Podcasts about cisco

Is your contact center ready to become a profit center? Agility requires not just adopting new technologies like AI, but also fundamentally rethinking how we structure our teams, measure success, and interact with customers. It demands a willingness to experiment, learn, and adapt quickly in a constantly evolving landscape. Today, we're going to talk about how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the contact center, transforming it from a cost center into a driver of customer loyalty and revenue growth. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Chang Chang, Senior Director, Product, Cloud CX Solutions at Cisco's Webex Customer Experience Solutions. About Chang Chang Chang Chang, Senior Director, Product, Cloud CX Solutions, Cisco's Webex Customer Experience Solutions.  Chang is a senior director of product management in the Webex Customer Experience Solutions business at Cisco. With over 14 years of product leadership experience, Chang has held key roles at Intuit and Mighty Audio (an early-stage startup), as well as a management consultant at PwC. Chang holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson. Chang Chang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/changjonathanj/ Resources Cisco's Webex Customer Experience Solutions: https://www.webex.com/ The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://www.teksystems.com/versionnextnow Catch the future of e-commerce at eTail Palm Springs, Feb 23-26 in Palm Springs, CA. Go here for more details: https://etailwest.wbresearch.com/ Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstromDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://www.theagilebrand.showCheck out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

In this episode, Venkat Kirishnamurthy, a principal Architect at Cisco, explains what are the ins and outs of designin an AI datacenter. How is it different from another datacenter ? What kind of scale are we talking about ? What is the throughput required to connect 1000 GPUs together ? Learn more about CX Services and how we can help you design your datacenter: https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/services/index.html

Send us a textIn this episode, Joe sits down with Vishnu Varma to explore the evolving landscape of cybersecurity and data management. Vishnu shares his journey from India to the US, detailing his experiences at Cisco and the rise of cloud security. They delve into the challenges of managing vast amounts of data in the age of AI, discussing how BonFi AI is innovating in data security. Tune in to learn about the importance of context in data protection and the future of cybersecurity in a rapidly changing digital world.00:00:19 Introduction to Vishnu's Journey00:00:30 Entering the US and Cisco00:02:18 Cloud Security and AI00:02:48 Data Governance and Challenges00:08:47 The Expansiveness of Cloud00:11:00 AI's Appetite for Data00:12:11 Data Security in the JNI Era00:14:29 The Importance of Context00:16:13 Data Used by Enterprises00:22:24 Conclusion and Future Trendshttps://www.bonfy.ai/Bonfy.aiBonfy ACS is a next-gen DLP platform built for the AI era. Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the showFollow the Podcast on Social Media! Tesla Referral Code: https://ts.la/joseph675128 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@securityunfilteredpodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secunfpodcast/Twitter: https://twitter.com/SecUnfPodcast Affiliates➡️ OffGrid Faraday Bags: https://offgrid.co/?ref=gabzvajh➡️ OffGrid Coupon Code: JOE➡️ Unplugged Phone: https://unplugged.com/Unplugged's UP Phone - The performance you expect, with the privacy you deserve. Meet the alternative. Use Code UNFILTERED at checkout*See terms and conditions at affiliated webpages. Offers are subject to change. These are affiliated/paid promotions.

У фокусі розмови – сервіс та продажі, які не варто розділяти в компанії. Разом з викладачами Анастасією Владичинською, adjunct professor kmbs, авторкою програм з сервісу та Володимиром Орловим, adjunct professor kmbs, регіональним менеджером по інноваціям і цифровій трансформації Cisco, обговорюємо пропозицію цінності для клієнта, розуміння ролі sales менеджера та сервісності в компанії. На прикладах говорили про «Чорну пʼятницю» та  яким чином досягнути сталого результату та повернення клієнта.Таймкоди:00:00:00 - Інтро00:01:31 - Що перше: сервіс чи продаж?00:10:20 - Короткострокові й довгострокові цілі в продажах та сервісі00:16:58 - Чорна п'ятниця, кейси сервісу та продажу00:30:28 - Сервіс як спосіб мислення компанії00:42:44 - Фрагментований досвід клієнта та конверсія00:58:52 - Продажі без дилеми: створити умови, щоб купували01:14:40 - Показники, що міряють продажі й сервіс разом01:27:50 - Взаємодія знижок з сервісом та продажами

Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation with Madhavan Jagannathan (Maddy) , Instrument and Control Engineer by training, software technologist by experience, and financial explorer at heart. With over two decades of experience across HCL, Adobe, EMC, Dell, and VMware, Maddy brings together deep tech, systems thinking, and a passion for financial markets. Gayatri introduces Maddy, highlighting 17 years of friendship and his rare mix of humor, humility, and insight across hardware, software, and finance.02:00 – The Physics of Curiosity Maddy recalls his fascination with science, choosing physics for his undergraduate degree, and his early ambition to pursue research at IITs before pragmatically opting for instrumentation at Madras Institute of Technology.05:00 – The Unplanned Leap into Software A “lucky break” leads him into HCL Technologies, where a chance campus interview launches his career in software — landing him in the prestigious Cisco division during the early internet boom.08:00 – Early Memories of the Software World Maddy reflects on working at the intersection of hardware and network management — when internet access was rationed, innovation was exploding, and curiosity was rewarded.10:00 – Settling into the Tech Ecosystem He discusses how he initially longed for the process industry, only to realize that the software world offered greater opportunities, intellectual challenge, and balance — ultimately leading teams early in his career.13:00 – From HCL to Adobe: Finding the Power of Software Maddy shares how joining Adobe in Noida, during its early transition to SaaS, transformed his understanding of software's reach and power. “That one year at Adobe changed my view of what software could do.”16:00 – The EMC and Dell Era: Process Meets Innovation He moves from startups to EMC, where he embraces Six Sigma, process excellence, and later joins Dell, leading teams focused on data center innovation. “Dell was about process discipline and fast engineering — a perfect blend of structure and innovation.”20:00 – Clarifying ‘Process': From Chemistry to Systems Thinking Maddy reflects on how his training in process control and systems modeling shaped his understanding of software and organizational design.23:00 – Discovering Financial Markets His long-standing curiosity about stock markets takes root. From reading stock pages in newspapers to managing his first ESOPs, Maddy begins to explore investing and financial systems deeply. “It started with curiosity — how a single number next to a company name could tell a story.”26:00 – The Birth of a Trader Inspired by his MBA classes and a growing interest in quantitative methods, Maddy takes professional trading courses — blending math, technology, and market behavior. “Trading is where math, technology, and psychology collide.”29:00 – Lessons from the Trading Floor He shares insights from independent trading during COVID, emphasizing discipline, emotional control, and the realization that he's better suited for his own portfolio than managing others' money.32:00 – The Intersection of Tech and Finance Maddy discusses how his tech background enhances his understanding of market microstructures, algorithmic trading, and the growing influence of AI and quantum computing in finance.35:00 – The Philosophy of Continuous Exploration For Maddy, trading and technology are both lifelong explorations. “Markets teach you more than finance — they teach you patience, humility, and the ability to think statistically about your own life.”38:00 – Reflections on Career and Curiosity Gayatri and Maddy reflect on his multi-layered career: from a hardware engineer and software innovator to a financial thinker who continues to connect systems, people, and ideas. Key Themes:Evolving from hardware and instrumentation to deep software systemsThe interplay between process thinking and product innovationLifelong learning and curiosity as a career compassApplying software and systems logic to financial marketsEmotional intelligence and discipline in trading Memorable Quotes:“Trading is where math, technology, and psychology collide.”“That one year at Adobe changed my view of what software could do.”“Markets teach you more than finance — they teach you patience, humility, and the ability to think statistically about your own life.”“I didn't plan my career — I followed my curiosity, and that made all the difference.”https://www.linkedin.com/in/madhavan-jagannathan-559bb51/Madhavan “Maddy” Jagannadhan is a seasoned technologist and financial explorer whose career spans hardware engineering, software system leadership and independent investing. With early roots in instrumentation and network hardware, Maddy went on to lead development teams at industry names like HCL Technologies, Adobe Inc., EMC Corporation and Dell Technologies—designing software-driven systems and complex processes. Today, Maddy blends his systems thinking, curiosity and trading insight into mentoring, personal investing and bridging tech and financial markets. Madhavan has an engineering degree in Instrumentation and Control from MIT (Anna University) and an MBA degree from Great Lakes Institute of Management.

Big thank you to Cisco for sponsoring this video and sponsoring my trip to the Cisco Partner Summit San Diego 2025 Cisco Unified Edge & The Future of Physical AI (w/ Kevin Wolenweber) Kevin Wolenweber reveals Cisco's new Unified Edge device and details the massive Nvidia partnership transforming data centers. We discuss the shift to "Physical AI," the terrifying security challenges of autonomous Agentic AI, and why "Gigawatt" scale clusters are changing the landscape for network engineers in 2025. // Kevin Wollenweber's SOCIALS // Cisco Blogs: https://blogs.cisco.com/author/kevinw... LinkedIn: / kevin-wollenweber-ba9428 // David's SOCIAL // Discord: discord.com/invite/usKSyzb Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidbombal Instagram: www.instagram.com/davidbombal LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davidbombal Facebook: www.facebook.com/davidbombal.co TikTok: tiktok.com/@davidbombal YouTube: / @davidbombal Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/3f6k6gE... SoundCloud: / davidbombal Apple Podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... // MY STUFF // https://www.amazon.com/shop/davidbombal // SPONSORS // Interested in sponsoring my videos? Reach out to my team here: sponsors@davidbombal.com // MENU // 0:00 - Coming up 01:00 - New Cisco Unified Edge // What is it? 03:28 - Use cases for the Cisco Unified Edge // Using AI models 08:00 - More traffic and more bandwidth 09:32 - Addressing security issues and solutions 10:44 - What's new on the Cisco Unified Edge 11:41 - Cisco and Nvidia partnership 15:03 - Growing data centers 18:24 - AI in the future 20:03 - Security regarding AI agents 23:08 - Networking and AI 25:35 - Conclusion Please note that links listed may be affiliate links and provide me with a small percentage/kickback should you use them to purchase any of the items listed or recommended. Thank you for supporting me and this channel! Disclaimer: This video is for educational purposes only.

Episódio gravado em 28/11/2025 ASSUNTO DO EPISÓDIO: Apresentamos a tese de Michael Burry que envolve apostar contra a Nvidia na bolsa. Se você não sabe nem quem é Michael Burry, não se preocupe, começaremos desse ponto. SOBRE AS FONTES CITADAS: Business Insider: Michael Burry abriu um Substack para explicar a tese de short em Nvidia - https://www.businessinsider.com/big-short-michael-burry-substack-nvidia-memo-depreciation-ai-bubble-2025-11  Yahoo Finance: Michael Burry alerta sobre US$176 bilhões em depreciação nas Big Techs - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/michael-burry-warns-176-billion-173613512.html  Post no X da página Kobeissi Letter que mostra a circularidade de investimentos nas empresas de tech neste momento - https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1975975477513757165?s=20  Vídeo no Youtube: a bolha AI é pior do que você está imaginando - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cdJQ8UyVLA Vezes em que Caio Augusto comentou sobre o assunto comparando Nvidia e Cisco no X nos últimos anos: Set/2023 https://x.com/CaioAugstOR/status/1707041374749458657?s=20  Mai/2024 https://x.com/CaioAugstOR/status/1795629936738505012?s=20  Abr/2025 https://x.com/CaioAugstOR/status/1916911023975498006?s=20 Mai/2025 https://x.com/CaioAugstOR/status/1924654992327110808?s=20 Gostou? Deixe seu like, comente sua opinião e passe adiante para dar um gás para os próximos episódios!

Couche-Tard may finally be showing early signs of a long-awaited turnaround with improving U.S. trends, stronger margins, and surprising strength in food and nicotine alternatives. Home Depot delivered solid operations but once again cut guidance as the renovation cycle continues to stall. And then there’s Nvidia another monster quarter… paired with a surprisingly cold market reaction. We dig into what’s driving the pullback, the emerging threat from in-house AI chips, and why Michael Burry believes Nvidia today mirrors Cisco in 2000. Tickers of Stocks Discussed: ATD, HD, NVDA, META, ORCL, MSFT, GOOGL, AMZN, CSCO Check out our portfolio by going to Jointci.com Our Website Our New Youtube Channel! Canadian Investor Podcast Network Twitter: @cdn_investing Simon’s twitter: @Fiat_Iceberg Braden’s twitter: @BradoCapital Dan’s Twitter: @stocktrades_ca Want to learn more about Real Estate Investing? Check out the Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast! Apple Podcast - The Canadian Real Estate Investor Spotify - The Canadian Real Estate Investor Web player - The Canadian Real Estate Investor Asset Allocation ETFs | BMO Global Asset Management Sign up for Fiscal.ai for free to get easy access to global stock coverage and powerful AI investing tools. Register for EQ Bank, the seamless digital banking experience with better rates and no nonsense.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sean Hehir, CEO of BrainChip, discusses their innovative neuromorphic technology, which mimics the way the human brain processes information to enable smarter, more efficient edge computing. We explore the real-world impact of bringing AI directly to devices, from wearables to smart home products, and what this means for speed, privacy, and energy efficiency. Tune in to learn how BrainChip is paving the way for a new generation of intelligent electronics and what's next for brain-inspired artificial intelligence. Key Takeaways:  How BrainChip is working across health tech, automotive, and consumer electronics to make brain-inspired AI a reality in the products we use every day. How BrainChip worked with Onsor Technologies to unveil AI-powered wearable glasses that predict epileptic seizures before they happen. Neuromorphic computing: what it is, why it's important, and how Brainchip is innovating in this area. Why energy efficiency is the hidden frontier we need in AI's next big leap. How Edge and Cloud AI are different and how they'll work together over time. Guest Bio: Sean Hehir is the CEO of BrainChip, the company behind Akida™, which is the world's first neuromorphic AI processor, mimicking how the human brain works to bring intelligence directly onto devices. After decades driving global partnerships at Microsoft, HP, and Cisco, he now leads BrainChip's push to move AI from the cloud to the edge—making it faster, safer, and dramatically more energy-efficient. Under Sean's leadership, BrainChip is powering breakthroughs across health tech, automotive, and consumer electronics, including AI-powered wearable glasses (built with Onsor Technologies) that can predict epileptic seizures before they happen. Sean is also a frequent industry speaker and serves on the board of the Silicon Valley Executive Network. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About this Show: The Brave Technologist is here to shed light on the opportunities and challenges of emerging tech. To make it digestible, less scary, and more approachable for all! Join us as we embark on a mission to demystify artificial intelligence, challenge the status quo, and empower everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a curious mind, or an industry professional, this podcast invites you to join the conversation and explore the future of AI together. The Brave Technologist Podcast is hosted by Luke Mulks, VP Business Operations at Brave Software—makers of the privacy-respecting Brave browser and Search engine, and now powering AI everywhere with the Brave Search API. Music by: Ari Dvorin Produced by: Sam Laliberte  

AI has brought incredible new capabilities into everyday technology, but it's also creating security challenges that most people haven't fully wrapped their heads around yet. As these systems become more capable and more deeply connected to the tools and data we rely on, the risks become harder to predict and much more complicated to manage. My guest today is Rich Smith, who leads offensive research at MindGard and has spent more than twenty years working on the front lines of cybersecurity. Rich has held leadership roles at organizations like Crash Override, Gemini, Duo Security, Cisco, and Etsy, and he's spent most of his career trying to understand how real attackers think and where systems break under pressure. We talk about how AI is changing the way attacks happen, why the old methods of testing security don't translate well anymore, and what happens when models behave in ways no one expected. Rich also explains why psychology now plays a surprising role in hacking AI systems, where companies are accidentally creating new openings for exploitation, and what everyday users should keep in mind when trusting AI with personal information. It's a fascinating look behind the curtain at what's really going on in AI security right now. Show Notes: [01:00] Rich describes getting into hacking as a kid and bypassing his brother's disk password. [03:38] He talks about discovering Linux and teaching himself through early online systems. [05:07] Rich explains how offensive security became his career and passion. [08:00] Discussion of curiosity, challenge, and the appeal of breaking systems others built. [09:45] Rich shares surprising real-world vulnerabilities found in large organizations. [11:20] Story about discovering a major security flaw in a banking platform. [12:50] Example of a bot attack against an online game that used his own open-source tool. [16:26] Common security gaps caused by debugging code and staging environments. [17:43] Rich explains how AI has fundamentally changed offensive cybersecurity. [19:30] Why binary vulnerability testing no longer applies to generative AI. [21:00] The role of statistics and repeated prompts in evaluating AI risk and failure. [23:45] Base64 encoding used to bypass filters and trick models. [27:07] Differentiating between model safety and full system security. [30:41] Risks created when AI models are connected to external tools and infrastructure. [32:55] The difficulty of securing Python execution environments used by AI systems. [35:56] How social engineering and psychology are becoming new attack surfaces. [38:00] Building psychological profiles of models to manipulate behavior. [42:14] Ethical considerations and moral questions around AI exploitation. [44:05] Rich discusses consumer fears and hype around AI's future. [45:54] Advice on privacy and cautious adoption of emerging technology. Thanks for joining us on Easy Prey. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave a nice review.  Links and Resources: Podcast Web Page Facebook Page whatismyipaddress.com Easy Prey on Instagram Easy Prey on Twitter Easy Prey on LinkedIn Easy Prey on YouTube Easy Prey on Pinterest Mindgard Rich.Smith@Mindgard.ai

Lukas Malinauskas, Karolis Tiškevičius ir Tomas Purlys susėdo aptarti Eurolygos MVP kandidatą Cisco, „Žalgirio” pergalę, „Ryto” pinigus ir pavojus ir neregėtą skandalą Šilutės krepšinyje. Tinklalaidės partneriai:

Big thanks to Cisco for sponsoring this video and sponsoring my trip to Cisco Partner Summit San Diego 2025. This video is a deep dive with Jeetu Patel on why the real AI revolution is happening in infrastructure and networking, not just in GPUs or chatbots. Jeetu explains that we are massively underestimating how much AI infrastructure the world will need. Power becomes the core constraint, GPUs are the core asset, and networking is the force multiplier that lets thousands of GPUs act as one system. He walks through how we went from models on a single GPU → 4–8 GPUs in a server → racks with hundreds of GPUs (like NVL-72 with 500+ GPUs) → clusters of racks, and now “scale across” between data centers when power and real estate are scattered across different regions. The conversation then shifts to edge AI and Cisco Unified Edge: instead of doing all token generation in big data centers, some inference and token generation must move to the edge (branches, factories, hospitals, stadiums, stores) where data is created. Jeetu explains why edge devices need to be plug-and-play, remotely managed, and integrate compute, networking, security and observability in a single platform. He also introduces the idea that AI is now constrained by three big bottlenecks: • Infrastructure • A trust deficit (people don't trust AI yet) • A data gap (models are mostly trained on human internet data, not on rich machine data) Jeetu explains how security becomes a prerequisite for productivity, not a trade-off, and describes Cisco's work with Splunk, open-sourced time-series models, and machine data (logs, metrics, traces) to close the data gap by correlating machine data with human-generated data for better insights. Globally, he talks about the “token generation race” – how every country now cares about having enough AI token generation capacity because it directly links to GDP and national security. He cites huge infrastructure build-outs with partners like G42 in the Middle East, at gigawatt and trillions-of-dollars scale. Finally, Jeetu tackles the “AI will take my job” fear. He outlines three stages of thinking: 1. “AI will take my job.” 2. “Someone who uses AI better will take my job.” 3. “Without AI, I won't be able to do my job.” His message to younger viewers: be excited, adopt AI as a companion, own your learning, and learn fast because AI compresses the time it takes to build skills. // Jeetu Patel's SOCIALS // LinkedIn: / jeetupatel Website: https://www.cisco.com/ X: https://x.com/jpatel41 // David's SOCIAL // Discord: discord.com/invite/usKSyzb Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidbombal Instagram: www.instagram.com/davidbombal LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davidbombal Facebook: www.facebook.com/davidbombal.co TikTok: tiktok.com/@davidbombal YouTube: / @davidbombal Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/3f6k6gE... SoundCloud: / davidbombal Apple Podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... // MY STUFF // https://www.amazon.com/shop/davidbombal // SPONSORS // Interested in sponsoring my videos? Reach out to my team here: sponsors@davidbombal.com // Menu // 0:00 - Coming up 0:33 - "Networking is sexy" 02:24 - Scale up, scale out and scale across explained 04:47 - Cisco and Nvidia partnership 05:55 - Cisco and G42 partnership // Addressing the AI bubble 08:11 - New Cisco Unified Edge 11:08 - Agentic AI in the future 13:05 - Huge demand for networking 13:57 - The three constraints 16:38 - AI in the real world 19:26 - How AI will take jobs away 21:38 - Conclusion Please note that links listed may be affiliate links and provide me with a small percentage/kickback should you use them to purchase any of the items listed or recommended. Thank you for supporting me and this channel! Disclaimer: This video is for educational purposes only.

