Podcasts about business model innovation

Aaron Levie, CEO & co-founder of Box, joins Azeem Azhar to explore how an “AI-first” mindset is reshaping every layer of Box – from product road-maps to pricing – and what that teaches the rest of us about building faster, smarter organisations.Timestamps:(00:00) Episode trailer(02:04) The "lump of labor fallacy" in sci-fi books(07:37) When individual productivity gains don't translate to teams(12:32) Box's Friday AI demos(21:23) How agents might redefine 100 years of management science(26:37) A lesson on AI innovation from the early days of Ford(29:52) Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, and Sergey Brin are coding again?(35:16) Pricing in a post-AI agent world(38:43) Cheaper tokens, heavier usage: AI's margin math(43:02) Solving AI's verifiability problem(48:24) How Aaron uses AI in his personal lifeAaron's links:Box: https://www.box.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boxaaron/X/Twitter: https://x.com/levieAzeem's links:Substack: https://www.exponentialview.co/Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azharX/Twitter: https://x.com/azeemThis conversation was recorded for “Friday with Azeem Azhar”, live every Friday at 9 am PT / 12 pm ET. Catch it via Exponential View on Substack.Produced by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1 Ltd

Guest of Pulse is Janette Hughes, Director of Planning and Performance at Scotland's Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI). Janette joins our hosts to discuss personal data stores – giving patients not just access but putting them in control over their own data.Bill Gates is predicting AI will replace doctors. Do George and Louise agree with him?The liquidators have moved into 23andMe and millions of customers are rushing to delete their data. What are the lessons learned on protecting personal health data from the personal genomics company's collapse?Research shows 1 in 5 Australians skip specialist appointments due to cost concerns. Will the Australian Health Minister mandating that 11,000 medical specialists are transparent with their fees help?A new meta-analysis of 83 studies shows AI and doctors perform similarly in diagnosis. Bu George wants the comparisons to stop already!The cost of not using AI in healthcare. Will we soon see arguments, regulations and legislation mandating the use of AI in the name of patient safety?Connect with Janette on LinkedInResources:Allied health $10K grant LinkNature Digital Medicine paper AI vs Drs LinkVisit Pulse+IT.news to subscribe to breaking digital news, weekly newsletters and a rich treasure trove of archival material. People in the know, get their news from Pulse+IT – Your leading voice in digital health news.Follow us on LinkedIn Louise | George | Pulse+ITFollow us on BlueSky Louise | George | Pulse+ITSend us your questions pulsepod@pulseit.newsProduction by Octopod Productions | Ivan Juric

In this episode of the Innovation Show, we dive into Chapter 3 of Gary Hamel's influential book, 'Leading the Revolution.' Gary, one of the early proponents of business model generation, discusses the concept of Business Concept Innovation and how it has reshaped industries over the years. We explore examples of companies like Dell and Apple, which have successfully implemented innovative business models, and we delve into the components of business model innovation, including customer interaction, strategies, and value networks. Gary also shares his insights on overcoming organizational inertia, fostering a culture of innovation, and the importance of rethinking conventional business assumptions. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in driving innovation within their organization and staying ahead of the curve.   00:00 Introduction to Gary Hamill Series 00:13 Business Concept Innovation 02:44 Examples of Business Model Innovation 04:41 Expanding the Innovation Horizon 05:49 Defining Radical Innovation 08:49 Challenges in Business Model Innovation 17:07 Importance of Deconstructing Assumptions 26:01 Executive Support for Innovation 37:46 Assessing Company Resources for Innovation 38:24 Challenges in Big Companies vs. Startups 38:38 Haier's Approach to Entrepreneurship 40:42 The Importance of Public Policy in Innovation 44:19 The Role of Government in Business Innovation 44:31 Decadence and Complacency in Organizations 46:03 Historical Examples of Efficient Government 50:46 The Need for Courageous Leadership 51:52 Activism and Innovation in Companies 53:27 Building a Resilient Business Model 56:42 Strategic Decisions in Business Models 59:21 The Importance of Customer Contact 01:03:44 First Mover vs. Smart Mover 01:07:44 Competitive Lockout and Choke Points 01:12:14 Preparing for a Rapidly Changing Economy 01:12:44 Continuous Learning and Personal Responsibility 01:14:03 Conclusion and Contact Information

Gary Hamel on Leading the Revolution Part 1   In this episode, renowned business thinker Gary Hamel discusses his book 'Leading the Revolution' with Aidan McCullen, offering an innovative action plan for companies or individuals aiming to stay ahead of the industry. Drawing on successful examples from companies like Charles Schwab, Virgin, GE Capital, and profiling innovators like Ken Kutaragi of Sony PlayStation, Hamel shares how to grow and innovate amidst market chaos. He explores the origin of revolutionary business concepts, key criteria for building activist-friendly and revolutionary-ready companies, the dangers of becoming ‘one vision wonders,' and harnessing employee imagination. The conversation also reflects on business failures, the cyclical nature of market success, and the essential need for continuous reinvention. Join for invaluable insights on thriving in turbulent times.   00:00 Introduction to Industry Revolutionaries 00:41 Exploring Revolutionary Business Concepts 00:48 Key Criteria for Building Revolutionary Companies 00:55 Avoiding One Vision Wonders 00:59 Harnessing Employee Imagination 01:11 Practical Advice for 21st Century Success 01:23 Welcoming Back a Business Thinker 01:50 Insights from Leading the Revolution 02:37 Honoring Professor Paul Hamel 03:23 Corporate Climate in 2000 03:56 Technological Advancements and Market Shifts 04:43 The Importance of Innovation 05:16 Challenges for Established Companies 06:15 Digital Transformation and Its Pitfalls 06:53 Investment in Technology 09:04 Organizational Orthodoxies 10:42 The Danger of Unchallenged Assumptions 11:19 Examples of Missed Opportunities 15:25 The Future of Retail and Education 17:23 The Importance of Humility in Leadership 18:24 Case Study: Sony's Rise and Challenges 20:44 Leadership and Organizational Dynamics 23:31 Encouraging Innovation from the Periphery 24:32 Case Study: Haier's Entrepreneurial Platform 29:07 Changing the Rules for Success 31:17 Forming Partnerships with Young Companies 32:22 Understanding Innovation Risk 36:31 De-Risking Innovation 37:55 The Importance of Intellectual Commitment 39:17 Challenges of Business Model Innovation 44:37 Strategic Planning vs. Strategy 50:27 The Illusion of Corporate Vitality 59:11 The Need for Innovative Leadership 01:01:13 Conclusion and Next Steps   Find Gary:

In this episode of the Aftermarket Champions podcast, host Vivek Joshi interviews Christian Kowalkowski, a professor at Linköping University and director of the Center for Business Model Innovation. They discuss the significance of business model innovation, particularly in the context of servitization within the manufacturing sector. Kowalkowski shares insights on the challenges faced by manufacturers, the importance of cultural shifts, and the evolving expectations of customers. The conversation also touches on the marketing strategies necessary for successful subscription models and the future of business model innovation in various industries.Takeaways1. Business model innovation is crucial for sustained competitive advantage.2. Servitization allows manufacturers to create new revenue streams.3. Cultural shifts within organizations are essential for successful transformation.4. Customer expectations are evolving towards performance-based outcomes.5. The transition from CapEx to OpEx is reshaping business models.6. HR challenges can hinder the progress of servitization initiatives.7. Effective risk management is vital in subscription-based models.8. Different industries have varying receptiveness to subscription models.9. Marketing strategies must adapt to new business models and customer engagement.10. The future of business model innovation is promising, with many opportunities for growth.

Dive into the secrets of building a thriving coaching business with our latest podcast episode of Business Coaching Secrets! In Episode 283, Karl Bryan and Road Dog unpack essential strategies and insights to elevate your coaching practice.  Here are three key takeaways from this episode: Simplicity in Business: Keeping it simple is crucial. As Karl mentioned, “Get clients, keep clients.” This straightforward approach helps in focusing on the core of business success. By clearly defining the starting line and the finish line, you set a path for measurable progress. Value of Accumulated Wealth: Karl emphasizes that 80% of wealth is accumulated rather than earned. Investing in appreciating assets like real estate, stocks, or businesses can combat inflation and build substantial long-term wealth, much like Warren Buffett's strategies. Effective Business Models: Rethinking your business model can massively impact success. Karl's example with accountants moving from a low-fee, high-volume model to a higher-value consulting approach showcases the power of innovative thinking. This principle can be applied to various industries, including coaching. Don't miss out on these invaluable insights! Check out Episode 283 of Business Coaching Secrets now.  Ready to elevate your coaching business? Don't wait! Listen to this episode now and make strides towards your goals. Visit Focused.com for more information on our Profit Acceleration Software™ and join our community of thriving coaches. Get a demo at https://go.focused.com/profit-acceleration

Send us a textThis episode of Marketing In The Madness is packed with strategies to grow your business, master AI-driven marketing, and build authentic communities in today's digital-first world. In this episode, Katie Street sits down with Matt Desmier, a seasoned business engagement expert, to tackle the challenges of content chaos, AI integration, and community engagement.From practical tips on using AI to transform your business model to strategies for building trust and connections on LinkedIn, this video offers actionable advice for business leaders, marketers, and innovators. Whether you're a tech entrepreneur, agency leader, or marketing professional, this discussion will help you adapt to the ever-changing digital landscape and set you up for success in 2025.In this episode, you will learn:How to manage content chaos with scalable, efficient strategies.Practical ways to use AI to redefine your business model and deliver value.The secrets to building a vibrant, engaged community on LinkedIn.Why businesses in membership organisations outperform their peers by 8x.How entering awards can transform your agency's mindset and performance.The importance of authenticity in marketing and why real connections matter.How to leverage LinkedIn comments for lead generation and relationship building.Episode Highlights:Businesses leveraging AI and personalisation can create scalable, efficient solutions.Authentic engagement on platforms like LinkedIn builds trust and generates leads.Membership organisations and awards programs are powerful tools for growth.Community-building is the future of business and marketing success.In this episode, we discuss: AI in Marketing, Community Building Strategies, Content Chaos Solutions, Business Model Innovation, LinkedIn Lead Generation, AI-Powered Marketing Tools, Membership Organisation Benefits, Award-Winning Strategies, Human-Centered Marketing, Digital Marketing Trends 2025Connect with Matt Desmier, Bournemouth University's Business Engagement & Knowledge Exchange Manager on Linkedin via https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattdesmier/Connect with Katie Street:https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiestreet/https://www.instagram.com/streetmate/Marketing in The Madnesshttps://marketinginthemadness.buzzsprout.com/https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketing-in-the-madness-podcast/https://www.instagram.com/marketinginthemadness/ Follow Street Agency:https://street.agency/https://www.instagram.com/street.agency/https://www.linkedin.com/company/streetagency/

This quarter of the Future of Agriculture podcast is made possible by Case IH: https://www.caseih.com/en-us/unitedstatesJanette Barnard's Prime Future Newsletter: https://primefuture.substack.com/Future of Agriculture YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@FutureOfAgDr. G. Kee Jim is the founding partner of Feedlot Health Management Services Ltd. (FHMS). Dr. Jim's cattle feeding companies (G.K. Jim Farms, Cattlinc Inc, Silverado Cattle Inc, Taweel Cattle Company Ltd, Korova Feeders Ltd, Diamond Feeders, Quality Beef Producers LP, CanTex Feeders LP, Tierra Blanca Cattle Feeders LP, and Ordway Cattle Feeders LP) are major players in the Canadian and United States cattle industries through ownership of cows, backgrounding cattle, grass cattle, feedlot cattle, and feedlots. In addition, Kee has served on the board of directors of several beef industry groups and as an Adjunct Professor in the Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and VERO at Texas A&M University.Brought to you by Case IH: Case IH designs,engineers and produces cutting-edge farm equipment based on a comprehensive understanding of farmers' needs, wants and challenges, integrating these insights into their development and manufacturing.For example, take their Model Year 25 Magnum tractor. The new Magnum is purposefully designed to answer farmers' needs in every design and engineering choice. Improved horsepower for pulling heavier loads, faster. Bundled, integrated and ready-to-go precision tech for greater accuracy in the field. And a transmission farmers can tweak for improved control and performance in different tasks. That kind of design thinking is exactly where the future of ag is headed, and that's why you'll be hearing me talk to the folks at Case IH at different points throughout this quarter about what they do and how they're working to push the ag forward.

There's nothing like the end of another year to have us reflecting on the recent successes in the world of agtech, and the many challenges still left to overcome. One thing that has continued to stand out to us in 2024 is the vital need for more business model innovation. There's so much amazing technology that already exists, but for one reason or another, it is not getting adopted or utilized; it's not delivering on the promised impact or commercial potential. Over the last twelve months we've talked to countless entrepreneurs and innovators who are finding novel and fascinating ways to overcome business model barriers, even when they aren't using those words to describe their efforts. So this week, Sarah is sitting down with Tenacious Ventures Managing Partner Matthew Pryor to connect the dots on business model innovation that we've discussed in different podcast episodes all year long. For more information and resources, visit our website. The information in this post is not investment advice or a recommendation to invest. It is general information only and does not take into account your investment objectives, financial situation or needs. Before making an investment decision you should read the information memorandum and seek financial advice from a professional financial adviser. Whilst we believe Information is correct, no warranty of accuracy, reliability or completeness.

Today is Part 2 of starting a startup live on the pod. We focus on finding and engaging potential customers through Brute Force Customer Acquisition and dig in on value creation using the Delta 4 framework. The entrepreneur we're helping experiences an epiphany about what his doctor customers truly need, challenging his initial assumptions and forcing him to pivot his approach. TackleboxBylddIdea to Startup NewsletterDelta Four 00:30 Intro - Last Week's Episode04:18 Brute Force Customer Acquisition + The Five Startup Steps09:37 The best brute force acquisition I've seen10:49 Doctor Customer Acquisition12:44 Hunting Delta 416:00 The Hunch

Join us for an insightful exploration of client and customer retention strategies across various industries. Our hosts, Judie Russell, Sian Horn, Jen Bryan, and Jay Woodard, share their unique experiences and approaches to retainers and project-based work.This episode is packed with practical tips on client engagement strategies, effective communication tools, and maintaining clear communication to ensure client satisfaction and long-term retention. Tune in for valuable insights to enhance your business practices and boost client retention.This episode is brought to you by Lemon7, the marketing agency that your competitors are going to wish they found first. If you'd like to get a paid advertising proposal today, head over to https://lemon7.ie/ Remember to subscribe, follow, leave a review wherever you're listening – your support means everything!Stay tuned until next time when we continue exploring strategies for business success! Chapters(00:00) Introduction and Sponsor(09:11) Flexible Pricing Strategies for Business Retainers(13:59) Business Model Innovation and Tax Planning(23:47) VAT Compliance and Cash Flow Management(31:25) Client Retainers and Communication Tools(35:57) Client Engagement Strategies for RetainersLinksAzure Communications https://azurecomm.ie/ The Vidacademy https://www.instagram.com/thevidacademy/ The Club Women's Network https://www.instagram.com/theclub_womensnetwork/ Elite Pilates https://www.instagram.com/elitepilatesstudios/ Sian Horn Business Consultant https://www.instagram.com/sianhorn_business/ AD32 https://www.instagram.com/ad32.ie/ Bite Size Cafe https://www.instagram.com/bitesizecafe/ Colbert & Co https://www.instagram.com/colbertandco/ Designjoy https://www.designjoy.co/ Arc https://arc.net/ Follow Us On SocialsJay Woodard https://www.instagram.com/iamjaywoodard/ The Vidacademy https://www.instagram.com/thevidacademy Sian Horn https://www.instagram.com/sian_horn Jen Bryan  https://www.instagram.com/jenbryan._ Unbranded Podcast https://www.instagram.com/unbrandedthepodcast/

In dieser Episode sprechen wir mit Matthias Beikert. Als Autor des Buches „Intrapreneur Stories“ hat er diverse Intrapreneurship-Projekte und -Initiativen aus dem deutschsprachigen Raum analysiert, die wichtigsten Erfolgsfaktoren abgeleitet und in einem Praxisleitfaden zusammengefasst. Wir sprechen mit ihm über sein Buch, seine persönlichen Lieblingsstories und die größten Unterschiede, die er zwischen verschiedenen Programmen von Unternehmen feststellen konnte.

In this episode of "The Brand Called You," Don Springer, Chairman of The Colton Group Inc. and an esteemed independent board director and advisor shares his extensive experience in corporate governance, growth strategies, and business model innovation. They discuss common pitfalls in board governance, the importance of diversity, effective growth strategies during economic downturns, and the transformative role of technology, particularly AI, in modern business practices. Tune in to gain valuable insights from a seasoned leader in corporate America. 00:31- About Don Springer Don is the chairman of The Colton Group Incorporated. He is an independent board director and advisor focused on board governance, growth strategies, and business model innovation.  He's the director of Elm Analytics LLC, which is the leading provider of supply chain optimization through data and intelligence. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tbcy/support

Welcome to today's episode where we're exploring the nuances of business model innovation. This concept transcends simple product or process innovation, delving into the very ways in which products and services are brought to market. Business model innovation is about changing the entire approach to the market, not just introducing new products or services.

Hailing from Michigan, Charles developed an early obsession with the public markets in high school. Charles Hudson is now the Managing Partner at Precursor Ventures, a pre-seed venture fund that has defined and has become synonymous with “pre-seed”. Charles is known for his ability to identify and mentor early-stage companies that have the potential to disrupt their industries - first and early - including companies like the Athletic (acquired by the NY Times for $525m), Bobbie (recently raised a $70m Series C), Carrot Fertility (recently raised $75M Series C) and Pair Eyewear (recently raised $75M Series C).Charles writes checks of $250k - $500k at Pre-seed and Seed. He is a Generalist with a focus on digital health, media, and software.Highlights:The boomerang back to VC: Charles shares his unique path from Michigan to Silicon Valley, starting in VC, then moving to Google and various startups before returning to VC.Founding Precursor Ventures: Charles spotted an opportunity to invest in non-obvious founders pre-product and pre-revenue while other firms moved upstream in 2015. This made him one of the first in a second wave of pre-seed firms to launch, and 10 years later, he's become the go-to first funder.Evaluating Founders vs. Ideas: Charles is a founder-first investor (founder 70%, idea 30%). He shares his criteria for assessing talent and reveals indicators of success that have generated alpha in his portfolio.Investment Strategy over Trends: Even in the face of trends like crypto, AI, and the economic downturn, Charles stays steady and focused on people and his definition of pre-seed, not morphing with industry shifts.Links:Follow Charles Hudson on Twitter: @chudsonRead Charles' blog on SubstackLearn more about Precursor Ventures: Precursor VenturesConnect with Charles Hudson on LinkedIn: Charles HudsonConnect with Us:Follow the First Funders PodcastNewsletter with behind-the-scenes access and key takeawaysTwitter/X: @shaherose | @aviraniEmail us with feedback and suggestions on topics and guestsDisclaimer: This is for information purposes only. This is not investment advice.(00:00) - Intro (00:52) - Early Days and Building Community (03:09) - Interning at Smith Barney to the CIA's Venture firm (08:59) - Embracing Risk and Independent Thinking defines a solo GP (11:05) - Operating Experience As Product Manager, then Business Development at Google and a Return to VC (16:50) - Charles' first role as an advisor surprisingly had a $300M acquisition by Paypal (19:55) - Joining Softech (now Uncorked) in 2010 when Seed investors were known as Super Angels (21:10) - Launching Precursor to fill the gap created by Super Angel Funds going upstream and defining a new category - "pre-seed" (23:50) - First Investments: the role of macro tailwinds and headwinds (27:57) - Evaluating Founders 70% and Ideas 30% (31:03) - The Role of Business Model Innovation in Generating Alpha (33:25) - Learning from Challenging Investments: If you don't know its ok, but say something (38:01) - Staying True to Your Investment Strategy (40:44) - Charles' best investment: The Athletic, acquired by the New York Times for $525M (45:55) - How he Decides: Evaluating Founders and Their Potential, Weird Patterns, Product Velocity, Remote Teams (51:38) - Current Investment Strategies, Focus Areas and Check Sizes (53:25) - Following High-Potential Talent vs. Investing Theses: People vs. Market vs. Product Evaluations (57:00) - Speed Round

"I believe business model innovation is more disruptive than technical innovation," - Fred Wilson, Venture Capitalist. To understand how business models get transformed in the Digital Age, listen to this episode. You will learn: What the four core business models are The framework to use if you want to update a business model for the Digital Age Why Apple is a prime example of tech & business model innovation --  To discuss a corporate training program for your organisation, book a consultation call here.  Happy clients include The Royal Bank of Scotland, Oxford University and Constellation Brands.  ---  We love hearing from our readers and listeners. So if you have questions about the content or working with us, just get in touch on info@techfornontechies.co   Say hi to Sophia on Twitter and follow her on LinkedIn. Following us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok will make you smarter. 

