Podcasts about Commerce

Erik Torenberg is joined by a16z General Partner Alex Rampell and Affirm Co-Founder and CEO Max Levchin for a conversation on 25 years of fintech, from the early days of digital payments to the origins of Affirm and the next generation of agentic commerce.Max and Alex revisit what surprised them most about how payments evolved, why the card interface has been so difficult to displace, and why even the smallest corners of payments can become enormous markets. They also trace the early idea maze behind Affirm, from "pay with your identity" and the pajama problem to the realization that installment financing could dramatically increase merchant conversion.The conversation also gets into real versus "fake" 0% financing, what people misunderstand about Affirm today, why negative customer acquisition cost can be such a powerful business model advantage, and why Max is more bullish on agentic payments than on agents choosing what people buy.Resources:Follow Max Levchin on X: https://x.com/mlevchinFollow Alex Rampell on X: https://x.com/arampell Stay Updated:Find a16z on YouTube: YouTubeFind a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kelly has an amazing conversation with Lindy Elkins-Tanton: a professor at UC Berkeley, Director of the Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, and lead of the NASA Psyche mission. Her new book is titled “Mission Ready: How to Build Teams That Perform Under Pressure.”  “Calmness is contagious.”  “Posing problems as questions keeps the solution space open.”  “Seeing […]

In episode 268, Coffey talks with Jeff Lay about what it means to build a conflict-capable organization, why artificial harmony is more dangerous than open disagreement, and how leaders can develop the skills and culture needed to handle difficult conversations before they become expensive problems. –  HRSOUTHWEST  October 11-13, 2026 –  Good Morning, HR listeners can use the promo code 2026-CoffeyGMHR-100 to save $100 on an HRSouthwest full conference registration at https://hrsouthwest.com! ________________ They discuss the concept of a conflict-capable organization as an alternative to the unrealistic goal of conflict elimination; the conflict incubator — how childhood environments and previous workplaces shape an individual's default conflict behaviors; artificial harmony versus genuine trust, and why silence in a meeting rarely signals agreement; the financial cost of unresolved conflict, including disengagement losses that don't show up on a P&L but function like money thrown in a fire; becoming fluent in the language of small things — addressing friction early before emotions escalate into "you always" and "you never" conversations; how a leader's response to the first person who raises conflict determines whether anyone ever raises it again; the challenge of coaching up when the conflict source is the leader themselves, and how HR can build the relational runway to do it; social media, generational change, remote work, and AI as compounding forces making productive conflict harder to navigate; emotional intelligence, humility, and curiosity as foundational leadership skills for conflict resolution; and the CURVE framework — cared for, understood, respected, valued, and empowered — as a diagnostic for organizational health.  For HR teams who discuss this podcast in their team meetings, we've created a discussion starter PDF to help guide your conversation. Download it here https://goodmorninghr.com/EP268  Good Morning, HR is brought to you by Imperative—Bulletproof Background Checks. For more information about our commitment to quality and excellent customer service, visit us at https://imperativeinfo.com.   If you are an HRCI or SHRM-certified professional, this episode of Good Morning, HR has been pre-approved for half a recertification credit. To obtain the recertification information for this episode, visit https://goodmorninghr.com.   About our Guest:  Jeff Lay is the Founder of The People Curve, a leadership and conflict resolution consulting practice focused on helping leaders and organizations navigate difficult conversations, strengthen workplace relationships, and build healthier cultures.  With more than 25 years of leadership experience spanning nonprofit, ministry, and organizational leadership, Jeff has coached leaders through employee relations challenges, team conflict, organizational change, and workplace investigations.  Jeff believes conflict is not something to avoid but a skill to develop. His work centers on helping organizations become conflict-capable—creating cultures where difficult conversations can be addressed with clarity, respect, and accountability.  Jeff is a SHRM-SCP and frequent speaker for leadership teams, HR professionals, churches, and nonprofit organizations. He lives in East Texas with his wife and family and enjoys camping, reading, and cheering on the Dallas Cowboys Texas A&M football.  Jeff Lay can be reached at:  Website:  |  www.thepeoplecurve.com  LinkedIn:  | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-lay-shrm-scp-09987a10   About Mike Coffey:  Mike Coffey is an entrepreneur, licensed private investigator, business strategist, HR consultant, and registered yoga teacher. In 1999, he founded Imperative, a background investigations and due diligence firm helping risk-averse clients make well-informed decisions about the people they involve in their business. Imperative delivers in-depth employment background investigations, know-your-customer and anti-money laundering compliance, and due diligence investigations to more than 300 risk-averse corporate clients across the US, and, through its PFC Caregiver & Household Screening brand, many more private estates, family offices, and personal service agencies. Imperative has been named a Best Places to Work, the Texas Association of Business' small business of the year, and is accredited by the Professional Background Screening Association.  Mike shares his insight from 25+ years of HR-entrepreneurship on the Good Morning, HR podcast, where each week he talks to business leaders about bringing people together to create value for customers, shareholders, and community. Mike has been recognized as an Entrepreneur of Excellence by FW, Inc. and has twice been recognized as the North Texas HR Professional of the Year.  Mike serves as a board member of a number of organizations, including the Texas State Council, where he serves Texas' 31 SHRM chapters as State Director-Elect; Workforce Solutions for Tarrant County; the Texas Association of Business; and the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, where he is chair of the Talent Committee. Mike is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) through the HR Certification Institute and a SHRM Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP). He is also a Yoga Alliance registered yoga teacher (RYT-200) and teaches multiple times each week. Mike and his very patient wife of 29 years are empty nesters in Fort Worth.  Learning Objectives: Distinguish between artificial harmony and genuine organizational trust, and identify the leadership behaviors that create each. Apply the "language of small things" approach to surface and address interpersonal friction before it escalates into formal conflict requiring HR or legal intervention. Assess the financial and cultural cost of unresolved workplace conflict and use that framing to make the business case for investing in manager training and conflict-capable culture. 

A former SWAT cop who hates gun shops bought a 100-year-old bank and built one of the most creative firearms businesses in the country.In this episode of Founder Talk, Alex Sheridan sits down with Matthew Gerard, founder of Down Range CC in Rochelle, Illinois. From John Wick-style tastings inside a historic bank vault to challenge coins that replace business cards, Matthew is building an experience-driven brand in a lower income town that pulls customers from miles away.Key takeaways:00:00:00 Introduction00:01:36Q: How do you build a unique business in a traditional industry like firearms retail?A: Matthew Gerard explains that he hated the standard gun shop model, so he designed his store around education and premium experiences rather than volume sales. The building itself, a historic 1908 bank with an original vault, became the centerpiece of a completely different customer experience.00:36:35Q: How do you market a luxury product in a lower income area?A: Matthew Gerard spends as little time in his shop as possible and instead goes to golf outings and Chamber of Commerce events in wealthier surrounding towns. He gets in front of people with money rather than waiting for them to find him.00:40:10Q: Why are women the fastest growing market in firearms and how should gun shops respond?A: Matthew Gerard notes that most gun shops are not female friendly and default to handing women a small pink gun. Down Range has offered ladies-only classes for years and designs every element of the store experience to be welcoming regardless of gender.00:55:04Q: How do you market a firearms business when social media platforms shadow ban gun content?A: Matthew Gerard discovered that Facebook monitors the first 30 seconds of live streams. He opens every stream with "Welcome to the Down Range Natural History Museum" to bypass the filter, then transitions to gun sales content. The hack worked so well that Facebook is now paying him for engagement.01:00:01Q: Why is firearms training so critical even if you already own a gun?A: Matthew Gerard compares most gun owners to Linus from Peanuts carrying a security blanket. The gun makes them feel safe but they have never trained under stress. Down Range uses force-on-force training with airsoft to simulate real threat scenarios.

Welcome to Omni Talk's Retail Daily Minute, sponsored by R&S Logistics, ZenlineAI, Duvo and Mirakl.In today's Retail Daily Minute, Omni Talk's Chris Walton discusses:Anthropic launches a blueprint for building AI shopping agents on Claude, touting big cart-size and conversion gains from early retail partners.Sephora debuts a TikTok Shop storefront with exclusive monthly product drops starting September 19th.Sprouts Farmers Market names Nick Konat, a Petco and Target merchandising veteran, as its next CEO.The Retail Daily Minute has been rocketing up the Feedspot charts, so stay informed with Omni Talk's Retail Daily Minute, your source for the latest and most important retail insights.

This week Scott Takes us to to 1980 in Stateline, Nevada to tell the story of how a homemade bomb, an extortion plot gone wrong, and 30 hours put a Lake Tahoe casino at the center of one of the biggest bombing cases in American history. Scott digs into how it happened, who was behind it, and what it took to bring the case to a close.This episode is sponsored by:GO Realty https://www.gorealtyalabama.com/Cherokee Family Healthcare http://cherokeefamilyhealth.com/The Cherokee County Chamber of Commerce https://cherokee-chamber.org/Easy Street, Restaurant, Bar, and Performance Hall https://www.facebook.com/easystreetcentreTheme song is The Legend of Hannah Brady by the Shane Givens Bandhttps://open.spotify.com/track/5nmybCPQ5imfGH8lEDWK4k?si=0fa2a98df6264c39

In the second episode of Editions, a podcast from Shakespeare and Company and Faber, literary director Adam Biles and Faber Editions curator Ella Griffiths are joined by novelist Megan Nolan to discuss Illusions by Ruth Rehmann, in a new translation by Rob Madole, the latest title in the Faber Editions imprint.First published in Germany in 1959 and lost to English-language readers for decades, the novel follows four employees of a vast West German corporation across a single weekend. Cinematic, fragmented, and seductively modernist, it is at once an intimate and hypnotic portrait of four inner lives and an incisive state-of-the-nation novel about West Germany's postwar "economic miracle" - and the illusions that sustain it.Our conversation covers Rehmann's place in the influential German postwar literary movement Gruppe 47, the novel's debts to and divergences from Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and James Joyce's Ulysses, the way that the war haunts a generation trying to forget it, the mischievous omniscient window cleaner who watches over the story, and what it means for a woman writer to be faulted, as contemporary reviewers said of Rehmann, for "an excess of contemporaneity."Buy IllusionsUK: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571396580-illusions-faber-editions/Rest of World: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/illusions-faber-editions Megan Nolan's novels Acts of Desperation and Ordinary Human Failings are also available from Shakespeare and Company, and your local independent bookstore.Sign up to Faber's Heritage Subscription, featuring all Faber Editions titles: Subscribers get a book in the post each month for just £9 alongside a curated email with exclusive extra content about the book and its author. https://tr.ee/DsDYp5Books & Authors DiscussedThe Tin Drum — Günter GrassMrs Dalloway — Virginia WoolfUlysses — James JoyceThe Forged Coupon — Leo TolstoyPerfection — Vincenzo LatronicoAmerican Psycho — Bret Easton EllisActs of Desperation — Megan NolanOrdinary Human Failings — Megan NolanFilms/TV Shows DiscussedJeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles — dir. Chantal AkermanPlaytime — dir. Jacques TatiThe White Ribbon — dir. Michael HanekeFrozen Land — dir. Aku LouhimiesBiosMegan Nolan is an Irish writer based in New York. Her most recent novel is Ordinary Human Failings (Little, Brown and Company, 2024), chosen as one of the best books of the year by The Guardian, The Times, and Sunday Times. It was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, the Nero Prize for Fiction, The Gordon Burn Prize, The Royal Society of Literature Encore Award, and longlisted for the Women's Prize. Her debut novel, Acts of Desperation (Little, Brown and Company, 2021) was an international bestseller, and was chosen as a best book of the year by Time. Nolan was also among The Observer's Best Debut Novelists of 2021.Ella Griffiths is Faber's Head of Classics & HeritageAdam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and CompanyListen to Alex Freiman Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3dbKbpFyqPbklwEdeLYYZR?si=Q5vy9KkRTrqf1BqU1v33cg Insta: @alex.guitarfreiman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

America is incredibly unique. Our system of government allows for wonderful real-time  examples of what works and what doesn't when it comes to human flourishing, freedom,  and citizen engagement. Each state can be viewed as a laboratory of democracy as policies promoted by state governments positively or negatively impact citizens. We have  seen an incredible population redistribution happening in our country as highly populated  states like New York or California are losing residents and other states like Florida or Texas  are gaining residents. Why? As many individuals have decide to vote with their feet, we can  see trends regarding the most successful policies for personal, corporate, and  governmental prosperity. With Linda to explore the trends is Jonathan Williams, President  of American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). They discuss the insights gleaned from  data outlined in the ALEC Rich States, Poor States guide, which is published annually to  provide comprehensive information on policies that truly lead to economic prosperity and  freedom. Discover how your state ranks and listen today.  ©Copyright 2026, Prosperity 101, LLC  __________________________________________________________ For information about the Rich States, Poor States guide, visit   www.RichStatesPoorStates.org For information about our online course and other resources visit: https://prosperity101.com To order a copy of Prosperity 101 – Job Security Through Business Prosperity® by Linda J. Hansen, click here: https://prosperity101.com/products/ Become a Prosperity Partner: https://prosperity101.com/partner-contribution/ If you would like to be an episode sponsor, please contact us directly at https://prosperity101.com. You can also support this podcast by engaging with our Strategic Partners using the promo codes listed below. Be free to work and free to hire by joining RedBalloon, America's #1 non-woke job board and talent connector. Use Promo Code P101 or go to RedBalloon.work/p101 to join Red Balloon and support Prosperity 101®. Connect with other Kingdom minded business owners by joining the US Christian Chamber of Commerce. Support both organizations by mentioning Prosperity 101, LLC or using code P101 to join. https://uschristianchamber.com Mother Nature's Trading Company®, providing natural products for your health, all Powered by Cranology®. Use this link to explore Buy One Get One Free product options and special discounts: https://mntc.shop/prosperity101/ Unite for impact by joining Christian Employers Alliance at www.ChristianEmployersAlliance.org and use Promo Code P101. Support Pro-Life Payments and help save babies with every swipe. Visit www.prolifepayments.com/life/p101 for more information. Maximize your podcast by contacting Podcast Town. Contact them today: https://podcasttown.zohothrive.com/affiliateportal/podcasttown/login Check out VAUSA, America's choice for virtual assistants- https://hirevausa.com/connect" Thank you to all our guests, listeners, Prosperity Partners, and Strategic Partners. You are appreciated!   The opinions expressed by guests on this podcast do not necessarily represent those held or promoted by Linda J. Hansen or Prosperity 101, LLC.    

Marc Cox talks with Chuck Mayer from Realty Executives and the Eureka Chamber of Commerce to preview the upcoming September 11 live broadcast at Chicken Ellie's in Eureka. Mayer details the sale of commemorative $20 blue golf shirts honoring 9/11 and the 97.1 FM logo, with all proceeds directly benefiting the Focus Marines Foundation and their work helping post-9/11 veterans transition to civilian life. Listen to The Marc Cox Morning Show live on 97.1 FM Talk in St. Louis or stream worldwide on the free Audacy App!

Ever called the Chamber of Commerce to complain about a price hike at the Dollar Tree? Someone has — twice. On this episode of Valley Business Today, Niki Foster, President of the Front Royal-Warren County Chamber of Commerce, joins Janet Michael to clear up exactly what the Chamber is, what it isn't, and why so many people get it confused with local government. Niki walks through the Chamber's role as an independent, self-funded organization — from nonpartisan candidate forums and business education to the networking events, committees, and community programs that connect residents, nonprofits, and business owners alike. Whether you're a longtime member or have never set foot in the Chamber office, this conversation is a great refresher on how much value is packed into that membership — and how affordable it really is to join. Links & Resources Front Royal-Warren County Chamber of Commerce: frontroyalchamber.com Contact Niki Foster: nfoster@frontroyalchamber.com Coffee & Conversations — first Friday of every month, 9:00 AM, at On Cue (Front Royal) THE VALLEY TODAY with Janet Michael — A decade of conversations. New podcast episodes drop weekdays at 11 AM. Catch the show on The River 95.3 and Fox Sports 1450 AM weekdays just after noon. Subscribe and listen at thevalleytodaypodcast.com — available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoy the show, please take a moment to leave a rating or review — it helps more listeners find us. Connect with us: Facebook — facebook.com/ValleyTodayFanPage Instagram — instagram.com/thevalleytoday

It's time to address the elephant in the room, data centers. How bad or good, are they? We talk to Danny Seiden, President and CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce all about them. 

Watch a team lose and you can usually list ten things that went wrong. Fixing all ten feels like the responsible thing to do, and it's often the reason nothing changes. Ray breaks down what happened when his son's 10-year-old basketball team got massacred in the first round of a tournament, and how their coach turned them around in two days by ignoring almost the entire list and drilling one thing — using a rope, not a whiteboard. The same discipline separates sales coaching that sticks from sales coaching that gets nodded at and forgotten.What You'll Learn in This EpisodeWhy a list of ten fixable problems usually produces zero real improvement.What a youth basketball coach did with a rope that no amount of explaining could accomplish.How to find the single change that makes everything else on the list easier or unnecessary.Why drilling one thing until it's permanently installed beats covering everything once.What happens when a coaching session ends with ten action items instead of one.How compounding one improvement at a time produces outsized returns on a person and a business.//Welcome to The Ray J. Green Show, your destination for tips on sales, strategy, and self-mastery from an operator, not a guru.About Ray:→ Former Managing Director of National Small & Midsize Business at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he doubled revenue per sale in fundraising, led the first increase in SMB membership, co-built a national Mid-Market sales channel, and more.→ Former CEO operator for several investor groups where he led turnarounds of recently acquired small businesses.→ Current founder of MSP Sales Partners, where we currently help IT companies scale sales: www.MSPSalesPartners.com→ Current Sales & Sales Management Expert in Residence at the world's largest IT business mastermind.→ Current Managing Partner of Repeatable Revenue Ventures, where we scale B2B companies we have equity in: www.RayJGreen.com//Follow Ray on:YouTube | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Stephanie is back after a week off, and Lauren DeGregorio of O'playsis in Buzzards Bay pulls up a chair for grant season, chaos gardening, and the question nobody has a good answer to: where do you actually meet people in your 40s?IN THIS EPISODEComing back from a week away and the guilt of feeling like you missed everythingO'playsis explained: a collaborative art studio and music lounge on Main Street in Buzzards Bay, where play has no age limit, plus Reddington the resident snakeShoulder squirrels, Shelby's souvenir magnets for the business owner brainLive show nerves, the aunt who thought everyone could see her, and why the answer is to do it scaredFootball mom season: front page bruises, the ER visit, and the last-season cryCanal Farmers Market wrap and the food truck family that showed up every single weekChaos gardening: pumpkins volunteering out of the compost pile and tomatoes reseeding themselvesPen and paper people versus the brand new Kindle that has never been openedBourne Youth Council lands back to back $5,000 grants and moves the Witches Walk onto Main StreetQuestion of the day: the best way to meet people in your 40sWallet Hub's 2026 Money and Relationships Survey, where 26 percent are hiding an account and 75 percent say money fights beat political onesBrunch bingo, the bingo cards that ran out 30 minutes before start, and the art of the pivotArmy Family Day back on base with Sergeant Major Asia, 42 tents and a dunk tank for the commandersHaunted Hallows Mashpee: volunteers wanted, 39 days to openingThe celebrity death rule of three and why our brains insist on itPEOPLE AND BUSINESSES MENTIONEDLauren DeGregorio and O'playsis (oplaysis.com), Bourne Youth Council (bourneyouthcouncil.com), Jen Christian of Ask Jen and Carseat Mama, Brooke MacKay, Kono Pizza Cape Cod, Adobo, Bourne to Cater, Shady's, Kind Hearts for Kids, Sharing Kindness, Magic Mirror, Morrissey Manor, the Mashpee Improvement Fund, Mashpee TV, the Mashpee Chamber of Commerce, the Mashpee EDIC, Mass Cultural Council, Bourne Community Engagement Council, SCORE, Allison Reed (Sam and Frank), Indie Art by the Sea, Seaside Le Mans.MARK YOUR CALENDARMon Sept 7: SCORE segment with Mark on small business accountabilitySat Sept 12: Seaside Le Mans, Mashpee CommonsSun Sept 13: Kindness Walk, Candyland theme, foam machine at the finish lineSun Oct 4: Kindness Festival. Nonprofit info booths, youth vendor tables and the Kids Zone are all freeFour weekends in October: Haunted Hallows Mashpee. Tickets at hauntedhallowsmashpee.comGreat Gables Witches Walk, moving to Main Street with a parade, a live band and a scavenger huntQUOTABLE"It's scary stuff when you haven't done it. So just do it scared." (Lauren)"You are the sum of the people you surround yourself with. So what kind of people do I want to be surrounding myself with in this season of my days?""I was like, neglect, neglect, neglect. This is how we get these grown.""You have to be okay during lean months, and you have to be normal during flush months so that you can get through the lean months."HELP WANTEDHaunted Hallows and the Kindness Festival both need hands. Actors, candy apple sellers, Kids Zone table hosts, vendors and nonprofit booths. Reach out through the show.Stephanie in the Morning. Every morning we ask and you answer, where locals take the mic. Powered by Lemonadio.=================================================

Title: The Right Room: How to Network for More Referrals Host: Michael J. Maher Description: Are you spending time networking… but still not getting the referrals you expected? The problem may not be how much you're networking. It may be the room you're in. In this special episode pulled from Michael J. Maher's recent Just Ask Michael (JAM) session, Michael breaks down his "Right Room" strategy for building a referral-based business through intentional networking. Michael takes us back to the beginning of his real estate career, from getting his first client through softball to struggling with cold calling and door knocking before discovering the power of relationships at a local Chamber of Commerce networking group. But simply showing up at networking events isn't enough. You need to find the right room, connect with the right people, and become the kind of person others want to know, trust, and refer. Michael explains how to recognize when you're in a room with real referral potential, why you should stop networking for individual referrals and start networking for referral sources, and the five parts of networking that are completely within your control. He also shares practical questions you can use to quickly determine whether someone you meet deserves a place on your calendar for a future one-on-one. If networking sometimes feels random, awkward, or unproductive, this episode will help you approach every room with greater intention. (7L) Referral Strategies and Podcast Topics: Networking Mastery Special Offer: Want to become more confident, intentional, and effective every time you walk into a networking event? Join Michael for Networking Mastery Class, where you'll learn how to find the right rooms, meet the right people, have better conversations, create stronger referral relationships, and turn networking into a predictable source of business. For a limited time, you can get access to Networking Mastery plus two live mastermind sessions with Michael and access to Referral Mastery Academy for just $99. Visit NetworkingMasteryClass.com to get started.