Big thanks to Cisco for sponsoring this video and sponsoring my trip to Cisco Partner Summit 2025. Is your encryption safe? Cisco's Vijoy Pandey reveals why distributed quantum computing is coming in 2-3 years, not 10. Learn about the 'Store Now, Harvest Later' threat and how quantum networking changes everything, including the security of your VPN. This paradigm shift is 100x bigger than the ChatGPT/AI moment, requiring the entire theory of computer science to be rewritten. Join us as we dive into the imminent future of cybersecurity, qubits, and entanglement technology from Cisco. // Vijoy Pandey SOCIALS // LinkedIn: / vijoy X: https://x.com/vijoy // David's SOCIAL // Discord: discord.com/invite/usKSyzb Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidbombal Instagram: www.instagram.com/davidbombal LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davidbombal Facebook: www.facebook.com/davidbombal.co TikTok: tiktok.com/@davidbombal YouTube: / @davidbombal Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/3f6k6gE... SoundCloud: / davidbombal Apple Podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... // MY STUFF // https://www.amazon.com/shop/davidbombal // SPONSORS // Interested in sponsoring my videos? Reach out to my team here: sponsors@davidbombal.com // MENU // 0:00 - Coming Up 0:36 - Intro 0:48 - Update on Quantum Computing 03:47 - Effects of Practical Quantum Computing 05:08 - Post Quantum Cryptography 06:12 - Why Bother with Quantum Computing 07:57 - How Do We get to Practical Quantum Computing 09:31 - Quantum Protocols and Applications 10:55 - Quantum Computing and Classical-Use Cases 13:28 - Practical Use Case for Quantum Alert 15:03 - Outro Please note that links listed may be affiliate links and provide me with a small percentage/kickback should you use them to purchase any of the items listed or recommended. Thank you for supporting me and this channel! Disclaimer: This video is for educational purposes only. #cisco #sponsored #ciscops25

This episode sponsored by Vita Bella Health LightSpeed VT: https://www.lightspeedvt.com/ Dropping Bombs Podcast: https://www.droppingbombs.com/ In this Dropping Bombs episode, Phil Vella, the former Cisco software sales "godfather" who helped scale the company from $0 to $5B, reveals a data-first playbook for hormones, peptides, and performance. Now running Vita Bella Health, Vella explains the anti-aging protocols, why comprehensive bloodwork is crucial, the reasons behind low testosterone in young men, and the safe, physician-supervised use of peptides and GLP-1s—avoiding sketchy "not for human consumption" products.   Learn how to structure your health like a sales machine, the key labs that matter, and why recovery is leverage, not a luxury. You'll also hear how properly dosed female testosterone can transform energy, mood, and relationships. This episode provides a framework for entrepreneurs to sell harder, sleep deeper, and perform longer by upgrading both their business and the body that runs it.

Jeff Edwards is a strategic sales leader in the tech industry who loves to inspire people, teams, and organizations to step into the fullest version of themselves. In his role as Director of Partner Sales at Cisco, Jeff drives growth and value creation for Cisco's Tier One Service Provider business in the Americas, managing a $2B business in global tech sales. He is a disruptive leader who challenges the status quo to solve hard problems and propel groundbreaking success. This led Jeff to start Shift Happens, an internal podcast at Cisco for people who want to lead at the edge of change. Through real conversations with the architects behind Cisco's biggest transformations, Jeff unpacks the mindset, strategies, and stories that help leaders stay ahead, speak with confidence, and turn every shift into momentum. In this episode of The Next Level, we discuss:  How leaders create a durable culture through everyday interactions Why accountability is essential to a healthy culture How curiosity and being a beginner build resilience and openness to change What systems leaders can use to help teams see change as an opportunity for growth The Next Level Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music. 

At the Cisco Partner Summit, Technology Reseller News' Moshe Beauford sat down with Cyndi Privett, Principal & Owner of Viewpoint Research, to discuss Cisco's sweeping updates to its partner program, the introduction of Cisco IQ, and how AI is reshaping partner profitability and customer experience. Privett described the new 360 Partner Program 2.0 as a major milestone in Cisco's evolving channel model. “There's now much more clarity around how Cisco intends to measure its partners going forward, and what the real levers of profitability will be,” she said. The redesigned incentive structure rewards partners that expand their portfolios beyond networking into security, collaboration, and managed services, with a strong focus on premium services and recurring revenue. A highlight of the event was the debut of Cisco IQ, a platform designed to give partners deeper insight into customer environments and enhance proactive support. “Cisco IQ is a big step forward—it's about enabling partners to deliver an up-leveled support experience and deepen their customer relationships,” Privett noted. Privett also reflected on Cisco's vision for machine AI, as outlined by Chief Customer Experience Officer Liz Centoni, which could one day allow multi-vendor “war rooms” to be fully automated. “We could soon see virtual war rooms where bots from Cisco, IBM, and others collaborate autonomously to solve outages or security breaches. That's the future Cisco is building toward,” she added. While Privett praised Cisco's forward-looking approach, she cautioned that not all partners will immediately benefit. “Those who can evolve, expand into new architectures, and lead with AI will thrive. Those who can't may find incentive dollars shrinking. But that's how every technology cycle works,” she said. From its unified edge strategy to its “picks and shovels” approach to AI enablement, Cisco's transformation signals a new era for partners ready to align around automation, intelligence, and measurable business outcomes. Learn more about Viewpoint Research at https://www.viewpointresearch.com/.

At the Cisco Partner Summit, Technology Reseller News' Moshe Beauford spoke with Jeff Drury, Director of Engineering at CVE Technologies Group, about how Cisco's expanding AI portfolio is reshaping partner enablement, education, and customer strategy across the channel. Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, with offices in Oregon and Hawaii, CVE Technologies Group has been a trusted Cisco partner since 2002. The company provides technology solutions, engineering support, and technical services to customers across the Intermountain West and beyond. Discussing the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence, Drury described AI as “the new buzzword — it's replaced ‘cloud' as the vaguest but most talked-about trend in technology.” He explained that customers are approaching AI adoption in three ways: by using built-in AI features within existing tools, leveraging large language models (LLMs) to improve workflows, and developing proprietary AI solutions — with the last category being the most complex and skill-intensive. Internally, CVE is also adopting AI to streamline operations. “We're looking at how to ‘dog food' our own AI initiatives, especially around LLM integration, to improve business processes and make us faster and more agile,” Drury noted. Education and enablement remain central to CVE's approach. “Cisco's been very good about providing enhanced and focused training once we show initiative and investment in a space,” said Drury. “Education is the key and the burden of being a successful channel partner — it's constant.” Looking ahead, Drury hopes for greater interoperability across AI-driven tools. “Standalone AI information for one product isn't beneficial if it can't talk to other systems. Interoperability between vendors' AI technologies will be key as the market matures,” he added. Learn more about CVE Technologies Group at https://www.cvetech.com/.

At the Cisco Partner Summit, Technology Reseller News' Moshe Beauford spoke with Nathaniel Stearns, Splunk and cybersecurity consultant at Keos Technology, to discuss Cisco's integration of Splunk following its landmark acquisition and what it means for partners navigating the next era of AI-driven security. Stearns explained that Keos Technology—Splunk's largest professional services provider in the United States—works closely with resellers, distributors, and channel partners to provide pre- and post-sales support around Splunk implementations. “Cisco has been making very accelerated leaps to integrate all of Splunk’s products into its existing portfolio,” Stearns noted. “It's expanding their security capabilities in a really powerful way, and there's a large amount of education happening across the partner ecosystem.” As Cisco weaves Splunk into its infrastructure and security portfolio, Stearns emphasized the growing role of AI integration. “Artificial intelligence is all the buzz these days, but when it comes to driving business outcomes, AI has to be well integrated into valuable tools,” he said. “Cisco is doing a uniquely good job of connecting these tools—networking, security, observability, collaboration—and adding AI to make each one stronger.” For partners, this evolution represents a major opportunity. Stearns explained that Cisco's combined suite—including ThousandEyes, AppDynamics, and now Splunk—offers unmatched visibility, security, and operational intelligence. “Cisco has done a tremendous job bundling these all together and making it the single marketplace you want to go to for your security solutions,” he said. Looking ahead, Stearns predicts that Splunk's integration into Cisco will double its impact across the enterprise landscape. “Splunk was already a strong platform, but now that it's part of Cisco, there's an opportunity to double its business because it fits so perfectly within Cisco's ecosystem,” he added. “Resellers will have a unique opportunity to package these tools together and deliver holistic security and observability solutions.” Learn more about Keos Technology at https://www.keostechnology.com/.

As the Managed Service Provider (MSP) landscape shifts vastly, service providers must fundamentally differentiate their offerings and value proposition to remain competitive. This imperative means a necessary expansion into robust security services, addressing a growing and critical concern for businesses ranging from Small to Medium Businesses (SMBs) right up to the enterprise level. Companies like Cisco and Microsoft are leading this transformation. They are not only ensuring security is built natively into their core platforms, but are also heavily invested in educating MSPs. This education emphasizes adopting a security-first mindset, adhering to industry best practices, and strategically integrating advanced security measures into their service delivery models. In this podcast, TRN senior editor Moshe Beauford explores this pivotal notion. He lays out his thoughts on how MSPs can successfully adapt to the swiftly evolving security landscape. This adaptation mirrors the historical transformation of traditional resellers into Value Added Resellers (VARs)—a shift that requires MSPs to add continuous, high-value security expertise and services to their portfolio.

The integration of Splunk into the Cisco stack is a potential game-changer for channel partners who fully leverage its capabilities. From a security perspective, Splunk provides a powerful analytics platform that acts as a gold mine for partners. It allows them to move beyond simple product reselling into offering high-value services like deep threat detection, correlation, and rapid response by analyzing security data across the entire Cisco environment. Furthermore, the platform offers significant benefits from an artificial intelligence (AI) standpoint. By applying Splunk’s AI and machine learning capabilities to the massive streams of data generated by Cisco devices, partners can automate formerly manual security and operational processes. This automation drastically improves efficiency, reduces labor costs and speeds up time-to-resolution for issues, allowing partners to deliver more profitable managed and professional services and expand with a viable security proposition. A key operational advantage is the unified visibility the combined platform delivers. Through it, partners can gain comprehensive insight into an entire fleet of devices across all their customers from a single, unified dashboard. This not only shortens the time it takes to get to market with powerful monitoring and security solutions, but also provides the deep operational clarity needed to deliver effective managed services and quickly troubleshoot complex customer environments. The final significant component resides in the ease of doing business: partners can sell Splunk products through existing Cisco Enterprise Agreements (EAs) and purchasing programs, simplifying procurement for customers and making sales transactions much simpler and faster for the partner. Check out the full podcast as expert guest, Moshe Beauford breaks down the key benefits of the Splunk-Cisco play for channel partners.

Jeetu Patel is President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco. He previously served there as Executive Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration.He joined Cisco in 2020 after serving as Chief Product Officer and Chief Strategy Officer at Box, where he played a key role in expanding the company into a multi-product platform used by more than 100,000 customers. He currently sits on the board of real estate services company JLL (Jones Lang LaSalle) and holds a B.S. in Information Decision Sciences from the University of Illinois.In this conversation, we discuss:How Cisco is becoming an AI-first company and why fully embracing AI is now a requirement, not a choiceHow AI will reshape every job, and which human skills will matter most in the decade aheadThe real constraints slowing enterprise AI adoption: power, trust, and dataThe infrastructure, security, and data gaps limiting AI's potential, and how Cisco is closing themWhy skill gaps are growing, and what workers can do to stay relevant as AI changes the workplaceHow Cisco approaches new markets, strategic focus, and building products people love at global scaleResourcesSubscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Jeetu on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How AI helps serve 70 million meals every dayPast guests mentioned on this show:Box´s CTO Ben Kus on Responsible AI Use, Innovation Culture, and Future AI TrendsBox's Global CIO Ravi Malick on Why Every Problem Doesn't Need an AppCisco´s Former CEO on the Future of AI-Driven Work and Investing in PeopleReign

This episode shows how AI magnifies both strengths and gaps in customer experience. Rajat Chawla explains why AI exposes bad CX, how invisible effortless experiences look, and what leaders must do on culture, accountability, and journey design using Taco Bell, KLM, and Starbucks examples. About Rajat Chawla Some highlights about Rajat Chawla: - Asia's first Certified Customer Experience professional. - Founder of Koyopo, a CX and leadership consulting firm.  - Worked with global brands like Google and Cisco. - Over two decades of experience in leadership, consulting, and coaching. - Helping organizations build customer-centric cultures that drive loyalty and growth. - Gallup-certified strengths coach, aligning authentic strengths with CX strategies. Resources  Koyopo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chawlarajat/ Please, hit the follow button and leave your feedback: Apple Podcast: https://www.cxgoalkeeper.com/apple Spotify: https://www.cxgoalkeeper.com/spotify Follow Gregorio Uglioni on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregorio-uglioni/ Gregorio Uglioni is a seasoned transformation leader with over 15 years of experience shaping business and digital change, consistently delivering service excellence and measurable impact. As an Associate Partner at Forward, he is recognized for his strategic vision, operational expertise, and ability to drive sustainable growth. A respected keynote speaker and host of the well-known global podcast Business Transformation Pitch with the CX Goalkeeper, Gregorio energizes and inspires organizations worldwide with his customer-centric approach to innovation

