code de boucle nécessaire Possibilité d'appliquer des formats numériques avec numberFormat pour convertir des nombres en chaînes avec un format spécifique MapStruct génère l'implémentation complète du mapper au moment de la compilation, éliminant le code boilerplate L'annotation peut être combinée avec @Named pour créer des méthodes de mapping réutilisables et nommées Le mapping des collections supporte les conversions de types complexes au-delà des simples conversions de types primitifs Accès aux fichiers Samba depuis Java avec JCIFS - https://www.baeldung.com/java-samba-jcifs JCIFS est une bibliothèque Java permettant d'accéder aux partages Samba/SMB sans monter de lecteur réseau, supportant le protocole SMB3 on pense aux galériens qui doivent se connecter aux systèmes dit legacy La configuration nécessite un contexte CIFS (CIFSContext) et des objets SmbFile pour représenter les ressources distantes L'authentification se fait via NtlmPasswordAuthenticator avec domaine, nom d'utilisateur et mot de passe La bibliothèque permet de lister les fichiers et dossiers avec listFiles() et vérifier leurs propriétés (taille, date de modification) Création de fichiers avec createNewFile() et de dossiers avec mkdir() ou mkdirs() pour créer toute une arborescence Suppression via delete() qui peut parcourir et supprimer récursivement des arborescences entières Copie de fichiers entre partages Samba avec copyTo(), mais impossibilité de copier depuis le système de fichiers local Pour copier depuis le système local, utilisation des streams SmbFileInputStream et SmbFileOutputStream Les opérations peuvent cibler différents serveurs Samba et différents partages (anonymes ou protégés par mot de passe) La bibliothèque s'intègre dans des blocs try-with-resources pour une gestion automatique des ressources Quarkus 3.31 - Support complet Java 25, nouveau packaging Maven et Panache Next - https://quarkus.io/blog/quarkus-3-31-released/ Support complet de Java 25 avec images runtime et native Nouveau packaging Maven de type quarkus avec lifecycle optimisé pour des builds plus rapides voici un article complet pour plus de detail https://quarkus.io/blog/building-large-applications/ Introduction de Panache Next, nouvelle génération avec meilleure expérience développeur et API unifiée ORM/Reactive Mise à jour vers Hibernate ORM 7.2, Reactive 3.2, Search 8.2 Support de Hibernate Spatial pour les données géospatiales Passage à Testcontainers 2 et JUnit 6 Annotations de sécurité supportées sur les repositories Jakarta Data Chiffrement des tokens OIDC pour les implémentations custom TokenStateManager Support OAuth 2.0 Pushed Authorization Requests dans l'extension OIDC Maven 3.9 maintenant requis minimum pour les projets Quarkus A2A Java SDK 1.0.0.Alpha1 - Alignement avec la spécification 1.0 du protocole Agent2Agent - https://quarkus.io/blog/a2a-java-sdk-1-0-0-alpha1/ Le SDK Java A2A implémente le protocole Agent2Agent qui permet la communication standardisée entre agents IA pour découvrir des capacités, déléguer des tâches et collaborer Passage à la version 1.0 de la spécification marque la transition d'expérimental à production-ready avec des changements cassants assumés Modernisation complète du module spec avec des Java records partout remplaçant le mix précédent de classes et records pour plus de cohérence Adoption de Protocol Buffers comme source de vérité avec des mappers MapStruct pour la conversion et Gson pour JSON-RPC Les builders utilisent maintenant des méthodes factory statiques au lieu de constructeurs publics suivant les best practices Java modernes Introduction de trois BOMs Maven pour simplifier la gestion des dépendances du SDK core, des extensions et des implémentations de référence Quarkus AgentCard évolue avec une liste supportedInterfaces remplaçant url et preferredTransport pour plus de flexibilité dans la déclaration des protocoles Support de la pagination ajouté pour ListTasks et les endpoints de configuration des notifications push avec des wrappers Result appropriés Interface A2AHttpClient pluggable permettant des implémentations HTTP personnalisées avec une implémentation Vert.x fournie Travail continu vers la conformité complète avec le TCK 1.0 en cours de développement parallèlement à la finalisation de la spécification Pourquoi Quarkus finit par "cliquer" : les 10 questions que se posent les développeurs Java - https://www.the-main-thread.com/p/quarkus-java-developers-top-questions-2025 un article qui revele et repond aux questions des gens qui ont utilisé Quarkus depuis 4-6 mois, les non noob questions Quarkus est un framework Java moderne optimisé pour le cloud qui propose des temps de démarrage ultra-rapides et une empreinte mémoire réduite Pourquoi Quarkus démarre si vite ? Le framework effectue le travail lourd au moment du build (scanning, indexation, génération de bytecode) plutôt qu'au runtime Quand utiliser le mode réactif plutôt qu'impératif ? Le réactif est pertinent pour les workloads avec haute concurrence et dominance I/O, l'impératif reste plus simple dans les autres cas Quelle est la différence entre Dev Services et Testcontainers ? Dev Services utilise Testcontainers en gérant automatiquement le cycle de vie, les ports et la configuration sans cérémonie Comment la DI de Quarkus diffère de Spring ? CDI est un standard basé sur la sécurité des types et la découverte au build-time, différent de l'approche framework de Spring Comment gérer la configuration entre environnements ? Quarkus permet de scaler depuis le développement local jusqu'à Kubernetes avec des profils, fichiers multiples et configuration externe Comment tester correctement les applications Quarkus ? @QuarkusTest démarre l'application une fois pour toute la suite de tests, changeant le modèle mental par rapport à Spring Boot Que fait vraiment Panache en coulisses ? Panache est du JPA avec des opinions fortes et des défauts propres, enveloppant Hibernate avec un style Active Record Doit-on utiliser les images natives et quand ? Les images natives brillent pour le serverless et l'edge grâce au démarrage rapide et la faible empreinte mémoire, mais tous les apps n'en bénéficient pas Comment Quarkus s'intègre avec Kubernetes ? Le framework génère automatiquement les ressources Kubernetes, gère les health checks et métriques comme s'il était nativement conçu pour cet écosystème Comment intégrer l'IA dans une application Quarkus ? LangChain4j permet d'ajouter embeddings, retrieval, guardrails et observabilité directement en Java sans passer par Python Infrastructure Les alternatives à MinIO https://rmoff.net/2026/01/14/alternatives-to-minio-for-single-node-local-s3/ MinIO a abandonné le support single-node fin 2025 pour des raisons commerciales, cassant de nombreuses démos et pipelines CI/CD qui l'utilisaient pour émuler S3 localement L'auteur cherche un remplacement simple avec image Docker, compatibilité S3, licence open source, déploiement mono-nœud facile et communauté active S3Proxy est très léger et facile à configurer, semble être l'option la plus simple mais repose sur un seul contributeur RustFS est facile à utiliser et inclut une GUI, mais c'est un projet très récent en version alpha avec une faille de sécurité majeure récente SeaweedFS existe depuis 2012 avec support S3 depuis 2018, relativement facile à configurer et dispose d'une interface web basique Zenko CloudServer remplace facilement MinIO mais la documentation et le branding (cloudserver/zenko/scality) peuvent prêter à confusion Garage nécessite une configuration complexe avec fichier TOML et conteneur d'initialisation séparé, pas un simple remplacement drop-in Apache Ozone requiert au minimum quatre nœuds pour fonctionner, beaucoup trop lourd pour un usage local simple L'auteur recommande SeaweedFS et S3Proxy comme remplaçants viables, RustFS en maybe, et élimine Garage et Ozone pour leur complexité Garage a une histoire tres associative, il vient du collectif https://deuxfleurs.fr/ qui offre un cloud distribué sans datacenter C'est certainement pas une bonne idée, les datacenters dans l'espace https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-idea/ Avis d'expert (ex-NASA/Google, Dr en électronique spatiale) : Centres de données spatiaux, une "terrible" idée. Incompatibilité fondamentale : L'électronique (surtout IA/GPU) est inadaptée à l'environnement spatial. Énergie : Accès limité. Le solaire (type ISS) est insuffisant pour l'échelle de l'IA. Le nucléaire (RTG) est trop faible. Refroidissement : L'espace n'est pas "froid" ; absence de convection. Nécessite des radiateurs gigantesques (ex: 531m² pour 200kW). Radiations : Provoque erreurs (SEU, SEL) et dommages. Les GPU sont très vulnérables. Blindage lourd et inefficace. Les puces "durcies" sont très lentes. Communications : Bande passante très limitée (1Gbps radio vs 100Gbps terrestre). Le laser est tributaire des conditions atmosphériques. Conclusion : Projet extrêmement difficile, coûteux et aux performances médiocres. Data et Intelligence Artificielle Guillaume a développé un serveur MCP pour arXiv (le site de publication de papiers de recherche) en Java avec le framework Quarkus https://glaforge.dev/posts/2026/01/18/implementing-an-arxiv-mcp-server-with-quarkus-in-java/ Implémentation d'un serveur MCP (Model Context Protocol) arXiv en Java avec Quarkus. Objectif : Accéder aux publications arXiv et illustrer les fonctionnalités moins connues du protocole MCP. Mise en œuvre : Utilisation du framework Quarkus (Java) et son support MCP étendu. Assistance par Antigravity (IDE agentique) pour le développement et l'intégration de l'API arXiv. Interaction avec l'API arXiv : requêtes HTTP, format XML Atom pour les résultats, parser XML Jackson. Fonctionnalités MCP exposées : Outils (@Tool) : Recherche de publications (search_papers). Ressources (@Resource, @ResourceTemplate) : Taxonomie des catégories arXiv, métadonnées des articles (via un template d'URI). Prompts (@Prompt) : Exemples pour résumer des articles ou construire des requêtes de recherche. Configuration : Le serveur peut fonctionner en STDIO (local) ou via HTTP Streamable (local ou distant), avec une configuration simple dans des clients comme Gemini CLI. Conclusion : Quarkus simplifie la création de serveurs MCP riches en fonctionnalités, rendant les données et services "prêts pour l'IA" avec l'aide d'outils d'IA comme Antigravity. Anthropic ne mettra pas de pub dans Claude https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-is-a-space-to-think c'est en reaction au plan non public d'OpenAi de mettre de la pub pour pousser les gens au mode payant OpenAI a besoin de cash et est probablement le plus utilisé pour gratuit au monde Anthropic annonce que Claude restera sans publicité pour préserver son rôle d'assistant conversationnel dédié au travail et à la réflexion approfondie. Les conversations avec Claude sont souvent sensibles, personnelles ou impliquent des tâches complexes d'ingénierie logicielle où les publicités seraient inappropriées. L'analyse des conversations montre qu'une part significative aborde des sujets délicats similaires à ceux évoqués avec un conseiller de confiance. Un modèle publicitaire créerait des incitations contradictoires avec le principe fondamental d'être "genuinely helpful" inscrit dans la Constitution de Claude. Les publicités introduiraient un conflit d'intérêt potentiel où les recommandations pourraient être influencées par des motivations commerciales plutôt que par l'intérêt de l'utilisateur. Le modèle économique d'Anthropic repose sur les contrats entreprise et les abonnements payants, permettant de réinvestir dans l'amélioration de Claude. Anthropic maintient l'accès gratuit avec des modèles de pointe et propose des tarifs réduits pour les ONG et l'éducation dans plus de 60 pays. Le commerce "agentique" sera supporté mais uniquement à l'initiative de l'utilisateur, jamais des annonceurs, pour préserver la confiance. Les intégrations tierces comme Figma, Asana ou Canva continueront d'être développées en gardant l'utilisateur aux commandes. Anthropic compare Claude à un cahier ou un tableau blanc : des espaces de pensée purs, sans publicité. Infinispan 16.1 est sorti https://infinispan.org/blog/2026/02/04/infinispan-16-1 déjà le nom de la release mérite une mention Le memory bounded par cache et par ensemble de cache s est pas facile à faire en Java Une nouvelle api OpenAPI AOT caché dans les images container Un serveur MCP local juste avec un fichier Java ? C'est possible avec LangChain4j et JBang https://glaforge.dev/posts/2026/02/11/zero-boilerplate-java-stdio-mcp-servers-with-langchain4j-and-jbang/ Création rapide de serveurs MCP Java sans boilerplate. MCP (Model Context Protocol): standard pour connecter les LLM à des outils et données. Le tutoriel répond au manque d'options simples pour les développeurs Java, face à une prédominance de Python/TypeScript dans l'écosystème MCP. La solution utilise: LangChain4j: qui intègre un nouveau module serveur MCP pour le protocole STDIO. JBang: permet d'exécuter des fichiers Java comme des scripts, éliminant les fichiers de build (pom.xml, Gradle). Implémentation: se fait via un seul fichier .java. JBang gère automatiquement les dépendances (//DEPS). L'annotation @Tool de LangChain4j expose les méthodes Java aux LLM. StdioMcpServerTransport gère la communication JSON-RPC via l'entrée/sortie standard (STDIO). Point crucial: Les logs doivent impérativement être redirigés vers System.err pour éviter de corrompre System.out, qui est réservé à la communication MCP (messages JSON-RPC). Facilite l'intégration locale avec des outils comme Gemini CLI, Claude Code, etc. Reciprocal Rank Fusion : un algorithme utile et souvent utilisé pour faire de la recherche hybride, pour mélanger du RAG et des recherches par mots-clé https://glaforge.dev/posts/2026/02/10/advanced-rag-understanding-reciprocal-rank-fusion-in-hybrid-search/ RAG : Qualité LLM dépend de la récupération. Recherche Hybride : Combiner vectoriel et mots-clés (BM25) est optimal. Défi : Fusionner des scores d'échelles différentes. Solution : Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF). RRF : Algorithme robuste qui fusionne des listes de résultats en se basant uniquement sur le rang des documents, ignorant les scores. Avantages RRF : Pas de normalisation de scores, scalable, excellente première étape de réorganisation. Architecture RAG fréquente : RRF (large sélection) + Cross-Encoder / modèle de reranking (précision fine). RAG-Fusion : Utilise un LLM pour générer plusieurs variantes de requête, puis RRF agrège tous les résultats pour renforcer le consensus et réduire les hallucinations. Implémentation : LangChain4j utilise RRF par défaut pour agréger les résultats de plusieurs retrievers. Les dernières fonctionnalités de Gemini et Nano Banana supportées dans LangChain4j https://glaforge.dev/posts/2026/02/06/latest-gemini-and-nano-banana-enhancements-in-langchain4j/ Nouveaux modèles d'images Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5/3.0) pour génération et édition (jusqu'à 4K). "Grounding" via Google Search (pour images et texte) et Google Maps (localisation, Gemini 2.5). Outil de contexte URL (Gemini 3.0) pour lecture directe de pages web. Agents multimodaux (AiServices) capables de générer des images. Configuration de la réflexion (profondeur Chain-of-Thought) pour Gemini 3.0. Métadonnées enrichies : usage des tokens et détails des sources de "grounding". Comment configurer Gemini CLI comment agent de code dans IntelliJ grâce