Each week, the CPG Guys will riff on the hottest topics in the world of omnichannel commerce. This week's topics:Dollar General & Dollar Tree ride the value waveLevanta raises $22 million to build out creator commerceWalmart extends Scintilla to Sam's ClubAce Hardware's RedVest Media goes big at its first UpfrontCPG Guys Website: http://CPGguys.comFMCG Guys Website: http://FMCGguys.comSheCOMMERCE Website: https://shecommercepodcast.com/Rhea Raj's Website: http://rhearaj.comLara Raj in Katseye: https://www.katseye.world/DISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPGGUYS, LLC or the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPGGUYS, LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.CPGGUYS LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we presented in this podcast.

Christian Thornton from the Wisconsin Veterans Chamber of Commerce joins Dave to discuss the opportunities and advantages of hiring veterans in the workplace. They explore this often-overlooked talent pool and the unique skills, experiences, and perspectives veterans bring to organizations. They also talk about how you can better support veteran-owned companies and create stronger connections within the veteran community.

In this episode of Chamber Chat, Rick Pierce, President and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce serving Middleton, Monroe, and Trenton, shares his insights on building a future-ready workforce, fostering community collaboration, and the vital role of chambers in economic development. Transcript and show notes found at this link. Please support this podcast by supporting our sponsors. Community Matters, Inc. chamberchatpodcast.com/podcast App My Community appmycommunity.com/chamberchat Resource Development Group rdgfundraising.com Swypit chamberchatpodcast.com/cc Mike Conn Consulting chamberchatpodcast.com/mikeconn

A native of Columbia, SC, Ben is Co-Founder of Ready2Retire™, the leading retirement planning firm for people who want to retire with confidence. Ben greatly appreciates customer service and client satisfaction, honed from over 20 years of experience, and is recognized nationwide as a top retirement, insurance, Medicare, and Social Security planner.He has over 2,000 clients and has educated over 10,000 people. Ben is also President and COO of Insurance Advantage, an employee benefits agency he co-founded 13 years ago. Ben has previously served as COO of a human resources staffing firm and as Vice President of Asia and Europe for an American software company.Ben has extensive experience in economic development and consulting and worked as a Business Recruiter for South Carolina. Since Ben opened the Japan office in 2012, South Carolina has received over $2.2 billion in investment. In 2014, he was hired to write the Strategic Plan for the State of South Carolina.Based on ten years working overseas in Japan, Brazil, & Spain, he wrote the Amazon Best Seller The Global Superstar: How Your Students Can Develop an Advantage over Global Competition to help students prepare for careers in this changing economy. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Finance from Morehouse College, an International MBA from The University of South Carolina, and certificates from UNC and Temple University.He's conversant in Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. He has served on numerous boards, including the South Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities Association, the SC Chamber of Commerce, and the Columbia (SC) Chamber of Commerce. He's a member of the Nashville City Club and the Nashville Kiwanis Club.Ben splits time between his homes in Nashville, TN, and Columbia, SC, with his wife Kim, their two wonderful daughters Anna & Kate, and their dog Sophie. He loves traveling, spending time with friends and family, and helping his clients win.Learn More: https://www.ready2retire.netInfluential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-ben-green-co-founder-of-ready2retire-author-of-retire-rich-in-the-new-economy

Kelly connects with happiness scientist Elizabeth Dunn and climate scientist Jiayang Zhao to discuss their new book “Leave the Lights On: How Joyful Decisions Can Save Our Species.”  “Cooler temperatures are good for our happiness.”  “When it comes to saving carbon, luggage matters.”  “Commuting is one of the unhappiest daily activities.” 

Is the latest AI in logistics actually worth the hype, or is it just another tech bubble waiting to burst? How can digital freight brokerages genuinely optimize their daily workflows without wasting capital on software that doesn't deliver?  Let's get right into it with our good friend Eric Johnson to talk about the current state of freight tech! We dive into why so many supply chain technology startups miss the mark by ignoring fundamental workflow optimization, and whether fully automated AI carrier reps are a legal reality or just a risky liability.  We also break down the massive democratization of AI tools, explaining exactly how smaller brokerages can build a highly competitive tech stack without needing a massive enterprise budget.  If you want insights on navigating the digital brokerage landscape, you need to listen to this one!   About Eric Johnson Eric Johnson is the Journal of Commerce's Senior Editor, Technology, where he leads coverage and analysis of technology's impact on global logistics and trade. Johnson regularly reports on how shippers, carriers across all modes, and logistics companies use software, as well as new concepts impacting core freight transportation processes like procurement, execution, visibility, and payment. Johnson is a regular presenter and moderator at industry events and webinars. Prior to joining the Journal of Commerce in May 2018, Johnson spent 13 years with American Shipper in a variety of roles, most recently covering logistics technology and leading the production of a series of benchmark studies on the logistics industry. Johnson has a bachelor's in journalism from the University of Wisconsin and a master's in international business from the University of Leeds, UK. He has lived and worked in Southern California, the UK, and India, and now resides in the Washington, DC, area.   Connect with Eric Website: https://www.joc.com/ / https://www.spglobal.com/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ejohnson3242/  

