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In this episode of The Level Up Podcast, Paul Alex pulls back the curtain on how the top 1% of entrepreneurs use data to dominate their industries. Success isn't built on guesswork—it's built on clear insights, rapid adjustments, and data-backed decisions that fuel serious growth.What You'll Learn:Elite-Level Metrics: Uncover the KPIs the top performers obsess over—like CAC, LTV, and conversion rates—and how they use them to scale fast.Trend Mastery: Learn how high-level entrepreneurs spot patterns early and use them to stay ahead of market shifts.Fast, Smart Execution: Discover why speed matters and how the best in the game make bold moves by trusting the numbers, not just their gut.
Wall Street, Cac 40… Europe 1 fait le point sur la situation de la Bourse.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Wall Street, Cac 40… Europe 1 fait le point sur la situation de la Bourse. Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Wall Street, Cac 40… Europe 1 fait le point sur la situation de la Bourse. Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Wall Street, Cac 40… Europe 1 fait le point sur la situation de la Bourse.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
In this episode, Brett sits down with Andrew Faris, CEO of AJF Growth and host of the Andrew Faris Podcast, to break down the critical elements of P&L design that separate ecomm brands that are dead on arrival vs. those who thrive. Andrew shares his hard-won insights from holding nearly every seat in the e-commerce ecosystem, including his experience running an aggregator "into the ground" and the valuable lessons learned along the way.—Sponsored by OMG Commerce - go to (https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact) and request your FREE strategy session today!—Chapters: (00:00) Join Us in NYC at Our Exclusive YouTube Event!(01:08) Introducing Andrew Faris & His eCommerce Journey(07:06) The Current State of eCommerce(13:16) The Influence of Moneyball by Michael Lewis in Marketing(19:29) Understanding P&L in eCommerce Success(23:34) Understanding Your Profit Goals & OMG Commerce's Case(29:35) How to Structure Your P&L as an eCommerce Brand(34:48) Optimizing Operational Expenses(34:56) CAC and Cost of Delivery(39:33) Channel Strategy and Product Margin Fit(42:51) Forecasting and Adjusting Business Strategy(49:50) Resources & Closing Thoughts—Connect With Brett: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/ Relevant Links:Andrew's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-faris-980b84108AJF Growth: https://ajfgrowth.com/Andrew's Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/7ssrhISeeGHgCLpzZgrxuJMoneyball by Michael Lewis: https://www.amazon.com/Moneyball-Art-Winning-Unfair-Game/dp/0393324818
Wall Street, Cac 40… Europe 1 fait le point sur la situation de la Bourse.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Wall Street, Cac 40… Europe 1 fait le point sur la situation de la Bourse.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
When the Silicon Valley Bank crisis erupted in early 2023, Larry Roseman was already well-acquainted with market upheaval. A member of the CFO class appointed around 2020—just as the pandemic began—Roseman had weathered previous storms. He began his career amid the dot-com collapse, then advanced through the 2008 financial crisis. “Scar tissue helps,” he tells us.So when he landed in Palm Springs for a tennis tournament and learned SVB was in freefall—taking all of Thumbtack's cash with it—his weekend plans were immediately sidelined. “Literally getting on the plane and landing, and the whole thing sort of blowing up,” Roseman recalls. “I was holed up in the hotel room for days,” working through how to ensure payroll and access to capital.That crisis became a defining moment. “That was the catalyst for us,” he tells us. Roseman used it to pivot the business away from growth-at-all-costs and toward sustainable, profitable growth. In just a few years, Thumbtack went from -$60 million in EBITDA to +$60 million.His ability to adapt comes from a varied career path—public accounting at Ernst & Young, investment banking at Bear Stearns and JPMorgan, and operational finance at eBay, where he helped spin off PayPal. At Thumbtack, a national home services marketplace, he's scaled the finance team tenfold and implemented a discipline around contribution margin, hire rate, and CAC.“The P&L doesn't lie,” Roseman tells us—especially in times of crisis, when it's clarity, not comfort, that defines the leader.
In the second segment of Something I Have Always Wondered About, KYMN News Intern Maya Betti talks with Anika Rychner and Lisa Percy of the Community Action Center. Among the several topics that they discuss, they talk about what the CAC does, the funding of the organization, and its expansion from just Northfield to operating […]
Join Dr. O as he chats with special guest Dr. Jessica Crowley, an experienced animal chiropractor who shares her insights on the powerful benefits of animal chiropractic care. From improved mobility to overall wellness, Dr. Crowley dives deep into how this practice transforms the lives of animals—and she reveals her biggest win in the field!
Analyse des mouvements du CAC 40 et de la chute de 25% de l'action Worldline, spécialiste des paiements en ligne, suite à une enquête journalistique internationale.Notre équipe a utilisé un outil d'Intelligence artificielle via les technologies d'Audiomeans© pour accompagner la création de ce contenu écrit.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Didier Hameau de Boursier.com fait le point sur la baisse du CAC 40 et la chute spectaculaire de 38% de l'action Worldline, spécialiste des paiements en ligne, suite à une enquête journalistique.Notre équipe a utilisé un outil d'Intelligence artificielle via les technologies d'Audiomeans© pour accompagner la création de ce contenu écrit.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Analyse des mouvements du CAC 40 et de la chute de 25% de l'action Worldline, spécialiste des paiements en ligne, suite à une enquête journalistique internationale.Notre équipe a utilisé un outil d'Intelligence artificielle via les technologies d'Audiomeans© pour accompagner la création de ce contenu écrit.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Didier Hameau de Boursier.com fait le point sur la baisse du CAC 40 et la chute spectaculaire de 38% de l'action Worldline, spécialiste des paiements en ligne, suite à une enquête journalistique.Notre équipe a utilisé un outil d'Intelligence artificielle via les technologies d'Audiomeans© pour accompagner la création de ce contenu écrit.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
What's slowing your sales team down isn't your people—it's your process.In this episode of the CEO Sales Strategies Podcast, Doug C. Brown sits down with Frank Sondors, founder of Salesforge.ai, to explore how AI sales agents and WhatsApp automation are helping B2B teams move faster, cut CAC, and scale without overhiring.Here's what you'll learn:✅ Why AI sales agents outperform traditional SDRs✅ How WhatsApp delivers 10x more responses than emai✅ What it takes to build systems that support human sellers instead of replacing them✅ How Frank scaled Salesforge from $0 to $3M ARR in under 12 monthsWhether you're running a lean sales org or scaling a high-ticket outbound team, this episode will show you how to combine automation with strategic selling for speed and results.
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with David Hirschfeld, owner of 18 year old business Tekyz, that boasts a hyperexceptional development team building high “ticket” products in the B2B space. They speak about ways in which AI is a gamechanger, how Tekyz backs their work for clients with relentless pursuit of quality, and how Tekyz practices ruthless compassion,to protect the company and enable it to grow Having collaborated with over 90 startups, he developed the Launch 1st Method—a systematic approach that minimizes risks and accelerates software company success with reduced reliance on investor funding, after observing that many companies launch a product first and then fail at a later stage – With Tekyz approach of Launch 1st exceptional founders are in love with the problem not the product. David's expertise bridges cutting-edge AI technologies, workflow optimization, and startup ecosystem dynamics. When not transforming business strategies, he enjoys woodworking, golfing, and drawing leadership insights from his experience raising four successful sons. You can find out more about David and Tekyz at: https://sites.google.com/tekyz.com/david-hirschfeld?usp=sharing https://tekyz.podbean.com/ - Scaling Smarter Episodes. www.scalingsmarter.net - Schedule an interview https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhirschfeld/ https://x.com/tekyzinc https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhirschfeld/ https://www.facebook.com/dmhirschfeld transcription: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founders Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, the host here on this monthly podcast, now in its third season. This podcast reaches entrepreneurs, business owners that are scaling. 00:31 professional service providers that provide services to these entrepreneurs, and corporate board directors who, like me, are building resilient, purpose-driven, and scalable businesses with great corporate governance. My guests to this podcast are business owners themselves, professional service providers, and corporate directors who, like me, want to use the power of the private company to build a better 01:01 world through storytelling with each of my guests in the sandbox. My goal is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. So today I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, David Hirschfeld. David is the owner and CEO of Techies, 17 or 18 year old business now that boasts 01:29 a hyper exceptional development team that are building high ticket products in the B2B space. Welcome David to the Founder Sandbox. Hi Brenda and thanks for having me. Great. So I'm delighted that we actually did a dry run in February. We've known each other for some time and AI, we're going to be touching on AI. And I think that the world of AI 01:58 particularly in software development, has changed significantly since we last spoke in February. So we're going to be getting into some, I think, novel concepts for the listeners of the Founder Sandbox. So I wanted to, you I always talk about how I like to work with growth stage companies that typically are bootstrapped and 02:26 It's only at a later stage do they seek institutional investment by building great corporate governance and reducing the reliance on investor funding until such a time that they choose the right type of investors that can help them scale. So when I found out what you do at Techies with Launch First and the type of work you do in B2B businesses, I absolutely wanted to have you here on the founder sandbox. 02:56 So let's jump right in, right? I think I'm eager to learn more about how to scale your bespoke development at Techies, right? To scale my own business? Okay. So there's a lot of different aspects to scaling my business and I bootstrapped for the last 18 years. 03:25 I've never taken any investment with techies. And I've done that very specifically because it gives me a lot of freedom. I don't have a reporting structure that I have to worry about. That doesn't mean that I can be lazy with my team. To grow my team, I have a philosophy 03:52 that I only hire people that are smarter than I am. And the ones that are in a position to hire, they can only hire people that are smarter than them. And by really sticking to this philosophy, even though sometimes it makes us grow a little slower than we would like, it means that when we bring in people, those people contribute immediately and contribute in a way 04:21 that it's our job to get the impediments out of their way and to facilitate them so that they can contribute and help us grow the company. So I call it the ball rolls uphill here because my job is to support everybody that is above me, which is everybody. And then the people that I support directly, their job is to support the people that are above them. 04:51 Because if we're hiring correctly, then people that we bring in can contribute in the area that we're bringing them in way more than the person that's hiring them. Okay. Thank you for that. So before you launched Techies, you had a career in companies like, I believe, Computer Associates, right? Texas Experiments and TelaMotorola. 05:19 There was a period of time between your experience in these large corporations before your launch tech is where you actually had your own startup and you sold it in 2000, right? And I believe you also learned perhaps with the second startup about how hard it is to find product market fit. Can you talk to that for my listeners, please? 