Bio   David is known for his ability to deliver inspiring and thought-provoking presentations that challenge audiences to think differently about innovation and product development. His keynotes and workshops are engaging and interactive, with a focus on real-world examples and case studies. David's message is relevant for entrepreneurs, executives, and organizations of all sizes and industries, and he illustrates concepts live on stage to leave attendees with concrete tools and techniques they can use to drive innovation and growth in their own business.   Interview Highlights 02:00 Early Startups 02:45 Dealing with uncertainty 04:25 Testing Business Ideas 07:35 Shifting mindsets 11:00 Transformational leadership 13:00 Desirable, viable, feasible 14:50 Sustainability 17:00 AI 22:50 Jobs, pains and gains 26:30 Extracting your assumptions 27:30 Mapping and prioritisation 28:10 Running experiments   Social Media   LinkedIn:  David Bland on LinkedIn Website:  davidjbland.com Company Website: Precoil YouTube: David Bland on YouTube     Books & Resources   ·         Testing Business Ideas: A Field Guide for Rapid Experimentation (The Strategyzer Series): David J. Bland, Alex Osterwalder ·         Assumptions Mapping Fundamentals Course: https://precoil.teachable.com/p/assumptions-mapping-fundamentals/ ·         The Invincible Company: How to Constantly Reinvent Your Organization with Inspiration From the World's Best Business Models (The Strategyzer Series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Alan Smith, Frederic Etiemble ·         Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want (The Strategyzer Series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Gregory Bernarda, Alan Smith, Trish Papadakos ·         The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses: Eric Ries ·         Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights- 2nd Edition, Steve Portigal ·         The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers & Learn If Your Business Is a Good Idea When Everyone Is Lying to You, Rob Fitzpatrick ·         Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (The Strategyzer Series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur ·         The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win: Steve Blank   Episode Transcript Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku   Hello everyone. I'm really honoured and pleased to introduce David Bland as my guest for this episode. He is the best-selling author of the book, Testing Business Ideas, and he's also the Founder of Precoil, an organisation that's focused on helping companies to find product market fits using Lean Start-up, Design Thinking and Business Model Innovation. He's not a newcomer to the world of Agile as well. So, David, it's an honour to have you on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. Thank you so much for making the time. David Bland   Yeah, thanks for inviting me on, I'm excited to be here. Ula Ojiaku   Right. So, where I usually start with all my guests, because personally, I am interested in the story behind the person - are there any happenings or experiences that have shaped you into who you are today? David Bland   Yeah, I think through childhood, dealing with a lot of uncertainty and then ended up going to school for design. I thought I was going to go a different career path and then at the last moment I was like, I want to really dig into design and I think people were sort of shocked by that, with the people around me, and so I really dove into that and then I came out of school thinking, oh, I might join a startup and retire in my mid 20s, because this is a .com craze, everyone was making all this money. Obviously, that didn't happen, but I learned a lot at the startups and I was introduced to Agile really early on in my career at startups because we had to go really fast and we were in a heavily regulated industry so we couldn't break stuff and we had to have kind of processes and everything. I did that for a while and then I realised, wow, there were some people that could learn from my mistakes, and so we kind of switched coasts. So we were near Washington DC for a while, and then we moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, and I started working with companies there, and I was like, well, let me see if I can just really dig in, help people learn how to apply stuff and coach them through it, and that was around 2010 or 2011 or so, and I've been doing it ever since, and I think why I love it so much is that it kind of helps people deal with uncertainty, gives them a process to deal with uncertainty, and at the same time, I have a hard time with uncertainty. So maybe it's kind of a little bit therapeutic for me to help others deal with uncertainty as well. So yeah, I just love what I do. Ula Ojiaku   And so you mentioned you don't like uncertainty, but helping other people deal with uncertainty helps you, that's interesting. Do you want to expand on that? David Bland   I mean, I very much like my routines and everything, and I feel like I come at it from a process point of view. So when I'm dealing with uncertainties, like, oh, what kind of process can I apply to that? So I feel a little better about things, even though there's a lot of stuff outside my control, at least I can have kind of a process. So I feel as if, when I'm dealing with people, I feel all of this anxiety, they're working on a new idea, they're not sure if it's going to be any good or not, giving them a process to work through it together, I don't really tell them if their idea is going to be good or not because who am I to judge their ideas most of the time? It's more about, well, here's a process you can apply to all that stuff you're working through and maybe you can come up to some sort of investment decision on whether or not you should go forward with that idea. So I feel as if my demeanour and everything comes off as someone that you're like, oh, I can talk to this guy and he's actually going to respect me, and so I feel like my style plus the uncertainty bit fits together really well. So I have a style where I come into orgs and say, you have a lot of uncertainty, here's a process, you're going to be fine, we're going to work through it together and it tends to work out pretty well. Ula Ojiaku   What comes across to me is that you give them tools or a process to help them hopefully come to an evidence-based conclusion without you having to share your opinion, or hopefully they don't have to have personal opinions imposing on whatever conclusion that is.   David Bland   Yeah, it's just a process.   Ula Ojiaku   And so what put you on the path to writing the book Testing Business Ideas, I was one of your students at the masterclass you and Alex Osterwalder ran during the covid lockdown, and you mentioned during that session, I don't know if you remember, that you probably went for a retreat somewhere, or you went on a hike as part of the writing process and that Alex gave you a hard time or something, so can you share your version of the story? David Bland   Oh yeah, I mean it was a joy writing with him. I think one of the difficult times for me writing that book…So first Alex approached me writing it and eventually, I mean initially it was just going to be me and then I mean he needed to be involved and so he played a big role strategically in helping me kind of think about the book writing process because I've never written a book like this and then also had it published and also did the whole four colour landscape style, very visual book. It's not that you just write an outline and then you start putting in words, it's a very different process. So yeah, he pushed me a little bit during that process, I would say, he would challenge some of my ideas and say like, are you explaining this in a way that where people can understand, you know? And so I feel as if it was a very productive process writing the book with him. It took about a year I would say. I think the way it came about was it was pretty much from my coaching, born out of my coaching, because I was helping companies with a lot of uncertainty, early stage ideas and they would say well we're now going to have interviews and we're going to do surveys and we're to build the whole thing. And it's like, well, there's other things you could do that are beyond interviews and surveys. And so he and I were continuously talking about this, and it's like, well, if people are only comfortable doing interviews and surveys they're not going to address all their risk, they're going to address a part of their risk, but not, you know, there's so much more they can do. And so, we started thinking about, well, is there a book that we could put that together and give people a resource guide? So, it's more like a textbook or almost something you would read in a university. My editor, I just spoke to him a couple weeks ago, he's like, this is required reading at Stanford now, and some other places in the university programs. And so it's very much like a textbook, you know, but the reason we wrote it was, you know, to help people find a path forward, to find a way to go and de-risk what they're working on. And so I felt it was very ambitious to put that all into a book, and of course, it has some flaws, but I think for the most part, it does the job, and that's why it's been really successful.   Ula Ojiaku   It is, in my experience, very well laid out. It takes a lot of work to distill these ideas into something that seems simple and easy to follow. So I do concur, it's been very helpful to me as well and the ideas. In your book, in the flap, it says, okay, the number one job as an innovator, entrepreneur, a corporation, is to test your business ideas to reduce the risk of failure. And I think you've alluded it, you've kind of touched on that in explaining how your career has gotten you where you are today. But what, in your experience, do you find leaders and organisations missing the most when it comes to testing ideas? David Bland   I think it's hard to unwind it all, because it goes back to how do you become a leader. And so, at least in Western, in the United States anyway, where I do some of my work, I feel as if it's very egocentric, it's very about what I can do and what I know. So there's a progression of becoming a leader where you grow up in an organisation because you have the answers, or at least you're able to convince people you know the answers, and then you're promoted and keep being promoted. And so when I'm coming in and saying, well, we might not know the answers, or we might need to test our way through and find the answers, it almost goes against that whole kind of almost like worldview you've built up or someone has built up over the years where it's about me. It has to be more than just about you as a person. It's like how do you enable leaders around you and how do you create more leaders around you and all that. And so I think where there's contradiction is this idea of, okay, I'm promoted to where I am because I have the answers, but now I want to enable people to test their way through things and find answers, and you almost need a feedback loop there of somebody that's willing to say, look, do you understand how you've unravelled some of this or how you've undermined things by saying, well, I know this is a good idea, so build it anyway. Or, that's not the test I would have ran, I would have done this other thing. You give people almost the benefit of your opinion, but they take it as marching orders, whether you realise it or not, and then it becomes this core of, why am I running tests at all because my leader is essentially going to tell me what to build. And so I think there's just some unpacking a bit of, well, I searched for the right answer in school and I was rewarded for that, and I went into business and I was rewarded for the right answer, and now we're telling you, there might not be a right answer, there are multiple right answers, and different paths and choices. And I think sometimes leaders have a hard time with that because it almost contradicts everything they've done in the past to be successful. Ula Ojiaku   So, what I'm hearing you say David is that in terms of, even before we get testing the ideas, please correct me if I'm wrong, it's that there needs to be a mindset shift, a paradigm shift of, you know, what leadership is all about, it's no longer going to be about the person who knows the way, who knows all the answers and tells people what to do, but moving from that to saying, hey, I recognise I have limits and I may not have all the answers and I empower you all for us to work together to test our way to find what the right path or direction would be. David Bland   Yeah, it's more about your leadership style and accountability. I think you severely limit what an organisation could do if everyone's relying on you for the answers. It's going to be really tough to scale that because if all answers have to come through you, then how do you scale? But also, it goes from transactional to transformational in a way. So transactional is, it's very much like, well, I want you to do something by this date on time, on budget, and on scope, and then basically hold you accountable to doing that, and then there's a very transactional level of leadership there. It's like, I asked you to do this thing, or told you to do this thing, you did this thing, so therefore I trust you. Where I'm trying get a bit deeper is, you know, well can you say, well, how do I empower a team to go find out what needs to be built, or if there's a real problem there, and then have them give me an account of, oh, we're making progress towards that, or you know what, we shouldn't go forward with this because this isn't worth pursuing, nobody has this problem, et cetera, and respecting their wishes or at least having a conversation about that. And so I think it does require a little bit of leadership. Looking at your style, looking at the words you use, looking at how you lead teams through uncertainty, which could be a little different than ‘I need this thing by this date and keep it under this cost and this scope' It's more about, well, we have an idea, we're not sure there's a market for it, can we go test that and see if there is and if it's viable for us and if we can actually do it? And it's a little different leadership style, and I think if you apply a transactional leadership style to trying to lead people through uncertainty, it just backfires, because it's very much like, run these experiments by this date, it doesn't empower the teams to be able to give an account of how they're addressing the risks. It's sort of a learning moment for leaders to say, oh, this leadership style that's worked really well for me in the past may not actually work really well for me here, it may work against me here in trying to drive out the uncertainty of this thing that we're trying to do. Ula Ojiaku   So if I may just build on your response to the question. What, in your experience, has helped, or could help, a leader who's used to, and has been in the past up until now rewarded for that transactional leadership, to make the switch to a transformational leadership? David Bland   I think asking them what they're worried about. I know people try to project confidence like they have the answers, but they don't, and so being able to be open, even if it's just a one-on-one, to say hey we have this thing where we think it might be a new business line or something that we're working on that's relatively new that we haven't done before, which is a lot of my clients, they're trying to do something that they haven't quite done before. It may not be too far away from what they're good at, but far enough away that they're worried, they're worried that it's not going to work. And so I try to get them and talk about what's keeping you up at night, what is worrying you about this, and then usually in the back of my head I'm saying, okay, what can I map that to? So I love the desirable, viable, feasible framing. I use it a lot from design thinking, user centre design. So if they're worried about the customer or there's not enough, you know, there's not really a job to be done there, I map that back to, okay, he's worried about desirability or she's worried about desirability. And if they're talking about, oh, we don't know if people will pay enough for this, or if we can keep costs low enough, you know, that's like I map it back to viability, right? And then if it's more about, I actually don't know if we're organised well enough as a company to do this and really execute on it and I map it back to feasibility. And then from there, it's more like, well how will we go test that since you're worried about it, rather than just build the whole thing and launch and see what happens. And so I try to kind of, I'd be really careful of the words I'm using and I'm trying to coach them into a moment where it's okay, just let's be open and transparent that it's not just about executing a bunch of things and then we're okay. It's more about, you know, what are we worried about and then how do we go address those worries sooner versus later. And so I try not to come at them with a bunch of canvases and a bunch of mapping tools and a bunch of stuff that would make them feel defensive because one, they probably have not had experience with those, and two, it's like, oh, this consultant's more interested in the tools than helping me, you know. So I try to use words that really kind of get at, what are you worried about and then how can we go test that and then kind of back away into the process from there? Ula Ojiaku   Well, it does seem like you apply quite some psychology to the whole approach, because it's really about meeting people where they're at. And I am, just back to your point about viability, desirability and feasibility. There is a school of knowledge, I mean, you are the expert here, so I'm deferring, but there's a school of knowledge that would add also like the sustainability parts to it. Or do you think it's separate from those attributes when you're looking at ideas? David Bland   Yeah. Well, I work on a lot of sustainable projects at the moment. Well, even over the last several years I've been working on companies trying to be more sustainable. So companies are manufacturing phones, they want their phones to be all recyclable materials, they want fully recyclable phones let's say. So I'm working on very cutting edge sustainability projects, but I still don't introduce it as another circle because I'm trying to keep it very simple. And so I know there are different flavours of it. I know some people add sustainability, some people add adaptability, some people add ethics, usability. Before I know it, it's just, you end up with seven circles and different themes, so I really try to keep it very simple. Even Alex and I talk about adaptability, because that was a theme that didn't quite make it into the book, but he talks about it in The Invincible Company, which is the book he wrote immediately after the one we wrote together. So I have ways of addressing those things, but I don't necessarily want to add a bunch of extra themes, because I feel like it's already challenging people with a bunch of ‘ility' words. I noticed they get confused even with the three. No matter how well I explain it, I'll see things like, things that are about building it, and reframed as desirability, and I'm like no, no, that isn't about the customer. I mean yes, of course we have to build what they need, but building it is more about feasibility. So even with the three I see people get confused so I just try to stick to the three as best I can, but basically we go into sustainability projects, still using those three, with sustainability top of mind. So I don't really call it out as a separate theme but I certainly take it into consideration when we're working on those projects.   Ula Ojiaku   Okay, just keeping it simple. Okay, thanks for that, David. So there are some instances where the people will consider probably are outliers to the known proven principles of design thinking, of product development, customer discovery. And I can't remember, I mean, I would have attributed it to the person, but I was just reading a tweet from someone who is known in the product development world and he was saying that if, he wouldn't have guessed that with the advent of or the popularity of Generative AI, that ChatGPT, according to his books, you know, broke all the rules of products, discovery products, development in the sense that there, and I wasn't aware that they were, Open AI was doing lots of market research to say, hey, what do you want from an AI assistant or Generative AI? But within months of releasing it to the public, they gained millions of users. So what's your thought on this? Would you say it was an outlier or is it that there were some principles working in the background that we are not aware of? David Bland   I imagine there's a lot going on we're not aware of. It reminds me of the older conversations about the iPhone. There was this air of, Steve Jobs had this single brilliant idea about the iPhone and then willed it into being and then everyone, it was wildly successful, right? But I look at, even like the first iPhone as, in a way it was kind of a minimum viable product. I mean, the hardware was pretty solid, but the software, the OS was not. I mean, it didn't have really basic stuff that we would expect that we had on other things like Blackberries at the time. You couldn't copy and paste, there were some things that were missing and people viewed it as a toy and they kind of laughed at it, you know, and then they iterated on it. I would say it was about iPhone three or four, by the time they really started to get market fit with it, and then you see, you know, people you wouldn't expect with iPhones with their iPhone. You're like, wait a second, that person has an iPhone. But that took a while, you know. And I think with Open AI, it's kind of a, we're still in the early stages of a lot of this, I feel, and I'm not really sure how it's going to shake out, but I imagine, you know, they seem to be very iterative about how they're going about it, you know. So I don't know how they went about the creation of it at first, but I feel as if at least now they're taking feedback. They're not just building stuff people are asking for, but they're looking at, well these people are asking for this, but why are they asking for it and what are they trying to achieve and how might we achieve that by releasing something that solves for that. And that's kind of your job, right? It's not just to build what people ask for. It's more about getting to the need behind what they're asking for, and there might be a more elegant way to solve for what they're asking for. But there's also some backlash with AI. So I see some things happening where a lot of my corporate clients have just banned it at the firewall, they don't want their employees even accessing it. They want to keep it within the company walls, so to speak, which is going to be kind of challenging to do, although there are some solutions they're employing to do that. I also see people taking it and, you know, interviewing fake users and saying, I can validate my idea because they asked OpenAI and it said it was a good idea, so I don't have to talk to customers. And it's like, okay, so they're taking some kind of persona from people and kind of building up a thing where you interact with it, and it seems very confident in it. It seems very confident in its statements. Like, that's the thing that I've noticed with OpenAI and a lot of this ChatGPT stuff is that it can be like really confidently wrong, but you find security in that confidence, right? And so I do see people saying, well I don't have to talk to customers, I just typed in ChatGPT and asked them. And I said, this is the kind of customer, what would that customer want? And it can literally generate personas that can generate canvases. It can do a lot that makes you seem like they are good answers. You could also just click regenerate and then it'll come up with really confident, completely different answers. So I think there's still a way where we can use it to augment what we do, I'm still a big believer in that, because I think it's really hard to scale research sometimes, especially if they have a small team, you're in a Startup. I think we can use AI to help scale it in some ways, but I think we just have to be careful about using it as the single source of truth for things because in the end it's still people and we're still, find all the tech problems, still people problems. And so I think we have to be careful of how we use AI in Agile and research and product development in general. Ula Ojiaku   Completely agree, and the thing about being careful, because the AI or the model is still trained at the end of the day by humans who have their blind spots and conscious or unconscious biases. So the output you're going to get is going to be as good as whatever information or data the person or persons who trained the model would have. So what I'm still hearing from you if I may use Steve Blank's words would be still get out of the building and speak to real customers. I mean, that could be a starting point or that could be something you augment with, but the real validation is in the conversation with the people who use or consume your products. David Bland   I think the conversations are still important. I think where it gets misconstrued a bit is that, well people don't know what they want, so we shouldn't talk to them. I think that's an excuse, you should still talk to them. The teams that I work with talk to customers every week quite often, and so we want that constant contact with customers and we want to understand their world, we want to find new insights, we want to find out what they're trying to do and trying to achieve, because sometimes that can unlock completely new ideas and new ways to make money and new ways to help them. I think this idea of, well, we can't talk to customers because we don't have a solution ready or we can't talk to customers because they don't know what they want, I feel as if those aren't really the reasons you should be talking to customers. With discovery, you're trying to figure out the jobs, pains and gains, test value prop with them, continue to understand them better. And if you pay attention to your customers, there's this great Bezos quote, right. If you pay attention to your customers and your competitors are paying attention to you, you're going to be fine because you are, they're getting lagging information, right? You're really deeply connected to your customers, and so I just think we've somehow built this culture over time where we can't bother customers, we can't confuse them, we can't come to them unless we have a polished solution and I think that's becoming less and less relevant as we go to co-creation. We go more to really deeply understanding them. I think we have to be careful of this culture of we can't bother them unless we have a polished solution to put in front of them, I don't think that's where we're headed with modern product management. Ula Ojiaku   And someone might be saying, listening to, whilst I've gone through your masterclass, I've read your book, but someone might say, well, do you mean by jobs, pains and gains with respect to customers? Could you just expand on those, please? David Bland   Yeah, if you look at the, so my co-author Alex Osterwalder, if you go back to the book before Testing Business Ideas, there's a Value Proposition Design book where we have the value prop canvas. If you look at the circle in that book, so the tool kind of has a square and a circle, and we usually start with a circle side, which is a customer profile. And with the profile, you're really trying to think of a role or even a person, you're not trying to do it at the org level, you're trying to think of an actual human being. And in that, we kind of break it down into three sections. One is customer jobs to be done. So you can think about, you know, one of the functional, usually functional jobs that tasks are trying to do, you could also weave in, you know, social jobs, emotional supporting, it can get really complicated, but I try to keep it simple. But one way to find out those jobs is by talking to customers, right? Then next are the pain points. So what are the pain points that customers are experiencing, usually related to the jobs they're trying to do. So if they're trying to do a task, here's all the stuff that's making it really hard to do that task. Some of it's directly related, some of it's tangential, it's there, it's like these impediments that are really, you know, these pains that they're experiencing. And then the third one is gains. So we're looking for what are the gains that can be created if they're able to either do this task really well, or we're able to remove these pains, like what are some things that they would get out of it. And it's not always a one to one to one kind of relationship. Sometimes it's, oh, I want peer recognition, or I want a promotion, or, you know, there are some things that are tangential that are related to gains, so I love that model because when we go and we start doing discovery with customers, we can start to understand, even in Agile right. If we're doing discovery on our stories, you know, we're trying to figure out what are they trying to achieve? And then is this thing we're about to build going to help them achieve that? You know, what are the pains we're experiencing? Can we have characteristics or features that address these big pain points they're experiencing? And then let's just not solely focus on the pains, let's also think about delighters and gains and things we could do that like kind of make them smile and make them have a good day, right? And so what are some things that we could do to help them with that? And so I love that framing because it kind of checks a lot of the boxes of can they do the task, but also, can we move the pains that they're experiencing trying to do it and then can we can we help create these aha moments, these gains for them? Ula Ojiaku   Thank you, and thanks for going into that and the definitions of those terms. Now, let's just look at designing experiments and of course for the listeners or people if you're watching on YouTube, please get the book, Testing Business Ideas, there's a wealth of information there. But at a high level, David, can you share with us what's the process you would advise for one to go through in designing, OK yes, we have an idea, it's going to change the world, but what's the process you would recommend at a high level for testing this out? David Bland   At a high level, it's really three steps. The first is extracting your assumptions. So that's why I like the desirable, viable, feasible framing. If you have other things you want to use, that's fine, but I use desirable, viable, feasible and I extract. So, what's your risk around the market, the customer, their jobs to be done, the value prop, all that. Viability is what's your risk around revenue, cost, can you keep cost low enough, can you make money with this in some way, make it sustained? And then feasibility is much more, can you do it, can you execute it, are there things that prevent you from just executing on it and delivering it? So that step one is just extracting those, because this stuff is usually inside your head, you're worried about it, some of them might be written down, some of them might not be. If you're in a team, it's good to have perspectives, get people that can talk to each theme together and compromise and come together. The second part of the process is mapping and prioritisation. So we want to map and focus on the assumptions that we've extracted that are the most important, where we have the least amount of evidence. So if we're going to focus experimentation, I want to focus on things that make a big difference and not necessarily play in a space that's kind of fun to play in and we can do a bunch of experiments, but it doesn't really pay down our risk. And so I like focusing on what would be called like a leap of faith assumption, which I know Eric Ries uses in Lean Startup, it also goes back to probably like Kierkegaard or something, and then Riskiest Assumption is another way you can frame it, like what are the Riskiest Assumptions, but basically you're trying to say what are the things that are most important, where we have least amount of evidence. So that's step two, prioritisation with mapping. And then step three is running experiments. And so we choose the top right, because we've extracted using the themes, we have desirable, viable, feasible. We can use that to help match experiments that will help us pay down the risk, and so I always look for mismatch things. Like you're not going to pay down your feasibility risk by running customer interviews, that doesn't help you whether or not you can deliver it. So making sure that you're matching your risk, and that's kind of where the book plays in mostly because we have 44 experiments that are all organised by desirable, viable, feasible, and then we have like cost, setup time, runtime, evidence, strength, capabilities. There's like a bunch of kind of information radiators on there to help you choose, and so we basically run experiments to then go and find out, you know, are these things that have to be true, that we don't have a lot of evidence to prove them out, are they true or not? And so we start then using this process to find out and then we come back and update our maps and update our artefacts, but that's kind of the three step process would be extract, map and then test.   Ula Ojiaku   Thank you. Would you say that there is a time when the testing stops? David Bland   I would say it never completely stops, or at least hopefully it doesn't completely stop. Even if you're using discovery and delivery, I find that usually in the beginning there's a lot of discovery and maybe a little bit of delivery or almost no delivery, and then as you de-risk you have kind of like more delivery and then a little bit less discovery. And then maybe if you're in a kind of repeatable mode where you're trying to scale something there's a lot of delivery and a little bit of discovery, but where I get really nervous are teams that kind of have a phase or a switch and they say, okay, we've done all the discovery now we're just going to build and deliver. I feel as if that constant contact with customers, being able to constantly understand them, their needs are going to change over time as you scale, it's going to change things, and so I get really nervous when teams want to just kind of act like it's a phase and we're done with our testing, right, we're done with our discovery. And I feel great organisations are always discovering to an extent. So it's just really finding the balance with your teams and with your orgs, like how much delivery do you have to do? How much discovery do you need to kind of inform that delivery? So ideally it doesn't stop, but the percentage of discovery you're doing in testing will most likely change over time. Ula Ojiaku   So in the world of Agile, Agile with a capital A in terms of the frameworks that originated from software development, the role of the Product Owner/Product Manager is typically associated with ensuring that this sort of continuous exploration and discovery is carried out throughout the product's lifecycle. Do you have any thoughts on this notion or idea? David Bland   I think there's always some level of risk and uncertainty in your backlog and in your roadmaps. So people in charge of product should be helping reduce that uncertainty. Now, it's usually not on their own, they'll pair with a researcher, maybe a designer. They might even be pairing with software developers to take notes during interviews and things like that to socialise how they're paying down the risk. But I think if you look at your backlog, you're kind of looking at middle to bottom and saying, oh, there's a lot of uncertainty here, I'm not really sure if you should even be working on these. So part of that process should be running discovery on it, and so I try to socialise it. So if you're in your Standups, talk about some of the discovery work you're doing, if you're in planning, plan out some of the discovery work you're doing, it's just going to help you build this overall cohesive idea of, well, I'm seeing something come in that I have to work on, but it's not the first time I've seen it, and I kind of understand the why, I understand that we did discovery on it to better understand and inform this thing and shape what I'm about to work on, and so I think it helps create those like touch points with your team. Ula Ojiaku   Thank you for that, David. So let's go on. There is, of course, your really, really helpful book,  personally I have used it and I've taken, I've not done all the experiments there, but definitely some of the experiments I have coached teams or leaders and organisations on how to use that. But apart from Testing Business Ideas, are there other books that you have found yourself recommending to people on this topic? David Bland   Yeah, I think there's some that go deeper, right, on a specific subject. So for example, interviews, that can be a tool book itself, right, and so there's some great books out there. Steve Portigal has some great books on understanding how to conduct interviews. I also like The Mom Test, well I don't like the title of the book, the content is pretty good, which is basically how to really do a customer interview well and not ask like, closed-ended leading bias questions that just get the answers you want so you can just jump to build, you know. So there are some books I keep coming back to as well. And then there's still some older books that, you know, we built on, foundationally as part of Testing Business Ideas, right? So if you look at Business Model Generation from Alex Osterwalder, Value Prop Design, the Testing Business Ideas book fits really well in that framework. And while I reference Business Model Canvas and Value Prop Canvas in Testing Business Ideas, I don't deep dive on it because there's literally two books that dive into that. A lot of the work we've built upon is Steve Blank's work from Four Steps to the Epiphany and I think people think that that book's dated for some reason now, but it's very applicable, especially B2B discovery. And so I constantly with my B2B startups and B2B corporations, I'm constantly referring them back to that book as a model for looking at how you go about this process from customer discovery to customer validation. So yeah, there are some ones I keep coming back to. Some of the newer ones, there are some books on scaling because I don't, I'm usually working up until product market fit, you know, and I don't have a lot of growth experiments in there. So there are some books now starting to come out about scaling, but I think if you're looking at Testing Business Ideas and saying, oh, there's something here and it kind of covers it, but I want to go a lot deeper, then it's finding complimentary books that help you go deeper on a specific thing, because Testing Business Ideas are more like a library and a reference guide and a process of how to go through it. It would have been like two or three times in length if we'd gone really, really deep on everything, so I think 200 pages of experiments was a pretty good quantity there. And so I'm often, I'm referring books that go deeper on a specific thing where people want to learn more.   Ula Ojiaku   Thank you for that. So if the audience, they've listened to what you have to say and they're like, I think I need to speak with David, how can they reach you? David Bland   Yeah, I mean, davidjbland.com is a great place to go, that's me, you can read about me, you can watch videos on me presenting. I have, you know, videos of me presenting at conferences, but also, there's a YouTube channel you can go to where I have some of my webinars that are free to watch as well, and just little coaching videos I make where I'm like, hey, I have a team that's really struggling with this concept and I just kind of make a quick YouTube video helping people out to say this is how I'm addressing this with, you know, with a team. Also Precoil, P-R-E-C-O-I-L, that's my company, and so there's a lot of great content there as well. And then just in general social media, although I have to say I'm pulling back on social media a little bit. So, I would say for the most part LinkedIn is a great place to find me, I'm usually posting memes about customer discovery and videos and things just trying to help people, like make you laugh and educate you, and so LinkedIn, surprisingly, I don't think I'd ever say like, oh, come check me out on LinkedIn, you know, five or ten years ago, but now that's where I spend a lot of my time, and I feel like that's where my customers are and that's where I can help them, so yeah, I end up spending a lot of time on LinkedIn too.   Ula Ojiaku   Yeah, some of your memes there like, I mean, how do I put it, just gets me up in stitches. Yeah, I don't know how you find them or do you commission actors to do some of them, but yeah, it's good. So yeah, so LinkedIn, social media is the main place, and your websites, those would be in the show notes. I also heard you do have a course, an online course. Can you tell us about that? David Bland   Yeah, this summer, I finally found some space to put together my thoughts into an Assumptions Mapping Course. So that is on Teachable. I'm going to be building it out with more courses, but I've just had enough people look at that two by two and read the book and say, I think I know how to facilitate this, but I'm not sure, and so I literally just went like step by step with a with a case study and it has some exercises as well where you can see how to set up the agenda, how to do the pre work for it, who you need in the room for it, how to facilitate it, what traps to look out for because sometimes, you know, you're trying to facilitate this priority sort of exercise and then things go wry. So I talked about some of the things I've learned over the years facilitating it and then what to do a little bit after. So yeah, it's a pretty just like bite-sized hands-on oh, I want to learn this and I want to go try with the team or do it myself. So yeah, I do have a new course that I launched that just walks people step by step like I would be coaching them. Ula Ojiaku OK, and do you mind mentioning out loud the website, is it precoil.teachable.com and they can find your Assumptions Mapping Fundamentals Course there?   David Bland   Correct. It's on precoil.teachable.com   Ula Ojiaku   OK, and search for Assumptions Mapping Fundamentals by David Bland. Right, so are there any final words of wisdom that you have for the audience, David. David Bland   Try to keen an open mind when you're going through a lot of this work. I feel as if the mindset is so important, you know. So if you're taking this checkbox mentality, you're not going to get the results out of following any of these processes, right. So, I think being able this idea of, oh, I'm opening myself to the idea that there's some assumptions here that may not be true, that I should probably test. It shouldn't be an exercise where you're just checking the box saying, yep, I wrote down my assumption and then, yeah, I ran an experiment that validated that and then move on, you know. It's more about the process of trying to, because your uncertainty and risk kind of move around. So, this idea of mindset, I can't stress enough that try and keep an open mind and then be willing to learn things that maybe you weren't expected to learn, and I think all these great businesses we look at over the years, they started off as something else, or some form of something else, and then they happened upon something that was an aha moment during the process, and I think that's, we have to be careful of rewriting history and saying it was somebody, it was a genius and he had a single brilliant idea, and then just built the thing and made millions. Very rarely does that ever occur. And so I think when you start really unwinding and it's about having an open mind, being willing to learn things that maybe you didn't anticipate, and I think just that mindset is so important. Ula Ojiaku   Thanks. I don't mean to detract from what you've said, but what I'm hearing from you as well is that it's not a linear process. So whilst you might have, in the book and the ideas you've shared, you know, kind of simplifying it, there are steps, but sometimes there might be loops to it too, so having an open mind to know that's something that worked today or something you got a positive result from, might not necessarily work tomorrow, it's, there's always more and it's an iterative journey.   David Bland   It's quite iterative.   Ula Ojiaku   Yeah. Well thank you so much David for this, making the time for this conversation. I really learned a lot and I enjoyed the conversation. Many thanks.   David Bland   Thanks for having me. Ula Ojiaku   My pleasure. That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless!   