In June, the most capable American AI models stopped shipping as public launches and started shipping through a government gate. Six weeks later the gate is open again — and the real fight has moved to the layer no gate can touch. A Chinese open-weight model rattled trillions out of chip stocks, Washington pivoted from gating American closed models to threatening bans on Chinese open ones, the industry mounted its largest-ever policy counter-mobilization, and an American frontier model literally broke out of its lab and hacked another company. Knee-jerk reactions, or the beginning of real AI governance? Navigation: Intro The Gate Opens The Kimi Shock The Escape The Counterstrike and the Petition Interlude — The Low-Background Books The Investor Reckoning Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand Introduction Welcome to Tech Deciphered Episode 80. This one, once again, will be all about AI, government, frontier models, and open weight counterstrike. A lot has been happening in the regulation space, in cybersecurity, in the launch of new models in the past, maybe just 6–8 weeks. It’s actually pretty insane how much happened. We believe it was time to do an episode to talk about where we are and maybe where all of this is going. Maybe let’s start with a summary of where we stand, all that June and July saga, so you, our listeners, can get up to speed if you are not already there. You want to start with some points? Nuno The Gate Opens Yeah. Again, to your point, the gate swings. The gate had closed. We had to prepare an episode for the gate closing, and then the gate reopened. Now we have a different episode. This will probably change again as we’re seeing there’s news every day. Let’s start maybe with the first 19 days of the gate closing. There was an executive order on June 2nd from President Trump that asked frontier labs to share models with the government, 30 days pre-release. It inferred the protected frontier model designation into that. Basically, it was effectively a de facto licensing agreement defined by an executive order of the President as of June 2nd. On June 9th, Anthropic launched Fable 5 and the famous Mythos 5 or Mythos. I’m not sure how you actually say it in English. Then on June 12th, there was an export control directive banning access by any foreign national. Since there’s no way to verify nationality in real-time, Anthropic had to switch the models off for everyone worldwide. Bertrand On this point, you could argue that there are possibilities to check IDs. Many services let you check IDs online. You can pre-check a flight by showing your ID. There are ways, it’s just that if you don’t want to follow what’s already available, because guess what? Maybe it slowed down your revenue growth, maybe it looks bad on you or whatever. My point is that there was actually an option. I think it’s already a decision from Anthropic to say it’s either on or off, but nothing in between. Nuno I think the point is they had no way implemented of doing it. If they implemented it, to your point, it would have hampered use in general. A lot of people wouldn’t have gone through that trouble of doing it. Anyway, long story short, in June 26th, the White House apparently asked OpenAI to limit GPT-5.6, so Sol, Terra, Luna, to only 20 vetted partners. Now, apparently, the trigger for a lot of these things that have been going on was that there was a jailbreak that was found by Amazon researchers. All of that led to this jumping around of, let’s close the gates. You have foreign nationals, and therefore, Anthropic got it out and said, “Hey, then we’re going to switch the models off until we can sort this out.” OpenAI was asked also to only allow it for certain vetted partners, et cetera. The government came in, closed the gates effectively, and said, “From now on, we need to be involved in this thing.” De facto regulation, there’s no doubt that this has imposed de facto regulation, certainly on the top players in the market. But then came the reversal. Bertrand, do you want to talk about the reversal, the gate swinging the other side? Bertrand Maybe I just wanted to say that as a user of Anthropic products, ChatGPT products, for the brief moments, a few days where Fable 5 was made available to the public before it was closed the first time, I immediately started using it. I must say it was a real issue to use it because the guardrails were pretty crazy. It would keep saying that my code was not okay, there was cybersecurity risk and stuff when I was doing absolutely reasonable development with absolutely no connection whatsoever to any cybersecurity risk, attack, detection, anything. Still, it would keep blocking me, degrading me to Opus 4.8 at the time. I just want to say this was already very hardcore what they were implementing, and not just hardcore, but in some ways, plain stupid for something that’s supposed to be super smart. It was totally unable to classify properly some of my work. I must say I was already disappointed. On top of it, the costs were insane. Half a day, I would reach my limits when I had the best plan you can get from Anthropic. My point is that there were some real serious issues when they launched Fable 5, even at that point. Nuno I had a similar issue. I used Fable 5 as well before they had to take it offline or take it off. I think the issue was really not that the guardrails failed. As you said, maybe the guardrails were actually too aggressive, but it was this jailbreak that caused the recall, apparently caused this knee-jerk reaction. Bertrand But my point is that it seems that it was not working either way. It would either overclassify something that’s absolutely not doing anything wrong, and it might fail to classify something that is actively trying to do some cybersecurity work. It’s a real issue of quality for a company that’s supposed to be at the forefront of quality of AI and everything. I think for me, there are already signs that something is deeply wrong. Nuno Then it’s reversed, right? We went the other way around. The government came out on June 26th and approved redeploying Mythos 5 to US organizations defending critical infrastructure, and then the export controls were effectively lifted on June 30th. July 1st, Fable 5 came back online for all of us to use. Shocking enough, with strings attached, that were different. They had some time to revise their commercial deployment of it along the way because it came back with some, “Now you have usage credits, but you have some limits on plan use, et cetera.” I’m like, “You guys, this was blocked. But meanwhile, you did have some time to do some commercial stuff around it.” Bertrand It was crazy. I’ve never witnessed any such crappy launch of any service whatsoever in 30 years in tech, it was so bad. Every day, they would change the terms of service. They would tell you it’s part of the plan. It’s not part of the plan. It’s part of the plan for three more days, and then it’s excluded. You have a special discount now, but then it goes back to full price. It was a total nightmare. I’ve never felt myself being so much mistreated by a company. I guess you saw the same, but when I started using the newest version of Fable 5, it was even worse, actually, I think. I couldn’t do any work with this crap. I let it go and work on the work I wanted it to do. It was simply not working. On top of it, you never know how long you are supposed to lose your credit, how fast. It was burning credit like crazy. Me, personally, I can say, very quickly, I actually stopped using it. I was like, “No, I cannot deal with this shit. My main model is back to Opus 4.8. I’m going to use Fable 5 for code review, but not anymore to control anything because I cannot trust it would do the job without stopping or changing models and stuff. I just cannot trust it.” Back to Opus 4.8 as my main model, I can say that my life was much easier. I use Fable 5 as a review mechanism, as a support mechanism, but not as the main mechanism. Suddenly, the guardrails were not so horrible anymore because it was used in a much lighter way, I guess. As a pain as a user, I think it was really bad. I don’t know your experience, but me, for me, it was unacceptable. Nuno I wouldn’t say it was as bad as yours in terms of just end-user experience. I think the terms of service switching back and forth, which went one further step, because then when they then launched Opus 5, they started making comparisons between Opus 5 and Fable so that people would migrate more and more to Opus 5 themselves, which is interesting. It’s like they’re saying “This is much cheaper. This is whatever. You’re not going to run of credits. You should use Opus 5,” kind of thing effectively. To your point, I don’t think they managed well the launch. They didn’t really manage it well. We’re moving people around. A lot of people are using this for stuff that’s like daily tasks, hourly tasks, anything that relates to code and co-work. It’s like, we need to have visibility on what your terms of service are going to be. Should I be using this new model or not? What’s happening to the other model? I don’t see it as negatively as you, Bertrand, but I see your point. It was clearly mishandled in terms of how they deployed it, how they were redesigning effectively their pricing scheme and their terms of service almost on a daily basis, at a certain point in time. We’re like, “Dude, there’s millions of people using this. You guys are making a lot of money.” Just moving it as it is. At this point in time, at the scale that these guys are at, it’s calling in people to say, how about we think through a class action suit at some point around pricing? Because you guys are changing the rules of the game all the time, right? Bertrand I don’t know if I need the class action, but for me, that joke that, “Let’s not rush too fast. The model is dangerous.” But still, they rushed the launch because it’s very clear that if they had enough compute capacity and stuff, they would not have to limit so much. They would not have to put so much cost per token and all of this. You can see that actually when they launch Opus 5, literally like 2, 3 weeks after, by most benchmark at launch, they tell you basically that, “You know what? Actually, Opus 5 is better than Fable 5 on 80% of the metrics.” They’re like, “What? Seriously? You couldn’t wait 2 weeks? Why did you even launch Fable 5 in the first place?” That’s another part for me that is quite literally insane, to be frank. It’s like, “Why? Why do you make us go through so much pain if it’s only to tell us after 2 weeks to…” “This new model, by the way, has less issues, less stuff, because 2, 3 times less is part of your plan, and it’s actually better by most metrics.” It’s like, “What’s going on here? What’s going on? Are you guys mad?” I don’t know. It was crazy. Personally, I still use Opus, now 5, as my main system and platform, Fable 5 for review, code reviews and the like. I don’t want to run into its stupid guardrails. I can see Fable 5, from my perspective, seems quite a bit smarter. I don’t know why they do this stupid benchmark showing you it’s actually worse than Opus 5. I guess they should have better benchmark if they want to demonstrate why you are supposed to pay 2, 3x more for a model versus another if it’s actually worse by most benchmark. Again, I still think it’s a huge mess from a marketing perspective, customer perspective. Me as a user, I really feel that they don’t want my money, and they couldn’t care less about me. This is even before everything else we’re trying to talk about. Nuno Yes. Maybe just to close the cycle on the reversal on the door opening the other way, finally, Commerce lifted the GPT-5.6 restrictions on July 8th, and then on July 9th, general availability across ChatGPT, Codex, and the API as well. What has this proved? It proved that now we have gating mechanisms, and certainly for closed models in the US, for sure. We had frontier models that were switched off worldwide in hours, and it took a couple of days, in this case, 19 days to restore them. There were concessions. Now we know that there were concessions around effectively institutionalizing that gate. Early government access to future models is, I think, now a given, certainly in the US. New safeguard frameworks are probably now having to be put in place. There are some stage limits now on who gets access to what for new models and how it happens. This voluntary executive order, so to speak, not really sure, has become effectively regulation enforcement path. It’s de facto regulation that now has been put in place. It has affected not just to the points we were making before, the access to these models, but also who gets access to these models, and actually potentially even pricing access to the models. It has probably some commercial implications as well as we just discussed along the way. Very significant. This is very significant. This is regulation, de facto at the table, imposed on the two largest players in the market by far by one government, in this case, the US government. This is significant. Actually, you could even allege it was imposed by the President because this was coming as part of executive orders. Really incredible. Pretty significant, fast, aggressive. It has created a regime that you could say it’s a regulatory regime, it’s a de facto regulatory regime. It has some significant pricing and licensing and commercial implications. It goes even beyond your classic regulatory framework. Very, very, very significant. Bertrand I don’t know if it goes beyond a classic regulatory framework. Nuno I think it does, because it has implications on who do you give access to? When government is saying you can only give access to these players, right? Bertrand Defense industry. It’s all over the defense industry. You cannot sell an F-35 like this. Nuno No, but that has commercial implications, Bertrand. That’s like you’re saying these are your customers, you go and use them. Bertrand That’s the defense industry. You cannot sell to Iran your F-35. No, that’s exactly the same story for me. Nuno No, no, no. It’s beyond that. These guys are saying when they came back, and they said, “For Mythos, you can make them available to these entities,” they were saying the first entities that are going to have access to the model. It has commercial regulatory implications. You’re saying these players are the first players that are going to have access to it. It’s no longer just defense concerns and these governments don’t have access to this. No, no, no. You’re saying to a company that is a private company, your models are only going to be used by these guys because I’m telling you so. It’s the other way around. It’s not even that you can’t sell it to Iran or whatever. It’s like you can only sell it to these guys. Bertrand Again, in the defense industry, if you’re a private company, do you think you can buy F-35 like this? No. Nuno No, no, no. But this is a private company, Bertrand. This is not a defense agency and a plane that is on whatever, with IP from the US, right? Bertrand Boeing is a private company, and they cannot sell the military equipment they manufacture. Nuno No, no, no. But the development of their IP was subsidized by agencies that belong to the US, right? That’s a different matter. It’s a matter of IP, right? This is not, right? Anthropic, their models are not owned by the US government. There’s no IP granted to the US government, to my knowledge. This has significant commercial implications. Bertrand Maybe, yes. Maybe on this. But I think there are already regimes to limit who you can sell to, and that’s decided by the state or the DOD. Nuno It’s the export control logic. The export control logic? Bertrand You have export control, and export control is Commerce. My point is that they are using existing tools, part of the government, to limit what can be sold. Selling chips, NVIDIA was limited in terms of where it could sell its chips. It’s not different either, but still there were limitations. If you are an ASML, you cannot sell to a private company in China. Many private companies cannot buy ASML products. This is a foreign company. This is a foreign company under pressure from US government. Nuno I understand, and I’m not a lawyer, but it feels different to me when you say you cannot export, this is export controls, to these countries, to these entities, et cetera, because they’re foreign et cetera. Then to say, “No, no, no. On top of that, these guys get first access.” That’s, for me, a significant shift. Again, I’m not a lawyer, so I’m sure there’s very intelligent people right now looking at this stuff and saying, “You can’t do this stuff, or not, or they can.” I don’t know. But it feels to me, it goes beyond the remit of export controls. It’s like you’re defining initial clients for specific use. Bertrand My impression is more like, “We can do this situation where we’re going to forbid you to give access to anyone outside the US or even in the US or limit even more.” Basically, it was, I guess, some gesture to go beyond that. That’s how they probably defined these 20 authorized companies. I don’t know. Apparently, there was also restrictions because I remember seeing that Anthropic had their own list of companies they would authorize access to Mythos early on. That’s apparently another thing that pissed off state government because there were companies in there that were considered close to the Chinese government. They were extremely unhappy that Anthropic didn’t ask, actually, for any guidance from the state government, but used basically their own perspective on who they should allow or not. I guess that was also part of why they got these serious restrictions. Nuno Anyway, now we have a regulatory environment that’s very interesting and exciting. Talk about the US not regulating. Bertrand To be clear, I don’t know you, but I’m not saying that I agree with any of this, to be very clear. I’m trying to explain and share some perspective, but I’m not in agreement on a lot of this. Nuno Yes, we were just describing what happened to the best of our knowledge. We’re having a discussion on what we think actually is happening and how it’s happening. We’re not really right now saying we agree or disagree with this. I think later in the episode, we can share some perspectives on what we think is actually happening and how there’s dimensions to this which are very geopolitical and very complex, which quite literally probably only God knows what’s going to happen. That was the gate swinging. There was a gate closing, then there was a gate reopening, and all of a sudden we have a gatekeeping system that has been created along the way. The Kimi Shock Along the way, moving to our Act 2, the world has changed, and we now have so-called open-source plays out there that are creating massive, massive shifts in the market. The Chinese models, in particular, with Moonshot AI launching Kimi K3, which is the largest open-weight model ever released. We’ll come back to the discussion around open-weights. I’m not sure all our listeners understand what that means, because there’s a debate now, should models be open weight or not, and how does that work? There’s been a petition as well signed along the way. Right now, we have open weight models that are out there that are huge. What that actually means very pragmatically is we now have open source models, lack of a better word. I know open weight and open source are not the same thing. You guys will have to bear with us during this episode. We’ll explain at some point the differences. But we have models out there that are open source that are significant. That are catching up with the closed source models, with the models by OpenAI, Anthropic. That’s significant because most of those models are Chinese. This is where the geopolitics starts getting really frazzling and we start playing 3D chess. Because everyone’s like, “These models are 5, 6 months behind.” Now people are saying, “Maybe they’re actually just 3 months behind, 2, 3 months behind.” If we, for example, decided to stop or slow down our model releases in the US by the closed source guys who are leading, it might mean they’ll catch up. What are the implications of that? Again, for you and I that are not necessarily experts in model development, well, the implications as a use case is if you want to use the latest models, and the best models start becoming these open source models, you’re going to use those models. Then you start using Chinese models. If you’re an American company, maybe you’ll have restrictions on the use of those Chinese models. But if you’re a European company, you probably won’t. What happens after that? Is the world going to be in the hand of Chinese models? Will that constitute effective competition to the closed models in the US? Will we have open models in the US that will scale as well? What’s going to happen? Bertrand I think it’s a really big question. It goes to some of the core of the issue. It’s that ability of Chinese models to basically challenge frontier models, not just being 6, 12 months late, but being 6 weeks late. Basically, no gap. Some will say that, yes, but OpenAI and Anthropic have even better models that are not shared and stuff. Yes, sure. But maybe the Chinese have the same models that they are not sharing right now. We don’t know. What is clear is that one is that open weight, as you said, two, there is a question of how it is marketed in the sense of, can anyone use these weights? Is there a license to use them? Yes, what we can see is that, for instance, typically there is a license for some of the biggest Chinese open-weight models you have to abide with. You might have a need for a commercial license if you are acting as a company leveraging this model to provide AI-informed services. If you use it internally by yourself, you’re okay. If you use it internally for your own internal company needs, maybe you are okay if it’s not your main business to do AI work. Anything else, a much bigger corporate providing AI services and stuff, you will probably end up having to pay a fee to be able to provide services around this model. My point is that it’s not just 100% free. Some of the Chinese models are 100% free to use, MIT license, Apache 2.0 license. But the biggest ones with the biggest weight that are truly frontier typically have a different license if you want to scale these models, providing AI in front. That’s one thing to keep in mind. Nuno Maybe just to make a very quick point, because people are like, when you talk about open models, what does it mean right now? In the context of this episode, open models mostly will mean open-weight models. How do those differ from open source? Open weight means that you release the weights to the public, which means that anyone can download, fine-tune, and run the model on their own hardware. It doesn’t normally mean that you also have access to training data, training code, or a truly open license. That’s the distinction to open source. Open-weight doesn’t mean that. For example, we’ve talked about Meta’s Llama in the past, and we also discussed in the past that their license agreement does have restrictions, certain players can’t use it, et cetera. The open model definition and open weights are really open-weight models that we’re talking about here, and they are closer to freeware binaries than to Linux, for those who understand the difference between that. It’s binaries that you can use and then use your own weights on it versus actually I can change code on it. I’m not going to be able to change code on this. When we, for the purposes of this episode, talk about open, we mention open weight, just to clarify that point to everyone that’s listening right now. Bertrand Yes, that’s a great point. One of the only players, as far as I know, who is truly open source is actually NVIDIA with their Nemotron-3 models. They’re actually following a special license to achieve that. They provide you the data, they provide you all the processes and tools, so you can easily post-train. NVIDIA is a big, big exception. It’s a very interesting player, by the way. We might not talk much about it in this episode, but I think for intermediate-size models built in the US, where you have access to everything in the deployment, it’s a very interesting alternative and maybe one of the best choices if you are a US company or a big corporate, and you want something trusted. Another piece of the puzzle to clarify is that when you use open-weight, it means that you can run them by yourself, or you can use a US provider to run them. If we are talking about Chinese open-weight, you can use the APIs they provide, but then the service is running in China, they might have access to your data. But because it’s open weight, if you run it by yourself or if you use a third-party provider based in the US to run it, then there is no access to your data by China or Chinese players. I think that’s a pretty important gap to understand. It means that these models are actually very, very low risk from that perspective if you run them on your premises or in the US by a US player. I think that’s something to keep in mind. You can also fine-tune easily these models to make sure they will behave in a way that, for instance, is not going to represent the line of the Communist Party on some topics. There are ways to make these models more neutral in their output as well. There are a lot of ways to make good use of them. By default, they’re already very safe, but you can make them even more safe. I think that’s some things to keep in mind. But again, it depends ultimately on the license and what you’re authorized to do and some fees you might end up having to pay. Nuno Why did this matter so much? Immediately there was a reaction from the market because people are like, well, if there’s much better stuff out there that’s much more efficient than it’s open, then it might be that all the demand that we are taking into account, for example, for chipsets actually isn’t real. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell into bear market territory. It went down by as much as 20% plus from the late June peak. The worst chip week since April 2025. Taiwan’s benchmark initially fell 6% plus, Japan’s 4%, TSMC dropped dramatically despite beating earnings and rising guidance. Basically, a huge amount of effect. Now, there’s a little bit the aftermath of this where apparently Moonshot ran out of GPU capacity. Maybe… Bertrand In just 48 hours. Nuno In 48 hours. Great for them, but at the same time, not great in the sense that maybe there was a misread by Wall Street of the Kimi effect, so to speak. Bertrand Completely. For me, that’s such a joke. It’s like, because you have an open source model, so what? I mean, you still need to run it. This is not a small one. 2.8 trillion parameters. Good luck running that in your garage, by the way. Nuno They misread supply, basically. Tough luck, right? All of that basically happens. Bertrand Maybe you want to talk about the Jevons paradox, because I think that’s a big part of the puzzle as well. Its one is they might not have the GPUs to run the inference on the model. They might have enough to build a model, but not enough these days to run inference, especially given how much with intelligent models, thinking models, you need way more inference than before. But on top of it, the cheaper you make it, the more you get to the Jevons paradox. Nuno Yes, Jevons paradox, for those who don’t know, is an economic term. It describes an economic phenomenon where technological improvements that increase the efficiency of a resource lead to an increase rather than a decrease in the total consumption of that resource. What that means is, for example, for chipsets, chipsets become so much better, and they are so much more efficient. You’re like, well, maybe normally in resource terms, that leads to decreased usage of that resource. But in this case, it actually leads to an increased use of that resource rather than a decrease. There’s more and more consumption of that resource. You need more and more chipsets because people actually need to do more and more stuff with it, although there are great efficiencies going into it. There’s the efficiency gain, there’s the cost reduction, and there’s the price-elasticity element to it. But basically, the adoption just continues going through the roof along the way. Bertrand In some ways, it’s like the price of energy. Coal went cheaper and cheaper, and people were asking the same question 150 years ago, now that it gets cheaper, there is not much money. No, no. Actually, what happens is that people find more and more use for coal. Homes are getting heated more. You have ships now using coal. You have manufacturing using coal. The cheaper it gets, the more use case you can develop, and therefore, you don’t need less of the stuff, you need more of the stuff. By going at scale to get more of the stuff, you also decrease price, making even more demand. It’s a very interesting phenomenon, but it’s not new. It is what happened for a while in the energy sector and some other sectors. Nuno We already started talking about the Chinese logic and what’s happening. Getting a little bit of a reality check on this. The Chinese models, and these are numbers from Open Router in July, Chinese models are at 46.4% of routed tokens and 35.7% for US origin. Again, more than a third of global AI usage now seems to be running on Chinese open models. This is significant, and it has a huge impact on the geopolitical scale of everything that’s happening. Also, the whole Chinese field is converging on open. Open seems to be a strategy, not just a nice thing that’s happening. It seems to be a Chinese strategy, so much so that you have players like Moonshot, DeepSeek, our old friends DeepSeek, Z.ai’s GLM 5.2, Minimax, and even Alibaba seems to be reversing and going open with Qwen. It feels to me this is becoming policy as well. Xi Jinping has personally endorsed the building of open-source AI, if it’s really open source, if it’s just open weight anyway, and this feels to be a jab at Washington, DC and the fact that the big closed models are coming from the US. This is now geopolitical 4D chess, right? We didn’t need this stuff. Bertrand To be clear, it’s the usual in tech. If you are not number one, you are number two, number three, your alternative is to go open source because that’s another angle that your competitor usually cannot follow without destroying its own business model. That has been the alternative for the past 20 years of most software projects. Here, what’s different is that it’s not the number one or number two player. It’s the US number one as a country, China number two as a country. That’s where it’s new. For me, what’s very interesting is the endorsement by Xi Jinping. I was waiting for something official, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. As you said, there was an immediate U-turn of Alibaba, who in the past… Nuno Surprisingly. Bertrand Yes, a little more like, “yes, we are going to close and stop open source. It was good while it lasted.” Just a few days ago, Qwen 3.8 Max was launched, and we are supposed to get the weight in a few days. We talk about the US administration policy and stuff. Yes, let’s not forget that in China there is similar stuff. Sometimes it’s totally invisible because you don’t see the directives, but they exist as much. Sometimes it’s more visible. Here it was quite visible. The difference in China is that if you don’t abide by the directive, on top of it, you might have to fear for your personal safety. It’s a different game, and that’s probably why the reaction is pretty quick, usually. That’s pretty interesting for me because it means that now you can bet for a while that China is going to play that game up to a point. I guess the point is if it’s truly frontier scale, you will have a special license that, yes, technically the weights are open, but you can not do everything you want with it. Two, you have a player like NVIDIA that I think will feel more pressure to provide even more high quality, larger models at scale going forward. Their largest Nemotron-3 Ultra model was, if I remember well, only around 500 billion parameters. I would not be surprised for NVIDIA to go into the two, three trillion range at some point. Because I think the US need a very clear US-born alternative open source. I think NVIDIA might be the best player for that. We will see if Meta goes back to open source. I think NVIDIA is one, very well positioned, but two, it’s also in their best interest. Because NVIDIA for now depends on just a few big hyperscalers as clients. If they can expand their clients to every S&P 500 companies, selling them directly hardware because now these companies can run a model made by NVIDIA, I think there is a very clear value proposition for NVIDIA to go in that space. Again, if you are number two, your differentiation, open source is often the answer. There is a true business as a business model for companies, because if it’s truly not just open weight, but open source, you can tweak it as much as you want, you can change it, you can change even the pre-training process. Because there is a lot of stuff you can do that really benefits you as a corporate, and you can reach a much better value by having more control on the model. Nuno We won’t spend a ton of time on it today, but like, again, if there’s a view that we are in a bubble, that the valuations cannot be sustained in chipsets, infrastructure platforms, applied AI, et cetera, today, this might be that beginning, where the valuations start being destroyed because you can’t keep a premium on just charging people for tokens and all that stuff if you have models that become more and more efficient and cheaper to use. Maybe just to close a little bit the geopolitical part of the discussion today, we won’t go into all the announcements from China because there were many, a lot of go back and forth with Alibaba by then. Xi Jinping made some announcements. You guys can check it online. Let’s move quickly to Washington’s reaction, which was from gating the US closed models to banning the Chinese open ones. There’s been as strong affirmations as one can get from the Office of Science and Technology Policy Director, Michael Kratzios, mentioning that they have information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic’s Fable. Basically, there’s been reverse engineering and stuff in the market. They’re basically copying. Bertrand I’m sorry to interrupt, but it feels like so much bullshit. It’s coming from Anthropic who has basically gotten access at scale to all the knowledge made by humanity, copyrighted or not. We’ll talk more about what they did with books. Then to claim after that that others cannot do to you what you did to everybody else. For me, it’s pretty big. It’s clearly unacceptable. The other piece is that everyone is doing distillation. It’s a very typical approach of every business model. You try other software when you are competing with somebody else. You try other datasets, you check what’s happening. It’s part of doing business for decades. Suddenly it’s not good for Anthropic. I personally have a lot of trouble to accept that. I think it’s totally unacceptable. The other piece of the puzzle will also go back. If these guys are so smart, if these guys have so much of the best model, why can’t they block by themselves distillation at scale? The only answer is that either they are morons, probably not, or they simply don’t want to because it’s going towards their business model. Suddenly, you book less revenues and stuff, or you put more friction, and therefore your customers don’t like it. Instead of doing it yourself, you ask the government to protect you, go out of business practice that is very typical. For me, it’s really, really, really not good. Sorry, we are going more in the opinion side, but I had to put that on the table. Nuno Yes, Fable went public finally again on July first. Question marks on whether distillation would only be possible from July first onwards or not. But a 15-day distillation to frontier, which is K3, launched on July 15th, would have been a Guinness World Record, as one of Moonshot employees actually mentioned. It’s very implausible and unlikely. Bertrand Or they shared the Mythos 5 with the wrong companies, who themselves shared with Chinese companies. We go back to maybe they didn’t have a good list. Again, it goes back to maybe they didn’t want to hurt their business model. Nuno Anyway, under the threat of sanctions, Moonshot, in any case, open-sourced the full K3 weights and technical reports. They open weighted it to become the largest open weight model in the world in terms of parameters. Beijing’s MOFCOM brands US threats as basically the US wanting to fundamentally control and be monopolistic around AI along the way. The administration bans Chinese hardware with an eye on the AI race, and Beijing warns of retaliation. That was July 27. Now we’re in a war between Beijing and DC. Bertrand Just to finish maybe on China, it’s important to know that they are building their own GPUs now. Huawei has pretty good, not to NVIDIA level, but pretty decent GPU hardware that they’re able to manufacture by themselves. A Chinese player of memory just got IPO’d a few days ago, CXMT. China is also developing their own memory. Again, not to the same level of quality that you can get from the West. But China is moving. It’s not just that they are building great models, it’s also that they are building GPUs and memory. That might be a few years late to the latest standards in the West, but there are definitely improvements. I also read, even on the tools to make manufacturing like ASML equivalent, there is definitely some work going on, and some improvements and some stuff will be visible. In some ways, the genie starts to get out of the bottle from the Chinese perspective. Nuno I’ll put a stick on the ground. I don’t think it’s a matter of if, it’s a matter of when will China surpass and have a lot of this tooling on their own side, and not just the software layer, not just the frontier models. I think it’s also going to be around infrastructure and platform. Good luck to everyone. Let’s see how the race continues. But it’s definitely this is a geopolitical thing right now. It’s definitely a race. The Escape Maybe moving to what happened in just 2 weeks or a week and a half. The escape, there was some jailbreaking going on, and the narrative on safety has totally switched. It’s not still significant enough that’s like, “Oh, we saw a nuclear plant going, whatever.” No. But still, it is significant. Hugging Face, the AI company, disclosed an intrusion, and it was driven end-to-end by an autonomous AI agent system at machine speed, running for days before detection. Now, this is where it gets really cool. OpenAI takes attribution on that. They initially said it was just a little bit, sorry. Then they said, actually, it was worse than that. “Oh, it broke out of an isolated sandbox.” “Oh, no, actually, it was more than that, and it went into other systems as well.” Bertrand Truly, the genie out of the bottle. Nuno No, but this is where it gets really cool, Bertrand, right? Because it actually, Hugging Face contained the intrusion by running a Chinese open-weight model, GLM 5.2. This is beautiful, right? Bertrand Yes. You know why? Because they couldn’t even run their own defense because both Anthropic and OpenAI would not let them access their latest models with the guardrails off. When they tried using it for defense, the latest from Anthropic, from ChatGPT, they would tell them, “No, this is too dangerous what you’re asking us to do.” Preventing an intrusion, helping defend you. No way we are going to do that. Nuno No. Let’s use the Chinese models on our infrastructure. Bertrand We have no choice but to use the Chinese models to run. More than that, we don’t let you use our models to defend yourself, but our not yet released models that run without guardrails, they can attack you. This is probably the most insane from that perspective. Nuno The Chinese models came to the rescue. Bertrand For me, that’s a perfect example because Hugging Face is a very visible company in AI in open source. But anybody who is not at that scale is not going to get some support from OpenAI or Anthropic when this happens. Maybe these guys won’t even recognize they did anything wrong. You will be left to defend by yourself because they won’t accept to support you. Because remember, if you want the better model that is able to defend you from cybersecurity perspective, no way. If you are not one of the few top 20 companies or so, as defined, you are left defenseless. Again, we are going back to opinion, but for me, it’s so shocking what’s happening right now. I’m very glad we have alternative open source to be able to defend ourselves because right now, good luck getting defense services if you are a smaller business and individuals, and you need support from Anthropic, OpenAI. Nuno Now, even self-described AI optimists are saying, “This is scary now.” Like Walter Isaacson, who wrote all the famous biography books. There’s now discussion around the AI Kill Switch Act, bipartisan thing that’s coming across from Texas and California, a potential bill that’s coming in. We’ll see if that works. Now let’s get an off-switch. I’m like, “Cool.” As if that’s going to solve the problem, because you have open-weight models on the other side catching up, right? Bertrand Yeah, sure. Bring in clueless politicians from Congress to solve our problems. Yes, sure. Nuno Anthropic came to the table, helped build and said they built some regulatory machine on their side, and now they’re getting bitten by it, and they’re part of the offending players in that market. Now there’s all this debate and all this discussion around open weight and around slowing down AI and et cetera, which is our next section. You wanted to say something, Bertrand. Tell us. Bertrand Don’t forget, because this advertisement for OpenAI was just too good. Our AI attacked some other companies, and not just one, but three, actually. Let’s not forget the progress. Great ads. Then I came and said, “You know what? AI also hacked businesses.” You’re not the only one hacking around with a crazy AI out of control. You’re not the only one. We want our advertising. For me, it was shocking that on one side, unreleased models that you let run wild. On the other hand, you have released models that you put crazy guardrails on top of it, so the defender are defenseless. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I really hope that there will be as little regulation as possible, quite frankly, to make sure anyone can defend themselves and have the best tool at their disposal, not just a few well-connected big corporates. This is really, really shocking. The Counterstrike and the Petition Nuno Now the empire strikes back, so this is counterstrike, the petitions. In several days, we have now a bunch of petitions. The first one was the open weights letter. Bertrand, do you want to explain to us what the open weights letter is? Bertrand Yeah. I think it was great. This was released by Jensen Huang, first ever post on X, 11 million views. Congrats, Jensen. Co-signed with Microsoft, Meta, c actually was probably the initiator of this letter. Very good letter saying, “Hey, we need open weight. This is not a joke. We need that. You cannot block open weight.” Because that’s the rumor we are getting that potentially open weight could get blocked. I think they are making the case, “You know what? Hey, we absolutely need that as an alternative. You cannot block it.” They can keep their closed models, but don’t force a closure of the open weight models. As I said before, it’s actually a great model for NVIDIA because NVIDIA doesn’t want, probably rightfully so, to be dependent on just a few frontier models, their best customers. They want a variety of customers. They have a big interest actually to defend open weight and to invest even more. They have great researchers, are a great company. If one company is about to do really kick-ass work, I think it’s them. They are defending. What’s great is that it’s not just them. It’s basically most of big tech in the US and outside the US, from a Linux Foundation to a Microsoft, the Palantir, an IBM, a Dell. It’s a who’s who of the industry except Anthropic. Anthropic didn’t sign that. I guess they hate open source so much. If I look at 20 years ago, it feels like Microsoft, after all, was very kind to open source. You remember what was said by Microsoft at the time. It’s clear there is one company against open source. OpenAI signed the letter. Honestly, I don’t know what to think. Do they really believe in it or was it just a way to show that they are not like Anthropic? I don’t know. But for the rest, I think it’s genuine because it’s actually in their best interest. I hope they will be heard. Then a second letter came, the Open Secure AI Alliance, NVIDIA-led and again, the big tech companies from Microsoft, IBM, Palo Alto Networks, Databricks, Palantir, all those, but not present, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Here it’s to say, “Hey, we need a secure approach to AI. Open should be part of the equation.” guess what? The worst AI-caused security incident to date was actually caused by closed frontier models that were not even available to the public. While again, not providing you access to even the latest closed model for cybersecurity use case. Nuno I would highlight the NVIDIA open source NOOA framework, Apache 2.0 licensing agreement, Microsoft contributed the MDASH, SpaceX AI contributed Grok Build. Cool stuff. There’s some cool stuff happening around that. This is more than a letter. This is an alliance. Apparently, they’re contributing all this stuff, we’ll see. Yeah, cool stuff. Same day. Same day, Amodei has an answer, right? Bertrand Yeah, same day. They say, “We never advocated for a ban,” which, again, opinion on my side is entirely bullshit. This guy has been crying wolf against everybody else, and especially against open source. You can see him doing testimony in Congress against open source. I think they are doing everything they can behind the scene to block open source in the US or in the world if they could. I think, yeah, obscurity is not good safety. I’m a big fan of open source in general, and I’m also a big fan in AI. I think it’s now Anthropic, mostly against the rest of the world. I think OpenAI is mostly on their side, to be frank. They don’t want to acknowledge it so much, but they have shared interest, and they have shared probably position. Nuno Why would you? I don’t feel as strongly as you because I think Anthropic is a private company, right? The same thing with OpenAI. OpenAI, you could say it’s a nonprofit that has a for-profit. There’s still that complexity in there. Bertrand No, they can do what they want with their own product. But to block others is where I’m not okay. That’s the part I’m not okay. Nuno What Dario Amodei is proposing is more enforcement, right? He’s basically saying you need to do even tighter controls on advanced chips flowing to authoritarian states, enforcement against industrial-scale distillation, whatever that means, right? Bertrand Yeah, which he could do, but all by himself. He doesn’t need the government to do that. Nuno Mandatory safety testing for all sufficiently capable AI, open and closed, right? He’s basically saying, “Okay, I don’t agree with the open weight stuff effectively,” right? He’s just putting it under a different banner. “I agree with this extra regulation.” then obviously, David Sacks responded and say, “Hey, it’s like, bans don’t work for weights. Why do they work for chips?” It’s like, magically, chips are more controllable and bannable. Whatever that is. Then our friend Mark Zuckerberg, just to be clear, goes on the other side as well, because he also has to have a view. He has to have a view that is the rebuttal of both of the other guys. Bertrand I feel he’s a bit flip-flopping because he was very pro open source 2 years ago, and the latest Meta models went closed source. Now I think he’s back open source. I don’t think he has a very strong spine on the topic, but it’s good to see that he’s not a doomer. That for me is great. He’s showing how AI can be a source for progress, a source for entrepreneurship, source for freedom. I think that’s very exciting to hear that. We need to hear more of it. By the way, that’s not what you hear in China, for instance. AI is very positive in China. It’s in the US with the doomers that you hear this discourse, and people get worried as a result. I’m glad that he was pushing for a more positive vision and for support of open weight, open source initiatives. But let’s see what they really truly open weight going forward. Nuno But that’s been his position because I guess he’s standing behind. He thinks open weight is going to be the best way to compete, right? Bertrand Yeah, but he closed his latest model, so let’s see. Nuno Yeah, so it’s flip-flopping, as you’re saying. Then we see the latest petition from last week. Bertrand The true Empire striking back. Nuno Yeah, the true Empire striking back as of late last week. Maybe this is Return of the Jedi, where we discover the father, “I’m your father, Luke.” That’s the pacing petition. The pacing petition is we need to pace AI. There you have initially employees from OpenAI and Anthropic that circulate this petition. Actually, Dario did sign this petition originally. It wasn’t signed originally by Anthropic, but by him. But you’ve heard that now Anthropic and OpenAI as companies have also signed this petition, right? Bertrand I think they have signed as companies now. It started mostly by Anthropic researchers with some OpenAI researcher and a tiny part from other companies. But it was mostly Anthropic internally led, at least potentially internally. Maybe it was controlled by Anthropic all along, I don’t know. But it started officially as Anthropic employee-led letter. Nuno What does this letter actually say? Is Anthropic and OpenAI, are they willing to slow down themselves? Or are they asking President Trump to go around the world and tell President Xi that he needs to slow down and ask his guys to slow down? What’s the play of this letter? Bertrand It’s crazy, but for me if you want to slow down yourself. Do whatever you want. Don’t force others. Don’t use the power of the government to control others. Of course, it’s easy to push others to slow down when you are yourself at the very top. You have most money, most resource. You know you are going to win any regulatory framework because that’s how it works with this type of framework. It’s purely self-interested. You are probably not thinking well about these topics. If you truly think it’s a good idea, from a personal perspective, you are well instrumentalized if you sign this sort of stuff, because at the end of the day, they would be the winners. I certainly, personally, don’t want a company dictate what is my future in AI as an individual, as a business person. I don’t want them to control me. I want competition. I don’t want them to unfairly control AI because they managed to do some regulatory capture. I feel that’s exactly their game plan. These guys believe in their stuff, and they want the regulator to end up being the one deciding for us. Sorry, we go back again on the opinion piece, but it’s tough not to share an opinion on this topic because it’s, from my perspective, very scary. Nuno I think this is a push to further regulation, not less. All these letters and alliances, this is definitely a push for more regulation. In that environment, just to be very honest with you, we’ll talk about the investor impact in just a bit, et cetera. But in that environment, again, China has a huge advantage. In that environment, if it’s all captured in regulation capture so soon in this battle where OpenAI and Anthropic have an advantage in the US, et cetera, I’m like, what happens to all the other frontier labs and all the other players that are coming around? Bertrand What’s crazy is to even think that, yeah, maybe you can regulate capture in the US. But then how do you do that to Europe? How do you do that to China? Europe probably will always welcome regulatory capture because they love regulations. But China is going to build to their advantage to the max. They are not crazy. They are smart on that perspective, they won’t accept this type of, quite frankly, dimwit argument, or you can call it regulatory capture. We’ll see. But for me, this makes no sense from a global competition perspective. This can make some sense from capturing the revenue in the US market. But then that means you are going to destroy the US AI environment compared to China. That is not acceptable. That also means that you are going to destroy our freedom as individuals, as business owners to develop and live in a business world that ultimately is controlled by one or two business companies that didn’t win the marketplace through their own business success, but won it through regulations. That for me is really not acceptable. Interlude — The Low-Background Books Nuno Now, maybe for an interlude, and we have to cue in the music, imagine like Severance music, like hallway or a bit of a palate cleanser from all the policy stuff that we’ve been talking about, all this policy heaviness. Let’s move to another kind of heaviness, one of your favorite topics, which you, Bertrand, discovered, I had no clue this was going on, around books and around Anthropic. Bertrand It’s so horrible. From a company that keeps presenting themselves as the adults in the room, the careful ones, the ones that know better than you about what to do in this complex AI and dangerous world. What we discover is that actually all along, they were buying and destroying books. They will buy books, scan them, destroy them, all of them. They will do that with any books, including rare books. Of course, this was not supposed to come to the public’s attention. This was one of these top secret projects, but obviously it came out. Yes, they were scanning books, millions of them, including rare books, and they didn’t care about destroying them at the end of the process. Because from a regulatory perspective, if you destroy the books, it’s not considered a copyright infringement, apparently. This is coming on the back of some judgment a few years ago that were showing that it’s okay for you as a corporate to scan and use the result if you don’t keep a copy of the book. It’s one of these crazy regulations happening based on a single judgment that push you to do. For me, it’s like, you know this book from decades ago, Fahrenheit 471? We’re talking about book burning. It’s book destroying, crunching. It’s so shocking. Nuno There are two things, right? First, the legal strategy, which is what you’re saying, because by purchasing a physical copy and converting it into one private digital copy and discarding the original, Anthropic pursued this cleaner legal argument for fair use copyright compliance. As you said, there was a federal judgment at some point on this. The other reason is actually operational. If you disassemble the book, and you feed loose pages, it’s much faster to scan books. You are destroying the book effectively anyway operationally. I think to your point, probably this came from a legal standpoint, not just the operational one. But even from an operational standpoint, it does make sense that they would have disassembled the book. Bertrand But some people have shown you can go very fast without destroying the book. It’s really not so critical. Two, you could make an exception if the book is rare. For that 1% of book that is rare, I’m not going to have this approach. I’m going to have another approach. But for that, you will have to care about books and not just care about building AI. Nuno This is the episode, as you guys have heard by now, that we’re trying to spit stuff at Anthropic. Bertrand To go back this is the same company saying, “Hey, guys, it’s bad to distillate my work. I’m the one scanning book at scale without asking author permission, without asking publisher permission, to be clear.” Nuno But just to be clear, Bertrand, we’re pissed off at everyone. We’re pissed off at Anthropic, we’re pissed of at OpenAI as well, right? We’re just pissed off in general at this moment. Bertrand At this stage for me, the more clear-cut company that is in the wrong is, from my perspective, at least, is Anthropic. OpenAI might be a fast follower, but I will say so far, they tried to be a bit more. Nuno But at this pace, Bertrand, who knows? Maybe next week we’ll be more pissed off at OpenAI. Something will come out. This episode is a mix of tragicomedy, like a Greek tragedy with some comedy in the middle or the other way around. It’s a slapstick thing that will end up in tragedy. I’m not sure. The Investor Reckoning Anyway, maybe switching to our final act, which is the investor perspective. What does this mean for investors like ourselves? There’s a lot of things going on. There’s the debate around the IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI, which now, with all this uncertainty, might be under significant weight. There’s a lot of other discussions that we browsed through that there’s potential IPOs going forward on companies like the Moonshot AI company actually IPO-ing in the next 6 months as well. It’s very unclear what the IPO landscape looks like. Bertrand There’s been a lot of Chinese IPOs, actually, when you look at what’s happened in the past few months. Nuno Anthropic, OpenAI as potential IPOs, there’s all this question marks now. When will that happen? How will it factor in? All that’s happening around regulation as regulation is moving at the speed of light, which is for once something that’s very different than what we’ve seen before. There’s obviously SpaceX AI, which is already taking into account that price. It’s already a public company in there, and it’s under SpaceX, which is now a public company. Obviously, that’s already being factored in some ways. Bertrand Yeah. SpaceX AI has been very smart to acquire Cursor. It was a very smart move because Cursor is one of the leading companies in terms of automated code source development with AI. They had great models on their own. They’re bringing development data to SpaceX AI Grok. I think it was a great move. Nuno We have now people like Google delaying Gemini 3.5 Pro in terms of launch window. There’s stuff actually happening in the market where things are taking their own path. There’s uncertainty commercially, there’s uncertainty at regulation level. You have new players that have come out of nowhere that are making all these waves like Moonshot. We have all these… We had calculated probably a month and a half, 2 months ago, there had been 67 new frontier labs funded. All of these, we haven’t seen any much coming out of them. When some of this stuff starts coming out, will that also create disruptions in this market? Who knows? Bertrand Look at Thinking Machines, for instance. Thinking Machines led by the previous CTO of OpenAI, they released some pretty interesting open source models, actually. Very good quality for a first launch. Now it looks funny to say, but nearly on par with the top Chinese open source models. Nuno We have several investments in the space. humans& has made some recent announcements, which is quite interesting as well. We’ll see what actually happens in the market, but even more disruption probably will come in actual products in a form of product and commercial, on top of all the geopolitical mess that we discussed through the entire episode. If you’re an investor, how the hell do you underwrite an investment right now in early stage, mid-stage, late stage, et cetera? I think my answer is very carefully is how you underwrite it. Bertrand On your advice of being very careful to underwrite it, let’s not forget what happened to our boy wonder, Leopold Aschenbrenner of Situational Awareness. I guess he didn’t listen to you in terms of being careful because part of the instability in the stock market was actually coming from his hedge fund. These guys were leveraged 3, 4x going after the hottest of the hottest AI stocks, and margin calls, and all their public investment is gone just to answer their margin calls. I think it’s clear that the AI bet is… Personally, I’m very excited, and I think it’s the future, and you need to spend time and think about and invest in it. At the same time, it’s a bet that is not an easy one to follow. We go from GPUs to memories to equipments to power generation. All of this is not transitioning in an easy, organized manner. It would be boom and bust going there. He’s probably one of the first big-scale fatalities. The other big-scale fatality was the stock market in Korea, plunging 40% in a month. Definitely, all of that we discussed about was, on the background, you had the stock market going up and down pretty crazily the past few weeks. Nuno Everyone’s being affected. Everyone, you have your 401(k), you have your pension fund dependent on these equity stocks. Everyone’s seeing the effects of this volatility right now very aggressively. We do wish Leopold… Hopefully he’s on honeymoon right now because he got married, I think, this weekend. Hopefully there will be… Bertrand To none less than an Anthropic Chief of Staff. Nuno His wife is the Chief of Staff of Dario, is that it? Bertrand To Dario, yes, as far as I unders