05:46 I don't know that it's that hard to find product market fit. It depends if that's your focus or not. If your focus is to nail down product market fit, then it's not that hard to determine whether you can achieve that or not fairly quickly. You can do that by selling your product to potential customers. That sounds strange. Of course, we all want to sell our products, but 06:14 What I'm suggesting is you start selling your product before you have a product, before you have a full product. And I don't mean an MVP, but a design prototype. You go out to the market and you start to sell it. If you have product market fit and you've identified the early adopter in your market and you know that they have a very high need from a perception perspective and there's a big cost to the problem that you're solving. 06:45 then you can offer them a big enough value upfront that they'll buy your product early and you can prove that there's a market for your product and they'll buy it in enough numbers that you can achieve a measurable metric, which I kind of call the golden ratio, which is three to one in terms of what is the lifetime value of a customer versus what does it cost to acquire that customer? And you can get to that three to one ratio. 07:13 in a prelaunch sale model before you ever started developing your product as a way of proving product market fit. Or you pivot quickly and cheaply because you're not having to rebuild a product that you've built in the wrong way. Or you fail fast and cheap. And every entrepreneur's first goal should be to fail fast and cheap. know that sounds backwards, but that should be your goal is that you can fail fast and cheap or if you 07:42 If you fail to fail fast and cheap, that means you've found a path to revenue and product market fit. And now you know you have a viable business. making the investment to build the product is a no brainer. And you came upon this methodology, right? Yes. because you did yourself when you had your first company, you did not understand the funding part, right? Can you talk? 08:12 a bit about your specific example and then how that's informed now 17 years of techies and over 90 projects with startups. Okay. So my first company was Bootstrap. Okay. And that one was successful and we grew it despite me, it was me and a partner. And despite ourselves, we grew it over eight years. 08:39 where he ended up with 800 customers in 22 countries and sold it to a publicly traded firm out of Toronto. That was in the product food, snack food distribution business because that was what our product was focused on. So I started another company about five years later, not realizing the things that I did the first time. 09:08 that made it so successful, which really fit the launch first model to a large degree. But the second time I built a product that would have been successful had I followed my first model, but I didn't. So I went the route of building an MVP and getting customers on a free version of it, and then going out and trying to raise money, which is the very classic approach that the SaaS products 09:38 take now. And the problem is with that approach is that you end up digging a really deep hole in terms of the investment that you make to build the product with enough functionality that you can convince people it's worth putting an investment in and you're not generating any revenue at the time. And I should have just started selling the product and generating subscription revenue right from the beginning. First of all, I would have been able to raise money much more easily. 10:08 Secondly, I would have not needed to raise money as much if I'd focused on sales. The problem with a lot of founders is they fall in love with their product. They believe that people will buy it at enough numbers and that investors will see the potential. they're afraid of sales. I've fallen into this trap before too. I've done it both ways. And I can tell you selling early 10:38 and staying focused on the customer and the problem are the way to be successful. So founders who I find are consistently successful, they are focused on the problem, they love the problem. The product is just the natural conclusion to solving the problem, not something to be in love with. They spend their time talking to customers about the problems. So how does a potential customer find you and work with you? 11:08 Oh, they can find me at Techies or they can find me at LaunchFirst, was spelled launch1st.com. And they can find me on LinkedIn. And then to work with me, it's just give me a call, send me an email, we'll set up a Zoom. I'll start to learn about what you're trying to accomplish and what your requirements are. And I'll typically spend quite a bit of time with any potential clients. 11:39 in one to usually multiple calls or Zooms, learning and creating estimates and doing a lot of work in advance with the idea that there'll be a natural conclusion at the end of this that they'll wanna start working with me in a paid fashion. So there's a lot of value that my clients get from me whether they end up contracting me or not. And how, again, back to, thank you for that and that. 12:08 how to contact you will be in the show notes. But what types of sectors do you work in? You know, in your introduction, I talk about high ticket B2B, right? who are the, so what founder that's has some idea today? What would be their call to action to find techies? And what would you, is it launch first before you go down? 12:35 No, it's not necessarily. It may be an existing company that is trying to implement AI or implement workflow automation, or they have a project and they don't have the IT team or capacity to handle it. We love those types of projects. It might be an existing startup that is struggling with their software development team and they're not 13:04 getting to the end goal that they're expecting and the product's buggy, it's taking too long, there's constant delays, they're way over budget and they need to get this thing done. And I call those recovery projects, they're probably my favorite because people recognize very quickly the difference that we bring. 13:33 and they really, really appreciate us. As far as what sectors, business sectors, healthcare, law enforcement, prop tech, real estate, finance, entertainment, I mean, we work in many, many different sectors over the last 18 years. So regardless in B2B, B2B2C, not so much e-commerce unless there's some 14:03 complex workflow associated with your particular e-commerce, but there's lots of really good solutions for e-commerce that don't require developers to be involved. But mobile, web, IoT, definitely everything is AI now. Absolutely. And in fact, when we last spoke, I'd like to say that you started to drink your own Kool-Aid at Techies. 14:33 you're starting to actually use AI automation for internal functions as well as projects at Techies. So can you walk my listeners through how you're using AI automation and what's the latest with agentic AI? So let's do the first. Yeah, okay. So there are a bunch of questions there. So let me start with 15:02 that we're building products internally at Techies to help us with our own workflows. These products though are applicable to almost any development company or any company with a development team. Some of them are, and some of them are applicable to companies that are, well, so one product is putting voice capability in front of project management tool. 15:32 and we use JIRA and JIRA is an incredibly technical tool for project managers and development teams to use to their projects, requirements, their track bugs, all of that. And so your relationship with what I call relationship with project management is very technical one. If you're a client, some clients are willing to go through the learning curve so that they can enter their own... 15:59 bugs and feature requests and things like that directly into JIRA. Most don't. They want to send us emails, which is fine, and just give us a list of what's going on and the problems that they're finding or the things that they need for a future version and the planning and the documentation, everything else. This is a real technical thing. We're going to make it a very natural personal relationship by adding voice in front of all this so that you can 16:29 be sharing your screen with your little voice app and say, just found a problem on the screen. And the voice app can see the screen. It knows your project. It knows your requirements. And it can identify problems on the screen that you may not have even noticed. And it can also prevent you from reporting bugs that have already been reported and tell you when they're planned to be built. And all of this just with a verbal discussion with the app. 16:58 that basically knows your project. Kind of like talking to a project manager in real time, but they don't have to write down notes and they can instantly look up anything about your project in terms of what's been reported in terms of bugs or feature requests and update them or create new ones for you or just report them to you and tell you when things are planned to be built and released or. 17:24 where they've already been released and maybe you need to clear your cache so you can see the change, whatever. Yeah. So it be like an avatar, but it's trained and it's specific to Jira in your case? In the first version, it's actually being built architected so that we'll be able to add other project management tools to it besides Jira in the future. to begin with, because we use Jira, it's going to work directly with Jira to start. 17:54 And this, by the way, you asked about agentic workflows, right? So we're building an agentic workflow in this tool where we have more different agents that work together to resolve these issues. so we have an agent that reads and writes documentation to JIRA. We have an agent that communicates with the user and the user might be the programmer 18:23 might be a person in QA, it might be a client for a lot of different things. And we have an analyst agent that when the person talks, the voice agent says to the analyst agent, here's what I understand. Here's the information I just got. Go do your work and come back and get me the answer. And it'll speak to the JIRA agent to get the information. It will also speak directly to us. 18:52 a vector database, which is a database where all the documentation from that project is ingested into our own separate AI model so that the context of all the communication is about their project and doesn't go off into other directions. And then can get back. So this is an agentic workflow. The idea of 19:20 agents is like everybody keeps talking about agents. Not everybody is really clear on what that even means. Can you define that? an agent is an AI model that you can interact with that is focused on one specific area of expertise. So if it's a travel agent, the word agent fits very well there, then their expertise would be on everything related to 19:49 travel and booking travel and looking up options and comparing prices. And that would be an AI travel agent. So that's very different from an AI project management agent, very different from an AI financial analyst agent. So each agent specializes in its own area of expertise and may draw from specific 20:18 repositories of information that are specific to that particular agent's area of expertise. And they actually look from the perspective of that type of person, if it was a person. So, and so they'll respond in a way that is consistent with how somebody who is a project manager would respond to you when you're talking to them, asking you questions about your requirements, knows what 20:46 information it needs to be able to assess it properly, things like that. wouldn't be very good about travel because that's not its area of expertise. Right. So is it common to have companies that are creating with their own large language model, right? Or their workflow processes internally to the company to create their own agent AI? 21:14 Or is there a marketplace now where you can say, want this type of agent to get in. This is a very basic question, but do build it? Right. Or do you buy it? Or is it something in between? It's something in between. So there are tools that allow you to basically collect agents out there. And there's a difference between an agent and a context. Cause you hear a lot about model context switching and things like, don't know. 21:44 if your audience knows these things. Or model context protocol. A context is not an agent, but it has some agent capabilities because it's kind of specializing your model in a certain area. But you would use this, but you're not, if it's a true agent, then it's probably tied to its own vector database. 22:12 that gets trained with specific information. It might be company's information. It might be information, let's say if I'm a security agent, then I'm going to be trained on the entire NIST system as well as all of my security architecture that's currently in place. And that so that it could monitor and 22:41 assess instantly whether there's security vulnerabilities, which you wouldn't ask Chet GPT to do that. No. Right? Because it couldn't. Because it doesn't know anything about your organization or environment. And it really also doesn't know how to prioritize what matters and what doesn't at any given moment. Whereas a security agent, that would be what it does. 23:10 I don't know if I answered that question. Oh, bad thing about building or buying. there are- Or something in between, Yeah. So there are tools that you can use to build workflows and bring in different agents that already exist. And you can use something like OpenAI or Claude and use it to create an agent and give it some intelligence and- 23:37 give it a specific, in this case, you're giving it a specific context. You could even tie a special machine learning database to it and make it even more agentic in that way. And then build these workflows where you're like, let's say a marketing workflow, where you're saying you first go out and research all the people who are your ideal customer profile. 