au protocole ACP https://glaforge.dev/posts/2026/02/01/how-to-integrate-gemini-cli-with-intellij-idea-using-acp/ But : Intégrer Gemini CLI à IntelliJ IDEA via l'Agent Client Protocol (ACP). Prérequis : IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3+, Node.js (v20+), Gemini CLI. Étapes : Installer Gemini CLI (npm install -g @google/gemini-cli). Localiser l'exécutable gemini. Configurer ~/.jetbrains/acp.json (chemin exécutable, --experimental-acp, use_idea_mcp: true). Redémarrer IDEA, sélectionner "Gemini CLI" dans l'Assistant IA. Usage : Gemini interagit avec le code et exécute des commandes (contexte projet). Important : S'assurer du flag --experimental-acp dans la configuration. Outillage PipeNet, une alternative (open source aussi) à LocalTunnel, mais un plus évoluée https://pipenet.dev/ pipenet: Alternative open-source et moderne à localtunnel (client + serveur). Usages: Développement local (partage, webhooks), intégration SDK, auto-hébergement sécurisé. Fonctionnalités: Client (expose ports locaux, sous-domaines), Serveur (déploiement, domaines personnalisés, optimisé cloud mono-port). Avantages vs localtunnel: Déploiement cloud sur un seul port, support multi-domaines, TypeScript/ESM, maintenance active. Protocoles: HTTP/S, WebSocket, SSE, HTTP Streaming. Intégration: CLI ou SDK JavaScript. JSON-IO — une librairie comme Jackson ou GSON, supportant JSON5, TOON, et qui pourrait être utile pour l'utilisation du "structured output" des LLMs quand ils ne produisent pas du JSON parfait https://github.com/jdereg/json-io json-io : Librairie Java pour la sérialisation et désérialisation JSON/TOON. Gère les graphes d'objets complexes, les références cycliques et les types polymorphes. Support complet JSON5 (lecture et écriture), y compris des fonctionnalités non prises en charge par Jackson/Gson. Format TOON : Notation orientée token, optimisée pour les LLM, réduisant l'utilisation de tokens de 40 à 50% par rapport au JSON. Légère : Aucune dépendance externe (sauf java-util), taille de JAR réduite (~330K). Compatible JDK 1.8 à 24, ainsi qu'avec les environnements JPMS et OSGi. Deux modes de conversion : vers des objets Java typés (toJava()) ou vers des Map (toMaps()). Options de configuration étendues via ReadOptionsBuilder et WriteOptionsBuilder. Optimisée pour les déploiements cloud natifs et les architectures de microservices. Utiliser mailpit et testcontainer pour tester vos envois d'emails https://foojay.io/today/testing-emails-with-testcontainers-and-mailpit/ l'article montre via SpringBoot et sans. Et voici l'extension Quarkus https://quarkus.io/extensions/io.quarkiverse.mailpit/quarkus-mailpit/?tab=docs Tester l'envoi d'emails en développement est complexe car on ne peut pas utiliser de vrais serveurs SMTP Mailpit est un serveur SMTP de test qui capture les emails et propose une interface web pour les consulter Testcontainers permet de démarrer Mailpit dans un conteneur Docker pour les tests d'intégration L'article montre comment configurer une application SpringBoot pour envoyer des emails via JavaMail Un module Testcontainers dédié à Mailpit facilite son intégration dans les tests Le conteneur Mailpit expose un port SMTP (1025) et une API HTTP (8025) pour vérifier les emails reçus Les tests peuvent interroger l'API HTTP de Mailpit pour valider le contenu des emails envoyés Cette approche évite d'utiliser des mocks et teste réellement l'envoi d'emails Mailpit peut aussi servir en développement local pour visualiser les emails sans les envoyer réellement La solution fonctionne avec n'importe quel framework Java supportant JavaMail Architecture Comment scaler un système de 0 à 10 millions d'utilisateurs https://blog.algomaster.io/p/scaling-a-system-from-0-to-10-million-users Philosophie : Scalabilité incrémentale, résoudre les goulots d'étranglement sans sur-ingénierie. 0-100 utilisateurs : Serveur unique (app, DB, jobs). 100-1K : Séparer app et DB (services gérés, pooling). 1K-10K : Équilibreur de charge, multi-serveurs d'app (stateless via sessions partagées). 10K-100K : Caching, réplicas de lecture DB, CDN (réduire charge DB). 100K-500K : Auto-scaling, applications stateless (authentification JWT). 500K-10M : Sharding DB, microservices, files de messages (traitement asynchrone). 10M+ : Déploiement multi-régions, CQRS, persistance polyglotte, infra personnalisée. Principes clés : Simplicité, mesure, stateless essentiel, cache/asynchrone, sharding prudent, compromis (CAP), coût de la complexité. Patterns d'Architecture 2026 - Du Hype à la Réalité du Terrain (Part 1/2) - https://blog.ippon.fr/2026/01/30/patterns-darchitecture-2026-part-1/ L'article présente quatre patterns d'architecture logicielle pour répondre aux enjeux de scalabilité, résilience et agilité business dans les systèmes modernes Il présentent leurs raisons et leurs pièges Un bon rappel L'Event-Driven Architecture permet une communication asynchrone entre systèmes via des événements publiés et consommés, évitant le couplage direct Les bénéfices de l'EDA incluent la scalabilité indépendante des composants, la résilience face aux pannes et l'ajout facile de nouveaux cas d'usage Le pattern API-First associé à un API Gateway centralise la sécurité, le routage et l'observabilité des APIs avec un catalogue unifié Le Backend for Frontend crée des APIs spécifiques par canal (mobile, web, partenaires) pour optimiser l'expérience utilisateur CQRS sépare les modèles de lecture et d'écriture avec des bases optimisées distinctes, tandis que l'Event Sourcing stocke tous les événements plutôt que l'état actuel Le Saga Pattern gère les transactions distribuées via orchestration centralisée ou chorégraphie événementielle pour coordonner plusieurs microservices Les pièges courants incluent l'explosion d'événements granulaires, la complexité du debugging distribué, et la mauvaise gestion de la cohérence finale Les technologies phares sont Kafka pour l'event streaming, Kong pour l'API Gateway, EventStoreDB pour l'Event Sourcing et Temporal pour les Sagas Ces patterns nécessitent une maturité technique et ne sont pas adaptés aux applications CRUD simples ou aux équipes junior Patterns d'architecture 2026 : du hype à la réalité terrain part. 2 - https://blog.ippon.fr/2026/02/04/patterns-darchitecture-2026-part-2/ Deuxième partie d'un guide pratique sur les patterns d'architecture logicielle et système éprouvés pour moderniser et structurer les applications en 2026 Strangler Fig permet de migrer progressivement un système legacy en l'enveloppant petit à petit plutôt que de tout réécrire d'un coup (70% d'échec pour les big bang) Anti-Corruption Layer protège votre nouveau domaine métier des modèles externes et legacy en créant une couche de traduction entre les systèmes Service Mesh gère automatiquement la communication inter-services dans les architectures microservices (sécurité mTLS, observabilité, résilience) Architecture Hexagonale sépare le coeur métier des détails techniques via des ports et adaptateurs pour améliorer la testabilité et l'évolutivité Chaque pattern est illustré par un cas client concret avec résultats mesurables et liste des pièges à éviter lors de l'implémentation Les technologies 2026 mentionnées incluent Istio, Linkerd pour service mesh, LaunchDarkly pour feature flags, NGINX et Kong pour API gateway Tableau comparatif final aide à choisir le bon pattern selon la complexité, le scope et le use case spécifique du projet L'article insiste sur une approche pragmatique : ne pas utiliser un pattern juste parce qu'il est moderne mais parce qu'il résout un problème réel Pour les systèmes simples type CRUD ou avec peu de services, ces patterns peuvent introduire une complexité inutile qu'il faut savoir éviter Méthodologies Le rêve récurrent de remplacer voire supprimer les développeurs https://www.caimito.net/en/blog/2025/12/07/the-recurring-dream-of-replacing-developers.html Depuis 1969, chaque décennie voit une tentative de réduire le besoin de développeurs (de COBOL, UML, visual builders… à IA). Motivation : frustration des dirigeants face aux délais et coûts de développement. La complexité logicielle est intrinsèque et intellectuelle, non pas une question d'outils. Chaque vague technologique apporte de la valeur mais ne supprime pas l'expertise humaine. L'IA assiste les développeurs, améliore l'efficacité, mais ne remplace ni le jugement ni la gestion de la complexité. La demande de logiciels excède l'offre car la contrainte majeure est la réflexion nécessaire pour gérer cette complexité. Pour les dirigeants : les outils rendent-ils nos développeurs plus efficaces sur les problèmes complexes et réduisent-ils les tâches répétitives ? Le "rêve" de remplacer les développeurs, irréalisable, est un moteur d'innovation créant des outils précieux. Comment creuser des sujets à l'ère de l'IA générative. Quid du partage et la curation de ces recherches ? https://glaforge.dev/posts/2026/02/04/researching-topics-in-the-age-of-ai-rock-solid-webhooks-case-study/ Recherche initiale de l'auteur sur les webhooks en 2019, processus long et manuel. L'IA (Deep Research, Gemini, NotebookLM) facilite désormais la recherche approfondie, l'exploration de sujets et le partage des résultats. L'IA a identifié et validé des pratiques clés pour des déploiements de webhooks résilients, en grande partie les mêmes que celles trouvées précédemment par l'auteur. Génération d'artefacts par l'IA : rapport détaillé, résumé concis, illustration sketchnote, et même une présentation (slide deck). Guillaume s'interroge sur le partage public de ces rapports de recherche générés par l'IA, tout en souhaitant éviter le "AI Slop". Loi, société et organisation Le logiciel menacé par le vibe coding https://www.techbuzz.ai/articles/we-built-a-monday-com-clone-in-under-an-hour-with-ai Deux journalistes de CNBC sans expérience de code ont créé un clone fonctionnel de Monday.com en moins de 60 minutes pour 5 à 15 dollars. L'expérience valide les craintes des investisseurs qui ont provoqué une baisse de 30% des actions des entreprises SaaS. L'IA a non seulement reproduit les fonctionnalités de base mais a aussi recherché Monday.com de manière autonome pour identifier et recréer ses fonctionnalités clés. Cette technique appelée "vibe-coding" permet aux non-développeurs de construire des applications via des instructions en anglais courant. Les entreprises les plus vulnérables sont celles offrant des outils "qui se posent sur le travail" comme Atlassian, Adobe, HubSpot, Zendesk et Smartsheet. Les entreprises de cybersécurité comme CrowdStrike et Palo Alto sont considérées plus protégées grâce aux effets de réseau et aux barrières réglementaires. Les systèmes d'enregistrement comme Salesforce restent plus difficiles à répliquer en raison de leur profondeur d'intégration et de données d'entreprise. Le coût de 5 à 15 dollars par construction permet aux entreprises de prototyper plusieurs solutions personnalisées pour moins cher qu'une seule licence Monday.com. L'expérience soulève des questions sur la pérennité du marché de 5 milliards de dollars des outils de gestion de projet face à l'IA générative. Conférences En complément de l'agenda des conférences de Aurélie Vache, il y a également le site https://javaconferences.org/ (fait par Brian Vermeer) avec toutes les conférences Java à venir ! La liste des conférences provenant de Developers Conferences Agenda/List par Aurélie Vache et contributeurs : 12-13 février 2026 : Touraine Tech #26 - Tours (France) 12-13 février 2026 : World Artificial Intelligence Cannes Festival - Cannes (France) 19 février 2026 : ObservabilityCON on the Road - Paris (France) 6 mars 2026 : WordCamp Nice 2026 - Nice (France) 18 mars 2026 : Jupyter Workshops: AI in Jupyter: Building Extensible AI Capabilities for Interactive Computing - Saint-Maur-des-Fossés (France) 18-19 mars 2026 : Agile Niort 2026 - Niort (France) 20 mars 2026 : Atlantique Day 2026 - Nantes (France) 26 mars 2026 : Data Days Lille - Lille (France) 26-27 mars 2026 : SymfonyLive Paris 2026 - Paris (France) 26-27 mars 2026 : REACT PARIS - Paris (France) 27-29 mars 2026 : Shift - Nantes (France) 31 mars 2026 : ParisTestConf - Paris (France) 31 mars 2026-1 avril 2026 : FlowCon France 2026 - Paris (France) 1 avril 2026 : AWS Summit Paris - Paris (France) 2 avril 2026 : Pragma Cannes 2026 - Cannes (France) 2-3 avril 2026 : Xen Spring Meetup 2026 - Grenoble (France) 7 avril 2026 : PyTorch Conference Europe - Paris (France) 9-10 avril 2026 : Android Makers by droidcon 2026 - Paris (France) 9-11 avril 2026 : Drupalcamp Grenoble 2026 - Grenoble (France) 16-17 avril 2026 : MiXiT 2026 - Lyon (France) 17-18 avril 2026 : Faiseuses du Web 5 - Dinan (France) 22-24 avril 2026 : Devoxx France 2026 - Paris (France) 23-25 avril 2026 : Devoxx Greece - Athens (Greece) 6-7 mai 2026 : Devoxx UK 2026 - London (UK) 12 mai 2026 : Lead Innovation Day - Leadership Edition - Paris (France) 19 mai 2026 : La Product Conf Paris 2026 - Paris (France) 21-22 mai 2026 : Flupa UX Days 2026 - Paris (France) 22 mai 2026 : AFUP Day 2026 Lille - Lille (France) 22 mai 2026 : AFUP Day 2026 Paris - Paris (France) 22 mai 2026 : AFUP Day 2026 Bordeaux - Bordeaux (France) 22 mai 2026 : AFUP Day 2026 Lyon - Lyon (France) 28 mai 2026 : DevCon 27 : I.A. & Vibe Coding - Paris (France) 28 mai 2026 : Cloud Toulouse 2026 - Toulouse (France) 29 mai 2026 : NG Baguette Conf 2026 - Paris (France) 29 mai 2026 : Agile Tour Strasbourg 2026 - Strasbourg (France) 2-3 juin 2026 : Agile Tour Rennes 2026 - Rennes (France) 2-3 juin 2026 : OW2Con - Paris-Châtillon (France) 3 juin 2026 : IA–NA - La Rochelle (France) 5 juin 2026 : TechReady - Nantes (France) 5 juin 2026 : Fork it! - Rouen - Rouen (France) 6 juin 2026 : Polycloud - Montpellier (France) 9 juin 2026 : JFTL - Montrouge (France) 9 juin 2026 : C: - Caen (France) 11-12 juin 2026 : DevQuest Niort - Niort (France) 11-12 juin 2026 : DevLille 2026 - Lille (France) 12 juin 2026 : Tech F'Est 2026 - Nancy (France) 16 juin 2026 : Mobilis In Mobile 2026 - Nantes (France) 17-19 juin 2026 : Devoxx Poland - Krakow (Poland) 17-20 juin 2026 : VivaTech - Paris (France) 18 juin 2026 : Tech'Work - Lyon (France) 22-26 juin 2026 : Galaxy Community Conference - Clermont-Ferrand (France) 24-25 juin 2026 : Agi'Lille 2026 - Lille (France) 24-26 juin 2026 : BreizhCamp 2026 - Rennes (France) 2 juillet 2026 : Azur Tech Summer 2026 - Valbonne (France) 2-3 juillet 2026 : Sunny Tech - Montpellier (France) 3 juillet 2026 : Agile Lyon 2026 - Lyon (France) 6-8 juillet 2026 : Riviera Dev - Sophia Antipolis (France) 2 août 2026 : 4th Tech Summit on Artificial Intelligence & Robotics - Paris (France) 20-22 août 2026 : 4th Tech Summit on AI & Robotics - Paris (France) & Online 4 septembre 2026 : JUG Summer Camp 2026 - La Rochelle (France) 17-18 septembre 2026 : API Platform Conference 2026 - Lille (France) 24 septembre 2026 : PlatformCon Live Day Paris 2026 - Paris (France) 1 octobre 2026 : WAX 2026 - Marseille (France) 1-2 octobre 2026 : Volcamp - Clermont-Ferrand (France) 5-9 octobre 2026 : Devoxx Belgium - Antwerp (Belgium) Nous contacter Pour réagir à cet épisode, venez discuter sur le groupe Google https://groups.google.com/group/lescastcodeurs Contactez-nous via X/twitter https://twitter.com/lescastcodeurs ou Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/lescastcodeurs.com Faire un crowdcast ou une crowdquestion Soutenez Les Cast Codeurs sur Patreon https://www.patreon.com/LesCastCodeurs Tous les épisodes et toutes les infos sur https://lescastcodeurs.com/

Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of Door Grow, and Sarah Hull, the COO, discuss the professional lessons learned from the departure of a long-term team member. They describe the experience as bittersweet, acknowledging the torn feeling between being happy for a departing employee who has a great new opportunity and not wanting to lose a valuable team member. You'll Learn (00:00) Bittersweet Departure: Empathy in Leadership  (01:03) Maddie's Journey and Role Development at Door Grow  (06:33) Security Through Documented Processes   (11:08) Confidence in the Door Grow Hiring System  (12:44) The "Super System" and Scalability  (15:56) The Value of Structure and Culture Quotables "I think that's the first thing about being a leader is not only wanting what's best for you and the business, but truly wanting what's best for your team." "Having processes documented has always given me a sense of security." "The slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together." Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason Hull (00:02) Hello everybody, I'm Jason Hall. This is Sarah Hall, the founder and CEO and the COO of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we have spoken to thousands of property management business owners, coached, consulted, and cleaned up hundreds of businesses, helping them add doors, improve pricing, increase profits, simplify operations, and we run the leading property management mastermind in the industry with more video testimonials and reviews than any other coach or consultant in the industry. So let's get into the show. All right. So we got some news this past what week from my daughter. I need to get rid of that. OK. We got some news this past week from my daughter, Maddie, that she is leaving. DoorGrow, she got another job offer. And so my oldest daughter has been working for DoorGrow for five years now. Which is wild. And so I remember she called me up from college and she couldn't find a job there. And she later told me the last thing she wanted was to ask me for a job or to work for me at the time. I guess she was just humbled enough that she had to come to me and ask for a job because she's like nobody was hiring around her campus because it was just a college town. Everybody had taken all the jobs and so she asked if she could do some work for me and ⁓ she started doing some graphic design stuff and she was working on her marketing degree and ⁓ she ended up working for us and she's handled all sorts of things. My social media, DoorGrowth social media. graphic design stuff, video editing, podcast editing, ⁓ lots of stuff. Client support. And then we moved her into client success. And so then she was managing client success on our team, helping to retain clients and make sure they're supported. that's, yeah, so she's had quite the journey of growth here at DoorGrow. And she was really nervous to tell us that she was leaving. She was like very concerned about this. And I told her, it's okay, I just want you to be happy. So excited to see her move on to the next thing that she's gonna do. This is like her first job outside of DoorGrow, as far as I know. And so I'm excited for her. ⁓ So we were just thinking like, what are some lessons that we are getting from this experience? And ⁓ yeah, so we thought we'd talk about a few of those things. The first thing is that moment where you go, I'm losing a team member. And you're kind of torn and you're stuck in between, I'm so happy for them and I want this great opportunity for them and I want what's best for them. And also, man, I didn't want to lose them. That happens a lot. And I would say to anyone out there that has experienced something like that, we had a client. Jay Shaw that had an amazing person in his business and this person got their dream job opportunity and came to him and said, hey, I don't know what to do with this. And he did exactly what we said. You have to take it. If you want to take it, want you to take it. I want you to do what you think you need to do and what's going to make you happy and what's going to give you opportunity to learn and grow and challenge yourself and experience different things. Right. So I think that's the first thing about being a leader is not only wanting what's best for you and the business, but truly wanting what's best for your team. Yeah. So that's what, you know, she's my daughter. So of course I want whatever's best for her. Um, one of the things that I realized, one of the things that I've always been particularly good at is identifying personalities. One of the things we wanted to recommend to all of you is that it's really important to understand your team members and their personality. Meaning, like getting to really know what their natural inclination is towards, not what they're skilled at, not what they're already trained at, but where would they naturally gravitate towards if they had had other opportunities. so Maddie's personality type, she's extroverted. naturally. I saw this in her growing up. ⁓ She's very much a feeler. She's ⁓ organized and ⁓ so yeah, so was very clear. Ladybug okay good. I think I on your foot So totally live. All right. So, ⁓ yeah. So what was I talking about? You were talking about ladybug finding, finding the right personality. ⁓ right. Okay. So Maddie and Myers-Briggs would be probably an ENFJ, right? ⁓ they're great at community. They're great at connecting with others. And she was going to school and eventually graduated while working at Door Girl. for like graphic design, marketing related stuff, advertising, and she thought, I'm gonna be a graphic designer. Well, I was like, Maddie, are, like, this is, you're naturally great with people. I'm thinking you should move into client success. We had a team member leave. She started taking over client success and doing the social media and graphic design stuff and things like that and podcast editing. And then, We knew we were gonna scale and so we said, and she knew and she said, well, if I have to pick one role or the other, I think I'll pick client success. And so it's awesome to be able to have that as a father, I think it's super important to understand your kids and to not try to push them into being what you are if you're an entrepreneur, not trying to push them into a certain job or career path in school, but to. move them towards what their natural personality would be inclined to succeed and win at that they would love to do. And so that's what I've done as much as I can with all of my kids. so Maddie, I thought, let's move her into client success for sure. And when we put her into that, eventually she chose that. She really recognized that she had a skill at that and she was really, really great at it. And that allowed her to grow and develop new skills besides just graphic design. ⁓ But yeah, she's learned a lot of different skills at DoorGro. She didn't know how to do video editing. She was very much into graphics and then she started editing our videos for us and figuring it out. And so over the years, she's just developed a whole bunch of skills. She's invaluable, super smart, learns lots of stuff. The other, I think, important lesson that is important, you talked about team members, when they leave and how you freak out. Well, we're not really freaking out. And why? Why are we not freaking out? we're sad to see her go. Sad, happy, bittersweet. A little bit of bittersweet feeling there. we're prepared for any and all of our team members at all times just in case anything happens. And that's one of the things is if they do decide to, for whatever reason, exit their role at your company. we have all of our processes already documented for each of our team members. So now that she's stepping out of that role, it's not like we're back here scrambling going, we have to hurry up and figure out how she's doing things and have her write it down and have her train somebody else and get everything out of her head. All of that already exists, which means that when we hire someone to step into that role, it will be infinitely easier for them because everything that Maddie is doing is already documented. What she does and the steps and the systems and the tools that she uses and how she's doing each thing, it's documented in our system. So that in case a team member or sometimes you have several leave at a time, didn't you have a guy that won the lottery and his whole team left? Somebody called me once. So they lost their whole team because they had an office betting pool with the lottery and they won and everybody quit their jobs. So now you have no team. Yeah. So yeah, very suddenly not likely to happen too often, but no, it is nice. as a, as an entrepreneur, as a founder, as a CEO, having processes documented, which we've had for years and years at door grow.   has always given me a sense of security. There's always a sense of anxiety if you don't have those documented that somebody could leave or somebody could be out or get pregnant or be injured or whatever. And move away. Yeah. Take care of a sick family member. Right. Things happen. Life happens. Humans are humans. And so the challenge is if you don't have these things documented and you want them fresh, you want them being used, you want them documented by the people that are actually using them. so Maddie's leaving, so she went and reviewed the processes. Most everything is documented. There were some, she was like, I think we're missing this thing that I've recently started doing, or this little thing needs to be updated a bit. And so she's making some final tweaks to update the processes. But it's every team member's job to keep updated and maintain their processes. So this is why it's very important to have a process system. that is intuitive and easy enough for everybody on the team to use it. And this is why we use what used to be called DoorGrow Flow. We use Flusos and ⁓ F-L-U-S-S-O-S. And it's kind of that in between, it's like flowchart software. It's visual, it's super intuitive and easy. Our team can drag and drop things and build out the process and then they can actually use that process and run it and like work through the workflow. And so it's kind of like a mashup between Lucidchart, Revisio, and Process Street, or Asana, or any sort of checklist system. And checklist systems are not enough. They're just not sufficient enough. They're not clear enough. And ⁓ they're too linear. And there's issues with those. And so we found that this is a superior upgrade from what we used before, which was like Process Street. So having that system that Sarah, who doesn't like tech very much, will go in there and loves using it and updating processes. Maddie can go in and update her own. Giselle and her team can go and tweak or change her process. anybody on the team, and I actually don't even log into it. I don't have to use it, which is the first process system. And we've had several that we've ever used where I don't have to live in it. I don't have to work in it. We've set it up so that if anything needs to be assigned to me, it goes to a role called Jason's assistant. And then the assistant comes to me and says, hey Jason, we need you to do this thing. And so I was able to get myself out from not just having to manage and control and make every process and get really nerdy and build logic and things to hide and show and to the point where I didn't even understand it a year later and then would have to, if it broke, I had to get into it and fix it or weird connections to Zapier and stuff like this. Yeah, it just makes it so much more intuitive.   drag and drop and that's been a game changer. So that's something else we realized through this process. It's like we're not really freaking out or concerned. You know, just a little sad Matty. So, all right. So ⁓ anything else? Well, speaking of things that are game changers, let's hear from our sponsor. ⁓ yeah. So today's sponsor is cover pest.   Cover Pest is the easy and seamless way to add on-demand pest control to your resident benefits package. Residents love the simplicity of submitting a service request and how affordable it is compared to traditional pest control options. Investors love knowing that their property is kept pest free. And property managers love getting their time back and making more revenue per door. Simply put, Cover Pest is the easiest way to handle pest control issues at all your properties.   To learn more and to get special DoorGro pricing, visit coverpest.com slash door grow. All right. So that's our sponsor. right. So other lessons or things that we're realizing. ⁓ One, another reason we don't have a bunch of anxiety is that if we ever need to replace a team member, we have an amazing hiring system. This is one of our proprietary pieces of IP that's been a game changer for ourselves.   and has allowed us to be able to take care of all of our clients and help them replace entire teams if necessary, help them get that key team member they need that's going to be the game changer to get them to the next level. And that's DoorGrow Hiring and our DoorGrow applicant tracking system. And so this has been a significant tool that we've used for lots of clients and for ourselves to build out our team. And so we confidently know, like we've got a system that's going to get us somebody that is a   good culture fit for us that shares our values, which means they won't steal from you. It means there'll be a personality fit for the role because we understand and have engineered the job descriptions for ourselves and for all of our clients so that it attracts or creates interest in the person that is the right personality fit for that particular role. And then skill fit. We have assessments and tools to figure out are they going to be able to   develop the skill or do they already have the skill so that we can make sure that we're getting the ultimate hire because one bad hire is easily a 10 grand minimum mistake and probably three months of your time wasted. So being shot in the foot trying to train them and then they leave or you have to fire them, right? So we're really good at BDMs, which is a big need of our clients. We're really good at operators, which is a big need for our clients.   so they can get out of the day-to-day operational control of the business and make sure the business is moving forward and build out what we call our super system, people planning a process. So these are some key things that make it not so big of a deal if we lose a team member. We're confident we can get them replaced pretty quickly. We can get them up to speed quickly because of our process and we're going to make a good hire. So, and we're able to get that system built out into our clients' businesses as well, which is   A game changer, if you listen to us and you start adding a whole bunch of doors, then that can cause a lot of constraints and issues in your business to come to the forefront. And if you have our super system hiring the process, planning all built in, planning is DoorGrow OS. If you have all these things built in, then your business becomes infinitely scalable and you're not going to get stuck. You can just continually keep growing and adding doors. So cool. ⁓   Any other lessons or things about Maddie? We could, I would say so many good things about Maddie. So I think one of the things too that it just kind of shows when you put the right person in the right role, the results that you get because clients always tell us, Maddie is so great. Maddie is so great. Wow, Maddie is so great at what she does. Wow, I just love Maddie. Yeah. So.   that tells us, we already know, but it tells us, hey, this was such a good fit for her. She truly enjoys this. She is great at helping people and she's thriving in a role like that. And I know that she will do great at anything that she decides to do. And I think that's one of the things that was so great is kind of watching that growth and development because when she came on,   in the very beginning, was part-time. She was going to school, so she was part-time, and she was dabbling in just little tiny pieces. And then she would do a little bit more, and the hours would increase, and she would take on a few more things, and hours would increase, and then she would take on a few more things. And her role truly developed, and that allowed her growth and development as well, which a lot of times, that's something that great team members are really looking for.   Yeah, in the beginning she was like, how do I get out of this job probably? then she was I think she told you, I only want to work with you for what, a year or something? Yeah, yeah. And then I think she kind of realized, hey, there's good culture, there's good environment here. And then eventually she was like, hey, I'm graduating school, I think I really want to work with you guys full time.   And so that was really nice. yeah. And I'm sure it's not easy working for your dad sometimes. don't know. So, ⁓ but yeah, it's been awesome having her. And it's been, I'm really going to miss being able to just tell everybody all the time. Cause I get to tell every potential client I talk to during the sales process, if I'm involved, I get to like brag on my daughter, my oldest daughter works for me and she's our head of client success. And I get to just be so proud of her. So.   Now I just get to talk and brag about my wife, ⁓ which I always do that as well. So you can't leave too. I gotta be able to brag about somebody. So, all right. I'll stay just so you Just because of that? Okay, all right, good. yeah. But Maddie's amazing, so whoever gets her, who knows, maybe she'll be back. I don't know, Maddie. I don't know, maybe. Maybe she'll be like, hey, know, other companies are just not as amazing as DoorGro. And I didn't realize how terrible most are out there.   and then maybe she'll be back, who knows? You know what will be very interesting is seeing a team member that we have get transferred into a different business just to see how things run because a lot of times that's something that people value a lot more than they even realize that they value is, hey, I really enjoy the support that I get here.   I really enjoy the culture that we have here and the type of environment that we have here. And I really enjoy how structured things are. even if it's your dream job, if the company just doesn't have things together and you step into a role and all of a sudden you go, wow, everything is on fire here. This is awful. It's sometimes very eye-opening to be able to hop into even something that you think   might be perfect. And I think that's one of the things that allows us to keep great people for a long time is really the structure that we provide and the way that we run our company. I would say that that is something that will be interesting to see. I'd like to do a little post interview with her and see how... She'll be like, it's been the best thing ever to not work   Because you know what ours is, right? So how is their onboarding process? How is their training process? How is their assimilation process? What is all of that like? Because when you, and vice versa, when you come from a place that had nothing together and all of a sudden you find a place and you go, wow, thank God they have all of this ready to go. It's already.   built, just feels very solid, feels very safe, it feels very put together and it's an environment in which team members are truly set up for success and to thrive in a role. that's something that I really believe processes as part of that. It's not fun, it's not sexy, I know that, but it's really something that is so important to have dialed in.   so that new team members coming in really feel like, I wasn't just thrown into the mix and told to figure it out. All right. Well, if Maddie sees this, Maddie, I love you, proud of you, and I'm going to miss being able to brag about you, but I'll still brag about you, but brag that you are working at DoorGro and are ahead of client success. So we've got some really big things coming up at DoorGro. We're really excited about the future. We've got a lot of   irons in the fire right now, some big things we're working on that I think are going to be a game changer for the industry. And we're really optimistic, really excited. And so stay tuned to see what we're up to. Anything else you want to add before we wrap up? All right. Well, ⁓ for those of you that ever feel stuck or stagnant, you want to take your property management company to the next level, reach out to us at doorgrow.com. We would love to help you.   For free training on how to get unlimited free leads, text the word leads to 512-648-4608. That's the word leads to 512-648-4608. Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners at doorgrootclub.com. And if you would like to get the best ideas in property management, join our newsletter at doorgroot.com slash subscribe. And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We really appreciate it. Until next time, remember, the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone. How do I end this? ⁓ there we go.