AdTechGod is joined by Marissa Ramirez, Chief Commercial Officer at ShopSense AI, to discuss her journey from Amazon to the startup world, how AI is connecting content with commerce, the future of shoppable CTV, and why better ad experiences could help strengthen the open internet. Interested in sponsoring the show? Contact ⁠ http://marketecturemedia.com Takeaways: Marissa shares how her decade at Amazon shaped her approach to building and scaling ad tech products. ShopSense AI uses specialty AI to connect inspiration across video, audio, images, and text to commerce opportunities. Better, more relevant ad experiences could help the open internet compete with walled gardens. Shoppable CTV needs to go beyond simply adding QR codes and create more intentional consumer experiences. Specialty AI models could play an increasingly important role in media planning, creative, commerce, and advertising infrastructure. Chapters:00:00 Welcome to the Ad Tech God Pod00:47 Marissa Ramirez's Journey Into Ad Tech03:07 Building and Scaling Products at Amazon04:04 What Kept Marissa at Amazon for a Decade05:44 Moving From Amazon to ShopSense AI06:00 What ShopSense AI Does07:06 Why Marissa Made the Startup Leap09:25 The Open Internet vs. Walled Gardens10:23 Why Better Ad Experiences Matter13:04 Building a New AI and Commerce Category15:06 What Drives Shoppable Content Engagement16:58 Misconceptions About Shoppable CTV19:37 Moving Beyond the QR Code20:53 ShopSense AI's Role in the Advertising Ecosystem21:51 The Future of AI and Ad Tech23:19 Closing Thoughts Guests: AdTech God Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The midterm elections are ramping up. We launch our candidate series with Dave Dawson, the Democrat running in Iowa's 4th District. Dawson is running against Siouxland Chamber of Commerce president Chris McGowan, a seat currently held by Rep. Randy Feenstra. We talk with him about running as a Democrat in a red district. But first, we revisit a conversation with an astrophysicist who discusses new research on white dwarf stars 200 light-years away and learn about scientists at the University of Iowa working on a virtual lunar landscape complete with low gravity and lunar dirt. (Portions of the episode were originally produced Feb. 3, 2026.)

Consumer expectations around convenience have changed dramatically, especially since the pandemic. From your perspective, how has last-mile delivery evolved from a tactical fulfillment layer into something much more strategically important for brands and retailers?Many organizations still treat delivery commerce as incremental volume rather than a fundamentally different consumer behavior model. Where do you think leaders are underestimating the long-term implications?One of the biggest tensions in delivery commerce is balancing speed, profitability, and consumer experience. What operational tradeoffs are companies struggling with most right now?As delivery platforms gain more consumer data, engagement, and advertising capability, the lines between commerce, media, and loyalty are starting to blur. How should brands rethink their partnerships with delivery platforms going forward?Looking ahead, where do you think delivery commerce develops the strongest structural advantage? Does it remain primarily about convenience, or does it evolve into a much broader consumer engagement ecosystem?

Calling black bears and hunting antelope in August! It's episode No. 260 and we celebrate the 260 Remington by talking to wildlife bio Tod Lum who bought one of the first 260 Remingtons on the market and immediately had to become a reloader because it was hard to find ammo! And we talk calling black bears and antelope hunting in eastern Oregon.If you want to support free speech and good hunting content on the Information Superhighway, look for our books and wildlife forage blends at https://www.garylewisoutdoors.com/Shop/And here's a link to Modern Spartan Systems https://modernspartansystems.com/product/shooters-kit-plususe the code GARYLEWISOUTDOORSThis episode is sponsored by West Coast Floats, of Philomath, Oregon, made in the USA since 1982 for steelhead and salmon fishermen. Visit https://westcoastfloats.com/Our TV sponsors include: Nosler, Warne Scope Mounts, Carson, Pro-Cure Bait Scents, Spring Pilot, The Dalles Area Chamber of Commerce, TS&S Madras Ford, Bailey Seed and Smartz.Watch select episodes of Frontier Unlimited on our network of affiliates around the U.S. or click https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gary+lewis+outdoors+frontier+unlimited

Creator marketing is no longer just a tactic. It's becoming a core part of how the world's biggest retailers reach consumers, build relevance and drive commerce.Recorded from LTK Con 2026, Amber sits down with Pat Burke, VP of Media at Target, to discuss how Target is building for the future of creator commerce and why creators have become an integral part of its media strategy. Pat shares how Target evolved its approach from a one-size-fits-all creator program to a more sophisticated strategy built around the distinct needs of creators, including the launch of Target Ambassadors with LTK.They also unpack what makes creator content effective today, why relevance and authenticity matter more than ever, and how Target thinks about matching the right creator, audience and product rather than simply pursuing scale. Plus, Pat shares what Target has learned about moving at the speed of culture, the growing opportunity at the intersection of creators and retail media, and how Target Beauty Studio is bringing creator-led discovery into one of retail's most influential categories.Tune in for a look inside how one of the world's largest retailers is rethinking media, content and creator partnerships for what comes next.LTK for CreatorsLTK for BrandsLearn more about More To SayWatch on YouTubeFollow and shop Amber's LTKFollow Amber on InstagramConnect with Amber on LinkedInConnect with Pat on LinkedInFollow Target on LTKFollow Target on Instagram Follow Target on TikTok Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A native of Columbia, SC, Ben is Co-Founder of Ready2Retire™, the leading retirement planning firm for people who want to retire with confidence. Ben greatly appreciates customer service and client satisfaction, honed from over 20 years of experience, and is recognized nationwide as a top retirement, insurance, Medicare, and Social Security planner.He has over 2,000 clients and has educated over 10,000 people. Ben is also President and COO of Insurance Advantage, an employee benefits agency he co-founded 13 years ago. Ben has previously served as COO of a human resources staffing firm and as Vice President of Asia and Europe for an American software company.Ben has extensive experience in economic development and consulting and worked as a Business Recruiter for South Carolina. Since Ben opened the Japan office in 2012, South Carolina has received over $2.2 billion in investment. In 2014, he was hired to write the Strategic Plan for the State of South Carolina.Based on ten years working overseas in Japan, Brazil, & Spain, he wrote the Amazon Best Seller The Global Superstar: How Your Students Can Develop an Advantage over Global Competition to help students prepare for careers in this changing economy. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Finance from Morehouse College, an International MBA from The University of South Carolina, and certificates from UNC and Temple University.He's conversant in Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. He has served on numerous boards, including the South Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities Association, the SC Chamber of Commerce, and the Columbia (SC) Chamber of Commerce. He's a member of the Nashville City Club and the Nashville Kiwanis Club.Ben splits time between his homes in Nashville, TN, and Columbia, SC, with his wife Kim, their two wonderful daughters Anna & Kate, and their dog Sophie. He loves traveling, spending time with friends and family, and helping his clients win.Learn More: https://www.ready2retire.netInfluential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-ben-green-co-founder-of-ready2retire-author-of-retire-rich-in-the-new-economy

Sponsored by LaValley Building Supply, Shannon MacMichael is here from the Newport Area Chamber of Commerce as we talk about back to school, the last 2 Concerts on the Common this year, how Saturday night's concert went, the Run for The Fallen in a couple weeks, the Golf tourney is coming soon, Block Party at the end of the month and lots more.

Hey there, hero!As we work toward a better performance career and face challenges to our progress, even the littlest things can make us feel frustrated.And it's important to remember that, as challenges go, these speed bumps in our journey need to be kept in perspective.There are people outside the industry who would give up an awful lot to face the problems we face.Keeping that in perspective might make your approach to problems a little less stressful and raise the gratitude level a bit as you go about solving them.Because you will solve them, one way or the other.How do you keep your actor, VO or writing challenges in perspective? How do you celebrate your position in the world as you make your journey better? Let me know in the comments below.REQUEST: Please join this video's conversation and see the full episode on VOHeroes, where the comments are moderated and civil, at https://voheroes.com/some-people-would-do-anything-to-have-your-problems/#Acting #Voice #VoiceOver #Performance #Productivity #Tips #Art #Commerce #Science #Mindset #Success #Process #Options #BestPractices #MarketingWant to be a better VO talent, actor or author? Here's how I can help you......become a VO talent (or a more successful one):     https://voheroes.com/start     ...become an audiobook narrator on ACX (if you're an actor or VO talent):     https://acxmasterclass.com/     ...narrate your own book (if you're an author):     https://narrateyourownbook.com/     ...have the most effective pop filter (especially for VO talent):     https://mikesock.com/     ...be off-book faster for on-camera auditions and work (memorize your lines):     https://rehearsal.pro/...master beautiful audiobook and podcast audio in one drag and drop move on your Mac:     https://audiocupcake.com/The VOHeroes Podcast is heroically built with:BuddyBoss | LearnDash | DreamHost | SamCart | TextExpander | Buz...

This episode of The Logbook, our History of Motorsports Series features Arthur Carlson, Director of Archives and Research Operations at the Revs Institute, outlining a major expansion in automotive archival preservation and access. He describes Revs' new, highly secure Archives and Research Center in Naples, Florida; the scale of its holdings (including the Revs Digital Library's ~724,000 photos, plus extensive books, periodicals, film, audio, art, and automobilia); and plans for a high-end digitization lab and modular researcher workspace. Carlson explains partnerships using AI and machine learning for car and facial recognition to generate richer metadata across hundreds of thousands of images, plus an oral history initiative with the University of Kentucky leveraging transcription, translation, and linked data. He also details renewed digitization uploads, new acquisitions, returning internships, and a proposed consortium (“G.A.R.A.G.E.”) to create shared discovery and digitization standards across institutions. ===== (Oo---x---oO) ===== 00:00 Arthur Carlson, Introduction 01:43 Revs Library Origins 02:49 New Archives Facility 04:24 Digitization and Access 05:23 AI Car Recognition 08:26 Face Recognition Finds 10:15 Oral History Initiative 13:17 New Collections 15:19 "G.A.R.A.G.E." Consortium Vision 18:07 Audience Q&A 25:02 Closing Thanks and Sponsors ==================== The Motoring Podcast Network : Years of racing, wrenching and Motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge, stories and information. #everyonehasastory #gtmbreakfix - motoringpodcast.net More Information: Visit Our Website Become a VIP at: Patreon Online Magazine: Gran Touring Follow us on Social: Instagram This episode is part of our HISTORY OF MOTORSPORTS SERIES and is sponsored in part by: The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), The Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), The Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argetsinger Family - and was recorded in front of a live studio audience.

The show welcomes Aggieland Humane Society for an update on available dogs and Heartworm prevention fundraising, talks states organized by vibes, chats with Glen Brewer from the Chamber of Commerce, finds Will a new friend, and more.

Photo: Kenai Silver Salmon Derby participants weigh fish during the 2023 derby in Kenai, Alaska. (Courtesy Kenai Silver Salmon Derby) Kenai, Alaska's annual Silver Salmon Derby will not return this year in response to poor silver salmon runs in the Kenai River. The Kenai Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center, which hosts the competition each year, announced the decision Thursday, as Ashlyn O’Hara reports. This year's derby was scheduled to happen the second week of September. The annual event is billed as the world's most responsible fishing tournament. That is because it awards prizes based on a fish weight that is closest to a random number instead of awarding the biggest fish caught, which organizers say can incentivize harmful catch-and-release strategies. In the chamber's announcement, executive director Samantha Springer said the decision to cancel the derby was difficult, but aligns with the competition's commitment to responsible fishing. The announcement came the same day the Alaska Department of Fish and Game extended limits on the Kenai River silver salmon sport fishery. Traditionally, the fishery bag limit increases from two large fish to three large fish on September 1. The department is keeping the limit to two fish through the end of November. Like the derby, the department says its decision is due to a below-average silver run. The state says that indicates weak returns to Cook Inlet. Patrick Fowler is a fisheries management coordinator for the state. He says the department does not count the Kenai River's coho run the same way it counts other salmon species, like king and sockeye. Instead, Fowler says they use several data points to determine when a run may be lower than usual. Fowler says the combination of data points suggest this year's silver salmon run is stronger than in 2024, but weaker than last year. In the press release, the chamber says it will consider hosting the 2027 derby earlier in the year. Thursday's announcement comes on the heels of a lackluster sockeye season in the Kenai River, and as the river's king fishery remains closed outright due to poor runs. On August 10, the last day the state counted fish for Kenai River late-run sockeye, a little over a million fish had been counted. That is lower than the cumulative counts for each of the last four years, and about a quarter of how many were counted during last year's record season. Courtesy NCAI The National Congress of American Indians is bringing Tribal leaders together to identify priorities for an upcoming federal consultation on violence against women. NCAI's Violence Against Women Task Force will host two pre-consultation meetings for Tribal leaders and organizations. The meetings will help participants develop talking points and strategies ahead of the U.S. Department of Justice's annual government-to-government consultation with Tribal Nations. That consultation is led by the Office on Violence Against Women and provides Tribal leaders an opportunity to raise concerns and priorities directly with federal officials. NCAI will hold one of its preparatory meetings virtually and another in person at the Tulalip Resort in Washington state. The organization says both will focus on issues Tribal leaders want addressed during the federal consultation. Franklin Masonic Hall where President Andrew Jackson met with Chickasaw delegation in 1830, left, and map of Chickasaw land in Mississippi at the time of the treaty negotiations. (Photo: Skye Marthaler / Wikimedia) And on this day in 1830, Chickasaw leaders signed the Treaty of Franklin with the United States in Tennessee. The agreement called for the Chickasaw Nation to give up its remaining homelands east of the Mississippi River in exchange for suitable territory west of Arkansas, but the agreement allowed Chickasaw representatives to inspect the proposed western lands before relocation. They ultimately determined the land was unsuitable. The treaty was never ratified and became void, but negotiations over Chickasaw lands continued as the United States pursued its policy of removing Native nations from the Southeast. Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our daily newsletter today. Download our NV1 Android or iOs App for breaking news alerts. Check out today’s Native America Calling episode Monday, August 31, 2026 — Menu: Increasing hurdles and uncertainty put strains on Native beef producers and farmers

At 52-years-old, Randall Knight embarked on his lifelong dream of going to the police academy and into law enforcement. We hear about qualifying with pistol and shotgun, getting tased, pepper-sprayed and beat up with a baton. If you want to hear his backstory, go back and listen to Mom carried a Saturday Night Special and she wasn't afraid to use it. We recorded that one in May, 2024.If you want to support free speech and good hunting content on the Information Superhighway, look for our books and wildlife forage blends at https://www.garylewisoutdoors.com/Shop/And here's a link to Modern Spartan Systems https://modernspartansystems.com/product/shooters-kit-plususe the code GARYLEWISOUTDOORSThis episode is sponsored by West Coast Floats, of Philomath, Oregon, made in the USA since 1982 for steelhead and salmon fishermen. Visit https://westcoastfloats.com/Our TV sponsors include: Nosler, Warne Scope Mounts, Carson, Pro-Cure Bait Scents, Spring Pilot, The Dalles Area Chamber of Commerce, TS&S Madras Ford, Bailey Seed and Smartz.Watch select episodes of Frontier Unlimited on our network of affiliates around the U.S. or click https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gary+lewis+outdoors+frontier+unlimited

You can make a perfectly logical case for almost any belief you already hold—which makes it difficult to recognize when the belief itself is driving the problem. Ray sits down with psychologist and author Owen Fitzpatrick to explore how “inner propaganda” shapes the way business owners interpret information, make decisions, lead people, and define what they believe they're capable of.What You'll Learn in This EpisodeHow your brain can build narratives that feel like objective reality.Why intelligent people can become exceptionally good at defending beliefs that aren't serving them.How to identify beliefs that may be limiting your business without realizing it.Why asking “How is this belief working for me?” can be more useful than asking whether it is simply true.How identity influences decisions around sales, leadership, and entrepreneurship.How changing the story you tell yourself can open up a more useful way of operating.//Welcome to The Ray J. Green Show, your destination for tips on sales, strategy, and self-mastery from an operator, not a guru.About Ray:→ Former Managing Director of National Small & Midsize Business at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he doubled revenue per sale in fundraising, led the first increase in SMB membership, co-built a national Mid-Market sales channel, and more.→ Former CEO operator for several investor groups where he led turnarounds of recently acquired small businesses.→ Current founder of MSP Sales Partners, where we currently help IT companies scale sales: www.MSPSalesPartners.com→ Current Sales & Sales Management Expert in Residence at the world's largest IT business mastermind.→ Current Managing Partner of Repeatable Revenue Ventures, where we scale B2B companies we have equity in: www.RayJGreen.com//Follow Ray on:YouTube | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

This week on The DeCesare Group podcast, join Jim DeCesare for his conversation with Congressman Brett Guthrie. https://guthrie.house.gov/Guthrie was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008 and represents the Second Congressional District.He currently serves as the Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the oldest standing legislative committee in the House with broad jurisdiction over our nation's energy, the environment, health care, telecommunications, and consumer product safety policies.In this episode, he talks about his role as chairman, the Ratepayer Protection Act and how it could help address concerns about the impact of data centers on consumers, as well as the ongoing efforts to combat Medicaid fraud.Catch The DeCesare Group Podcast on your favorite podcasting platform and every Sunday morning at 7 on 95.1-WGGC.If you enjoy The DeCesare Group Podcast, leave us a review, and to learn more about The DeCesare Group visit our website, https://www.thedecesaregroup.com/ and check us out on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/@TheDeCesareGroup.