My guest today is Kevin Kelley, strategy and design firm principal. He has over 35 years working in the areas of retail, food and places of public gathering and commerce. Skilled in Architecture, Brand Strategy, Retail Strategy, Retail Design, Business Model Innovation, Consumer Behavior, Consumer Psychology and Management. Kevin is a frequent lecturer at conferences around the U.S. and in Asia. The topic is his book Irreplaceable: How to Create Extraordinary Places that Bring People Together. In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss: Place and connection Design and architecture Human experiences Retail and consumer behavior Creativity and innovation Human decision-making process Importance of natural interactions Extracting insights from clients Understanding human senses Novelty and unique experiences Jump in! --- I'm MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I'm proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show. To start? I'd like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/ You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/ Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

My guest today is Kevin Kelley, strategy and design firm principal. He has over 35 years working in the areas of retail, food and places of public gathering and commerce. Skilled in Architecture, Brand Strategy, Retail Strategy, Retail Design, Business Model Innovation, Consumer Behavior, Consumer Psychology and Management. Kevin is a frequent lecturer at conferences around the U.S. and in Asia. The topic is his book Irreplaceable: How to Create Extraordinary Places that Bring People Together. In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss: Place and connection Design and architecture Human experiences Retail and consumer behavior Creativity and innovation Human decision-making process Importance of natural interactions Extracting insights from clients Understanding human senses Novelty and unique experiences Jump in! --- I'm MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I'm proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show. To start? I'd like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/ You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/ Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

In dieser Episode sprechen wir mit Mario Englert, einer von vier Geschäftsführern des Familienunternehmens LAUDA. In seiner Funktion als CFO verantwortet er die Bereiche Finanzen, IT und Digitalisierung. Das Thema Nachhaltigkeit, das einst als Hobby begann, spiegelt sich heute sehr stark in seinem beruflichen Alltag wider. In dieser Episode sprechen wir mit ihm über die Bedeutung des Green Deals für Unternehmen und welche Rolle Nachhaltigkeit im Kontext eines Unternehmens spielt.

A Note from James:"Okay, two things. One is Tim Collins tells me all about getting pitched the ultimate AI porn business and how AI is going to change the porn industry. From both a business perspective and an AI perspective, I do think it's interesting how every industry is basically going to change. Because then, when we started with this...Tim, who I've worked with for a long time—like 20 years or so—recently I found out he is a writer of horror novels and he's writing a horror graphic novel, but using MidJourney for the graphics part. Now, I've always been fascinated by graphic novels, but I figured I couldn't ever do one because I can't draw or paint or anything. But now, you can use AI to make your own graphic novel.So, Tim describes that. Then we talk about the AI porn industry. That's this episode. Even more fascinating is the next episode, which is more like a mini-episode. I'll describe that one briefly, but we explore the ultimate business model. Don't steal it, or you can steal it if you want, but it's fascinating.So, first, stay tuned for this one, about how to use AI, how AI is changing every industry, particularly the porn industry, and how you can make your own graphic novel." Episode Description:This episode discusses the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) across various industries, with a focus on porn and graphic novels. Tim Collins shares insights on an AI-driven business model aimed at revolutionizing the porn industry, highlighting the technology's ability to generate realistic models and interactive experiences. Furthermore, Collins, a writer of horror novels and an emerging horror graphic novelist, elaborates on his use of the AI tool Midjourney to create the artwork for his graphic novel, leveraging AI to maintain consistency in character designs and scenes. The conversation navigates the technicalities of using AI for creative processes, the societal implications of AI in adult entertainment, and personal anecdotes, concluding with reflections on the broader impact of AI on creativity and commerce. Episode Summary:00:00 Introduction to AI's Impact on Industries00:04 Exploring AI in the Porn Industry00:29 The Creative Process of Making a Graphic Novel with AI01:28 Deep Dive into AI-Generated Graphic Novels05:00 Innovations and Challenges in AI for Horror Content05:52 The Future of AI in Adult Entertainment08:05 Personal Reflections and Ethical Considerations08:58 Closing Thoughts and Future Episodes ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to “The James Altucher Show” wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn

She was absolutely determined to succeed. Hear how you can be too! I always want to bring interesting people to On the Brink with Andi Simon. You will love this interview with Maryles Casto. Her journey has been extraordinary, largely because of her ability to listen carefully, understand people's needs, and create solutions that are part of her personal style and amazing business savvy. Thanks to an unquenchable can-do attitude and sheer hard work, Maryles made her travel agency the go-to travel company in Silicon Valley, serving the biggest names in tech and beyond. Listen to her story, get inspired, and please share. Watch and listen to our conversation here About Maryles: “Asian hospitality with Yankee business sense” Born in the Philippines, Maryles Casto is a pioneering travel industry executive and entrepreneur with 47 years of experience founding and leading companies to profitability. A former Philippine Airlines flight attendant, Casto created and helmed Silicon Valley-based Casto Travel, the West Coast's largest privately owned travel management agency. (Casto Travel was frequently ranked among the Top 100 Fastest Growing Businesses in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, and ranked second in revenues among Silicon Valley women-owned businesses by Silicon Valley Business Journal in 2006.) In 2019, she sold the company to Flight Centre Travel Group of Australia. She is also the founder and owner of Casto Travel Philippines, Inc., as well as chairwoman and CEO of MVC Solutions, which provides travel industry businesses with back-office support, accounting and other services. Maryles has served on many business, civic and philanthropic boards, including the Commonwealth Club of California. She has been International Chair of the Committee of 200, an invitation-only group for the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and she is a founding member of the Northern California branch of the International Women's Forum. You can connect with Maryles on LinkedIn and her website, or email her at maryles.casto@castotravel.ph. Key takeaways from our interview: Business is all about anticipating the client's needs. If you can't believe in what you or your company is, how can you go out and sell? It's not what you do. It's what the clients are asking for. “There is a hole in the cloud, and whatever I do, I always have a hole in the cloud to get out.” It's time for us to be kind to each other. More stories of women who dreamed big and achieved success in business:  Debra Clary—Yes, You Can Become The Curious Leader You Were Meant To Be! Roseann and Clara Sunwoo—How Did Roseann And Clara Sunwoo Build A Successful Women's Fashion Brand? Gemma Toner—An Exciting Woman Took A Moment Of Inspiration To Transform Other Women Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-authored by Edie Fraser, Robyn Freedman Spizman and Andi Simon, PhD Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast here  Andi Simon: We're giggling. But welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. I'm here to help you see, feel and think in new ways. My job is to get you off the brink, and our podcasts are here to bring people to you whom you might not know or meet people who have stories to share that are going to help you change your story. Now remember, every time you hear someone's story, your own brain begins to shift things around until you go, oh, I can do that! Or wow, what a great idea. And so the whole idea of a podcast, whether you visualize it and see it or you listen to it, is to help you see, feel and think in new ways so that you can soar. And that's why I bring wonderful people here, and people bring wonderful people to me. To be here today is just going to start out a little bit different. The co-author of our book, Edie Frazier, who is on the bottom of our screen here, she and I wrote Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success. And it's been quite a journey. And as Maryles Casto, who's come to us through Edie has said, is that turning a page and changing your life is really amazing. But that's what we wanted to do. And I wanted Edie to introduce Maryles to you, because she's very important in her own life. And then Maryles will talk about her own journey so that you can learn from it, because there's wisdom here that is going to be difficult to get from reading her bio or looking at her great website. So this is an opportunity for us to share. And in sharing, we can all grow together. Edie, thank you for joining us. Please, I can introduce Maryles Casto when you're done more formally, but this is so special for you. Please tell us about your experiences with Maryles Casto and why it makes you smile so.   Edie Frazier: A joy to say thank you to a dear friend, Maryles Casto, because we go years without talking to each other. But when we get together and reminisce, we think of the qualities of a leader, a true trailblazer, and the best of friends. You know, Maryles wrote her book A Hole In The Clouds: From Flight Attendant to Silicon Valley CEO. And she did it. And she built this major travel business where she was the icon, and she knew all the founders in Silicon Valley who trusted her, respected her, and built with her. And she built that business across the US and world and runs the business now in the Philippines from her home there. But she gives joy and support, and she's the best you can find and firm of that word trust and respect and caring and she lives a legacy. So Maryles, I just want to say thank you for the friendship and know your spirit is in each of us who have gotten to know you, adore you, and we've got years ahead to salute one another. But I just say to Maryles Casto, you are the true blue of the hole in the sky.  Andi Simon: Oh. Maryles Casto: I love you, too. Andi Simon: Edie, that's beautiful. Maryles, do you want to respond to Edie before she takes off?  Maryles Casto: That's what friends are for is our song. Keep smiling and that's what friends are for. And, Edie, I just want you to know, can I plug this? This is my book.  Andi Simon: Yes, of course.  Maryles Casto: That's for you. And I want to talk about why this cover. We can talk about it later because it's natural. It happened. And the world needs to read that book on the sky and the hole in the sky. We love you, buddy.  Andi Simon: This is such a wonderful way to introduce you. And maybe we will start almost with the book for a moment. But for my listeners, you know, before we jump in, I just want to give you a little context. Maryles Casto was born in the Philippines and lives in the United States and has for most of her life. She's a successful leader. But when you hear her story, she really is an explorer. And there's something about the way she has tackled her life and built something really special that's so important to share. But here's a quote that I think captures it. And remember, I'm an explorer. Sometimes I'm a philosopher or a futurist. But Maryles, listen, I care a great deal because we've been to 37 countries, not to the Philippines yet, but this is the way we discover. I've yet to see a problem where the best solution is to hide or be ignorant. It's only through contact with other cultures and peoples, and in their contact with us, that we can hope to bridge the divide between people of the world. As an anthropologist, my job is to help people see and feel and think in new ways through a fresh lens. And today, that's just what we're going to do. So I'm not going to read your bio, but I'm going to ask you to talk to our audience about your own journey. You started in the Philippines. You came here. You capture it much better than I could ever. And then what we'll do is, we'll sort of migrate into the lessons learned, the things that you, the wisdoms, you want others to understand. The kind of sharing person that you are and the kind of glorious life that you've lived. Maryles, please. Who's Maryles and how is this book been sort of this triumph of what's happened? Because we'll come back to your book.  Maryles Casto: Okay. So let me tell you a story. I was born in the Philippines, and I was raised on a sugar plantation. So that was my background with my family and I think my inspiration really comes from my mother because she was always so kind and because we were privileged. My friends were all the workers, the children of the workers. So I developed a kind of relationship where there was no class basis for me. I mean, everybody is the same. And so I really valued that. But also, my father was my closest friend. And I learned a lot from my father as well. And my father was very competitive. I remember one time, and this was when I was growing up in the Philippines, we have a fair every year, and so I was entered as one of the contestants. I wanted to be the queen. I wanted to win. It really started about wanting to win. We arranged it. There were three candidates. And the big dinner that night, it was a gala dinner, and they were contributing money in the ballot box. And I was watching my father, and I was competing with the Chinese woman. The father was very wealthy, and the father kept putting some money into the ballot box and my father was doing nothing and I thought, doesn't he realize I need to win. But what I did not realize, and this is my father's competition. You never let the competition know what you're doing. But he had already positioned somebody who was standing very close to the ballot box. And at the very last minute, maybe a minute before it closed, he drops this whole bundle of money. That's when I became the queen.  Andi Simon: Uh, that was not deception, but that was smart.  Maryles Casto: Smart because he knew that he had to do it this way. And so I learned that, and that I was one of my first lessons in my business. I can be very open, but also never give, you know, everything that you can in the competition. I never liked schooI because I always wanted to be outside. I get very bored, especially when they tell you to do number one, number two, number three. And all I could think about is, why not do number ten? What do we have to go through this whole process of developing? And I also couldn't pay attention. I didn't realize at that time that my world was outside and I was very mischievous. And I remembered one time when they were trying, it was a Catholic school run by the nuns who were very strict. Of course, the rebel in me already said, I don't like to lose. I don't like this, and I don't like you in a way. I was in class and I was doing something mischievous. And anyway, I was reported. And so they punished me. They punished me by walking around with this garbage can on my head. And so what did I do? I went into the classrooms and then I started dancing. So they didn't know what to do with me. But I created the whole fiesta. So I was already learning through all these things that I was doing, and I think I applied a lot of that in my business world because I never saw the challenges. I always just went. And I thought that, you know, I'm going to try it.  So I was in the Philippines. I ended up being a flight stewardess, and at the time, being a flight stewardess was the top of the field because when you were traveling, you were entertaining. And I learned so much when you were a flight attendant at that time. It took two months to train. You had to learn about the client's needs. It was very much anticipating the client's needs. A passenger came on board. That was your responsibility to make sure that they remembered what the flight was about. And you remembered everything about the passenger. So I was very focused on the passenger's relationship and how they felt. I was in the Philippines a long time, and I had never dated an American, and I was introduced to this American. And needless to say, after two days, I decided I was going to marry him. Of course, he didn't know anything about it. But when we have a mindset, he couldn't say no because I was determined. So needless to say, after that he fell in love with me, of course. And so we got married and I had to break this news to my father. Ah. My father. My father's Spanish, my mother's half Swiss. And he thought that this was just going to be one of those little romances. He had no idea that I was going to get married and move to this country. And it just broke his heart. But I was determined to come to this country, and I did. But my husband did not have any money. We had money, but my husband did not. And so it came to fruition when we were on our honeymoon, when all of a sudden we had to go on that $5 a day. Remember that book? And I thought, this is not going to work, because if I was hungry, I wanted to have this restaurant here. Now, we had to walk for 20 minutes to find a restaurant that was in that book. I hated that book. And then I realized that this was changing my life. And when we arrived in the United States, I had nothing. You couldn't fly as an airline stewardess if you were married. So I knew I had to do something. I remember one time we were going into this grocery store, and my husband was showing me comparison shopping, and I thought, why? And even now, I'm sorry to laugh. No, but, honey, I'm reading my book, and I'm laughing because I remember all this. I remember looking at this mayonnaise and he would say, well, what mayonnaise should you buy because of the ounces? And I thought, I have no idea. All I know is, it's my level. But I think my message is, I was having so much fun. Everything I did, I enjoyed. I was too passionate and so finally he said, you have to find a job. And so I thought, well, I don't have any experience. So he said, well what about Avon. And then I read something about Avon. So I thought, I can do that. So first I had to learn about cold calling because I'd never done anything cold calling. So we would practice. And this is so much fun, I mean, reliving what we had to go through. So I went on a cold call and I was petrified, I wouldn't get out of the car. I would knock on the door. Finally, I ended up buying all my things. And so I did not make any money and that was not my job. So I quit that and then ended up working for Macy's in the gift department, wrapped all the gifts, and I was so bad they fired me. So I thought, I've got to do something. And then a girlfriend said, why don't you become a travel agent? And that is how my world opened up. And when I started working for agencies, my first client in one agency that I worked with was Intel, and they were just a hundred people. And then I had GE. And so I started working in the corporate market. But I didn't last long because the owner was horrible. One thing I learned is, he did not take care of the employees. It was all about him and his family. But none of us were able to participate on trips. So I learned a lot about what not to do from him. And so, my girlfriend and I were running the corporate department. She was running the vacations, and I was getting so frustrated. And my husband said, why don't you start your own. I was petrified, I'd never done anything like this. But, you know, you try it. And with $1500 each, we partnered together and we opened this agency. But I did not tell anybody where we were going. I did not tell our clients. And so we opened this little agency in Los Altos. We had no money. We had Repo Depot, I mean, you know, name it. It's the same Silicon Valley how it started up, holding the hole in the ceiling. And I waited and waited and there was no clients because I had not told anybody. So I decided I was going to go cold calling, things that I hated the most. But I was dressed to the hilt, I had on my high heels, and I started walking around in the Silicon Valley park, and I was walking. And then I saw this gentleman that was standing, uh, it was a company called Rome Rollin. And of course they were bought by IBM. Very, very big now. And there was the owner, I think was in there in one of the corner suites with a glass window. And he was looking at me because I was pacing back and forth and he thought I was a street walker. You can not say the first street walker. And all of a sudden my heel broke. And so I'm limping towards this receptionist and I said, I need to see that man in the corner. And at that time, in the valley, you don't need reservations, you don't need appointments. Everybody could just walk in. So I walked in and he came out and then we became friends. And that was really the start of the whole Silicon Valley movement, because he was one of the founders. And through him, I started getting more and more business and then I got Steve Jobs and I got Apple. So it went crazy. And then again, I could talk about my story, but I know that there might be questions you might probably want to ask me.   Andi Simon: Well, but you see, in some ways you've given us a nice foundation for how to begin the challenges of, I don't know how to do that, and I really don't like to do this, but I tried that. And next thing you know, you and your friend and you still have to find some customers. And this isn't sort of it. They don't drop into your lap. Although I must confess that if you hang out, all of a sudden things begin to happen. You were talking to them and learning from them. You began to craft something other than booking a ticket on a plane to go somewhere. And what I loved about what you did was that you created something far bigger. And I have a hunch you began to see things that they would ask for and you'd figure out how to do. But I'm putting words into your mouth. So how did you grow? Because you didn't grow a little. You grow with a whole different mindset completely.  Maryles Casto: It was so fast. And I think there were so many. We were growing so fast. We couldn't control our growth. And, you know, since I was, and we talk about how you felt as being the first woman because there really was no one, there was no other woman. There were men in my industry, but I never even thought about it. All I knew was that I was not going to fail. I was going to do whatever it took to be successful, and I was damn good. I was very, very good. And I believed in that. Yes, because if you can't believe in what you or your company is, how can you even go out and sell? So I knew I would be pitching. I'd go in and before, I would pitch directly to the vice president or the presidents. But as it changed, you have to go through purchasing, you have to go through all this. So the dynamics change. But on a 1:1, give me the CEO. And I was a CEO and I would always say, I'm in the same seat as you are. If I founded this company with $1,500, and I would have this argument with Steve because I said, if you weren't given the $200 million, where would you be? So I was very respectful of them. But I also thought, you know, tell me when you have started your company on your own with the seat of your pants, and then I'll respect you more. So don't get any baloney about all this, you know, because anyway, I just went ahead. I just focused and I thought, I will make this happen. And again the growth. But then we also suffered because we couldn't perform as much as we wanted to because we were making mistakes. And finally I said, stop it. We're not accepting any clients. We have to figure out what is wrong with our company, because there definitely was something wrong. We were not delivering the product we talked about. We were not paying attention to the customer. So I decided we would clean house and we were hiring people we shouldn't have hired, I learned. And so gradually when we started saying, we can't accept the account, we can't accept. And then they respected me for that. And then gradually we started fixing. We did our own training. I'm very focused on customer service. For me it is my religion. And you have to pay attention. And it's not what you do. It's what the clients are asking for. And even long before that, I started doing profiles. Each of my clients that had this black book, I would write everything. Who wanted coffee, what kind of newspaper they had, every single detail. This was before anybody thought about putting it all down, but I did. And then I also came up with a new service. I decided I was going to do my own Visa passport. I did not want anything touching my client except me. So anything they needed, not just the travel part of it, it's how you get to the airport. So I had airport service, people with uniforms. They're all in the yellow necktie. I had a limo service that would pick up all my VIP clients. They didn't have to ask me. I anticipated every move they made because my responsibility is, one, they call Casto.  I was responsible for them from when they left for the airport or when they left their home until I brought them home. I was sitting on that flight with them. I was getting in the car with them. I was in the hotel with them. I thought about only the clients, so. And I made sure everyone in our company understood that we don't survive without our clients, but we have to think ahead and anticipate whatever they need.  Andi Simon: Let's think about it, though, because nobody came and said to you, you're missing a major part of the business. You're selling. You weren't selling anything, really. What you had done is become a colleague of your clients, right? An extraordinarily important part of their experiences. You were and it's really a beautiful story about, it's not a travel ticket. It's not a limousine. It's this whole experience where I don't want you to have to worry about a thing. And I understand the whole. So you didn't even have to tell them, do you want this or do you want that? You said, I got it all mapped out for you. You don't have to worry.  Maryles Casto: One call.  Andi Simon: One call. Now, how did you begin to scale? Because often I have entrepreneurs who arrive at 10 million or 20 million and want to scale to 100 million, and they're not sure how to do that. You scaled and you started to talk about training. I mean, that's really what we're talking about here, is scaling. How did you do it?  Maryles Casto: Well, I started buying agencies again. Recession, remember when we had this major recession. And I thought, this is an opportunity, I can buy now. And I decided I was buying agencies, but strategically, I had 15 offices all over the United States because it had to be a very strategic move. And by the time, we had offices everywhere, but we were also very strategic. I did not want to just be Silicon Valley. I would be putting all my eggs in one basket. So my offices were in San Jose, in Palo Alto. I decided I needed a different kind of a base. I needed the banks. I needed a government contract. So I went to San Francisco and expanded my business there. And then I decided I needed 24 hour service because a client doesn't end at 5:30. When they travel, what happens? You know, they have to have a way of calling us. I didn't want them to call the airlines. They were my clients. They were my responsibility. I couldn't grow in Silicon Valley anymore because we were all looking for the same, we needed people. So I was having lunch with one of the senators who had come to the Valley for a business opportunity, and he was the senator from South Dakota. And he said to me, you know, South Dakota, we could use some business. So I had never been to South Dakota, Rapid City. So I flew there with him. He said, let's just check it out. So we put a blind ad to just say that we were coming for interviews. We got 500. Work for you.  Andi Simon: Wow.  Maryles Casto: There is a market here. But what I wanted to do was put my training there. But I also wanted my 24 hour service. No one was offering 24 hour service at that time. The airlines were, but not any travel agency. So these were all the things. I shouldn't say I, because there were a lot of people involved. But I would say I had the vision that you have to look at and say, what now? What else can you do? How can you enhance your service? But what is it that the clients need? And so as we were developing the corporate market, there was no one who could touch us in the corporate market because we had every account there was. And I also worked very closely with a lot of the venture people. So when they were funding companies, of course, for travel, I owned it. Andi Simon: Branded you, right? They endorsed you and you just came along.  Maryles Casto: Yeah. I would say, you know, you're funding this company. How do you know they're protecting you? You know, travel is the second largest expense. Working with me, I will guarantee you, because I also bought stock for all these companies because I thought we have to be investors as well. So even if it's small. But I felt that every flight I was looking at that as a shareholder. Andi Simon: You are so wise. And so it's fascinating listening to you because once you got going, nothing stopped. You just keep figuring out pieces. You said something important, though, and it's not a bad time to sort of migrate into the team. How did you support yourself around you with smart people? And what were you looking for in that team? They gave you the ability to multiply. They were your multipliers. What kinds of folks came in and how? One of the things that I read was that you treated this like a family.   Maryles Casto: I wanted them to feel proud. I bought my partner out after two years, I felt like she was so worried about expanding. She was so worried about losing money. And I thought, you know what, we're still very small. If we lost money, if we went belly up, I want to build it up myself. I don't want to drag her down. So I bought her out. And then we had to come up with a name because at that time, I think we had nine employees. When I bought her out, she wanted to do the vacation side only. She was not interested in the rest of it. So I had to come up with them and I said, okay, what is our name going to be? Because our original name was Travel Experience. And so we had this powwow and they said, well, why don't we call it Casto, it's your name. And I thought, no, I have to be very careful because if I give you my name, you have to guarantee you're going to back it up. It's not just about me, it's about all of us. So I then created this where they had to belong to this elite group, which happened to be customer travel. So I had all of us in uniform. They helped design this uniform, and we would go to all the functions in our uniform.  Andi Simon: But you know the symbolic meaning of that. You know, you're a meaning maker and the symbolism is not inconsequential. They belonged. People wanted to belong. And therefore they knew how to behave, how to think. And they took it home to their families, and they were part of something much bigger than just having a job. Correct?  Maryles Casto: Yeah. I made them very proud of being part of us. I said, it's not me, it's us. The Casto is you together. Of course, everybody thought it was Castro. And they look at me and say, oh, Castro. No. There's no answer. But you know what it was. I mean, we had so much fun. We really did. We put events together and the company would come in with different hats. We come in with different costumes. And, I couldn't wait to get into the office. And they felt the same way. There was so much joy. Lots of sorrow, too. I mean, we cry. I mean, we all shared a divorce. But we were together.  Andi Simon: Yes.  Maryles Casto: And that is very important.  Andi Simon: Amazing, amazing, amazing because you did it and it worked. And it became something well beyond itself. I want to get to your book, but also you grew it and then you added new services and then you began to see it grow, and then you finally sold it. What was the impetus?  Maryles Casto: Well, you know, when we started the business, about five years later, we got a big offer. This company, and in fact, this is a funny story because this company was a very large company, and they were interested in buying us because they wanted to get into the Silicon Valley when it was just starting. It was getting a lot of attention. And so, they made an offer and I said, no, I didn't want to, but anyway. And he and I  had a good relationship because when Intel became such a big company, purchasing people came in, and then they decided I was too small now. And they were concerned about my capacity to service them. So he was very, very large, one of the largest agency in the United States. So they gave him the business. So we partnered together. And so that's when he really wanted to take my business. And me, I said, no, it wasn't going to work. So that was the first venture. And the second one was a company that was from Omaha, Nebraska, another very large company. And at that time we had Andy Grove, who became chairman of Intel. And Andy became a very good friend because, again, he was a client and he became a friend because I knew everything about his travel. And he was so paranoid that if I wasn't going to take care of him, something would happen to his travel. So the second offer came in and we said, okay, we'll take it seriously. The gentleman flew in from Omaha and somewhere, somehow, I just did not feel that they were the right partners. They didn't understand Silicon Valley. And I just felt that it's not going to grow. It didn't have the same spirit, they weren't willing to be, it takes a different personality. So we thought the deal was done. And at the last minute I had to call them to say, okay, you know, we've arranged it. I picked up the phone and I couldn't say yes. I said no, and oh my God, both my son and Andy were furious with me because I said no. And I said, it just can't work. So I knew that we had to do something. And because of my son, the offer came in and it was a really good offer, and we knew that the time would come that we would have to exit. And so we sold it two years ago. We sold it a month before the pandemic.  Andi Simon: Oh, my, timing is everything.   Maryles Casto: And now I'm a rich woman.  Andi Simon: But, you know, I have a hunch you've been rich through this whole journey, haven't you?  Maryles Casto: Yeah, I have, I have, yeah.  Andi Simon: You know, the financial richness is nice, but at the end of the day, I'm not sure you worked for work's sake. I think you worked for the absolute... Maryles Casto: Love of it.  Andi Simon: For the love, you know, for the joy that you gave others, for the way in which you helped their lives do better. Am I misreading that? And this was spiritual and almost religious on your part, right? Correct.  Maryles Casto: Yes. It was, it is, and it still is. I still communicate with the people that, when we sold the company, we always kept the Philippines. The Philippines when we were growing so fast and we knew that we had to expand. I wanted to expand internationally, and I knew it was either India or the Philippines, and I knew the Philippines because I was from the Philippines and I knew the customer service, all the technology driven, because our business was very technology driven. I knew it was about personal travel and I knew that hospitality. It's like somebody said, it's Asian hospitality with Yankee business sense. That's how somebody describes me.  Andi Simon: Well, that's terrific, but that's a great image of it, right? I mean, because you blended all of these together in such a way that you created a whole new way of doing things. But, my goodness, it worked, and it's really brilliant listening to you talk about it. Talk about the book. Was this a way of capturing this and having a legacy as a book about this journey that you just shared or something different?  Maryles Casto: You know, it was something that I knew that I felt like there was a book in the making. I just never got the chance to sit down. And this was after we sold the company, and I was in the house and I was meeting with some friends, and just all of a sudden it just came to me. I had to write my book. I said, I'm ready for that. And I thought the story had to be told. I wanted other people to read what I went through and how much I have enjoyed my life. And I wondered, my grandchildren, maybe not now, but later on when they're older. Of course I dedicated the book for them, but I don't think they fully understood the challenges. But when they're grown. And maybe one day when they have a business, they can look at my book and say, you know what, Grandma did something.  And I have to share the coverage. And remember, I was covered.  Andi Simon: Yeah. Tell us about the cover.  Maryles Casto: This cover was an actual one. And when I decided when we were doing so well and I thought, we needed exposure now. We wanted people to know more about Casto Travel, not just in the Valley, but other areas as well. And so I had this girlfriend who started her own business, a PR business. And so I called her as a brand and said, listen, I'm ready to do something. I want the exposure of Casto more globally or more internationally or more regionally. And so she said, okay. So San Jose Mercury News was going to do an article and the photographer said, I can do your shot, but I don't want to do it here. I have an idea. Meet me at the airport at 6:00 in the morning and we'll do a shoot. And I said, oh my God, what is this about? So I met him at the airport and he had this truck, and in this truck was this desk. And he told me, bring the thing that you really want to put on the table. And I said, okay. But I thought, well, maybe it's just at the airport. So I brought these two doves or two birds, because Casto Travel is all about birds because that was my logo. I want to fly. I want to spread my wings. So I brought these two birds and then I thought, where are we going? He said, just follow me. And at that time, nobody can tell you, there's no security, no nothing. So he drove this guy and his truck to the runway, and he put the desk in. He said, no, we'll stay here. Let's get this all organized and let's wait for the plane. I said, wait for the plane. It took three hours to get just the angle.  Andi Simon: Oh, God.  Maryles Casto: I'll put it up. I thought I had to use this book.  Andi Simon: Just come in so we can see it, put it up again and hold it there for a second. Ah, so that's you. And that's the plane over you and this story is as beautiful as the cover of the book. We would not know why that book cover is so important, but that is cool. That captures you, doesn't it?   Maryles Casto: And, you know, the flying was because my father, when we were little, when I was little, and I was growing up, my father had an airplane. He had a small airplane, and he would be traveling from different farms. I always loved to fly. And so my father and I would go up flying. And he would say, okay, Maryles, watch. Look for the hole in the clouds so that we could get in and we could fly higher, and then we would do our maneuvers. And that was in tribute to my father. There is a hole in the cloud, and whatever I do, I always have a hole in the cloud to get out.  Andi Simon: Yeah, but your whole life has been finding that hole in the clouds and soaring up through this to get on top. This is something. Sometimes I ask the people I'm interviewing about some lessons that you wish someone had told you then. But I think that your story isn't easy to capture in a lesson or two. Unless there's something you think your younger self wishes somebody had told you. Is there something that you can share?  Maryles Casto: Oh gosh, somebody told me and so many people told me things. I don't know. For me, it's maybe kindness. For me, it's not a word we use a lot, and it's time for us to be kind to each other. And you don't have to be a jerk. No, really, and I, this was my actual experience. I was invited by United Airlines to go to the Academy Awards. At the time, we were big producers of United. And so I went. And then that night, this was Pretty Woman. Remember that, Julia Roberts? Anyway, we were staying at this beautiful hotel, and when we were being picked up in the limo, they were invited too, Larry Allison was invited with his girlfriend, and she was just fantastic looking. And then John Chambers from Cisco, so we were all going together. And when we got down, the limo was there, the door opened, and Larry Allison came in and he closed the door. He says, I don't share my limo. This is an actual story. I don't share my room. And so we just looked at him because at that time, you can't find any limo, especially Academy Awards night. So he drove off and we had to find another limo. And that's when it's the yin and yang. And I said, you know, you really are a jerk. And here's John Chambers. He was so sweet. I mean, the difference between the personalities. And again, I just feel like, if you could just show a little bit more kindness and don't get into your ego. The ego is nothing. What does it really mean?   Andi Simon: Yeah. That's beautiful. The joy that you can give, the kindness that you can show elevates you and someone else. And then an act of kindness that stayed in your mind as a moment that you never want to do again. How can I be kind? Correct.  Maryles Casto: Okay. And that's why I think I'm doing what I'm doing now. I suppose I mentioned to you that I'm starting my foundation because that is what it is really about. I've been so fortunate. And look at me. I'm now into my old age and I love it. I love what I've lived, and I mean that I love it. For me, aging is not a disease. It's something to celebrate. How many of us can say, I've lived it.  Andi Simon: I know, but that's so important because it's true. We're at a point now where we can be. We don't have to become. We can just enjoy the moment.   Maryles Casto: Exactly. I love the whole process of aging. My body is what it is now, and I celebrate everything I have. I celebrate my hair. I no longer am going to dye my hair because I just love being white. I'm doing it. And I think that probably my message is just as we all go through our lives, enjoy the moments you have and don't worry about the rest of the nonsense. There's so much of that.  Andi Simon: I'm going to I wish I didn't have to, but we're going to say goodbye and I'm going to thank you. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you, Edie, for introducing you. But I can understand why her friendship and yours transformed both of you over time. Because Edie is quite remarkable. This has been a gift to me and to our listeners. So thank you. So I'm going to say to our listeners, thank you for coming to On the Brink. I know that today has taken you off the brink. And then we're going to all soar. But the message is kindness and acts of kindness bring joy. So let's not just be nice, help each other also. In our book Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success that Edie Frazier and myself have written with 102 women about their wisdoms. And like what you heard today from Maryles Casto, the wisdoms help change your own lives. And I will tell you that every event that we're running, people share their wisdom a little like this podcast. And when they do, they are changing. And I've had people who keep coming back and saying, let me tell you what I heard and what I want to share again, and what I care about and what I'm now becoming. I had one woman who had yellow marks on the whole book, and I went, oh my goodness, and couldn't wait to show me her yellow marks. She says, I'm a better leader today. And I went, man, can a book do that? It can. And Maryles Casto, thank you for joining us. So I'm going to thank you so much. Remember everybody to take your ideas, your observations, turn them into innovations. And you too can soar, like Maryles says.  Maryles Casto: Bye bye.   WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Women Business Owners® (NAWBO)