Episode 378 revisits Dr. Shane Creado's science-driven advice on sleep, strategic napping, and why sleep is foundational for health, hormones, immunity, and performance. Learn practical nap protocols (10–20 minutes or 90-minute recovery naps), timing, environment tips, and how to protect your morning from cortisol-spiking habits like checking phones. The episode also shows how combining a short nap with the Silva Method — setting an intention and entering alpha — can boost creativity, insight, and problem-solving. It concludes with actionable routines to improve sleep consistency, support shift workers, and make sleep a strategy for better productivity and well-being. Welcome back to SEASON 14 of The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we connect the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning and emotional intelligence training for improved well-being, achievement, productivity and results—using what I saw as the missing link (since we weren't taught this when we were growing up in school), the application of practical neuroscience. I'm Andrea Samadi, and seven years ago, launched this podcast with a question I had never truly asked myself before: (and that is) If productivity and results matter to us—and they do now more than ever—how exactly are we using our brain to make them happen? Most of us were never taught how to apply neuroscience to improve productivity, results, or well-being. About a decade ago, I became fascinated by the mind-brain-results connection—and how science can be applied to our everyday lives. That's why I've made it my mission to bring you the world's top experts—so together, we can explore the intersection of science and social-emotional learning. We'll break down complex ideas and turn them into practical strategies we can use every day for predictable, science-backed results. This week, in our review of EP 72 with Shane Creado, MD and his book Peak Sleep Performance for Athletes and will learn:  How strategic napping, morning brain habits, and even the Silva Method all work together to reset your brain, boost performance, and transform your health from the inside out. Clip 1: The Science of Strategic Napping In Clip 1, Dr. Shane Creado explains why every cell in the body follows its own circadian rhythm—and why humans were historically wired for polymodal sleep, with natural dips in alertness that make afternoon naps biologically appropriate. You'll learn: Why the “post-lunch crash” is actually a melatonin rise, not just fatigue Why old advice to “avoid naps” is outdated How short, intentional naps can boost alertness, learning, mood, and performance The simple rules behind strategic napping: length, timing, and environment This clip lays the groundwork for using naps as a tool—not a crutch—for better brain function. Clip 2: Your Morning Cortisol Curve & Hidden Sleep Dangers Clip 2 shifts the focus to the first moments of your day. Dr. Creado warns that checking your phone the moment you wake up spikes cortisol and sends your brain into danger mode, increasing anxiety and disrupting emotional regulation for the entire day. You'll also learn: Why shift work fragments DNA Why the WHO classifies shift work as a possible carcinogen How sleep protects your hormones, immune system, gut health, and long-term aging This clip reinforces that sleep is foundational biology, not optional or replaceable. How This All Connects to The Silva Method We close the episode by tying these insights back to our most-listened-to series—the Silva Method. Both Dr. Creado's strategies and Silva's techniques point to the same powerful truth: When we intentionally shift the brain into restorative states—through sleep, strategic napping, or Alpha/Theta training—we unlock higher performance, creativity, intuition, and emotional stability. You'll see how: Strategic naps naturally guide the brain into Alpha and Theta brainwave patterns Morning routines that protect your cortisol curve mimic Silva's “mental housecleaning” Sleep resets the brain in the same way Silva exercises reset focus, clarity, and intuition Both methods teach us to work with the brain, not against it Together, the science of sleep and the mental training of Silva give you a complete framework for building peak performance from the inside out. Episode 378: Featuring Dr. Shane Creado (Integrating the Silva Method[i] for Increased Creativity-Nap Integration) For today's Episode 378, we continue with our review of past episodes as we make connections to prior learning with whatever it is that we are currently working on this year. I'll create a roadmap at the end of this season so this pathway will make sense to us (I hope!) as we piece together important parts of our success puzzle and begin to bring them to life. As we review these episodes, you'll notice that around the time of the pandemic, around 2020, our interviews took a turn towards health and wellness, and to stay on track, I created a framework of our Top 5 Health Staples on Episode 87[ii], which eventually evolved into our Top 6 Health Staples when we added stress reduction to help us to boost our physical and mental health. This week, we're going back to one of my favorite interviews with the inspiring Dr. Shane Creado, who we first met on EP 72[iii] in July 2020 on the topic of “Sleep Strategies that Will Guarantee a Competitive Advantage.” Dr. Creado is a double board-certified sleep medicine doctor and psychiatrist who practices functional sleep medicine, integrative psychiatry, and sports psychiatry. He brings all of these specialties together to uncover the underlying factors that sabotage our sleep and then treats them comprehensively, helping people to achieve their health and performance goals with sleep at the forefront. To quickly review his background: Dr. Creado completed an undergraduate degree in physical therapy, went on to earn his MD, and then completed a fellowship in Sleep Medicine at the University of Wisconsin, recognizing the huge overlap between sleep and psychiatric issues. He believes in optimization, not normalization, and devotes his work to optimizing brain health in professional athletes, executives, and anyone interested in peak performance. We did a deep dive into his book Peak Sleep Performance for Athletes: The Cutting-Edge Sleep Science That Will Guarantee a Competitive Advantage on EP 71[iv] so that, when he came on EP 72, we could maximize our time together, by asking the most practical questions to help all of us move the needle with our sleep. How did I come across Dr. Creado? I first heard him on Dr. Daniel Amen's Brain Warrior's Way Podcast, since he worked closely with Dr. Amen at that time. At that point I was just beginning to learn how to track and improve my own sleep. This conversation with him actually happened about a year before our interview with Dr. Kristin Holmes,[v] VP of Performance Science at WHOOP, and before I began officially measuring my sleep data with a wearable device. A few months after this interview, Dr. Creado reviewed my brain scan results from Dr. Amen's Clinics and told me that my brain showed the same pattern as someone who was sleep deprived (which we shared on EP 84[vi]). That feedback sent me searching for what else I could do to improve this crucial health staple: sleep. This episode opened the door for me to meet many other leaders in health and wellness and ultimately led to our deep dive into the six health staples that are scientifically proven to improve our mental and physical well-being. This was all years before our popular series on The Silva Method[vii] (still our most-listened-to series on this podcast), where we covered how to improve our creativity and innovation with sleep, and also before our review of The Fisher Wallace Brain Stimulator[viii] that held the top spot for years (with the topic of improving sleep). But it all really began with conversations like this one—with Dr. Shane Creado—on achieving peak performance with our sleep. So let's go back to March 2020 and revisit what Dr. Creado had to say about sleep.   VIDEO 1 – Click Here to Watch Dr. Creado reminds us that every cell in our body has its own circadian rhythm. When we understand this, it becomes clear what we need to do to support healthy sleep. He explains that historically, human sleep has been polymodal—people would sleep a few hours early in the night, wake for a bit, then sleep again in the early morning, and often nap in the afternoon. This pattern lines up with how melatonin behaves in the body: it rises at night, dips, and then shows a slight rise again in the afternoon. So when you feel sleepy after lunch, it's not just the food—it's your melatonin rising and your brain asking for a recharge. Key Takeaways from Dr. Shane Creado Dr. Creado challenges older sleep-hygiene advice that says to avoid naps altogether. In his words, that's “pretty much wrong.” Naps can be incredibly helpful—as long as you're strategic about them: Know how long you're going to nap Be deliberate about when and where you do it These are the keys to strategic napping, which we'll explore more as we revisit this powerful conversation. But first, let's put strategic napping into action. Put These Tips into Action 1. Keep Your Nap Between 10–20 Minutes (Power Nap) Short naps prevent you from dropping into deep sleep. This helps you wake up refreshed—not groggy—and boosts alertness, memory, and mood. 2. Use the 90-Minute Cycle Only When Needed A full 90-minute nap allows you to complete an entire sleep cycle. Use this only if you're: recovering from sleep debt jet-lagged coming off a night of fragmented sleep Avoid these longer naps late in the day. 3. Nap Before 3:00 PM Align your nap with the natural melatonin rise that occurs in the early afternoon. This prevents nighttime sleep disruption and supports your circadian rhythm. 4. Create a Consistent Nap Environment Set up conditions that your brain recognizes as “rest time”: dark or dim lighting comfortable temperature (lower temperatures are recommended) quiet or white noise reclining or lying down if possible Consistency trains the brain to drop into restorative rest efficiently. 5. Use a Caffeine Nap (If It Works for You) Drink a small amount of caffeine (like green tea or half a cup of coffee) immediately before a 10–20 minute nap. The caffeine kicks in right as you wake, giving you a double boost. 6. Set an Alarm Helps you avoid drifting into deep sleep and waking up groggy. This trains your brain to trust short naps and prevents oversleeping. 7. Observe Your Afternoon Melatonin Dip If you feel naturally sleepy between 1:00–3:00 PM, this is your biological nap window. Don't fight it—leverage it (if you can). 8. Don't Nap to Escape Stress Use napping as a performance tool, not an emotional coping mechanism. If you're lying down to escape anxiety, use breathwork or a 5-minute mindfulness break instead. 9. Track Your Sleep Response Everyone's nap sensitivity is unique. Track how naps affect your: nighttime sleep alertness mood work performance training or athletic performance If you want to dive deep, measure it: WHOOP, Oura, or any wearable can help determine your best nap duration and timing. 10. Combine Naps With Movement A short walk before or after a nap enhances the circadian benefit and clears residual grogginess. PUTTING THESE TIPS INTO ACTION: By now, we've all heard that napping is not a sign of laziness—it's a strategic tool for combating the sleep epidemic we're facing. Sleep deprivation can impair the brain as much as being under the influence, which is why even short, well-timed naps can play a powerful role in restoring our cognitive performance, mood, and overall health. I had to look to see what Matthew Walker[ix] (also known as the Sleep Diplomat) had to say about napping, compared to Dr. Creado's view, since I was studying both at the same time. If you look at this chart I've added in the show notes, you can see that Dr. Creado's philosophy helps you to nap for performance; (which makes sense to me since Dr. Creado advises athletes) and Matthew Walker helps you to nap without harming your nighttime sleep. His advice also made sense to me as he advises the general population, and the statistics don't lie. Most of us are sleep deprived. Both sleep experts believe in the power of taking naps, and they both lean towards napping for less than 20 minutes for power napping that avoids grogginess. While not all work environments are built to support this research, that surrounds napping before 3pm, there are companies that are embracing this research, you can Nap on the Job at These 10 Companies[x] Google PricewaterhouseCoopers Ben & Jerry's Cisco Potato Zappos Nike Uber White & Case Thrive Global If you like this option, you're in good company. Many organizations are already embracing future-focused workspaces with this research in mind. Arianna Huffington, now the founder of Thrive Global, has been one of the loudest voices calling attention to the sleep-deprivation crisis. She wrote the best-selling book The Sleep Revolution[xi] to highlight the science behind sleep and why our culture must change. Huffington points to research showing that naps boost the immune system, lower blood pressure, increase learning capacity, improve memory, and enhance our ability to perform complex tasks (Yahoo Finance). Companies adopting nap rooms and rest pods aren't being trendy—they're aligning their workplaces with well-established neuroscience and physiology. And this brings us full circle, because Dr. Shane Creado was emphasizing these same science-backed principles long before workplace culture caught up, showing us exactly how sleep—and even strategic napping—can become a powerful tool for peak performance. And here's where today's episode takes a powerful turn. We are going back to our MOST downloaded Series, The Silva Method, to now implement this method into Dr. Creado's tip for napping, to increase our creativity, innovation and productivity. The Silva Method & The 20-Minute Nap Where Creativity, Insight & Neuroscience Meet** Now that we know what to do from Dr. Creado's research—use short, strategic naps to support performance—the next step is to take this deeper and connect it to the most transformative tool that we've covered in our 7 years of hosting this podcast: The Silva Method. This is where the magic happens, as theory meets practice. What José Silva taught decades ago about guiding the brain into the Alpha state (a mental state of calm wakefulness, that is distinct from the high-frequency beta waves of a busy, alert mind) aligns perfectly with what neuroscience shows happens in a 20-minute nap. And it also explains why so many innovators—Einstein, Edison, Dalí, Tesla, Da Vinci—used structured micro-naps or “drifting states” to solve complex problems. They weren't just resting. They were deliberately entering the insight zone. Edison used metal balls to wake himself the moment he crossed into Theta (the brain state of deep relaxation that's a gateway to creativity, inspiration and new ideas). Dalí held a key over a plate for the same purpose. Einstein was known for multiple micro-naps throughout the day. Da Vinci mapped polyphasic sleep schedules to stay in that creative borderland between wake and sleep. They had discovered what both neuroscience and the Silva Method confirm: The moments between wakefulness and sleep—Alpha and early Theta—are the brain's most fertile ground for new ideas. **If you have not yet listened to the 4 PART SERIES on The Silva Method[xii], I highly encourage it as we do go into detail on HOW to start this practice, and learn how to train your brain to accomplish outstanding results that truly will shock you. How This Works? The Silva Method adds conscious intention. Before entering the Alpha, State you plant a question, problem, or intention—something that you want to solve, or learn more about. Then during the nap-like drift, the brain naturally reorganizes information, makes connections, and surfaces insights. When you return to Beta (full wakefulness), those insights often rise effortlessly. I've been doing this practice for 26+ years now, and I can tell you that it takes practice. In the beginning, I didn't have control of what was showing up on the screen of my mind during these short naps, and I had a difficult time understanding what certain things (or insight that were flashing on the screen of my mind) really meant. This will take practice, but it's well worth the time spent. A 20-minute nap and The Silva Method are using the same brain states—one intentionally, one biologically. Combined, they become a powerful creativity tool. Why This Works (Neuroscience + Silva) ✔ The brain enters Alpha/Theta — insight frequencies ✔ Cortisol drops — freeing cognitive resources ✔ The Default Mode Network activates — your “creative network” ✔ The nap resets your mental clarity ✔ The Silva Method gives the mind a specific task (whatever it is you are looking to solve). Together, they create a simple, natural protocol for breakthrough thinking. How To Use The Silva Method with a 20-Minute Nap to Improve Creativity? Here's a simple protocol that we can all use: Set an intention “Show me a solution for ___.” “Give me a creative idea for ___.” Enter Alpha (Silva Method) Use the 3–2–1 countdown or your preferred Silva relaxation method. Drift for 15–20 minutes You don't need full sleep—just hover between wake and sleep. Wake & Write Capture any images, ideas, feelings, or impressions immediately. This is truly one of the fastest ways to reset the brain, boost creativity, and spark intuition—because it aligns neuroscience with intention. The insights that you discover here are life-changing. Start writing down the ideas you “see” and “feel” and you will begin to find solutions to problems or ways forward in your daily life. VIDEO 2 Click Here to Watch Which brings us to our 2nd clip from Dr. Creado who reminds us about an important habit (that I have yet to master). Dr. Creado explains the deeper biological consequences of poor sleep with a powerful reminder: “If you immediately go to social media or your work emails as soon as you wake up, your cortisol levels are boosted even more. You go straight into danger mode and anxiety mode, and that's how you start your day.” He goes on to give an example many people don't realize the seriousness of: “Shift work actually causes fragmentation and breaks in your DNA. It sets people up for an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. The World Health Organization has even designated shift work as a possible carcinogen—a cancer-causing behavior.” Most people think a few hours of lost sleep just makes them groggy or irritable, but as Dr. Creado explains, the consequences go much deeper: “This goes down to your very DNA. Sleep is your anchor. It can stave off aging. It can prevent obesity and inflammation. It can boost your immune system. It can delay menopause. It can upregulate testosterone and growth hormone levels, suppress stress hormones, and even regulate your gut flora.” This section reinforces the core theme of your episode: sleep is foundational biology—not a luxury—and optimizing it has ripple effects across every major system of the body. Key Takeaways from Dr. Shane Creado's 2nd Clip Avoid social media and emails immediately upon waking. They spike cortisol and activate “danger mode,” increasing anxiety from the moment your day begins. Shift work is biologically damaging. It fragments DNA, increases risk of heart attacks and strokes, and is recognized by the WHO as a possible carcinogen. Sleep is not optional—it's your biological anchor. It stabilizes your entire internal system, including mood, hormones, metabolism, and immunity. Poor sleep accelerates aging. Adequate sleep can slow (and even reverse) biological wear, protecting long-term health. Sleep regulates critical hormones. It boosts testosterone and growth hormone while reducing stress hormones like cortisol. Your gut depends on your sleep. Quality sleep helps maintain healthy gut flora, which influences everything from mood to inflammation to immunity. Put These Tips Into Action Here are simple, science-backed steps you can start today to optimize your sleep: 1. Protect the First 30 Minutes of Your Morning No social media No emails No news Use this time for grounding: hydration, sunlight, breathwork, or light movement. Dr. Creado is far from the only expert emphasizing this point—best-selling author Brendon Burchard includes it as one of his core High Performance Habits, reminding us that how we start our morning sets the tone for our entire day. 2. If You're a Shift Worker, Control What You Can Keep a consistent sleep–wake schedule when possible Use blackout curtains and cool temperatures Nap strategically to offset circadian disruption Prioritize sleep hygiene even more than daytime workers (This population is often overlooked. It came up with Dr. Creado, as well as with our interview with Kelly Roman how many people with shift work should be given extra support). 3. Build a Nighttime Routine That Signals “Safety” to the Brain Dim lights 60–90 minutes before bed Reduce screens Use calming cues: stretching, reading, warm shower, or meditation Keep a consistent bedtime 4. Use Strategic Napping to Lower Stress Hormones 10–20 minutes in the early afternoon Set an alarm to avoid deep-sleep grogginess A “caffeine nap” can boost alertness if well-tolerated 5. Strengthen Your Hormone Health Through Sleep Consistency Aim for 5–8.5 hours per night Regular sleep schedules support testosterone, growth hormone, and metabolic stability 6. Support Your Gut Through Rest Quality sleep = more balanced gut flora Try to eat your final meal 2–3 hours before bed Avoid heavy meals late at night 7. View Sleep as the Foundation for Everything Else Instead of seeing sleep as something to “fit in,” shift your mindset: Sleep is the strategy that makes all your other strategies work better. REVIEW AND CONCLUSION — Episode 378 PART 1 of our REVIEW with Dr. Shane Creado Key Insights From Video 1: Your Biology Wants You to Nap Dr. Creado reminded us that every cell in the body runs on its own circadian rhythm, and historically, humans slept in multiple phases—including early afternoon naps aligned with our melatonin's natural rise. He challenged outdated sleep-hygiene rules that discouraged napping and instead showed us how strategic naps—short, intentional, and well-timed—can restore energy and boost performance. We covered practical strategies for making napping work in real life, from 10–20 minute power naps to full 90-minute cycles when recovery is needed, emphasizing timing, environment, and consistency. Napping for Performance vs. Protecting Nighttime Sleep To deepen this topic, we compared Dr. Creado's approach with Matthew Walker's. Both agree that short naps (under 20 minutes) offer the best everyday benefits, though their philosophies differ: Creado teaches you to nap for performance, especially for athletes and high performers. Matthew Walker teaches you to nap without disrupting nighttime sleep, focusing on the general population. And while not all workplaces support napping, many leading companies now do—Google, Cisco, Zappos, Nike, Uber, PwC, and more—reflecting research championed by leaders like Arianna Huffington, who has long warned that sleep deprivation is a cultural crisis. Naps, she notes, improve immunity, blood pressure, learning, memory, and performance. Organizations adopting nap rooms aren't following a trend—they're following neuroscience. Key Insights From Video 2: Protect Your Morning Brain In our second clip, Dr. Creado warns about a habit many of us (including myself) struggle with: checking the phone immediately upon waking. This single behavior spikes cortisol and sends the brain into “danger mode,” setting the tone for an anxious, reactive day. He also described the biological risks of shift work—including DNA fragmentation and increased risk of heart attack and stroke—conditions serious enough that the WHO classifies shift work as a possible carcinogen. His message was clear: Sleep is your anchor. It affects aging, inflammation, immunity, hormone balance, and even gut health. Dr. Creado reminded us that sleep isn't a luxury—it's foundational biology. When we optimize sleep, we improve every system in the body: our hormones, immunity, focus, mood, and even our longevity. And when we take what he taught and combine it with the intentional practice of The Silva Method, we unlock something even more powerful. A simple 20-minute nap becomes more than rest—it becomes a doorway into the Alpha state where creativity, insight, and intuition live. This is why so many innovators throughout history used micro-naps to solve problems. The Silva Method simply adds conscious intention. And when we pair intention with the brain's natural rhythms, we create one of the most reliable pathways for breakthroughs. And watch how your best most innovative and creative ideas begin to rise to the surface.   With that thought, we will close out this episode, and we will see you next week, with PART 2 of our interview review with Dr. Creado. We have only scratched the surface of our review of this important health staple of sleep. See you next week.   REFERENCES: [i] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #261 PART 1 of Apply the Silva Method for Improved Intuition, Creativity and Focus. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/a-deep-dive-with-andrea-samadi-into-applying-the-silva-method-for-improved-intuition-creativity-and-focus-part-1/   [ii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #87 with Andrea Samadi on “The Top 5 Brain Health and Alzheimer's Prevention Strategies” https://www.achieveit360.com/the-top-5-brain-health-and-alzheimers-prevention-strategies-with-andrea-samadi/   [iii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #72 with Dr. Shane Creado on “Sleep Strategies that will Guarantee a Competitive Advantage.”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/dr-shane-creado-on-sleep-strategies-that-will-guarantee-a-competitive-advantage/   [iv] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #71 with Dr. Shane Creado on “A Deep Dive into Dr. Creado's Peak Sleep Performance for Athletes”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/self-regulation-and-sleep-with-a-deep-dive-into-dr-shane-creados-peak-sleep-performance-for-athletes/   [v] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE 134 with Dr. Kristin Holmes, VP of Performance Science from Whoop.com https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/kristen-holmes-from-whoopcom-on-unlocking-a-better-you-measuring-sleep-recovery-and-strain/   [vi] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE 84 “Andrea's SPECT Image Brain Scan Results”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/how-a-spect-scan-can-change-your-life-part-3-with-andrea-samadi/   [vii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #261 PART 1 of Apply the Silva Method for Improved Intuition, Creativity and Focus. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/a-deep-dive-with-andrea-samadi-into-applying-the-silva-method-for-improved-intuition-creativity-and-focus-part-1/   [viii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE 120 “Andrea's Personal Review of The Fisher Wallace Wearable Medical Device for Anxiety, Depression and Sleep/Stress Management” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/personal-review-of-the-fisher-wallace-wearable-medical-device-for-anxiety-depression-and-sleepstress-management/   [ix] https://www.sleepdiplomat.com/   [x] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nap-job-10-companies-100300632.html   [xi] https://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Revolution-Transforming-Your-Night/dp/110190402X The Sleep Revolution, Published by Arianna Huffington April 4, 2017 [xii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #261 PART 1 of Apply the Silva Method for Improved Intuition, Creativity and Focus. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/a-deep-dive-with-andrea-samadi-into-applying-the-silva-method-for-improved-intuition-creativity-and-focus-part-1/  

Catch Up - Cisco by Talented Slackers

Google and CrowdStrike point to Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters attacks, IBM and Cisco to collaborate on long distance quantum computers, Australia adds Twitch to social media ban for users under 16. MP3 Please SUBSCRIBE HERE for free or get DTNS Live ad-free. A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.Continue reading "Researchers Say Russia-Aligned Pravda Network Is “LLM Grooming”"

Google phone users can now work with Airdrop on the iPhone cause Google cleverly found a way. Google might have jumped ahead in the AI race and Sam Altman knows it. I've heard of quantum computing, but a quantum internet? The Weekend Longreads suggestions, and at the end, a long rant about my latest AI experiments. Google cracked Apple's AirDrop and is adding it to Pixel phones (The Verge) Altman Memo Forecasts ‘Rough Vibes' Due to Resurgent Google (The Information) Source: Kalshi's valuation jumps to $11B after raising massive $1B round (TechCrunch) Americans' Social Media Use 2025 (Pew Research Center) IBM, Cisco outline plans for networks of quantum computers by early 2030s (Reuters) IBM, Cisco to collaborate on ‘internet' of quantum computers (Silicon Republic) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: Google's new AI image creator took my shirt off (The Verge) Google's Nano Banana Pro generates excellent conspiracy fuel (The Verge) The new silicon valley (literally) (The Verge) How America's Hottest Chicken Chain Keeps Its Secret Sauce a Secret (WSJ) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today Scott interviews Andy Lapteff. He opens up about his non-linear career path, starting from a working class background and his physical jobs in telecom to becoming a senior product marketing manager and podcaster. Join us as Andy shares candid stories of how he developed his resilience and the heartwarming origin story for the Art... Read more »

Today Scott interviews Andy Lapteff. He opens up about his non-linear career path, starting from a working class background and his physical jobs in telecom to becoming a senior product marketing manager and podcaster. Join us as Andy shares candid stories of how he developed his resilience and the heartwarming origin story for the Art... Read more »

Jeff Edwards is a strategic sales leader in the tech industry who loves to inspire people, teams and organizations to step into the fullest version of themselves. In his role as Director of Partner Sales at Cisco, Jeff drives growth and value creation for Cisco's Tier One Service Provider business in the Americas, managing a $2B business in global tech sales. He is a disruptive leader who challenges the status quo to solve hard problems and propel groundbreaking success. This led Jeff to start Shift Happens, an internal podcast at Cisco for people who want to lead at the edge of change. Through real conversations with the architects behind Cisco's biggest transformations, Jeff unpacks the mindset, strategies, and stories that help leaders stay ahead, speak with confidence, and turn every shift into momentum. In this episode of The Next Level, we discuss:  Jon and Jeff's backgrounds and how they each got to this point in their life and careers Jeff's current role at Cisco and how his conversations about leadership, change, and growth evolved into the “Shift Happens” podcast Why change is so hard and the reasons why each person approaches change differently Strategies for embracing change and viewing it as an opportunity How to lean into vulnerability and humility as a leader The Next Level Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music. 