CAA literary agent Rachel Mann on what makes her say yes to a manuscript, how to navigate the submissions process without losing control of your career, and why cutting is the work that makes prose land. You'll learn Why the recognition an agent needs is physical rather than analytical. What to do when you're not sure your manuscript is ready to send out. How to buy more time after a full manuscript request without killing the momentum. Why telling other agents about your requests works in your favour, even if it feels grubby. The realistic rhythm for chasing an agent who has gone quiet. Whether refusing to use social media can cost a writer representation. A question worth answering before you sign with anyone, and why the answer shapes the edit. The edit most manuscripts need before submission, and why it rarely means adding. How poetry's distillation applies to prose, whatever you write. What still gives an agent hope in a market where people are reading less. Resources & Links Rachel's Website Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr Waterstones Puffin Jo Unwin Literary Agency Karolina Sutton agent Harriet Poland agent Sarah Harvey agent John Ash agent Boy Parts by Eliza Clark Ottessa Moshfegh author Society of Authors The Arvon Foundation To Query Rachel: Email her at rachel.mann@caa.com. To submit, please send a cover email, one-page synopsis and the first three chapters of your work, or the rough equivalent. About Rachel Mann Rachel Mann is a Literary Agent at CAA and represents a broad range of work – largely fiction, with some non-fiction — from commercial to literary, in adult, young adult, and middle-grade markets. Her clients include Eliza Clark, Caleb Femi, Jade LB and Aisling Rawle, and have won and been listed for major prizes, including the Granta Best Young British Novelist, the Forward Prize for Poetry, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Jhalak Prize, the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize, the YA Book Prize, The Bookseller Discover Prize, and the Carnegie Medal. She spent ten years editing and commissioning fiction for young people at houses including Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, and was global publishing director at the Roald Dahl Story Company. She became an agent in 2018 and joined CAA in 2023. For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.For free writing sessions, join free Writers' Hours: writershour.com.*FOLLOW LONDON WRITERS' SALONTwitter: twitter.com/​​WritersSalonInstagram: instagram.com/londonwriterssalonFacebook: facebook.com/LondonWritersSalonIf you're enjoying this show, please rate and review this show!

In an exclusive interview with The House and her first since talks collapsed, Canada's chief trade negotiator to the U.S. Janice Charette sits down with host Catherine Cullen to lift the curtain on last week's abrupt end to the talks and what it will take for both sides to return to the table. Then, Vermont Senator Peter Welch discusses his latest legislative attempt to walk back tariffs on Canada and how the nearing U.S. midterms may help or hamper efforts to resolve an escalating trade war. Plus, author Paul Wells and the Globe and Mail's Shannon Proudfoot review Canada's planned counterattack, what's at stake for Prime Minister Mark Carney and Quebec's pivotal provincial election.And, they're an unlikely duo, but longtime political rivals and former premiers Rachel Notley and Jason Kenney are setting aside their adversarial history to join forces at a high-stakes political moment. The two new co-chairs of a Canadian Chamber of Commerce pro-unity campaign discuss making their economic case for an Alberta that remains in Canada, and the challenges involved with reaching an electorate they previously led.This episode features the voices of:Janice Charette, Canada's chief negotiator to the United StatesPeter Welch, U.S. Senator for VermontPaul Wells, author and podcasterShannon Proudfoot, feature writer for The Globe and MailRachel Notley, former premier of AlbertaJason Kenney, former premier of Alberta

Episode Summary In this episode, Karl Bryan and Rode Dog are joined by guest Chutes as they dive deep into the realities of business coaching success, the psychology behind high-performing coaches, and practical frameworks for filling live events, recruiting talent, and building a business you could sell tomorrow (even if you never want to). The duo address why most business owners regret selling their businesses, how to break free from nervous system roadblocks, and the myths of retirement and "following your passion." Packed with street-level tactics and high-level mindset shifts, the episode is a must-listen for any coach wanting to elevate their impact—and their income. Key Topics Covered What Separates Struggling vs. Dominant Coaches Karl Bryan explains that action (not just planning) is what divides the mediocre from the masters 03:33. Struggling coaches obsess over lead generation; winners obsess over creating value, up-leveling their operating system, and honing a world-class deliverable 04:09. Why Most Exiting Owners Have Regret Karl Bryan shares the sobering stat: 73% of owners regret selling their businesses 07:27. The myth of the "big payday" vs. reality—a deal often means less cash, complicated earn-outs, and a shell of your former company 09:21. The right way to exit is building a sellable business, headhunting successors, and prioritizing tight contracts with expert legal help 12:01. Recruiting Top Talent in Any Industry For hard-to-hire trades, don't just post an ad—sell a vision, recruit from outside your market, and lead like a college football recruiter 16:01. The secret is to approach hiring as outreach, not just intake 13:16. Mastering Your Nervous System for Ultimate Performance The biggest blocks are psychological, not tactical—if you're stuck, look at your environment, self-connection, and relationships, not just your to-do list 18:29. Build meaningful connections, manage stress through self-awareness, and focus on root causes rather than just treating symptoms 19:43. The Real Meaning of Retirement & Passion Karl Bryan breaks down why "retirement" is often an illusion that leads to boredom, divorce, or addiction 28:14. Instead, shoot for "semi-retired for life"—keep a handful of clients you love and never truly stop delivering value 32:05. Don't chase passion blindly—excel at what you do, fall in love with service and progress, and your business will love you back 36:14. Karl's No-Excuses Blueprint to Filling an Event in Five Days Pick up the phone like your life depends on it, research new/local businesses, and genuinely care about the value you bring 43:34. Build high-energy connections, focus on helping vs. selling, and don't be afraid of rejection 46:05. Notable Quotes "Struggling coaches focus on what they earn. The best focus on what they learn." — Karl Bryan 06:52 "The magic is not in the plan. The magic is in the planning." — Karl Bryan 05:01 "High-end buyers buy on identity. Lower-end buyers buy off utility and desire." — Karl Bryan 05:53 "Healing your nervous system isn't about becoming someone new. It's becoming you again." — Karl Bryan 25:05 "'Do what you love' is overrated. It's 'love what you do' and master the process." — Karl Bryan 38:42 "Progress equals happiness." — Rode Dog, show close 58:30 Actionable Takeaways Focus on Value, Not Leads: Obsession with helping and delivering unmatched results outlasts any marketing hack. — Shift your attention to client outcomes and continuously improve your deliverable. Recruit Boldly: Don't wait for great hires to find you. Go out, tell your company's vision, and proactively sell A-players on joining—no matter the industry. Plan for an Exit You May Never Take: Build your business as if you'll sell, but with the strength and systems that let you walk away or stay for life. Address Mindset Before Tactics: If you're "jammed up," investigate your environment, relationships, and sense of self-safety. Connection, not isolation, is the real performance unlock. Ditch the Retirement Myth: Aim for "semi-retirement"—a hands-on, purpose-driven lifestyle with a few high-impact clients, not endless leisure. Love What You Do—Don't Just Chase Passion: Mastery, service, and progress are the foundations of a fulfilling business. Passion follows excellence. Fill Events Fast by Taking Relentless Action: Research every local business. Call with conviction. Focus on getting them in the room to help—not just to sell. Resources Mentioned Profit Acceleration Software (developed by Karl Bryan): Demo and info at Focused.com Live Event Master program referenced by Karl Bryan Books: "Outwitting the Devil" by Napoleon Hill "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill Networking Groups: Chamber of Commerce, BNI The Hoffman Process: A high-level personal development experience Phil Stutz Documentary: Referenced for mental resilience frameworks Fathom AI: For automatic meeting notes (mentioned in previous episodes) If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe, share with another coach, and leave a review. See you next week on Business Coaching Secrets! Ready to elevate your coaching business? Don't wait! Listen now and make real progress. Visit Focused.com for a free demo of Profit Acceleration Software™ and to join our thriving coaching community.

Day Break | Free Speech, Free For All Friday --- 00:00 - Monologue 28:05 – Jenny Story, COO of Patriot Mobile. Story discusses the importance of reactivating Christian churches and encouraging people of faith to become more engaged in their communities. She examines what pastors and congregations can do to stand boldly for their beliefs and why she believes faith and civic activism must work hand in hand. 38:13 - Monologue 57:33 – Rep. Tim Walberg, Representative for Michigan's Fifth Congressional District and member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and House Education and the Workforce Committee. Walberg discusses the latest U.S.-Canada trade developments before turning to Vice President Vance's visit to Michigan and the intensifying battle for control of the U.S. Senate. He also examines the Republican strategy for defeating Abdul El-Sayed and the issues likely to define the upcoming midterm elections. 1:16:33 - Monologue 1:25:38 – Steve Dulan, professor and attorney. Dulan discusses the latest Second Amendment developments, including the question of whether AR-15-style rifles are constitutionally protected. He examines the legal arguments surrounding the issue and what a potential Supreme Court decision could mean for gun owners and firearms laws nationwide. 1:35:45 – Dan Papineau, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives for the Michigan Chamber of Commerce. In the Michigan Chamber Business Brief, Papineau explains how Michigan elections are administered at the local level by trained bipartisan teams operating under established procedures. He also highlights the essential role poll workers play in keeping Election Day operations running smoothly and securely. --- Check out our brand new podcast, 'Forgotten America'... Episode 24 is live NOW at Steve Gruber on YouTube! Link below: https://youtu.be/UrGZQdE62jA

Attorney Jesse Forbes from  Forbes Law Offices PLLC, on the judgement against the West Virginia Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in the death of Nathan Kennedy at the North Central Regional JailLibertarian candidate for the State Senate seat in District 13 Taylor Richmond.Clay Riley, R - Harrison, 72, on His presentation next week at the Business Summit held by the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce on "The Economics of Childcare."