Prepare to challenge what you know about innovation in the AEC industry, as we're joined once again by the visionary himself, KP Reddy, CEO of Shadow Partners. Let's  uncover the glaring oversight that's been plaguing industry giants: an overwhelming focus on the latest tech, while business model innovation—the true catalyst for change—remains underexplored. Embark on a revelatory discussion that promises to redefine how you perceive and integrate innovation into your business strategy.This episode isn't just about the 'what' of innovation; it's the 'how' that will capture your focus. We navigate the treacherous landscape where bold pioneers risk it all for their disruptive brainchildren, and where companies like Blockbuster become cautionary tales for failing to adapt. With KP's insights, learn how mastermind groups can become the crucible for forging new paths in business models. It's a conversation that's set to spark a transformation in how you approach, utilize, and ultimately monetize innovation in the AEC sector.KP shines a spotlight on a critical blind spot within the realm of Chief Innovation Officers in the AEC space. It's not merely a lack of grasp on advanced technologies, but a nuanced challenge around Business Model Innovation. He dissects this industry blind spot, highlighting the correlation between a robust business model and the success of innovation initiatives in the AEC space.Want more discussions like this? You can connect with KP Reddy and other innovators in the AEC and CRE Industry in the Shadow Partners Community....go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠bit.ly/ShadowPartnersCommunity⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more today!

Welcome to today's episode where we're exploring the nuances of business model innovation. This concept transcends simple product or process innovation, delving into the very ways in which products and services are brought to market. Business model innovation is about changing the entire approach to the market, not just introducing new products or services.

Learn how to be your own boss and the power of saying no   Those of you who are wondering whether it's time for you to leave that corporate life and start your own business, you're going to love my guests today, Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau. They're freelance writers and translators and the authors of the new book Going Solo: Everything You Need to Start Your Business and Succeed as Your Own Boss. Many aspiring entrepreneurs have plenty of skill and passion but don't have a sense of how to run a business, which makes their advice so valuable. Are you an entrepreneur or solopreneur? You really should listen in. Watch and listen to our conversation here According to Julie and Jean-Benoit, a good business plan is basically six questions: 1. What do you want to do? 2. Why do you want to do it? 3. What's the market? 4. What price do you want to offer? 5. What will you bring to people? 6. What's the purpose, the “what for”? To connect with them, visit their LinkedIn page or their website. Want to learn more about what makes successful entrepreneurs successful? Here's a start: Blog: 10 Qualities To Drive Your Success As A Female Entrepreneur Blog: The 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business Podcast: Marsha Friedman—How A Woman Entrepreneur Took A Little Idea And Turned It Into A Big Business Podcast: Sharon Cully—Great Ideas to Help Entrepreneurs Gain Time and Success Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights My third book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-written with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman  Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast here Andi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. I'm Andi Simon, I'm your host and your guide. And remember, my job is to get you off the brink. So I want to bring to you people who are going to help you see, feel and think in new ways. You know, and this is always my starting speech, because what I want my audience, whether you're watching or you're listening, is to learn something new. And the best way to do that is to see it and feel it and begin to get the stories from someone else who has done it and say, Oh, I can do that too. So today I have a wonderful couple here to share with you their story and a new book. Let me tell you about them. Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau are the authors of Going Solo: Everything You Need to Start Your Business and Succeed as Your Own Boss. So those of you who are out there wondering whether or not it's time for you to leave that corporate life and start your own business, or you're already starting the business and want to know how to succeed at business, or you're really thinking about, I don't know, going back into business, it's a good time to listen in and think about your own purpose and passion and where you could really have a great trip. They are prize-winning authors and journalists. The husband and wife pair have been running a freelance writing business for over three decades. Look at the books behind them. I just love books and so many folks have no books. And I'm a book author and I love books. They've spoken across Canada, the US, Europe and Japan. Their work has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, The International Herald Tribune, France's L'Express, and more. They've published 15 books, written over a thousand articles, won more than 30 journalism and literary awards. They're avid travelers, they've lived in Paris, which I love, where John Boehner was a fellow of the Washington-based Institute for Current World Affairs. They've been to Toronto and Phoenix, where Julie was a Fulbright Scholar at Arizona State University. They're trilingual in English, French and Spanish, and they are based in Montreal, where they live with their twin daughters. I've told you enough. It's enough for you to see that I got somebody really cool here for you today, and they're going to help you. Just like I want to see things through a fresh lens. Thank you, Jean-Benoit and Julie, thanks for joining me. Jean-Benoit Nadeau: Thank you. Thank you very much for having us. Andi Simon: Now Jean-Benoit has told me I can call him JB. Tell us about your own journey. It's one thing to read a bio, it's another thing to begin to think through, How did they get here? Why this book at this time? You certainly have written lots. Jean-Benoit, would you like to start about your journey? Jean-Benoit Nadeau: Okay. I began as a writer in 1987. As a journalist. I'd done some theater before that. I'd studied engineering, decided in the end that I wanted to earn a living writing, and began as a writer. And since I was not that employable because I had no experience, I started freelancing, which was my destiny as a creator. Anyway, I realized later that a couple of things went well. I got my degree in political science, and was freelancing, meanwhile, and in 1993 things were going well and a magazine in Montreal offered me a job. I took the job and I was employed 29 days and I quit. That's when I became self-employed by choice. My father is an engineer. He had his own consultancy, which became quite large eventually, but he was an entrepreneur, and he's the first person who told me, because I was telling him, I have no job, What am I? Oh, he said, you're self-employed. Oh really? He said, Yes. I know what it was. Andi Simon: Bravo to your father. Jean-Benoit Nadeau: And then we discussed frequently until he became sick at the beginning of the middle of the year 2005. He was a good mentor. He mentored us a lot. And we realized quite early that a lot of the problems we were going through were the same that he was going through as an engineer. Aside from writing, you know, how do you negotiate? How do you manage without losing time? How do you finance your business and all these things? And I gave seminars first for journalists because I had a certain amount of success as a writer. So I was giving seminars to journalists. And then in 1997, I published a book which is the original version of the book in French for the Quebec market. And I started giving speeches in Chambers of Commerce and associate trade associations and realized that I was right on the advice that we had developed, because I was already partnered with Julie. So the advice that we were developing applied to everybody who wants to be creative in their work, really. And then we never had good success. We sold like 30,000 copies of the book in the tiny Quebec market and in French. And Julie said at one point, That book is absolutely translatable. So we got the rights back from my publisher and she translated it, and here we are. Julie Barlow: So I had been thinking for years and years of translating it, but just got buried under other projects. My writing career began much like jazz. I stumbled into it, began writing music, music reviews when I was in university. And I lost my confidence. I didn't come from a background with a father who was an entrepreneur. I didn't come from a business background at all. I didn't even know you could really make a living as a writer. Andi Simon: Aha. Julie Barlow: And that's not unusual in our field, you know, for people to have a skill and develop it but not have any sense of how to run a business. So I finished my education, finished my master's degree, and then just started out. And, nevertheless, even with that help that we had, there's a number of skills you have to really develop in order to make your passion into a business. Basically, I felt very fortunate to have your dad. And of course, we developed our own, our own by trial and error. And over the decades we developed our skills and our tips, and I was very happy to translate the book. We have two editions of it: one for the United States and one for Canada. And it's just great to share with others, not just creative people, but people who want to live their passion. They want to do what they want to do. They want to leave a job, start out fresh, out of school or whatever. There's just some basic things that you need to understand to make it work so that you don't get drowned in frustrations. Andi Simon: You know, it's interesting while I'm listening to you. So I'm in business 22 years now, and I launched my business after being in corporate as an executive in two banks and as an executive in two hospitals. And prior to that, I was an anthropology professor. I got my tenure and I was a visiting professor teaching entrepreneurship. And I was on a journey because I knew I was an anthropologist. I like to apply it among businesses that are going through change because people hate change. And I sort of helped them see, feel and think in new ways. But when I launched it after 911, my PR firm said to me, Oh, Andi, you're a corporate anthropologist who helps companies change. And I went, Bingo. And so in a sense, he defined my passion, my purpose, the why. Then the question was, how? And I did what I used to do anyway, which was start to have lunch with people, you know, never eat alone. We started to network and network and network. And next thing you know, I had a half a dozen clients and I went, Oh, this is fun. This is free. And I'm having a great time being me. And I do think that part of the passion and purpose is knowing who you are, not just what you do, but it's sort of my story. I want to go back to yours. When you began to help people through the book, let's talk about a process, a way of thinking. Because remember, we live the story in our mind. And so now the question is, typically the people who are going to read this book, what kind of story, what are they trying to do? Give them the wisdom and the lessons learned that you have. So the book complements it in some fashion. Who would like to start it? Jean-Benoit Nadeau: I think that a very important moment in the process of thinking of ourselves as entrepreneurial was the realization that it's so hard to change. And as an anthropologist, you'll understand. Historically, people used to be all self-employed. And the people who were employed were at the bottom of the scale. They didn't own their means of production, and they were at the bottom of the scale. And around the 19th century, that scale shifted. The people who were employed moved up socially, and it became a goal of education to have a job. We all went to study in order to have a job. We don't say to people, Study well, you're going to have your own enterprise. We never say that to kids. We tell them to study well, you'll have a job. So then I realized I will never have a job. What am I going to do? Well, I'm going to have work. Yep. So that's what self-employed is. You don't have a job, but you have work and you don't have a boss. You have a client who is your equal because you are your own boss and you don't have a salary. You have income which you build. But you see, it took me about 4 or 5 years even to send a bill to my clients because I thought it was pretentious. I'm sorry, I was an artist. I was a writer. I came from the theater. So at one point they would look at their books and say, Oh, we haven't paid this guy, so let's send him a check. That's how I was paid. So of course, that was the big moment of understanding that that's too much work. I don't have a job. Andi Simon: So, you know, Julie, I'm going to let you pop in, but I want to just set the context because I've been coaching some young women in their 20s, some are graduating from college, some have graduated and have had a couple of jobs. But I'm not sure that they know who they are, what they're doing, or why they're doing it. But I will tell you that the education in college makes them seem as if they're fully competent at something. They just don't know what that something is or where to find a company that wants their something. And I'm disturbed at the disconnect between their job, work, passion, purpose. Julie, your turn please. I didn't want to cut you off, but I wanted to set the stage. Julie Barlow: One of the big places where you see this problem of flipping from feeling like somebody's in control of what you produce and what you do, comes in negotiating, which is something we talk a lot about with writers who tend to think there's a system that they fit into and there's a certain amount that they will get paid. And they tend not to think that they're in the driver's seat. And so they get exploited. And one of the big problems is that people who, and you see this sometimes when people who leave a job to start working freelance, they just think of their clients as their bosses. And they even use that term. They say well, the boss says, the bosses, and they don't start from a position of power, which is that they can sell or not sell, and sometimes it's just worth walking away. I mean, I have this discussion with fellow writers a lot. There are clients who are just not good clients, and they're hurting you and they're not paying you fairly and they're wasting your time. You could be using your means and whatever it is you sell or produce to make money from somebody who appreciates it, you know? So one of the big things is avoiding bad clients and learning to say no. So we have a little section in the book of 16 Ways to Say No. It's very popular with people. You have to learn when to say no and how to walk away from things. And sometimes saying no is what really radically, suddenly improves your condition. I mean, you need to be able to do that. It's tough for people. Andi Simon: Well, it's interesting because I remember my first client who I said, “I'm really not good for you and you're not good for me. So I think you should find somebody else for your sake.” And I remember that feeling of freeing myself, but allowing them to be free of me as well, because we were simply not going to make it. And it was for your sake. And I'm sure that because it was a perspective that it wasn't my problem but for your benefit, it's time to go. But I've learned that no is a good word. Julie Barlow: Yes, it is a good word. And it can even bring a bigger yes at the end of the day from somebody else. I recently, last year, said no to a really, really what could have been a very lucrative writing contract with somebody that I just knew we were not a good fit. You know, you have to, and we talk about this as well in the book, you have to explore fairly carefully with your client. Make sure they understand what they're getting, make sure they understand what you're giving them. Yes, you're on the same terms. Things have to be clear from the beginning or you have problems down the line. And I just could not get through to them. We just could not see eye to eye on the thing. But, we left on good terms and I said, I'm sorry, I'm just not going to do this anymore. The word about what I had done with them traveled back to his literary agent which came back to me in the form of another book contract. So I absolutely understood what I did. But, you know, these are the lessons that you learn as a business person, clients' expectations. And again, it's the boss-client mentality. You have to take the time to make sure that you understand their expectations and that they understand what they're getting or you just end up with problems with them. Jean-Benoit Nadeau: People make a lot of fuss about the business plan. We've got questions about that. And I say, yeah, I know, but we say, the business plan is basically five questions. What do you want to do? Why do you want to do it? What's the market? What price do you want to offer? What will you bring to people? That's just the basics. If you need financing or an associate, you may need to write almost a book business plan, a book-size business plan. But a good business plan can fit on 2 or 3 pages. But there's a sixth question, which I forgot, that I didn't mention, which I think is the most important: What for, the purpose? But your goal, your personal goal, where do you want to go with that? Do you want to teach social dancing? A lot of people want to turn their passion into a business, and that's good. That's often why people go with you. Self-Employment. Well, you're not going to once things start running and that can come pretty quickly. You'll go somewhere if you know where you want to go, and you will not even decide who your clients are. And if you want to start teaching for the purpose of creating a franchise of social dancing, or create a shoe for social dancing, you are not going to choose your clients in the same way. Your venues, the place where you're going to showcase them, etcetera. And it's the same with a writer. You are not going to do all the thousands of choices you have to do in your daily business. If you want to be a publisher or have an agency, or want to be an editor in chief, or move into book writing or film, these are all personal choices. There's nobody who's going to tell you which is right, but it's very important, it orients you. Andi Simon: But I also think, I can't tell you how many folks come in by referral. Sometimes they find us on the internet and they are trying to do what they did in the corporate world in an independent freelance business fashion, but they don't really understand that things are different. You know, they did this there and therefore I'm going to do this now. I said, But there you had the brand of the big company and you had a network and so forth. Why should somebody hire you now? And how are you going to actually build a revenue stream, a client base, have a business with it, as opposed to being an employed person who used to do something. This means the story changes, but they aren't thinking about how to do it actually and they have no idea. Very often your book is very valuable about how I think about myself now? Because when I said I'm a corporate anthropologist who helps companies change, to be honest with you, I knew people had to change, they didn't care how I did it, and I admitted I picked that one up. I knew that the whole sales process was about, you know, where are your gaps? Where's your pain point? How can I help? How I did it, they didn't care. But it's a very important piece. They really didn't know what an anthropologist would do, but it was interesting to watch the transformation. But many times they come and don't know how to turn an idea, an observation, into a business innovation. So your book comes at a very timely moment. When they get going, do you help them create scalability? A word I use often because, you know, there are 13 million women-owned businesses in the US. 10 million of them don't make solopreneurs. 5 million of those don't make more than $10,000 a year. And they're more like side hustles, which is fine. But there are a whole lot of solopreneurs, and I worry about the lack of scalability. Not being able to underwrite it with the right capital. Don't know how to use a bank to finance it. Don't use their credit cards with family and friends. I mean, there's a whole huge market of folks who need to make an income in a better way, but need to think differently about what they're doing and not simply celebrate the fact that they're not inside a company, which is often what they say. “I didn't like being there, so I'm doing this.” I say, “But you're not in business. You're just trying.” So, thoughts? Julie Barlow: So one of the ideas that we speak of is that between somebody making $25,000 a year as a solopreneur and somebody making $250,000 a year, the thing you have to understand is that you don't have to work ten times more. You make your choices in the function of things. In our case, writing that feeds other ways of making money. So for instance, we wrote a book about the French language and we turned that into speaking gigs on the French language, articles on the French language, a film script on the French language, a radio show on the French language. I mean, the book just keeps on giving us content that we use for other things. And we're not being paid to sit and produce new content every day. That's what we would do if we had a job, perhaps as a script writer at a company. But we are using our content to make money for us. The best way to be a writer is to sit and wait for the royalty checks to come to the door. You know, of course we have to write, but all of the choices that we make, we make sure that they are not dead end choices because they are choices that are going to feed that or feed other books or enable us to produce books using a gig, doing something that will feed us with content for something else. I mean, that's how we go from thinking like an employee to thinking like a business person. Jean-Benoit Nadeau: I recently read a biography of Charles Dickens and was fascinated that he was one of the first authors in history to do what he called “work the copyright,” which meant that earning a living was not just about writing, it was to use his intellectual property to work for him, and for a lot less work. And as writers, we have the benefit of having intellectual property created the minute we finish something. The costly part of the intellectual property is developing it into research. But if you choose your ideas very well for the purpose of reusing them, then things become a lot easier. That's just in the production side of it. But if you negotiate well, you can actually improve your productivity without raising your rate just because you understand better what the client wants or because you negotiate better the ownership of what you produce for them, because you keep that ownership for yourself or because you get better terms. That's just at the negotiating level. You can keep collecting. If you bill quickly, you collect quickly, and then you have less money on your credit card. There's all sorts of things like this at all levels of what it is to run a business that are productive. Andi Simon: And what you're saying though, is a mindset. And I do think that mindset isn't the narrow: I'm a freelance writer. It's the broad: I'm in business to take ideas and in multiple channels begin to bring them to market because my purpose is to share French and I need to do it on all the different channels. And I need to do that in multiple different ways. And the content keeps repurposing itself. I mean, people say to me, Did you sell a lot of books? I said, I brought in a lot of clients. I mean, you can bring in good clients. I was in Mexico three times off a book that someone found in a Hudson News in an airport, and got to give programs to CEOs down there three years in a row. Before the pandemic, I just loved the multiplier of the book. And I just had a podcast earlier today of a guy who I gave the On the Brink book to. He took it on his vacation, came back and was quoting it for me. I mean, you can't ask for much more than that. I love how what we do is designed not to be an end, but a beginning.  And I do think it opens the door. And the idea is, how many different doors can it open and how do we get to where we're really taking the message and helping spread it. Julie Barlow: To do that you kind of have to be agile. I mean, the word is a little overused, but you do. You need to be watching what's going on. You know, in the book, we encourage people who are starting out to be curious to contact their competitors, to sit down with people in their business and ask questions and figure things out. People can be very shy and a little bit locked into their own little universe. You can stay in front of your screen all the time, but it's important to get out and understand what's going on. And people are helpful. And they're happy to have somebody, I'm happy for young writers to approach me and to ask for me to sit down and explain things to them. When I don't have time to do a contract. I'd love to be able to keep my client happy by sending them somebody else who can. And you know, that happens fairly frequently. And it's sort of a win-win for everybody. But, you know, communication and being open to that and watching the industry change is really important. One of our early methods was to resell articles because we write in both languages and we would resell them in different markets. And that changed when the internet came. And we started writing before the internet when that all changed. And then it was very hard to keep our copyright over certain things and resell things. But we found new ways to do that. And one of them is translating and we don't necessarily get paid for our copyright, but we need to translate it. So we get paid for that. We're always looking to see where the soft spots are and how things are changing. And you always have to kind of be aware of what's going on and not get stuck in a way of doing things. And that, again, is something very particular to being sort of an entrepreneur, entrepreneurial state of mind, as opposed to thinking like an employee and doing what you're asked to do. Andi Simon: You're segueing into a topic that I always like to include, though, and you've been through many years of watching many different transitions and transformations, and often you pick up. I often talk about the future is here, we just haven't quite distributed it widely. But you pick up little signs, and the little signs are the tip of the iceberg of where things are going. Are there some signs that you're already beginning to watch happen and you're saying, there's something coming? I'm not quite sure what, but I'm really interested to see where and who, and I'm going to poke further, and anything you can share, because I do think the times are changing. Jean-Benoit Nadeau: Well, in Canada we have this problem right now. The Canadian government wants to control better. Well, wants to ensure that big companies like Facebook and Google share their publicity market with traditional media, and they created a law, a Facebook Australia-style law. And Facebook reacted by blocking all Canadian content on Facebook. And Google is threatening that. So that is raising a lot of questions on the future of writing as a writer in Canada. It's going to be a rocky year next year, I would say. Julie Barlow: So artificial intelligence is a big one. Yeah, AI is affecting us. Again, maybe back to what Jean-Benoit said about purpose. We as sort of high-end writers are right now kind of safe from AI. It can't really do what we're doing. So we're enjoying the benefits of it right now, which is transcribing automatic tools for transcribing interviews and translation tools that give us decent first drafts of translations and various different things, but all the writing community is a little on edge about what is going to do, because it's getting better at generative artificial intelligence. We can't afford to have our head in the sand. Andi Simon: I fell in love with AI. I say that gently because I use it in different kinds of ways. It writes great poems for me. And if I want to give a granddaughter a poem about a situation, I give it three facts and outcomes a great poem. And I went, I can't write that, but boy, that is a great poem, and I don't even know who I would ask to write it. But it is interesting to watch what we begin to use it for. I had a great big project and I said, Tell me, what are your thoughts, AI, about this project I'm working on? And it freshened up my thinking, not that I was necessarily going to use it, but as a solopreneur, it's often difficult to find open colleagues with conversations that can make intelligent insights into things you're thinking about. And so I'm finding all kinds of ways to make it my friend. And I say that because it's how you feel about it as opposed to being angry at it. Jean-Benoit Nadeau: You know, we use artificial intelligence a fair amount. We have an excellent character here called Antidote. It's pure artificial intelligence. And all the intelligence software that is there doesn't make a very good translation, but makes a good first draft. In fact, in Canada, where we translate a fair amount because we have two official languages, the number of people who are employed as translators has increased by 18% in the last seven years, when the labor force has increased by six. So it reduced the cost of entry to a lot of people who would not translate. And then they give it to a machine. They come out and they say, someone says, that's not very good, but let's hire someone who finishes the translation. Andi Simon: What is Grammarly? I mean, this whole book, I put every one of them through it. We have 102 women and I gave everyone to Grammarly and they made the corrections and I sent it back and they approved it. And man, it was efficient. And there were limits to how much creativity was going to go into it. But it got me comfortable that they would sound professional and it was even far better than the proofreader of the publisher. And so it was fun to test. I just needed a third third party. Jean-Benoit Nadeau: But one of the things about artificial intelligence is that it's a misnomer. It's an algorithm that processes a lot of information. And one of the problems for journalists, anyway, one of the issues with our AI is that, for example, ChatGPT is essentially a sociopath. It doesn't tell you it doesn't know what it doesn't know. It makes up things and it doesn't give you the source, which is contrary to any kind of ethics in journalism. And, I don't think it threatens journalism. It will be a tool like glasses or even the word processor. Andi Simon: You know, I'm in the schools, my daughter is a teacher. And she said back to me, I had to do a lesson plan for a student in special ed. So I went into ChatGPT and it came back and it was almost as good as I would have done. And in a minute I went, yeah, now use your time to teach the child and not write the lesson plan. You know, it's a perfectly good way to get going. Nothing is perfect, and even our own lesson plans may not be perfect. We think they're better than AI. But I'm enjoying the transition to the next stage of data and insights coming from intelligent stuff in different ways. So it'll be fun if we stay and make it happy, and then be wise and go back and check and make sure it's correct. But even this stuff on Google, I'm never quite sure it's correct either. You have to be knowledgeable enough to know. This has been such fun. I'm so glad that you're on our podcast today, and if folks would like to buy the book, where could they buy it? Julie Barlow: Amazon.com, Amazon.ca in Canada, Barnes and Noble. It should be available in any bookstore. Jean-Benoit Nadeau: It's widely distributed. Just make sure if you ever go, it probably won't happen, but the Canadian edition has a little maple leaf at the top. If it doesn't have that little maple leaf, it's an American edition. Andi Simon: The things that look great. Thank you so much. So it's going solo and if you want to go solo, you've been with us today listening to Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau. I do, as we are trying to really help you see, feel and think in new ways so that you can decide, how am I going to spend the next stage of my career doing a job, or do I want really interesting work? Am I going to be a creator of a whole new market space, or am I going to copy someone else and be another? And I do think it's a time for really rethinking who you are and where you're going and how to do it. So I want to thank you for coming. Thank you for coming today and speaking to our audience. As you know, our new book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, just came out and it is doing gangbusters. And it too is on all the booksellers, Barnes and Noble and Amazon. It's the stories of 102 women, and they are really interesting stories because the women have five wisdoms they want to share with you, and each of them has a different background, history, and their own journey. And it's really quite fascinating. The reviews are: "I wasn't sure what I was going to find, but I went through the whole book and each of the women inspired me. So when you gave the book to me, man, this is a great book!" Who knew? And I said, I know. The whole idea is to share their wisdom with you so you can be inspired, you can aspire to greatness. You can begin to think about how other women have done it. One of my favorite quotes in there is, “Don't believe everything you're thinking.” And I said, I like that. We preach, turn a page and change your life. I really think women in business are here to help you do just that. So on that note, I want to thank everyone for coming. Keep sending me your ideas on who we should have on, share the podcast and I wish you well. Bye bye now.   WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS® is a registered trademark of the National Association of Women Business Owners® (NAWBO)