24:07 I was going to say ICP, but I'm trying not to use acronyms because not everybody knows every acronym. Ideal customer profile. And then it finds all these people that fit your ideal customer profile. Then it says, well, which of these people are in the countries that I do business? And then it illuminates the ones that aren't. then which ones, and it may be using the same agent or different agents to do this. Then once it's nailed it down to the very discrete 24:37 set of customers. Now the next step in the workflow is, okay, now enrich their data of these people to find their email and other ways of contacting them as well as other information about them so that I have a really full picture of what kind of activity are they active socially? they speak? Do they post? What are they speaking about? What are they posting about? What events are they going to? Things like that. 25:07 So that would be the next step and that'd be an agent that's doing all the enriching. And then after that, the next step would be to call basically call a writing agent to go do, am I writing an email? Am I writing a LinkedIn connection post? Am I doing both? Set up a drip campaign and start reaching out to these people one at a time with very customized specific language, right? That is in your voice. 25:34 It doesn't sound like it's written by a typical AI outreach thing. All right, so these would be steps in a workflow that you could use with several different tools to build the workflows and then calling these different agents. 25:48 Let's go back to the launched first. What would be a typical engagement with a company? you know, they, um, the founders that have the greatest success in your experiences are the ones that love the problem space and not the product. All right. So walk my listeners through. 26:17 What a typical engagement. it's staff augmentation. it full out outsourcing? it tech? because it's very complex. I can touch so many. can touch high tech and high ticket B2B products, sector agnostic. what, put some legs on this for my listeners, please. Sure, sure. We're not. 26:46 so much a staff augmentation company, although we'll do that if asked to, but that's not the kind of business that we look for. We look for project type work. So a typical engagement for launch first would be somebody wants to launch a product, they're in the concept phase. We help refine the concept and we build out, help that we do the design and then we build a high fidelity prototype, which is a design prototype. 27:16 When I demo a design prototype to somebody, they think that they're looking at a finished product, but it's not. It doesn't actually do anything. It just looks like it does everything. So it's very animated set of mock-ups is another way to look at it. And it's important because you can build out the big vision of the product this way in a couple of months, whereas 27:46 it takes instead of, you so you're looking at the two year roadmap when we're done of the product. If we were to build an MVP, then you're going to see a very limited view of the product and it's going to cost a lot more to build that MVP than it takes to build this design prototype. Now we're in the process of doing this. We're also nailing down who that early adopter is. And there's a, there's a very, 28:14 metrics driven methodology for doing this. your launch first. Within launch first, right. Okay. All right. And then we'll help the client build a marketing funnel and help them start to generate sales. We're not doing the selling, they're doing the selling. And it's important that founders do the selling because they need to hear what customers are saying about the thing they're demoing, why they want it, why they don't. 28:43 So that if we need to pivot, which we can do easily and quickly with a design prototype, then we can pivot and then go and test the model again, two or three or four times in the space of a couple of months. And we'll either find a path to revenue or accept the fact that this probably isn't the right product for the right time. But in the process of doing this, you're learning a lot about the market and about the potential customer. 29:13 I want to be clear about something. Almost every founder that comes to that I meet with, they love the product, not the problem. They started out with a problem that they realized they had a good solution for and they forgot all about the problem at that point. And so I spend a lot of time with founders reminding them why the problem is all that matters and what that means and how to approach customers, potential customers so that 29:41 you're syncing with their problems, not telling them about this product that you're building because nobody cares about your product. All they care about is what they're struggling with. And if they believe that you really understand that, then they care about whether you can solve that problem for them or 30:01 And can I be audacious and ask you what a typical engagement duration is like? So this would be for launch first. Yes. If it's a, and our hope is that they'll find a path to revenue and start building the product and engage us for the development. Cause that's really our business is building the products. So, but it's not a requirement. And, and our typical engagement with our clients are several years. 30:32 Not all of them, but most of them, would say. Once they start working with us, they just continue to work with us until they decide to bring in their own in-house team or they fail eventually, which many of our clients do, which is why I created Launch First. Right. You often talk about your hyper exceptional team at Techies. What is it that's so highly exceptional? Talk to me about your team. Where are they? Yeah. 31:02 And if you go to my website, which is tekyz.com, you'll see at the very top of it in the header above the fold, it says hyper exceptional development team. And I don't expect people to believe me because I write that down or I tell them that I expect them to ask me, well, what does that mean? Do you have evidence? And that's the question I want to get because I do. Because when you work in an exceptional manner, 31:31 as a natural consequence of working that way, you produce certain artifacts that the typical development teams don't produce. And I'm not saying there aren't other exceptional teams, but they're really few and far between. And what makes a team exceptional is a constant need to improve their ability to deliver and the level of quality that they deliver as well and the speed at which they develop. It's all of these things. 31:59 So, and, you know, after 18 years, we've done a lot of improving and a lot of automation internally, because that allows our team to work in a really disciplined protocol manner without having to feel like they're under the strict discipline and protocol of, you know, a difficult environment to work in. And so we create automation everywhere we can. The voice... 32:27 tool is one of those automations. The way we do status reports, it's very clear at the level of detail that we provide every week to every client in terms of status reports where we're showing here's what we estimated, here's the actual, here's our percent variance on how much time we spent and how much it's costing. We want to always be within 10 % above or below. 32:56 Either being above or below is not, know, the fact that we're ahead of that doesn't necessarily mean that's a good thing, right? So we want to be accurate with our estimates. And we are typically within 10%. In fact, our largest customer last year, we did a retrospective and we were within six and a half percent of what our estimates were for the whole year. and that's a, we're pretty happy with that number. 33:24 I think most teams are looking at many, many times that in terms of variance. it's not that uncommon for teams to be double or triple what they're or even higher what the actual estimate was. So when we do invoicing, we invoice for each person at their rate. 33:50 based on their level of expertise, which is all part of our agreement upfront. So the client is very transparent every month for the hours that they work. And we attach the daily time sheets to every invoice. I'm the only company I know of right now that does that. I know there are others. I've seen monthly, but I've never seen daily. Yeah. Yeah. Because for me, if I could ask, well, 34:18 why did this person ask a work that many hours that last month? What did they do? I hate that feeling that I get when somebody asks that question. I know they're only asking because they have to justify it to somebody else or whatever the reason, but I don't like the way it feels because it feels like my integrity is being questioned. I don't get upset at people for asking me that. I just feel like I'm not giving them enough information if they have to ask me that question. So we started about eight years ago. 34:47 providing the daily time sheets because I don't like that question. And we never get questioned on our invoices ever anymore. I bet you it's informed you as well in future projects, maybe on including workflow automation in your own internal processes, right? When you see people's time sheets, right? And you've gone over budget. So it informs you internally. So it's not only for the client. 35:16 I suspect, right? No, it's not. Right. And we use it ourselves to also, because it also helps us looking at our overhead costs because not everything gets built to the client. And so we track all our own times, you know, what we're spending doing what. And we don't get to, it's not like a developer has to spend a lot of time or a QA person or whatever, putting in a lot of detail. We just need a couple of bullets, you know, every day in the time sheet with the, whatever they spend. 35:45 If they spent four hours on one thing and three on another, they'll just break it into two entries just to make it easy. And that's important for us, or they may be working on two different projects and each project. So when we do the timesheets also every month, we give our clients a breakdown by project. So if we're working on four different projects for a client or even one project, but it has four different really 36:15 functional elements that are very clearly different. Like let's say a mobile app and a web app and a particular client implementation. Each one of those gets assigned its own project and we break down summaries of the time spent on each of those every month and who spent the time on those, along with the daily time sheets, along with the invoice. And nobody else does that because it takes a lot of discipline and protocol and you have to have lot of systems in place 36:45 to do that without literally getting everybody to quit, right? That works for you. And nobody minds doing it because it's easy because of all the systems we put in place to do that. That's the whole point, right? Right. were not particularly happy of getting asked that question oftentimes. So eight years ago, you set out to provide the information on a daily basis, which is incredible. We started that with blended rates like a lot of companies do. 37:14 And then I didn't like that because at the end of a project when most of it's QA, people would start to get frustrated that they're still getting billed the same blended rate, even though for the more expensive period at the beginning of the project, I thought, okay, forget this. Well, just bill based on individual. And then I didn't get those questions anymore, but then I would get questions about individuals on the month. And that's when I started doing the time sheets. 