Success in professional services isn't about doing more—it's about doing less, but doing it exceptionally well. In this episode of The IC-DISC Show, I sit down with Raffi Yousefian, CEO of The Fork CPAs, to talk about how extreme specialization transformed his accounting firm from a general practice into the leading restaurant and bar controllership service in the country. Raffi shares the counterintuitive journey of deliberately shrinking his client base to accelerate growth, ultimately tripling revenue within 18 months of selling off 30% of his practice. We explore how Raffi evolved from serving three industries to exclusively focusing on restaurants and bars, and why weekly financial reporting creates competitive advantages that monthly statements simply can't provide. He breaks down the economics of restaurant operations, explaining why 2% savings in food costs can represent an entire profit margin when you're working with businesses that operate on 5-7% net profits. The conversation reveals how subscription pricing combined with deep industry expertise solves the profession's labor shortage by making firms more profitable and attractive to talent. What strikes me most is how Raffi's specialization philosophy mirrors successful models in other industries, from medical concierge services to dating apps. If you've ever wondered whether narrowing your focus could actually expand your opportunities, this conversation provides a compelling roadmap.   SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Raffi sold off 30% of his accounting practice to focus solely on restaurants and bars, then tripled the remaining 70% within just 18 months. Weekly financial reporting in restaurants isn't a luxury—it's survival, since a 2% swing in food costs can represent your entire profit margin. The Fork CPAs moved from "insecure niching" with three industries to hyper-specialization, proving that doing less actually accelerates growth when done with expertise. Restaurant operators typically process 300-400 invoices monthly for a $3-4 million location, making specialized systems and processes non-negotiable for profitability. Subscription pricing in accounting solves the labor shortage by making firms more profitable, allowing them to pay better and attract talent to the profession. Specialization creates resonance with ideal clients who say "you sound like my soulmate" rather than casting a wide net and hoping something sticks.   Contact Details LinkedIn - Raffi Yousefian (https://www.linkedin.com/in/raffiyousefian/) LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About The Fork CPAs Raffi YousefianAbout Raffi TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dave: Good morning, Raffi How are you today? Raffi:: Good morning, David. I'm doing well. And yourself? Dave: I am doing great. I appreciate you coming on the podcast. Just a formal introduction, you are Raffi Yousefian, and you're the CEO of the Fork CPAs. Is that correct? Raffi:: That's correct. And I appreciate you having me. I'm excited to have a conversation with a like-minded individual in the accounting industry. Dave: Yes. I've been looking forward to this for some time. So what part of the world are you calling into from today? Raffi:: I am in Brooklyn, New York City. Dave: Okay. Raffi:: Specifically Williamsburg Greenpoint, which is meant to be the hipster capital of the world in case you're interested. Dave: Yeah, I have heard that name. For that reason, I don't think I've ever been there. I haven't been to New York in about 15 years, and I think I rarely have ever been anywhere but Manhattan. So I'll have to be sure to check that out the next time I'm in town. Raffi:: We would love to have you. We're right across the East River. Dave: Okay, Raffi:: Great. Great nightlife scene, great food scene. A lot of sighting. New concepts are popping up every day, bars, restaurants, so it's a great place to be. Dave: That sounds awesome. Well, first of all, let's get to the name. What the heck does The Fork CPA's name mean? Usually the CPA firm is named after the founder or the partners. So what's the fork? What's the meaning of the fork? Was one of your partners named Fork or talk? Raffi:: No. So the fork, I have a 15 slide presentation on it. Maybe I can walk you through it one day. But the fork represents a tool that is highly agile with very sharp and fine edges, and it also relates to the restaurant industry and represents us and our values as a firm. So that's where the four comes from. That's the, in a nutshell description. And then the CPAs, you add that to clarify that we're doing accounting and tax, so that's where work branding comes from. Actually, we launched the brand in 2022, so it hasn't always been our name. Dave: Okay. Well, I really like it. So are you a New York native? Raffi:: I'm not. I'm actually from dc so lived in DC for about 10 years. That's where I started the firm, and I moved up to New York in 2021. Dave: And you went to college in Maryland? Raffi:: Yes, university of Maryland College Park. Dave: Okay. And then you graduated and you went the big four route with ENY? Raffi:: That's right. I worked at ENY for about three and a half years, and then moved to a smaller firm for about a year and a half, two years after that. And this was in 2016 when I launched the firm that I currently have right now. Dave: And you just started it from scratch? Raffi:: So initially the firm was called ROYCA LLC, and I just used my initials with CPA at the end just to get started. Okay. I started it from scratch. At the time I had the potential opportunity to acquire a restaurant bookkeeping business, and that is really what initiated me or catapulted me to taking that leap from moving from a W2 job to starting my own business. The acquisition actually never ended up panning out to be anything. It ended up being more of like a referral relationship. So it was good in that it incentivized me and motivated me to actually take the leap. But as we started from scratch, didn't end up buying any book of business or anything like that and just grew from there January 1st, 2016. Dave: And is that how the restaurant and bar capability started, was from that referral relationship with that bookkeeping firm then? Raffi:: Yes. Well, the referral relationship was a result of me taking over my brother-in-law's finances, and he had a restaurant and catering business. Dave: Oh, I Raffi:: See. And so his accountant was ending their relationship because he was moving on to be the CFO of a big fast growth restaurant group. And so I asked to meet with him. I said, can I meet with the former accountant? Maybe he has a book of business that he wants to sell or get rid of. That's not where the interest in restaurants started, but that definitely had an impact on moving towards that restaurant niche at some point. My first real client was a restaurant business. Dave: Okay. Raffi:: Yeah, Dave: That is great. You've got your CPA firm, it's growing. And then at a point you realized you had a concentration in the restaurant bar business. Now, conventional wisdom says when you have a concentration like that, whether it's client industry, you need to fix it by diversifying, but you decided to go in a different direction, right? Tell me the story. Raffi:: Yeah, so initially the purpose of the firm was to provide an alternative and frictionless experience to traditional public accounting. And this was 2016 when web-based apps were all very new, and even the cloud firms were very server-based. You log into this server and it wasn't very web-based, so even cloud modern firms were still very clunky, and the client experience was terrible. So the idea was, okay, replicate the public accounting model just in a more modern and frictionless way. And so we were still providing a lot of the traditional services you get in a small public accounting firm, 10 forties, monthly bookkeeping, annual bookkeeping, industry agnostic, and one of the first moves. So that was, people love that, right? It was new cutting edge, modern virtual CPA firm. And then I think by year two, we decided we had to narrow down what we were doing. Raffi:: Again, we were trying to be everything to everyone just in a more modern way. And so I think the first change we made was limit our service offering to monthly services only. So value-based billing, fixed fee. It was a mix of value-based billing and fixed fee at the time. So we basically told all of our annual clients, mostly 10 40 clients, sorry, if you want to work with us, you have to have a business, and we have to own the entire accounting process from monthly all the way through your business tax preparation. So that was the first change we made. We didn't specialize just yet. Dave: And what year was this? 2017. Raffi:: I think this was around 2017 or 20 17, 20 18 then. So that worked really well. That allowed us to scale and grow much faster. Now everybody's on a monthly fixed retainer. You're not doing all this work during tax season, those three months trying to do 12 months of books. So there's no bottlenecks during tax season. For the most part, 10 forties are still very much a bottleneck. And in 20 19, 20 20, we decided to narrow down even further and say, okay, we're going to service three industries. And I like to say this is the insecure way of niching down. And so we narrowed it down to, I believe it was restaurants and bars for sure. Nonprofits and professional Dave: Services. Raffi:: And so that helped again, even better. Now we can scale and grow even faster with more efficiency. And then 2022, we were at a point where the restaurant and bar industry vertical was growing much double, triple what our other verticals were growing. And I believe it was just a natural result of our passion was behind that vertical, the professional services and nonprofits, great clients, low volume, easy to work with, very professional. But yeah, just stagnated the growth that stagnated. I wasn't as much interested in those verticals as I was in restaurants. And so we decided to launch the for brand in 2022 and in 2023. So in 2023, the restaurant practice was about 60 to 70% of our revenue. And so we spun off the 30%, which was nonprofits and professional services, and merged it slash sold it to another firm. And since 2023, March of 2023, we've been solely fork CPAs, Eileen niched down into restaurants and bars under the fork CPAs brand. Dave: Okay. I love the story. And then I believe, did Brandon Poe help you sell that practice? Raffi:: Yes, exactly. I think this was probably the first spinoff maybe that they did spinning off a niche and selling it to another firm, and then continuing as a, so it was new to them. And we actually did a podcast about this with Brandon. And yeah, I think it was, like you said, it sounds counter intuitive to specialize versus diversify, but to provide some context, that 70% between March of 2023 and end of 2024, I think it grew like 250, 300% our revenue. So we were basically triple the size that we were when we did the spinoff. Dave: So I have to put some numbers on this. So let's pretend the firm did a thousand dollars a year of revenue. So $700 of it was restaurants and bars. You sold off the $300 practice and then using that multiple, the firm today now is doing 200 or $300. Raffi:: Well, not today, within a year and a half, within a year and a Dave: Half, Raffi:: Within a year and a half, it was at like 2000. So you were at 1000? We were like 2100. So that 700 became 2100. Dave: Wow. Raffi:: And I think a big part of it had to do with, I actually retained my staff that was part of the nonprofit and professional services vertical. So that was about four people. And so that also helped because you need staff to grow into. Dave: And Raffi:: It did hurt our valuation because a lot of the times when firms are acquiring, they want to acquire the staff, one of the biggest problems when, Dave: Yeah, they're just buying the clients basically. Raffi:: So we took a hit on the valuation, but if we hadn't retained our staff, they wouldn't have been as easy and efficient to scale and grow within that year and a half. Dave: So why is it, so it appears based on what you're saying, that there was a underserved market in New York restaurants and bars. That's the only conclusion I can really come to have that kind of a growth implies that the market was not being well served. Is that assumption accurate or was there something else in play? Raffi:: So we definitely have competitors, but I would say underserved in a sense that the level of service and quality is just not there. It's a highly commoditized service offering restaurant bookkeeping. And so our value proposition is not just restaurant bookkeeping, it's restaurant controllership. Raffi:: So for the same price as a bookkeeping service, maybe a little bit more of a premium, 20%, 15, 20%, you can get a more comprehensive service offering under a subscription model to a controller. And the controller owns your entire accounting process. And in addition to that, we also have a tax department that will take care of the tax compliance at year end and quarterly. So I don't think we have any actual competitors that do exactly what we do. However, we have at least 40 to 50 competitors nationally. So it is underserved in that sense, but it's not something super unique or cutting edge that we're doing. It's just a different approach, a different way of doing it. Dave: And your client's all in the New York area? Raffi:: No, it's all, it's nationally. Mostly East coast. Yeah, mostly dc, Maryland, Virginia, New York City, metropolitan areas, urban areas, but it's pretty much all over the country. We can serve clients nationally. Dave: Now, when you pick up a new client, what percentage of the time is it a brand new restaurant and what percentage of the time are you taking over from another provider? Is it mostly taking over from another provider? Raffi:: I would say it's about 70% taking over. It depends. For example, we might have a restaurant group that has 10 locations and now let's say 10 franchises, and they're forming a new group and they're starting from scratch with a new concept. So there's some of that. I see most of them are fast growth. So they have the goal of, Hey, we just opened our first location and we want to be at five locations in three years. That's where a solution like ours really provides maximum value because we can help you get from zero to five in as fast as you want because you're not sitting there concerned about hiring accountants and building an accounting department. And so we take care of the back office for you through that growth stage. Dave: And what percentage of your clients are franchisees? Raffi:: It's not a large percentage. It's mostly independent operators, probably five to 10%. We have competitors that focus solely on talk about hyper specialization. They do restaurant bookkeeping for McDonald's franchises, but it gets pretty specific. And that's not necessarily our target market. Our target market is more independent operators, smaller franchise groups, 15 to 20 units, but we're not like a volume commodity shop. Dave: So I can relate to your business in so many ways, and it's why when I heard you on Brandon's podcast, I just was dying to talk to you. So as I think I told you, so all we do is icy disc work, and we're the only firm I know of that does nothing but icy disc work. We manage more than anyone else. So all we do, we live, eat and breathe it. But within that space, our largest sector by far is the scrap metal business. And what's interesting, and I hear this all the time from our clients, is that I'm the only advisor they've ever had who understands the scrap metal business, that when they have a banker that they're interviewing new banks or a new CPA, it's always the same thing. They come out and they're like, wow, I thought this was going to be Sanford and Son's junkyard. This is a whole different business. And they get so frustrating. And I've frustrated, and some of 'em have asked me to find CPAs, find them a new CPA, and one of the first things they want is somebody with scrap metal experience because it's so frustrating for them having to, every year there's a new staff person and every year they have to explain all over again how the whole business works. I'm guessing it's similar in the restaurant business. Is that right? And kind of dive into how your expertise manifests itself when you're talking with an Raffi:: Potential Dave: Client? Raffi:: Yeah, absolutely. Having an accountant in the entire spectrum of accounting services, whether that's your tax preparer, your controller, your bookkeeper, your CFO, having that industry specialization is completely invaluable. And I think the, in any industry, restaurants aside, the consumer is starting to realize that and the level of insight you can provide as a specialist and the value you can add is way beyond what a generalist can do. And sometimes people will hire generalists because of a referral or a trust that they have with this person. And I think that's really the only time where there's any justification in hiring a generalist, to be honest with you. But even that, it's okay, well, sure, this might be your dad's accountant or your family friend accountant that everybody trusts, but is that really providing any value? If you can't trust your service provider, then what's the point? Raffi:: So yeah, the level of value you can provide, and just to give you some examples, if you have three locations as a restaurant and you want to add another location, you should be able to go to your accountant and say, here is what the landlord is asking for rent. Here's what I'm expecting to do in sales. Is this a good investment? And the accountant, if they're specialized, they should be able to tell you very quickly just by reviewing your projections, your performa and saying, yes, this is an investment that we're not investment advisors, but if your projections actually pan out to be what they say, then yes, we want your occupancy cost to be 8% of sales, and you're showing that in your projection. So yeah, if this spot that you've identified can actually generate that type of sales and your prime costs are going to be this much, your bottom line is potentially going to be this, then your ROI will be X. And therefore, yeah, it's a good investment. Now, a generalist might be able to do that by doing some research, Raffi:: But that example can be applied to so many different things. When we sit down and analyze p and ls as a controller, we need to be able to look at trends and identify, wait, why do we lose money this month? Very quickly, right on a call, oh, it's because your labor was 35% and it's usually 32%. And in restaurants, it's typically 32, 33 is the ideal number. Just being able to throw out numbers off the top of your head and being well-trained in a specific vertical, it just provides so much value. And we talk about in the accounting industry about how we have to become advisors. This is like AI is going to take over all the compliance overseas hiring and all the bookkeeping is going to be automated. And so now we have to become more advisors and just data entry people and compliance providers. And the only way you can really do that, in my opinion, if you want to be a true advisor, is to niche down and specialize. Otherwise, how much value can you really add as a generalist? Dave: Sure. Well, and I was just thinking, I would imagine having come up through the accounting side, I couldn't imagine a worst controller or bookkeeper job than being the bookkeeper or controller for a restaurant. I can just picture it. There's some a closet basically that's your office, and especially if it's in the facility itself and it's not noisy and there's just all this stuff going on, and if it's a bar, all the actions in the evening, and I just couldn't imagine a worst working environment or work environment than that. So it makes even more sense to just have that outsource. And I'm also guessing my clients, probably 20% of the owners of my clients actually have an accounting background just for whatever reason, that was how they ended up there. But I'm guessing that's perhaps even lower in the restaurant business. I just imagine the average restaurateur bar owner is not a former ENY tax person. Raffi:: Right. So it's funny you bring up the bookkeeping role in a restaurant closet that they put the bookkeeper in traditionally speaking with all the stacks of invoices. So just to provide some context, a restaurant that does three to $4 million in revenue will have anywhere from three to 400 invoices minimum per month. Dave: Are you serious? Raffi:: Yeah. They need to get inputted into the accounting system to get true accrual basis accounting. Dave: Wow. I thought you just bought everything from Cisco and payroll and called it a Raffi:: Day. Well, the franchisees, yeah, the franchisees are all different. They work with a Cisco or usb, and then they have less invoices, but still very high volume. So the role of the bookkeeper 10, 15 years ago was show up to the restaurant, get all these invoices and put them into QuickBooks. And if you're not a specialist, even if you're following the traditional model from 15 years ago, there's no way to make money doing this type of work, especially when restaurants are super low margin. They don't have big budgets for accounting. And so the only way to really make it work is to specialize to have a fixed system process, tech stack around restaurant bookkeeping that allows you to process this high volume and still leave some room to make money as an accountant. So I'll just throw that out there. And then your other question was related to what kind of persona do you get, what kind of demographics do you get on the restaurant industry side, and it's mostly blue collar, a lot of creatives. So I think once you get to the groups, the restaurant groups that have five to 10 people, a lot of 'em start hiring more office workers. More people can sit at a computer and do numbers, which helps a lot on the admin side. But if you're working with a single unit operator or two to three unit operator, you're dealing with somebody that's always on the run. They're always busy, they're in the kitchen, they're wearing multiple hats. Raffi:: Most of the time they're creatives, they're chefs that created a concept, and that's their strength. Their strength isn't numbers, so it makes it even harder to get information out of them and to keep them organized. And that's really what an accountant bookkeeper does. It just helps somebody stay organized and provides them and helps digest their financials. And a big part of it's just helping them stay organized. So you can first count the numbers, put them into the system, come up with a good workflow. But yeah, it makes it very challenging to work with those types of clients. Dave: Sure, I can understand that. Now, my understanding is the restaurant and bar business has one of the highest failure rates of any type of business. Is that true? And what is the failure rate? What percentage then fail in 1, 3, 5 years? I'm sure you have some numbers around that. Or Raffi:: Actually, believe it or not, there actually is no number and the number is What's your Dave: Guess? What's your guess? Raffi:: They say the myth has always been nine to 10 restaurants fail, something like that. And I've researched this multiple times, and it's really just a myth. There's no hard evidence about that. I don't think it's wrong or it could be very much accurate because it's very high. But any industry, the reason for the failure rate is because of the supply and demand. Everyone wants to open a restaurant, the barrier to entry are low. It's easy to raise money to open a restaurant. Everyone wants to invest in a restaurant. It's just a sexy business. And when you have such a high supply of any type of business, it could be restaurants, it could be filmmakers, it could be musicians, like how competitive the music and film industry is, you end up having an overage of service providers or suppliers or restaurants in this case. And therefore it makes it extremely difficult to generate a profit. Raffi:: And it is a difficult business to run for sure as well. But I think that's the biggest challenge is once you start making a little bit of money, 10, 15%, boom, another competitor comes in and opens a similar concept down the block or a competing concept, and now there's limited amount of residents or consumers in that neighborhood. So now they go into that restaurant, and especially in cities like DC right now, DC's very competitive. There's just so much money being pumped into restaurants and such a limited amount of guests and consumers. So it's the same, let's say 10,000 people that are going to the same restaurants, let's call 'em upscale, casual restaurants. And every week there's a new restaurant opening. And then you could have the best concept in the world, but it only lasts six months because as soon as you're not the hottest thing in town, another one rolls right in and takes