Dr. Elizabeth J. Altman is an associate professor of management at the Manning School of Business, University of Massachusetts Lowell, and guest editor of the MIT Sloan Management Review Future of the Workforce project. Altman served as a visiting assistant professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point in Fall 2018 and has served as a visiting scholar at the Harvard Business School. Altman teaches strategy, organizational theory, and human resources management in undergraduate, MBA, and doctoral programs. Her research focuses on strategy, innovation, platform businesses and ecosystems, leadership in the digital economy, organizational identity, and organizational change.It used to be, your workforce were your employees. But today, 30-40% of a company's workforce is made up by contractors! Add to this the increasing amount of work being done by suppliers and partners and you see that what composes your workforce is much different than what it once was. This raises lots of questions. Elizabeth has spent 19 years in industry. She was a vice president at Motorola in executive and leadership roles in industrial design, product development engineering, manufacturing, marketing, and strategy. Awarded a U.S. Dept. of Commerce and Japanese government fellowship, Altman worked as an engineer for Sony in Japan. She lectures and consults worldwide for multi-national clients on strategy and platform businesses and has served on corporate and non-profit boards. Her work has been published in the Harvard Business Review (HBR), MIT Sloan Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Marketing Letters, and other internationally recognized management journals and books. Her HBR article with Prof. Andrei Hagiu was selected for inclusion in an edition of the “HBR 10 Must Reads 2019” book and included in “HBR's 10 Must Reads on Business Model Innovation.” She also co-authored the book, The Innovator's Guide to Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work, (Harvard Business Press), as well as the recent Workforce Ecosystems (2023).In this episode, she shares:The new role of institutions in society, and how workforce employee and stakeholder sentiment play into that The actual definition of a workforce, and how it has even expanded into including questions like: What is a workforce? Who is in the workforce? and how do you think about it from an ecosystem perspective to incorporate technologies as an integral part of them? How to consider goals and incentives for employees given this broader perspective? How do you build culture when your workforce is composed by a large percentage of contractors and suppliers? How AI and machine learning technology can now be considered an official part of the workforce in many cases _________________________________________________________________________________________Episode Timeline:00:00—Highlight from today's episode01:07—Introducing Elizabeth + The topic of today's episode2:55—If you really know me, you know that...4:19—What is your definition of strategy?6:44—Why do you think the focus in companies has shifted to more than just financial performance in this era?8:34—Tell us about your journey into researching workforce ecosystems.11:27—Breaking down the types of employees in a typical organization12:17—A new definition of a workforce15:13—How do goals change within an organization that has varying types of employees?17:20—Could you talk to us about the most important implications or adjustments that need to be made in light of this changing workforce ecosystem?20:54—What is the role of technologies in our workforce as they become a big part of our production?23:20—How does organizational culture fit into all of this?25:32—What are some other big implications in leadership as workforces change?27:18—How is the structure and processes around workforces changing?29:56—How can people follow you and connect with you to continue learning from you?__________________________________________________________________________________________Additional Resources: Manning School of Business Faculty Page: https://www.uml.edu/msb/faculty/altman-elizabeth.aspxNewest Book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262047777/workforce-ecosystems/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizaltmanTwitter: https://twitter.com/lizaltman

Dr. Elizabeth J. Altman is an associate professor of management at the Manning School of Business, University of Massachusetts Lowell, and guest editor of the MIT Sloan Management Review Future of the Workforce project. Altman served as a visiting assistant professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point in Fall 2018 and has served as a visiting scholar at the Harvard Business School. Altman teaches strategy, organizational theory, and human resources management in undergraduate, MBA, and doctoral programs. Her research focuses on strategy, innovation, platform businesses and ecosystems, leadership in the digital economy, organizational identity, and organizational change.It used to be, your workforce were your employees. But today, 30-40% of a company's workforce is made up by contractors! Add to this the increasing amount of work being done by suppliers and partners and you see that what composes your workforce is much different than what it once was. This raises lots of questions. Elizabeth has spent 19 years in industry. She was a vice president at Motorola in executive and leadership roles in industrial design, product development engineering, manufacturing, marketing, and strategy. Awarded a U.S. Dept. of Commerce and Japanese government fellowship, Altman worked as an engineer for Sony in Japan. She lectures and consults worldwide for multi-national clients on strategy and platform businesses and has served on corporate and non-profit boards. Her work has been published in the Harvard Business Review (HBR), MIT Sloan Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Marketing Letters, and other internationally recognized management journals and books. Her HBR article with Prof. Andrei Hagiu was selected for inclusion in an edition of the “HBR 10 Must Reads 2019” book and included in “HBR's 10 Must Reads on Business Model Innovation.” She also co-authored the book, The Innovator's Guide to Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work, (Harvard Business Press), as well as the recent Workforce Ecosystems (2023).In this episode, she shares:The new role of institutions in society, and how workforce employee and stakeholder sentiment play into that The actual definition of a workforce, and how it has even expanded into including questions like: What is a workforce? Who is in the workforce? and how do you think about it from an ecosystem perspective to incorporate technologies as an integral part of them? How to consider goals and incentives for employees given this broader perspective? How do you build culture when your workforce is composed by a large percentage of contractors and suppliers? How AI and machine learning technology can now be considered an official part of the workforce in many cases _________________________________________________________________________________________Episode Timeline:00:00—Highlight from today's episode01:07—Introducing Elizabeth + The topic of today's episode2:55—If you really know me, you know that...4:19—What is your definition of strategy?6:44—Why do you think the focus in companies has shifted to more than just financial performance in this era?8:34—Tell us about your journey into researching workforce ecosystems.11:27—Breaking down the types of employees in a typical organization12:17—A new definition of a workforce15:13—How do goals change within an organization that has varying types of employees?17:20—Could you talk to us about the most important implications or adjustments that need to be made in light of this changing workforce ecosystem?20:54—What is the role of technologies in our workforce as they become a big part of our production?23:20—How does organizational culture fit into all of this?25:32—What are some other big implications in leadership as workforces change?27:18—How is the structure and processes around workforces changing?29:56—How can people follow you and connect with you to continue learning from you?__________________________________________________________________________________________Additional Resources: Manning School of Business Faculty Page: https://www.uml.edu/msb/faculty/altman-elizabeth.aspxNewest Book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262047777/workforce-ecosystems/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizaltmanTwitter: https://twitter.com/lizaltman

Business Model Innovation with James Jordan | CEO, StraTactic + Professor, Carnegie MellonJames F. Jordan, a Distinguished Service Professor of Healthcare and Biotechnology Management and Senior Director of Healthcare and Biotechnology Programs at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, and the CEO of StraTactic joins Maureen Shaffer, CEO, Mingletoe, to chat about:·       Brand Definition·       Citation Caution·       Goodbye Queue·       Clients–Not Patients·       Differentiation Vigor·       Amazon + Healthcare·       Precision vs. Personalized·       Drive Not-Sexy Outcomes·       Customer Investor Acquirer·       Why Teach Grandma to Text·       Win Health Care Consumerization·       And much much more!Listen to hear for yourself! Watch to see!

Heather Clancy is an award-winning journalist specializing in transformative technology and innovation. She started her reporting career on the business news desk of United Press International, and her articles have appeared in Entrepreneur, Fortune, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. Heather was the launch editor for the Fortune Data Sheet, the magazine's newsletter dedicated to the business of technology, and she co-authored the Amazon best-seller for entrepreneurs, "Niche Down, How to Become Legendary By Being Different." In her role at GreenBiz, Heather chronicles the role of business model innovation and technology in enabling corporate climate action and transitioning to a clean, inclusive and regenerative economy. About VSC Ventures: For 20 years, our award-winning PR agency VSC has worked with innovative startups on positioning, messaging, and awareness and we are bringing that same expertise to help climate startups with storytelling and narrative building. Last year, general partners Vijay Chattha and Jay Kapoor raised a $21M fund to co-invest in the most promising startups alongside leading climate funds. Through the conversations on our show CLIMB by VSC, we're excited to share what we're doing at VSC and VSC Ventures on climate innovation with companies like Ample, Actual, Sesame Solar, Synop, Vibrant Planet, and Zume among many others.

There's no question that business model innovation is a hot topic in today's business world. After all, who wouldn't want to be the next Uber or Airbnb? But what does it take to create a new and successful business model? It turns out that business model innovation is not just about having a great idea […]

How you may choose to transition your business depends on what your business's new direction will be. Nancy Boisvert is a professional marketing and business consultant with over 3 decades of experience. During this time, she has helped countless entrepreneurs understand and hone their marketing programs. She knows that in order to have a successful marketing plan, one must be able to see the whole picture and understand the interaction of the business model and the personalities, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the people involved. She knows how to analyze the viability of a business model, and applies her real world knowledge and experience to all projects. In July 2022, Nancy shifted her focus to helping the aging and their friends and families, who are or will become their caregivers. More often than not, the road to having a great plan in place for aging is filled with potholes, detours and obstacles. The development of a strategic, comprehensive aging plan eases the anger and frustration that can occur as these issues present themselves. Please join us as we broadcast LIVE to discuss the anatomy of a business shift without abandoning your core business. Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Schedule Free Consultation

In this episode, RJ Nicolosi talks about driving growth through business model innovation, technology, and people. He is an entrepreneur, CEO and CEO coach. He works with companies to drive growth through business model innovation, technology and people. RJ Nicolosi is the chairman and founder of Catapult Leadership Lab and the chief digital officer of RevLocal. He helps companies to achieve sustainable double-digit growth. If you are a CEO of a high-growth company, and you recognize that all the answers are not found within the confines of your company, it is best to reach out to RJ Nicolosi on https://www.catapultleadershiplab.com/ or via https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjnicolosi. Mitchell Levy is the Global Credibility Expert at AHAthat, the first AHA leadership (Thought Leadership) platform on the market for thought leaders, experts and companies to unleash their genius to the world. His passion is helping entrepreneurs, business owners and C-Suite Executives get known as thought leaders & become best-selling authors with the AHA platform. He is an accomplished entrepreneur who has created 20 businesses in Silicon Valley including four publishing companies that have published over 800 books. Mitchell is an international best-selling author with 60 business books, has provided strategic consulting to over 100 companies, has advised over 500 CEOs on critical business issues, and has been chairman of the board of a NASDAQ-listed company. Visit https://www.credibilitynation.com to learn more about the Credibility Nation community.Visit https://www.ahathat.com/author to learn how you can become an Amazon best-selling author in 4 months.

For our penultimate episode of 2022, we interview Perry Klebahn about his soon-to-be-published book Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric that Matters, co-authored with Jeremy Utley. Perry is an Adjunct Professor and Director of Executive Education at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design--the d.school--at Stanford University. Prior to his role at the d.school, Perry was CEO of Timbuk2 and COO of Patagonia. He's also an avid surfer. Perry posits that innovation is not an event, a workshop, a sprint, or a hackathon, but rather the result of mastering ideaflow. Put simply, ideas / time = ideaflow. When applied, ideaflow is an effective approach to problem-solving that reduces effort, minimizes risk, and magnifies results. To illustrate this concept, Perry shares personal stories of when he has (and hasn't) applied ideaflow to gnarly business problems, and how he, Jeremy, and the d.school team promulgate this approach to their students, startups, and large corporations.  "Once you fully understand what ideas are, where they come from, and how to separate the winners from the losers, you can finally put that lightning rod down and start making lightning." Pre-order Ideaflow today and learn more by visiting ideaflow.design/.On Twitter:@SherpaPod@JayGerhart@TheBenReport@jeremyutleySupport the show

The best piece of the week was @Joel Makower's, “How to Greenwash Like a Pro.” It's worth a read. While it is satire, Joel's larger points play out across the resale news this week. We are witnessing an industry that continues to accelerate around a customer shift to buying used, look no further than the Poshmark deal. This in turn creates a competitive environment with independent marketplaces, as seen in @Forbes “Battle Of Luxury Resale Business Models.” All of this places more pressure on brands to protect their brand equity and own their customers' experience. It's also a good reminder that jumping on the circular bandwagon with marketing isn't a substitution for required innovation. Let's start with the Poshmark deal. Bloomberg covered the Poshmark acquisition by Naver, a leading South Korean e-comm platform. I see this as a win for @Manish_Chandra, a pioneer in the resale space, and Poshmark's investors and the industry. The deal priced POSH at 3.4X their 2022 revenue, a 34% premium to the past 30-day volume-weighted trading average and ahead of more asset-heavy competitors.Other public resale companies such as The Real Real (TRR) and Thredup stock prices were up following the announcement as @Olivia Rockeman points out in her Bloomberg article as an indication of additional M&A activity. While that would surprise me, I view this as opportunistic rather than industry maturity and consolidation. The competition will continue to heat up as more independent retailers such as Vestaire, StockX, and even Goodwill were in the news. As the Sourcing Journal covered, StockX expansion into additional luxury categories will set up more direct competition with The RealReal and Vestaire.Forbes published a piece on Reflant vs The RealReal. The column rightly pointed out that brands supported by B2B players such as Reflaunt will add pressure to Independent marketplaces such as The RealReal. These marketplaces trade on premium brands with little to no value back to the brand. Where I found the article a bit off, was in the competitive match-up as players such as StockX and Vestiaire are far more competitive for The RealReal than Reflant, at least today.Goodwill joins the premium resale market along with brands such as Gucci, Hermes, and Louis Vuitton. I don't view this as true competition for these competitive independent marketplaces such as StockX as Goodwill lacks the investment in areas such as SEO and dynamic pricing necessary to truly compete here. Goodwill's announcement of the program targets its aim, “to provide professional training, job placement, youth mentorship, and more to local communities.” This is what Goodwill does best and I believe this move will create more opportunities for them here. It will also create additional places for branded products to show up, making resale innovation and strategy more important for brands.Jimmy Choo, Sando, and DÔEN all launched resale programs. Jimmy Choo launched as a ‘partnership' with The RealReal which similar to other deals with independent marketplaces is more of a marketing partnership. Brands may gain traffic and earned media but in the end, they are not building a more circular model to stay in touch and own their customer experience.French brands, Sando and DÔEN launched as branded experiences with B2B providers, Archive and Treet respectively. Sando's storefront experience is appealing, although as with other recent launches the inventory is a bit sparse (about 75 items listed). The challenge with low inventory is first-time customers won't likely find relevant items and may not quickly return. Ideally, inventory for resale will continue to come from customers via accessible programs such as mail-in and trade-in programs. The DÔEN experience was high-end and as WWD pointed out, certainly wins the ‘best pun award' titled, ‘Hand Me Dôen.' The DÔEN experience was not as clear in terms of how the program works but it appears the program is starting with always on trade-in and pop-up flash sales.Resale activity continues to intensify, as there will only be room for a few independent marketplace winners. This makes it more important for brands to have a resale strategy and plan that protects their brand equity and allows them to monetize the full value of the items they design and produce. Some of the programs we saw this week are intermediate steps but fall short of the innovation we need to shift the model–maybe they had an early draft of Joel's article.The So What:-Brands face more headwinds as competition intensifies within the independent resale marketplaces as more of their product will show up for sale in more places-Don't confuse marketing activity with innovation that ultimately is necessary to service a new way customers are shopping for preloved itemsSubscribe to The Resale Edit at www.trove.com/blog

Daniel Tolson has served as a consultant to more than 7,150 companies and across the globe. As a business influencer, he impacts millions of people each year. Daniel is considered the world's Number One business coach specialising in Emotional Intelligence, with over 1,350 case studies into emotional intelligence in the past three years alone. His interactive talks and seminars on Sales Success and Business Model Innovation, bring about immediate improvements in sales results. He has conducted high-level consulting assignments with many billion-dollar plus corporations in emotional intelligence and business model innovation.