37:43 And like I said, I'm sure there's other companies that do it, but I haven't run into one or somebody that works with one. So that's an exceptional thing that we do. But it also allows us to do really, really good reporting to the client on status on what we've spent our time on, what we're expecting to spend our time on next week, what we just spent our time on this week, where we are. 38:12 in terms of our plan for the month, things like that. So let's switch gears, David. Yeah. Back to actually the podcast and some of my guests and listeners are corporate board directors. So they're sitting on either advisory boards or fiduciary corporate boards. And with all the hype around AI. 38:39 it's not uncommon for them to be asking, what are we doing, right? For existing companies, right? And I'd like you to walk my listeners through while it's in the, you know, in the imaginary realm, what is it? I think any founder today that's actually scaling, right? Has to have some AI element. At least I've even heard you need to have it. 39:08 an AI officer in the company. So what's your take on that? What would you respond to either to your board of advisors, your advisory board, or your board of directors? So, and of course, a lot of it depends on the type of company you are. Absolutely. Right. If you're making alternative material I-beams, for example, for skyscraper construction, then 39:37 AI, other than maybe in the design process of these specialized materials, AI may not be as big a critical factor, although for invoice reconciliation and distribution and scheduling and all that, AI could be a huge value to you if you don't have super efficient systems already. For most everybody else though, if you have not embraced the need to 40:06 leverage AI and everything you're doing, then you're way behind already. That doesn't mean you have to be in a race to do this. just, because I'm of the belief that you have to slow down to speed up. But you do need to make it a priority. And in a lot of different ways. Number one is, 40:36 The most obvious is workflow automation. You should be probably tackling workflow automation as just a part of your constant improvement program to become more efficient, whether it's with AI or not. But AI is particularly good at workflow automation because it can tackle steps in that workflow that couldn't be tackled without AI. So the first thing 41:06 the companies should be doing if they're not doing it is documenting all of their processes, all of their tribal knowledge into playbooks. So when you have somebody who's an expert in something in your company and they're the person who's the only one that knows how to do it and so we can't live without them, that's a bottleneck for scaling. Because if you bring somebody else in to expand their capacity, they're going to... 41:32 put a big dependency on that person with all the expertise, which is going to cause problems. So anybody in a position like that should be documenting all of their procedures and protocols and especially all the nuances and all the edge cases into playbooks. And there should be some centralized playbook repository for the company. And this becomes part of your intellectual property and part of your value if you ever 42:02 you're trying to raise money or you're trying to sell your company. So it increases your value. So you do that, then AI, you start to look at automating those workflows because now they're documented. So now what can be automated in them from just a workflow automation perspective. And then how much can you implement AI in there? Because now AI can learn to make the same kinds of decisions that this person is making. 42:31 And this is like the low hanging fruit that I'm talking about right now. Right. Exactly. Right. Because the bigger stuff is if we implement AI in here, what workflows would we totally throw away and start from scratch? Because we can think of way more sophisticated ways of addressing this now that we have intelligence involved in all these steps. But that's later. 42:57 worry about that once you get your arms around implementing AI, automated workflows and then- So workflow automation. So playbooks, workflows and AI in your automated workflows. That's sort of the stepped wise process. Excellent. You heard it here on the founder sandbox. Thank you, David. And if you're not sure how to do all that, 43:25 ask AI, okay, here's my company. What should I be focusing on if I wanna implement playbooks, workflow automation and AI? And AI will help you figure this all out. Right. That's a jewel here. So what'd you do? Chat GBT, co-pilot, what's your complexity? Where would you go to? All right. Well, it just depends on the flavor of the day. Right now. 43:53 I was using chat GPT primarily for this stuff just because it was a first and I'm very comfortable with the apps. have them everywhere. And Claude's recently come out with a new version and it's in some ways I'm just finding the output way more organized and smarter. And so I've been using Claude more in the last couple of weeks, but that'll change in another week or two. Any one of them will do a pretty decent job. 44:21 I'm not using perplexity because it's built on top of the other ones. But perplexity is a great tool if you're newer with this because it makes some of the... It's a little bit more accessible for somebody who doesn't know how to use AI. Gemini is also really good, but that's more of a technical... And there's so many things you can do. 44:49 with AI that you wouldn't even think about. And I'll give you an example, more as a brain opening exercise for everybody than anything else. Because this is something I did about seven weeks ago. I, chat GPT had just come out a week or two before with their vision capability in the mobile app. And for those of you who don't know it, with chat GPT, there's a talk 45:19 button. It's not the microphone. It's the one that looks like a sound wave in the mobile app. You tap that, and now you have a voice conversation with chat, which I use this constantly. Even when I'm working with, I've got some contractors at my house whose English isn't very good, so I ask it to do real-time translation for me. And it does matter the language. And I start talking, and it translates to their language. And they respond 45:49 in their language and it translates to English and it's doing it perfectly. And so I can have a very natural conversation with anybody just holding my phone up in front of them now. Right? But it has this vision capability where when you go into that voice mode, you tap the camera next to it, and now it's looking out the front of your screen while you're talking to it. And so I'll give you a couple of examples where I've used it six weeks ago and again, like 46:18 weeks later and I now used it many times like this. I was in Lowe's, which is a store for home improvement. And for some project I was on, my wife calls me and says, I need fertilizer for a hibiscus. And I say, well, what do I get? She says, anything that says hibiscus on it, it'll be fine. I said, okay, fine. And if anybody that knows these big box stores, there's like hundreds of bags of fertilizer of different brands. 46:48 And I couldn't find one that said hibiscus. This is a typical thing with my wife. Oh, just look for this. And of course, there isn't that. So I asked Chess GPT, okay, I'm in Lowe's and I'm looking for a fertilizer for hibiscus. What would you suggest? And it said, oh, there's a number of brands that are high acid. And I said, we'll recommend a brand. Tonal is a really good brand. And I said, okay. So I'm looking and I can't find it. 47:18 So I walked 30 feet back and I'm talking, right? I'm having this, know, people are looking at me like, what the hell is he doing? And I walked 30 feet back because there's many, many shelves, you know, columns of shelves with fertilizer. I walked back and I turned on the vision and I say, okay, there's all the fertilizers. And I'm moving my phone across all these shelves. say, do you see tonal here? And it says, yes, look for the one in the red and white bag. 47:48 And I see it on the shelf. So I walk straight forward. see a red and white bag. That's not tonal. said, this isn't it. And she, cause it's a woman's voice that I have, she says, it's two shelves to the left, second from the top. I walk over there and it's right where she said it was. Crazy. And you're not a beta user. So this is available today. This is available. It's been available for a couple of months. And then 48:18 My daughter-in-law asked me to get something from the pharmacy, from CVS, another big box pharmacy store, right? And this is something I don't even know if I'm in the right aisle because it's something I've never bought. So I ask it, I say, I'm looking for this brand and I'm not sure if I'm in the right aisle or not, but I'm going to walk down the aisle and tell me if you see it. As I'm walking down the aisle, holding it straight forward so it can see both sides. And it says, well, 48:45 Yes, I'm familiar with the brand. You should look for it in a green and white box. then she goes like this. Oh, I see it. It's down there on the right on the bottom shelf. And I turn and I look and it's right by my right foot. 48:58 You heard it here. This is crazy. think it's a bit creepy. How many times have you been looking for something on a shelf? You know, and you're like, oh, how long, how many hours is this going to take me to spot it? Good internet connection and all that. So, oh my goodness. It's creepy and it's wonderful. So same time. the same time. Yeah. Yeah. For quality of life and even for, um, yeah. So 49:25 That's a mind opening thing is all the reason I bring that up. Excellent. Hey, let's go. Let's continue on in the founder sandbox. I'd like to ask each of my guests to share with me. I'm all about working with resilient, purpose driven and scalable companies in the growth phase. So what does resilience mean to you? You can either answer, you know, what's the first thing that comes out of your, you cannot use chat, GBT. I'm not fancy. No hands. 49:55 No hands, and I don't have the voice version going because you'd hear it. Podcast we could do it. And we are real. We're not. Yeah, we are real. We're not. So I think that's, I don't think that's a difficult question to answer. Resilience means opportunity. So no matter what happens, even if it seems terrible, what opportunity does that create? Excellent. If you ask that. 50:22 keep reframing everything from that perspective, it creates resilience. Right. Thank you. What about purpose-driven? Purpose-driven means having a clear long-term path and goal and asking yourself if the things you're doing keep you on purpose to that. 50:56 Scalable. What's scalable mean for you? Scalable for me means eliminating tribal knowledge or not eliminating it, but documenting tribal knowledge. First of all, figuring out how you generate revenue and then how you expand your ability to generate revenue, which means growing your 51:25 growing your team, growing your capacity and identifying the bottlenecks and focusing all your energy on the bottlenecks. And usually the bottlenecks have to do with tribal knowledge or with lack of workflow automation. Wow, you know, it's easier said than done though, that tribal knowledge, it is resistant, right? Oh yeah, because it's career, what's the word I'm trying to think of? 51:55 It keeps you in your job forever if you're the only one that knows how to do the thing. Absolutely. That's for another podcast, David. My final question today is, did you have fun in the Founder Sandbox? Oh, yes. I had a lot of fun. Thanks. That's a great question too. Thank you, Brenda. Did you have fun? 52:20 Did you? I had had fun. And particularly in this last part, right? Cause we're talking about some heavy duty, you know, uses of, um, agentic AI, right. And scalable, you know, LTV, CAC and all that. And then we get to hear these real life, you know, kind of creepy, um, uh, uses of, um, on our phones today with, um, with AI, which is, which is quite amazing. But I also know that in your world of techies, 52:50 your team, which is distributed, have a lot of fun events too. So you probably- have one more thing on the whole scalable thing. You have to be compassionately ruthless or ruthlessly compassionate, however you want to say it. Okay. So that the people, every, and the ruthless is anything that's going to get in the way of you growing your company, which benefits everybody in the company. 53:19 it needs to be addressed in a ruthless way. But if you build a culture of ruthlessly compassionate, then all the people that work for you feel that same level of ruthlessness to protect the company and make it grow. And you practice what you preach, I suspect, at Techies. Yes. Yes. It took me a while, but if we accidentally hire the wrong person, either because 53:45 we made a mistake in the process or they faked us out and we recognize they're not smart enough. Literally, that's usually the problem. They're not smart enough to carry their weight. We fire them immediately. We don't try to bring them along because you can't improve somebody's IQ. You can improve any other aspect, but their IQ is their IQ. And that will be a bottleneck forever. 54:13 in our team and it'll require other people to carry that person. And it sends the wrong message to the team that I don't value them enough to make sure that we only surround them with people that are going to inspire them and help them grow. Excellent. And I suspect they are not fungible by AI, your employees, not techies. I mean, we've gotten better and better. 54:40 at not making those mistakes over the years. So that doesn't typically happen. takes us, we're much more careful about how we hire. AI gives us the ability to recruit faster, more broadly, along with workflow automation. But what I mean by real, this is the compassionate. Once my team understood this, now they embody that and they will get rid of somebody if they made a mistake. I don't have to force the issue ever anymore because 55:10 they recognize how much, important it is to protect their teams. So to my listeners, if you liked this episode today with the CEO and founder of Techies, sign up for the monthly release of founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers who provide their examples of how they're building companies or consulting with companies to make them more resilient, scalable, and purpose-driven. 55:40 to make profits for good. Signing off for today. See you next month in the Founder Sandbox. Thank you.