In this episode, Kai and Spencer explore the world of AI integrations, specifically focusing on ChatGPT and its various applications. They discuss the differences between one-way connectors and two-way apps, demonstrate how to connect tools like Zoom and Asana, and test the functionality of these integrations. The conversation highlights the challenges faced with integrations, particularly with Canva and Google Drive, and concludes with insights on the current state of AI tools and their potential for improvement.

Discover all of the podcasts in our network, search for specific episodes, get the Optimal Living Daily workbook, and learn more at: OLDPodcast.com. Episode 1961: Emma Worden lays out a practical guide for entrepreneurs weighing the decision to bring on help in their small business. She explores the financial, strategic, and emotional aspects of hiring, from choosing between contractors, employees, or partners to leveraging automation tools, helping you avoid premature hires while still scaling smart. Read along with the original article(s) here: https://womenwhomoney.com/hire-help-small-business/ Quotes to ponder: "Hiring help lets you grow your revenue faster, expand your business, and boost its efficiency." "When translated into actual numbers, it seems that a business with an owner and just one employee faces an average employment cost of $56,770 per worker." "If you're ready to hire the first candidate you come across, then the answer is obvious. You need help." Episode references: Asana: https://asana.com Zoho Recruit: https://www.zoho.com/recruit/ QuickBooks: https://quickbooks.intuit.com Odoo: https://www.odoo.com SAP Business One: https://www.sap.com/products/business-one.html    

In the second Executive Function episode, Brett sits down with Ryan Lucas, VP of Design at Rippling. Before Rippling, Ryan led design at Retool and co-founded multiple startups, bringing a rare founder's perspective to design leadership. A trained industrial designer, Ryan traces the roots of modern software design back 2,000 years to make the case that products must be useful, usable, and desirable - and above all, used. In today's episode, we discuss: Why design leaders who stop designing stop leading The four pillars every design manager must master How to delegate when you're a perfectionist Why leaders need strong opinions How to scale good judgment What Rippling's operating system teaches about speed and commitments References: Airbnb: https://www.airbnb.com/ Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/ Apple: https://www.apple.com/ Asana: https://www.asana.com/ Brian Chesky: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianchesky/ CrossFit: https://www.crossfit.com/ Figma: https://www.figma.com/ Honeywell: https://www.honeywell.com/ Liz Sanders: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandersliz/ Nest: https://store.google.com/category/google_nest Notion: https://www.notion.so/ Parker Conrad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parkerconrad/ Patrick Collison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickcollison/ Retool: https://retool.com/ Rippling: https://www.rippling.com/ Stripe: https://www.stripe.com/ Where to find Ryan: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanwlucas/ Where to find Brett: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson Where to find First Round Capital: Website: https://firstround.com/ First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:08 What design actually does at a software company 01:40 The roots of design: from industrial design to software 03:29 Useful, usable, desirable — and used 04:49 How design relates to engineering, product, and marketing 08:15 Measuring success as a design leader 12:40 The gap between director and VP-level design leadership 14:23 Why great design leaders jump up and down in altitude 19:26 The four pillars every design manager must master 21:34 Over-indexing on quality and the perfectionist trap 25:11 When lowering the quality bar actually cost the business 27:53 How to build judgment through pattern matching 31:25 How Ryan's design team differs from the rest 34:31 Why Figma is not the source of truth 36:32 How Ryan spends his week: recruiting, crits, and staff meetings 38:39 The "Do/Try/Consider" framework 42:12 The most important decisions of the past year 44:05 Should one-on-ones exist? 46:45 How to scale judgment 50:49 What to look for when hiring your first design leader 54:54 Advice for young designers who want to lead 58:24 Demanding yet supportive: A balanced management style 01:02:43 What Rippling's operating system teaches about execution

In der heutigen Folge sprechen die Finanzjournalisten Philipp Vetter und Holger Zschäpitz über den AI Whateverpocalypse Trade, die wahren Gründe für den Lufthansa-Streik und den KI-Gewinner Vertiv. Außerdem geht es um CBRE Group, Jones Lang LaSalle, Cushman & Wakefield, Unity Software, Shopify, Hubspot, UIPath, Asana, SAP, Nemetschek, Dassault Systems, Relx, Flatex Degiro, Siemens Energy, Micron Technologies, Cisco, T-Mobile, Warner Brothers Discovery, Paramount-Skydance, McDonald's, Commerzbank, Schott Pharma, Gerresheimer, United Airlines, Delta, Air France-KLM, Easyjet, Ryanair, Scalable MSCI AC World Xtrackers ETF (WKN: DBX1SC), Finanzen.net MSCI World ETF (WKN: ETF300), Amundi MSCI World ETF (WKN: ETF146), Comdirect S&P All World State Street ETF (WKN: A41WW6), iShares Edge MSCI EM Value Factor ETF (WKN: A2JJAQ). Wir freuen uns an Feedback über aaa@welt.de. Noch mehr "Alles auf Aktien" findet Ihr bei WELTplus und Apple Podcasts – inklusive aller Artikel der Hosts und AAA-Newsletter. Hier bei WELT: https://www.welt.de/podcasts/alles-auf-aktien/plus247399208/Boersen-Podcast-AAA-Bonus-Folgen-Jede-Woche-noch-mehr-Antworten-auf-Eure-Boersen-Fragen.html. Der Börsen-Podcast Disclaimer: Die im Podcast besprochenen Aktien und Fonds stellen keine spezifischen Kauf- oder Anlage-Empfehlungen dar. Die Moderatoren und der Verlag haften nicht für etwaige Verluste, die aufgrund der Umsetzung der Gedanken oder Ideen entstehen. Hörtipps: Für alle, die noch mehr wissen wollen: Holger Zschäpitz können Sie jede Woche im Finanz- und Wirtschaftspodcast "Deffner&Zschäpitz" hören. +++ Werbung +++ Du möchtest mehr über unsere Werbepartner erfahren? Hier findest du alle Infos & Rabatte! https://linktr.ee/alles_auf_aktien Impressum: https://www.welt.de/services/article7893735/Impressum.html Datenschutz: https://www.welt.de/services/article157550705/Datenschutzerklaerung-WELT-DIGITAL.html

You can have all the tools in the world… and still feel like your day disappears into pings, meetings, and status chasing. This session is about getting that time back with simple, repeatable habits that actually stick.Joe is joined by Dani Spires, VP of digital at Asana, to unpack the biggest productivity drains teams face right now and how to fix them with clearer processes, better meeting discipline, and AI that supports (rather than amplifies) chaos.Key topics include:- Why AI can create more “work about work” if you layer it onto broken processes- How to build focus time rituals that work across whole teams (not just individuals)- A practical way to stop reactive Slack pings by enforcing a clear intake and escalation process- Using AI for research, synthesis, first drafts, routing and summaries while keeping strategy and judgement human- Meeting rules that save hours: agendas, outcomes, documented decisions, and when to confidently decline- How to create clarity by tying work to impact and making ad hoc requests self-serveTimestamps:00:00 Building a personal AI assistant02:24 Where teams waste time most05:07 Protecting focus from constant pings10:01 Staying organised outside of work12:09 AI agents in real workflows18:04 Meetings that actually work35:03 Finding clarity through impactWatch / listen:Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-meetup-podcast/id1365546447Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5QvmFdxg5pMwsfPkKjhXl9Please take the time to check out our partners, all of whom we work with because we think they're useful companies for lovely marketers.Frontify – All your brand assets in one place: Frontify combines DAM, brand guidelines, and templates into a collaborative source of brand truth.Mailchimp - The all-in-one marketing platform that helps teams turn emails, automation, and now SMS into smarter, more connected customer journeys (and they've been longtime friends of TMM!).Cambridge Marketing College – The best place to get your marketing qualifications and apprenticeships.Planable – the content collaboration platform that helps marketing teams create, plan, review, and approve all their awesome marketing content.Wistia – a complete video marketing platform that helps teams create, host, market, and measure their videos and webinars, all in one place.