In this episode, we come to you live from the Next World Forum conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia where we discuss gaming and esports business model innovation, with special guests Abdulaziz Baeshen (Assistant Minister for Sport and Sport Affairs at the Ministry of Sports, Saudi Arabia), Grant Johnson (CEO of Esports Entertainment Group), Kishan Deepak Palija (CEO of Geekay Group), Yannick Theler (CEO of Savvy Games Studios), moderator Lucy Hedges (Technology Editor for Metro UK), and our very own Paul “The Profit” Dawalibi!

Hear how to make your business better, remotely It should be no surprise to you that as an anthropologist specializing in helping companies change, I loved my interview with Liam Martin. As we've all experienced, the pandemic has dramatically changed what we think of as “normal.” In particular, the meaning of work has changed and continues to, as each generation moves into the workforce with different values, beliefs and behaviors. Businesses, both small and large, are trying to recruit, retain and develop their talent pool, only to find that today's workers have very different ideas about what matters to them, reflecting fundamental societal questions about what “really matters” to each of us. Enjoy. Watch and listen to our conversation here Today's podcast contains very valuable data, information and insights about how to manage a remote or hybrid workforce Think of it as today's future way of working. But, as so many of our clients are asking, how do you manage a remote workforce, particularly since women really have embraced remote work? My guest Liam Martin, co-founder of a remote-first company which grew eight figures with people in 43 different countries and no office, says, "Remote work has been our way of working for more than 10 years. We observed that almost 99% of new remote companies during the pandemic could not figure out one thing common to all successful remote-first companies: asynchronous communication, the bedrock of every successful remote business. Here are a few of the new counterintuitive principles Liam and I discuss:  Introverts climb to the top faster in remote-first companies because their thoughtfulness is seen as an asset, not a liability. In remote-first organizations, charismatic leaders are not required; in fact, charisma is one of the biggest barriers to business growth, regardless of whether the company is remotely located or not.  Remote teams operate on autonomy, and contrary to popular belief, the more automated measurements you have within your organization, the more freedom you have.  Remote-first companies have, on average, half as many managers as on-premises companies. Management in remote first-organizations is redundant. Contact Liam via LinkedIn or his two websites: Time Doctor and Running Remote.  Enjoy our conversation. Rethink your own organization. It may be time to change. Perhaps we can help you visualize a new business model for the future—which is really today! Please contact us here.  Want to know more about successfully taking your company remote? Start here. Blog: How Are You Changing How You Work? Is It Working? Blog: The Future Of Work: 5 Most Important Trends To Watch Blog: Virtual Organizations, Hybrid Organizations, And The Most Amazing Workplaces For Tomorrow? Podcast: Teresa Douglas—Unleashing Those Secrets To Working Remotely Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants   {{cta('20db9f83-fb49-4483-b118-61d915909275','justifyleft')}} Read the transcript of our podcast here Andi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. Hi, I'm Andi Simon. As you know, I'm your host and your guide. I'm also a bit of an explorer. And I go looking for really interesting people who are going to help you see, feel and think in ways so you can soar. These are indeed fast-changing times and so the more unusual people I can bring to you, the happier I am. I'm amazed at where people are listening to our podcasts. So thank you, you've pushed us to the top 5% of podcasts across the globe and that's a pretty impressive place to be. And we're now at 327 podcasts, so we just keep going, trying to find great folks. Today I'm quite honored to have Liam Martin with me. Liam has a very interesting story to share with you about the world that we're in. And I'm going to ask him some questions about what is work, what's remote work. I have my own clients who are trying to bring their employees back into the office. And the employees are saying, "Why?" And they're saying, "Why not? We miss you." And they say, "But we don't miss the commute. And we don't mind working out of the house, and we're getting much more productive and we're actually having a life." It's a very interesting time, even as we go post-pandemic. It's hard to know what's going on and who's coming back, and how to use remote and what we've learned wisely. And I think that's the lesson to be learned today. So let me introduce you to Liam. Liam is a serial entrepreneur. He runs something called Time Doctor and staff.com, one of the most popular time-tracking and productivity software platforms in use by top brands today. He's also co-organizer of the world's largest remote work conference, Running Remote, and he'll tell you a little bit about it because it's already happened. I think you're going to wait for next year to make sure you can get there as well. Liam is an avid proponent of remote work and has published in all the major publications. He targets expansion of remote work, not because it's a gig but because it really does work for work. And I've been talking and doing research a lot about what is work, where do we work? When is the home not a home? How can we talk about life-work balance? It's sort of blended, and the pandemic was a catalytic moment for change. And I love change. But it's also been a catalytic moment for wondering about the core values we've got. Liam, thank you for joining me today. Liam Martin: Thanks for having me, Andi. I'm super excited to be able to get into this subject, because I think we're going to be able to get a little bit deeper than the average podcast. Andi Simon: Well, I think that's what I hope to do. I refuse to say: give me three things to talk about. You have a new book out called Running Remote. And it's focused on remote work methodology. And it's a revolutionary guide. And for the listener and the viewer, it is revolutionary because it isn't simply about what you ought to do, it's also how you should do it and why you should do it. But it raises those fundamental questions we're asking, like, what is work? And how do you get it done? And then how do you review the people who are working this way? And what are all the four things that we have in our company? Liam, tell us about you. Who's Liam, how'd you get here? Why is remote work so important to you? Liam Martin: So first off, I'm currently in a chalet in northern Canada. I'm from French Canada. So I'm fluent in both French and English. And I've been working remotely for almost 20 years. I definitely was doing it before everyone thought it was cool. And the reason why I was doing that was, I actually dropped out of my Ph.D. They gave me a professorship, which was a master's degree for dropping out. And I remember teaching my very first class at McGill University. I was incredibly excited about this because this is where I was going in my career. I started with 300 students and ended up with less than 150. And the worst academic reviews in the history of the department. The department had been up and running for 186 years. So pretty bad. I remember walking into my supervisor's office and looking him very squarely in the face and I said, "I don't think I'm very good at this." And he said, "No, you are not." And I said, "Okay, so what do you think I should do?" He said, "You have to get pretty good at this teaching thing over the next 10 to 20 years before you get to do anything really fun. So figure out how to get better at that or figure out how to do something else." Six weeks later, after I put a master's thesis under his door, I was out into the real world. And that's where I actually started my very first business which was an online tutoring company. And I grew that to dozens of tutors throughout North America and Europe, but I ended up actually really working for the business. I was working 18-hour days. I remember actually chipping one of my teeth. When I went to the dentist to be able to check the tooth, you sat down, you've got the big white light, the chair that goes back, and the dentist gasped. And it's never a good idea when a health professional gasps when they look at you. He said, "Liam, which tooth are you talking about? You've chipped almost all of your teeth." He felt that I had pancreatic cancer because I had had X-rays the year before in which my teeth were perfect. And it was from stress. I was grinding my teeth at night, and grinding them into chalk. So he said, "Figure out how to do this remote work thing better, figure out how to do a business better." And that's where I really started to unlock the secrets of remote work. I've now grown multiple businesses to eight figure run rates and beyond. We have team members in 44 different countries all over the world. And I'm really excited about our mission statement, which is empowering the world's transition towards remote work. Everything that we do feeds into that. Andi Simon: That is just fascinating. But I also remember teaching my first class at Queens College. I had 300 students in the room. And when I was done, my professor came up to me, Dr. Silverman said to me, "You'll do." And I wasn't quite sure what that meant other than spend 10 years as an academic and get my tenure. And I had really rave reviews, except for an occasional non-rave. But then I too left to get into business. I wasn't going to do the same thing in academia for the rest of my life, the idea of being tenured was a very high mark to achieve and then something that I didn't want to pursue. And business has been quite fascinating in terms of change. When you did this, it was early in the remote world, you could see opportunities there. And I'm curious, because as you began to build the companies around this, you learned some things that became really quite a passion of yours, and really probably the substance of your book. So before we get into your book, some of the insights that came from that early business and the remote work workplace. Liam Martin: So for me, I'm always really good at figuring out trends that are moving up into the light. The problem for me, however, is, I don't know how fast they're moving. So are we talking about the market expanding at 2% per year, 10% per year, just to kind of give you context. In February of 2020, 4% of the US workforce was working remotely. By March, 45% of the US workforce was working remotely. That's the biggest transition in work since the industrial revolution. But the industrial revolution took 80 years. And we did that in March. So a complete change of everything that we know as it applies to work. Just a month ago, the US Census actually collected a new data set with regards to remote work, and identified that 7% of the US workforce is currently working remotely. But if you include hybrid work, it's 32% of the US workforce, and less than 10% of that workforce is working remotely due to the pandemic. So over 90% are working, because they want to be able to work from home. So we're at a really interesting transition phase where a lot of people are being pushed back to the office, they're being pushed back to these hybrid work agreements, even though they don't really want to be able to do them. And I think that that feeds into the core of the big problem that we had during the pandemic, which was that instead of actually adopting remote work, we simply recreated the office at home. Andi Simon: Well, yes, we did. Because when in doubt, you know, mimic. Humans are great monkeys. And we knew what we knew. But we were very attached to it. But we may not even have liked it. And now we had something new that we had no idea about, there were no models. So we had to figure out something. There are a couple of problems that have developed. One of which is the worker at home having to navigate. I had my own clients who were trying to navigate family and work and their own self-care. You had your managers who were trying to figure out how to make sure the work got done. And they were also trying to figure out how to evaluate how the work got done and if it got done well. One gentleman said to me, "I used to go out and have coffee with my folks and I learned what they were doing. I don't know how to do that now." And I asked him, "That's the basis on which you evaluated?" And he said, "Yeah, that was pretty much how I evaluated them." I said, "Well, one wonders whether that was good, or now it's bad." So you had the managers and you had the important performance evaluation. And they were working with a group and they are lonely, but they don't want to come back to the office. And so how do you develop a community of remote workers? And how do you do it in such a way as they can begin to develop the trust they need to know who to go to for what kind of problems? So I have a hunch. These are issues that you saw happening, and maybe even have some suggestions about. Can you take me through it any which way? How do you do it at home? How do you manage it? How do you evaluate it? Or how do you build a business? What do you see happening? Liam Martin: Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. So you're actually addressing all of the problems that we saw when we were developing this book. The first one, which I think is the most important, is, How do you measure success inside of a remote-first organization. And one of the issues that I personally had to deal with because I've come from the remote work world, I've been doing remote work for almost 20 years, I've actually never worked inside of an office. I think, technically, the last time I worked inside of an office was when I got that horrible review, in grad school teaching a first year Sociology course. And the philosophy inside of remote-first organizations, it's the third tenant of what we identify in our book, is detailed metrics. So every single individual inside of our organization has a quantifiable, longitudinal metric that is actually collected by the platform, and not necessarily by the individual. And inside of that, we have a philosophy that we like to call radical transparency, where everyone gets access to that information. So when you join an asynchronous remote organization, you actually don't just get access to what you do or what your department does, but you get access to everything in the organization. The saying is, Can we give you the same informational advantage as the CEO of the company, which is sometimes very difficult for people that live in a synchronous 20th century MBA mindset to get their heads around. But what it does provide to you is, the measurement is actually the platform's responsibility, not the managers. So you have this clear third perspective, and the conversations that happen between managers and employees are, "Your numbers are not where they need to be, I need to be able to help you to get those numbers to where they need to be because I don't control those numbers, I don't control the judgment as to whether or not you succeed or not, these numbers are actually predefined. So we need to be able to work together to be able to get you to where you need to go,' which aligns you with the manager. So you, the manager, is not judging you. It's the platform that's judging you. But more importantly, actually, the manager is also being judged, and in the same way, because the manager is saying, "Well, all your direct reports," where the person above them would say, "All of these numbers don't necessarily seem to be working out and this other department is doing better than you. You might be the problem as the manager." So qualitative versus quantitative measures. Qualitative measures don't really exist inside of asynchronous teams. And we think that that is an advantage. Andi Simon: Now clarify something for our viewers: what does it mean to be asynchronous? I want to go back to your data as data-driven performance. But asynchronous means what? Liam Martin: So fundamentally, it just means building a business without interacting with people simultaneously, or what we call synchronously. But I can give you a good example that kind of alludes to this. I don't know how old you are, but I remember when, back in the day, I would have to watch Friends every Friday at 8:30pm because I knew that if I missed Friends, on Monday I wouldn't be in the conversations that everyone was having because in that episode, you got to find out what Chandler does this week. And sometimes I'd show up at 8:40 and I missed the first 10 minutes of Friends. So I'd have to take another six months before I could check out a rerun of that particular episode. That is synchronous communication at its core. Asynchronous communication and management is more like the Netflix model. So the information is available for you, documented in a digitized platform and it's available to every employee to consume when it's most advantageous to them to consume it, not on a timetable of the manager or the organization. So you as a worker can say, "Well, I don't really want to meet at 3pm to be able to do this meeting because I'm really in a good flow state right now and I'm completing a project, so I can watch the recording or I can read the minutes of that particular meeting at 8pm when it's most advantageous for me to be able to consume that information." It's a very, very small shift in the way that you think but it creates a massive increase in overall productivity by our data. And again, I looked at approximately three dozen companies that are asynchronous at this point and some of the most successful companies in the world, by the way, are asynchronous. WordPress is asynchronous, GitLab is asynchronous, Shopify is in part asynchronous. These are massive companies that run like 30-40% of the internet and they have no zoom calls. They have no phone calls. They all are autonomous nodes in the system because they know exactly what they need to achieve and they have the information available to them through the platform and in order to be able to actually achieve those particular goals. So we see in our data that the average organization is about 33% more productive. And we define productivity by the amount of hard problems that organizations can solve. One of the big philosophical frameworks inside of the book that's been passed around inside of the remote work community for years is a book called Deep Work by Cal Newport. And so we use that at scale. And we're finding that those organizations are 33% more efficient. They cost about 50% less than their on-premise counterparts. And they're generally going to be a lot more effective as we move forward. And if you're not doing this right now, this is probably why you've had difficulty in the past actually deploying remote work at scale. Andi Simon: Now go a little deeper here because as we talk about developing talent, we talk about humans needing autonomy. They need to be in control. They need to believe that it's fair, that there's a fairness lead there. They need to protect their status, they need some certainty. And then they need the mastery, and they need the relationships. That human brain, you don't make decisions based upon what we call score. Nobody needs their status protected. I need my certainty, my autonomy, my relationships and my fairness. As you're talking, I'm saying to myself, Well, this is really fascinating because asynchronous management businesses enable people who are able to become quite autonomous, master their jobs, get the kind of fairness that they require because it's not biased. It's based on the data. You do it or you don't and then they can begin to build the relationships. They need to get their work done, as opposed to the artificial meetings of the past, where you came together, even though there was nothing to discuss, no agenda or takeaways from it. You're smiling and been in too many of those. Liam Martin: I have a saying , which is, No agenda, no agenda. That's my mindset with regards to that kind of stuff. I mean, this is so difficult for people to get their minds around. And it was very, very difficult, by the way, for me to be able to, for the first time ever, be exposed to a synchronous environment in which I would sit around with eight other people in a room. And maybe two of those people would talk for 90 minutes, and then we would leave. And I would think to myself, "Why was I here? I could have written four blog posts or done two podcasts during that time. Why am I here? This could have been an email." Andi Simon: I was an executive at a hospital, I moved from banking to healthcare, and same thing. We would come to meetings, no agenda, no takeaways or work to be done. An FYI kind of meeting I guess. But coming from the outside, which never has straight meetings, and now, it was one of those, what am I supposed to do here? Why am I spending the time? And then I watch people selectively omit the meetings, which is a whole other strategy. But they're also talking about their behavior, and I can get the job done without being synchronous. I couldn't get it done with being an autonomous individual capable of doing this. So take me through your book a little bit. I love the asynchronous part. Other parts to it that your listeners here should know about that you want to make sure they share, because I have a hunch you want them to become remote workers. Liam Martin: Yeah, so really there's three core tenants of the book and it's very simple, because we've seen so many books come out about remote work. There's actually 27 coming out this quarter, based on what my publisher is telling me. And there's no book on asynchronous work. There's no book on asynchronous management, which is a real shame because I actually think it's the core of what all of these real pioneers were doing before the pandemic and this really was a bit of a kind of qualitative journey for me. Looking at all of these different companies and identifying where the trend lines were, I was trying to identify the signal. And then we talked about asynchronous work and I realized every single company that was successful was deploying what I call asynchronous management at scale. So there's three core fundamental pieces to it. There's deliberate over-communication, democratized workflows, and detailed metrics. So over-communication of information shouldn't be easy to understand, it should be impossible to misunderstand. That's a very small switch in your mindset. But an email is not just an introduction to an asynchronous meeting, an email is where the conversation should hopefully start and end. And the less of those forms of communication that you end up having, the clearer that you can be, the extra three minutes that you spend on an email or communicating in a project management tool, as an example, the more effective you're going to be, organizationally. The second one is democratized workflows. So process documentation is at the core of every single asynchronous organization. There is a really great quote from a company called GitLab, which is a $14 billion company. They spend less than 1% of the time communicating synchronously, but they have a $14 billion valuation and are growing incredibly quickly. And they have this saying, which is, We always respond with a link. So whenever someone asks a question inside of the organization, they respond with a link to a process document that answers their question. So they're removing the manager from being the way that people get answers. And they're training them to basically figure out that the platform is really their manager. Again, reinforcing autonomy, allowing individuals to say, "Well, here's where I go to get my information. It's actually in this documentation and I want to actively use it as much as humanly possible." And then the third one, that we had touched on before, is detailed metrics. Every single person inside of an asynchronous organization has a third party, longitudinal quantifiable metric that they do not self-populate, that is populated by the platform itself. And then that information is available to everyone. So everyone knows what everyone else is doing inside of the organization. And counterintuitively, you may think that this impacts autonomy, but in reality, actually, if it were me, I would much rather be managed and measured by a platform that's at its core egalitarian, as opposed to John that says, "Hey, you know what, I don't really like the way that Liam talks to me sometimes so therefore, I'm going to give him a low rating on my three sheets to review," that type of stuff. So between those three core tenants, you can actually build any level of asynchronous organization. And it's really exciting once you get there because then you can do things like, have your employees work wherever they want. So they don't necessarily need to be in a particular location, because you're not dependent upon synchronous communication. They don't have to be located in the same city. We have employees in 44 different countries across the planet. You can have employees that are from any location and are bringing in very different perspectives. We've had one funny week where I had a meeting with someone that was talking about debating their transition from male to female. And then the very next week, I had a discussion with someone who was thinking about having a second wife in their family because in the Middle East, this person was from the Middle East, and that was legal and encouraged in their particular country. And then this other person was transitioning. Where in any organization could you have those two same people interact? Well, you can have an organization in which you don't necessarily have to have that kind of cultural homogenization that you end up having in the vast majority of synchronous organizations. So it's a really exciting time. And I see this going back to another friend of mine, Darren Murph, who was head of remote at WordPress. He said, “This is really a Model T moment where we're really seeing a new way of operating a business.” And that's why I want to kind of get this out to as many people as possible. Andi Simon: How about decision making? As I'm listening to you, you're empowering your folks to make decisions? Or do you have a different asynchronous way of evaluating options or how do you manage expenditures, empowerment, risk taking, things like that. You know, some of my clients are always concerned about, "How much risk shall I take? How do I go up for approval? Where do I manage the dollars?" But as I'm listening to you, it sounds like we're going to empower our people to make those decisions, or how do they work? Liam Martin: Yeah, so I can give you one clear example, which can kind of allude to many more. We have this concept called Silent Meetings inside of our organizations, inside of all asynchronous organizations. And to get very tactical, we use a platform called Asana, which is a task and project management system. And every single week, we have a meeting where we post issues. So the issue might be, we would like to hire 10 more engineers to work on this particular issue. Here's the pros and cons. Here's what we think. Here's why we think we'll succeed. Here's the risks if we fail. And then we debate that issue asynchronously. So we start writing comments inside of that particular issue ticket. And sometimes these issues can go 40, 50, 100 comments long. They are incredibly intense, very rich pieces of information. And if we come to a conclusion, we take that conclusion, and we put it to the top of the ticket, and we clear the ticket. And if we have less than three issues in our agenda, the platform automatically cancels the synchronous meeting. So we do this meeting every week. And we have on average one meeting a month because we don't necessarily need to address all of those issues, all the issues that you think are going to make or break the business and completely change the trajectory of what you're doing as an organization. They don't need to be discussed synchronously the vast majority of the time, they can be discussed asynchronously, and can be just as successful. And the advantage is that, #1: there's documentation. So I can go back two years and I can figure out why did I make this decision in the business. I can look at the 78 comments and the debate. So there's no undocumented conversations inside of asynchronous organizations. The second big advantage, and I don't know if you've had this situation happen to you, but it happens to me all the time. It's very difficult for me to be able to communicate in the moment. I'm much better sitting down and thinking about things, getting the information and processing it in my own time. And when I look at a boardroom, I don't even need to hear what people are saying to figure out whose ideas are going to get adopted. First, it's usually the six foot tall white guy that looks like Captain America because, generally, that person has a charismatic advantage, what I like to call a charisma bias. So we have that person pitch those ideas. Is that person's idea better than anyone else's? Probably not. But can the packaging of that person sell everyone on that idea? Absolutely. So inside of asynchronous organizations, the wallflower like me that doesn't actually want to debate those issues in the moment, because I know I will lose, I don't have that type of skill set. I can communicate in asynchronous meetings and better ideas get adopted more often inside of asynchronous organizations. And over time, that is a killer formula for much higher levels of success inside of your organization. Andi Simon: It sounds like, in your organization, this is how you run the business. So the question is, how do you then develop, attract, retain, and develop your talent? Do they just love this way of working and learn it immediately? Because it's a different way from mine. I'm guessing they've acquired skills in high school and college, about how you get things done. And, you know, a feeder system needs to be created and may actually be you that creates it, but what would you do with employees to make them happy doing it this way? Liam Martin: So the first thing that I think you need to take a look at is, there's a core assumption in there that I think the majority of synchronous organizations take into consideration which we do not, which is the concept of culture. I mean, you're really just boiling it down to, How do we build culture inside of organizations. Asynchronous organizations are more focused on the work than the people. So inside of asynchronous organizations, we do not say that we own a position, we say that we currently operate a position. So I am not the CMO of the company. I currently operate the position of CMO of the company. And at any point I have the documentation in place to be able to completely delegate that responsibility if I want to. So I want to take the year off and write a book about remote work, which I did. I can, within days, delegate all that responsibility to my direct reports, and the organization continues on. But going back to the work concept, it entirely is focused on, Are people really passionate about the problem that you're trying to solve? Our mission as a company is, we're trying to empower the world's transition towards remote work that feeds into everything that we currently do as an organization. And our measurement for new people that are coming into the organization is, "Are you as passionate about that as us? Do you have a cult-like commitment to that particular mission? If you don't, don't work here. We'll find you a job somewhere else that's way better. And will probably pay you more, but we can't pay you as much. It's going to be more difficult. But at the end of the day, we're going to try to put a dent in the universe that I think you will be fundamentally proud of because you're so incredibly passionate about this particular subject." And that's what almost the majority of people miss is, it doesn't matter how qualified someone is, are they actually excited about what they're doing? Because if they're not excited about what they're doing, then you might as well not even start. So that's where we start. And as an example, we have an ENPS rating, which is an Employee Net Promoter Score, basically, how engaged employees are in the organization. The industry average is 36. And when I studied these asynchronous organizations, I found on average, they had a score of 72. So they're much more engaged. And the two major reasons that they give for why they like working there is autonomy and access to information. So having an open organization like that allows for people to be more autonomous, enjoy what they're doing. They're not necessarily interacting with coworkers as much because asynchronous organizations just by default don't do that. But there are different ways that we interact. Like one of the companies that I studied in the book is a company called Todoist, which is a task management app that has millions of users all over the world. And they play a kind of version of Dungeons and Dragons on their instant messaging platform. And as a group, they all have a little community and they say, Well, do we go left or we do we go right? And some of them are wizards and rogues and warriors, and they fight a fight. And they have this actually through text. So it's a really fun kind of experience. And they'll say, Hey, within the next 24 hours, everyone's got to log in. And you've got to make your decision as to what you do because we're going to be moving our party forward. And that's a very nerdy example. But that's just some of the ways that we interact asynchronously. Andi Simon: Liam, I'm enjoying our conversation and I'm also watching our time. And when is your book coming out? Liam Martin: The book is going to be out August 16. So dependent upon when this session comes out, it may be available. And if people want to go check it out, go to runningremotebook.com. And then you can obviously pick it up at Barnes and Noble. Amazon is probably the easiest place to be able to get it. Andi Simon: But we all do want to keep Barnes and Noble happy. But to your point, this is really cool if you do consulting? And do you help people create asynchronous organizations? Is that part of your toolkit as well? Liam Martin: No, because I don't have time to be able to do that. I have to stay an operator inside of the inside of remote work. But if you go to runningremotebook.com, I actually do have a network of consultants that I can refer you to if you're really interested in deploying asynchronous itself. Andi Simon: Because the last thing I like to do is raise expectations. This is really cool. And why would I like to do this with all of my remote workers? Can I take the opportunity and turn it into something better? And then they say, But how do you do this? And you know, you can't learn to play golf without a coach and some idea of how you hit the ball. And you gotta hit it 700 times before you hit it well, so there's lots to do between the lip and the top here. But this has been so fascinating. As you are wrapping up: two or three things you might like to leave the listeners with? They often remember the end even better than your beginning. And your beginning was wonderful. Liam Martin: Well, so I think first off, to your point: I'm not trying to build a million asynchronous organizations, I'm trying to get a million organizations to be 1% more asynchronous. So if you pick up this book and you're able to pick up two or three strategies to be able to remove one or two meetings from every single individual, that is going to be a net gain to the universe, in my opinion. So it's really important to be able to check out the book see what you think. The second point that I'll leave you with is: If you think that this is not going to be the norm moving forward, you are unfortunately not understanding how history works. We're at 30% of the US workforce working remotely. I believe that within the next five years, we're going to be back up to 50% of the US workforce working remotely in part. And this is a permanent civilizational shift. So you can either stick your head in the sand, and think that the old way is the way to be able to do it, going back to the horse and buggy concept, or you can jump onto those Model Ts and right into the future. So it's up to you. But I would highly suggest that if you think that this is a trend, or just kind of a speed bump in history, definitely pick up the book, because you need to be able to adapt for those changes. Andi Simon: Well, you know, the comment that this is the Model T for work is a very interesting metaphor. I'm sure you've read that Henry Ford invented the modern age. And now we have electronic vehicles, electric vehicles coming out, transforming the car from a combustible engine to basically a computer with a battery. And so there are lots of great transformations happening at this moment. And I think that work, and I love catalytic moments, which the pandemic did create a crisis and I preach, Don't waste a crisis, because you learned a lot. And I do a tremendous amount of virtual workshops and speaking engagements. And people say, "We want you to come." And I'm trying really hard to tell them that that's a waste of my time, and not probably more valuable for them. Because I'm not there to entertain you with my charismatic life. I mean, I'm there to inform you and educate you, perhaps with a little edutainment. But if we can do it remotely, it's really cool for me and for you. And it's cheaper for you too, and so I did 49 of them this year with great reviews. I have them starting to book up for next year. And I'm saying to myself, I don't really need to do it in person. It's a little asynchronous in a sense, but it's not too far for what you're talking about. That's a great transformation, we learned a lot. And boy, you can listen in and find yourself coming away transformed, like our listeners are going to be after listening to you. This has been such fun. Thank you for joining me today. I know you're doing a lot of podcasts. I hope this has been a fun one for you. Because part of it is really fun taking your ideas and sharing it. So you don't have to tell me if it was fun or not. You can just smile for our viewers. Liam Martin: It was actually very enjoyable. And thank you so much for having me. Andi Simon: Well, and thank you, both viewers and listeners for coming today. Now remember, my job is to help you see, feel and think in new ways so that you can do things better. My job is to get you off the brink so you can soar. And the times, they're changing, you often become stuck in the mud. You're the deer in the headlight, you stand still, you're attached to your shiny object. And until you see something new, you don't know how to change. And that's because your body protects you from the unfamiliar or the unknown. And so today, we've been hearing a lot about the changing nature of work. It's happened. And now you can sustain it, but also turn it into a better way to do business, because quite frankly, your customers are looking to do it as well. And it's not just inside, but it's outside, which is what we love to do. My books are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business has been doing really well and won an award for the 2022 best business book for women in business. And my On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights has been hustling along. They're showing you how a little anthropology can help your business grow. And remember my job is to help you change. You hate change but the times are changing. So come along and let's have some fun. You can reach me of course at info@Andisimon.com or info@Simonassociates.net and our new Simon Associates website is out, which is www.simonassociates.net. Come take a look and see what you can learn about how to change. Bye for now. And thank you again for coming. Bye-bye.