Wall Street, Cac 40… Europe 1 fait le point sur la situation de la Bourse.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Wall Street, Cac 40… Europe 1 fait le point sur la situation de la Bourse.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Wall Street, Cac 40… Europe 1 fait le point sur la situation de la Bourse.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Didier Hameau de Boursier.com fait le point sur la situation des marchés financiers européens. Il explique que les indices boursiers, comme le CAC 40, sont en baisse en raison de la tension géopolitique liée à l'intervention américaine en Iran. Le prix du pétrole, en forte hausse, impacte négativement certains secteurs industriels et automobiles, avec des baisses notables des valeurs comme Thalès, Stellantis et Air Liquide. Notre équipe a utilisé un outil d'Intelligence artificielle via les technologies d'Audiomeans© pour accompagner la création de ce contenu écrit.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Wall Street, Cac 40… Europe 1 fait le point sur la situation de la Bourse.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Didier Hameau de Boursier.com fait le point sur la situation des marchés financiers européens. Il explique que les indices boursiers, comme le CAC 40, sont en baisse en raison de la tension géopolitique liée à l'intervention américaine en Iran. Le prix du pétrole, en forte hausse, impacte négativement certains secteurs industriels et automobiles, avec des baisses notables des valeurs comme Thalès, Stellantis et Air Liquide. Notre équipe a utilisé un outil d'Intelligence artificielle via les technologies d'Audiomeans© pour accompagner la création de ce contenu écrit.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
In this episode, together with Raymond Vrabel - Sr. Director Partner Programs, we explore the unique challenges and opportunities within the MSP space, a dynamic ecosystem where many businesses hit a growth plateau and struggle to scale. We unpack why MSPs often stall, diving into the common scenario where technically brilliant owners wear too many hats, but lack the commercial muscle to push through to the next level.Our guest, with two decades of MSP experience, shares invaluable insights on how MSPs can break the growth ceiling by moving from owner-led sales, to building dedicated sales teams, embedding revenue acquisition into their company culture, and operationalizing scalable processes. We also discuss the vital importance of focusing on customer lifetime value (LTV) versus cost of acquisition (CAC) - a concept that powers the fastest-growing SaaS businesses and can revolutionize MSP success.The episode further dives into:- How AI is reshaping MSP operations by multiplying workforce efficiency and enhancing client service- The cybersecurity challenges that come with AI adoption and how MSPs can stay ahead- Why successful MSPs leverage AI not just to automate, but to elevate their business and client relationships- What truly effective partner programs look like beyond just handing over tools and assets- The power of white-glove enablement, strategic handholding, and tailored blueprints to help partners growIf you want a clear roadmap for helping MSPs move from surviving to thriving, this conversation is packed with actionable wisdom and forward-looking perspectives.Connect with Raymond: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rayvrabel/_________________________Learn more about Channext
Les assemblées générales des grands groupes du CAC 40 viennent de s'achever et on constate que de plus en plus de grands patrons viennent d'autres pays pour diriger nos fleurons... Le meilleur exemple, c'est Luca di Meo, qui vient de passer de Renault à Kering, le géant du luxe de la famille Pinault.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
App Masters - App Marketing & App Store Optimization with Steve P. Young
In this episode, we're joined by Romain Torres, co-founder of Arcads.ai — a platform using AI to automate ad creation and scale paid user acquisition like never before.Romain's not just another founder—he's scaled and sold multiple startups, including an intermittent fasting app that hit $2M in revenue in just 9 months. He's helped scale apps to $8M using AI-generated videos, avatars, and agents—and today, he's revealing how indie devs can tap into the same power.We'll break down how to scale paid ads with AI, automate creatives, and turn performance data into profitable campaigns using tools that small teams can actually afford.Whether you want to automate and launch paid ads faster, lower your CAC, or scale to millions—this episode is a masterclass in AI-powered growth.You will discover:✅ The exact AI tools you can use to automate paid ads✅ Why “AI actors” are the future of video ad creatives✅ How to build hundreds of ad variations from just one script✅ The indie-friendly framework for scaling user acquisition with AILearn More:https://www.arcads.ai/?comet_custom=appmastersWork with us: https://www.appmasters.comIndie App Santa: https://www.indieappsanta.comGet training, coaching, and community: https://appmastersacademy.com/*********************************************SPONSORSYou ever work with a tool where the support feels like...a ghost town? Yeah, not AppsFlyer.Their support team is massive — like 5x bigger than the industry average. They're global, 24/7, and actually helpful!If you're scaling your app and don't want to be left hanging, check out AppsFlyer dot com or book a demo by clicking this https://tinyurl.com/AppsFlyerAM*********************************************Everyone's talking about web2app funnels - the breakthrough strategy maximizing mobile revenue. But building them in-house takes months of development. web2wave eliminates the complexity with their innovative all-in-one platform✅ powerful drag-and-drop quiz builder✅ streamlined payments✅ comprehensive analytics✅ smart A/B testing✅ and moreLaunch high-performing web2app funnels in days, not months.Visit https://web2wave.com/ to create your web2app funnel for free.*********************************************Follow us:YouTube: AppMasters.com/YouTubeInstagram: @App MastersTwitter: @App MastersTikTok: @stevepyoungFacebook: App Masters*********************************************
App Masters - App Marketing & App Store Optimization with Steve P. Young
In this episode, we're joined by Romain Torres, co-founder of Arcads.ai — a platform using AI to automate ad creation and scale paid user acquisition like never before.Romain's not just another founder—he's scaled and sold multiple startups, including an intermittent fasting app that hit $2M in revenue in just 9 months. He's helped scale apps to $8M using AI-generated videos, avatars, and agents—and today, he's revealing how indie devs can tap into the same power.We'll break down how to scale paid ads with AI, automate creatives, and turn performance data into profitable campaigns using tools that small teams can actually afford.Whether you want to automate and launch paid ads faster, lower your CAC, or scale to millions—this episode is a masterclass in AI-powered growth.You will discover:✅ The exact AI tools you can use to automate paid ads✅ Why “AI actors” are the future of video ad creatives✅ How to build hundreds of ad variations from just one script✅ The indie-friendly framework for scaling user acquisition with AILearn More:https://www.arcads.ai/?comet_custom=appmastersWork with us: https://www.appmasters.comIndie App Santa: https://www.indieappsanta.comGet training, coaching, and community: https://appmastersacademy.com/*********************************************SPONSORSYou ever work with a tool where the support feels like...a ghost town? Yeah, not AppsFlyer.Their support team is massive — like 5x bigger than the industry average. They're global, 24/7, and actually helpful!If you're scaling your app and don't want to be left hanging, check out AppsFlyer dot com or book a demo by clicking this https://tinyurl.com/AppsFlyerAM*********************************************Everyone's talking about web2app funnels - the breakthrough strategy maximizing mobile revenue. But building them in-house takes months of development. web2wave eliminates the complexity with their innovative all-in-one platform✅ powerful drag-and-drop quiz builder✅ streamlined payments✅ comprehensive analytics✅ smart A/B testing✅ and moreLaunch high-performing web2app funnels in days, not months.Visit https://web2wave.com/ to create your web2app funnel for free.*********************************************Follow us:YouTube: AppMasters.com/YouTubeInstagram: @App MastersTwitter: @App MastersTikTok: @stevepyoungFacebook: App Masters*********************************************
Send us a textUnlocking the Secrets of Go-to-Market Success: The Top 10 KPIs You Need to TrackIn this episode, we dive deep into the essential metrics every business leader and marketer should monitor to ensure their go-to-market (GTM) strategy is on track. Whether you're launching a new product, entering a new market, or refining your sales process, understanding the right key performance indicators (KPIs) can make all the difference between success and stagnation.Join us as we break down the top 10 KPIs that provide actionable insights into your GTM effectiveness:Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Discover how much it really costs to win a new customer and why optimizing this metric is crucial for profitability.Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Learn how to calculate and maximize the total revenue a customer brings over their relationship with your brand.Monthly and Annual Recurring Revenue (MRR & ARR): Track your revenue growth and forecast future performance with these foundational metrics.Net Promoter Score (NPS): Gauge customer satisfaction and loyalty to identify advocates and areas for improvement.Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Ensure your marketing investments are delivering measurable returns.Support Tickets: Monitor customer issues and feedback to enhance your product and customer experience.شف أسرار نجاح استراتيجية الدخول إلى السوق: أهم 10 مؤشرات أداء يجب تتبعهافي هذه الحلقة، نغوص في أعماق أهم المؤشرات التي يجب على كل قائد أعمال ومسوق مراقبتها للتأكد من أن استراتيجية الدخول إلى السوق (GTM) تسير في الاتجاه الصحيح. سواء كنت تطلق منتجًا جديدًا، أو تدخل سوقًا جديدًا، أو تعمل على تحسين عملية المبيعات، فإن فهم مؤشرات الأداء الرئيسية الصحيحة يمكن أن يصنع الفارق بين النجاح والتراجع.انضم إلينا بينما نستعرض أهم 10 مؤشرات أداء توفر رؤى عملية حول فعالية استراتيجيتك:تكلفة اكتساب العميل (CAC): تعرف على التكلفة الحقيقية لجذب عميل جديد ولماذا يعد تحسين هذا المؤشر أمرًا حاسمًا للربحية.قيمة عمر العميل (CLV): تعلم كيفية حساب وتعظيم إجمالي الإيرادات التي يجلبها العميل طوال علاقته مع علامتك التجارية.الإيرادات الشهرية والسنوية المتكررة (MRR & ARR): تابع نمو إيراداتك وتوقع الأداء المستقبلي من خلال هذه المؤشرات الأساسية.مؤشر صافي المروجين (NPS): قِس رضا العملاء وولاءهم لتحديد الداعمين ومجالات التحسين.العائد على الإنفاق الإعلاني (ROAS): تأكد من أن استثماراتك التسويقية تحقق عوائد ملموسة.تذاكر الدعم: راقب مشاكل العملاء وملاحظاتهم لتحسين منتجك وتجربة العملاء.معدل تحويل المبيعات: اكتشف مدى فعالية تحويل الفرص إلى عملاء فعليين.معدل فقدان العملاء (Churn Rate): راقب معدل مغادرة العملاء لتقليل الخسائر وتعزيز النمو.مدة تهيئة العميل الجديد: قِس الوقت الذي يستغرقه العميل الجديد ليبدأ في تحقيق القيمة من منتجك.حجوزات العروض التوضيحية: تابع عدد العملاء المحتملين الذين يطلبون تجربة المنتج.استمع الآن لتتعرف على كيفية استخدام هذه المؤشرات في تحسين استراتيجيتك وتحقيق أهدافك التجارية! Support the showSupport the Podcast on:https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/okuwatly?locale.x=en_UShttps://www.buymeacoffee.com/MaBa3refSubscribe to Maba3ref Newsletter:https://maba3refbranching.beehiiv.com/Connect with Maba3ref Podcast:https://www.instagram.com/maba3refbyomarConnect on TIKTOK:https://www.tiktok.com/@okuwatly
Tonino Benacquista, écrivain, nouvelliste, scénariste, dramaturge, dont l'univers glisse du roman noir au roman blanc, de l'écrit à l'image, est l'auteur d'une œuvre importante, populaire et exigeante. À l'image de son nouveau roman «Tiré de faits irréels» qui, à travers la satire du milieu littéraire français, fait le portrait d'un éditeur et lecteur passionné en bout de course qui pourtant n'a pas dit son dernier mot. « Mon banquier avoue volontiers qu'il ne lit pas quand je lui offre les dernières parutions de ma maison d'édition, non pour m'attirer ses bonnes grâces, encore moins son admiration, réservée aux seuls patrons du CAC 40, mais pour lui fournir de temps à autre une preuve matérielle de mon activité. Le livre n'étant pour lui ni un outil d'émancipation, ni même un objet récréatif, je veille à ne jamais employer le mot «littérature» de peur de provoquer l'ennui ou la gêne d'un individu s'étant construit contre celle-ci, qui n'engendre ni profit ni épargne, du moins dans le sens où il l'entend. À ses chiffres je n'ai pas su imposer mes lettres. Que n'ai-je suivi naguère un stage de gestion au lieu de lire Goethe ! Soulagé de s'être débarrassé d'un insolvable, il a tenu à me raccompagner jusqu'au seuil de sa banque. » Après quarante ans de bons et loyaux services rendus à la littérature, « Bertrand Dumas Éditeur » a fait faillite. Mais Bertrand, son fondateur, refuse cette fatalité. Il lui reste une dernière nuit pour trouver une solution miracle. Lui qui a tant cru au pouvoir du romanesque rêverait que le romanesque vienne maintenant à son secours. Il va être entendu au-delà de ses espérances. (Présentation des éditions Gallimard). Illustration musicale : Les Rolling Stones You can't always get what you want.