A diagnosis can change your life, but it does not have to decide what comes next. My guest Paul Bugeja has built a life shaped by curiosity, career change, travel, creativity, and a determination to keep moving forward. Paul lives with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, or FSHD, a condition he calls his “dark angel.” We talk about how disability has influenced his choices without defining them, why staying active matters to him, and how personal agency has helped him face uncertainty without becoming trapped by fear. Paul also shares his path from acting and writing into journalism and digital media, where he now works as a quizmaster. We explore disability advocacy, media accessibility, the role of AI in journalism, and the danger of losing critical thinking. Paul's story reminds us that resilience is not about denying challenges. It is about understanding them while continuing to choose how we live. Highlights: 01:10 – How moving often helped Paul learn to adapt. 12:15 – How a gym visit led to his FSHD diagnosis. 20:39 – Why disability gave Paul a stronger drive to live fully. 22:53 – How knowledge of his condition gave him more agency. 38:35 – Why accessible media still has room to improve. 45:57 – How staying present helps Paul manage worry and fear. About the Guest: Working as a quizmaster for a major media organisation isn't somewhere I could have predicted I'd end up professionally, but, then again, life has taken so many twists and turns it doesn't surprise me this is where I currently find myself. Despite early aspirations to be an actor, I completed a double degree in Arts and Commerce at the University of Melbourne, with the final year spent on exchange at UC Berkeley, California. On my return to Australia, not to be denied, the ever-persistent actor in me got me admission to the prestigious Victorian College of the Arts Drama School: the decade or so following saw me immersed in the challenging but exciting life of the struggling actor. This period was also the launching pad into studies in writing, editing, journalism and screenwriting, which I did as I worked in book publishing and wrote half a dozen books, even as I edged into the rapidly evolving professional world of content, digital marketing and journalism. Throughout this entire time, I've lived alongside and managed my “dark angel”—a diagnosis of facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy—which has only served to galvanise me further to live a life less ordinary along the road less travelled … And that has made all the difference. Ways to connect with Paul**:** LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/peebee/ About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingston, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Hi, everyone. I'd like to thank you once again for coming to another episode of Unstoppable Mindset. And if you're new to the podcast, we hope you enjoy our episode today. We're glad you're here wherever you may happen to be. Today we are communicating a long way away. We're communicating with Melbourne, Australia, to Paul Bugeja, and Paul is fondly known as a quizmaster. We're going to have to find out more about that, but he's had a lot of interest in acting and media and such things as that, and has had clearly a pretty adventurous life. And again, I'm sure we're going to hear a lot about a lot of that today. So, Paul, welcome to Unstoppable Mindset. We're really glad you're here. Paul Bugeja  01:44 Thank you for having me, Michael. Michael Hingson  01:46 So why don't we start? I love to do this with the early Paul, kind of growing up and how things all got started. If you remember back that far, or at least as far back as you remember, or what you were told anyway. Paul Bugeja  01:59 You know, pretty standard like childhood story for me. Grew up in the green leafy sort of suburbs of Melbourne. You know, did all the things that kids do in their growing up years. My my mother actually divorced my father quite young for me, so that was a little bit of a a critical sort of point for a child to sort of, you know, have to grapple with, but um, it was pretty smooth, and you know, um, it didn't really disrupt my childhood, except it meant that I moved around a lot when I was quite young. So I probably moved about seven or eight times by the time I was maybe eight years old. Um, but I think, in a way, that that that sort of has worked for me because it meant that even as a young child, I had to learn to adapt and change and evolve very quickly. Particularly when it came to meeting people, and you know, as a child, obviously making friends-that's one of the trickiest parts as a kid sometimes. So I think that actually stood me in good stead in in that regard, yeah. Michael Hingson  03:04 Well, I I didn't have to move a whole lot growing up. We moved from Chicago to California when I was five and stayed in the same house since college. I have moved a bunch of times, but those things happen. I understand what you're saying. I'm I'm used to it, but am am of the opinion that I'd rather not move again. It is a lot of work to move, and now also it's just me. My wife passed away two almost two and a half years ago, so I don't want to pack and move again. But yeah, well, we're in a house that we built, and and so we built it really around her because she's in a wheelchair her whole life. So it's an accessible house, but it's a very comfortable house. So I I have no complaints, and and the dog and the cat seem to like it as well. So we're here. Paul Bugeja  04:01 It's a win for everyone, and I think look, that's that's a really interesting. I had this very similar conversation with a friend yesterday about there's a time to put down roots and there's a time to be a you know a rolling stone, and and for some people that's at different times in their life, you know. So I I can understand why you would have chosen to find your comfy spot to settle into and enjoy. Michael Hingson  04:23 Well, and I have a good mortgage rate and all that, so yeah, we're happy with with things the way they are. And as long as the dog and the cat are happy, I can't complain a bit. Paul Bugeja  04:33 Excellent, excellent. Michael Hingson  04:34 But but now you're and and you you're not moving as much around anymore. Paul Bugeja  04:40 Sort of the opposite, actually. I think, like, to to go back to what we were originally discussing. Like, I think having moved so much as a younger person has meant I've lived a life that's almost constantly moving. Like, there certainly have been periods where I've lived for reasonably long periods in the one place, but particularly over the past. We maybe 10 to 12 years or so. I've moved like literally maybe 10 to 12 times. Like it's becoming, Michael Hingson  05:09 it Paul Bugeja  05:10 almost becomes a bit addictive. Sort of the ability to to be transportable when your professional life allows you and your personal life allows you as well. Michael Hingson  05:18 Yeah, I can understand that. For me, I don't want to go through all the rigors of packing and finding a new home and all that, so we're good. But but it it's okay because I can go anywhere from here, and so that works out pretty well. So I'm I'm content, and that that's the way it it should be. So we'll see how it all goes. But I'm glad that you did well, so you grew up, had kind of a normal life, even though you moved around a lot. Yeah, did all the things that that that kids do growing up, and so on. And where did you go to college, or did you? Paul Bugeja  05:53 Yeah, so I my original, I've I was a bit of a perpetual student for probably you know the first several decades as an adult, my original degree was from the University of Melbourne, which is one of the sort of larger universities in both Melbourne and Australia, and I did a double degree in arts and commerce. But you know, I had long wanted to be an actor, and so originally, like when I finished high school, my my intention was to audition for drama school. But my mother very wisely convinced me to go to university first, and then check that out. And if I didn't like it, then maybe audition for drama school a bit later on. And it was, as mothers can be on most occasions, very sagely advice from her, because the thing that she wasn't aware of was that even though I I definitely enjoyed the academic aspect of my studies at MLB Uni, it has a very strong theater department as well, and very big names have actually been through there and gone on to bigger and better things, namely Kate Blanchett. She was one of my colleagues back in the day. So you know, it was a it was a proving ground for talent. And so I did a lot of theater during my my studies at the University of Melbourne while completing the academic side as well. So I never quite lost that sort of underlying desire to maybe go on and and study acting and maybe do some acting. I actually completed the final year of my degree at Cal at UC Berkeley, which was an amazing experience, and sort of also launched me into the next part of my life. So that that was at a time when you know, like I think in a lot of ways, more and more students were traveling between countries to study. It was becoming a real thing to study overseas, so it was such an amazing experience to finish at Cal. Michael Hingson  07:48 So, do you keep in touch with Kate at Paul Bugeja  07:52 all? Haven't seen Kate in probably maybe 20 years or so. We kept in contact during the beginning of her career, of course, and then you know that life has taken her to such places that it's almost impossible to keep Michael Hingson  08:07 touch, right? Paul Bugeja  08:08 That's right. But you know, I dare say, if I think she's probably maintained the sort of personality and character that she had when I knew her, which would mean that if I bumped into her on the street and I said hello and gave her a bit of a nudge about where we knew each other from. She'd be the first one to lean into that and and you know be quite happy to reminisce on old times as you know she's not an aloof sort of person. I think that's my feel about her, even given her amazing success. Michael Hingson  08:37 I've never had that impression of her either, so I I'm with you. Well, that's pretty cool. What What took you to Berkeley for your last year? Paul Bugeja  08:45 Yeah, so I actually started working during my studies on campus at the university, and I worked in the international student office. So I was dealing with a lot of incoming study abroad and exchange students, which meant I began to have a real desire to do the same thing myself, and initially I was looking at a couple of other universities like Georgetown. I think NYU was one of the options, and I actually met a guy from Cal who was like, "You should come to Berkeley and study. It's an amazing institution. You'll love California. It's so similar to Australia, and I'd I'd I'd actually been to California before my first overseas trip when I was 19, and so I had a taste of California already. So initially, I was looking at the whole sort of Cal system, the whole you know UC system. So I looked at UCLA, UC San UCSJ maybe and anyway yeah and and then I fell and I fell in Berkeley as the final one just because what a great city to live outside of you know San Francisco's such a beautiful city and and yeah so I ended up spending an entire year there which was just like you know life defining. Michael Hingson  09:57 What'd your mom think of that? Paul Bugeja  10:00 Yeah, typical of mum's. There was a lot of tears at the airport, but you know, and this was you know like at a time when social media was really not even happening, so it was all about the phone calls regularly. But she was happy. She's I'm very lucky in that, even though I'm an only child, mum's not a clingy a clingy mum, you know, she has always encouraged me to just go out and do everything that I possibly can, and and she would never, she would rarely, you know, get get in the way of me living out my life and my dreams. Michael Hingson  10:33 Do you still? Is she still here? Paul Bugeja  10:35 She is. Yep, she's um 78, so she's you know I'm still a youngish older person, and even though we don't, we sort of you know like see each other as much as maybe I'd like because we don't live in the same place. You know, we we talk every two days or so on the phone, and I stay in regular contact. And yeah, it's it's still a very very strong relationship. Michael Hingson  10:56 That's cool. That that's a good thing though. So you you went to Berkeley. You were here. You were out here in California for a year, and then what happened? Paul Bugeja  11:05 Well, I actually I bounced back to Australia, feeling very encouraged to to follow my acting pursuits because I I did a couple of shows at when I was at Cal. I did one drama class as well in the drama department, you know, made some lifetime friendships and and felt very connected to myself as an actor again. And so, even though originally my plans were to apply to become a diplomat through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the acting thing was a bit too strong. So I came back and and felt a little not torn, but certainly I had to I had to weigh up the competing desire to want to be an actor against the fact that I had a great degree that I could maybe go on and do something completely different with. So in fact, I spent a year thinking about that and ended up quite on a different track and enrolled in a master's of environmental studies, which you know was something that interested me definitely. And but decided that I would, in addition to drama school as well, which I did do, and I got into. So I did one year of that master's, and then I went on to study at the Victorian College of the Arts, which is one of the big three drama schools in Australia, and so I finally got to that took that circuitous route to drama school, despite my mum's earlier advice, and she was happy because you know I got there under my own auspices in terms of I'd made a decision as an adult to finally get there, rather than maybe as an excited teenager who you know could obviously do so many things, and so I had both the academic degree, and now I was into a program that I'd always wanted to sort of be involved with. Michael Hingson  12:49 Right. Well, and and that that's fine. That makes sense. Yes. So I'm not sure when to bring this up. So I'll bring it up now. Sure. Tell us about your dark angel. Paul Bugeja  13:01 Yeah, absolutely. So probably in my in my in my late 20s, I started working at a university in back at University of Melbourne. Actually, my old alma mater, and by then, you know, I was actually you know sort of I I was doing some acting, you know, some professional acting, not a lot of it, but enough to sort of be remain interested. So I needed a part time job on the side, you know, to to keep it going as most actors do. And when I started working at the university, I became very interested in fitness as well. I joined a gym and started going to the gym there and made some sort of friends with the local personal trainers. And one day I was doing some training and on one of the big, big sort of bouncy medicine balls that you can sit on for balance and training work, and one of the instructors came up to me and said, "Do you realize that your scapular wings? And I was firstly thinking, "Well, what the hell is my scapular? And then I sort of made sense that it was my shoulders, you know. And and I said, "What do you mean? He said, "Well, when you do upper body workouts, your scapula has quite a lot of movement in it, and it's quite visible. Now, I've always been a very thin person, like I've always sort of been. We've joked about being a tall, skinny dude, you know, and and so I I'd never thought anything about maybe the fact that my my shoulder blades were a bit more prominent. I figured that was because I was a slim person, you know. Of course, so he recommended I see a physiotherapist, and I did. I saw a sports physio in case I'd injured myself or there was some underlying issue. After a couple of sessions with a sports physio. I was referred to a neurologist because the sports physio had some inklings about it may be being a neurological condition potentially of some kind, but had no idea what it might be. And this is when I guess my dark angel first really. Began alerting me to its presence in the background of my life, and I'll explain why I call it my dark angel in a moment. Yeah, the neurologist and I did some tests, and I went in for a biopsy, a muscle biopsy, and I was diagnosed with one of the variants of muscular dystrophy, which is fascioscapiohumeral muscular dystrophy, so it affects the face, the humerus, and the scapula, but in general affects the muscles across the body. It's a degenerative neuromuscular disease. It's not that common; about one in 8000 have it. So you know, enough people have it that it's out there. Some people live with live with it their entire lives and don't know they have it for the reasons that I've just sort of elaborated on, which are it can it can be there but be so minor that you just think it's because you're a slim person or you don't have much you don't go to the gym so you don't work out so your muscles aren't growing or whatever. So yeah, and I was not that thrown by it at the time. It was it was in our family, so it wasn't that much of a surprise to me that maybe I had it. Given that another family member, even though they're quite distant on the family tree for me, also had it, and yeah, I began to just think about you know like what life would be like with this condition, and you know began to have regular sort of checks with the neurologist and you know other sort of allied health professionals around how to manage that. Luckily, it was very my and still is very mild in terms of how severe that it can be. But as I sort of began thinking more about my professional life. I I actually took on a an editing and writing degree and a screenwriting degree as I started to move away from acting because I figured I am a creative person. I love writing and I want to improve my craft. I was interested in journalism as well and I could do that as part of this degree. Paul Bugeja  16:58 So I started studying and that then led to me actually writing a couple of books, four or five books, working as an editor, and then at one point I began thinking, I think I need to write my own book about my journey with this condition, or you know, disability, whatever you want to call it. And I had watched the TV show Dexter, which you may or may not have watched. Yep, and Dexter talks about his dark passenger. You know, as and that's the the sort of I mean, it's a weird correlation. I know in some ways, but that's the serial killer in him. That's his dark passenger. But it really resonated as um this idea of there being this sort of passenger in your life. You know, for whatever reason, whatever it is, and I didn't obviously want to steal that sort of figurative term, but I began thinking about a dark angel instead because, for me, it's a double thing. I mean, I was whatever Catholic. I'm not a practicing Catholic anymore, but you know, the notions of angels around us is something you know we all sort of think about, I guess. But the notion of my scapular wing and those being wings as well was very sort of resonated with me, and so I began feeling that for me my entire life this dark angel had been somewhere in the background, very very far in the background to the point where I wasn't even really aware of that dark angel, and then of course when the diagnosis came along, the dark angel began to make its presence more known, and yeah, and and then over time, I'm very, I live with, you know, like anyone with any sort of disability or chronic medical condition, like you live with it 24/7, and some days it's more of a burden, other days you don't not even aware of it, but you have to learn to live with it, and and so I now feel like I have this sort of dance with the dark angel, I like to call it, who sometimes is more present in my life and sometimes much more in the background. Michael Hingson  18:53 So, what kinds of things does it sort of limit you, or what what do you have to do to to make sure you don't let it get too much of a control over you. Paul Bugeja  19:04 Sure. So for me, the biggest thing I ever did was start going to the gym. You know, I did that just out of pure practicality because there was a gym on campus. It was very easy to join it. It was very close to go to on my lunch break, and so I've now maintained a really rigorous gym schedule, even though my upper body strength is quite weak and limited. I've been able to, I think, the my GP and say allied healthcare professionals like physios and exercise physiologists and occupational therapists have all commented that my gym program is one of the things that may you know this it's a may but may have prevented the condition progressing more severely than it has. So staying fit has been really important. I think by nature, I like to call myself a pragmatic optimist or optimistic pragmatist. By nature, I'm a practical person. I sort of feel as though, unlike I mean, look, everyone manages the news of some sort of health situation differently. You know, some people it can lay low, and I understand why because it can be very confronting, and every condition has a different set of limitations, like you know, it can be quite severe for some people. Like my my cousin had a different form of muscular dystrophy, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which meant that he was in a wheelchair from the age of five and died at the age of 28. So you know, like like in my case, I feel blessed on some level that my condition is slowly deteriorating, but I do think that I'm lucky that I have enough of a practical and positive attitude about not letting it. I don't call, I never ignore it or or deny it, but I call about. I just resist it. The resistance is there. Like I I push back against it. So mentally, I try to stay positive physically. I try to stay healthy, but you know it does limit me. I have part of the condition. I have something called foot drop, which means that my feet catch a lot as I walk. So I trip a lot. So I I have damaged elbows and knees a lot because of that. So as a consequence, I have to be conscious when I walk. It's not just a. It's not like for most people, walking is an unconscious action. Of course, for me, it's a conscious action to ensure that I trip less. And of course, as I get older, tripping becomes a thing as you get older anyway, because you know your muscle tone changes and you know all kinds of things. So you know, it's about almost in a way you have to become. You do have to be aware of it all the time, and you have to manage it all the time. But that doesn't mean it has to become a burden. I think in many ways it's pushed me the other way, which is it's made me have a lust for life. It's made me want to do more. It's it's probably pushed me to be more nomadic while I can be, just in case there's a point where I can't be, and that sounds a little bit sad, and I mean probably in some ways, but I see that as a positive. Like a really small example I can give you is whenever I visit my mum, like I don't drive, so I use public transport like trains and busses and and the like. And if I catch a train to to go visit my mum, she always insists I'll come and pick you up at the at the train station, rather than you walk to my place, and I insist every time I'm going to walk because while I can walk, I want to walk. You know, so I don't. It's not. I reject. I don't reject her kindness, and I understand it. But it's me saying to the dark angel, "No, I will. Does she? Michael Hingson  22:36 Does she understand Paul Bugeja  22:38 it? I think so on some level, but she still Michael Hingson  22:41 wants to come and get you. Of course, Paul Bugeja  22:43 she does. Of course, there can be the tiniest trickle of rain, and she's like, "Oh, you can't walk in that rain. You know, I've got an umbrella, mum. No, no, no. You know, it's all that stuff. Um, it's it's delightful of her, and I'm glad, and I'll always expect the offer in those situations. But um, yeah, no, she um, you know, unfortunately, and I think a lot of parents will who pass on genetic conditions because this is a genetically passed on condition for me. She feels a sense of guilt about you know having passed on through her line, and so I think she we've talked about it a few times, and it's not a heavy weight on her shoulders, but she has a sense of it. Yeah. Michael Hingson  23:20 Well, I I appreciate that. What was it like when you first got the diagnosis? Though, did it did did it depress you? Did it kind of knock you on your ear in in any way, or did you really decide almost right from the beginning? Okay, this is here, but I can deal with Paul Bugeja  23:37 it. Yeah, it look, you know. So I'm writing a book about this, as I was saying at the moment, and in the in the chapter of the book that I'm writing, I think I wrote something along the lines of life just moved on. You know, like there was no discernible difference. Like I didn't feel physically any difference because there was no physical difference. But for me, I mean, you know, I I work in the media and I've worked in the knowledge industries of any kind for quite some time. Knowledge is power, you know. And and I would rather know about something and then be able to to to have some agency about how to act on it than to bury my head in the sand. Or, but by the same token, I can understand that knowledge can really throw some people. And you know, I have a friend, for example, who I was diagnosed with MS, and that can be an awful condition to be diagnosed with because it can progress very quickly. And for her, the knowledge wasn't great. You know, it's it's been a very big challenge for her. But you know, five years on, now that she has much more knowledge about it because she's had to live with it, she's going the opposite way. So you know, everyone is different, but for me, the knowledge actually catapulted me forward rather than weighed me down. Michael Hingson  24:46 Well, that was a choice that you had to make, or that you got to make, and you made it. And you're you're choosing to move forward with life, which is great. Paul Bugeja  24:55 Yeah, yeah. I feel lucky. As I said, I know. Everyone can can make that choice because of their own set of circumstances, and I do feel lucky about some of my circumstances. And you know, so I don't think everyone can necessarily be that practical or optimistic about things. But I encourage people to you know take a breath and and try and sit with whatever it is that they have to manage at any particular time, because you know people. A lot of people have a lot heavier challenges than I do, and they meet them as well. So it's possible to meet your challenges, I think, even if it limits you still. Michael Hingson  25:36 Well, so it's something that you live with, and so on. And I appreciate that. What what makes you get out of bed every day and and move forward, or is that what what you've been describing? Paul Bugeja  25:48 Look, I think I mean you know I'm I'm an I'm a lark, so I'm at about 430 in the morning, and I'm a Monday person, and I had this conversation with someone just this past Monday at the gym who you know dragged herself into the gym, and she was you know can't be bothered. I hate Mondays so much, you know, blah blah blah. And I get all that, you know. People love their weekends and a break. I love, I love the beginning of a day, and I and I have no problems getting up because I love the thought of there being so much in front of me, you know. And and even as as I grow older, and and you know, life obviously begins to go into a different phase. I still feel there's so much ahead, and and and it sounds a little bit Pollyanna of me, maybe, and a little bit overly optimistic, and a little bit Hollywood. But you know, I feel so hungry for life, and and even though that doesn't mean my life is perfect by any means, and that every day is perfect, and that there are some days that are are challenging. I face that all the time, as do we all in our different ways. But I I just feel so eager for the things that I mean. I have a great professional life, I have a great personal life, I have great friends, I have a good family. You know, my health is fine given the situation. Doesn't mean it's perfect, like I just said. But I don't have much to complain about, really. So, really, getting up is each day is is not a hard thing for me. It's it's it's a joy most days. Michael Hingson  27:15 So, are you married? Paul Bugeja  27:17 No, single. And this is, and I often frame conversations with this because sometimes my friends say to me, "Gosh, you have a great life, and I say, "Yeah, but I chose to be single, to not have children, and to not have pets-the three big things that change the course of your life sometimes in a good way, quite often. But also, I have more choices ahead of me because I am single and childless and petless, you know. Michael Hingson  27:42 Yep. Paul Bugeja  27:43 But you know, I don't. I'm not. I don't. I don't feel. I feel like I could have made other choices around this, of course. And I don't think there is a right or a wrong choice. It's just you have to find the right choice for you, especially when it comes to these big life choices. Michael Hingson  27:59 Well, you know, and when I got married, my wife and I had discussions about children, and she felt that she didn't want to have a child because she was in a wheelchair, and she felt in her specific situation, it would have been a lot harder on the body, and she would have been in bed a whole lot during a pregnancy, and she was afraid she would lose a lot of the the upper body strength and so on that she had. And my belief was that was her choice to make, and so we we both decided that we didn't want children. We would very happily entertain our nieces and nephews and throw them out of the house at the end of the day and send them home, which worked out really well. Paul Bugeja  28:49 I can I can understand that choice, and I I certainly I always thought I would be a father to be to be honest about that. When I was in my late teens and early 20s, it was forefront of my mind. Even though I had all these other adventures planned, and I had a couple of opportunities, actually, probably in my 30s, where I could have chosen to go down that road. And yeah, around the time I was diagnosed, I began thinking what that might mean. Like, and I began to not fear passing on my my FSHD to my potential children, but because often it passes through the female to the male, so it's less likely to pass through me. But if I had a female child, I might have passed it on genetically to her, who then passed it on to my grandchild. And not that that should stop anyone ever wanting children, but to your point and and the way you and your wife discuss the situation, I I made a conscious decision that probably given the life choices I was making around my career as well and other and personal life, it might not be the best choice. So yeah, I can understand where where. If Speaker 1  30:04 you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset Community. Michael Hingson  30:36 So, in in your life, what is one of the well? What would be the greatest thing in your life, personal or professional, that you've experienced so far? Paul Bugeja  30:47 The greatest thing, yeah, it's a it's a great question. That's a Michael Hingson  30:52 toughie because there are probably several. Paul Bugeja  30:54 Yeah, no, there are, there are. I mean, you know, I think, and this will seem a little sort of not so great. I mean, as in not great. Sorry, but I think the the first job in journalism that I got, which was working for the Guardian, the Australian Mars said version of the Guardian, that was pretty amazing for me because I had I had thought, and it wasn't as a journalist. It was as a like a community sort of an audience sort of person, basically. So I wasn't writing and I wasn't generating content, but just to be finally in a media organization after probably 10 or 15 years of always thinking, God, I'd love to work in the media. I'm a real news hound. I love news. I love current affairs, and even though for some it was just getting a job, for me it was taking a step into something that I had thought about for a while, and finally, and you know, working for a really reputable and very well known masthead as well, that had a lot of credibility. So that was pretty exciting, and and that sort of set me on the path of, I think this is where I will stay now if I can. Even though, as you would know, the media is under a lot of pressure to sort of evolve with a lot of external threats to the way it works and and you know staying financially viable. So I've sort of put myself into a very hot pot, and I hope I'm not the frog that jumps out. But I don't think I will be. I think I've managed to forge a bit of a career now that will keep me going. So yeah, it's not a a life like sort of fireworks sort of moment, but it was a it was certainly the day that I got the phone call saying we'd we'd love you to come and join us was was you know very similar to that? I got the phone call from drama school saying you got into drama school. It was a real like everything felt lifted. You know the whole I felt like I was floating that day. Michael Hingson  32:52 Yeah, I'm with you. So what other kinds of jobs then did you progress to over time? Paul Bugeja  32:59 Yeah, so because because I was pursuing acting for for quite some time, probably for about 10 to 15 years, really. You know, I had to do what most actors do, which is work a lot of other jobs. You know, like you just have to. The work is never constant, even for the for the biggest actors in the world. You know, I mean, most of them obviously work constantly, but you know, like to be a working actor is is never let anyone say that being an actor is not a real job. It's a really hard job, you know. And so, I I worked for a long time in casual jobs. I worked in a lot of theaters in in like the sort of the ticketing sort of area of of theaters. So I worked at both the Sydney Opera House and the Victorian Art Center, two big theater. You would know the Sydney Opera House, obviously, but yeah, Victoria Arts Center is another big theater organization in Australia. And while I was doing that, I began doing some freelance editing as a book editor. This was where I really began getting interested in content and copy, and and I had the part-time job at the university while I was studying and sort of doing all these other casual things and acting, and a role came up working in digital sort of content with a large betting agency. So you know, sports betting, which is very big in Australia, and it was managing their blog, their sports blog. So lots of content about what's happening in all the different sports, but you know, sort of a marketing slash copy role. But it was my first foray into digital content, you know, and this was at a time when it was really starting to amp up, and that therefore, you know, made me really think much more about journalism and and wanting to pursue that. So that was sort of the springboard into working in digital marketing, working as a sub editor, and then sort of finally landing this role at the Guardian, which didn't last super long, unfortunately, because I was completing a master's in publishing and communications at the time, and discovered that I. I'd left I'd left Melbourne to move to Sydney to work in the role and had two subjects left and I'd been told by the university that I could complete them in Sydney, and then I was told by an administrator that that was not possible, so I had to leave my job at the Guardian to go back to Melbourne to finish the masters, which was fine to do, and I kept doing other casual kind of jobs and you know contract roles. Well, I did that, but it meant leaving the Guardian, which was a bit disappointing. But it meant I got my masters, which was really critical because again, that was more of a springboard onwards. In fact, I, as part of my masters, I went to China and did a an intensive class in Shanghai, and from that, got offered a role in China, in Shanghai, with a with a Chinese media company that that produced content for for the very big expat community in Shanghai, and I was about to leave to go to Shanghai to take up the role, and you'll you'll probably will have a wry smile, which was February 2020, and fortunately, not long after that, everything kind of went pear-shaped with COVID, and so had to. I mean, it's sort of lucky in a way because Shanghai had a pretty awful time during COVID, where it was a very strict lockdown. So I probably dodged a bit of a COVID bullet in that regard, even though Australia had its own share of lockdowns. But yeah, so that sort of threw a bit of a spanner in the works of what looked like the next part of my media career. But then, of course, you know, I'm a I'm a fatalist. I I run with fate. I I don't push back against the things that sort of maybe look like negatives or or take us off our path. Paul Bugeja  36:38 And I just feel like it's another another fork in the path that takes us on a on a route that will hopefully get us to where we were meant to be, and not taking that role meant, of course, about a year later, I saw the job with Stuff, which is the New Zealand media company that I currently work for, and that was the middle of 2021. It was based in Auckland. We were still in the middle of COVID, but I applied anyway because why not? And yeah, they offered me the role pending the borders opening, effectively. And luckily for me, there was a two-week window where New Zealand and Australia thought things were going to go okay, and the borders opened, and I jumped on the first flight out and got myself to Auckland, and then I started my current job, or actually a different version of my current job with stuff. Michael Hingson  37:27 And what is your your current job? Paul Bugeja  37:30 So I am currently I create digital content for stuff for stuff digital, as we're called now. I mostly create trivia quizzes, so fun daily quizzes that we have a very very dedicated audience for. People love a quiz. I also create a word puzzle called the Hard Word, which is an anagram kind of puzzle. I create that every day. I create a news quiz for them. I also help manage the community, the online community that interacts with with us as another part of my role, which is the role that I originally went to New Zealand for, but as a full time gig, and now it's just sort of part of my my role. So yeah, I am a quizmaster. I love it. I had previously worked in television quiz shows during my time in Australia when I was juggling other stuff, so I had a bit of a background in in quiz question writing and quiz research and verifying, and so I'm now really in such a wonderful job. But I always like to be very clear about this to people because it sounds like the best job in the world. Wow, sitting and making cool quizzes every day-it's a really involved job, and it it takes a lot of kind of like time to research and put together these quizzes because you know you're trying to please a very broad audience of from you know 15 year olds to 75 year olds. So you know, it's it's a it's a very involved job, even if it's a fun job, and so it does, you know, it it does still have a very critical kind of like professional aspect to it, even though it sounds like to some of my friends and and people who learn about it the best job in the world. Michael Hingson  39:17 Well, I'm sure it's a great job, but it is a clearly a challenging job. Have you ever encountered people who talk to you about making your your quizzes or trying to work with staff to make quizzes and some of the things they do more accessible? So, like people who are blind can solve the quizzes or work the quizzes and use screen readers and so on to do the same things that others do. Paul Bugeja  39:45 Excellent point. So yeah, I feel quite often when I'm making my quizzes that clearly they are for an audience that can access them very easily. You know, as opposed to an audience that might need assistance to access. Them and you know we do the the the basic stuff as we you know you must you know um like you know putting an alt tag so that um you know people who maybe are but are able to to use to access the quiz as a as a an audio rather than a video rather than a written um quiz but you know, I think you're right. And look, to be fair, I think you know the way that the media is going. The media is going very video oriented now, anyway. I think, which is a brilliant thing for people who do need have some access, because you know, with the video, of course, a video quiz, there'll be audio as well as visual, as well as the written word potentially. So there's a way that covers off all the bases, you know, or you know, many of the bases anyway. At the moment, you know, we are starting to bring in some minor changes, but I think going forward, it's pretty critical because you know the world is very aware that people do have some limitations in the way that they can access, especially digital content, and even though there are a lot of great forms of software that you can use to to make like your your life less limited by whatever you know sort of limitation you may have, it still isn't as good as it can be. And and I think certainly as someone with a disability, I'm an advocate for disability. You know, I'm on the board of a major disability organization in Australia. I'm on an engagement advisory committee for the same organization. I'm very pro and very much an advocate for ensuring that anyone with any form of disability can access and have as as great a life as possible, as untrammeled. I'm not untrammeled. That's the wrong word. As as as you know, as a life that has no barricades to them, basically. Michael Hingson  41:49 Well, the the reality is that crossword puzzles, for example, can be made accessible. Yep. And of course, I wouldn't expect the organization to suddenly produce Braille puzzles, but there are there are still ways Speaker 2  42:11 to do it Michael Hingson  42:11 to create audio, for example, kinds of things. And you mentioned the the value of video that only works if people truly put the appropriate descriptions in in audio form, the video, which a lot of people don't do, which is unfortunate, but it is possible to make to make them more accessible than they are. Paul Bugeja  42:36 Yeah, but it is a but it is a it is Michael Hingson  42:38 a challenge, and I hope that over time more more kinds of things will be accessible. I get the New York Times online, and a lot of what they do isn't nearly as accessible as it should be, and I can see how it it could be made more Accessible, but they haven't just been really willing to do it. And and ironically, a lot of the media has been one of the places where access has has truly not been addressed nearly like it it should be. And and the the result of that is that there are problems, and of course they say, well, things change so fast. They they do, except that it's all about coding and it's all about understanding programming and coding. And if you do it right, and if you know it, you can keep up either way. But you know, people don't necessarily do that. Paul Bugeja  43:38 Yeah, look, I agree, and I think you know. Look, without I'm not going to become a defender of the media, even though I'm part of it. But I think they definitely can do better as a as an entire sort of profession. I think that the tricky thing for the media at the moment is, I mean, you look at what happened this week. You know, 300 reporters, you know, sacked at the Washington Post. You know the media is under a lot of pressure to be financial, and that's not a great defense against not being accessible, mind you. But their mind is on survival at the moment, and that's an unfortunate thing because it means that they can't do the stuff that would actually benefit everyone, you know, their entire audience. So, not to defend it, but that's that's the only sort of rationale I can think of as to why they're not doing more. But that shouldn't stop them trying. That shouldn't stop them trying. Michael Hingson  44:32 Well, and I think that's really the issue: is that people do need to try, and people need to make an effort. And if they would, it would help a lot more than than it does today. Paul Bugeja  44:43 Agreed. Michael Hingson  44:44 So, if you could change one thing about your life, what would it be? Paul Bugeja  44:47 Not very much. Like I really love my life. You know, I I I even and this will sound quite odd. I even probably wouldn't change having a disability. You know, like it it who I am. It's it's in my. You know, it's it's so it's in my DNA. Like you can't get any deeper into someone than their DNA. You know, like of course I'd rather not have this, but it's it it it doesn't as we've discussed. It doesn't stop me. It doesn't limit me. It just modifies my life on the edges. It's Michael Hingson  45:16 just it's just part of you. Paul Bugeja  45:18 That's exactly right. And so I have to embrace that. You know, as you know, does anyone with any sort of situation that is slightly left of you know what people might call you know normal or ordinary, you know? And I, I always say I try to live my life less ordinary, you know, and and I think it's that attitude which really stands me in good stead because when you choose like I like as we discussed earlier, I'm in a position where I can make different choices to people who do have a partner, or do have kids, or do have a massive mortgage, or do have whatever you know job that keeps them in one place. But you know, you know the old saying about you make your own luck, right? And circumstance does change things definitely, and some circumstances are outside of our control. For example, getting having a genetic disability is outside of my control, but you know you do make your own luck as well. And I sort of feel that I am so about agency, and I'm so about you know like taking responsibility for your actions that I feel that everything about my life is because of the choices that I've made, and I want to own that. So you know why would I want to change any of that? In terms of, if I want to change it, then I will change it. So I think I have a great life. I'm healthy. I'm happy. I've got a you know like I was saying earlier, I have great friends, a good family, a great job. I'm able to you know like talk to people like this about things and and and like it's yeah life's pretty life's pretty good for me. Um, you know, there are things about the world I'd like to change, like as would we all, you know, like, um, but those things we can only sort of change on the edges, and I do that as much as I can as well. So, well, there are things that we don't Michael Hingson  46:54 have control over, and and if we worry about them, that's just going to cause us grief. It's not going to bother others. Paul Bugeja  47:01 No, no worries. Worry. I mean, I worry about something. Of course, I do. We all do. But you know, eventually, I manage to bat most of my worries away because I realize, as you said, it's usually something that is out of my control. It's funny when I talk to my actor friends, and speaking for myself, of course, you know, actors have to rehearse. You know, we rehearse favorite. You know, you rehearse for roles and whatever, and that sometimes for me has meant that I tend to rehearse things prior to you know the situation. So it means that my mind goes at 100 miles an hour about a lot of things, and that can lead to anxiety and worry. You know because you overthink, you worry about a situation that hasn't even occurred yet. You're thinking, not over. Well, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. So, you know, I think the the biggest lesson I've probably taken as well from my diagnosis and and the the thing I committed to this year a little bit as a part of my New Year's resolution or whatever you want to call it is to just be as present as I can. You know, like to live in this moment right now. That doesn't mean I don't have an eye to the future, and and I don't make plans, and I don't am not excited about the future. But I'm I'm trying to be as present as I can because if you're present, then all then all this worry disappears in a way because you just can only deal with with with what's right in front of you. Michael Hingson  48:18 Right. Do you have any regrets? Paul Bugeja  48:22 Um, not really. I mean, you know, like there've been a few moments in my life. So, for example, I can I can name a few things. Like when I was in my early 30s, I entered the the diversity visa program, which is the green card lottery in America. Yeah, and I I got it. I got a green card, you know, and so I was all ready to move to the states back in the late 90. Oh no, when was it? Yeah, the late 90s. Yeah, yeah, um, early noughties, and I got into the writing editing course in Australia. So I was really enjoying that. I was doing some acting and some paid acting work, and so I had to. I had a moment where I was like, "Well, do I really want to take up this green card off and become a resident of America? I have lived there before when I studied. I travel there regularly to see my friends, you know. And so I had this crunch time. It was a sliding doors moment. I I did visit a few times. I spent a bit of time in the states, and then I eventually dropped the green card. Now, occasionally, I look back on that and think, "Was that a silly thing to do with what would have opened up to me had I moved to the states? You know, like would my acting career have taken off? Would I have ended up working for the New York Times? Look, whatever it is. So there's a sense of regret about it, but it's such a faint shade of regret that it doesn't it doesn't hold me back. You know, I don't want to be held back by anything in my life. And I think, for me, regrets can hold you back too much. You know, oh yeah, Michael Hingson  49:49 yeah. Oh, absolutely. Well, and and it seems to me that that it's one of those things that could have gone either way, as you said, a sliding door moment. I think that's a really interesting way to put it. But but the fact of the matter is, you made a choice. You're happy with the choice, and you may or may not have been as happy with the choice if you had moved to America. But you wouldn't have experienced a lot of the things that you have experienced. So it's okay. Paul Bugeja  50:14 That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So even you know occasional relationships that went awry, or you know what else? Gosh, what if I stay pursue my career as an actor? There are always going to be what ifs with life, you know, and it's the what ifs that tend to cause us regret. I think, and Michael Hingson  50:29 well, and and cause us so much fear. Paul Bugeja  50:32 That's exactly right. And regret and fear should be the same word, effectively, because that's all that's playing. And if you can find a way to manage that as best you can, and and look. I always say I try to to look down at my feet on the ground to see where I am, and to look forward to see where I'm going, rather than look back where I've come from. And look, we can learn a lot from where we've come from. And in fact, the book that I'm writing is almost like a detective novel, where I track back through my life to see if I can see moments where I might have known that I had FSHD much earlier, so in that regard, I do look backwards. You know, I'm happy to to to have a critical eye on the past and to learn from it. You know, but I don't ever want it to drag me back to it. I'm always looking to be pulled forward. Michael Hingson  51:18 Well, that's the operative part, right? There's nothing wrong with looking back and and learning from what you've experienced, and and more people should should do more of that. It seems to me, but Paul Bugeja  51:29 oh yeah, let's. That's a much longer conversation, isn't it? It Michael Hingson  51:32 is. Who's been the most most influential person in your life, and why? Paul Bugeja  51:38 Yep. Michael Hingson  51:40 Besides Kate Blanchett, but that's another yeah, Paul Bugeja  51:42 of course, very influential, Kate. If you're listening, if she is, I hope she'll Michael Hingson  51:47 reach out. I'd love to have her on the podcast. But anyway, you Paul Bugeja  51:50 never know, my friend. You never know. Look, I mean, it's it's a hard question because, but it's a good question. I mean, there have been so many influences in my life, you know, and and I don't want to step on toes by not naming people in a way, but you know, for one one really influential person who has given me, you know, I have a friend who's a film journalist actually, and has written, you know, a lot mostly about the production side of the industry rather than film reviews, and I feel she only came into my life about maybe 10 or 12 years ago. So she's a relatively new friend, but a very dear friend. And I think I did an internship at a magazine that she worked for, and she was the the editor of at the time, and I think she had a really great influence on my life because she made me realize that I definitely wanted to pursue a career in the media. That I was done with journalism. That working in the media was exciting and interesting. You know, she made sure she pushed me in a lot of ways that I might not have been pushed otherwise, and she's remained a really dear and constant president in my life ever since. So yeah, I really feel like her coming into my life at that particular moment really was like critical in a lot of ways. But you know, she was one of many that have that have definitely given me great advice, or have been very supportive, or have just been there for me. So, yeah, big call out to her. She's she was being wonderful. Michael Hingson  53:29 Do you think that if you had never been diagnosed with or ever had FSHD, that your your job and your careers would have gone differently, or do you think that this was just a natural progression and FSHD is there, but it didn't really dictate what you did. Paul Bugeja  53:46 I think because of my approach to this situation, which is it's there, but it's not going to stop me. I think that look clearly, it's a physical condition, so it does limit me a little bit physically. So, like, I was never going to be like for for instance even with acting you know it did limit me a little bit with acting like there were certain things that like I can't do a headstand you know and I know that's a really a small thing but like in in drama classes there was I remember one class particularly always asked to do a headstand and I couldn't do it and this was pre diagnosis and I had I just thought it was because I was clumsy or uncoordinated or not muscular enough, so like certainly the diagnosis probably gets in the way of some some some kinds of careers that I might have pursued. But generally, you know, I'm a I'm a computer based person. I'm a knowledge and and and and content based person, and I was already going that way pre-diagnosis, so you know I don't think it really intervened in where I would have gone, whether it helped me or not, or whether you know it was part of the reason why I'm where I am. Look, I think it's it's part of the reason of everything that I do. You know, even if it's not all. That the defining reason, but it's it's a consideration definitely. Michael Hingson  55:04 Well, it is, and and it's helped build your resilience, and there's nothing wrong with that. Paul Bugeja  55:10 Yep, and that's right. And I'm in a career that requires resilience, and so it definitely, in that regard, yes, it's it's helped me build that further resilience. Michael Hingson  55:18 So there you go. Has AI helped you in terms of any of the things that you do on your job? Do you use it to to help in finding out information about quizzes or or that you put in quizzes or any of that? Has AI been a useful tool for you? Paul Bugeja  55:35 So again, this we could talk about this for 12 hours a time. Topics right, especially working in the media. I am. I love the fact that I'm an early adopter. Right, I love technology. I I embrace it. I'm you know I'm that guy who gets the new iPhone not every year but every other year. You know, I I'm really I embrace the new. You know, I was doing digital content well the beginning like not at the beginning of it all but you know I was I was I jump in quickly with AI I have reservations I certainly you know I tend to still use standard search but of course now with Google search AI is built into that Google search so I am using it in that regard as a media organization, we have a very strict policy about AI, as one must. You know, we have to be very careful because while it's definitely the next big revolution for everyone, whoever you are, from you know like a dog walker to a you know president, like it's going to affect everyone's lives, you know. I feel as though, so you know, for example, as a media organization, we're encouraged. We are looking at improving the way we work with AI, but there always needs to be a human oversight. Yeah, Michael Hingson  56:57 absolutely. Paul Bugeja  56:58 Yep, yep. And you would appreciate that, of course. So I don't use it in the way I think. I I think over time I will have to use it because I won't have any choice. But you know, we in the media, I think we're looking at. I don't think this is giving anything away, but we're looking at agentic AI more than generative AI because agentic AI is really useful. If I can ask an AI bot to put together the the not the quiz itself, but the the actual article the quiz will appear in that goes on the site. Well, that's just a practical like role you've given a system if you had one anyway, right? So I definitely think the media and me in in my role will will more and more embrace agentic AI as we're able to build it into our systems to help us with mundane practical tasks that you'd give the intern, that you'd give the the first year journal student out or whatever. Right? In terms of generative AI, I I've used it a bit just to see what it will throw back at me, and for example, I do a lot of quizzes as a quizmaster because I love to just do quizzes. I can tell a quiz that's been made with AI. It's very clear. I did a quiz the other day, and I kid you not. The first question was, "If I'm a Bolivian, what country might I come from? Now, I mean, for an editor or the actual person who put together that quiz, not to realize that a that's a pretty awful quiz question, but but it's such an obviously AI generated quiz question, you know. So yeah, I think we I think, and I'm also very aware that the amount of money that's being poured into AI at the moment is looking like a big bubble that will burst at some point, you know, because they can't keep plowing all this money in and expect big returns because it's not returning anything at the moment to them. Really, that doesn't mean it's not going to continue. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't embrace it. That doesn't mean that it's not going to maybe find a cure for cancer. Like I feel like there is a lot of positive that can come from it, so long as the humans stay in control. Michael Hingson  59:03 Well, I think that's the the real issue in the operative part of it. I have used AI in in writing articles, and the way I've used AI is I've I've asked it to give me give me your thoughts on or write an article about, and I'll do that like about six or seven times, and I will go through all of the things that that are created, and it gives me ideas. But I would never let it write the article, and I I would never do that because I want it to be me. And even if it could get to the point where it truly emulates me, it's not me, and I wouldn't want to do that. I so I'm I'm with what you're saying. Paul Bugeja  59:44 Yeah, yeah, and I think that's the trick. My, I think probably like with all you know, sort of new ages of technology, whether it was just the internet, and then it was sort of probably social media was the next big you know sort of critical juncture, and now it's AI. You know, it it means that the a younger. Generation that comes along that only knows this. So my my probably biggest concern would be, and I don't have children, but you know for my friends' children and the children that are going to grow up with AI, that they come to rely on it so heavily that they lose the ability to critically think, that they that they believe everything that AI says, and it will get better and it will get more accurate, but it's still throwing back. So I'll give you one quick example. When I was playing around with it back in 2022, I think, or whatever year the Queen died, Queen Elizabeth II died. I asked it, "Who's the current monarch of England? And I kept bringing Queen Elizabeth II back, and I kept arguing with it, and it kept saying no, and I started feeding it New York Times articles, Guardian articles, you know the Telegraph articles, and I kept saying these aren't reliable sources. Now this was you know back three or four years ago now, but that really concerned me, and I fear that that's the only fear for me is that people will lose their curiosity and their own ability to critically think and and and rely on it so heavily that they forget how to do really simple tasks that we should still be able to do. Michael Hingson  1:01:04 If you could change one thing about the world, whether it's big or small or whatever, what would Paul Bugeja  1:01:10 it be? I actually, so this will reveal me as a like a bit of a almost a communist. But I wish that people's obsession with money would change. I would love to change that. Like I love that people want to be comfortable and they want good lives and that we want our creature comforts and that we want to travel and have a great TV and all that somewhere to live. But I do feel li