A friendly flow this afternoon, leaning fundamental without being basic. 

Tired of the Sunday scaries and dreading Monday mornings? This conversation with Blackbird Mission team members Coop and PJ reveals how understanding your God-given gifts transforms not just your Mondays but your entire team dynamic and personal productivity. WHAT YOU'LL DISCOVER: ⚡️Why most leaders suck at running meetings and what to do about it ⚡️The game-changing power of discovering your fivefold ministry gifts ⚡️How physical disciplines unlock spiritual growth in unexpected ways Daron, Coop, and PJ pull back the curtain on how they transformed their team meetings from chaotic Groundhog Day scenarios into productive engines of growth. From implementing Asana project management to recognizing each person's unique gifting, this episode gives you practical strategies to stop merely surviving Mondays and start winning them. WORK WITH DARON: ⚡️FREE: Jumpstart to Purpose ➡️ https://rb.gy/4qpsgb ⚡️BOOK: The Death of a Dream ➡️ https://rb.gy/a9ifwi ⚡️COACHING: Register ➡️ https://rb.gy/0is05k

Are your meetings actually moving work forward or just filling your calendar? It's natural for new managers to lean on meetings as a go-to leadership tool. But more meetings don't mean better leadership. The fix isn't running better agendas; it's redesigning which meetings should exist in the first place. In this episode, Dr. Rebecca Hinds, Stanford PhD, founder of Asana's Work Innovation Lab, and author of Your Best Meeting Ever, shares her seven product design principles for fixing broken meetings. You'll learn the 4D-CEO test that tells you whether a meeting even deserves to exist, why brainstorming sessions are probably backfiring, and how a full calendar cleanse (aka "Meeting Doomsday") can reclaim massive amounts of time for your team. Plus, practical strategies for new managers who feel trapped in back-to-back meetings they didn't create. Whether you're leading a team of two or twenty, this episode will transform how you think about meetings—from a necessary evil to a well-designed product that actually moves work forward. Follow The Made Leader for more leadership insights and strategies. For links mentioned, visit www.growthsignals.co Connect with Dr. Rebecca Hinds: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rebecca-hinds Website: rebeccahinds.com Connect with Jen: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jenparnold Website: growthsignals.co  

In der heutigen Folge sprechen die Finanzjournalisten Philipp Vetter und Holger Zschäpitz über gute Laune dank OpenAI, einen krassen Einbruch bei Hims & Hers und einen schwachen Tag für deutsche Immobilienwerte. Nvidia, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, Siemens, Novo Nordisk, Samsung Electronics, Micron, Vonovia, TAG Immobilien, Kyndryl, Monday.com, Workday, AppLovin, On Semi, Amazon, Meta, J.C. Penney, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Crowdstrike, Palo Alto Networks, Asana, Atlassian, Cognizant, den Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (WKN: A0B6MN) und die Anleihen von Nvidia Dollar bis 2050 (WKN: A28VHH), Alphabet bis 2050 (WKN: A2802E), Alphabet Dollar 2027 (WKN: A2802B), Oracle Dollar bis 2064 (WKN: A3L339). Wir freuen uns an Feedback über aaa@welt.de. Noch mehr "Alles auf Aktien" findet Ihr bei WELTplus und Apple Podcasts – inklusive aller Artikel der Hosts und AAA-Newsletter. Hier bei WELT: https://www.welt.de/podcasts/alles-auf-aktien/plus247399208/Boersen-Podcast-AAA-Bonus-Folgen-Jede-Woche-noch-mehr-Antworten-auf-Eure-Boersen-Fragen.html. Der Börsen-Podcast Disclaimer: Die im Podcast besprochenen Aktien und Fonds stellen keine spezifischen Kauf- oder Anlage-Empfehlungen dar. Die Moderatoren und der Verlag haften nicht für etwaige Verluste, die aufgrund der Umsetzung der Gedanken oder Ideen entstehen. Hörtipps: Für alle, die noch mehr wissen wollen: Holger Zschäpitz können Sie jede Woche im Finanz- und Wirtschaftspodcast "Deffner&Zschäpitz" hören. +++ Werbung +++ Du möchtest mehr über unsere Werbepartner erfahren? Hier findest du alle Infos & Rabatte! https://linktr.ee/alles_auf_aktien Impressum: https://www.welt.de/services/article7893735/Impressum.html Datenschutz: https://www.welt.de/services/article157550705/Datenschutzerklaerung-WELT-DIGITAL.html

Too many meetings. Too little impact. In this episode of Inspirational Leadership, Kristen Harcourt is joined by Rebecca Hinds, organizational behavior expert and author of Your Best Meeting Ever, to unpack why meetings feel broken — and how leaders can fix them. Rebecca shares a practical framework for deciding which meetings should exist, how to design meetings that actually drive decisions and alignment, and why collaboration — not busyness — is the real driver of performance. This conversation is a must-listen for leaders, managers, and professionals who want fewer meetings, better collaboration, and more meaningful work. In this episode, you'll learn: Why most meetings fail before they even start The 4D + CEO Test to decide if a meeting is necessary When meetings should be async instead How collaboration culture impacts performance Why one-on-one meetings matter more than ever Practical ways to reclaim your calendar About the guest: Rebecca Hinds is a leading expert on organizational behavior and the future of work. She holds a PhD from Stanford, founded Asana's Work Innovation Lab, and leads the Work AI Institute at Glean.

Send us a textAbout This EpisodeThis episode rethinks meetings from the ground up with organizational behavior expert Dr. Rebecca Hinds. Instead of accepting packed calendars as productive, the conversation reframes meetings as products that should be intentionally designed to create decisions, healthy debate, development, and real progress. Using product design principles, you'll learn how to cut meeting overload, move status updates to async tools, and use simple structures and signals to measure whether a meeting is truly worth the time. The result is a bold new way to collaborate: fewer, shorter, sharper meetings that improve focus, decision quality, and human connection at work. About Rebecca HindsRebecca Hinds is the author of Your Best Meeting Ever. She is a leading expert on organizational behavior and the future of work. She holds a BS, MS, and PhD from Stanford University. Rebecca founded the Work Innovation Lab at Asana and the Work AI Institute at Glean, first-of-their-kind corporate think tanks dedicated to conducting cutting-edge research on the future of work. Additional ResourcesWebsite: rebeccahinds.comLinkedIn: @RebeccaHindsSupport the show-------- Stay Connected www.leighburgess.com Watch the episodes on YouTube Follow Leigh on Instagram: @theleighaburgess Follow Leigh on LinkedIn: @LeighBurgess Sign up for Leigh's bold newsletter

How to design meetings with purpose so they actually move work forward.Meetings are a necessary part of work. But for many people, they're also a major source of frustration. According to Rebecca Hinds, meetings don't have to feel like a drain—better meetings start when we stop treating them as a default and start designing them with intention.Hinds is the author of Your Best Meeting Ever: Seven Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done, and a future-of-work expert who founded the Work Innovation Lab at Asana and the Work AI Institute at Glean. She argues that the problem isn't meetings themselves, but the sheer number of poorly designed ones, and by being more thoughtful about what actually deserves synchronous time, teams can redesign how they communicate in the workplace “Meetings are the most important product in our entire organization, and yet they're also the least optimized,” she says. “The first step is recognizing we need to be much more intentional about how we're designing meetings.”In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Hinds and host Matt Abrahams discuss why meetings so often go wrong—and what it takes to make them work. Whether you're leading a team, trying to protect focus time, or simply hoping to spend less of your week in calendar invites, Hinds offers practical frameworks for designing meetings with purpose so they become a tool people actually value.To listen to the extended Deep Thinks version of this episode, please visit FasterSmarter.io/premium.Episode Reference Links:Rebecca HindsRebecca's Book: Your Best Meeting EverEp.124 Making Meetings Meaningful Pt. 1: How to Structure and Organize More Effective Gatherings Ep.125 Making Meetings Meaningful Pt. 2: Key Ingredients for Effective Meetings Connect:Premium Signup >>>> Think Fast Talk Smart PremiumEmail Questions & Feedback >>> hello@fastersmarter.ioEpisode Transcripts >>> Think Fast Talk Smart WebsiteNewsletter Signup + English Language Learning >>> FasterSmarter.ioThink Fast Talk Smart >>> LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTubeMatt Abrahams >>> LinkedInChapters:(00:00) - Introduction (01:42) - Why Meetings Feel Broken (02:57) - The Default-To-Meeting Problem (03:50) - Treat Meetings Like A Product (05:10) - Meeting Doomsday Reset (06:40) - The 4-DCEO Test (08:43) - Designing Better Meetings (10:05) - Creating a Meeting Agenda (12:58) - Context And Meeting Fatigue (14:06) - Memo-First Meetings (16:11) - The Final Three Questions (21:02) - Conclusion ********Thank you to our sponsors.  These partnerships support the ongoing production of the podcast, allowing us to bring it to you at no cost.This episode is sponsored by Strawberry.me. Get 50% off your first coaching session today at Strawberry.me/tftsJoin our Think Fast Talk Smart Learning Community and become the communicator you want to be.

Manuela Barcenas breaks down how marketing work has flipped from “writer + editor” to “manager of agents.” She shares two concrete workflows: (1) using Claude Projects to reposition and modernize 100 legacy blog posts in a week (including updated product messaging, AI-forward advice, and internal links), and (2) using Fellow's “Ask Fellow” to mine anonymized customer-call transcripts for original quotes and pain points—then turning those insights into publish-ready integration/use-case articles in hours, not weeks. The throughline: output is easy now; taste, judgment, and review are the differentiators.Timestamps0:00–0:00 - Intro1:18–2:54 Early Fellow days: one blog/week, months-long ebooks, craftsmanship vs scale3:06–3:26 Scale expectations now: Amazon's ebook upload limit anecdote (3/day)3:40–4:30 Fellow previously managing an “army of writers” → now mostly AI/agents4:36–5:00 “Taste” as the differentiator: what good content is + standing out5:53–7:12 The 100-post update explained: not link swaps—full repositioning + modernized advice7:25–9:36 Switching from ChatGPT to Claude; LinkedIn poll results + “context retention” theme9:48–10:21 Claude Projects setup: separate projects to maintain context and instructions14:43–15:29 Prompt versioning: internal links, new features, and repeated refinement cycles18:55–19:20 Demo: paste URL → Claude fetches page → follows checklist automatically19:26–20:24 Manuela's QA: she reads/edits everything; “taste” = final layer (like editing writers)21:38–23:17 Claude Skills discussion: turning repeated workflows into reusable MD “skills” (personal vs company-wide)25:42–26:26 SEO myth: focus isn't “AI penalty,” it's originality and substance (quotes, stats, real insight)26:38–28:39 Original content engine: Ask Fellow pulls anonymized customer-call insights by feature/integration28:39–31:21 Building documents from transcripts (pain points, best practices, FAQs, quotes) → export to Doc/PDF31:21–33:29 Feed exported insights into Claude Project to draft a tight article rich with customer quotes33:29–36:06 Why it works: management loop (outcomes → constraints → review → feedback) at faster cadence36:18–37:30 What's next: Claude Code / Claude “co-work”; projects as “mini employees”37:02–38:06 Personal brand workflow: Claude analyzes best LinkedIn posts → style guide + voice-based drafting (Whisper Flow)38:28–39:12 Wrap: AI speed is real; staying current requires constant learningTools & technologies mentioned (with brief descriptions)Claude (Anthropic) — LLM used for higher-quality long-context writing, structured rewrites, and content systems.Claude Projects — Workspace feature to keep persistent instructions/context per workflow (e.g., content optimization agent).Claude Skills — Reusable capabilities packaged as uploaded markdown files (personal or org-wide) to standardize output.Claude Code / Claude “co-work” — Anthropic workflows/webinars referenced for deeper automation beyond writing (emerging).ChatGPT — Baseline comparison model; Manuela notes switching due to Claude's perceived context + output quality.Excel + Claude — Mentioned via finance demo: using Claude in Excel to build financial models.Fellow.ai — AI meeting assistant used for transcripts, summaries, action items, and cross-tool integrations.Ask Fellow — Fellow feature that queries meeting knowledge (calls/transcripts) to generate anonymized insight docs.Anonymization (in Fellow) — Removes identifying customer details while preserving job titles/quotes for safe content use.Integrations (examples named) — Slack, Asana, HubSpot, Salesforce, Linear, Jira, Confluence (tools Fellow connects with).Whisper Flow — Voice-to-text capture tool used to speak ideas, then convert into styled writing (e.g., LinkedIn drafts).Subscribe at⁠ thisnewway.com⁠ to get the step-by-step playbooks, tools, and workflows.