In this episode, Alex Immerman, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, joins CJ to discuss the CFO role and how it's changing in the era of AI. He explains what the components of a company's AI agenda the CFO should own, how and where it should be leveraged in an organization, and why, if you're preparing to go public, AI needs to be mentioned in your S-1. He breaks down how the financial landscape differs greatly between AI-native SaaS companies and traditional B2B SaaS companies in terms of retention curves and gross margins, and how this relates to the ever-important LTV to CAC metric. As someone who has worked with prominent CFOs and interviewed many for a16z's portfolio companies, Alex also describes the qualities of a great CFO, and shares his favorite interview question, before discussing CFOs, CEO, and board dynamics.—LINKS:Alex Immerman on X (@aleximm): https://x.com/aleximmAlex Immerman on a16z: https://a16z.com/author/alex-immermanAlex Immerman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/immermanAndreessen Horowitz: https://a16z.comCJ on X (@cjgustafson222): https://x.com/cjgustafson222Mostly metrics: http://mostlymetrics.comRELATED EPISODES:So You're Looking for a “Strategic” CFO? Bloomerang's Steve Isom on What That Really Means: —TIMESTAMPS:(00:00) Preview and Intro(02:19) Sponsor – Navan | NetSuite | Planful(05:52) What Separates Good CFOs From Great Ones(11:56) Questions Alex Asks When Interviewing CFOs for Portfolio Companies(15:17) How CFOs Should Engage With Investors During the Hiring Process(17:22) Sponsor – Tabs | Rippling Spend | Pulley(22:22) What a Great CFO-Investor Relationship Looks Like(24:46) The CFO-CEO-Board Dynamic(28:27) How the Role of a CFO Is Changing in the Era of AI(31:41) AI-Native Company Versus Incumbent for Finance Category Leader(33:49) Components of a Company's AI Agenda That the CFO Should Own(38:39) Why the LTV to CAC Metric Is So Important to Investors(41:13) LTV to CAC by Sector(42:41) The Importance of Gross Margin Adjusting Your CAC Payback(43:21 Retention and Churn Patterns in AI-Native Companies(45:23) Gross Margin in AI-Native Companies Versus Traditional B2B SaaS(50:11) What It Takes To Be a Public Company-Ready CFO Today(53:58) How IPO Expectations for the CFO Have Shifted in the Past Few Years(55:05) Wrap—SPONSORS:Navan is the all-in-one travel and expense solution that helps finance teams streamline reconciliation, enforce policies automatically, and gain real-time visibility. It connects to your existing cards and makes closing the books faster and smarter. Visit navan.com/Runthenumbers for your demo.NetSuite is an AI-powered business management suite, encompassing ERP/Financials, CRM, and ecommerce for more than 41,000 customers. If you're looking for an ERP, head to https://netsuite.com/metrics and get the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning.Planful's financial planning software can transform your FP&A function. Built for speed, accuracy, and confidence, you'll be planning your way to success and have time left over to actually put it to work. Find out more at www.planful.com/metrics.Tabs is a platform that brings all of your revenue-facing data and workflows - billing, AR, payments, rev rec, and reporting - onto a single system so you can automate and be more flexible. Find out more at: tabs.inc/metrics.Rippling Spend is a spend management software that gives you complete visibility and automated policy controls across every type of spend, saving you time and money. Get a demo to see how much time your org would save at rippling.com/metrics.Pulley is the cap table management platform built for CFOs and finance leaders who need reliable, audit-ready data and intuitive workflows, without the hidden fees or unreliable support. Switch in as little as 5 days and get 25% off your first year: pulley.com/mostlymetrics.#AINativeSaaS #a16z #CFO #LTVtoCAC #AIinSaaS Get full access to Mostly metrics at www.mostlymetrics.com/subscribe
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In episode #288 of SaaS Metrics School, Ben Murray tackles a frequent mistake SaaS operators make when calculating Lifetime Value (LTV) — treating it as an aggregate rather than the point-in-time metric. Ben breaks down the correct formula, shares how to align it with gross revenue retention, and explains when LTV (and LTV to CAC) should be used SaaS businesses. What You'll Learn: Why LTV is a point-in-time estimate, not a company-wide average The correct formula for LTV in SaaS: Cohort ARPA × Gross Margin ÷ Churn How to choose the right churn input using gross revenue retention When LTV to CAC is reliable vs. misleading based on your sales motion (SMB, Mid-Market, Enterprise) Common pitfalls when using LTV in low-volume enterprise models Key SaaS Metrics Covered: LTV (Lifetime Value) LTV to CAC Ratio Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) Cohort ARPA / ACV Churn measurement strategy (trailing 3 vs. 6 months) Who Should Listen: SaaS CFOs, founders, marketers, and RevOps professionals looking to improve financial modeling and SaaS efficiency metrics — especially if you rely on paid acquisition or track LTV to CAC closely. Resources Mentioned: SaaS Metrics Foundation Course: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/the-saas-metrics-foundation Free SaaS Metrics Tools: TheSaaSCFO.com Subscribe to Ben's SaaS newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/df1db6bf8bca/the-saas-cfo-sign-up-landing-page Like What You Hear? Please leave a rating and review to help this podcast reach more SaaS professionals who want to build metrics-driven businesses.
Today we're joined by Dylan Ander, founder of heatmap.com, to talk attribution, LTV, CAC, creative testing, and what actually moves the needle in media buying performance.We unpack why conversion rate alone isn't the best indicator of success and what to look at instead, from holdout testing and CAC payback windows to 60-day LTV. Dylan shares his approach to attribution when platform data (especially from Meta) falls short, and how to build creative testing frameworks that truly help scale spend.We also dive into the nuances of media buying across channels, how to interpret noisy performance data, and the signals that actually matter. Dylan breaks down how to use on-site surveys to gather clearer attribution insights - what to ask, how to ask it, and how to use the data. Plus, we get into pricing strategy: why many brands hesitate to raise prices, and how pricing impacts both conversion and LTV.Finally, Dylan walks through an audit of Cody's website using heatmap and revenue data, offering tactical, high-leverage feedback on what's working, what's not, and what to test next.If you have a question for the MOperators Hotline, click the link to be in with a chance of it being discussed on the show: https://forms.gle/1W7nKoNK5Zakm1Xv600:00 Meta Summit Takeaways02:47 AI in Marketing Strategies06:08 Introduction to Dylan Ender09:04 Core Web Analytics Insights11:55 Customer Feedback and CRO15:13 The Importance of AOV and Conversion Rate17:58 Revenue Per Session vs. Conversion Rate20:50 Price Testing Strategies39:41 Revenue Testing and Feedback42:08 The Importance of Price Testing43:36 Challenges in SaaS Pricing44:57 Understanding Heat Maps and Analytics52:58 Live Testing vs. Split Testing56:20 The Role of Customer Feedback in Marketing01:01:12 Understanding Funnel Metrics01:08:53 Optimizing Navigation for Better User ExperienceEpisodes discussed in the show:Episode 1 - A Deep Dive into Attribution and Measurement Episode 27 - How We Set Goals, Attribution Limitations and KPIs for Growth? Powered by:Motion.https://motionapp.com/pricing?utm_source=marketing-operators-podcast&utm_medium=paidsponsor&utm_campaign=march-2024-ad-readshttps://motionapp.com/creative-trendsPrescient AI.https://www.prescientai.com/operatorsRichpanel.https://www.richpanel.com/?utm_source=MO&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=ytdescAftersell.https://www.aftersell.com/operatorsRivo.https://www.rivo.io/operatorsSubscribe to the 9 Operators Podcast here:https://www.youtube.com/@Operators9Subscribe to the Finance Operators Podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/@FinanceOperatorsFOPSSign up to the 9 Operators newsletter here: https://9operators.com/
In this episode of Grow a Small Business, host Troy Trewin interviews Dean Mathews, the founder of On The Clock. Dean shares his evolution from a solo software developer in 2004 to leading a team of 23 professionals, supporting 170,000 to 280,000 active users. Originally launched as a time-tracking app, On The Clock has expanded to include employee scheduling and payroll services, with ambitious goals of reaching $10 million in revenue and one million monthly active users. Dean discusses the critical role of consistency, hiring the right talent, and leveraging tools like Asana for effective project management. He also emphasizes the importance of understanding customer needs and fostering a culture that prioritizes growth and team development. Other Resources: When should a growing small business have a Board of Directors or Advisors? Get a return from an effective Chairperson of a Board An easy way to measure if your customers love you in 21 minutes – use the Net Promoter Score (NPS). And it's FREE. Why would you wait any longer to start living the lifestyle you signed up for? Balance your health, wealth, relationships and business growth. And focus your time and energy and make the most of this year. Let's get into it by clicking here. Troy delves into our guest's startup journey, their perception of success, industry reconsideration, and the pivotal stress point during business expansion. They discuss the joys of small business growth, vital entrepreneurial habits, and strategies for team building, encompassing wins, blunders, and invaluable advice. And a snapshot of the final five Grow A Small Business Questions: What do you think is the hardest thing in growing a small business? According to Dean Mathews, the hardest thing in growing a small business is shifting from doing everything yourself to empowering others by building systems and trusting your team. He highlights the importance of moving from working in the business to working on the business, emphasizing that true growth comes from hiring the right people, clearly defining roles, and creating an operating structure that allows others to thrive. You can't scale alone, and recognizing that earlier can make a significant difference. What's your favorite business book that has helped you the most? Dean Mathews' favorite business book that has helped him the most is Scaling People by Claire Hughes Johnson. He found it especially valuable because it offers practical frameworks and structures for growing teams and building an internal operating system. The book resonated with him as it closely aligned with the challenges he faced while scaling OnTheClock, particularly around leadership, processes, and team development. He even conducted a book club at work based on it, applying its lessons to enhance how his company operates. Are there any great podcasts or online learning resources you'd recommend to help grow a small business? Dean Mathews recommends several great podcasts and online learning resources to help grow a small business, especially in the SaaS space. His top pick is the SaaStr Podcast, which features insights from successful SaaS founders and is packed with growth strategies. He also expressed strong interest in exploring content by Alex Hormozi, particularly his books $100M Offers and $100M Leads, and his podcast focused on data-driven business scaling. Additionally, Built to Sell Radio by John Warrillow was recommended for its focus on recurring revenue and building sellable businesses, while Nathan Latka's Podcast was noted for its sharp focus on SaaS metrics like ARR, MRR, CAC, and churn—making it a valuable listen for any growth-minded founder. What tool or resource would you recommend to grow a small business? Dean Mathews recommends using a project management tool like Asana to grow a small business, as it helps teams stay organized, track progress, and manage both projects and processes effectively. He believes every business boils down to three core elements—people, projects, and processes—and Asana helps align them in a structured way. Additionally, he highlights creating an internal operating system (built in tools like Google Slides), which outlines company values, goals, job roles, meeting structures, and key metrics. Together, these tools support scalable growth and team alignment. What advice would you give yourself on day one of starting out in business? Dean Mathews' advice to himself on day one of starting out in business would be to “buckle in, you're in for a ride” and to understand early on that scaling a business is all about people. He emphasizes that success doesn't come from doing everything yourself, but from hiring the right people, trusting them, and building systems that empower them to thrive. He reflects that if he had learned earlier how to let go of control and focus on developing others, his business could have grown even faster. Surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you in their areas is key to building something truly sustainable. Book a 20-minute Growth Chat with Troy Trewin to see if you qualify for our upcoming course. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your small business to new heights! Enjoyed the podcast? Please leave a review on iTunes or your preferred platform. Your feedback helps more small business owners discover our podcast and embark on their business growth journey. Quotable quotes from our special Grow A Small Business podcast guest: Trusting others with your vision is the first step to real growth — Dean Mathews A strong culture starts with clearly defined and lived values — Dean Mathews Leadership is less about control and more about enabling success — Dean Mathews