your customer base. So it's very competitive, very low margin, and that's why it makes the financial analysis so much more important. Dave: Yeah, I would think so. Is it safe to assume that the failure rate of your clientele is likely lower than the industry average? If you had to guess? Raffi:: Probably. Yeah. Yeah, our failure rate is pretty low. And I think which might also be overlooked, that insight into your finance is a huge competitive advantage for operators, for restaurant operators. Dave: Yeah, I would imagine. Raffi:: Because even 2%, they're mostly high volume, high revenue businesses, they're top line businesses. So an average full service restaurant probably does three to $4 million in revenue. And so even a 2% savings on your food costs, that can be your entire profit margin right there. So the average restaurant does between three, it used to be like five to 10%, now it's three to 7%. But needless to say, it's pretty low, the profit margin. So if I can provide weekly reports that give managers insight into their labor and food costs, that in itself helps them reduce food and labor costs two to 4%. And it's key to do this weekly, not monthly, right? Because monthly it's already too late. You don't know what you did four weeks ago to be able to tweak and adjust the levers in your business. So yeah, I think it's a competitive advantage. Hey, if I can save you two to 5% just by monitoring the financials, forget all the time savings that I'm going to give you automatically you've added a lot of value and you've maybe even saved that restaurant from going out of business. Dave: So I'm curious, just what are the typical expense breakdowns like in a restaurant, how much, what are the food cost percentage range typically in labor and brand, whether, Raffi:: So it depends on the type of concept, whether it's a pizza shop, whether it's a quick service restaurant versus full service versus steak versus seafood. But generally 60 to 65% is your prime cost. So that's your cost of goods sold and your labor. Raffi:: And so anytime we see, for example, for quick service, it's about 60%. So anytime we see, hey, this quick service restaurant is doing 63%, it's a red flag, and we bring that up to the operator, you need to adjust. And sometimes they can't adjust something they can't control. The sales are low because scaling of labor, when you have sales fixed labor and the rest is pretty much, it's about eight to 10% occupancy costs, rent, real estate, taxes, insurance, and then the rest is overhead, operating expenses, supplies, GNA, office supplies, things like that. And then that leaves about five to 10% profit at the end if it's run well. Dave: Wow, it sounds like a Raffi:: Terrible business. It sounds like a difficult business to run profit. Very difficult. Yeah. I get a lot of people that come to me and say, Hey, I'm thinking about investing in a restaurant, or I want to open a restaurant. I'm like, run, don't do it. Dave: Yeah. There's a joke. I forget how it goes and what industry it is. How do you become a millionaire in the oil and gas business? You start as a billionaire. It's kind of the same in the restaurant. How do I end up with a million dollars restaurant? You start with $10 million. Raffi:: Exactly. Dave: So talk to me, do you have everybody on the same accounting system? For example, all of your Raffi:: Clients? We more or less, we have two tech stacks that we support. So QuickBooks plus Margin Edge, that's one Tech Stack. And then the other Tech stack is a accounting software called Restaurant 365. Dave: Okay. Designed just for the restaurant business. And they're both, and so I know QuickBooks pretty well is the other one. Raffi:: Yes, everything is web-based. The Margin Edge is just a plugin. It's an app for QuickBooks to essentially convert it to providing restaurant. It's the bridge between the restaurant and the books. Whereas Restaurant 365 already integrates all of that, the plugins into one platform, which is really nice. Dave: Have you seen that one is a better fit for most of your clients, or do you have a preference for one over the other? Raffi:: It depends on the concept for sure. Okay. For example, we have Dave's Hot Chicken. I'm not sure if you've heard of it. The franchise, one of the fastest growing franchises in America. They have a, I'm not sure if it's an agreement, like a franchise agreement or some type of agreement with the restaurant 365, but basically as a franchisee, you get Restaurant 365 templates as part of your, Dave: Not Raffi:: Templates, but it's almost pre-configured so that it makes it very easy to use Restaurant 365. So in those cases we're like, it's going to be much easier to implement this off the shelf solution versus having QuickBooks and Margin Edge and setting it up for the franchise and all that. So it really just depends on the concept. Dave: Okay. Raffi:: Yeah. Dave: What are some of the things clients tell you, or what's the feedback you get after six to 12 months? I have to imagine that your clients are really happy with your service. What are some of the things that you hear from folks? So this is your chance to really brag about your team and your business model. What are some of the things you hear? Raffi:: Typically, it's not so much. The feedback we hear is so-and-so is so great. You have an invaluable resource for our team and our growth. We have a lot of testimonials that we get from clients. They provide so much peace of mind. Now I can focus on what I do best without having to worry about are my bills getting paid? Am I profitable? What are the numbers that I need to look out for? But really we see the results most of the time because you see a restaurant operator that has one location or two locations, and they have maybe an internal person that is a partner in the business that is overseeing the financials. And we do a discovery call with them. We find out they're spending their whole week just getting receipts from employees and uploading invoices to the accounting software. And then we're like, you spend your most of your time on this. And we tell 'em our value proposition, and it's hard for them to believe. And then within seven or eight months, they're out there scouting new locations, improving their margins, really working on the business rather than spending their time doing admin work. And that's extremely rewarding to see. Raffi:: And not all of them do this. Some will not take advantage of what we provide. Some of them, just like the time savings when we see, okay, this person was stuck at two, three locations, and now they have the time to really focus on growth and building systems and processes and focusing on their vision, and we're just essentially handling their entire back office. They're reporting and providing all the analytical information they need to make these decisions about their growth. That's really nice to see both from their perspective and our perspective. It's a nice partnership to have. Dave: And I can imagine that weekly reporting is critical. I can just imagine there's a lot of restaurants that it's a part-time person. It's their accounting firm that does it. It's one of the partners. And basically they get their financials two or three weeks after the month ends. So they're looking at six and seven week old data. And I could imagine that if you have a problem and you're losing money and you don't realize it until after you've lost money for seven weeks, I can see where that could be a problem. Raffi:: Yeah, exactly. And you're looking at your p and l 15 days after the month ends and you're saying, wait, how do we get 27% labor? Who was doing the scheduling that week? Who was doing the inventory count? What did he change? What did they not change? And when you're doing it weekly, you know exactly what affected or impacted the numbers in your reports. Whereas if it's, and this can apply to other industries as well, not just restaurants, but in restaurants and bars, it's specifically very, especially very important. Dave: Yeah. What do you enjoy the most about your current role in this business that you've built? Raffi:: I really enjoy the growth aspect of it, the vision setting, the vision, setting the goals. We follow the EOS framework Raffi:: And I love that kind of stuff. Working on the business, setting the goals, as I said, and holding your team accountable to achieving those goals. And it's crazy how quickly you see results when you really commit to it. And I'm still trying to figure out whether I'm a visionary or integrator and I don't know. But I like both. I like ops and I also like sales and marketing and being the CEO, so I'm still trying to pinpoint that. But we have a director of operations and she runs the operations for the most part. But I love setting the vision for operations. Hey, it would be awesome if in a year we can reach a stage where every client is following the same AP process, for example, or something like that. And yeah, I really enjoy that kind of stuff. Dave: So let's say we're talking three years from now, and in fact, I may just make a note to have you back in three years. I've never asked a guest this question, and it's probably because I just was in Strategic Coach session last week. If we were sitting down three years from now and looking back over those three years, what would you have liked to have happened both personally and professionally to have been pleased with your progress? Or even just professionally, what would you like to accomplish over the next few years? How do you see the business going? Raffi:: We have ambitions to grow very quickly, and our mission, I know sounds generic, is to achieve proud employees and happy clients. Raffi:: And so I'm obsessed with great businesses, which pretty much provide that proud employees that love where they work, they want to do a good job, and the customers and clients are all promoters of the business. That's the ideal goal. So we want to grow while maintaining that. We don't want to become one of these, again, commodity shops where we're just bringing on clients for the sake of bringing on clients and adding numbers to the top line revenue. I think of acquisition as a big part of that. I probably see that in the cards in the next two to three years in terms of us acquiring another firm. And it really narrows down your goal when you're trying to focus on restaurants and bars. So just trying to replicate what we do, providing that controllership level service, maybe acquiring the bookkeeping, restaurant bookkeeping service, and deploying our model so that people paying the same price for bookkeeping can essentially get a much higher level of service. And then thus complimenting our mission, our purpose, which is proud employees, happy, happy clients. Dave: I love that. Proud employees, happy clients. That was always Herb Kelleher's philosophy. The founder of Southwest Airlines is he viewed employees as his customers that if he made his employees happy, then they would do a good job with their end customers. Raffi:: Yeah. Yeah. The Southwest stories pretty amazing. But I think we debated our leadership team debated about the happy employees versus proud employees for a bit. Raffi:: And I think we very specifically and adamantly decided that we want proud employees because it's not, as soon as you pay happy, nobody's ever a hundred percent happy. We want the clients to be happy and satisfied, but we want our employees to, there's going to be tough times and they're not always going to be happy, and times are going to be tough, but as long as you're doing what you're proud of and it feels rewarding, at the end of the day, it's a job. So we're not expecting everyone to show up to work and be super happy about what they do, but at least we want them to be proud. And I think that comes with passion. If you don't have passion for what you do, you're most likely not going to be proud, and you're probably not the best fit for our company. So it attracts a certain type of employee, but it also pushes out a certain feeling amongst your team. Dave: I like it. Well, as we're wrapping things up, I can't believe how the time has flown by. If we could go back to 2011 when you were graduating from the University of Maryland, if you could go back in time and give yourself advice, your 22, 20 3-year-old self advice back then, what advice might you have given yourself based on the experience you've had over the last 14 years? Raffi:: I like to say I would have niched down earlier, but it's hard to say that's what I would've done if I had done it differently. I'm just not sure because you learn so much by not niching down early on, and Raffi:: You have to generate revenue when you first start out your firm. So in theory, that's what I would've probably have done niche down earlier. Maybe I would niche down three years earlier, four years earlier, not maybe from the beginning. But in terms of other advice, yeah, I would've probably taken accounting more seriously earlier on because I had so many little businesses at that time when I was in college, I was just still trying to figure things out, and I knew accounting was potentially one of them, but I had a, well before that in college, I had an eBay business where I was selling, going to stores, finding things for cheap and selling them online. And then I had a welding business, and then I had a DJ business. And so I was still trying to figure out, I was very on the fence about do I pursue accounting versus something else, and I would've probably told myself to take it, focus on the accounting much earlier. Dave: That is so interesting. I asked that question to a lot of guests, and they almost all have the same answer. But when I asked you the question as I was asking it, I was thinking, oh, that's a dumb question. Most of my guests, they waited 20 years before they started their own business, and their price themselves would've been, be afraid, take the leap early, but you really couldn't have taken it much earlier. You were an employee for five years. You needed to learn the industry, and obviously you had those entrepreneurial tendencies early on, but that is interesting. You wish you had taken the accounting more seriously since that you didn't know then that this is what your future was going to be. Raffi:: Right. I knew it was going to be in entrepreneurship, growing a business, starting a business, but in hindsight, again, if I hadn't done all the DJing and the parties and the events, I wouldn't have been exposed to how marketing really works and how PR really works. So I don't know. It's hard to say. Dave: Yeah, that makes sense. Well, is there anything I didn't ask you that you wish I had asked you? Raffi:: Yeah, I think when we've talked in the past, we talked about the pricing model when it comes to niche services, I think that's also very relevant. You want to share, Dave: Do you want to share how that works or is that something that Raffi:: Yeah, I think Dave: Standard pricing on or whatever your, I didn't want to get too much into pricing. I didn't want you to feel obligated to share anything you didn't want to share. Raffi:: Yeah. I think another aspect of niching down that is valuable and necessary as it comes to our industry and accounting is the pricing model. So there's various forms of pricing and professional services. You have hourly billing, the traditional hourly billing, you have the value-based pricing, you have fixed fee, and then you have subscription. And the trend, I believe, is moving towards subscription. It was value-based. Hourly is the old model that hopefully most people aren't following anymore. But the subscription model for the industry I think is going to be the best because we have problems in the industry right now. They talk about the shortage of labor and all that and the need to adapt advisory services. But I think it's not just, you can't look at labor in a vacuum. You have to look at why do we have a shortage of labor problem? It's because we have a value proposition problem and we have a pricing problem, Raffi:: In my opinion at least. And I think subscription pricing is going to change that. And subscription pricing is beneficial to our industry because it prices the relationship and not just the scope of work and value-based pricing the customer. How do they see the value that we're providing? And you price based off of that. But I think once you move into subscription, it completely revolutionizes and changes the value of public accounting and the accounting service in general. And if we want to solve the labor shortage problem, we need to make the industry more profitable and pay people better so that they're incentivized to pursue an accounting degree and get a CPA. And subscription pricing, I believe, really does that in order to provide subscription pricing you to don't need to. But it really helps by niching down, because the whole concept of subscription pricing is you pay this fixed price and we do everything for you. No hourly billing. There's no scope of work. We do everything for you that is in our wheelhouse that we can do under our roof. And when you provide that type of peace of mind and frictionless experience for clients, all of a sudden, I think the potential for profit and paying your better skyrockets. Dave: So yeah, Ron Baker would be so proud of your transition. Raffi:: Yeah, I think it's a little too early. I think he wrote his Times Up book like three, four, or maybe, yeah, three, four years ago, something like that. Something like that. So it might be a little too soon to tell whether it's going to work in practice. It's worked for us, but it's very difficult to implement subscription pricing if you don't niche down Dave: Well, and I think the monthly work also helps, like a CPA firm who all they're doing is just the annual tax return. How do you justify a subscription billing? Right? Certainly a month in subscription billing, there's more of a disconnect, but with what you're doing, the tax return is, I don't want to say an afterthought, it's just a inevitable outcome of what you've done throughout the year. Raffi:: I think the most similar example that's been tried and tested is the medical concierge. So one time medical, one medical, the subscription based medical office that Amazon acquired, I dunno, what was it three, four years ago? So I think it's very similar because you have an annual checkup, so think of that as your tax return. So you pay Amazon, it's a very low price. I don't know what it is, but I dunno, maybe a few hundred dollars a year for your subscription to one-time medical or one medical. And a lot of the medical concierge services work like this, they range anywhere from $50 a month to $300 a month depending on the Raffi:: Level of service that you're getting. And that gives you unlimited access to a primary care physician. So if I want to go see them every week, it's included in my a hundred dollars a month subscription, and I can get that once a year tax return done or that once a year physical done, but that doesn't really change anything. It doesn't change my subscription. That could be the only thing that I do with them, but just I'm paying for that peace of mind. I know if something happens or if I'm planning for something, I can just call that primary care physician or that accountant and run it by them for no extra charge. And so I think it works well. Maybe it's a little too soon to tell for the accounting industry, but I think it's generally worked with the primary care medical world. Dave: No, I think the accounting profession is perfect for it. So are most of your clients now on a subscription basis? Raffi:: Yeah, it's pretty much all subscription. We have what are called add-ons, Dave: So Raffi:: Our general subscription is controllership services. But anything that they need, for example, IRS audit, gap audit, notice defense, maybe they're pursuing a valuation or a deal, and that's something that we can handle. It's in our wheelhouse. That's all included in the subscription. But when you don't niche down, it's hard to Dave: Exactly. Raffi:: It's hard to limit what you offer. So that's why I think when you say we're very clear that we don't do budgets, so that's not in our wheelhouse. We don't really have anybody on the team that can do budgeting for restaurants. We can get on a call and talk through it with you based off of what we know, but we won't prepare a projection and budget. We're not a CFO service. We're a controllership service. So it's hard to be clear about where you draw the line with your, what's in your wheelhouse, because technically, yeah, I could learn how to budget. I'm an account. It's not that difficult. But again, you can't promise everything. Then you want to try to promise as much as possible so that your subscription has value, but there also has to be safeguards in place. Dave: Well, that is a great way to wrap things up. I'm glad that you'd mentioned the pricing. I really appreciate that. Well, I really appreciate your time. Like I said, when I reached out to you, I love your specialization approach. I just think that's the problem with specialization is you have to say no to everything else. And that's so emotionally difficult for people, especially if you have a scarcity mindset then, Raffi:: Right? Accountants basically. Dave: Yes. Yes. So I think that's great. It's no surprise to me, and I really would, if you're up for it, I'd love to check in with you in three years and see how things have gone. Raffi:: Yeah, I'm definitely up for it. And I also love, you're hyper specialized. That's the IC-disc. I think you mentioned to me how many there are in the country, and it's very limited. Yeah, a few thousand. So that's even more specialized, but it's great. The more specialized, in my opinion, the better. Right? Dave: I tell you this quick story. I've learned niche specialists, that niche and specializing firsthand. When I was internet dating in 2000, the infancy of internet dating, and I think I was 35 years old. And what I noticed that most guys did, they had an approach of casting a wide net. And it was, I'm looking for a woman between the ages of 18 and 88, any religion, any hobbies, anybody type. And I think their attitude is, I'm going to cast a wide net. I'm going to get all these fish in the net, and then I can just cherry pick the ones I want. So I'm like, I'm going to try something different. And so let's say I was 34. My criteria was they had to be a year older to two years younger. They had to be tall, athletic Christian, dog loving women with a commitment to excellence. And my friends are like, you're not going to get any response. Dave: And I'm like, yeah, you're probably right. And they were right. They were almost right. I got almost no response. But what happened when I did get a response from a woman, it's the same reaction you get. There was resonance because the woman would say, oh my God, you sound like my soulmate. I'm 33, I'm five nine. I used to play college volleyball. I have a golden retriever. And so what would happen is, I think when they were talking to the guys with the white net philosophy, they'd have dinner and the guy would say, wow, you're amazing. You're exactly what I'm looking for. And they're like, no, you're not. Your profile is 18 to 88. It wasn't really, but that's really where I learned it. And I think it's the resonance that you get with specialization, and it worked dating and it worked in my business. Sure. You hear the same kind of resonance thing from your new clients, and you're like, wow, I didn't know such a service existed. Raffi:: Exactly. Yes. Yeah. It's like a perfect match for both sides, right? Dave: But it takes a certain amount of courage and a certain amount of abundance mindset to be able to pull the trigger. The other thing is it's hard to refer people who don't specialize. If you meet an attorney and you're like, what do you specialize in? You go, well, mostly wills. We do the occasional divorce, occasional criminal defense. If you get a speaker sick, you give me a call and you're like, I can't help you. But if they specialize in speeding tickets in one county in Texas, and that's all they do, I talk to somebody, a party, and they say, oh, I got a speeding ticket. I'm like, oh, it's Raffi:: The first person that comes to mind. Yeah, exactly. Dave: Yeah, Raffi:: It makes a big difference. Dave: Yeah, it's great. Well, hey, Raffa, I really appreciate your time. This has been a lot of fun and keep up your work and let's come back in three years. Raffi:: Thank you, David. I appreciate you having me. Dave: There we have it. Another great episode. Thanks for listening in. If you want to continue the conversation, go to ic disc show.com. That's IC dash D-I-S-C-S-H-O w.com. And we have additional information on the podcast archived episodes, as well as a button to be a guest. So if you'd like to be a guest, go select that and fill out the information, and we'd love to have you on the show. So it we'll be back next time with another episode of the IC Disc Show. Special Guest: Raffi Yousefian.