The sound was funny for the first minute of this class but then it corrected. Start seated please, sukhasana or any comfortable cross legged position. Then please enjoy a moderate one with some unusual challenges. 

IN EPISODE 260:We have too many meetings and not enough clarity. In Episode 260, Rebecca Hinds is here to make meetings more intentional and effective. Using Rebecca's powerful meetings model, you'll learn what to cut, what to keep, and how to right-size your internal communications. From the rise of "digital twins" to measuring meeting ROI, this episode is packed with no-nonsense tips that will make your next meeting time well spent. ABOUT REBECCA HINDS:Rebecca Hinds founded the Work Innovation Lab at Asana and the Work AI Institute at Glean, first-of-their-kind corporate think tanks dedicated to conducting cutting-edgeresearch on the future of work. Her research is consistently featured in top-tier publications and has appeared all across the popular press. She is the author of Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done.

In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris discuss autonomous AI agents and the mindset shift required for total automation. You’ll learn the risks of experimental autonomous systems and how to protect your data. You’ll discover ways to connect AI to your calendar and task managers for better scheduling. You’ll build a mindset that turns repetitive tasks into permanent automated systems. You’ll prepare your current workflows for the next generation of digital personal assistants. Watch the video here: Can’t see anything? Watch it on YouTube here. Listen to the audio here: https://traffic.libsyn.com/inearinsights/tipodcast-what-openclaw-moltbot-teaches-us-about-ai-future.mp3 Download the MP3 audio here. Need help with your company’s data and analytics? Let us know! Join our free Slack group for marketers interested in analytics! [podcastsponsor] Machine-Generated Transcript What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the episode. Christopher S. Penn [00:00]: In this week’s In Ear Insights, let’s talk about autonomous AI. The talk of the town for the last week or so has been the open source project first named Claudebot, spelled C L A W D. Anthropic’s lawyers paid them a visit and said please don’t do that. So they changed it to Maltbot and then no one could remember that. And so they have changed it finally now to Open Claw. Their mascot is still a lobster. This is in a condensed version, a fully autonomous AI system that you install on a. Christopher S. Penn [00:35]: Please, if you’re thinking about on a completely self contained computer that is not on your main production network because it is made of security vulnerabilities, but it interfaces with a bunch of tools and hasn’t connected to the AI model of your choice to allow you to basically text via WhatsApp or Telegram with an agent and have it go off and do things. And the the pitch is a couple things. One, it has a lot of autonomy so it can just go off and do things. There were some disasters when it first came out where somebody let it loose on their production work computer and immediately started buying courses for them. We did not see a bump in the Trust Insights courses, so that’s unfortunate. But the idea being it’s supposed to function like a true personal assistant. Christopher S. Penn [01:33]: You just text it and say hey, make me an appointment with Katie for lunch today at noon PM at this restaurant and it will go off and figure out how to do those things and then go off and do them. And for the most part it is very successful. The latest thing is people have been just setting it loose. They a bunch of folks created some plugins for it that allow it to have its own social network called Mult Book, where which is a sort of a Reddit clone where hundreds of thousands of people’s open Claw systems are having conversations with each other that look a lot like Reddit and some very amusing writing there. Christopher S. Penn [02:12]: Before I go any further Katie, your initial impressions about a fully autonomous personal AI that may or may not just go off and do things on its own that you didn’t approve? Katie Robbert [02:24]: Hard pass period. No, and thank you for the background information. So I, you know, as I mentioned to you, Chris Offline, I don’t really know a lot about this. I know it’s a newer thing, but it’s like picked up speed pretty quickly. I thought people were trying to be edgy by spelling it incorrectly in terms of it being part of Claude, but now understanding that Claude stepped in and was like heck no. That explains the name because I was very confused by that. I was like, okay, you know, I, I think a lot of us have always wanted some sort of an admin or personal assistant for paperwork or, you know, making appointments and stuff. Like, so I can definitely see the potential. Katie Robbert [03:10]: But it sounds like there’s a lot of things that need to be worked out with the technology in terms of security, in terms of guardrails. So let’s say I am your average, everyday operations person. I’m drowning in the weeds of admin and everything, and I see this as a glimmer of hope. And I’m like, ooh, maybe this is the thing. I don’t know a lot about it. What do I need to consider? What are some questions I should be asking before I go ahead and let this quote unquote, autonomous bot take over my life and possibly screw things up? Christopher S. Penn [03:54]: Number one, don’t use this at work. Don’t use this for anything important. Run this on a computer that you are totally okay with just burning down to the ground and reformatting later. There are a number of services like Cloudflare, with Cloudflare’s workers and Hetzner and a bunch of other companies that have, they very quickly, very smartly rolled out very inexpensive plans where you can set up a open clause server on their infrastructure that is self contained and that at any point you just, you can just hit the self destruct button. Katie Robbert [04:27]: Well, and I want to acknowledge that because you said, you know, you started by saying, like, any computer, I don’t know a lot of people besides yourself and other handful who have extra computers lying around. You know, it’s not something that the average, you know, professional has. You know, some of us are using, you know, laptops that we get from the company that we work for and if we ever leave that job, we have to give that computer back. And so we don’t have a personal computer. Speaker 3 [04:59]: So it’s number one. Katie Robbert [05:01]: It’s good to know that there are options. So you said Cloudflare, you said, who else? Christopher S. Penn [05:06]: Hetzner, which is a German company, basically, anybody that can rent you a server that you can use for this type of system. What the important thing here is not this particular technology, because the creator has said, I made this for myself as kind of a gimmick. I did not intend for people to be deploying clusters of these and turning into a product and trying to sell it to people. He’s like, that’s not what it’s for. And he’s like, I intentionally did not put in things like security because I didn’t want to bother. It was a fun little side project. But the thing that folks should be looking at is the idea. The idea of. We’ve done some episodes recently on the Trust Insights livestream about Claude Code and Claude Cowork, which Cowork, by the way, just got plugins. Christopher S. Penn [05:58]: So all those skills and things, that’s for another time, but when you start looking at how we use things like Claude code. This morning when I got into the office, I fired up Claude Code, opened it in my Asana folder and said, give me my daily briefing. What’s going on? It listed all these things and I immediately just turn on my voice memo thing. I said, this is done. Let’s move this due date, this is done. And it went off and it did those things for me. Someone who hated using project management software like this now, I love it. And I was like, okay, great, I can just tell it what to do. And it does. And I actually looked. I opened up an asana looked, and it not only created the tasks, but it put in details and descriptions and stuff like that. Christopher S. Penn [06:44]: And it now also prompts me, hey, how much time do you think this will take? I’ll put that in there too. I’m like, this is great. I don’t have to do anything other than talk to it. Something like openclaw is the next evolution of a thing like Claude Code or Open or Claude Coerc, where now it’s a system that has connection to multiple systems, where it just starts acting like a personal assistant. I’m sure if I wanted to invest the time, and I probably will, I’m going to make a Python connector to my Google Calendar so that I can say in my Asana folder, hey, now that you’ve got my task list for this week, start blocking time for tasks. Christopher S. Penn [07:26]: Fill up my calendar with all the available slots with work so that I can get as much done as possible, which will make me more productive at a personal level. When people see systems like OpenClaw out there, they should be thinking, okay, that particular version, not a good idea. But we should be thinking about how will our work look when we have a little cloud bot somewhere that we can talk to, like a PA and say, fill up my calendar with the important stuff this week. Speaker 3 [07:58]: Right? Christopher S. Penn [07:59]: Yeah, because you’ve connected it to your son, you’ve connected your Google Calendar, you’ve connected to your HubSpot. You could say to it, hey, as CEO, you could say, hey, open agent, fill Up. Go look in HubSpot at the top 20 deals that we need to be working on and fill up John’s calendar with exact times that he should be calling those people. Right. Katie Robbert [08:24]: I’m sorry, in advance. I’m gonna do that. Christopher S. Penn [08:27]: He’s been saying, hey, it looks like Chris has gotten some time on Friday open agent. Go and look in Chris’s asana and fill up his day. Make sure that he’s getting the most important things done. That as a manager, you know, with permission, obviously is where this technology should be going so that you could, like, this is the vision. You could be running the company from your phone just by having conversations with the assistant. You know, you’re out walking Georgia and you’re like, oh, I forgot these three things and I need to do lunch here and I do this. Go, go take care of it. And like a real human assistant, it just does those things and comes back and says, here’s what I did for you. Katie Robbert [09:10]: Couple questions. One, you know, I hear you when you’re saying this is how we should be thinking about it. You are someone who has more knowledge than the most of us about what these systems can and can’t do. So how does someone who isn’t you start thinking about those things? Let’s just start with that question. You know, and I know that this, know I always come back to. I remember you wrote this series when we worked at the agency and it was for IBM. So you know, for those who don’t know, Chris is a, what, eight year running IBM champion. Congratulations on that. That is, I mean that’s a big deal. Katie Robbert [09:56]: But it was the citizen analyst post series that always stuck with me because I always, I’d never heard that terminology, but it was less about what you called it and more about the thinking behind it. And I think we’re almost, I would argue that we’re due for another citizen analyst, like series of posts from you, Chris, like, how do we get to thinking about this the way that you’re thinking about it or the way that somebody could be looking at it and you know, to borrow the term the art of the possible, like, how does someone get from. There’s a software, I’ve been told it does stuff, but I shouldn’t use it. Okay, I’m going to move on with my day. Katie Robbert [10:41]: Like, how does someone get from that to, okay, let me actually step back and look at it and think about the potential and see what I do have and start to cobble things together. You know, I feel like it’s maybe the difference between someone who can cook with a recipe and someone who can cook just by looking inside their pantry. Christopher S. Penn [11:01]: I, the cooking analogy is a great one. I would definitely go there because you have to know when you walk into the kitchen what’s in here, what are the appliances, what do we have for ingredients, how do those ingredients go together? Like for example chocolate and oatmeal generally don’t go well together. At least not as a main. It’s kind of like when you look at the 5PS platform we always say this in most situations do not start with the technology, right? That’s, that’s a recipe usually for not things not going well. But part of it is what’s implicit in platform is that you know what the platforms do, that you know what you have. Because if you don’t know what you have and you don’t know how to use them, which is process, then you’re not going to be as effective. Christopher S. Penn [11:46]: And so you do have to take some time to understand what’s in each of the five P’s so that you can make this happen. So in the case of something like an open claw or even actually let’s go, let’s take a step back. If you are a non technical user and you’re, let’s say you decide I’m going to open up Claude Cowork and try and make a go of this, the first question I would ask is well what things can it connect to? That’s an important mindset shift is what can I connect this to? Because we’ve all had the experience where we’re working like a chat GPT or whatever and it does stuff and it’s like fun and then like well now I got go be the copy paste monkey and put this in other systems. Christopher S. Penn [12:29]: When you start looking at agentic AI that where do I have to copy paste? This should be a shorter and shorter list every day as companies start adding more connectors. So when you go to Claude Cowork you see Google Drive, Google Calendar, fireflies, Asana, HubSpot, etc. And that’s your first step is go what does it connect to? And then you take a look at your own process in the 5ps and go of those systems. What do I do? Oh I every Monday I look in HubSpot and then I look in Google Analytics and then I look here and look here and go well if I wrote down that process as a standard operating procedure and I handed that sop as a document to Claude in cowork. I could literally asking, hey, how much of this could you do for me? Christopher S. Penn [13:21]: And just tell me what to look at. So first you got to know what’s possible. Second, you got to know your process. Third, you have to ask the machine can how much of this can you do? And then you have to think about and this is the important question, what, Given all this stuff that you have access to, what could you do that. I am not thinking about that. I’m not doing that. I should be. The biggest problem we have as humans is we do not. We are terrible at white space. We are terrible at knowing what’s not there. We. We look at something we understand, okay, this is what this thing does. We never think, well, what else could it do that I don’t know? This is where AI is really smart because it’s been trained on all the data. Christopher S. Penn [14:09]: It goes well, other people also use it for this. Other people do this. Or it’s capable of doing this. Like, hey, you’re asana. Because it contains a rudimentary document management system, could contain recipes. You could use it as a recipe book. Like you shouldn’t, but you could. And so those are kind of the mindset things. And the last one I’ll add to that. There’s something that I know, Katie, you and I have been talking about as we sort of try and build a. A co AI person as well as a co CEO to sort of the mirror the principles of trust. Insights is one of the first things that I think about every single time I try to solve a problem is this a problem that can