Most B2B marketers are stuck in the short term – chasing pipeline, tweaking LinkedIn Ads, and fighting for form fills.This episode, we break down how to get out of that cycle – without dropping results.We unpack the research (like The Long and the Short of It), the frameworks (like our 5 Stages of Awareness), and how small marketing teams can build brand and hit pipeline targets at the same time.Here's what we cover in this episode:+ Why most marketers default to the short term (and how to break the habit)+ The truth about diminishing returns in performance marketing+ The role brand plays in lowering CAC and increasing sales velocity+ How to map every activity to a stage of awareness using a unified frameworkTune in and learn:+ Why only 5% of your market is ready to buy – and what to do with the other 95%+ How brand building actually impacts the short term too+ How to balance your marketing budget (even on limited resources)This episode is a must-watch if you're in a small marketing team and trying to build a brand and drive pipeline – without burning your budget or your boss's patience.-----------------------------------------------------
What wisdom emerges when contemplative action meets radical compassion? In this special bonus episode, we step outside the chapter-by-chapter rhythm of Richard Rohr's final book, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage, for a rare and intimate conversation between Fr. Richard Rohr and his longtime friend Fr. Greg Boyle. Together, they explore the soul of the book and the spirit of this moment in history. Fr. Greg, founder of Homeboy Industries and author of Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times, joins Richard and CAC staff member Paul Swanson for a profound dialogue on everything from the death of Pope Francis and the surprising emergence of Pope Leo, to the themes of humiliation, humility, and radical belonging. Together, they reflect on the journey from order to disorder to reorder, offering insight into how love acts in the world, especially among the most marginalized. Fr. Richard and Fr. Greg Boyle embody the very message they share: that transformation is always possible, and that love, when lived, is the greatest force for healing in our divided world.
Wall Street, Cac 40… Europe 1 fait le point sur la situation de la Bourse.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Didier Hameau et Claire Lemaitre analysent la baisse du CAC 40 après les frappes sur l'Iran, avec notamment une forte hausse du prix du baril de pétrole et des baisses dans le secteur automobile.Notre équipe a utilisé un outil d'Intelligence artificielle via les technologies d'Audiomeans© pour accompagner la création de ce contenu écrit.Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
In this episode of SaaS Fuel, Jeff Mains sits down with Natalia Zacharin, founder of Zacharin & Co Consulting, to talk about financial clarity, fractional CFO strategies, and turning financial chaos into sustainable growth.They unpack why most SaaS companies operate blind when it comes to money, the dangers of growing too fast, and how founders can stop guessing and start scaling—with confidence.Natalia also shares how one founder survived a major revenue drop without debt, and the psychology behind smart financial decisions that separate profitable businesses from struggling ones.Key Takeaways00:00 – The payroll-to-revenue sweet spot for SaaS (30% rule)01:06 – Welcome to SaaS Fuel with Jeff Mains02:00 – Why financial clarity is a superpower03:48 – Meet guest: Natalia Zachary, founder of Zachary & Co05:37 – From accounting to strategic CFO: Natalia's journey06:38 – Why founders must own their numbers08:22 – What a fractional CFO actually does10:54 – Why growth can lead to running out of cash12:05 – Hiring mistakes and scaling with intention18:10 – Forecasting tips for SaaS founders21:57 – Most important SaaS metrics to watch24:45 – The difference between profit and cash in the bank27:12 – Avoiding the CAC-to-cash gap30:33 – Why profit matters again (finally)35:07 – Turning a low-margin SaaS into a sellable asset39:11 – Tools to simplify financial tracking41:23 – How masterminds improve founder financial IQ43:15 – The future of AI in finance46:42 – Mindset shift: clarity > avoidanceTweetable Quotes“Fast growth can kill your business if you don't manage cash.” — Natalia Zacharin“Financials aren't just numbers—they're the story of your business.” — Jeff Mains“You don't need a huge finance team. You need a smart one.” — Natalia Zacharin“If you don't know your runway, you're already flying blind.” — Jeff Mains“A mind once stretched by new numbers never returns to old assumptions.” — Natalia Zacharin“Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. Cash is reality.” — Jeff MainsSaaS Leadership LessonsKeep Payroll at 30% of Revenue – It gives breathing room for taxes, reinvestment, and founder salary.Fractional CFOs Are Game-Changers – They offer high-level insights without the full-time cost.You Can Grow Yourself to Death – Fast growth without cash control leads to disaster.Forecasting Beats Guessing – A basic forecast can prevent gut-based, costly decisions.Profit ≠ Cash – Just because you're profitable on paper doesn't mean you have money in the bank.SaaS Valuation Starts with Financial Clarity – A sellable business has healthy margins, clean books, and intentional growth.Guest ResourcesEmail - natalia@zacharinconsulting.comWebsite - http://www.zacharinconsulting.comFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/natalia.alekseyevna/Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/growyourbottomlineEpisode SponsorSmall Fish, Big Pond –
ABM programs often fail to deliver revenue results. Nadia Davis, VP of Marketing at CaliberMind, shares her expertise in transforming account-based marketing strategies into effective revenue generators. She breaks down the five most critical three-letter acronyms for B2B marketers today—ABM, CRM, MQA, MQL, and CAC—while explaining how to build holistic omni-channel ABM frameworks that contribute meaningfully to sales pipelines.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Revenue Generator Podcast: Sales + Marketing + Product + Customer Success = Revenue Growth
ABM programs often fail to deliver revenue results. Nadia Davis, VP of Marketing at CaliberMind, shares her expertise in transforming account-based marketing strategies into effective revenue generators. She breaks down the five most critical three-letter acronyms for B2B marketers today—ABM, CRM, MQA, MQL, and CAC—while explaining how to build holistic omni-channel ABM frameworks that contribute meaningfully to sales pipelines.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Mary Meeker's experience dates back to her role as a leading technology analyst at Morgan Stanley with her “Internet Trends Report”, she was in the middle of the Netscape, Amazon, and Google IPOs, and became a VC at Kleiner Perkins (2010) and then founded Bond in 2018 which has raised $5.75B to fund companies including Canva, Stripe, Plaid, Ironclad and Nextdoor to name just a few.During this episode of SaaS Talk with the Metrics, CAC and Growth discuss some of the KEY highlights of the 339-page report, Bond and Mary Meeker just released on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Trends - 2025 including:ChatGPT and Generative AI are the fastest growing technology adoption of all time - with contextExponential growth of the AI ecosystemHow Generative AI is reinventing the technology stack and economic modelsGeo-political impact of the race to AI leadershipCapital intensive nature of AI and the operating profitability realityLegacy SaaS companies or native language models applications - who will win...and whyThe Metrics Brothers go beyond legacy SaaS to discuss the AI Trends captured in the Mary Meeker - Bond report and guess what - it includes numbers and metrics!!!Full report available at: https://www.bondcap.com/report/pdf/Trends_Artificial_Intelligence.pdfSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
In this episode of the Afterburn Podcast, host John “Rain” Waters sits down with Vincent “Jell-O” Aiello, former Navy fighter pilot and host of the @FighterPilotPodcast for a deep dive into the highs and hardships of naval aviation. From his first spark of inspiration at an airshow to flying over 700 successful carrier landings, Jell-O shares a candid and compelling journey through the world of military flight. They discuss the grit required to survive flight school, the evolution of airmanship and training, and the life-changing experience of attending Top Gun. JJell-O recounts intense moments from deployments aboard the USS George Washington and John F. Kennedy, reflects on the emotional toll of military service, and gives insight into his time flying as an adversary pilot in the F-16. He also opens up about his book, Through the Yellow Visor, and how storytelling plays a crucial role in honoring those who serve. This episode is rich with wisdom on perseverance, mentorship, and what it truly means to be a fighter pilot. Through the Yellow Visor: https://amzn.to/4jaAfc6 Get a signed copy: https://www.fighterpilotpodcast.com/product-page/through-the-yellow-visor
How do we navigate spiritual transformation when everything seems to be falling apart? In this episode, we're exploring Chapter 4 of Richard Rohr's final book, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage, titled "Welcoming Holy Disorder: How the Prophets Carry Us Through." After our conversation with Richard, we're joined by Jungian psychologist and author Connie Zweig, who deepens our exploration into the role of the shadow, the hidden parts of ourselves and our communities that disorder brings to light. Connie, along with hosts and CAC staff Mike Petrow, Paul Swanson, and Carmen Acevedo Butcher, unpack the cyclical pattern of order, disorder, and reorder that Richard calls the Wisdom Pattern. Together, they explore how disorder is not only inevitable but sacred, a season of necessary unraveling that allows space for grace, healing, and transformation. This episode shows how the prophets help us see what we cannot, why true spiritual growth demands discomfort, and how embracing the dark night of the soul can lead to profound renewal—both personally and collectively. Connie Zweig, Ph.D. is a retired Jungian therapist and author of Meeting the Shadow and Romancing the Shadow. Her award-winning book, The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul, extends Shadow-work into midlife and beyond and explores aging as a spiritual practice. Her book, Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path: The Dance of Darkness and Light in Our Search for Awakening, extends shadow-work into religion and spirituality. Her new podcast, Dr. Neil's Spiritual Awakening to Non-Duality, posts on all podcast platforms. See her new SUBSTACK for livestreams and new writing: https://www.shadowworkawareness.com/about.