Nvidia's earnings become a global Super Bowl as markets brace for either a surge or a correction. The panel breaks down Jensen's guidance, supply demand frenzy, AI bubble fears, Cisco déjà vu, and why Nvidia's fate could drag the entire market with it.

Making Your Communication a Game Changer for Your Business Get ready to shift your communication game—live on Wednesday, November 19th at 3 pm Eastern, on A New Direction, I'll be sitting down with the remarkable Molly Tschang, co-author (with Marshall Goldsmith) of the groundbreaking new book Say It Skillfully: Speak Up. Make Your Words Matter. Win Together.. If you've ever found yourself stuck, unsure how to speak up, or wanting to be heard rather than overlooked—this episode is for you. Molly brings a rich background—from leading major integrations at Cisco and U.S. Filter, to founding her own firm and podcast—so she knows firsthand what it takes to turn communication from risk to strength. In the podcast we'll dive deep into the Me-You-We framework from the book—a simple yet powerful model that helps anyone craft meaningful conversations grounded in intention, empathy, and shared reality. The book calls communication “the ultimate currency” and points out how many high-performing teams still struggle because people don't speak up—or don't know how to. We'll hear how Molly encourages professionals at every level to move beyond fear (of being wrong, of not fitting in, of offending) and step into voice in a way that honors both self and others. It's the kind of mindset reset that fits right into the micro-dose improvement and reflection style I live for here at “A New Direction.” We'll also explore real-world stories from the book: how leaders used these skills in mergers, tough feedback conversations, multicultural teams, and even in personal life. These are not just “communication tips,” they are tools for building culture, trust, and influence. From Molly's perspective: “Your communication is how others fundamentally experience you.” Cornell Engineering. If you're coaching athletes, running a team, or simply want to lead with more authenticity and impact—this conversation will give you actionable communication pathways, not just ideas. Whether you're prepping to speak in a meeting, navigating a career pivot, or simply wanting to be heard more clearly at home or work—this is your communication playbook moment. You are going to enjoy Molly's insights to our community and help you level up your voice and your impact. Molly Tschang and Marshall Goldsmiths's book, "Say It Skillfully" is a book takes something we so over complicate and makes it easy for all of us to implement. Whether you are an employee who does feel like you have a voice.  Or a leader who has unintentionally squelched the voices, this book is for you! As a coach, I work with high performers, business owners, executives, athletes—you name it. And the common denominator among all of them isn't intelligence, strategy, or even talent. It's communication. The internal dialogue. The external courage. The ability to speak truth with clarity AND humanity. This book tackles that exact intersection with exceptional honesty and practicality. It doesn't preach. It doesn't guilt. It guides. What I love most is that Molly doesn't teach communication as a “technique.” She teaches the "me-you-we" frame work, and it as a mindset—one grounded in self-awareness, curiosity, and genuine connection. She shows you how to start by knowing yourself first. Then moves you to getting to know others. And finally, how we know ourselves as a team or group where everyone has a voice. This isn't just a book you read. It is going to require self-reflection ad intention.  And as I applied these tools in my own life and coaching sessions, in business conversations, I have seen change in myself and others. If you're a leader, if you're a teammate, if you're in a relationship of any kind, or if you simply want to be a better human being, Say It Skillfully belongs on your "must read" list. It's wise. It's relevant. It's transformational.  Then don't just let it sit there. Read it. Practice it. And put it into action. A powerful, practical, human book. Molly and Marshall—thank you. This one is a difference-maker.  Get your copy by clicking here. Please thank our sponsors for making A New Direction Possible: Enhance Your Audiobook Experience with Zoundy! If you're an author or narrator looking to produce high-quality audiobooks with ease, Zoundy is the ultimate tool you need. Designed specifically for audiobook creation, Zoundy delivers crystal-clear sound, seamless editing capabilities, and professional-grade production tools—all in one intuitive platform. Whether you're recording your own book or refining your narration, Zoundy ensures every word is heard with perfection. And here's the best part: As a listener of A New Direction, you get an exclusive deal! Head over to zoundy.com/jay and use the code JAY25 at checkout to unlock special savings on your audiobook production. Don't settle for anything less than studio-quality sound—power up your audiobook journey today with Zoundy! and Linda Craft  Team, REALTORS they can help you sell your home or buy your next home.  For more than 40 years they have been known for their “Legendary Customer Service”.  They have helped people all over the world sell their home or find their next home.  And they return and bring their friends. And even if you live in another area, they are connected to the best real estate professionals that they can recommend, and to help you with your residential real estate needs.  Join the Linda Craft Team tribe and click on over to www.LindaCraft.com The Turnaround Coach: When You're Ready for a Shift That Actually Sticks There comes a moment in every business, every career, and every life where the wheels start spinning and you realize you're working twice as hard for half the progress. I've spent my entire coaching life inside those moments. Not avoiding them—transforming them. Whether it's an overwhelmed executive, a plateaued business owner, or a high-performance sales professional stuck in their own blind spots, my superpower has always been the same: I step into the chaos, find the thread of truth, and help you pull it until everything shifts. That's why people call me The Turnaround Coach. Turnarounds rarely happen because people lack talent. They happen because people lack clarity—clarity of purpose, clarity of discipline, clarity of next steps. When you work with me, we break through the noise and get brutally clear about what's really holding you back. And once we name it, everything changes. You start seeing new opportunities. You start making decisions with confidence instead of fear. You start building discipline instead of chasing motivation. The turnaround begins the moment you stop trying to fix the symptom and start addressing the source. But here's the truth: a turnaround isn't an event. It's a process. It's a series of intentional micro-shifts that compound into major transformation. I don't just help you get “unstuck.” I help you build systems, habits, and mindsets that keep you from ever going back. My clients don't just experience breakthroughs—they build resilience, clarity, and momentum that carry them into their next level of greatness. If your business, your leadership, or your life is asking for a shift… if you're tired of white-knuckling your way through the same patterns… if you're ready for your turnaround—reach out. I coach Mavericks because Mavericks are the ones willing to change. Email me directly at jay@jayizso.com or click on "Coaching Mavericks - Unlock Your Potential with Jay Izso" and let's start your turnaround today.