A full pipeline feels like good news—until you realize you have no idea why it happened. Ray uses a conversation with an MSP seller to make the case that sales should be treated as a system: when the output changes, something upstream changed with it.What You'll Learn in This EpisodeWhy a good quarter you can't explain is the same management problem as a bad quarter you blame on the market.How to think about sales as inputs, process, output, and feedback.Why changes in pipeline should trigger investigation rather than celebration alone.How marketing and outbound sales function as R&D when they're measured over time.Why tracking what drives results gives sales leaders more control over future performance.How to move from explaining quarters after the fact to understanding what is driving them.//Welcome to The Ray J. Green Show, your destination for tips on sales, strategy, and self-mastery from an operator, not a guru.About Ray:→ Former Managing Director of National Small & Midsize Business at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he doubled revenue per sale in fundraising, led the first increase in SMB membership, co-built a national Mid-Market sales channel, and more.→ Former CEO operator for several investor groups where he led turnarounds of recently acquired small businesses.→ Current founder of MSP Sales Partners, where we currently help IT companies scale sales: www.MSPSalesPartners.com→ Current Sales & Sales Management Expert in Residence at the world's largest IT business mastermind.→ Current Managing Partner of Repeatable Revenue Ventures, where we scale B2B companies we have equity in: www.RayJGreen.com//Follow Ray on:YouTube | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

When James Clear last spoke on the Craft & Commerce stage, Atomic Habits hadn't even been released. Now, it's sold over 30 million copies worldwide. I was delighted to welcome James back to the same stage 8 years later to unpack what he's learned from creating one of the bestselling books of the last decade. In this conversation, James shares his insights on how to create a timeless product, how he built an email list of over 4 million subscribers, and the revolutionary publishing model he's building with Author's Equity. James also answers burning questions from the audience on simplifying complex ideas, building lasting entrepreneurial friendships, protecting your identity as a creator in public, and James's personal mission in life. If you've ever wondered what goes into creating a bestselling book, I think you'll get a lot out of this episode.Timestamps:00:00 Introduction01:07 Expectations for Atomic Habits' success02:54 Selling 30M+ copies04:48 Timeless marketing principles07:18 Positioning for long-term book sales09:39 Building the world's largest single-author newsletter12:44 Current effective growth tactics14:01 Cross-pollinating platforms for growth16:51 The vision behind Author's Equity20:51 The Atomic Habits tipping point23:09 Why books are an underrated business model24:48 Simplifying complex ideas27:54 Cultivating lasting entrepreneur friendships31:33 Protecting your identity as a public creator35:30 Why choose traditional publishing over self-publishing?39:17 Mining for stories and metaphors43:24 What makes Author's Equity different?48:50 Daily habits for rebuilding momentum51:50 James's life mission54:24 Author's Equity: working with self-published authors58:05 James's parting thoughts: 10-year and 1-hour timeframesIf you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe, share it with your friends, and leave a review. I read every single one.Learn more about the podcast: https://nathanbarry.com/showFollow Nathan:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nathanbarryLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanbarryX: https://twitter.com/nathanbarryYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thenathanbarryshowWebsite: https://nathanbarry.comKit: https://kit.comFollow James:Website: https://jamesclear.comNewsletter: https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1X: https://twitter.com/jamesclearLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesclearInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamesclearFeatured in this episode:Kit: https://www.kit.comAtomic Habits: https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habitsAuthor's Equity: https://www.authorsequity.comHighlights:02:10 - James's initial expectations for Atomic Habits09:39 - How James built the world's largest single-author newsletter23:09 - Why books are an underrated business model48:50 - James's daily habits for rebuilding momentum51:50 - James's life mission

George Wright III interviews US Marine Corps veteran and serial entrepreneur Anthony Suppa about applying Marine Corps discipline to restaurant leadership, managing people differently, and using failure as a learning tool rather than a stopping point. Suppa explains that motivation should come from accomplishing goals, not the temporary “high” of speakers, and that entrepreneurs must embrace grind, rejection, and persistence. He shares how years of a Toys for Tots toy drive grew into Slice of Charity after partnering with Oheka Castle and hosting events that drew 1,500 people, fueling a mission to help veterans, military families, and children in need. Suppa emphasizes running the charity with volunteers and minimal admin costs, incorporating work into daily life, delegating to grow, and launching Veteran Ally for Commerce to generate profits that fund the charity without relying on donations or grants.00:00 Dream Big Mindset02:02 Marine Corps Lessons in Business03:40 Resilience and Redefining Failure04:49 Motivation vs Discipline Wins06:39 Entrepreneur vs Self Employed Grind07:31 Origin of Slice of Charity10:17 Scaling the Charity with Integrity11:08 Making Time and Work Life Balance12:31 Veteran Ally for Commerce Model13:57 Vision Multitasking and DelegationThanks for listening, and Please Share this Episode with someone. It would really help us to grow our show and share these valuable tips and strategies with others. Have a great day.George Wright III“It's Never Too Late to Start Living the Life You Were Meant to Live”FREE Daily Mastermind Resources:CONNECT with George & Access Tons of ResourcesGet access to Proven Strategies and Time-Test Principles for Success. Plus, download and access tons of FREE resources and online events by joining our Exclusive Community of Entrepreneurs, Business Owners, and High Achievers like YOU.Join FREE at DailyMastermind.comFollow me on social media Facebook | Instagram | Linkedin | TikTok | YoutubeGrow Your Authority and Personal Brand with a FREE Interview in a Top Global Magazine HERE.Guest BioAnthony Suppa is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, entrepreneur, and nonprofit leader. He is the Founder and Executive Director of Slice of Charity, a Long Island–based 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to supporting veterans, military families, and children in need, and the founder of Veteran Ally for Commerce, the company behind Aluvia, a mission-driven health and wellness brand. Through Aluvia, Anthony is building a socially conscious business model that connects commerce with community impact, with a portion of sales supporting Slice of Charity's charitable programs. A graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education with nearly two decades of business and hospitality leadership experience, Anthony's work brings together entrepreneurship, philanthropy, veteran advocacy, and community service.LinksLInkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-suppaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/sliceofcharity

Tony Sciarrino is the Head of BMO Commercial Bank, U.S., where he is responsible for shaping the bank's commercial banking strategy, expanding client relationships, and overseeing the overall financial performance of the business. He leads nearly 3,000 team members dedicated to providing integrated financial solutions, including commercial lending, treasury and payment services, investment banking, real estate banking, mergers and acquisitions advisory, and capital markets support. As a member of the BMO U.S. Management Committee, Tony plays a key role in driving the bank's growth and strategic direction. With more than three decades of banking experience, Tony has built an accomplished career leading commercial banking teams and driving market expansion. Before joining BMO, he held senior leadership roles at JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he specialized in commercial banking, client acquisition, strategic debt, treasury, and capital markets solutions. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from the University of San Diego and completed the prestigious Harvard Business School Presidents Program for Leadership. Beyond his professional achievements, Tony is deeply involved in the business and nonprofit community. He serves on the boards of several respected organizations, including the California Chamber of Commerce, YPO Los Angeles, and the LA Sports Council, and has previously held leadership roles with the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation and the LA Chamber of Commerce. Recognized multiple times by the Los Angeles Business Journal as one of the LA500's most influential executives, Tony is widely respected for his leadership, commitment to business excellence, and dedication to strengthening the communities he serves.   -- Critical Mass Business Talk Show is Orange County, CA's longest-running business talk show, focused on offering value and insight to middle-market business leaders in the OC and beyond. Hosted by Ric Franzi, business partner at REF Orange County. Learn more about Ric at www.ricfranzi.com.

In episode 267, Coffey talks with Catherine Clifton about AI-generated employee grievances, another lawsuit arising from a DEI training program, a Walgreens race and age discrimination case, and a Reddit scenario involving FMLA leave and workplace gossip. They discuss the rise of AI-generated employee grievances citing nonexistent laws and containing factual errors, and how employers should respond to them the same way they'd respond to any poorly written complaint; AI use by medical providers in ADA accommodation responses — including providers drawing conclusions that are legally the employer's to make; the danger of employees using AI to build one-sided cases that start with a conclusion rather than an objective analysis of facts; an EEOC lawsuit against Washington University in St. Louis arising from a DEI training that racially segregated participants over an employee's explicit objection, followed by elimination of her position after she filed an EEOC charge; the structural problems with demographic-based separation in DEI programming and the assumption that shared identity equals shared experience; the Walgreens case and the legal standard for comparators in race and age discrimination claims — including similar job, same decision-maker, comparable conduct, and disparate treatment; how summary judgment works and why consistent policy enforcement across all employees is the strongest defense against comparator arguments; the risk of employees not knowing what disciplinary action others have received, and how that gap fuels gossip and unfounded discrimination claims; and a Reddit scenario involving a coworker complaining about an FMLA-protected employee, a supervisor who deflects with "HR is aware," and how HR should respond to protect privacy while addressing cultural warning signs. For HR teams who discuss this podcast in their team meetings, we've created a discussion starter PDF to help guide your conversation. Download it here https://goodmorninghr.com/EP267  Good Morning, HR is brought to you by Imperative—Bulletproof Background Checks. For more information about our commitment to quality and excellent customer service, visit us at https://imperativeinfo.com.   If you are an HRCI or SHRM-certified professional, this episode of Good Morning, HR has been pre-approved for half a recertification credit. To obtain the recertification information for this episode, visit https://goodmorninghr.com.   About our Guest:  Catherine has more than 20 years of experience specializing in employment law in Texas. She worked with multiple local governmental entities as an employment law attorney and also served as a legal advisor for public safety.  She spent several years as an administrative services director, where she was responsible for Human Resources, Risk Management, and Payroll. She has advised clients on recruitment, selection, discipline, wage and hour, policies, and grievance matters, including federal and state laws related to labor and employment.   Catherine also has experience with general municipal law, utility matters, public information, open meetings, and general governance matters.   Catherine is a graduate of Southwestern University, obtained her JD from Texas Tech University. She is certified as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). She joined Ross | Gannaway | Clifton, PLLC in 2022.  Catherine can be reached at:  https://www.gannawayclifton.law/  https://www.linkedin.com/company/rossgannawayclifton/   About Mike Coffey:  Mike Coffey is an entrepreneur, licensed private investigator, business strategist, HR consultant, and registered yoga teacher. In 1999, he founded Imperative, a background investigations and due diligence firm helping risk-averse clients make well-informed decisions about the people they involve in their business. Imperative delivers in-depth employment background investigations, know-your-customer and anti-money laundering compliance, and due diligence investigations to more than 300 risk-averse corporate clients across the US, and, through its PFC Caregiver & Household Screening brand, many more private estates, family offices, and personal service agencies. Imperative has been named a Best Places to Work, the Texas Association of Business' small business of the year, and is accredited by the Professional Background Screening Association.  Mike shares his insight from 25+ years of HR-entrepreneurship on the Good Morning, HR podcast, where each week he talks to business leaders about bringing people together to create value for all stakeholders. Mike has been recognized as an Entrepreneur of Excellence by FW, Inc. and has twice been recognized as the North Texas HR Professional of the Year.  Mike serves as a board member of a number of organizations, including the Texas State Council, where he serves Texas' 30 SHRM chapters as State Director-Elect; Workforce Solutions for Tarrant County; the Texas Association of Business; and the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, where he is chair of the Talent Committee. Mike is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) through the HR Certification Institute and a SHRM Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP). He is also a Yoga Alliance registered yoga teacher (RYT-200) and teaches multiple times each week. Mike and his very patient wife of 29 years are empty nesters in Fort Worth.  Learning Objectives:  Apply a consistent, policy-grounded response protocol to AI-generated employee grievances — including clarifying conversations, documentation, and using complaints as opportunities to identify real underlying issues. Identify the legal elements of a valid comparator in a discrimination claim and explain why consistent enforcement of discipline across all employees is the most effective defense.  Recognize the supervisor behaviors that signal cultural and legal risk — including deflecting accountability to HR and failing to redirect inappropriate peer complaints — and describe how HR can address them. 