Ed and Ron are honored to have Kevin Smoot on the show, who Ron met at various accounting conferences. After the first time Kevin heard Ron speak, he went back to his firm and completely transformed his business model. Join us as we dive into the details of this transformation, Kevin's current strategy, and future plans.

Ed and Ron are honored to have Kevin Smoot on the show, who Ron met at various accounting conferences. After the first time Kevin heard Ron speak, he went back to his firm and completely transformed his business model. Join us as we dive into the details of this transformation, Kevin's current strategy, and future plans.

Ed and Ron are honored to have Kevin Smoot on the show, who Ron met at various accounting conferences. After the first time Kevin heard Ron speak, he went back to his firm and completely transformed his business model. Join us as we dive into the details of this transformation, Kevin's current strategy, and future plans.

This episode is with Alex Osterwalder - Author of best-selling books Business Model Generation, Value Proposition Design, and his latest book, The Invincible Company. He's been ranked No.4 of the top 50 management thinkers globally, and he's the co-founder of Strategyzer, which helps companies expand existing business lines, build new growth enginges, de-risk innovation ideas, and up-skill teams. In this episode we talk about how to build an invincible company through business model innovation.

683: Ather Williams III; EVP & Head of Strategy, Digital, and Innovation at Wells Fargo; and Prakash Kota, SVP & Chief Information Officer of Autodesk, discuss the technology-led business model innovations at their respective companies. Prakash begins with the digital transformation he has led at Autodesk. Both executives then give their perspectives on identifying and operationalizing innovation opportunities and adopting an agile mindset to measure the value realized from these opportunities.

683: Ather Williams III; EVP & Head of Strategy, Digital, and Innovation at Wells Fargo; and Prakash Kota, SVP & Chief Information Officer of Autodesk, discuss the technology-led business model innovations at their respective companies. Prakash begins with the digital transformation he has led at Autodesk. Both executives then give their perspectives on identifying and operationalizing innovation opportunities and adopting an agile mindset to measure the value realized from these opportunities.

This episode of Over the Edge features an interview between Matt Trifiro and Ali Fenn, President of ITRenew. Ali is a dynamic and innovative executive with a track record of success in business development, sales and product management. Fenn's experience spans numerous technology areas, including: enterprise infrastructure and the broader software and applications stack, storage and data management, security, mobile applications, hardware, and consumer web applications and services. She is currently a board member of Virtual Power, and strategic advisor for Energy Internet Corporation as well as Pentatonic. In this episode Ali Fenn, President of ITRenew, a circular data center services company that provides secure decommissioning and Sesame recertified rack scale solutions, breaks down the journey of technology from pre-use to post-use, and analyzes the amount of carbon emission produced throughout its lifecycle. She also talks about creating a circular IT infrastructure, demystifying hyperscale hardware, and causes of the ‘lion's share' of carbon emissions. She ends the episode talking about a need for the world's collective effort in solving unsustainable IT infrastructure.---------Key Quotes:“They've [most companies] done a really good job at being efficient in the use phase, but supply chain is the next big place we all have to look at. It's the lion's share of carbon emissions. It's not just equipment, it's cement and construction and everything else that goes into the physical infrastructure.” “I do believe that it's this topic of sustainability and in the context of IT infrastructure: It's our global collective imperative to solve it. And, at the same time, it's a huge opportunity, right? Data center infrastructure is going to fuel the transition economy. It's a trillion dollar opportunity. This is not just sustainability, it is not a tax. It's an opportunity if we do it right.” “The idea here is to demystify hyperscale hardware and demystify open hardware. It doesn't have to be harder, but there is some work that goes into making it accessible to the broader markets. And that's the stuff that we do. We ultimately deliver it in a way that the enterprises can run super fast. And, that time-to-value is a big one, especially right now in the supply chain that we're in. You asked about the value proposition of this stuff, well, it's available. We're not manufacturing this stuff, right. So that's a huge advantage right now.”---------Timestamps:(02:30) Early on in Ali's career(03:25) First Company Ali Joined(04:00) Transfer to Infrastructure and Hardware(05:50) What does ITrenew do?(07:53) Data Center Sustainability and the ‘3 scope' terminology associated with carbon emissions(09:40) PUE - Power Usage Effectiveness(11:42) Hardware Footprints - Sustainability and Circularity(15:45) Hyperscale data centers(20:30) ITrenew and recycling vs. refurbishing(25:01) What is Sesame?(25:40) Data Security(29:38) Edge is Everywhere - computing impacting sustainability and equipment(33:21) Ecosystem Wide Collaboration and Data Center Sustainability(35:56) Supply chain data publication(36:45) TCO Levels(39:00) Rack Density(40:00) Business Model Innovation and Circular IT Infrastructure(42:30) Edge Computing Effects(45:15) Solving IT infrastructure --------Sponsor:Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi-cloud environment, we're here to help you simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting DellTechnologies.com/SimplifyYourEdge for more information or click on the link in the show notes.--------Links:Follow Matt on TwitterFollow Ali on TwitterConnect with Ali on LinkedInwww.CaspianStudios.com

Happy Hump-Day Friends!Wooooo it's been a great week so far! I don't have a full-time job, but I have a full-time passion that is making me werrrkkkkk! Which brings me to my next guest. Talk about ups & downs, success & failure. This man is nothing short of impressive & inspiring! I cannot do this conversation justice, you need to listen for yourself! Please welcome VIP guest Daniel Tolson! Daniel Tolson has served as a consultant to more than 15,000 companies and individuals throughout Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Italy, Great Britain, Ireland, and both North and South America.As a business influencer, he impacts millions of people each year. He has studied, researched, written, and spoken for 20 years on the topics of time management, goal setting, strategic planning, sales iQ, business model innovation and emotional intelligence. Daniel is considered the world's Number One business coach specializing in Emotional Intelligence, with over 5,500 case studies into emotional intelligence in the past three years alone. He has written and produced more than 250 audio and video learning programs, which have influenced business owners all around the world, including: Mental Detox, Total Emotional Mastery, and Win Sales Now!Daniel speaks to corporate and public audiences on the subjects of Emotional and Social Intelligence, including the executives and staff of many of Australia's largest corporations. His interactive talks and seminars on Selling with Emotional Intelligence, Business Model Innovation, Time Management and The Psychology of Success bring about immediate improvements in productivity, performance and output. Prior to founding his company, The Tolson Institute, Daniel was a leader of 17,000 cabin crew for Emirates Airlines. He has had successful careers in real estate sales and marketing, Pawnbroking, Second Hand Dealing, a former Australian Champion Wakeboarder and eXtreme Games Competitor.He has conducted high-level consulting assignments with many billion-dollar plus corporations in emotional intelligence and business model innovation. Daniel has traveled and worked in over 100 countries on six continents and lives in both Taiwan and Australia.He is happily married with two children. To learn more or connect, head to the links below:https://danieltolson.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieltolson/https://twitter.com/DanielTolson1Support for Label Free Podcast is brought to you by ​MANSCAPED™​, who is the best in men's below-the-waist grooming.  ​MANSCAPED  offers precision-engineered tools for your family jewels. They obsess over their technology developments to provide you the best tools for your grooming experience. MANSCAPED is trusted by over 2 million men worldwide! We have an exclusive offer for my listeners - 20% off + free shipping with the code: LabelFree20 at   https://www.manscaped.com​ As always thank you for the support, to contact me directly follow the link below: https://www.labelfreepodcast.com​ Stay Healthy, Stay Ready- Deanna Marie Kuempel #ad​​ #sponsor​

Innovation Sherpas Ben and Jay interview Kip Lee, Vice President of Innovation & Product Strategy at University Hospitals, and a Managing Director of UH Ventures. He's pursuing a Doctorate in Design and Innovation at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, and serves as an editor of the journal, Design Issues, published by MIT Press. In this inspiring conversation, Kip shares a bit about his background--such as designing at Marriott International--and the lessons healthcare innovators can apply from the hospitality industry. He describes the origin story of the UH Ventures group and how they worked as nomads across the University Hospitals organization, developing empathy and conducting ethnographic research simultaneously. We are thrilled to have our listeners listen to and learn from this wise and kind innovation leader. Kip's TEDxCLE talk: http://www.tedxcle.com/kipum-lee/Check out Kip's blog: https://architekton.org/Find us on Twitter@SherpaPod@JayGerhart@TheBenReport@KipumSupport the show (https://healthpodcastnetwork.com/)

In addition to a general Subscription Economy update, Ed and Ron will discuss what happens when the subscription model collides with a legacy model. There are essentially three ways to a launch a subscription model. What does the empirical report so far on the most optimal approach? Can you have two business models within the same organization? Join us for an in-depth look at these issues.

In addition to a general Subscription Economy update, Ed and Ron will discuss what happens when the subscription model collides with a legacy model. There are essentially three ways to a launch a subscription model. What does the empirical report so far on the most optimal approach? Can you have two business models within the same organization? Join us for an in-depth look at these issues.

An episode 20 years in the making! For our 96th episode, Ben welcomes long-time friend Matthew Swift, co-founder and CEO of Concordia, to discuss how he innovates in the world of public affairs.  Concordia is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to actively fostering, elevating, and sustaining cross-sector partnerships for social impact, including hosting the annual Concordia Summit. Matt described Concordia as "A forum discussing the world not as one person sees it but as a broader collective sees it, with no bias towards political party or political movement, and no bias for public sector or private sector."Learn how the idea for Concordia started at a student auction at Georgetown University, and how the Concordia Annual Summit began as a small event with 100 people (mostly friends and family, Matt admits) to now hosting nearly 4000 attendees with  representatives from 90 countries and 17 sitting heads of state.Additionally, Matt shares his insights on how to convene leaders to drive change, as well as:Counsel for healthcare innovators about how to approach public/private partnershipsThe experience design of a Concordia Summit eventWhy the response to Covid-19 is perhaps the greatest public/private partnership in historyOn Twitter:@MatthewASwift@ConcordiaSummit@SherpaPod@TheBenReportSupport the show (https://healthpodcastnetwork.com/)

Liz Markle PhD believes innovation in health and wellness isn't a new pill or superfood or wearable but a return to the universally applicable and radically simple advice to move, nourish, connect, and be. Tired of patients not making progress in between doctor visits, Liz wanted to make it easier for people to design their lives so that healthy behaviors were the default. Enter Open Source Wellness, a "behavioral pharmacy" that is high-touch and powered by connection, leading to health transformation. Listen to learn more about: Liz's career arc The genesis story of Open Source WellnessOSW's business modelHow a hypothetical $10b grant from the Gates Foundation would scale OSWVideo: What is Open Source Wellness?Credit to Mad*Pow and the Health Experience Design Conference for making the connection.On Twitter:@DrElizMarkle@OpenSourceWell@SherpaPod@TheBenReport@JayGerhartSupport the show (https://healthpodcastnetwork.com/)