How a Growth Mindset Drives B2B Marketing Success  In an increasingly competitive business environment inundated with digital noise, relying on “play it safe” tactics will only result in your brand drowning in a sea of sameness. The path to true differentiation, innovation, and standing out is not an easy one as it requires a significant mindset shift. For B2B marketing initiatives to succeed, you must create room for experimentation and data-driven discovery. How can B2B marketers approach this effectively and secure internal buy-in for it? That's why we're talking toVincent Weberink (Founder, Pzaz.io),who shares expert insights and proven strategies on how a growth mindset drives B2B marketing success. In this episode, Vincent talked about why design experiments are crucial in B2B marketing and highlighted the need for structured, data-driven growth experimentation. He shared his proven methodology consisting of ideation, ranking, and rapid prototyping designed to quickly and effectively validate concepts. Vincent also shared some common B2B marketing pitfalls that teams should avoid and emphasized the value of iterative testing and learning. He broke down how teams can build an entrepreneurial mindset and get internal buy-in for experimentation-driven B2B marketing. https://youtu.be/SlQa58iKf3k Topics discussed in episode: [2:09] The importance of running structured experiments in B2B marketing [5:21] Common challenges marketing teams face when designing and executing experiments [13:53] Key pitfalls marketing teams should avoid and some practical solutions [20:36] How to align internal teams and consistently generate strong experimental ideas [31:31] Actionable steps B2B marketers can take to run effective experiments: Understand and acknowledge that what you know is probably wrong Use ideation and designing experiments Trust your team Be creative in applying growth hacks Get external help if stuck Companies and links mentioned: Vincent Weberink on LinkedIn Pzaz.io Cisco Airbnb ChatGPT 13 Failures Later What The Hack?! Transcript Christian Klepp  00:00 In a B2B landscape that has become increasingly competitive and inundated with digital noise, using play it safe tactics will result in your brand drowning in a sea of sameness. That said, the path to differentiation, innovation and standing out is not an easy one, as it requires a change in mindset. You need to have room for experiments to truly create something that is relevant to customers. So how can B2B marketers do this, and how can they get internal buy in for it? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers in a Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp. Today, I’ll be talking to Vincent Weberink, who will be answering this question. He’s the founder of pzaz.io who specializes in developing business growth through creative, structured data driven growth experimentation. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B marketers mission is. Christian Klepp  00:51 Vincent Weberink, welcome to the show.  Vincent Weberink  00:54 Hello Christian. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.  Christian Klepp  00:59 Absolutely I’ve been really looking forward to this conversation. I think we’re going to have a great time. We’re going to have a great discussion also about topics, and a main topic in particular that I think is going to be so relevant to B2B marketers and their teams in general. So you know, without further ado, let’s not keep the audience in suspense for too long. Let’s just jump straight into it. All right. So Vincent, you’re on a mission to drive business growth through creative, structured and data driven growth experimentation. So for this conversation, let’s focus on the following topic, which is how B2B marketers can create a mindset and design experiments to understand what customers want. That kind of sounds like it’s very, I’m going to say pedestrian, but it’s incredible, and I’m sure you’ll have plenty of case studies to show that there’s a lot of people out there that don’t follow this process, and then they get into trouble. So I’m going to kick off this conversation with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat them all right? So the first question is, why do you think that design experiments are important for marketing teams? And based on that, where do you see a lot of marketing teams struggle? Vincent Weberink  02:09 I think they’re very important because as human beings, we’re emotional when we make decisions. Problems is that, therefore when we try to drive growth. We have this idea about something, and then we tend to completely jump into it, build everything. Spend a lot of time and money and resources on building that thing that we believe is going to be very, very successful, and that takes a lot of time. And the reality is that most of the time you’re actually wrong, even though you think that you know your customer, even though you think that you know this is the best trick or marketing tactic that you’re developing. And what this experimentation model does, it sort of forces you to go through a very structured, almost scientific process, because there are some steps in there that help you to remove that emotion from your decision making.  Vincent Weberink  03:12 And an example of how decision making often is influenced is when you’re in a small team or a large team, you’re sitting around the table and you’re trying to brainstorm, say, oh, you know, we have this, this challenge. We’re launching a new product, or we’re changing something, and we need to communicate it, driving sales up. And then the people who are best sort of equipped with sales capabilities are the ones that you know will dominate the conversation, and what we tend to do is then listen to them, whereas there are other people around the table that you know, they might be more introverted, might say less, that also have really, really great ideas. So what happens is that you collect all these thoughts and ideas, and then the person that’s very good at selling is selling their idea to you, and you end up taking that one. But it has nothing to do with reality, whereas in the methodology that I’m sort of promoting, what you actually do is you try to capture as many ideas as possible, as quickly as possible, and then, in almost a democracy, you rank and rate them according to several criteria, and that will help you to make some of those ideas float. And the ones that pop up are the ones you should actually focus on, because now, within that democratic decision making process, you’ve tried to optimize the chances that one of those ideas will actually lead to much quicker success than any of the others. And you can also use it in the reverse, the ideas that completely sink because no one voted for them, maybe only just the person that was selling. You know that they go away. You just throw them away and forget. About them, because clearly they didn’t get enough support. And the other question you were asking, sorry focused on the first question.  Christian Klepp  05:08 No problem, absolutely, absolutely no. Well, that was a great way to, like, set up the conversation. And I guess it segues to the question, where do you see, based on what you said, where do you see a lot of marketing teams struggling? Vincent Weberink  05:21 Well, I see them often struggling is that they tend to spend money and time on just the ordinary things that everyone sort of accustomed to, because depending on the type of company you work in, that’s the safe choice, and that ultimately doesn’t really help you grow. It’s typically the stuff that you would never expect to work. And I’ll give you a great example of this in a moment that might give you this amazing growth overnight or amazing success. It doesn’t necessarily have to be growth. It can be specific campaign where you just need people to sign up, because you’re trying to obtain information from them and to get those people to sign up. It could be a problem. You’re designing your funnel, and then something isn’t really working.  Vincent Weberink  06:15 So in my experience, what happens is that people will say, Okay, let’s build a landing page. Let’s build a website, and let’s make it beautiful. Let’s make it perfect. But while you’re in this early stage, you have no clue if it’s going to work or not. You’re now wasting all of those resources where it’s so much better to very, very quickly, design experiments, run them as quickly as possible, see where something is happening, and then sort of iterate upon that specific experiment that you were running. And then slowly, over time, you get to a point where that experiment can be fleshed out, can be refined. You might do some A/B testing, and especially in the world we’re moving into with the rise of AI speed is everything past early days of when I was starting to do, you know, growth marketing or growth hacking, depending on what you like to call it. Let’s say 15 years ago, you could simply run an experiment, and that experiment could would last for certain periods of time. You could get away with some of the experiments, even running them for months. But with the rise of AI, what we’re seeing is that experiments only work for very, very short periods of time. And what I see with a lot of the marketing teams is that, you know, they’re not accustomed to driving fast and quickly running and failing fast, so that you can very quickly learn to see what ultimately what ultimately works.  Vincent Weberink  07:55 So a great example of something that I experienced it when I was running one of my startups, which was a streaming service, and I believed I got everything right. I was just convinced that there was nothing wrong with the product, but I wasn’t getting any traction, nothing, literally, no one was signing up, and I just couldn’t understand. So what I started to do is just run one experiment after another. First obviously, I went out and spoke to people, because that’s the first thing you should do most of the time, especially when you’re in startup mode, either a startup or you work for corporate, maybe running a division or launching a new product, you have no data. But if you read all of the books out there, they all tell you, Oh, let’s look at the data. Well, guess what? You don’t have any data. So what you need to do is you need to go and speak to people and find the soft data to really understand, you know, what’s going on. How do I create a product that people will be willing to buy, and I did that, and then it sort of confirmed that there was nothing wrong with the product. And then months into that process, I still wasn’t getting any traction, and the startup was sort of moving to a point where it started to fail, because, you know, you’re running out of money, you’re running out of time. So I kept running experiments, believing that the methodology that I use simply works. You just need to keep running, running, running. And then one day, I essentially was close to giving up, and I decided to take on another project because I had run out of money. But on the side, I kept running experiments, and what I did is I put a play button on the homepage, allowing people to watch television for five minutes without signing up. And that simple trick got me 11,000 euros overnight. It took me 11 months. To uncover that, I had now proven that indeed, the product wasn’t wrong. The product was always right, but the way we were marketing was wrong, and it is always one of the two. It’s either there’s no product market fit or you’re selling it in the wrong way. Your marketing is wrong. And in a way that was very frustrating, because this very simple thing, almost as simple as a paperclip now gave me all the growth in one way. It was too late for me, because I had to go into that other project. The revenue wasn’t enough to sustain the business, but it did allow me to sort of keep the business afloat. And I was working this other project, and then I returned, after like a half a year or so, back full time onto the startup once I was generating enough recurring, recurring revenue there, and yeah, that’s sort of, you know, what I strongly believe in. You just need to keep running those experiments.  Vincent Weberink  10:53 Of course. The third option is that your timing is completely off, which is another thing that I’ve experienced several times. I’ve run many startups, most of them failed over time. I’m proud to say that I never had to raise money for any of those startups. I was sort of in the last 30 years of my career. Thank you. I always managed to, you know, make enough money to sort of sustain, but many of them never became the big winner. They were just doing enough, and then at some point, there was an end of life, because either the market was fooled or or just turned out that there was no point in continuing to run that company. An example is VPN product that I did in 2003 that’s when the first idea started. VPN was a business to business product, and we decided to consumerize VPN because our only competitor at the time was called hide my ass, and the technology was very, very complicated. And after sort of what happens after 911 where a lot of governments started to invade everyone’s privacy, we decided that, you know, it is also important for individuals to retain a level of privacy, you know, within the boundaries of the law, obviously. So we spent a lot of time in developing that technology, creating a product that was very, very easy to use and that was secure and safe. And we were very, very successful in the first year and a half. We even managed to get in Google on the second place, right after Cisco, which is the inventor of VPN, but by the time we had about 40,000 customers, that was it. That was just, we just couldn’t grow anymore. And I then decided to abandon that project. Over time, someone else continued it for several more years, and of course, now VPN mass market product, but over 20 years later, and it’s the most common product out there, and we were just too early. So even though it was an exciting, exciting adventure, it made us money. It was a profitable business. Ultimately, at the time, there was no point in sort of continuing, trying to sort of push it, push it further. Christian Klepp  13:18 Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely great points. And you know, thank you for sharing those, those experiences and the you know, those past successes and challenges, failures and so forth. I think it’s, I think it’s an important part of the overall process, right? I’m going to move us on. And you’ve mentioned some of these already, but like, what are some of these on the topic of design experimentation and growth growth marketing. What are some of these key pitfalls that marketing teams need to avoid, and what should they be doing instead? Vincent Weberink  13:53 The key pitfalls they need to avoid is to believe that they’re always right. I mean, that is the first thing is, in essence, that you should learn that most of the time you will be wrong, and that success lies in the ability to admit that and to move forward very, very quickly by running a lot of those experiments, and by designing those experiments very quickly and having the ability to turn them into minimum viable products. And the pitfalls that most people fall into is that they think you’ll just read a book, and then you can just do it. It’s simple, right? Oh, it’s just like marketing. It’s the same way how I learn how to do advertising, I can simply learn how to do, you know, growth marketing. But the reality is, it’s then it is a thing or a trick so that understanding and the realization that you just need to start thinking differently, start thinking out of the box, be creative, because a lot of those hacks come from places that you simply will not expect.  Vincent Weberink  15:15 I guess Airbnb is a typical example. You know, as far as I remember the story correctly. Two guys set up Airbnb. It was literally an air bed in someone’s house. They were running the business. They had about 10,000 you know, customers, and they could have said, Oh, you know, we’re doing great. Our marketing is doing well. We’re making money. But ultimately, they were not satisfied, so they decided to continue, and then what happens is, this is before the big thing that most people have heard of, which is correct, Greg’s list. That’s when they really exploded. But before that, something else happened, and that was when one of the founders said, Well, how do we expand our capacity, and how do we get more people interested in our products? And it was around the organization of trade shows when there was always a shortage of capacity in hotels, and they decided to try that out. And if I remember correctly, they grew sort of from 10,000 people to 200,000 people in just a couple of months. And that was actually their real growth hack, the real spurt, whereas reckless took them to millions. And that’s the thing that everyone knows. But it was that mindset, that understanding of not being satisfied with what you’re doing, and the ability to pivot, because it was a complete pivot. It was no longer just an air bet. Now you were renting out a bed in someone’s house, and that was sort of the foundation what then became Airbnb. And I think most marketing teams have never been exposed to that way of thinking. You know, they’ve been taught the simple stuff on, how do you do advertising, how do you look at data, you know, how do I build a website? How do I organize a trade show, etc. But it’s these things where you take an idea, where you’re almost stepping into the entrepreneur’s shoes by looking at, how can I make the business grow through extraordinary ways of marketing? Christian Klepp  17:30 Absolutely, absolutely. You know what? That’s a phrase that I also heard at a business meeting on Friday where I was talking to the branch manager of a bank. And one of the things that she said, why, how she helped the branch to grow, is because she came out of a business. She was a family business, and she was running her own business, so she came with an entrepreneur’s mindset. And I do think that there is that is really, like, significant, especially if you’re talking about and I don’t want to, like, use these, like, overused buzzwords, let’s say, but like, you know, if you’re entering this world of, like, the scrappy entrepreneurs or even the scrappy marketing teams, right, you can’t necessarily go in there with the corporate mindset. No offense to anybody that’s in corporate but if you’re stretched for, as you can rightfully attest to Vincent, if you’re stretched for time, bandwidth, resources and budget, you’ve got to, you’ve got to think more like a guerrilla fighter versus a conventional army, right? Vincent Weberink  18:38 You need to test as early as possible whether or not the ideas or your hypothesis, hypothesis that you have are actually true, and especially when you’re an entrepreneur or in a product team. And I have an example for there was a famous UK bank that had an idea where they wanted to test if friends and family would be willing to become guarantors for young people that would want to buy a house in London. And you know, banks are very, very big, slow organizations, and typically, if not alone, figuring out how this legally works will cost them millions right to develop the whole full product. So how do you do something? How do you create this experiment where you can prove whether or not there’s any viability in even thinking of offering such a product? And what they came up with is essentially to build a landing page where they would simply ask people to sign up for the service. They ran a 500 pound budget against it, so the total cost of the whole experiment was maybe 1500 pounds, and now they’ve managed to validate it, which saved them literally hundreds of 1000s of pounds and the risk that that product might have failed. And I think that is exactly the entrepreneurial mindset that a market. Marketer needs to develop and understand, Okay, I’m not just responsible for selling this product, but I’m also responsible for understanding, you know, who do I sell it to? How do I sell it? What should the product look like? How can the product evolve so that there’s a good product market fit? Christian Klepp  20:17 Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. You brought some of these up already, but let’s dig into it deeper and unpack it. I should say, like, so based on your experience, like, how do you how can B2B marketers get traction as early as possible? So how can they build experiments? What are those key steps that they need to take? Vincent Weberink  20:36 The first thing this is, so I sort of use a methodology and which is very, very structured. And I use that because if I don’t, I get lost in ideas. Because it is very easy to come up with 100 ideas. A lot of people you know, can do that. So what we do is I sit down, either with a team, or I might take a certain periods of time, where all I do is just collect as possible. Then for every idea, I write down, what is the idea? What do I believe this idea will give me? So what is the outcome? How do I prove, potentially, as a hypothesis, that what I believe is true? And then I sort of make those notes, then I store them in cards. And you can do that in any kind of project management tool, whether it’s notion or cell or bunch. Just create those cards.  Vincent Weberink  21:31 Then what I do is I rank and rank them so, and I ask the team to do that, or the people I work with, for example, if I was doing consultancy for clients, we would have a specific, specific group of the clients do doing the same thing, and then all we would do is see, Okay, which of those ideas are floating. And we would take the top 10, again, it was very easy to then generate, like, 100 different ideas, and you take the top 10, and then for each of those, you’re now going to discuss them and essentially say, Okay, if I need to turn this idea into minimal but viable products, allowing me to prove that I am right or wrong, what is the least amount of work you can then do? And you know, so in my book, I publish a whole list of MVPs (Minimum Viable Product), but actually, with ChatGPT, you could probably just type, give me a list of all the different type of MVPs and explain how they work. So for example, you have a Wizard of Oz. A Wizard of Oz is, is an MVP, where everything happens behind the scene. The product really doesn’t exist, but the customer thinks it exists. And you do everything manually. That’s just an example.  Vincent Weberink  22:51 So what you then do is you then going to think about, okay, who needs to do what? And then you run a short sprint. You design the sprint. Say, Okay, next Monday, with the three of us, we’re just going to spend one day on building that thing. And I, most of the time use distribution hacking, or in other words, advertising, to drive some traffic to whatever that experiment is to then prove of my whether or not my hypothesis is correct. And from there onwards, you then, of course, have some analytic tool, or, depending on how you how, you then prove it, and then you start to iterate and but I promise you, most of those experiments will fail, which is great, but if you run 10 very quickly, maybe in the course of two weeks, if you have two or three where you see the needle moving a little bit, now you have something to take the next step. And a classical mistake that I’ve seen is that people always tend to make it too complicated. So what they do is, rather than designing an experiment that gets you one answer, they try to get as many answers as possible. And that doesn’t work, because you know, if you have any exposure to data, if you have multiple data points, then it’s now up to your interpretation, and then you’re selling it to yourself, because you want the hypothesis to be true. So it’s very difficult to then again, step back and say, Ah, you know, can I really be honest with myself? So test one thing at a time. Once you’ve proven that one of those things work, you just design the next one and the next one and next one, and then within this very short periods of time, you’ll get to a point where, where it starts to work or fail. You could prove that the product simply is not viable. Which, which I’ve had many times, and then even pivoted afterwards, given up on many products, because simply, even though I believed, you know, was going to be amazing, yeah, it turns out to be wrong. So, yeah. Christian Klepp  25:00 Absolutely, absolutely. Like, it’s really a fine, a fine balance between speed, but also like, like, the quick experimentation, as you say, and you know, as you were, as you were discussing your process, it actually just made me think of another question, which I’m sure you faced countless times, and you brought it up in the beginning too. How do you get this internal alignment? You talked about, like a team getting together in the room, and I’ve been in one of those teams right, where there were a couple, like, we used to call them the stars of the show, because, you know, when they get up on stage, they want the spotlight to be only on them. Forget about what everybody else says. My idea, my baby is the most beautiful baby in the world. And how dare you insult my baby, right?  Vincent Weberink  25:48 Exactly.  Christian Klepp  25:49 But, but the reality, as you rightfully pointed out, which I’ve also seen firsthand, the reality, is that the one that shouts the loudest doesn’t necessarily have the best idea, right? It’s sometimes these people. It’s sometimes these people that don’t say anything, that don’t contribute to the conversation, they actually have the solution that perhaps the market is looking for. But unfortunately, their voice is drowned out by these so called, I’m just gonna call them the Divas in the room, right? So back to the question, how do you get that alignment? How do you get those ideas out of everybody in a way that it’s not just fair, but it’s also like more, more in line with what the market is looking for. Let’s put it that way. Vincent Weberink  26:43 The people around the table that typically don’t speak up, you know, some of them are the deep thinkers. They really think about something, and they have really great ideas, but they’ll then struggle to properly defend their idea and to explain it, whereas the other person on the table, who’s good at selling themselves, you know might they’ll do everything to defend their idea, and therefore they will attack the other ideas. And what you sort of see is by implementing this rank and rate model by definition, you’re externalizing the decision making, so you’re agreeing with everyone on the around the table, that everyone writes down their idea on the paper, on a piece of paper, and you define what that structure should then look like, which means is no one has to defend it. They just write it on paper. You then gather those pieces of paper and you add them to the tool. Then you ask everyone to rank and raise which, by the way, could be done anonymous, which I’ve done many times. And that way you just look at the one that floats, and you just, if the team look, we don’t know who’s right, we can’t afford for this venture to fail, and therefore, we’re just going to focus on the ideas that have the greatest potential of propensity. And that’s how I do it, and it’s always worked well for me. There’s, of course, when I would introduce this to new startup teams, very often it’s the entrepreneur that is the biggest problem. You know that they’re the hardest to convince, because they typically have the strongest opinion of all.  Christian Klepp  28:34 So you’re talking about the founder, right? The founder Vincent Weberink  28:36 Yeah. About the founder? Yes, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, because they look, you know, there might be a great marketer or great salesperson who have very strong ideas, and they might, you know, accept inputs, but it’s typically the founder that will then say, yeah, now if you know, it’s my money, so I’m going to just do it my way, and it’s wrong, because you’re now letting your emotion again, getting In the way. And this example that I gave you with the play button that was sort of happened while I was in the process of creating that methodology that I use, which is sort of based on me having read 1000 books where I really struggled that most of the books, even though they’re written for startups, if you really dive into it, they’re actually more for startup teams and corporates, very often, the way they’re described, that you just can’t apply them to normal startups, because normal startups work differently. And what I then did is I sort of took all of the models in there, and then figured out, what if you combine them, crunch them, and then create this methodology. And I was doing that for myself, because I really struggled, having done so many startups, and then I found, okay, so now I have this methodology. I just kept doing it. Kept. Believing that ultimately, it would work with the idea that sometimes you know on this path and that other people need to help you to sort of step out of your comfort zone and sometimes think from the left, from the other side, because your growth might come from a different direction, and which could even be true within your customer persona. You think you have the persona, right. But while you’re digging and running the experiments, it might be the persona next door which is the true, real customer, and you just need to uncover that by believing in that methodology. So… Christian Klepp  30:40 Absolutely, absolutely. You know, we did one of those exercises in Q2 with a client that had was very convinced of their ICP (Ideal Customer Profile). And then we went through this exercise where we did, um, we did a diagnosis on the ICP to determine, like, is this the right is this actually the right ICP you should be going after, right? So I’m 100% with you on that one. Okay, my friend, we come to the point where we’re talking about actionable tips, and it’s really just a recap of all the great recommendations you’ve given us already. So just imagine that there’s a SaaS (Software as a Service) marketing team out there, or somebody in B2B marketing that’s listening to this conversation. They’re like, wow, that’s exactly what I’m going through right now. So what are the maybe three to five things you would say they can take action on, like right now? Vincent Weberink  31:31 First of all, understanding you know, coming to the realization that whatever you know is probably wrong. Which is, which is the hardest thing to do. The second thing is you should really start working by using ideation and designing experiments, create MVPs fail as fast as you can, because that’s the way you learn as quickly as you can. And I sort of describe that in my book that I just launched, because it, you know, yes and into the same problem. Also, you know, trust your team. Trust that other people have great ideas as well. And very often, the great ideas come from the people that otherwise wouldn’t, wouldn’t say anything and be as creative as possible. Try to prime yourself by just, you know, search online, what are great growth, growth hacks or other marketing tips and tricks, and then try to figure out, how can I apply those? How can I use those as potential experiments? Because that way you can just simply move forward. But you know, if you’re stuck, get external help, because they’re like people like yourself, you know, who can really help to sort of leapfrog this, because otherwise, you’re just stuck and trying to learn, and while you’re running out of money, you have no time. Most starters will last for six months, and then they’ve run out of money, prove that you’re right before you build anything. And that is really, I think, the most important. And so the last tip I want to give, don’t just start building any product, because you will fail. It’s not for nothing that 95% of startups fails within within the first couple of years. It’s because, you know, you believe that people will flock and will love whatever you’re building. But the reality is just very, very different, and it might be the smallest thing that you get wrong, but you know that’s enough to fail, so… Christian Klepp  33:46 Prove that you’re right before you build anything. I mean, if there’s anything that the audience should be taking away from this conversation, I think it’s that sentence, right? Absolutely, that’s fantastic. Thanks again for sharing those tips, and I hope the audience is taking as many notes as I am during our conversation. Okay, two more questions before I let you go, Vincent, so here comes the bonus question. So you’re, this is the understatement of the year, but you’re a bit of a nomad, right? Like you’re originally from the Netherlands, you’ve lived in Greece, and now you’ve relocated, I think the last time we spoke, you were in Florence, and now you’ve moved somewhere else in northern Italy, right? So how has this lifestyle impacted you, personally and professionally? I mean, it’s clearly changed your view of the world, I’m sure. Vincent Weberink  34:39 Yes, so somehow I felt I was always stuck in the Netherlands as an entrepreneur. Because especially in the past, there is this thing, and I like to joke about it, where the Americans have the not invented syndrome, not invented here syndrome, the Dutch people have the invented hair syndrome, which means it’s all your Dutch. So therefore it can’t be good. And I felt I was very often, sort of, you know, locked up. And at the same time, the world is getting smaller and smaller every day. And I was lucky, being in technology, that we were able to then start moving abroad. And in all fairness, some of the moves we’ve done were actually caused because of the failures we’ve had, not that we run away or anything, but it was sort of, I was trying to do something locally. It didn’t really work. And then it was time for new challenges. And I found, always have found a lot of energy being able to now live in a completely different country, with a different language, with a different culture, and that really enriched my life. I started to look at things very, very differently, especially learning that everyone has a different view, whereas as a young person, I always had a very strong opinion, and the world had to be the way I saw it. But nothing is further from culture plays an incredibly important role on how people perceive things, how to behave, what kind of products they buy, how you should sell. Language plays an incredible, incredibly important role. So, yeah, I guess I was, I can’t say I was lucky because I created my own luck. I created my own decisions. I was lucky that my lovely wife and son have always supported me and that we’ve been on this journey through seven countries in the last 20 years. Yeah, and we’re in Italy at the moment. Indeed. Christian Klepp  36:35 Wow. Seven countries. Yeah, yeah. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. That’s about the same number as in terms of my own experience. Like, I live in Canada now, and that’s country number seven. So there’s more, there’s more of us out there than you think, right? Like, exactly. So it’s very similar to my story. But, like, how’s your Italian? By the way. Vincent Weberink  36:57 It’s getting there. I’m studying hard at the moment, and, yeah, we sort of arrived here in January. Officially, my son is studying at university, and he’s finishing. But I guess, you know, I speak some Spanish, so Italian is slightly easier. Yeah. Christian Klepp  37:16 It’s, yeah, it is helpful. I realized, like, I also speak a certain level of Spanish, and that helped me get by even in a country like Portugal, where, Let’s appreciate it’s a complete it’s a different language, but there are some similarities. So they can understand what I’m saying, they’ll just answer in Portuguese, as long as you also understand what they’re saying, more or less. Yeah, I mean, I try to figure it out, and then they, they’ll, they’ll speak slowly, and I’m like, okay, okay, I got it. Obrigado, all right. Like, fantastic, fantastic. Vincent. Thank you so much for coming on the show and for sharing your experience and your expertise with the listeners. So please, a quick introduction to yourself and how people out there can get in touch with you. And by the way, I really love that we’re color coordinated. And for those that are listening to the audio version of this, we’re both wearing, like denim colored outfits. Vincent Weberink  38:11 Well, thank you Christian. Thank you very much for having me. It was a real pleasure. Yeah, of course. You know. My name is Vincent Weberink. My email is vincent@webberink.com and if anyone has any questions or potentially is interested in the book that I’ve just released, which is condensing 1000 books and failures and success, then of course, please, please get in touch with me. Thank you again. Christian Klepp  38:42 Fantastic, fantastic, and we’ll be sure to include a link to your book in the show notes. So once again, Vincent, thank you so much for your time. Take care. Stay safe and talk to you soon. Vincent Weberink  38:53 Looking forward, Christian, thank you very much. Take care.  Christian Klepp  38:56 Thank you. Bye for now. 

Are you looking to save time, make money, and start winning with less risk? Then head to https://www.ovtlyr.com.The S&P 500 is already slipping into a bearish downtrend, and one of the biggest names in market history is sounding the alarm again. The investor who famously called the 2008 crash is back with a new warning, and this time he says the setup could be even worse. In this video, we walk through what he is saying, why he thinks AI stocks are in bubble territory, and what the charts actually reveal once you cut through the hype.This one gets right into the real story behind AI valuations, trend direction, and how major stocks like Nvidia and Palantir actually behave when the market is weakening. You also see exactly how stage one, stage two, stage three, and stage four cycles show up on real charts like Tesla, Cisco, Bank of America, and more. If you have ever wondered why bubbles form, why they burst, and how regular investors get trapped in the boom and bust cycle, this breakdown explains it in simple, no-nonsense language.Right in the middle of everything, we take a practical look at how trend alignment works using the 10 EMA, 20 EMA, and 50 EMA. This pulls back the curtain on why counter trend trades are so difficult and why following the trend matters far more than trying to predict what happens next.Here is some of what you will get inside:✅ Why AI stocks are acting like a bubble✅ How market cycles form and why traders ignore the warning signs✅ Why shorting strong names in an uptrend is a dangerous move✅ What market breadth reveals about real buying and selling pressure✅ How past bubbles show the difference between buying smart and buying lateWe also dig into why this environment is not the same as the dot com bubble. Yes, money is pouring into AI. Yes, valuations are elevated. But today, the Federal Reserve is loosening money supply, lowering rates, and ending quantitative tightening. That means the “needle” that popped the dot com bubble is not the same needle that would pop an AI bubble today, which makes the timing and outcome very different.You will also hear an eye-opening discussion about the three possible needle points that could burst the bubble: the job market getting hit by rapid AI adoption, sky-high investor expectations that companies cannot meet forever, and simple value exhaustion as too much money chases too few winning stocks.On top of that, there is a breakdown of the OVTLYR Trend Template, why systematic entries and exits work, how expectancy plays into long-term returns, and why emotional decisions like FOMO and panic selling almost always end badly. If you want to avoid riding the boom up and then giving it all back on the bust, this is the kind of analysis that keeps you grounded.If you are looking to save time, make money, and start winning with less risk, stick around. You will walk away with a clearer, calmer way to approach the market no matter what bubble people say is forming next.Gain instant access to the AI-powered tools and behavioral insights top traders use to spot big moves before the crowd. Start trading smarter today

Kat's out of town, so Ian is joined by Brad Oliver, Director of the US Commercial Collaboration SMB & Midmarket Sales Organization at Cisco to talk hobbies, work/life balance and fighting off burnout. You have to be able to bring your best self everyday, but how do you go about doing that? Just two bros talking life, love and pursuit of happiness. Truly an episode for the people. If you came for Cisco information...sorry, but click here so our boss doesn't fire us! id.cisco.com/app/ciscoid_aemcloudprodsaml_1/exk14lk1xf6SKDANc5d7/sso/saml

In this week's show Patrick Gray and Adam Boileau discuss the week's cybersecurity news, including: Anthropic says a Chinese APT orchestrated attacks using its AI It's a day ending in -y, so of course there are shamefully bad Fortinet exploits in the wild Turns out slashing CISA was a bad idea, now it's time for a hiring spree Researchers brute force entire phone number space against Whatsapp contact discovery API DOJ figures out how to make SpaceX turn off scam compounds' Starlink service This week's episode is sponsored by Mastercard. Senior Vice President of Mastercard Cybersecurity Urooj Burney joins to talk about how the roles of fraud and cyber teams in the financial sector are starting to converge. Mastercard also recently acquired Recorded Future, and Urooj talks about how they aim to integrate cyber threat intelligence into the financial world. This episode is also available on Youtube. Show notes Full report: Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign Researchers question Anthropic claim that AI-assisted attack was 90% autonomous - Ars Technica China's ‘autonomous' AI-powered hacking campaign still required a ton of human work | CyberScoop Amazon discovers APT exploiting Cisco and Citrix zero-days | AWS Security Blog CISA gives federal agencies one week to patch exploited Fortinet bug | The Record from Recorded Future News PSIRT | FortiGuard Labs CISA, eyeing China, plans hiring spree to rebuild its depleted ranks | Cybersecurity Dive This Is the Platform Google Claims Is Behind a 'Staggering' Scam Text Operation | WIRED A Simple WhatsApp Security Flaw Exposed 3.5 Billion Phone Numbers | WIRED DOJ Issued Seizure Warrant to Starlink Over Satellite Internet Systems Used at Scam Compound | WIRED Multiple US citizens plead guilty to helping North Korean IT workers earn $2 million | The Record from Recorded Future News Cyberattack leaves Jaguar Land Rover short of £680 million | The Record from Recorded Future News FBI: Akira gang has received nearly $250 million in ransoms | The Record from Recorded Future News Operation Endgame: Police reveal takedowns of three key cybercrime tools | The Record from Recorded Future News Inside a Wild Bitcoin Heist: Five-Star Hotels, Cash-Stuffed Envelopes, and Vanishing Funds | WIRED