This week on Sinica, I speak with Kendra Schaefer, the partner at Trivium China who heads their tech practice. She recently published a fascinating paper looking at the Cyberspace Administration of China's comprehensive database of generative AI tools released in China, and she shares the insights and big takeaways from her research on that database. It's a terrific window into what Chinese firms, both private and state-affiliated, are doing with generative AI.03:51 – Mandatory registration of generative AI Tools in China10:28 – How does the CAC categorize AI Tools?14:25 – State-affiliated vs. non-state-affiliated AI Tools18:55 – Capability and competition of China's AI Industry22:57 – Significance of Generative Algorithmic Tools (GAT) registration counts26:06 – The application of GATs in the education sector29:50 – The application of GATs in the healthcare Sector31:00 – Underrepresentation of AI tools in other sectors32:56 – Regional breakdown of AI innovation in China36:07 – AI adoption across sectors: how companies integrate AI40:21 – Standout projects by the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS)42:42 – How multinationals navigate China's tech regulations47:50 – Role of foreign players in China's AI strategy49:38 – Key takeaways from the AI development journey53:41 -– Blind spots in AI data57:25 – Kendra's future research directionPaying it Forward: Kenton Thibaut.Recommendations:Kendra: The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age by Thomas Mullaney.Kaiser: the Rhyming Chaos Podcast by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria RepnikovaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Joe Carr is the Co-founder and President of Serenity Kids, an Austin-based baby food company dedicated to providing nutrient-dense, ethically sourced products for children. Alongside his wife and co-founder, Serenity Carr, Joe launched Serenity Kids in 2018 to revolutionize children's nutrition and empower future generations. With a background in youth services, nonprofit leadership, and life coaching, Joe brings a passion for child development and social impact to his role. He is also an autism advocate serving on the Advisory Board for the Autism Hope Alliance and is active in men's personal development through the ManKind Project. In this episode… Many DTC brands struggle to stand out in crowded markets while keeping customer acquisition costs under control. Traditional paid ads are expensive and short-lived, while organic strategies often take too long to show results. How can founders create authentic connections with customers and drive scalable growth without burning through the budget? Joe Carr, a founder with deep expertise in e-commerce and early childhood nutrition, shares how leveraging guest podcast appearances can create evergreen traffic and boost conversions. Joe explains how being a subject matter expert, identifying niche white space in podcast content, and offering compelling affiliate incentives helped lower CAC and build lasting credibility. He also highlights the importance of understanding the customer journey and offers tips for crafting messaging that educates and connects, not just sells. In this episode of Minds of Ecommerce podcast, Raphael Paulin-Daigle interviews Joe Carr, Co-founder and President of Serenity Kids, about how guest podcasting fuels long-term DTC growth. Joe discusses why unpaid promotions outperform traditional ads, how his team crafts affiliate offers, and how authenticity builds trust with parents. He also shares insights on launching his podcast, identifying topic white space, and positioning non-founder voices as brand advocates.
MORE STAFFINGRecruit, onboard, and train incredible virtual professionals in the Philippines with my friends at More Staffing by visiting https://morestaffing.co/af. INTELLIGEMSIntelligems brings A/B testing to business decisions beyond copy and design. Test your pricing, shipping charges, free shipping thresholds, offers, SaaS tools, and more by clicking here: https://bit.ly/42DcmFl. Get 20% off the first 3 months with code FARIS20.RICHPANELCut your support costs by 30% and reduce tickets by 30%—guaranteed—with Richpanel's AI-first Customer Service Platform that will reduce costs, improve agent productivity & delight customers at https://www.richpanel.com/.//Taylor Holiday is the Founder and CEO of Common Thread Collective. Learn more about working with CTC at https://www.commonthreadco.com. Follow Taylor on X at https://x.com/taylorholiday and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-holiday-a169b322/.//Taylor Holiday says your eCommerce business doesn't stand a chance—and he means it. In this episode, Taylor (CEO of Common Thread Collective) and Andrew go head-to-head over whether eCommerce is still a viable, scalable business model. The conversation pulls no punches and goes deep into the real pain points 7–9 figure brand operators are dealing with right now: margin compression, CAC volatility, platform shifts, and the myth of infinite scale.You'll also hear how ChatGPT is already changing buyer behavior, why most brands are failing at storytelling, and what it really takes to build a sustainable DTC brand in 2025. Beyond eCom, the episode explores parenting, fitness, and the psychology behind founder burnout.Whether you agree or disagree with Taylor's take, this is an unfiltered look into what separates surviving brands from thriving ones.CHAPTER TITLES:1:40 - Andrew The E-Commerce Optimist8:20 - Is Competition A Bad Thing In E Commerce?16:12 - What Optimization Setting To Use With Your Ads43:36 - The Growth of Retail1:22:00 - This Could Wipe Out Your DTC Business1:32:00 - Meal Planning & Fitness// SUBSCRIBE TO MY CHANNEL FOR 2X/WEEKLY UPLOADS!//ADMISSIONGet the best media buying training on the Internet + a free coaching call with Common Thread Collective's media buyers when you sign up for ADmission here: https://www.youradmission.co/andrew-faris-podcast//FOLLOW UP WITH ANDREW X: https://x.com/andrewjfaris Email: podcast@ajfgrowth.comWork with Andrew: https://ajfgrowth.com
In this episode of In the Circle, I am extremely privileged to speak with Father Richard Rohr.Richard Rohr is a Franciscan friar, author, and spiritual teacher renowned for his work in Christian mysticism and contemplative spirituality. Born in 1943 in Kansas, he was ordained a Catholic priest in 1970 and later founded the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Through the CAC and the Living School for Action and Contemplation, Rohr has helped thousands explore a deeper, more experiential faith.Rohr's teachings emphasize the union of action and contemplation, encouraging spiritual growth through lived experience rather than rigid doctrine. His message includes ideas like the “true self,” the “universal Christ,” and the transformative power of embracing paradox, suffering, and mystery. He is known for offering an “alternative orthodoxy” that bridges traditional Christian thought with modern spiritual needs.He has authored numerous influential books, including Falling Upward, The Universal Christ, and The Divine Dance. Though recent health challenges have led him to step back from public speaking, Rohr continues to write and guide through his work at the CAC, remaining a vital voice in contemporary spirituality.Tommy Discusses:The role of practiceReligion, spirituality, and science The true recovery goalHealthy vs unhealthy religion Would you like to be a guest on the In The Circle Podcast? Submit Your Question Here: R20.com/inthecircleFurther Links & ResourcesCatch a Meeting. We offer 40+ Live Online Recovery meetings every week. Come and find your community here. Meetings are always free.Want ongoing recovery insights and inspiration delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to the Weekly UPLIFTJoin our Recovery 2.0 Community: access your authentic power, connect with others on a similar path, and thrive in life beyond addictionSubscribe to The Recovery Channel on YouTubeVisit our websiteCome and experience an in-person event or retreat: r20.com/eventsAddiction is part of everyone's journey, but recovery is not. The Recovery 2.0 Membership is a place where you can explore the topics that interest you, find community, and connect with Tommy Rosen on a personal level. It's here that we'll dig into spirituality and union of the mind, body, and spirit, and transform from the inside out. You will learn and grow alongside a community of supportive, conscious, compassionate, and vibrant individuals, like you!Join us at r20.com/welcome to explore how to move beyond addiction and thrive in your life.Connect with TommyInstagramFacebookTikTokRecovery 2.0
This week on GTM Live, Carolyn and Trevor unpack the 9 go-to-market dysfunctions quietly derailing growth at even the most ambitious B2B companies.They dig into why so many teams, despite big budgets, headcount, and tools, are still struggling to drive efficient growth. Spoiler: it's not the people. It's the system.You'll hear why fragmented data, financial secrecy, and siloed ownership are causing misalignment across marketing, sales, finance, and CS. And what it takes to rebuild GTM as a unified, accountable system.Trevor breaks down the real role of RevOps (and why it's failing in most orgs), while Carolyn makes the case for ditching vanity metrics and rethinking how you measure and invest in growth.If you're questioning whether your CAC is sustainable or your GTM truly aligned, this one's for you.Key topics in this episode:The 9 biggest GTM dysfunctions hurting growthWhy RevOps struggles to drive real impactHow to align GTM and finance on a shared data modelThe danger of over-investing in top-of-funnelWhy teams fix symptoms, not systemsWhat it actually takes to build a full-funnel growth engineThis episode is powered by Passetto.We help high-growth companies build the GTM system they should've had all along: measurable, connected, and built for real growth. We integrate your CRM, financials, and GTM data to uncover what's working, what's not, and what to do next.Part platform, part advisory. All about clarity.Learn more at passetto.com.