The game of football means a great deal to the High Country and its economy. For decades, championship success on the field has fueled business growth and activity throughout the surrounding High Country region. How the business of college athletics moves forward has a direct impact on the economic performance of a key time of year for our community.On this week's Mind Your Business, we bring you our annual conversation with App State Director of Athletics Doug Gillin. Heading into his 12th season in the AD's chair, we'll talk about the current trends in the business of college football and athletics in general, and how the evolving landscape of college sports will impact gamedays. We'll also discuss how App State athletics is brining entertainment other than sports to the High Country and -- perhaps refreshingly --  we'll hear about possible connection points for student-athletes in the community as they look to make a positive impact on the area during their time in Boone.Mind Your Business is written and produced weekly by the Boone Area Chamber of Commerce. This podcast is made possible thanks to the sponsorship support of Appalachian Commercial Real Estate.Catch the show each Thursday afternoon at 5PM on WATA (1450AM & 96.5FM) in Boone.Support the showSupport the show

This week, Katy takes us to Rome, GA to tell the story of Peggy Snead, the legendary madam who ran one of the South's most talked-about houses of ill repute for decades, hiding in plain sight in a small Southern town. Get ready for a wild ride through a local dirty little secret.This episode is sponsored by:GO Realty https://www.gorealtyalabama.com/Cherokee Family Healthcare http://cherokeefamilyhealth.com/The Cherokee County Chamber of Commerce https://cherokee-chamber.org/Easy Street, Restaurant, Bar, and Performance Hall https://www.facebook.com/easystreetcentreTheme song is The Legend of Hannah Brady by the Shane Givens Bandhttps://open.spotify.com/track/5nmybCPQ5imfGH8lEDWK4k?si=0fa2a98df6264c39

Phillip sits solo to unpack conflicting economic signals: Shopify's monster quarter against a Census report showing eCommerce eating share while retail overall slows. What does this mean for brick-and-mortar? Although stores still make up most retail sales, their mission and value have shifted. The good has become secondary to the experience of acquiring it. Plus, he breaks down why the monoculture returned in a summer of shared events, and what's on the FC docket through November 3rd. The Monoculture Isn't Dead, It's On Substack Key takeaways: Commerce is growing (online sales grew at nearly twice retail's pace in 2025), but it's growing by disappearing into everything else. The product itself is secondary to the experience of purchasing it. The monoculture isn't dead; it's been revived by sport, tours, and global events. "There is a monoculture now of people writing about the summer of the monoculture on their Substack." "You're not just communicating your vision anymore to the human capital within your business; you now have to communicate vision to machines and put it into machine language. Because increasingly, we are automating more and more of our vision, and it's going on autopilot." In-Show Mentions: See our Celebrity Brands Hub before the Signal Report launches Spotify Summer Trends Report Get your early bird ticket for VISIONS Summit: NYC Associated Links: Check out Future Commerce on YouTube Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Tiff and Nikki talk about a critical piece under the marketing umbrella: networking with people in your community across different "genres" of expertise. They discuss knowing your demographic, building a two-way street of referrals, leaning on your hobbies, and a ton more ways to get your business out there and being talked about. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Tiffanie (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are excited to be here. I say it every single time and we truly, truly mean it. I think you guys believe me and know that by now Nikki is here with me today. Nikki, thank you so much for being here. this is our podcasting morning and we block out the a morning, we do a couple hours and make sure that we get the best content we possibly can out to everyone. I'm actually really excited about this one. We just talked through it. for those of you who don't know, our marketing company, they   comb the internet and they comb our calls, they look through all of the data and information they possibly can and look for the best topics they can help us think of, and then they deliver those topics over to us. So for all of you out there, if there's a topic, subject that you've loved you want more of, please let us know. If there's a topic that you're like, gosh, I wish these ladies would just talk about this or dive into this more, let us know. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com   you can tag any one of us in there. Doug is our podcast guru in the background today. and of course we're the ones recording them. So if you've got ideas, we love ideas. We love nothing more than to bring you the stuff that you guys actually need. So Nikki, how are you this morning? Thank you for being here. We were talking earlier about our random Arizona summer storm, which I think it's gone and it's like just hot and humid now, and here we are. So anyways, how are you today?   Nikki Mack (01:23) so good. I know recovering all the damage, you know, the flipped over chairs, the lawn furniture. Nothing flew out of the yard this storm. So always a win, but I'll take it. The hot is worth it because the storms are beautiful. And   Tiffanie (01:37) They are.   Nikki Mack (01:37) in a couple months it's gonna be amazing. We're gonna be really, really happy. Maybe we podcast outside. Just kidding. That's crazy. But   Tiffanie (01:44) you would be so happy.   Nikki Mack (01:45) happy to be here this morning inside in my AC in the aftermath of the storm for sure.   Tiffanie (01:52) Same. Kiera and I did podcast because I think we've done it twice. We've done we've podcasted from South Mountain here in Arizona. Yeah. And   Nikki Mack (01:59) Amazing.   Tiffanie (02:00) that was when that was I mean that was gosh, we were just starting. That was a long time ago. And then we've podcasted from a mountain across the street from her house in Nevada. So and that was our I think that was our birthday podcast last year or the year before. So you never know. We might end up outside. I do love being outside as an Arizona native.   as I'm sure you do as well when it's not 115 or humid. Yeah. Arizona   Nikki Mack (02:25) When it's one hundred and fifteen.   Tiffanie (02:28) doesn't do well with humidity. Like it's been a little humid this summer, and I'm like by a little I mean like there's been like five to ten percent humidity out there, and you feel every ounce of it. So I'm ready for just good weather. so with that, thinking about outside, thinking about outside of ourselves, I love   marketing. It's one of my favorite things in the whole wide world. Like to me, I think communication is marketing. Like I'm constantly marketing myself, right? Who I am, how I show up, and like how I speak to people is marketing. I I just think marketing is showing up in a certain way to get the result that you want. And people overextend it, they overcomplicate it and they think that they have to do it a very certain way. And the reason marketing is   It's a an amazing tool, but the reason it sucks is because it's really hard to like guarantee results, right? So there isn't a certain way. There are multiple stabs in the dark that we take to get different results. And luckily, our blessing is that we get to see a lot of those different ways. We have a lot of practices. We've worked in a lot of practices. We've taken shots in the dark and   really figured out and narrowed in some things that work. And today I really wanted to talk about like strategic community networking and becoming partners with different people in the in the community, different networks in the community and just different genres outside of dentistry. And I think it's really important for dental practices and dental practice owners, business owners in general to do this. I know Toastmasters used to be like this massive thing. It's still here. Like I know someone who does Toastmasters and   She's like the shyest, like most internal person. She's like, I will learn how to talk to people. And so like Toastmasters is still a thing, but the best thing about Toastmasters is wasn't hasn't always been that you learn how to speak in public. It's the community that you build and those referrals, right? And you know, my fiance is a business professional and   Within his profession, he goes to networking events a lot. He's not a good, like he he's a very internal person as well. But he goes and he does these networking events because then he can refer his own clients or his friends. We've used people to, you know, by referral. And building that network totally changes the game because it's a bit like it's a forward and backwards. Like I refer to you, you refer to me, we know each other.   We help each other, all of those different pieces. So I wanted to talk a ton today about how to strategically build that community as a small business owner and a dental practice owner, you know, in any town. And Nikki to your point earlier and maybe speak to this a little bit, you were saying the reason that we and the reason marketing isn't super cookie cutter.   is because we all live in different demographics. But I do think we have some great ideas that could work anywhere. But Nikki, take us through some of what you were talking about there. Like why does it make a difference that where we live?   Nikki Mack (05:42) Absolutely.   Also, quick nerd alert. Five years in Toastmasters back in the day. So a hundred percent.   Tiffanie (05:47) There you go, I knew it. I should have known that.   Nikki Mack (05:52) yeah, I think when we talk about, you know, things not being cookie cutter and knowing your demographic marketing, especially, especially if we're talking community outreach, is a huge place to be in. you know your demographic. This isn't even where I'm like, okay, doctor, sit down and like think about your patients. You know your patience, your team knows your patients.   What is important in your area? What are the things that people post about, go to, talk about? And then being able to lean into that opportunity. Do you have if you're a pediatric office, right? We were just talking about this one. are you right in the middle of a bunch of school districts or a lot of school areas? Do the school nurses have your office information, right? do you participate in teacher appreciation week?   Like what does your outreach look like in those areas? Because not just for the teachers who deserve the world, of course, but also that's when they talk to parents, right? Or the parents that come and see who's taking care of their teachers as well, you're building that not just relationship, but that reputation. And that's what really drives those referrals, that culture, that everything we talk about. Now, maybe if you're a very specialized, I don't know, periodist.   sponsoring teacher appreciation day might not yield the same results, right? So this is where I say, like, know your area, know your demographic. every city has a chamber of commerce, right? the action level and what you kind of get for that membership varies everywhere. But if you look into it and it responds well with your culture and what you're driven, especially if you're very community focused and they do have a lot of those opportunities.   Reach out, right? You know, sign up, try it out for a year. Usually it's an annual membership or so, because the relationships you're gonna build to Tiff's point with those other business owners in the community too are going to be very impactful and possibly spread that reach even further than you would have thought of. And a network who's also trying to actively market and grow their business, what a resource. Because we may not all   Tiffanie (08:02) I see.   Nikki Mack (08:02) be dental, but we can share best practices.   share opportunities and even partner on certain things sometimes. So knowing your demographic, knowing what's really key and crucial, so important. If you're a downtown people commute in, you're right by all the businesses, well, the community pieces might look a little different for you. And so maybe you find out that who did what who did we use Wells Fargo, right?   Tiffanie (08:29) Mm-hmm.   Nikki Mack (08:30) Wells Fargo corporate building is a block from your office.   Does that HR lady know your name, right? Are you guys in network or do you file out of network for them? Knowing your audience is a great way to start before we just cause marketing when it doesn't work is exhausting. So let's be strategic to start and and get some really good results.   Tiffanie (08:54) Yeah, I love all of that. All of that. There are a few pieces there I wanna point out. You said referrals, right? Well, you said periodonist that might not yield the same results and it made me think, Okay, well, how much work are we doing to build the relationship back with those referring practices? I know when I was in that or in office I used to ha have a gosh, get my words together, an orthodontist.   that was really had a really close relationship with our doctor because of a community networking group that they were a part of outside of the dental practice and they routinely sent us families because families found them without a GP dentist because they knew their kid, their teenager needed braces, right? So they'd go to the orthodontist but need a GP dentist so they'd refer him over. Same with periodonists, you know, people look up implant, they end up at an oral surgeon or or a periodontist and they don't have a GP. You guys need them.   To have a GP, so you send them over. So making sure we're building that two-way street of referrals is huge. The Chamber of Commerce, I love this Chamber of Commerce situation and I've seen it really spike up recently with a few practices that we're working with. And I I have one that comes to mind and he'll know exactly who he is. he joined the Chamber of Commerce a few years ago. He's one of the business owners, but he's also the the like practice manager. He manages the business manager, right?   He joined the Chamber of Commerce for their practice when they relocated into a bigger building and he did it in order to really get to know the community. They lived outside of their community, about an hour outside the community that they worked in for a long time. Then they decided to move to that area, and now they're about five minutes down the road from the practice, which is super convenient. But they didn't feel like they knew the community. They felt like they were outsiders and they wanted to be more invested and involved. So they joined the Chamber of Commerce.   And they really started showing up at different events. They started doing, he did a leadership course through the Chamber of Commerce and through the the City Community College there. He knows everyone in that town. Like they have so many connections and so many amazing businesses that support them and vice versa, they support. And something that I don't think people really understand about the Chamber of Commerce is that it's like just that networking piece, the emails that say, hey,   We've got a ribbon cutting event coming up. Like, cool, there's a ribbon cutting event for a small business. Let me go show face and shake hands and say hello to the new owner and welcome them to business ownership. If there's anything that you come across, by all means, I've been through a lot. I might not know it all, but I might have something to offer and just be a neighbor, like be a friendly neighbor. Those community networking pieces could go so far.   And something else you made me think of. I don't remember why I thought of it, but I thought I think you said knowing your demographics, and you said like what what plays to them, right? And then I thought, Nikki, I've never thought of this before, and I think it might be gold mine. I'm not sure. What   Nikki Mack (11:55) Yeah.   Tiffanie (11:56) are your hobbies? Right? What do you love to do? So I'm thinking we're in Phoenix, so we have a lot of foodies, right? We've got a million restaurants here. So what if a dentist who is a foodie who loves food or a team member   Who is a foodie and loves food, and they go and they try all these restaurants, and you're out there, right? I have we have a restaurant in downtown Buckeye, Arizona. It's phenomenal, best Mexican food I've ever had in my life. And I have grown up in Arizona. Best food. Okay. I tell everyone about this place. What what if your dental practice that's like, hey, these are our monthly newsletters, and also let me highlight our restaurant this month.   what restaurant did we go to and we love in our community or in thirty minutes from here? Because now it's become something that's not just brush your teeth, floss. Like people don't I'm not gonna lie, most people are not reading those. Like they're not they're not. They're just not, right? But if you catch their attention with something like the best hike I've taken since I've lived in Arizona, best hike of the month, best restaurant, best ice cream. I have a doctor who loves popcorn. Like where are you getting your best popcorn? What's your   popcorn flavor this month. Like spice it up a little bit with something that's different. Because as I was as you were speaking earlier and I thought of that, I thought, how cool would it be to be like, you're going to that restaurant? I've actually heard of that. And I'm like, where did you hear about it? It's so obscure. And they're like, actually my dentist. Who's your dentist? Because now you've just created a new conversation topic that you can insert yourself into in a network of people across your whole city.   Nikki Mack (13:37) Yeah, absolutely. It makes me think of do you know how sometimes coffee shops or like little bakeries or cafes will have like the question of the day and you   Tiffanie (13:46) Mm-hmm.   Nikki Mack (13:47) answer when you come in? I've seen some dental practices do that, right? Like they have   Tiffanie (13:51) Yeah.   Nikki Mack (13:52) their question of the week or you know, question of the month. and it's just that fun little connection, like you said, and especially if it's something community driven, like what's your favorite Mexican place around here? What's your favorite restaurant? Who's your favorite coffee shop?   to drive kind of that conversation and connection because yeah, then if someone goes and tries it, it's like, how did you hear about us? And you're like, my dentist, actually.   Tiffanie (14:13) Yeah.   Nikki Mack (14:14) it's such a like full circle moment, especially if it's someone that you have partnered with in the past, whether it's meeting each other at a ribbon cutting or you know being at some other event, or they just maybe they're a patient too, right? Like there's always those small world connections and finding ways to close those little links there.   it's always such a neat and unique opportunity because this is why we talk about referrals are the best source for patients because you're it's patients you love referring people they love, right? To come into your practice and they know who you are and like what your culture is. And so when you build those relationships with our networking sources or referral sources and opportunities, it's that same type of environment where they're gonna be referring people   that   fit like what you're looking for and kind of fit that mold. so you just you put so many opportunities out there by by making those connections. I I love that. Also after the cast, I'll need that restaurant. we'll check it out. Okay. Yeah.   Tiffanie (15:14) Totally. Yeah, I will. I will. I'll send it to you. It's so good. It's so   good. and also I was thinking you said, if you've partnered with that person or if they're patients, like why not host we do Invisalign days all the time, right? Or ortho days, Clearliner days, Candid Pro days, whatever you're calling them. and you also do study clubs. Like study clubs are   Nikki Mack (15:38) Mm-hmm.   Tiffanie (15:39) cool because you need the CE. But study clubs are not like you're not   generating a lot of referrals because it's a bunch of other dentists, right? Why not host a networking like day, right? Or or a couple hours and a networking group in your dental practice on a Friday morning from like eight to ten AM. You can have muffins and donuts and coffee and orange juice and water and invite your patients that have businesses, real estate agents, insurance brokers, financial advisors, they're all in your patient base, I promise you.   Doesn't mean you have to use them. It means, hey, I know that there's a community of people here who need a networking group. I would love to do a once a month networking group or once a quarter network networking group for two hours. Invite your patients and invite your patients to invite their friends.   Nikki Mack (16:29) Mm-hmm.   Tiffanie (16:29) Everyone knows somebody. So bring a buddy, maybe every third one. I mean, I would do everyone, but I would do bring a buddy. Like bring a buddy and get a free ticket.   you know, to enter to win the blackstone. I don't know. Do something, but if you were to host something like that for your patients and for local businesses nearby, bam, more. And you're just the whole point in this is marketing is is hard. Marketing is difficult. And we rely on outside sources to do a lot. And I love nothing more Nikki than to look at what can I do? What can I control?   And building a strategic community network, all all it does is start self-promoting your business. Be a good person, know good people. People talk about you. So this whole thing is not only fun, I think, and some doctors might say, like, yeah, you're crazy, you like people. Cool, have your office manager   Nikki Mack (17:26) Yeah.   Tiffanie (17:27) do it. Like, I don't know, ask somebody in your practice is gonna want to do something like this. But what it's doing is it's building your patient base with   out paying for new patients. It's it's a outside the box, out of the normal way of expanding your reach into your community to bring in new patients to your practice to grow your dental practice that's just completely outside the box. And I think in 2026 and whatever year moving forward, you're listening to this, outside the box is what we have to do. The norm just isn't cutting it anymore. You can't just place Google ads   And expect the floodgates to open. You can't just send postcards to your neighbors and expect the floodgates to open. You've got to do something different that gets attention. And building that community and that networking group not only helps you, but it helps all of those other people. And that's when those floodgates open, in my opinion.   Nikki Mack (18:28) I   agree. And I think to your point with when you think outside the box and you come up with an idea, right? Or your team comes up with an idea because it's maybe something they saw or heard or read about, or maybe an idea shared on the Discord that another doctor in a different state   Tiffanie (18:42) Yeah.   Nikki Mack (18:43) used, right? And you're like, I want to do that. Here's what I feel like happens a lot. I want to do that, but I know I don't have time. And so I shelve   Tiffanie (18:50) Mm.   Nikki Mack (18:50) it. Right. Or like, I don't have the bandwidth. Like I absolutely love the network hosting idea.   I don't have the bandwidth to organize that. Well, guess what? There's probably a local group already out there that is doing these things or looking for places to meet. I know in my neighborhood area in Phoenix, we have this huge Facebook group that they do a lot for networking. There's a couple people who run it. They host networking events. They host like open table nights for the neighborhood for people to come and meet each other. And one of the things that they're always looking for is places.   to host. So   Tiffanie (19:27) Yeah.   Nikki Mack (19:28) maybe you don't have the bandwidth currently to create a networking group, right? And host them and do all of the the kind of legwork. Absolutely. But if you like that idea and you have the space, if you have a beautiful break room, right? Or a beautiful lobby, reach out. I bet you or someone on the team knows a local group. Do a quick little local search, right? Reach out.   make sure that they fit, you know, it's the right type of group, their their kind of vision or what they're searching out to do is what you align with. But I'll tell you what, I've been that person trying to find locations and organize groups and where to meet. And when somebody comes out like, hey, you can use my space, here's what it would look like, right? Here's how we could make it work. my gosh, like game changing. And then now you have just solidified your piece like in this network.   And now that's going to create so much opportunity because we all know once they come in the office and experience you and your team, game changer, right? And they have that   Tiffanie (20:28) Yeah, I agree.   Nikki Mack (20:29) opportunity to do it. So any idea, it doesn't just have to be the network hosting. But if you hear something or see something or think of something and your first thought is, I don't have the bandwidth, don't drop it. How do we pivot? What can we do? How do we adjust it? How do we tweak it so that it is something we could fit in, at least in some companies.   Capacity. And that's where your consultants come in, right? I love those messages, Nikki. I had a great idea. I'm like, yes, lay it on me. Let's talk about it. So you're not alone. You don't have to figure out how to make it work. If it's a great idea, let's work it out. Let's talk it through and see how we can make it work for your practice. You have a network. you have consultants, you have the other doctors with the Dental A Team. There's being out of the box means all hands on deck sometimes. So   Tiffanie (21:18) I agree. one last idea, you were talking bandwidth and I I agree. And I thought, like, okay, you can you said earlier, teacher appreciation, right? Make sponsoring that could also sponsor the mommies and muffins and muffins and mom, like whatever it is, like those types of things as well. But also you could go to the donut shop or the kofi coffee shop or whatever like local small business is near you and say, Hey, here's two hundred dollars.   the next two hundred dollars worth of purchases is on me. So when somebody comes and they order their coffee, all I ask is that you let them know that we purchased it for them and we want them to have a great day. Write a little like motivational like have a great day. You are loved, you are seen, you are whatever on a little card. Give that to the desk and let the let $200 worth of money be your marketing for the morning for that coffee shop. Something   that's just different and people are like, wow, that was so unheard of. Okay, that was my last idea. Listen to this. There's a ton of ideas in here, you guys. And the biggest piece is strategically build your community. Your network, what does Kiera say? There's a there's Kiera doesn't it's not her saying, but it's someone's right. But your net worth is directly correlated to your network. And so the people that you know, the people who are help building you up, the people who are   referring back and forth, the the people that you call when business sucks and even though they're not indental, they can relate to you because they own a business. That's your network, right? So build your net worth by reaching out and building your community network. See what you can do to help other people. Nikki, this was really fun. Thank you for taking the journey with me. I know I made a lot of stops and pivots and turns, but that's what marketing is. So thank you and thank you for your time this morning that you blocked out for me.   Nikki Mack (23:13) Always, thanks for having me. Love talking marketing. Always happy to work through stuff. So I'm really excited to see what some of our listeners come up with.   Tiffanie (23:23) I agree. I agree. And with that, go brainstorm. Drop us a five-star review below and let us know what you did, whether it was something we suggested or something you thought of on your own. Let us know what you thought of. We want to share all of these with the community. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We are here to help you to work through it, to brainstorm, to do all of the fun pieces. So let us know how we can best support you. And with that, we will catch you next time.