Send me a DM here (it doesn't let me respond), OR email me: imagineabetterworld2020@gmail.comThis is the 19th episode feature of the CKLN Mind Control Radio Series that will be airing on all my channels. These lectures, interviews, and presentations are some of the most important documentations on mind control that you will find. This series is extremely difficult to find online and has stood the test of time since 1997 when it aired on CKLN Radio. I will be airing this series over the next couple months for 'Movie Night'. If you listen to this entire series, it'll tremendously help your understanding of MK ULTRA and trauma-based mind control. You will hear from renowned experts, advocates, educators, therapists, survivors, whistleblowers, and researchers who helped pave the way for where we are today. -----------------------------------------------------------------------Fritz Springmeier - The Illuminati & Mind Control SlaveryWe are going to be talking to Fritz Springmeier and Cisco Wheeler, co-authors of the "Illuminati Formula Used to Create an Undetectable Total Mind Control Slave" and "Deeper Insights", books about trauma based conditioning mind control. Fritz is a researcher about the Illuminati and minister to mind control victims. Cisco Wheeler says she is from a generational Illuminati family and that trauma-based mind control was perpetrated against her from birth. We will hear the interview with Cisco in a couple of weeks, and today we are going to hear an interview with Fritz Springmeier. Fritz talks about the Illuminati families and how they have used mind control to consolidate their power throughout history. -----------------------------------------------------------------------Wayne Morris and the International Connection Radio Show are proud to deliver the entire nine-month series in this rare exclusive format. (International Connection 2003)The Mind Control Radio Series, a series on Canadian involvement in U.S. CIA and military mind control programs and the links to ritual abuse.International Connection Host Wayne Morris interviewed survivors, therapists, researchers, and writers regarding unethical mind control experiments carried out by Canada and the United States on Toronto radio station CKLN-FM 88.1 Sunday mornings at 9:30 AM."Mind Control Radio Series" focused on different issues of military and government use of mind control with a focus on the Canadian involvement in the experimental programs including:- The documented history of CIA/military mind control programs including the funding of projects at Canadian institutes across the country (Including the Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal).- The military and intelligence uses of mind control including using the child victims for sexual blackmail, message delivery, information stealing, coercion and assassination.- The use of Multiple Personality Disorder for mind control programming and the links to the MPD effects of ritual abuse, sexual abuse and severe trauma-------------------------------------------------CONNECT WITH EMMA / THE IMAGINATION:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@imaginationpodcastofficialRumble: https://rumble.com/c/TheImaginationPodcastEMAIL: imagineabetterworld2020@gmail.com OR standbysurvivors@protonmail.comMy Substack: https://emmakatherine.substack.com/BUY ME A COFFEE: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theimaginationVENMO: @emmapreneurCASHAPP: $EmmaKathSupport the show

Jyoti Bansal is the co-founder and CEO of Harness, the software delivery platform used by thousands of engineering teams, and previously founded AppDynamics, which he led from inception to a multibillion-dollar acquisition by Cisco. In this episode, Jyoti unpacks what it really takes to move from mid-market to enterprise, why he thinks in terms of “product-market-sales fit,” and how he structures Harness as a collection of “startups within a startup” to launch multiple “best-of-breed” products. In today's episode, we discuss: Why companies get stuck in the mid-market and struggle to move up into enterprise Why Jyoti deliberately lost Netflix as their customer The difference between product-market-sales fit, and product-market-fit How to build a scalable, capacity-driven go-to-market machine (instead of chasing deals) Diagnosing whether you have a product problem or a distribution problem How to hire and evaluate your first head of sales and top sales leaders Why Jyoti sold AppDynamics three days before IPO The “binary differentiator” rule for launching new products into crowded markets Why Harness runs 16 product lines under one roof Where to find Jyoti: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jyotibansal/ Twitter/X: https://x.com/jyotibansalsf Where to find Brett: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson Where to find First Round Capital: Website: https://firstround.com/ First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast References: Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/ AppDynamics: https://www.appdynamics.com/ Barclays: https://home.barclays/ BIG Labs: https://www.biglabs.com/ Carlos Delatorre: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cadelatorre/ Charles Schwab: https://www.schwab.com/ Cisco: https://www.cisco.com/ Citi: https://www.citi.com/ Cloudability: https://www.apptio.com/products/cloudability/ Datadog: https://www.datadoghq.com/ Dynatrace: https://www.dynatrace.com/ Harness: https://www.harness.io/ Jeff Bezos: https://x.com/JeffBezos Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/ Nasdaq: https://www.nasdaq.com/ Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/ New Relic: https://newrelic.com/ Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ Splunk: https://www.splunk.com/ Traceable: https://www.traceable.ai/ Unusual Ventures: https://www.unusual.vc/ VMware: https://www.vmware.com/ Timestamps: (01:48) Why do companies get stuck in the mid-market? (05:09) Designing a product for enterprise and mid-market (07:19) Why Jyoti lost Netflix as a customer - on purpose (10:18) Becoming a scalable GTM organization (12:32) The real signs of product-market fit (14:04) Have you delivered the value? (15:46) How to hire your first sales team (19:59) The four signs of excellent sales leaders (23:16) How to interview a sales leader (27:51) Where Jyoti developed his commercial taste (29:37) Why early founders need to learn sales (32:02) How AppDynamics began (36:36) Why Jyoti sold three days pre-IPO (41:55) What does a healthy board look like? (44:23) How Jyoti perceives competition (46:18) Why you need a binary differentiator (49:53) How to launch multiple products (52:00) “We need to be best of breed” (57:38) Why PMs are like mini-entrepreneurs (1:00:20) The startup within a startup (1:02:45) A culture of continuous improvement

In this episode, we speak with Dan Williams, Partner at Delta-v Capital, an investment firm focused on growth-stage software and technology services businesses. Founded in 2009, Delta-v Capital has provided flexible growth capital solutions to innovative companies across infrastructure software, cloud services, CxO software, and vertical software sectors for more than a decade. The firm manages over $1.3 billion in assets and maintains offices in Denver, CO, and Dallas, TX. Dan leads Delta-v's infrastructure software practice, focusing on cybersecurity, AI, and DevOps. He has led investments in companies including Arctic Wolf, Claroty, Corelight, Teamworks, CloudBees, LogRocket, and You.com, with successful exits such as Socrata and Venafi. Before joining Delta-v, Dan held product, engineering, and corporate development roles at Cisco and worked in the buyout group at American Capital. He holds a BS in computer science from MIT and an MBA with honors as a Palmer Scholar from the Wharton School. Dan was recently recognized as a Top Software Investor of 2025 by GrowthCap. I am your host, RJ Lumba. We hope you enjoy the show. If you like the episode, click to follow.  

In this episode of OnBase, Paul Gibson talks with Tejal Patel about why ABM often falls short in large enterprises and how companies can fix it. Tejal shares how her B2C background shaped her customer-centric approach and explains the key issues she sees inside big tech—misalignment, data quality gaps, siloed teams, and overreliance on ABM as a standalone strategy.She contrasts this with the agility of smaller organizations and outlines practical ways to improve targeting, use intent data, strengthen sales–marketing alignment, and unify brand and demand. This conversation offers clear, actionable advice for anyone trying to make ABM work at scale.Key TakeawaysABM is a tactic, not a standalone strategyTejal argues that ABM only works when paired with brand, awareness, nurture, and customer-centric messaging. Without broader demand creation, ABM becomes narrow and ineffective.Sales and marketing alignment remains the biggest barrierLarge enterprises struggle with global vs. regional disconnects, mismatched KPIs, and long internal approval cycles, slowing execution and creating misfire between strategy and action. Smaller companies excel because they have fewer layers, faster decision-making, and shared prioritization.Data quality is the silent killer of ABMMessy CRM data, fragmented systems, mismatched account naming, and inconsistent scoring models undermine targeting, personalization, and sales handoff. Clean data and agreed lead quality criteria must come first.Intent data only works when paired with first-party signalsGreat ABM prioritizes first-party data, then layers on external intent. Messaging should be mapped to where accounts are in their journey, not just industry segmentation. Audience clusters can be built based on behaviors, not just firmographics.Brand and demand must run in parallelBrand builds trust with the 90% who aren't yet buying; demand captures the 10% who are. Both motions must reinforce each other with consistent messaging across all touchpoints, internal and external.Simplification accelerates performanceTejal shares examples where hundreds of micro-campaigns were consolidated into fewer, audience-grouped programs, leading to clearer measurement, stronger engagement, and faster pipeline.AI will finally unlock true personalization at scale, but only with clean inputsAI can accelerate content, sales enablement, and buying-group messaging, but only when built on a foundation of strategy, quality data, and customer-centric principles. Otherwise, AI simply amplifies the noise.Quotes“Smaller companies succeed because they're aligned, agile, and closer to the spirit of ABM.”Tech recommendationsMiroChatGPTCanvaResource recommendationsThe Rundown AI newsletterLisa Adams (LinkedIn) – insights on AI and modern marketing org designHarvard Business ReviewShout-outsJuskiran Sond, Senior Global Digital ABM Marketing Manager at Riverbed TechnologySuyasha Kale, Senior Paid Social Advertising Manager - Global at TeamViewerBrett Rieser, EMEA & LATAM Growth Marketing, Senior Manager at Palo Alto NetworksAbout the GuestTejal Patel has 25+ years experience in marketing transformation, strategic planning, organisational design & change management. She has held senior leadership roles at Cisco, Microsoft & Nokia. She specializes in creating practical yet ambitious strategies that deliver tangible success. She is skilled at building and retaining high-performing teams. Known as a turnaround expert, Tejal combines strategic vision with hands-on execution and inspires a culture of collaboration and empowerment.⁠Connect with Tejal⁠.

Cisco's channel partner ecosystem has undergone a profound transformation following a series of announcements at its 2025 Partner Summit in San Diego. The core focus of said announcements is enabling partners in an era of artificial intelligence (AI) via edge computing and Splunk. This significant shift is driven by new AI and edge offerings (Cisco Unified Edge and Cisco IQ), which promise to provide partners with fast-tracked time to market for next-generation, Cisco-powered solutions. This move is a seismic change to how partners operate, shifting the focus from traditional hardware sales to integrated, outcome-focused solutions with AI at the center of it all. The networking giant further backed the evolution with substantial commitments in marketing spend and major investments in partner education and enablement to build expertise in AI and security. All this is set to be formalized in the upcoming Cisco 360 Partner Program, launching in 2026. We sat down with Technology Reseller News Senior Technology Reporter Moshe Beauford, who offered his expert perspective on the Cisco partner news.

This week on Own It we're talking to Meryl Draper from Quirk Creative. She is truly global, leading a firm that has offices in New York, Guadalajara, and Paris, where she is based now.  Meryl spent time at iconic agencies and with impressive brands through the years including Ogilvy & Mather, MSL Group, Cisco, Blackboard, IBM and more. After co-founding Quirk Creative in 2015, she has guided the agency to Adweek's Fastest Growing companies list. She's also been recognized on AdWeek's Creative 100, and The Drum's 50 under 30.   She is impressive. So is her firm. And we loved her perspective on the industry and how we can help produce more women-led agencies … and women owned agencies … as we all continue to grow.  You can find links to Meryl Draper's LinkedIn Profile and Quirk Creative's agency website in our show notes at untilyouownit.com.  If you're enjoying Own It, please find it on your favorite podcast app and drop us a rating and review. Those help more people discover the show and join our community.  Also, if you're a female or non-binary agency owner, or you want to own an agency someday, join our growing community at that same address … untilyouownit.com.

Microsoft warns of potential Windows 10 update failure China-backed hackers launch first large-scale autonomous AI cyberattack Feds fumbled Cisco patches requirements, says CISA Huge thanks to our episode sponsor, KnowBe4 Your email gateway isn't catching everything — and cybercriminals know it. That's why there's KnowBe4's Cloud Email Security platform. It's not just another filter—it's a dynamic, AI-powered layer of defense that detects and stops advanced threats before they reach your users' inbox. Request a demo of KnowBe4's Cloud Email Security at knowbe4.com or visit them this week at Microsoft Ignite booth #5523. Find the stories behind the headlines at CISOseries.com.

Google taking on SMS Scams, iPhones could make wallets obsolete, Something new in my task bar….blue dot, New HP Laptop with Spam Pop-Ups, OpenDNS Instructions missing from Cisco! Russian Robot face-plants, Checkout.com hacked and not paying the Ransom, Did my system update on its own?

Operation Endgame expands global takedowns. The U.S. is creating a Scam Center Strike Force. Microsoft rolls out its delayed “Prevent screen capture” feature for Teams. Proton Pass patches a clickjacking flaw. Researchers uncover previously undisclosed zero-day flaws in both Citrix and Cisco Identity Services Engine. Android-based digital picture frames contain multiple critical vulnerabilities. Lumma Stealer rebounds after last month's doxxing campaign. Our guest is Garrett Hoffman, Senior Manager of Cloud Security Engineering from Adobe, talking about achieving cloud security at scale. X marks the spot… where your passkey stops working.  Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our daily intelligence roundup, Daily Briefing, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow CyberWire Daily on LinkedIn. CyberWire Guest On our Industry Voices segment, we are joined by Garrett Hoffman, Senior Manager of Cloud Security Engineering from Adobe, talking about achieving cloud security at scale. You can hear the full conversation with Garrett here. Selected Reading End of the game for cybercrime infrastructure: 1025 servers taken down - Operation Endgame's latest phase targeted the infostealer Rhadamanthys, Remote Access Trojan VenomRAT, and the botnet Elysium (Europol) US announces ‘strike force' to counter Southeast Asian cyber scams, sanctions Myanmar armed group (The Record) Microsoft rolls out screen capture prevention for Teams users (Bleeping Computer) Proton Pass patches DOM-based clickjacking zero-day vulnerability (Cyberinsider) Amazon discovers APT exploiting Cisco and Citrix zero-days (AWS Security Blog) CISA warns feds to fully patch actively exploited Cisco flaws (Bleeping Computer) Popular Android-based photo frames download malware on boot (Bleeping Computer) Increase in Lumma Stealer Activity Coincides with Use of Adaptive Browser Fingerprinting Tactics (Trend Micro) Elon Musk's X botched its security key switchover, locking users out (TechCrunch) Share your feedback. What do you think about CyberWire Daily? Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey. Thank you for helping us continue to improve our show. Want to hear your company in the show? N2K CyberWire helps you reach the industry's most influential leaders and operators, while building visibility, authority, and connectivity across the cybersecurity community. Learn more at sponsor.thecyberwire.com. The CyberWire is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

OWASP Top 10 2025 Release Candidate OWASP published a release candidate for the 2025 version of its Top 10 list https://owasp.org/Top10/2025/0x00_2025-Introduction/ Citrix/Cisco Exploitation Details Amazon detailed how Citrix and Cisco vulnerabilities were used by advanced actors to upload webshells https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/amazon-discovers-apt-exploiting-cisco-and-citrix-zero-days/ Testing Quantum Readyness A website tests your services for post-quantum computing-resistant cryptographic algorithms https://qcready.com/

Carl Quintanilla, Jim Cramer and David Faber led off the show with the end of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history — 43 days — after President Trump signed into law a funding bill approved by both houses of Congress. Disney shares take a hit as a Q4 revenue miss overshadows an earnings beat. Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins joined the program to discuss how AI fueled the company's better-than-expected earnings and upbeat guidance. In a CNBC Exclusive, legendary media mogul John Malone spoke to David about the potential sale of Warner Bros. Discovery. Also in focus: Quantum computing stocks under pressure, Dow 48,000 and beyond, Sources tell David that Elon Musk's xAI raised $15 billion in its latest funding round.Squawk on the Street Disclaimer Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What does it really take to build an AI-ready network in 2025? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Vikas Butaney from Cisco and Ali Tehrani from Presidio to unpack the biggest announcements from Cisco's Partner Summit and discuss how their collaboration is helping enterprises modernise networks for the AI era. Together, we explore how businesses can move faster, strengthen security, and simplify operations while adapting to a world of continuous data flow and intelligent automation. Vikas shares how Cisco's strategy is built around three customer imperatives: AI ready data centers, future proof workplaces, and digital resilience. He talks about how Cisco is weaving these priorities into new innovations such as secure routers with five times the throughput, Wi Fi 7 access points, and unified dashboards that bring Catalyst Center and Meraki together for a single view of the network. He also introduces AI Canvas, a multiplayer workspace that allows NetOps and SecOps teams to collaborate in real time, showing what it looks like when AI becomes part of the operational fabric rather than an add on. Ali joins the conversation with the partner's perspective, explaining how Presidio brings Cisco's architecture to life through the last mile of execution. He describes how the Cisco Unified Branch initiative uses AI workflows and branches as code to deliver zero touch rollout across thousands of sites. By combining automation, golden configuration templates, and telemetry driven SLAs, Presidio helps customers reduce deployment times from weeks to minutes while maintaining consistent performance and security. Throughout our discussion, we compare AI for networking, where AI helps to run and optimise the network, with networking for AI, which provides the infrastructure to power high volume AI workloads. We talk about how Cisco is building security directly into the network with Access Manager, simplifying IoT segmentation, and preparing for a post quantum world. This episode offers a clear, inside look at how Cisco and Presidio are shaping the next generation of secure, intelligent networks. So, how ready is your organisation for this new era of AI driven connectivity?   You said: Please also insert these links Press Release: Cisco Supercharges its Secure Enterprise Network Architecture for the AI Era Blog: Unlocking the AI Era: How Cisco is Delivering on its Vision for a Secure, Simplified, and Scalable Network Blog: From Fragmented to Future-ready with Unified Branch: Powering IT in the AI Era   ChatGPT said: What does it really take to build an AI ready network in 2025? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Vikas Butaney from Cisco and Ali Tehrani from Presidio to unpack the biggest announcements from Cisco's Partner Summit and discuss how their collaboration is helping enterprises modernise networks for the AI era. Together, we explore how businesses can move faster, strengthen security, and simplify operations while adapting to a world of continuous data flow and intelligent automation. Vikas shares how Cisco's strategy is built around three customer imperatives: AI ready data centers, future proof workplaces, and digital resilience. He talks about how Cisco is weaving these priorities into new innovations such as secure routers with five times the throughput, Wi Fi 7 access points, and unified dashboards that bring Catalyst Center and Meraki together for a single view of the network. He also introduces AI Canvas, a multiplayer workspace that allows NetOps and SecOps teams to collaborate in real time, showing what it looks like when AI becomes part of the operational fabric rather than an add on. Ali joins the conversation with the partner's perspective, explaining how Presidio brings Cisco's architecture to life through the last mile of execution. He describes how the Cisco Unified Branch initiative uses AI workflows and branches as code to deliver zero touch rollout across thousands of sites. By combining automation, golden configuration templates, and telemetry driven SLAs, Presidio helps customers reduce deployment times from weeks to minutes while maintaining consistent performance and security. Throughout our discussion, we compare AI for networking, where AI helps to run and optimise the network, with networking for AI, which provides the infrastructure to power high volume AI workloads. We talk about how Cisco is building security directly into the network with Access Manager, simplifying IoT segmentation, and preparing for a post quantum world. If you want to learn more about Cisco's announcements and vision for the AI era, check out these resources: Cisco Supercharges its Secure Enterprise Network Architecture for the AI Era Unlocking the AI Era: How Cisco is Delivering on its Vision for a Secure, Simplified, and Scalable Network From Fragmented to Future Ready with Unified Branch: Powering IT in the AI Era This episode offers a clear, inside look at how Cisco and Presidio are shaping the next generation of secure, intelligent networks. So, how ready is your organisation for this new era of AI driven connectivity?   Tech Talks Daily is Sponsored by NordLayer: Get the exclusive Black Friday offer: 28% off NordLayer yearly plans with the coupon code: techdaily-28. Valid until December 10th, 2025. Try it risk-free with a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Send us a textFormer Army veteran and cybersecurity strategist Nia Luckey joins Joey Pinz Conversations live at Cyber Bay 2025 to explore how calm, creativity, and courage intersect in today's fast-moving digital world.From 13 years in the U.S. Army to leading major security operations for Cisco, JSOC, and AT&T, Nia reveals how adaptability, humility, and trust fuel progress in both tech and life. She reflects on her TEDx Sugar Creek journey, turning raw burnout into a message that now inspires thousands.We dive into:1️⃣ How her military mindset evolved into collaborative cybersecurity leadership2️⃣ Why AI and quantum bring both opportunity and risk3️⃣ The life lessons behind her motto — “Choose your hard.”Nia reminds us that real success starts with stillness, service, and consistent action — whether hiking mountain peaks or leading global security teams.