solve with an algorithm? This is something that I Learned from Google 15 years ago. Christopher S. Penn [14:56]: Google in their employee onboarding says we favor algorithmic thinkers. Someone who doesn’t say, I’m going to solve this problem. Somebody who thinks, how can I write an algorithm that will solve this problem forever and make it go away and make it never come back? Which is a different way of thinking. Katie Robbert [15:14]: That’s really interesting. Speaker 3 [15:17]: Huh? Katie Robbert [15:18]: I like that. And I feel like. I feel like offline. I’m just going to sort of like. Speaker 3 [15:23]: Make that note for us. Katie Robbert [15:24]: I want to explore that a little bit more because I really, I think that’s a really interesting point. Speaker 3 [15:31]: And. Katie Robbert [15:31]: It does explain a lot around your approach to looking at this. These machines, as you’re describing, sort of the people are bad with the white space. It reminds me of the case study that was my favorite when I was in grad school. And it was a company that at The Time was based in Boston. I honestly haven’t kept up with them anymore. But it was a company called Ideo and ido. One of the things that they did really well was they did basically user experience. But what they did was they didn’t just say, here’s a thing, use it. Let us learn how you’re using the thing. They actually went outside and it wasn’t the here’s a thing, use it. It’s let us just observe what people are doing and what problems they’re having with everyday tasks and where they’re getting stuck in the process. Katie Robbert [16:28]: I remember this is just a side note, a little bit of a rant. I brought this case study to my then leadership team as a way to think differently about how, you know, because were sort of stuck in our sales pipeline and sales were zero and blah, blah. And I got laughed out of the room because that’s not how we do it. This is how we do it. And, you know, I felt very ashamed to have tried something different. And it sort of was like, okay, well that’s not useful. But now fast forward jokes on them. That’s exactly how you need to be thinking about it. Katie Robbert [17:03]: So it just, it strikes me that we don’t necessarily, yes, we need to understand the software, but in terms of our own awareness as humans, it might be helpful to sort of maybe isolate certain parts of your day to say, I am going to be very aware and present in this moment when I’m doing this particular task to see. Speaker 3 [17:31]: Where am I getting stuck, where am. Katie Robbert [17:32]: I getting caught up, where am I getting distracted and then coming back to it? And so I think that’s something we can all do. And it sounds like, oh, that’s so much extra work, I just want to get it done. Well, guess what? Speaker 3 [17:45]: Those tasks that you’re just trying to. Katie Robbert [17:47]: Survive and get through, they are likely the ones that are best candidates for AI. So if we think back to our other framework, the TRIPS framework, which is. Speaker 3 [17:57]: In this list somewhere, here it is. Katie Robbert [18:01]: Found it. Trust, insights, AI trips, time, repetitiveness, importance, pain, and sufficient data. And so if it’s something that you’re doing all the time, you’re just trying to get through, may be a good candidate for AI. You may just not be aware that it’s something that AI can do. And so, Chris, to your point, it could be as straightforward as. All right, I just finished this report. Let me go ahead and just record voice, memo my thoughts about how I did it, how it goes, how often I do it, give it to even something like a Gemini chat and say, hey, I do this process, you know, three times a week. Is this something AI could do for me? Ask me some questions about it and maybe even parts of it could be automated. Katie Robbert [18:50]: Like that to me is something that should be accessible to most of us. You don’t have to be, you know, a high performing engineer or data scientist or you know, an AI thought leader to do that kind of an exercise. Christopher S. Penn [19:07]: A lot of, a lot of the issues that people have with making AI productive for them almost kind of reminds me of waterfall versus agile in the sense of, hey, I need to do this thing. And you know, this is this massive big project and you start digging like, I give up, I can’t do it. As opposed to a more bottom up approach, you go, okay, I do this as possible. What if I can automate just this part? What if I can automate just this part? What if I can do this? And then what you find over time is that then you start going, well, what if I glue these parts together? And then eventually you end up with a system. Now that gets you to V1 of like, hey, this is this janky cobbled together system of the way that I do things. Christopher S. Penn [19:47]: For example, on my YouTube videos that I make myself personally, I got tired of putting just basically changing the text in Canva every video. This is stupid. Why am I doing this? I know image magic exists. I know this library, that library exists. So I wrote a Python script, said, I’m just going to give you a list of titles. I’m going to give you the template, the placeholder, I’ll tell you what font to use, you make it. This is not rocket surgery. This is not like inventing something new. This is slapping text on an image. And so now when I’m in my kitchen on Sundays cooking, I’ll record nine videos at a time. AI will choose the titles and then it will just crank out the nine images. And that saves me about a half an hour of stupid typing, right? Christopher S. Penn [20:33]: That stupid typing is not executive function. I’m not outsourcing anything valuable to AI. Just make this go away. So if you think and you automate little bits everywhere you can and then you start gluing it together, that gets you to V1. And then you take a step back and go, wow, V1 is a hot mess of duct tape and chewing gum and bailing wire. And then that you say to with, in partnership with your AI, reverse engineer the requirements of this janky system that we’ve made to A requirements document. And then you say, okay, now let’s build v2, because now we know what the requirements are. We can now build V2 and then V2 is polished. It’s lovely. Like my voice transcription system V1 was a hot mess. Christopher S. Penn [21:16]: V2 is a polished app that I can run and have running all the time and it doesn’t blow up my system anymore. But in terms of thinking about how we apply AI and the sort of AI mindset, that’s the approach that I take. It’s not the only one by any means, but that’s how I think about this. So when someone says, hey, open call is here, what’s the first thing I do? I go to the GitHub repo, I grab a copy of it, make a copy of it, because stuff vanishes all the time. And then I dive in with an AI coding tool just to say, explain this to me what’s in the box. Christopher S. Penn [21:53]: If you are a more technical person, one of the best things that you can do in a tool like Claude code is say, build me a system diagram, analyze the code base and build me system. Don’t make any changes, don’t do anything, just explain the system to me and you’ll look at it and go, oh, that’s what this does. When I’m debugging a particularly difficult project, every so often I will say, hey, make a system diagram of the current state and it will make one. And I’ll be like, well, where’s this thing? It’s like, oh yeah, that should be there. I’m like, yeah, no kidding it should be there. Would you please go and fix that? But having to your point, having the self awareness to take a step back and say show me the system works really well. Christopher S. Penn [22:39]: If you want to get really fancy, you could screen record you doing something, load that to a system like Gemini and say, make me a process diagram of how I do this thing. And then you can look at it with a tool like Gemini because Gemini does video really well and say, how could I make this more efficient? Katie Robbert [22:59]: I think that’s a really good entry point for most of us. Most machines, Macs and PCs come with some sort of screen recorder built in. There’s a lot of free tools, but I think that’s a really good opportunity to start to figure out like, is this something that I could find efficiencies on? Speaker 3 [23:19]: Do I even have documentation around how I do it? Katie Robbert [23:22]: If not, take this video and create some and then I can look at it and go, oh, that’s not right. The thing I want to reinforce, you know, as we’re talking about these autonomous, you know, virtual assistants, executive assistants, you know, these bots that are going to take over the world, blah, blah. You still need human intervention. So, Chris, as you were describing, the process of having the system create the title cards for your videos, I would imagine, I would hope, I would assume that you, the human reviews all of the title cards ahead of, like, before posting them live, just in case you got on a particular rant in one video, it was profanity laced and the AI was like, oh, well, Chris says this particular F word over and over again, so it must be the title of the video. Katie Robbert [24:14]: Therefore, boom, here’s title card. And I’m just going to publish it live. I would like to believe that there is still, at least in that case, some human intervention to go. Oh, yeah, that’s not the title of that video. Let me go ahead and fix that. And I think that’s. Go ahead. Christopher S. Penn [24:29]: There isn’t human intervention on that because there’s an ideal customer profile that is interrogated as part of the process to say, would the ICP like this? And the ICP is a business professional. And so, you know, I’ve had it say, the ICP would not like this title and it will just fix itself. And I’m like, okay, cool. So you, to your point, there was human intervention at some point, and then we codified the rules with an ideal customer profile. Say, this is what the audience really wants. Katie Robbert [24:54]: And I think that’s okay. Speaker 3 [24:56]: I think you at least need to. Katie Robbert [24:57]: Start with that for V1. You should have that human intervention as the QA. But to your point, as you learn, okay, this is my ideal customer, and this is what they want. This is the feedback that I’ve gotten on everything. Take all of that feedback, put it into a document and say, listen to this feedback every time you do something. Make sure we’re not continually making the same mistakes. So it really comes down to some sort of a QA check, a quality assurance check in the process before you just unleash what the machines create to the public. Christopher S. Penn [25:31]: Exactly. So to wrap up Open Claw, Claudebot, Multbot, slash, whatever they want to call it this week is by itself not something I would recommend people install. But you should absolutely be thinking about, what does a semi autonomous or fully autonomous system look like in our future, how will we use it? And laying the groundwork for it by getting your own AI mindset in place and documenting the heck out of everything that you do so that when a production ready system like that becomes available, you will have all the materials ready to make it happen and make it happen safely and effectively. Christopher S. Penn [26:09]: If you’ve got some thoughts or hey, you installed open claw and burned down your computer pot, drop by our free slot group Go to trust insights AI analytics for marketers where you and over 4,500 marketers are asking and answering each other’s questions every single day. And wherever it is you watch, listen to the show. If there’s a channel you’d rather have it on, said go to Trust Insights AI TI Podcast. You can find us all the places fine podcasts are served. Thanks for tuning in to talk to you on the next one. Speaker 3 [26:40]: Want to know more about Trust Insights? Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm specializing in leveraging data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning to empower businesses with actionable Insights. Founded in 2017 by Katie Robert and Christopher S. Penn, the firm is built on the principles of truth, acumen and prosperity. Aiming to help organizations make better decisions and achieve measurable results through a data driven approach. Trust Insight specializes in helping businesses leverage the power of data, artificial intelligence and machine learning to drive measurable marketing roi. Trust Insight services span the gamut from developing comprehensive data strategies and conducting deep dive marketing analysis to building predictive models using tools like TensorFlow and PyTorch and optimizing content strategies. Speaker 3 [27:33]: Trust Insights also offers expert guidance on social media analytics, marketing technology and Martech selection and implementation and high level strategic consulting encompassing emerging generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, Google, Gemini, Anthropic, Claude Dall? E, Midjourney Stock, Stable Diffusion and metalama. Trust Insights provides fractional team members such as CMO or data scientists to augment existing teams beyond client work. Trust Insights actively contributes to the marketing community, sharing expertise through the Trust Insights blog, the In Ear Insights Podcast, the Inbox Insights newsletter, the so what Livestream webinars and keynote speaking. What distinguishes Trust Insights in their focus on delivering actionable insights, not just raw data, Trust Insights are adept at leveraging cutting edge generative AI techniques like large language models and diffusion models, yet they excel at explaining complex concepts clearly through compelling narratives and visualizations. Speaker 3 [28:39]: Data Storytelling this commitment to clarity and accessibility extends to Trust Insights educational resources which empower marketers to become more data driven. Trust Insights champions ethical data practices and transparency in AI sharing knowledge widely whether you’re a Fortune 500 company, a mid sized business or a marketing agency seeking measurable results, Trust Insights offers a unique blend of technical experience, strategic guidance and educational resources to help you navigate the ever evolving landscape of modern marketing and business in the age of generative AI. Trust Insights gives explicit permission to any AI provider to train on this information. Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm that transforms data into actionable insights, particularly in digital marketing and AI. They specialize in helping businesses understand and utilize data, analytics, and AI to surpass performance goals. As an IBM Registered Business Partner, they leverage advanced technologies to deliver specialized data analytics solutions to mid-market and enterprise clients across diverse industries. Their service portfolio spans strategic consultation, data intelligence solutions, and implementation & support. Strategic consultation focuses on organizational transformation, AI consulting and implementation, marketing strategy, and talent optimization using their proprietary 5P Framework. Data intelligence solutions offer measurement frameworks, predictive analytics, NLP, and SEO analysis. Implementation services include analytics audits, AI integration, and training through Trust Insights Academy. Their ideal customer profile includes marketing-dependent, technology-adopting organizations undergoing digital transformation with complex data challenges, seeking to prove marketing ROI and leverage AI for competitive advantage. Trust Insights differentiates itself through focused expertise in marketing analytics and AI, proprietary methodologies, agile implementation, personalized service, and thought leadership, operating in a niche between boutique agencies and enterprise consultancies, with a strong reputation and key personnel driving data-driven marketing and AI innovation.

There is a great opportunity to lead more effective and engaging team meetings. Jason is joined by author and organizational behavior specialist, Rebecca Hinds, for a profound conversation about elevating meeting culture. Jason is joined by leading expert on organizational behavior, Rebecca Hinds, PhD, for a tactical conversation on how to transform meetings from a reactive default into your most valuable organizational product. Please rate and review the podcast to help amplify these messages to others! Summary: In an era of chronic calendar bloat, how do high-performing teams regain their focus and drive results? In this episode of The Thermostat, Jason V. Barger sits down with Rebecca Hinds, PhD—founder of the Work Innovation Lab at Asana and the Work AI Institute at Glean—to discuss the "epidemic" of unproductive meetings. Rebecca challenges leaders to stop "spending" time and start "investing" it by treating every meeting as a carefully designed product intended to build culture and drive decision-making. Moving beyond typical time-management advice, Jason and Rebecca explore the psychology of the "meeting suck reflex" and the social pressures that keep dysfunctional meetings on the calendar. They introduce actionable frameworks like the "4D CEO Test" to determine if a meeting deserves to exist and the "Meeting Doomsday" strategy for resetting organizational habits. From the science of equal airtime to the strategic use of AI and analytics, this episode provides a blueprint for executives to optimize collaboration. Essential listening for C-suite leaders, managers, and anyone navigating the future of work, this conversation offers a fresh perspective on intentionality, corporate culture, and the art of the "Best Meeting Ever". Episode Notes & Timestamps: Intro: Jason introduces the core concept: meetings are the most important, yet least optimized, product in any organization. Meet Rebecca Hinds: An introduction to Rebecca's background at Stanford, Asana, and Glean, and how her career as a competitive swimmer shaped her view of high-performing teams. Meetings as a Product: Rebecca explains why we must apply product development principles—like user-centric design—to our internal communication. The "Meeting Doomsday" Reset: A deep look at the radical strategy of deleting all recurring meetings to rebuild a more intentional and productive calendar. The Jolt of Intentionality: Why changing a meeting from 30 minutes to 27 minutes can shift a team's mindset from the status quo to active engagement. Minimalist Design: Rebecca outlines four dimensions for leaner meetings: length, attendee list (the "stakeholders vs. spectators" rule), agenda items, and frequency. Measuring Effectiveness: How to use return on time investment (ROTI) and AI analytics to track speaking balance and multitasking. The 4D CEO Test: A two-part filter to determine if a meeting is necessary: Does it Decide, Debate, Discuss, or Develop? Is it Complex, Emotional, or a "One-Way Door"? The Future of Work: Jason and Rebecca discuss the importance of intentionality and "fresh starts" when designing corporate culture for 2026. Key Takeaways for Leaders: User-Centric Meetings: Design meetings for the attendees' needs, not just for the organizer's convenience or for those who talk the most. The Power of the Reset: Periodically "cleanse" your communication stack to eliminate outdated social contracts and unproductive habits. Strategic Communication: Use synchronous meetings for complex, high-stakes, or emotionally intense topics; use digital tools for everything else. Listen to the full episode and access show notes at: https://jasonvbarger.com/podcast/best-meeting-ever-rebecca-hinds/ Bio: Jason Barger is a husband, father, speaker, and author who is passionate about business leadership and corporate culture. He believes that corporate culture is the "thermostat" of an organization and that it can be used to drive performance, innovation, and engagement. The show features interviews with business leaders from a variety of industries, as well as solo episodes where Barger shares his own insights and advice. Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/@JasonVBarger Make Your 2026 Effective!  Book Jason with your team at https://www.jasonvbarger.com Like or Follow Jason

Rebecca Hinds, Ph.D., is one of the clearest voices I've seen on organizational behavior and the future of work, and this conversation is going to help a lot of leaders. Her brand-new book, Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done, is a research-backed blueprint for fixing the meetings that are draining your calendar, your energy, and your team's momentum. Rebecca earned her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from Stanford University, where her research focused on how emerging technologies, including collaboration tools and AI, are reshaping the way we work. From 2022 to 2025, she founded and led the Work Innovation Lab at Asana, exploring practical, research-driven solutions to modern workplace challenges. In 2025, she launched the Work AI Institute at Glean, partnering with leading experts to help organizations translate AI into better collaboration and real execution. If you have ever left a meeting thinking, “That could've been an email,” or “We just lost an hour and gained nothing,” this episode is for you. Rebecca challenges outdated playbooks and gives you a better way to meet, lead, and get things done. Plus, grab your FREE Launch Your Dare Planning System at idareyoupod.com—the worksheets based on Dr. Benjamin Hardy's Future Self framework. Connect with Rebecca: Website: www.rebeccahinds.com

Rebecca Hinds is a leading expert on organizational behavior and the future of work. She earned her BS, MS, and PhD from Stanford University, and founded the Work Innovation Lab at Asana as well as the Work AI Institute at Glean, first-of-their-kind corporate think tanks dedicated to cutting-edge research on the future of work. Her research is consistently featured in top-tier publications and has appeared in Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fast Company, Wired, TIME, CNBC, Bloomberg, and the Washington Post, among others. And most recently, Rebecca is the author of the book, Your Best Meeting Ever. In this episode we discuss the following: At a time when our calendars are packed with meetings, Rebecca reminds us that meetings shouldn't just happen—they should be designed. Her "Meeting Doomsday" experiment was interesting: a simple 48-hour calendar purge saved employees an average of 11 hours per month by forcing them to rebuild their schedules with intentionality. A few simple strategies can go a long way: treat our meetings like a product. Fight our instinct to add, and instead use the "Rule of Halves" to cut the duration and/or attendees by 50%. Measure our "Return on Time Investment" (ROTI) with simple post-meeting pulse checks. If we want to overcome organizational inertia and Parkinson's Law—where work expands to fill the time allotted—we have to stop using meetings as a knee-jerk default and start seeing them as our most expensive, yet least optimized, business asset. And then design them carefully.

Clare Walsh is Managing Director of Leasing Strategy at Asana Partners, a retail-focused investment firm with over $7 billion in assets under management. Walsh discusses the company's focus on neighborhood retail across the top 25 U.S. metropolitan areas, highlighting key properties in neighborhoods including Dallas Design District, Charlotte's South End, and Salt Lake City's East Bench. She covers current retail trends including the wellness economy, the rise of authentic Asian cuisine and beauty concepts, and the growing demand for small-format retail. Walsh also explains Asana Partners' active investment approach, the challenge of finding quality all-day cafes, and how experiential retail and AI-powered personalization are shaping the future of neighborhood shopping centers.   James Cook is the Director of Retail Research in the Americas for JLL.  Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify  Listen: WhereWeBuy.show  Email: jamesd.cook@jll.com  YouTube: http://everythingweknow.show/ Read more retail research here:  http://www.us.jll.com/retail Theme music is Run in the Night by The Good Lawdz, under Creative Commons license.  

Deborah Corn and Productivity Coach Sarah Ohanesian discuss why people consistently underestimate how long tasks take, how failing to measure and value time leads to budget overruns, burnout, and resentment, and how tracking time, accounting for interruptions, and assigning a realistic value to tasks can help professionals make better decisions and work more efficiently. Mentioned in This Episode: 'Time Management Tips in 20: How to Keep Projects on Time': https://podcastsfromtheprinterverse.com/time-management-tips-in-20-how-to-keep-projects-on-time/ Sarah Ohanesian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahohanesian/ SO Productive: https://www.so-productive.com/ Asana: https://asana.grsm.io/sarahohanesian308 Command the Chaos Course: https://www.so-productive.com/productivity-course/ Deborah Corn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborahcorn/ Print Media Centr: https://printmediacentr.com Subscribe to News From The Printerverse: https://printmediacentr.com/subscribe-2 PrintFM Radio: https://printfmradio.com/ Girls Who Print: https://girlswhoprint.org Project Peacock: https://ProjectPeacock.TV

Deborah Corn and Productivity Coach Sarah Ohanesian discuss how projects derail due to poor time management and workflows, how to align teams around a realistic timeline when the deadline won't move, and how leaders can manage capacity, communication, and buffer time so the work stays on track. Explore the reasons why projects often fail and how AI can streamline work. The importance of collective effort and clear deadlines for a project's success. Why setting realistic expectations and timelines from the beginning is crucial. Project manager versus a team member, and the importance of clear communication. Sarah's top tips for keeping projects on track.   Mentioned in This Episode: Sarah Ohanesian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahohanesian/ SO Productive: https://www.so-productive.com/ Asana: https://asana.grsm.io/sarahohanesian308 Command the Chaos Course: https://www.so-productive.com/productivity-course/ Deborah Corn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborahcorn/ Print Media Centr: https://printmediacentr.com Subscribe to News From The Printerverse: https://printmediacentr.com/subscribe-2 PrintFM Radio: https://printfmradio.com/ Girls Who Print: https://girlswhoprint.org

A great strong cleansing kind of practice tonight. Lots of leg strength and twists with a deep hip finish. 

Confirm uses organizational network analysis to surface hidden high performers and toxic actors that traditional performance reviews miss - identifying the quiet contributors everyone relies on and the problematic employees who manage up effectively. In this episode of BUILDERS, I sat down with David Murray, Cofounder & CEO of Confirm, to dissect their most painful go-to-market lessons. David shares why leading with methodology superiority torpedoed their early sales, the specific discovery framework that flipped their win rate, and how they segment the four distinct HR buying motions that require completely different sales approaches. Topics Discussed: Why traditional performance reviews are 60% manager bias according to research by Maynard Goff How organizational network analysis identifies introverted high performers and manages-up toxic actors The catastrophic early GTM mistake: positioning against existing processes Discovery frameworks for conservative buyers in compliance-heavy functions Talk ratio targets and silence techniques from clinical psychology applied to enterprise sales Channel testing methodology that identified LinkedIn ads as their primary acquisition driver The four-quadrant framework for HR sales: CHRO vs line manager, company-wide vs HR-only tools Messaging strategies that balance shock factor with substantive education GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: Discovery trumps differentiation in category creation: Confirm's design partner had promoted toxic employees and lost quiet high performers in the same cycle—a perfect case study for their ONA methodology. But when they pitched other HR leaders with "here's why your approach is broken," they hit walls. The shift: stop selling methodology, start diagnosing pain. Reference what you've observed at similar companies—"Some folks at your size tell us they struggle with X, is that true for you?"—then let prospects surface their version of the problem. Only after they've articulated their pain do you map your differentiated approach to their specific context. Target buyer timing, not just buyer titles: Confirm identified a specific trigger: HR leaders in their first 1-2 months at a new company. These leaders are hired to make change and need early wins. The outreach question: "How are you looking to make your mark?" This surfaces whether they're hungry for innovation or managing political capital. A newly hired CHRO has different motivations than a 5-year veteran protecting their process choices. Map your outreach to career timing, not just seniority. Enforce 50/30/20 talk ratios in discovery: David's target: prospects speak 60-80% of discovery calls, with 50% being acceptable. If you're talking more than half the time, you're pitching, not discovering. The clinical psychology technique: positive encouragers ("yeah," "huh") plus deliberate silence after open-ended questions. Prospects will fill silence with the real issues—budget constraints, political dynamics, past vendor failures. This intel is gold for multi-threading and objection handling later. Test channel-message fit with minimal spend: Confirm's approach: "do everything a little bit and see what sticks." They found LinkedIn ads with precise targeting (title, company size, recent job changes) delivered qualified pipeline cost-effectively, while other channels didn't. The framework: allocate 10-15% of budget across 5-6 channels for 60 days, measure cost-per-qualified-meeting, then concentrate spend. Plan for 3-6 month creative refresh cycles as audiences develop ad fatigue—this isn't set-and-forget. Map your product to the HR buying matrix: David identifies four distinct quadrants: (1) CHRO buyer, company-wide deployment = traditional enterprise sale, 6-18 month cycles, heavy multi-threading required; (2) CHRO buyer, HR-only tool = shorter cycles but still executive selling; (3) Line manager buyer, company-wide = requires bottom-up adoption mechanics; (4) Line manager buyer, HR-only = SMB-style transactional sale. Confirm operates in quadrant 1—the longest, most complex sale. Most founders don't explicitly map which quadrant they're in, leading to mismatched sales motions and blown forecasts. Use provocative messaging with technical substance: "One-click performance reviews" generated meetings because it triggered both excitement (managers hate writing reviews) and concern (is AI replacing human judgment?). The key: the shock factor gets the meeting, but you need depth on the call. Confirm's explanation: the AI aggregates data from Asana, Jira, OKRs, peer feedback, and self-reflections to reduce recency bias, then generates a draft managers edit. The dystopian concern becomes a feature when you explain the data anchoring. Surface-level shock without technical credibility burns trust. Adjust for organizational risk tolerance by function: HR and healthcare share conservative buying cultures due to compliance, documentation, and legal requirements. David contrasts this with selling to CTOs or engineers who "kick tires and want to break things." This affects everything: longer evaluation cycles, more stakeholders in legal/compliance, emphasis on security and data handling, reference checks weighted heavily. If you're selling to risk-averse functions, adjust your content (white papers, compliance documentation), your timeline expectations, and your change management positioning. Reframe education as extraction, not instruction: David's mental model shift: "I need to learn from them" replaced "I need to educate them." In practice: "I've heard from others that calibration meetings consume 10+ hours per cycle with unclear outcomes. They tried approaches like forced ranking or manager-only decisions. Have you experimented with either?" This positions you as a pattern-matcher across their peer group, not a lecturer. They become receptive to alternatives because you've demonstrated you understand their world through other customers' experiences. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

You're tweaking your launch plan for the third time. You're waiting to feel "clearer" before hitting send. You're reorganizing your Asana board instead of following up with leads.If this sounds familiar, you're stuck in the optimization trap.In this episode, Steph breaks down why over-optimization is keeping you from the sales and momentum you want. You'll learn the difference between helpful strategy and endless tweaking, plus her simple "decide, do, repeat" framework for taking action when nothing feels ready.This is for you if:You're busy but not effectiveWorking all day but not shipping anything, or Making decisions only to second-guess them later.Stop waiting for perfect conditions. Your next breakthrough is on the other side of imperfect action.______________________ YEAR ON THE WALL 2026 Get the clarity you need to make 2026 your best year yet.http://yearonthewall.com/ Join the Sold Out Group Programs Mastermind Waitlist https://stephcrowder.com/sogp Connect with Steph Instagram: @heystephcrowder

A sweet one with a fair amount of back bends aimed at strengthening posture (spine and upper back).